A/N: This chapter has gone through so many revisions that I can ideally finish this story with the scenes I've decided to scrap. SMH. Nevertheless, thank you for your patience. I had to take a miniature break from writing because I was getting burned out and interest in fanfic seemed to plunge. I'm back for the moment. So let's get it.

"Hey can we talk?"

His first inclination was to deny her request, but being in close proximity with an object one coveted or once coveted could water down one's resistance. She was undoubtedly in the Christmas spirit with her tight red dress that complimented her rich sepia skin. Her large doe eyes implored he not turn her away for the second time in as many weeks. She could handle one rejection but two would be too much. So Damon sat aside his lukewarm drink and fell in step with Elena.

Besides, on account of his earlier actions he considered it penance. Damon had returned to the dorm room, lips a little puffier than they had been, hair a bit more disheveled. Stefan leveled him with a curiously suspicious glint that the elder promptly ignored as Damon filled a glass with bourbon to mask the scent of Bonnie on his tongue.

She had sauntered back inside a few minutes after his timed arrival, having detoured to a communal bathroom down the hall to "freshen" up.

Their kissing…at first started off so innocent and then in no time flat it became something else. Bonnie wouldn't label it as primal—maybe a close cousin of it—but her lips had been left raw and swollen, nipples tight and hard; the seat of her panties, moist. Her core throbbing, face flushed.

For her sanity avoiding Damon was imperative. Her avoidance created an opening.

Bonnie saw them leaving and the first thing to go through her wasn't fear or even jealousy. She had anticipated the moment Elena would say enough was enough and make her move. Guys seldom played hard to get when it came to the long-haired brunette. They seemed genetically incapable of resisting her. It was the old pattern, the same song and dance that no matter whoever came into the picture afterward, her previous paramour found it difficult to move on completely from Elena.

It wasn't her fault. Bonnie knew this. She just wished that she didn't feel so stupid for thinking there was a glimmer of hope…for anything. Bonnie did what she could to put the kiss out of her mind and to muster up a drop of regret and guilt for having kissed Damon back and enjoying it. She was bankrupt in that area because she didn't feel guilty or regretful enough. Making out with her friends' exes or estranged lovers wasn't her forte. What was she doing?

Inwardly, Bonnie's shoulders sagged. She shouldn't have returned to the party.

"I think I'm going to go guys."

"Oh, no stay. We're about to play a few games," Caroline implored.

"I'd like to but I still have a million things I need to do around the house. I'll see you later."

Their breath could be seen on the air. Elena hugged her arms over her torso. She felt the chill but it was warmer than the reception she was getting from Damon. She had led himself outside to walk across campus. They were approaching a stone bridge that couples flocked to during warmer months to take pictures, make plans, or make out. The bridge was empty. The sound of the bustling stream below was its only companion.

Damon saw Elena shivering. Vampires could get cold if they went a long time without feeding. She clearly hadn't eaten tonight or perhaps all day. He shed his leather jacket and draped it around Elena's shoulders.

"Thank you."

"You wanted to talk."

"To be honest I don't really know where to start," Elena laughed nervously.

"How bout you start with whatever's on your mind and we'll go from there."

"All right. I'll start with something easy. How have you been?"

"Good. You?"

"Just good?" she nudged Damon playfully. "Not excited or dreading the holidays?"

"I'm indifferent. I'm not big on holidays. The old you would know that."

Elena gulped at the obvious dig. She placed her hand on Damon's arm stopping him from taking another step.

"We never talked about what I did and I know how you feel about that. What I want to know is...what were you hoping for when you came back?"

Damon's chin tilted toward the sky and he chuckled tiredly. "What I wanted back then seems so long ago, Elena that it technically doesn't matter now," he seared her with a myriad emotions that left her feeling discomfited. "I have loved one version or another of you for over half of my life, but I need to stop trying to redo everything. Rewrite history.

"I'll tell you what I was hoping for. I was hoping to come back here, see my brother and dead all the bullshit between us. I hoped to see you, my girl, make love to you until we were both desiccated, and live in bliss for eternity. But that's not what happened, at least not between us."

Elena flushed and it was that spark she hadn't felt with Liam. Still she inquired, "So is that possibility totally and completely gone?"

"In a perfect world, Elena you never loved my brother and I never did horrible things to win your love. I was reminded of a quote recently that said...'you cannot build your happiness on someone else's pain' but I've done nothing but that my whole fucking life, and I don't want to do that anymore." Damon took a breath. "You were right to forget about me."

He wandered off leaving Elena with a decision to make. Her afternoon session with Ric to restore her memories didn't garner the results she hoped for in one fell swoop. Since it took her almost all day to pinpoint when exactly she fell in love with Damon—according to Alaric—it seemed to be taking just as long for her to make the connection again. She didn't know why her brain was so defective. Seeing Damon tonight bought a sense of warmth and curiosity. Her journal entries were her source material linking her to a love that was at times crazy and obsessive, but underneath was special and passionate.

Elena found herself waking up in the middle of the night, panting, having dreams that she couldn't divine if they were memories trying to resurface or just fantasies. She was determined to find out if that underlining heat still lingered between them.

She felt it a moment ago, but what about Damon?

The doppelganger caught up with him spinning him around. She crashed her mouth on his.

At first Damon was too stunned to respond. Less than an hour ago he had been kissing Bonnie. Now Elena was ravaging his mouth as if there was buried treasure in his orifice. His jacket fell off her shoulders as she wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing him closer.

It was instinct, really, as he returned her embrace, fighting her mouth with everything he had. Idle hands were the devil's playground and his were roaming familiar curves and hills he had mapped into memory. Those static-y feelings reemerged and he was the Damon from eight months ago who would kill anyone for this girl.

But then reality intervened, smacking him upside the head and Damon abruptly ended the kiss. Elena stumbled in her boots and pulled down her dress that mysteriously rode up.

Damon wiped his mouth, "What the hell was that?"

"I'm sorry." Elena fidgeted. "I shouldn't have kissed you like that. I just wanted to see what it was like. It wasn't…terrible."

No, Damon could concur. It hadn't been terrible and it felt like coming home from war. He took in Elena's heaving chest, puckered nipples and knew without doubt that he could fuck her right now and she wouldn't object. She was curious about him; mind probably filled with images of what the two of them had done via her diary. It would take next to nothing to fall into that old habit of temporarily resolving their issues with sex. And he was hard up.

"Damon…" Elena reached for him, her hands cupping his face. She was inclining on her toes, lips moving closer, and for a split second Damon averted his attention.

Right over Elena's shoulder he saw someone studying them. Even from this distance Damon could discern who it was and let out a curse. The person jumped slightly, spun, and quickly got missing.

Damon ordered his legs to move, to go after Bonnie who just saw him kissing—correction—ravishing Elena.

Shit! This was exactly what he didn't want to happen.

"I need to go, Elena."

He was in such a rush to catch up with Bonnie he forgot all about his leather jacket, which the doppelgänger picked up from the ground.

Bonnie barely had time to get her key in the ignition before she saw Damon careening straight for her.

"Bonnie! Stop it's not what you think!"

"Fuck you!"

Focusing her power she sent Damon hurtling backwards into a car that set off its alarm and shattered the windshield. Bonnie kept him pinned there while firing up the Prius' engine, reversing out of her spot, whipping her little car around speeding for the exit.

The heavens opened and Damon was pelted with rain and sleet. Yeah see this was why he was indifferent toward the holidays. He habitually found some way to screw things up.

Bonnie wiped her face for the nth time and still the tears continued to flow. For just a second, for a brief second she believed in Damon. Believed he'd stopped finding ways to hurt or let her down. Or betray her. Could it even be considered betrayal? They weren't together, or dating, or even confessed to having romantic feelings for one another. They were friends.

But he kissed me.

He felt sorry for you. That's the only reason why he hangs around you, oh and to mooch off you.

No, he genuinely cares about me. He wouldn't have tried to bring me back if he didn't.

Again, Damon only did that to prove he could be just as good as Stefan; be better than Stefan at saving lives. It was never really about you.

But we got to know each other in the prison world.

Let me repeat, that had nothing to do about you, but about the fact he literally had no one else to talk to. Its only ever gonna be Elena for him. Accept that.

Bonnie released a shuddering breath and let out a small scream that sent picture frames flying off the end tables.

Banging sounded on her door and she stilled. She knew who it was. Like an inmate on death row being led to the lethal injection table, Bonnie's weighted feet sauntered to the foyer. She spoke at a normal level. "I want you to leave."

"Bonnie let me explain."

"Explain what my eyes have already seen. No thanks. Leave."

"But you don't know what you saw," Damon countered and jiggled the door handle. "Why can't I get in? I have an invitation."

"It's been revoked," Bonnie stated coldly.

Damon gaped at the door. "You can't do that. You can't rescind my invitation."

"I can and I have. You have two seconds to get the hell away from my front door."

"Not until I explain what you saw."

Bonnie marched closer. "What I saw was pretty damn self-explanatory. It was Damon and Elena's usual routine of codependent toxicity. And I don't want any part of that. Go. Away."

"That's not what it was. She kissed me!"

"You kissed her back!" Bonnie chided. "Did you forget that less than an hour ago your lips were on mine because I sure as hell didn't?"

"No," the chastened vampire sighed. "I didn't forget."

"Then why, Damon? Why did you do it? Why did you kiss her back?" Bonnie croaked.

He hated hearing the tears in her voice that she was fighting tooth and nail not to let out. And it killed Damon that he was the cause of it.

"Bonnie, please let me in."

"No. I don't want to see you right now."

There was a lengthy pause but it was scientific fact the stubborn vampire still lingered on her porch.

"You're being so self-righteous right now."

"Excuse me," Bonnie snapped.

"You technically have no reason to be upset. I didn't promise you anything."

Bonnie had to stop herself from extracting Damon's brain from its skull. That may have been true but it was the principle of everything. The principle being you didn't comfort someone and kiss them like they meant something to you only to turn around and do the same to another person within minutes. Bonnie made the conjecture Damon was probably baiting her so she would open the door and hit her with those stupid puppy dog eyes of his. She wasn't going to fall for it.

"Get the hell off my porch, Damon. I'm not gonna tell you again."

"Look, all right…witchy…you're the only one I've ever been completely honestly with, and I'm not going to stop that now. I still love her and a part of me still wants to be with her."

Bonnie knew but it still hurt like hell to hear. "I figured as much."

"But that doesn't mean…" Damon hurried his explanation along but was interrupted.

"Do you know how many guys I'm honestly close with that I've opened myself up to who can truly say they know me? One. And that was you, Damon. The funny thing is I know you and I should have seen this coming, but I didn't think you'd do it on the same night you kissed me."

"Bonnie...I'm sorry. Please don't walk away from me. You're the one who's truly kept me together."

She backed away from the wooden barrier separating them. "If you want to be with her...then that can't be my responsibility."

"Bonnie," Damon pounded and kicked the door but Bonnie was already gone.

Being immortal meant his physiology was different. Eight hours of sleep and three square meals a day weren't necessary for replenishment. Yet the emotions, especially the heightened ones kept Damon from getting one wink of sleep.

Damon peeled himself off the hard mattress of the economy lodge hotel he checked into, feeling hungover, which was impossible since he couldn't get drunk, and surprisingly hadn't self-medicated with alcohol after leaving Bonnie's.

"Fuck," he scrubbed his face with his knuckles.

He spent most of the night tossing and turning, agitated because Bonnie was done with him for the foreseeable future, and he didn't know how to get her to forgive him. Let alone see him. His heart was lead heavy, insides burned like they had been knifed with a poisoned blade. If Damon didn't know any better he would think he was heartbroken. That was plum absurd. He hadn't fallen in love with the witch. He didn't love Bonnie like that. Okay, so he loved her as a friend, but that was it. That was as far as it went. If she didn't want to be in his life he sure as hell wasn't going to force her, and ideally she'd be the one missing out; not him, Damon sniffed.

But…his bravado deflated, she was right. Bonnie was tragically right. He was the only one who truly knew her, and he mismanaged things. Yet it wasn't entirely his fault, he raged petulantly. It wasn't like he deliberately sat out to hurt her or send mixed signals. Elena had been the one to initiate the kiss and…yeah he kissed her back, but did it really mean anything, right?

Damon began to wonder. Had Elena picked up on Bonnie's presence long before he had? The speech he had given the doppelganger didn't have, at least to him, any subtext that said 'kiss me'. Was it just a spontaneous attempt on Elena's end to rekindle the chase between them? Or had it been premeditated?

Asking her would solve the mystery, but Damon wasn't in the mood to hunt her down and demand she explain herself.

First thing…he needed a drink and maybe beat something or someone within an inch of its life. Then he'd figure out something on how to rectify things with Bonnie.

He called Alaric. He hadn't kicked his ass in a while.

Bonnie Bennett's boots crushed the hardened, icy grass as she treaded through Mystic Falls' cemetery. Her gloved hands accidentally tightened on the two bouquets of flowers she brought with her that she intended to leave on the graves of her father and grandmother, but she was banned from getting any closer. She had visited with Grams a few times over the years, but the visits became more infrequent as her magic became the only solution to nearly every damn problem. Her dad on the other hand, Bonnie had never ventured to his plot—the pain of regret unbearable because she had stood right there as a ghost and watched her father be murdered.

The memory of it made her breath hitch and her eyes flood with tears. She was tired of crying, had been crying since last night leaving her eyes puffy and swollen. So she switched her thoughts to getting revenge on Silas—her father's murderer, who expected her to bring him back.

"I hope you're rotting, asshole," Bonnie wiped a tear away.

Her father and grandmother were not buried side-by-side. Grams lied with the other Bennett's who Bonnie could only make assumptions on what they were like. She wished she knew more about her family, her ancestors, and wondered if they passed their temperament to Grams' to her. Her father's grave was closer to the mayors of the past—she had been informed by the caretaker the last time she came to visit.

Lowering her eyes, Bonnie scratched idly behind her ear.

Like a vacuum the air became unnaturally still. All sounds were cancelled as if the area was holding its collective breath. The trees and headstones blurred from sight.

The world around Bonnie didn't necessarily grow dark or overcast. Quite the contrary. Shades of red and gray were heightened as if God tweaked the controls to add shading and definition to things her vision otherwise would have missed.

A feeling of pure terror washed over Bonnie. She checked to her left and right, but could discern nothing out of the ordinary besides the fact she suddenly became colorblind. What the hell was going on?

As much as she yearned to flee, Bonnie found herself incapable of movement. She stood still, like a stone, and knew she was fucked because she felt someone standing directly behind her. And whatever it was it was colder than death.

Her breath trembled as it slid past her slightly parted lips, released as white-gray vapor. The individual hair follicles on Bonnie's petite frame contracted, and rose sky-high as if she waltzed into an electromagnetic field. The young witch could actually taste it, like copper pennies. It made her gag.

A deathly kind of cold engulfed Bonnie the same as the mouth of a carnivorous plant enclosing on its food. The weight was unbearable, but there was nothing to be done to dislodge it. Bonnie felt her powers bleed out of her, and quietly shrieked when that presence laid its firm hand on her shoulder.

By some miracle her heart was still beating.

The presence shifted and now stood right next to Bonnie. She steeled herself to take a peek, expecting to see some long cloak, or something decidedly old school and stereotypical of what Death would wear. If this were Death she was dealing with. Not a metaphorical, allegorical version of Death or its bastard—the vampire but. The. Real. Deal. In increments her eyes skirted to the left.

Bonnie's knees began to shake. At first she saw a bare impression of a body, nothing concrete. Her eyes hit gray flesh, a beard, the tip of a long aquiline nose. The witch's perusal continued upward to a pair of hooded, deep-set eyes—the color indistinguishable. Not true, they were swirls of mercury. Its hair was shoulder length, blacker than Damon's, layered, thick.

His hand slid off her shoulder, using the back of his knuckles to trail down her arm. Bonnie chewed her bottom lip to squelch making a sound. His touch was unfathomable. She could feel it yet at the same time, couldn't. And then, those knuckles brushed lightly over the back of her hand turning it into a block of ice.

It whispered something Bonnie could quite make out, and in the next second, she found it very difficult to breathe, to feel anything below her neck. Losing touch with her body brought back a jarring memory. The memory of her dying in the caves using every drop of magic to resurrect Jeremy from the dead. She was trading places again. Ceasing to exist on the plane of the living. It was painful, needles sticking her in every pore kind of pain.

Bonnie gasped and kept gasping desperately searching for a breath before things turned dark. The pain was lessening now, draining, releasing her from its clutches. And when she could successfully pull a drop of oxygen into her deprived lungs, Bonnie greedily gobbled it up.

Sound boomed in her ears, colors were bright and glaring, she could feel. Everything. The cold, the air, the clothes on her body…the arms cradling her.

A fringe of black hair covered the furrowed brows of the person holding her. The eyes were bluer than the sky but the cold fury darkening them made Bonnie shrink.

"What. The. Hell. Were. You. Doing?" Damon fumed. "Were you trying to kill yourself?"

"No," Bonnie denied amid her confusion. She came to leave flowers at her dad and Grams' graves and forgot she couldn't because of the magic-free bubble. She didn't know how Damon was equating that to suicide.

"You were over the boundary, Bonnie."

"I was?"

"Yes!"

"So that explains it," she said mostly to herself.

"Explains what?"

Bonnie attempted to push him away but Damon obstinately held on. "Let me go."

"No, I don't trust you not to do something that stupid again."

"I didn't do it on purpose."

"Could have fooled me," he grumbled.

Then it clicked in Bonnie's head why he thought she might do something that reckless and it made her laugh sardonically. "Please," she seethed. "You and Elena kissing would never drive me to kill myself. Let's get that straight."

Damon loosened his hold on Bonnie who didn't waste a second to wiggle away. "What happened last night wasn't something I tried to do on purpose, Bonnie."

She ignored him and began the trek to her car. Damon flashed in front of her. "Move."

"You and I both know that if I wanted to fuck Elena sideways I would have done it."

"I don't want to hear this," Bonnie maneuvered around the vampire but he continuously stepped in the way.

Damon was tickled because if Bonnie really desired to shut him up she had the arsenal to do it. Her heart wanted him to explain that what she saw wasn't really what she saw, but her pride had already convicted him, and was ready to sentence him to a life of being written out of hers.

"If she truly meant the same to me that she did in the past would I have bothered to come to you last night to talk about what happened?"

That drew Bonnie up short but she discarded the notion just as easily as it formed. "You still could have gone to her afterwards. That doesn't prove anything."

"Only I didn't."

"Why are you telling me this, Damon? What do you want? Do you think that as your friend I'll stand on the sidelines and happily watch you rekindle your romance with Elena? Maybe…if you hadn't kissed me!"

Damon turned the tables on Bonnie, threw her ass on the hot seat. "Are you saying you want more than friendship with me?"

Automatically the witch moved to retort but closed her mouth. "I'm saying, Damon…that I would prefer for you not to play games with me."

"I'm not playing games. Bonnie," a pale hand cupped her face. "I would never play games with your heart. It's on you to believe that."

She really wanted to, and a large part of her did believe it.

Being so acutely aware of another individual was achingly raw. It was brutal in its intensity. Made her senses go haywire because they couldn't decide what to focus on. Bonnie's ears were growing warmer by the second, her entire body actually. The sensory input was…scintillating. She despised the fact Damon's touch could scramble her brains like this.

Damon's feet shuffled closer to the point he felt Bonnie's belly on his lower abdomen. She instinctively arched her back to make sure some semblance of space remained between them, but the hand on her cheek wormed its way to her neck. Her resistance was corroding, and if Damon came any closer she didn't have it in her to pull away from him again.

But she had to. He couldn't go around kissing her then kissing Elena before kissing her again. It did and wouldn't work like that. She was no one's side piece.

"I knew there was going to be a consequence," Bonnie doused cold water on the budding situation.

Lines of perplexity settled around the corner of Damon's eyes. "A consequence to what?"

"I saw something…or I think I did right before you pulled me out the Travelers' spell. I don't know who or what it was, but I really don't want to linger in this part of the cemetery any longer." Bonnie pried Damon's hands off her.

"Do you think it led you to crossing over the boundary?" Damon guessed.

"It could have."

"Why?"

"I don't know. You can stand here and figure it out on your own," Bonnie left.

When she got to her car, she sighed shakily and jumped when her phone binged. Unearthing it, she had a text message from Damon.

Are we still friends? He even enclosed the emoji of hands clasped together in prayer.

Against her will, a snicker bubble up her throat. Bonnie didn't reply. That she would need to think on.

"This thing better still work," Damon eyed the pendant given to him by Esther!Lenore so that he could safely enter Mystic Falls city limits. He hadn't seen or heard from Mama Original or from any member of her coven since they sent him back to 1994 to get Bonnie. Damon wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

Ideally it wasn't his problem.

Nevertheless, Damon's vehicle idled right outside of the Welcome to Mystic Falls sign, sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Esther had advised Damon to step out on faith. That wasn't something he had much experience doing because faith seemed like believing in an implausible ideal. Yet he used it far more often than he thought.

Shifting the car into Drive and placing his foot on the gas, Damon gunned it, blew past the sign and waited for his flesh to burst into flames.

He drove about a quarter mile without incident. The scenery of brown grass and barren trees gave way to one-story houses, blinking traffic lights, and gaudy Christmas decorations. Mystic Falls was that storybook town you saw printed on the cover of postcards. It was a motif, an idea of what life in a rural area should be where people stopped to converse on sidewalks, and were never in a rush to get anywhere because life was about enjoying it one monotonous moment at a time. People waved or stared as he drove by, but he pretended not to see as he sped the Camaro through downtown intersections.

Within minutes he was back on an empty two-lane road that bisected the more heavily populated area of the town from those who owned acres of private land they protected with metal fencing, shotguns, and Rottweilers. The houses increased in size and sat farther back from the main road. Billows of white-gray smoke rose from brick chimneys. The smell was a welcomed pleasure of nostalgia.

Almost two centuries ago he would have ridden down this road on his Andalusian horse, coattails flapping in the wind behind him, leather reins gripped tightly between his knuckles as he rushed home for supper after a day of gambling.

Old times.

Two and a half miles later, Damon made the turn off and drove down a skinny paved road only big enough for one car. The road itself was flanked by towering beech trees with an occasional bird or crow nesting on a branch. Damon never looked left or right or checked his mirrors. He kept his eyes forward and was greeted to the sight of steeple roofs and dark brick. The Gothic-Tudor style manor was in view.

He hadn't known what to expect when it came to the grounds themselves. Damon sure as hell hadn't expected Little Gilbert to mow the massive, football size lawn. The boy could barely groom himself properly. Clearly, by the state of the house, he wasn't living here anymore, which was a gotdamn relief to Damon. His teenaged funk stunk up the place. The grass was high in a few places but overall was littered with piles of leaves, probably a good three to four inches worth.

Other than that, and the fact a film of dust and mold had accumulated on the windows, his home was…it was home.

The brakes squeaked when Damon put the car into Park and he climbed out, glancing around and listening. No one was hoarding from what he could gleam. His boots crunched along miscellaneous pebbles and dead leaves that covered the driveway. Pressing down on the lever he wasn't surprised that the front door opened wide up.

Cold, moldy air struck Damon in the face and blew his raven hair off his forehead. The manor was arctic cold and still. Many believed houses had pulses—a heartbeat brought on by the family taking up residency there—yet from what Damon was gathering his house had been dead for as long as he had.

He sighed and saw his breath in the air. Floorboards creaked under his weight. Damon walked through the foyer into the living room and dragged a finger across the surface of the first table he reached. The tip of his digit was covered in grayish-white dust.

Damon took a panoramic view of the most popular room in his house. Everything was right where it had been left. A few books were open on various tables peppered throughout the space, abandoned and forgotten. Sunlight bounced off the crystal decanters throwing colors of the rainbow along the paneled walls. Of course that drew Damon like a beacon.

A smirk graced his face as he picked up his favorite bottle of bourbon, but for the moment his desire wasn't for a drink. Damon did take the bottle upstairs with him. He briefly examined the state of the oil paintings hanging on the walls, flicked on a light switch to see if there was any power. Nothing happened.

Guess the electric company was serious about shutting off your electricity if you didn't pay the bill.

Nevertheless, Damon strolled down the hall that led to his boudoir yet he found himself pausing outside of the one Bonnie had taken custody of.

It was across the hall from his and two doors up. Damon planted himself in the threshold taking it all in. The canopy bed, the leather ottoman resting at the foot of it; the armoire that doubled as the entertainment center; the door that led to the old-fashioned bathroom with its porcelain amenities and claw-foot tub. White gossamer curtains shrouded the windows and pooled in layers of fabric on the floor. The air didn't smell of anything in particular, but that didn't stop Damon from inhaling to see if he might catch a hint of her perfume.

Ridiculous and pointless because Bonnie hadn't occupied the manor in this dimension.

A week was how long they lived separately until Bonnie moved in. "It doesn't make sense for the two of us to live apart. We're the only ones here," had been her explanation as she hefted three huge suitcases through the front door.

What she really meant was she wanted to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn't disappear without telling her. Naturally, Damon complained but may have been secretly relieved he wouldn't have to live alone.

It was odd. Her sleep talking had driven him up a wall but then her incessant muttering calmed him, eased his own trepidation that at any second either one of them would stop existing for good.

Reversing out of the room Damon went to his room. Like an overgrown kid he ran and jumped on his bed. A cloud of dust flew up to the ceiling. Damon waved the motes away and absorbed the place where he slept, read, drank, bathed, conspired, fucked.

"I've missed you."

The blue-eyed vampire loitered for a moment, his lids shutting. Ideally he could move back home but it wouldn't be the same if Stefan wasn't here or…Bonnie. Yeah he didn't see the latter wanting to share quarters with him in any capacity considering she probably hated his guts at the moment. Bonnie may not have answered his question on if they were still friends, but she didn't say hell no so he was taking that as a good sign. He could show positivity when needed.

Rising from the bed, Damon carried out what he really came here to do.

She wasn't drowning her sorrows in ice cream and sad movies occasionally bashing man's existence. That sensation of death Bonnie experienced in the cemetery renewed the promise she made to herself to never feel that helpless or lonely again. Bonnie had expected there to be a consequence of some kind, or adversity for cheating death again, and it finally manifested. Rubbing that tight spot above her heart, Bonnie could now identify it.

Having feelings for her best friend.

Bonnie angrily flipped another page in the interior design magazine she had been perusing.

The bell rung. She groaned. Wasn't up to seeing anyone or being cordial. The bell tolled again. She really wanted to ignore but, gave in and answered.

"Who is it?"

"You don't know me, Bonnie but I promise we have been acquainted in the past."

Brows drawn together in skepticism and suspicion, Bonnie said, "I'm not opening this door until you give me a name."

"Esther…Mikaelson but I go by Lenore now."

The door swung open after that and Bonnie's jaw plummeted to the ground. The African American woman standing on her welcome mat was far from the blonde hair, blue-eyed woman who's quest to kill her children led to her mother being turned into a vampire.

Here stood the bitch who got inside her head, possessed her for a time, and used her to complete Alaric's transition. Left for dead. Bleeding what blood remained in her body on the cold, unforgiving ground underneath that had Damon not been there she would have died. And the spirits did nothing to help. They never helped her when she needed them the most. Yet they saw fit to take her magic, use her like a puppet at their convenience, torture Grams…

"Bonnie?"

Snapping out of her thoughts, Bonnie shook her head and realized she warped the door handle. She yanked her hand away taken aback by her strength and of course terrified of it.

She brought her gaze back to the woman who looked to be in her late forties, early fifties with slanted charcoal eyes. "What do you want? You have a lot of nerve showing your face to me."

Lenore lifted up her hands accepting Bonnie's derision. "I understand I'm the last person you want to see, but were it not for me, Damon Salvatore wouldn't have been able to travel back to 1994 to rescue you."

That information drew Bonnie up short. Damon had only confided that witches and warlocks from New Orleans were instrumental in her recovery. He didn't mention Esther's involvement, but this stood to reason he might not have known it was her. Then again, Esther had an ego that could rival Klaus' and she'd want Damon to know it was her.

Folding her arms defensively over her chest, Bonnie muttered, "Again, none of this explains why you're here. I'm not helping you to kill your kids this time around."

"Trust me when I say I've moved past that single-minded way of dealing with a nuisance I created. I'm just here to let you in on something's you need to know."

"Like what?"

"May I come inside so we can discuss this privately?"

Everything in Bonnie was screaming at her to deny Esther's request and slam the door in her face.

"Please, allow me just a few minutes of your time and you won't hear from or see me again. I give you my word," Ester persevered.

At that moment, Bonnie could hear Damon loud in clear in her ear, "Don't trust the bitch because she's only interested in serving her own agenda."

However, on the flipside, Bonnie desired to hear her out because she had the feeling Damon's kidnapping might have something to do with whatever Esther had to tell her. Whenever an Original was involved, it went without saying something more insidious was happening below the surface.

It always did.

"Just answer me this…does it have anything to do with doppelgangers or needing a Bennett witch?"

Esther smiled a little. "I can, with a hundred percent certainty guarantee it doesn't involve the doppelganger, but may potentially involve you."

That's was the opposite of what Bonnie wished to hear.

Saying nothing, she showed her unexpected guest to the living room where they sat down. Hospitality dictated she at least offer the woman a beverage since she did help rescue her from 1994, but Bonnie wasn't in an accommodating spirit at the moment.

"First…how are you?" Esther inquired. "Have you been feeling all right?"

"For the most part—yes."

"I'm glad to hear it." Esther cleared her throat. "I'll make this brief. When I was here last I felt a peculiar disturbance."

"A disturbance of what?"

"Unnatural energies. I believe it comes back to what happened this past spring in why what's occurring now."

"The traveler spell," Bonnie deduced.

Esther nodded. "You were the anchor holding the Other Side together, but it started falling apart once travelers began sacrificing themselves in droves in order to free Markos. However, I think something else was released with its collapse."

When Bonnie heard the word 'released' she instantly thought of her close encounter of the third kind yesterday in the cemetery. Instead of having a hot flash she experienced a cold one, and unconsciously rubbed her jean covered legs.

"What?" she prodded.

Armed with what he came to retrieve, Damon took one final, cursory look around. He swaggered toward the door and swore he caught movement in his peripheral. Pausing, he expanded the volume of his hearing, but caught no sound vibration of any kind. No breathing or heartbeat. It was stone cold silent.

To his right something slithered just out of his field of vision. As he focused on a specific object such as the area where he stored his liquor the picture was distorted like radiated waves.

It rushed toward him. Damon was airborne landing hard on his back. "The hell?" he cursed and blinked.

Standing poised above him was the bare impression of a person with gray skin and an eerie pair of swirling silver eyes.

"What was released, Esther?"

"That's the thing, Bonnie. I don't know. But I have a theory."

Chapter end.

A/N: What I'm unleashing next hopefully won't be complicated. Thank you so much for reading. And *hand clasped* review.