A/N: Four days later and I'm still salty, lol. But I'm in awe that so many love this story and really want to see it continued. Thank you so much for the reviews, for following, and adding to your list of faves! You guys spoil me, I spoil you in return. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: These characters are the creative property of LJ Smith and The CW. No copyright infringement is intended.

It wasn't so easy trying to hide in plain sight when you were a sight to behold. Tall, dark, and gorgeous, but Damon Salvatore figured he was managing just fine. A few students lazily walked along the halls of the educational building. Whispering, lamenting, or being downright obnoxious giving him a wide berth as he stood, arms folded, back braced up against the wall. Waiting. Waiting for a particular door to open and a particular person to emerge.

Lockwood's intel better not be bullshit, Damon thought as he cracked his knuckles, and relaxed his stance even more giving off the innocuous impression of boredom, which really wasn't all that hard to execute.

A few females here and there slowed their steps once seeing him, giving Damon a thorough once over from head to toe. Stripping him down to his skivvies. He didn't smile or grin or toss them a flirtatious look because right now his mind was on autopilot as it had been for the last three weeks.

Every single day, three times a day without fail Damon found himself traveling to that tree stump in the woods looking and waiting for another message from Bonnie to appear. He had heard nothing from her. Never received another sign or wonder about her prognosis. And knowing he wasn't the most optimistic of creatures, the silence was beginning to play tricks on his patience and sanity.

Damon felt both slipping through his fingers and he didn't know how to stop it. No matter what, he refused to think or believe anything bad had happened to Bonnie. That Kai in his nonchalant madness—that even creeped him the hell out, had hurt Bonnie. He just couldn't afford to think like that.

Luckily his musings were interrupted when the classroom door Damon had been staking out swung open, and an influx of students strolled out.

He kept his gaze locked squarely on its target and when he spotted who he had been waiting on, Damon began to move.

Liv was putting her tablet back into her bag. She stopped in the middle of the hall not because of that, but because she sensed a vampire approaching. Sighing in annoyance she wasn't terribly surprised that it was Damon Salvatore. She had been expecting him to corner her sooner or later to guilt trip her about doing a spell that could bring Bonnie back.

Liv lost count of how many times she's had this conversation with every single last one of Bonnie's friends. Her polite dismissals apparently hadn't been enough to convince anyone there was nothing to do. Now it was time to bring out the big guns and just tell them to fuck off and leave her alone. She didn't want nor need to get sucked up into their drama.

They may have been used to Bonnie being at their beck and call, and going out of her way to help them at an expense to herself, but she wasn't Bonnie. She felt bad for Bonnie, she did. But Liv didn't want to take her place or stand in her shoes.

Holding up her hand to block him from sight, Liv bit into her lip and snorted ruefully.

"Crazylocks," Damon greeted.

She dropped her hand and looked as disinterested as she could. "If you're here to ask me about a spell, sorry I can't help you."

Damon didn't saying anything. Once he spotted the instructor leaving the classroom figuring the coast was clear, he took Liv roughly by the arm and dragged her inside.

She resisted and zapped him with an electroshock that immediately caused him to drop his hold on her. But Damon straightened his spine, letting the rush of discomfort pass through him like acid reflux. He faced the witch and pulled his lips back from his teeth, showing fang.

"That wasn't very nice."

"Yeah, well I'm not in the mood."

"I really don't give a shit what mood you're in. I'm not here to ask you if there's a way to bring Bonnie back just for you to lie to my face. I've heard it all before and I'm not buying it. When there's a will, there's a way."

Liv blinked at Damon drolly and cocked her head to the side letting her blond spiral curls cover half of her face. "So what do you want?"

Damon removed a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and held it out to the witch. "I need you to send this to 1994."

The witch looked at the paper, then at Damon before looking at the paper again. She scoffed and switched her weight on her feet. "What makes you think I can do something like that?"

"Because Bonnie did," Damon replied simply. "She sent this to me," he removed another piece of paper from his inner jacket pocket and held out of Liv's reach. "If she can time travel a note so can you since you two are of the same ilk. Actually," Damon amended, "she's a Bennett and you're just you," he smiled mockingly.

"So you think insulting my abilities is going to get me to help you? And don't even think about threatening my brother."

"Liv," Damon said jovially. "I don't need to threaten your brother or you for that matter. Besides, I hooked Luke up with a date with some waiter he's been drooling over for the last month, so he and I are officially pals. You know, it's amazing what tequila can do to one's tongue and start letting a whole lot of deep dark secrets fly," his eyes darkened menacingly. "Don't you have a thing for a particular Wolfman, former Wolfman I should say? I wonder how he would take knowing…"

"All right!" Liv snatched the paper out of Damon's hands. "I'll give it a try but I'm not promising you anything."

They had gone back to Liv's tiny shoebox apartment. Damon had given her the address of the boardinghouse and told her to focus specifically on the date May 10th, 1994. He stood back, kept silent, and watched as the witch sat in the middle of her living slash bedroom while candles burned.

Liv held the note in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes, and began reciting the incantation.

Her voice was guttural like it was coated in phlegm and the imagery alone caused Damon to grimace. Her way of performing a spell far differed from Bonnie's who made it seem like a full body experience. The way her voice lowered in octave and the complicated words spilled from her mouth like fingers dripping with honey. Wind would blow her mahogany locks across her heart shaped face as she literally poured her soul into her magic.

It never occurred to Damon that after watching Bonnie perform a spell he would hear a very faint echo of her voice in his head for a couple of hours. He had sort of ignored it because there were far too many other things he needed to do at that time. Plus, he never liked to give stuff like that too much attention.

Damon kept his azure irises locked on Liv to make sure she wasn't faking it. Since returning he had taken a crash course on Latin and was a little more familiar with the language than he had been in the past. So the words she was saying were legit. However, that didn't guarantee she was actually putting any real effort into it.

Again, this made him think of another nuance when it came to Bonnie and magic. Sad he could only recognize these things now that they were separated. But this was something else he had overlooked in favor of remaining objective. Bonnie's magic had a particular smell and if he wanted to be real, it also had a taste. Not anything distinctive or strong like cayenne pepper but more like dew.

Twice her sweet blood had coated his tongue, once by force and the other time willingly when Bonnie linked him, Stefan, and Klaus to her in order to pull off the desiccation spell. Bonnie's blood was powerful and had a kick, and he could admit to sneakily wanting to taste it again while they had been sequestered away since the scent permeated every single room she entered.

He had wasted a lot of time being irritated with Bonnie. Primarily the reasons for his irritation had more to do with the fact for as annoying she could be, she was a distraction. A temptation and he had to keep her in a very specific block he created within his mind.

Bonne's smell was intoxicating and made him thirsty. If he had acted on that thirst…he changed his thought pattern.

Damon wasn't really scenting anything from Liv other than the fact she really needed to get rid of that Chinese takeout in her fridge.

He stood up a bit straighter as the note began to kindle and then ignited. Hope quickened in his chest, but then vanished the second the flames went out but the note still remained in the center of Liv's hand.

She slowly peeled open her eyes and didn't look disappointed in the least. More like vindicated she had proven what a true hack she was when it came to pulling off what Bonnie had so easily done.

"See, I told you I wouldn't be able to do it," Liv got to her feet and walked over to Damon. She handed the missive out to him and he quickly snatched it from her fingers. "She's a Bennett. I'm not, like you said. I understand why you're trying so hard to get her back. Guilt is a great motivator for a lot of things."

Damon's eye narrowed but he didn't comment. Liv didn't know him or what he was feeling though she was right on the money. Guilt played a small part, but that wasn't the explicit reason he was exhausting every lead and reading every book on time travel and the occult beginning with the last page and working back to the first.

Nor was he going to spill his guts out to her. She just needed to do her part and keep her little observations to herself.

"Thanks for nothing," he chided and headed toward the door.

"When are you going to let the others know what really happened, Damon?"

He paused and faced the witch. Besides her rack, she wasn't much to look at in Damon's opinion. But the sleepy eyes, the practiced pout, and her 'I don't give a shit' attitude he figured she thought worked well in her favor. Added to her allure of being a witch.

"The device…the ascendant it would have worked for the both of you, not just one. Despite what you told the others…Bonnie sacrificed herself for you to come home. Didn't she?"

She was perceptive to Damon's annoyance. He twisted the doorknob and showed himself out.

For two days Bonnie hadn't stepped foot outside of the boardinghouse. Or left Damon's room much. Only to forage for food that was pretty much it. Kai was still on the loose and she had expected him to pop up demanding her head on a spike, but he never showed.

A mental and psychological test of wills was now taking place in which Bonnie refused to play along, but she was astute enough to know she didn't have a choice. The game begun from the moment she sent that axe flying into his chest and he got her back with an arrow.

She thought tirelessly of that day. Of how she reached the conclusion that Kai wasn't needed after all since he didn't know the spell on how to make the ascendant work. That it once again boiled down to being a Bennett.

The swiftness of her actions surprised her and had shocked the hell out of Damon, which that kind of threw Bonnie off. He was typically the one to kill first and ask questions later. The double pat he gave to her shoulder didn't make her feel bad for the executive decision she made. In fact, it secretly tickled Bonnie that she was able to astonish Damon. Nick naming and cold-blooded murder were his things.

She had shifted the dynamic between them again. And maybe for the first time, Damon was seeing how his actions usually played out through someone else's eyes.

Kai would have been Bonnie's first murder, but this was his prison. Death would have been merciful; and the witches he betrayed and who put him there had figured that out, and made it impossible for him to stay dead after taking his life, or having it being taken from him.

Bonnie wasn't sure she could mentally handle killing this guy every single time their paths crossed as she tried to figure out another way to get back home. The protection ward around the boardinghouse seemed to be holding thus far, but she knew it wouldn't be long before Kai came sniffing around ready to extract revenge since the two of them wouldn't be going anywhere for a while.

Hopefully Damon got her message and was doing what he could to help her.

Bonnie sat on the floor in her impromptu command central. She had turned Damon's bedroom into her war room. For reasons she dare not examine too closely, Bonnie could feel his presence the strongest here although her mind knew he was gone. It helped to ease the loneliness, combat it, keep it at bay though going to sleep at night proved difficult because she was just so used to him being around.

Bonnie unconsciously massaged the center of her chest feeling pressure there that usually flared up when she thought about Damon.

Staying active is what she pushed herself to do. So long as she was toiling for answers she could stave off depression.

Bonnie was thankful the in-house library was stocked with a plethora of books including the entire Encyclopedia Britannica—although it was the 1994 edition. Still it provided the info she needed for the time she was in. The Internet was out so this would have to make due.

With a pencil lodged between her teeth, Bonnie flipped through the pages of the newspaper dissecting every single word, looking up definitions in the off chance a spell might be coded in the paper. She had searched through every room looking for crystals, anything she could use to harness energy and make a talisman since the Salvatore's were such hoarders.

Bonnie hadn't come across anything yet.

What she needed to do, really, was go back to the cave and collect the ascendant. That is, if Kai hadn't already gotten to it and was working on repairing it, bearing in mind it was salvageable.

He would come marching back to the boardinghouse if Bonnie's speculation turned out to be correct. When he came she'd have to be ready for him.

Too bad she didn't know anything about booby-trapping because she would certainly exercise her non-existent MacGyver skills, and make a bomb out of duct tape and a toilet brush.

Bonnie scribbled, took meticulous notes whenever a word or phrase jumped out at her. Then she cross referenced those words to spells in the grimoire. So far…she had a sentence.

Something crashed into the window causing Bonnie to shriek. The pencil fell out of her mouth and rolled on the floor. She spun to face the window and rose fluidly to her feet.

The lights went out, plunging the room, the entire house into darkness.

Great, Kai cut the power.

"OH BONNIE! TIME TO COME OUT TO PLAY!"

Elena Gilbert didn't really know what to make of the sight in front of her. She watched from the doorway as Damon, pencil lodged between his teeth, flipped the pages in one book, speed reading before discarding it and picking up another. The walls, the floors, the desk, and his bed were flooded with maps, symbol drawings, hastily written notes mapping out a network of theories that may gleam some answers into finding a way to bring Bonnie home.

Seeing him for the first time had been…weird. Elena remembered Damon but what she remembered wasn't pleasant, and it kind of warred with his aesthetics that someone so physically striking could be such a cruel individual.

However, despite that she supposedly fell in love with him. Elena had only been brave enough to read a couple of passages in her journal describing her relationship with Damon. Bearing witness to him exhaust himself to such levels for a person she thought he hated confused her greatly. Yet it also validated one of her written reasons in how she could be with him.

It was almost like watching herself in a movie while she read her pre-compulsion thought patters concerning Damon. Now she could understand better why so many had been against her relationship with the elder Salvatore right from the very start. Him being Stefan's brother, notwithstanding. It was because at some point Elena lost herself while falling in love with him. Her love had clouded and skewered her perception of Damon—reality leading her to ignore problematic red flags.

But the Damon she remembered didn't match the one before her now. Elena didn't believe Damon's urgency to get Bonnie back was purely about reuniting her with her friends, or because she deserved to be alive. Which she did more than anyone. No, Elena suspected Damon's reasons went much deeper though he may not be aware of them. It was plainly written on the hard lines around his mouth that the longer it took to find a solution, whatever changes he underwent for the positive may be lost, and without Bonnie he may fall apart.

That just made her heart swell that the whole time she thought Bonnie was dead, she had been alive and being herself, and inspiring someone like Damon to change. Elena realized a little too late that she had neglected her friendships, especially the one with Bonnie who sacrificed so much for her, and that made Elena hang her head in shame.

"Hey," she said breaking into his concentration.

Damon's head snapped up, brow furrowed. He hadn't even realized she had been standing there the whole time. "Hey," he mumbled around the pencil still in his mouth.

"Found anything useful?"

Damon removed the pencil and blew out a breath. "Just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo with hardly any scientific proof to back it up. Not like science was a hundred percent responsible for my return or even my existence," he roughly scratched his growing beard. Damon hadn't shaved in a couple of days. Not since the spell to send that note to Bonnie failed.

Elena informed him, "Stefan and Alaric are going back to the coven…the Gemini coven in Oregon to try again."

Damon said nothing but his scrunched brow said it all. "A waste of time. They aren't going to give us anything useful to go on considering why they sent that little bastard packing in the first place."

Brown eyes studied him carefully. "You're really worried about Bonnie aren't you? This guy must be bad news if you're this…agitated."

Elena's words brought Damon up short. Since his return they hadn't really seen each other, or spoken about anything of importance outside of Bonnie. For a split second he wondered what she thought of all this and then decided he didn't care. Elena took the easy way out, had her memories of him erased instead of putting on her big girl drawers and dealing with her grief like a typical person would.

So therefore, in Damon's mind, he didn't owe the doppelganger any explanations since she couldn't afford the courtesy of remembering at least the good times between them. So much for a love that consumes.

"I've been studying geological events and one is coming up."

"What is?" Elena sighed knowing it would be a long shot in him opening up because of the decision she made.

She moved closer while Damon unearthed something buried at the bottom of an alarmingly growing pile on his temporary bed.

He had taken up Stefan's offer to move into his home in Savannah.

"It's called a syzygy…a lunar eclipse. Bonnie needed an eclipse in order for the ascendant to work. Since I've yet to hear from my contact about the location of another one, I'm thinking a witch may be able to use the alignment of the sun, moon, and earth to open up a doorway. If I have something of Bonnie's from the time she's in to lead me there and hopefully lead us out, it may work."

A divot formed between Elena's eyebrows. So Damon meant to do this alone? She sensed some benign part of her should have been bothered by Damon doing this on his own—without her but she found herself being more curious than anything else.

"Only problem with that," Elena rasped, "all of Bonnie's belongings she might have kept from 1994 are in Mystic Falls of which none of us can enter."

Damon had something. The note. From Bonnie. But he wasn't sure if he could part with it especially with his time travel theory being circumstantial at best. Impossible at worst.

"I may have something," the elder Salvatore reluctantly disclosed. "I just hope…if this works and I get there…it's not too late."

Kai had been demolishing the house—trying to since the ward thankfully thwarted his efforts, throwing whatever his hands landed on since lunch, and Bonnie was growing sick of it.

He couldn't take the hint. He wasn't getting in and she wasn't coming out.

"I have the ascendant, Bonnie," he singsong. "Every single little nut and bolt, pulley and axel. If we work together nicely with promises not to maul each other to death or simply maul one another's clothes off,"—Bonnie pictured his sinister grin—"we can get it repaired and give it the old college try once more. What do you say? Help this little Norman Bates go home. And you won't have to worry about me peeling the skin off Damon's skeleton if our paths should cross."

Bonnie ignored him.

"This ward isn't going to hold forever. And you're going to have to leave to get provisions and no I'm not talking about jam or pancakes. So I'll be out here. Right under this window signing you to sleep, and trust me, my melodies aren't filled with jumping sheep. More like emaciated witches dangling from trees by the ankle. I considered doing that to my mother once."

Bonnie grabbed Miss Cuddles, grabbed Damon's copy of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, the grimoire, and took the steps two at a time to the foyer. She flung open the front door and waited for Kai to walk around to the front of the house.

He appeared looking sly. "I knew you'd come around eventually and see things my way. Plus I see you're all packed and ready to go," he tried to enter the house but bounced off the impenetrable and invisible shield.

"Where's the ascendant?"

"Somewhere safe."

Bonnie nodded. "Then I suggest you bring it tomorrow. And just a reminder that I am not to be played with…incendia."

Flames started at Kai's feet and traveled upward. Bonnie flashed him a smile and pushed the door closed using her telekinesis.

"What do you say, Miss Cuddles," she addressed the bear amid Kai's screams, "chili tonight?"

Damon rubbed his tired and bloodshot eyes as he sat on Stefan's porch. Tonight had been a bust. He needed to surround himself with a new group of people who could go from Monday to Tuesday without being kidnapped or having their neck snapped. Caroline and Ivy had gotten into some trouble since the newbie vampire had yet to learn to control herself. Damon thought Caroline was a useless immortal, but no that honor now belonged to Stefan's…whatever.

Just as he thought of his brother, Stefan joined him on the porch handing him a glass filled with bourbon.

"Thanks," Damon took a sip.

Stefan sat down next to Damon and gave him a once over taking in his disheveled appearance. Damon didn't even look this wrecked after discovering the truth about Katherine, or when they were defying the laws of nature to keep Elena from Klaus. He never let himself go even when the world was crumbling around his feet. To think all of this was happening because of Bonnie?

What exactly went down between those two?

Damon sensed that Stefan wanted to tell him that if he needed to talk he was there. He appreciated the unspoken offer, but he wasn't quite sure where to begin.

He stretched out his left hand and examined his day walking ring. A corner of Damon's mouth lifted in a rueful smile.

"She tried to take this from me," he said.

"Who did?" Stefan questioned.

"Bonnie. We were on our hundredth grocery shopping trip and she thought she saw someone," his tone was flippant but the expression on Damon's face was reflective. "I thought she was imagining things because she wanted to get out of that place so badly, but when I saw movement too…I was willing to play along.

"It had been a tarp on the back of a truck and that little spark of hope I had that we might not be totally alone because if we weren't alone, and someone else was there then there might be a way for us to get out after all. Just like that," Damon snapped his fingers, "I was back in my own little cell in hell, and Bonnie said, 'Give me your ring.' I just looked at her like she was crazy.

"She made a grab for my hand and tried to pry it off, and went into this speech about me just ending it since I didn't have any hope left. She railed about how my lack of hope was ruining hers and she didn't need it because my pessimism wasn't helping. So if I was done…be done."

Stefan swallowed picturing that scene in his head. Imaging things from Damon and Bonnie's point of view. "Clearly you decided not to. So why didn't you?"

Damon turned to face his brother. "If I ended it…who would she have? I couldn't…I couldn't leave her," he got up and traipsed back into the house but not without Stefan hearing, "and it ended up happening anyways."

Chapter end.

A/N: So how do we likey? Let me know and thank you so much for reading!