A/N: Sorry for the delay. Enjoy, beautiful people and thank you in advance for reading.

Making costly mistakes was nothing new to Jeremy Gilbert. At one point he used to make them every day. The adage, with age comes wisdom was only applicable to those who chose to use and operate in wisdom. Intelligence could degenerate if it wasn't nurtured and no he hadn't spent his free time improving the state of his mind and rehearsing how to respond in dire situations. Like this one.

Of course by the time Jeremy thought to slam and lock the door, the thing masquerading as Jenna curled its fingers around the door's sharp molding, pushed and slithered inside.

Ghost-white and spluttering, Jeremy skittered backwards, heart palpitating wildly and dangerously close to stopping. "H-how-how is this, how a-are you…"

'Jenna' canted her head at an impossible angle, sizing Jeremy up, her eerie smile stretching the bones and facial tissues grotesquely until she was more ghoul than person. He slammed his eyes shut against the image, but it was far too late for that. It would be something which would haunt him for decades, barring he lived, and didn't croak of a heart attack that felt was oncoming.

Where are my weapons? Why didn't I bring those down? Fuck, he cried but then mentally slapped himself. Hard. He was a hunter. He had killed before. He had trained with the two most prolific killers he knew, Damon Salvatore and Klaus Mikaelson, though he wouldn't claim he'd earned a certificate. Unfortunately, the kills he had committed had been impersonal, people he had had no special ties with. This was different because this was Jenna.

Fear began to recede, if only a little, and anger began to grow. Whoever this was, they were desecrating his aunt's body for the second time. The first was when she was forcibly been changed into a vampire. Now this. Her corpse reanimated again—and still approaching, herding Jeremy into a corner both figuratively and literally—gawking at him with a bottomless hunger that sizzled and made him queasy.

"What do you want?" maybe he could reason with it.

"Freedom."

"I don't know how to free you."

"Duh," 'Jenna' said and wheezed a laugh that made the hair stand up on the back of Jeremy's neck. "You know the one with the gift."

He knew exactly who she meant. "Bonnie."

"Yessssss."

Little Gilbert wholeheartedly expected to see a forked tongue slither out of 'Jenna's' mouth. Thankfully, one did not. "She won't free you."

"We don't need her to free us. We need her to stay out of our way."

"And I'm guessing you want me to convince her to keep her wand sheathed? I'm not gonna sit around and let you break out and kill a bunch of people."

'Jenna' laughed. "Puny boy, you have no idea what we are. Keep her from us and we'll help you."

"Help me with what?" He should probably stop talking to this thing and kill it, but…

'Jenna' twitched and stepped closer backing Jeremy up until he hit the wall. "We know where your sister is."

Album covers, that was the first thing Bonnie noticed when she finally looked around Ezra's apartment. Vinyl album covers from artists lauded as being the godfathers, godmothers of soul and kings and queens of pop, and icons whose music transcended decades held places of prestige on the wall above the couch. Bonnie took note of the rest of the room. A rug on the floor beneath a wood table, two spider plants dangled from the ceiling in a corner opposite the couch, flatscreen TV perched on a low wooden stand, a three-shelf bookcase that was filled to brimming. She couldn't see their spines from the angle she stood in the room, but they were probably textbooks maybe even some grimoires or photo albums. A breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the small living room, and right above the entrance to the hallway that led to the rest of the apartment was a distinctive clay mask. Bonnie squinted. It was familiar somehow yet she couldn't place where she might have seen it. In all, Erza's space was homey.

The man in question had vacated to his room to don a shirt and splash cold water on his face to wake up. He returned, rubbing his eye. His jaw practically cracked as he yawned.

"Do you want some coffee?" he flipped on a switch flooding the kitchen and part of the living room with harsh florescent lighting.

"I'm sorry I barged over here before dawn…"

"—before the ass crack of dawn," he muttered irritably.

Bonnie disregarded it and approached the breakfast bar. He didn't have any stools to sit on leaving her to stand and brace her elbows on the laminate surface. She observed as he opened a cabinet to retrieve a package of Starbucks ground coffee. "Ezra, I need you to be straight with me."

"You want to know if you can trust me," he corrected. "I can say until I'm blue in the face that you can, but it still won't get you to trust me. You have trust issues and I don't blame you for them. If I were in your shoes I would too."

"If you were standing in my shoes and some person approached you out of nowhere pretending to be someone he's not just for him to turn around and say he's your long lost sibling, the product of an affair…" Ezra tossed a glare in her direction, "and then you find out that possible sibling has powers that makes yours look like a cheap trick and that he possibly has a connection with the once-thought-dead mother of the person you're romantically involved with, and the mother of one of your bitter enemies, what would you do with any of that?"

"Fly to Mexico for a much needed mental health day," Ezra quipped and spooned coffee into the filter. Glancing at Bonnie and seeing her flared nostrils and arched brow, he did away with levity and got serious. He sighed. "I would try to find out the truth through the possible lies."

"Exactly. In terms of paternity you've given me letters you could have written yourself."

"I told you if you want more proof that your dad and my mom fucked and here I am, my mom is more than willing to talk to you."

Bonnie winced at his crassness and the unwelcomed imagery that statement caused. She got back on track, "That can explain away part of what you've told me, but what about the other part? What's your connection to Esther Mikaelson and Damon's mother?"

With the coffee percolating, Ezra leaned against the counter, cupping the lip of it with his hands. He knew this day would come eventually that he'd have to provide more than surface answers, that his poofing in and out of Bonnie's life would lead to her wanting the full story. There was the cover story he had come up with and then there was the truth. Bonnie had proven she had the stomach to handle it, but an exchange of some sort had to happen.

Stepping out of the kitchen he trailed to the living room and headed to his bookcase where he found what he needed, and extended it to Bonnie. She stared at the leather-bound tome before meeting his gaze with a question.

"It's all here. The long score between Esther Mikaelson and her sister Dahlia. Did you know she had a sister who also happened to be the more powerful witch between them? There's even a little section about Lily Salvatore, a notorious ripper before her infamous son Stefan came on the scene. I'm sure you know all about him, the Ripper of Monterrey? No? It's all here too." He waved the book like it was candy and she was chasing her next sugar high.

"That still doesn't answer the question of where you fit in, in all of this," Bonnie crossed the room and stood a foot away, eyes glued to the book.

"Come on, Bonnie. Figuring that out is elementary. I have a unique set of skills. Who wouldn't want to acquire my services once I made my debut on the scene? Long story short, Lily Salvatore was supposed to be sent to a prison world although killing her would have been the better option. But there was an organization that captured and studied vampires like Lily. She found out they were after her and she cut a deal, but the price was obtaining Esther Mikaelson's talisman, which really was a talisman belonging to a witch called Ayana."

Bonnie's head shot up at hearing that name. She hadn't heard that name in years. Had shamefully forgotten about her. Ayana, the mage that Esther Mikaelson apprenticed under if that was how one wanted to look at it. She had been the link that connected the Bennetts to the Mikaelsons, Bonnie remembered Elena telling her shortly after the Mikaelson Ball in which she had not been invited to attend. At the time Bonnie hadn't cared to dress up and slow dance with the family she had every intention of putting into the grave, yet once she realized how integral her family had been to so many unfolding supernatural events and the survival of bloodlines, by right she should have been there.

"Ayana…she's my ancestor," Bonnie whispered.

"Which means that necklace, the all-important talisman is yours. It's part of your family's legacy."

Chills. Chills racked through Bonnie which made her hair follicles contract and breed goosebumps.

Five minutes later, two cups of coffee sat cooling on the table as Bonnie flipped through the book. It was an anthology, a detailed record of significant historical events in the occult. Entries were made from different eyewitnesses or those who played a hand in what occurred in the past.

"Lily Salvatore needed to procure the talisman for Dahlia," Ezra was saying. "It was her payment to the witch for getting her out of a jam. Now Dahlia is an interesting character, because she has only been awake ten times in the last thousand years."

"What do you mean?"

"She leap frogs through time. She puts herself into a sleeping beauty coma where she's only awake for one year out of a hundred, and she just happened to be awake when Lily found herself in deep shit. She promised that she would find the talisman and bring it to Dahlia the next time she woke up. However, keep in mind Lily had to keep a low profile since she was being hunted. She could only make so much noise…there were so many hunters around that time, the two biggest being Rayna Cruz and Mikael Mikaelson."

"Dahlia's brother-in-law."

"Mm-hmm. Dahlia is set to wake up again very soon."

"When was the deal first made between Lily and Dahlia?"

"In the year of our Lord nineteen o-three."

"Then Dahlia would have woken up in two thousand and three." Ezra nodded. Bonnie continued, "What was Lily's excuse for not having it?"

Ezra slumped against the sofa, knees spread shoulder length apart, "She had been detained. Dahlia had been mad as hell with her lack of effort so she extended the deal. Gave Lily another ten years but if she failed, Lily would find herself where she should have been from day one."

"In the grave," Bonnie concluded. "I take it that we've finally come to the part of the story where you make your intro?"

"Yep. Lily had put out some feelers and I answered. She was highkey pissed when she found out that the necklace had been in the town she avoided since her 'death'," he air quoted, "wrapped around the neck of her sons beloved."

Bonnie stiffened and shut the book closed with an audible snap.

"Ah…" he coughed to clear his throat. "Sorry about mentioning her."

"It's fine." Her tone said it was anything but fine.

"How have you been doing with all of that?" Ezra tread carefully but Bonnie heard the sincerity in his voice.

Sighing, she placed the book on the table and tucked her legs under her. "I'm…I don't know. Before all this happened not many people asked me how I was doing," she smiled sadly. "Or they'd ask but they weren't looking for more than a surface answer…When I came back this second time from the dead, I had asked: what was the catch. The first time I died and came back, I experienced the painful death of every supernatural as they used my body to get to the other side. Being the anchor sucked, FYI," she exhaled. "This time around things seemed to be going okay, and then the other shoe dropped. I'm not happy with the way things turned out…Do you—"

"Do I what?" he prompted.

"—do you think I did the right thing…to Elena?"

"I can't answer that. I'm not in your shoes, I haven't gone through a tenth of what you've experienced, and even if I did, I can't tell you you're wrong to feel the way you do. Sometimes extreme actions are necessary if you want to invoke change. There's nothing pleasant, nice, or gentle about righting the wrong that's been done to you."

"Doesn't it just perpetuate a cycle of harm?"

"If you watch out for one pair of toes, you'll step on another and sometimes those toes need to be stepped on. Are you worried about the people who loved Elena looking at you different?"

"They already do," she swallowed.

"Does it matter to you?"

Ezra's question had exposed another layer. A layer that was nasty, convoluted, twisted, but in some areas poignantly beautiful, but cursed. Bonnie had cared about the perception of her actions, how her friends saw her. It was life that the negative voices were louder and had a much bigger impact. When she didn't feel good about herself, she tried too hard in other areas to compensate, which was an unsustainable practice. To conform to people's perception of her instead of finding out who she was and finding pride in it.

"I think," she began, "that some part of me will always care what they think. How can I not if I value them? But there's a part of me that's changing where I won't let their opinion stop me from being who I am and feeling comfortable with myself. All I can do is keep moving forward."

Ezra nodded. "Where do things stand with us? If you believe nothing else about what I've told you, then believe I want to be your friend. In time."

Bonnie's smile this time was a little less sad but didn't stretch from ear-to-ear. She was filled with a moment of nostalgia because a certain vampire had said virtually the exact same thing, though his motives had been driven purely by selfishness. Who would have thought that through blood, tears, constant deaths, they would end up being friends, and more.

"There's still so much we need to talk about," she looked at Ezra. "Our possible connection, Lily, Esther…and I forgot this bunch, revenants."

Ezra's forehead crinkled as he cocked his head to the side almost like a bird. "Revenants?"

"Right," Bonnie resisted smacking her forehead, "they're vampire-witch hybrids who've been possessing people to break out of their own prison world. There was a prison within the other side that kept them locked up, according to Esther Mikaelson who's wearing a new face these days. Oh, and she also wants me to help her rebuild the other side. When the other side collapsed, they were freed but they're confined to Mystic Falls thanks to traveler magic. Traveler magic is also the reason why I can't step foot into my hometown, because if I do the spirit magic that's keeping me alive…"

"Stops working. Got it. Damn. Your life truly is stepping out of the frying pan into the fire."

"Facts." At that time Bonnie's cell started vibrating. She already knew who was calling. Seeing that it was almost five a.m. Bonnie figured it was time to hop back on the road. "I should get going."

"You haven't finished your coffee. You should drink it. You haven't slept at all tonight."

"I'll be okay," she got to her feet. Ezra did the same and walked her to the door.

"Maybe we can link up later and talk more. More about us and less about the supernatural," he suggested.

"Maybe," Bonnie shrugged on her coat. "Thank you. For everything."

Snapping his fingers, Ezra doubled back to the coffee table and picked up the book. He handed it to Bonnie who reluctantly took it. "You're gonna want to read that. Whatever's about to happen next, it might help."

"Thank you…Well guess I'll talk to you later."

"You know how to reach me. Drive safely, Bonnie."

"Will do," tossing up a wave she headed to her car.

Ezra shrunk back inside his apartment and rubbed his arms to generate some warmth. He tidied up the living room, double checked to make sure the door was locked, and turned off the light ready to crawl back into bed.

His bedroom wasn't completely unoccupied. Curled up under the sheets and dangling the coveted talisman was the woman Bonnie and Ezra had spent a huge chunk of time discussing.

"A deal is a deal," Lily Salvatore reminded.

"Yeah, and I always keep my word."

Dark circles stained her pale skin, her hair hadn't been combed in over twenty-four hours, and she longed for a shower with a bag of blood, but Caroline Forbes refused to leave her mother's side. Not until Liz opened her eyes and probably not even then. She fiddled with the sheets and constantly checked the monitors. Liz's numbers were improving and so far, what had affected them in Mystic Falls was contained to just Mystic Falls.

Being in this hospital made her think of her dad. He chose death for the final time over becoming like her, holding steadfast to his beliefs that the world was for humanity explicitly. Their relationship had been fractured, and those pieces he had taken the hammer to when he tried to force her to be something other than what she was. The only way for her to ever stop craving blood and needing it to survive was if she died. No amount of conversion was going to change her nature. In the end, Bill hadn't accepted it, but they made peace with one another, and he died quietly and with dignity in the arms of his little girl. Caroline didn't even want to think about the day she would have to tell her mother goodbye. The thought of it alone was too painful.

Absently she heard someone approaching. She knew who it was before he even appeared in the doorway.

Stefan hoovered right outside of room 318 brandishing a bouquet of flowers and a subdued demeanor. Rapping on the door with his knuckles, he waited for permission to cross the threshold.

"Hey, Stefan," Caroline looked at him over her shoulder.

"Hey," he stepped inside. "How's she doing?"

"She's stable. Her numbers are improving. At least that's what the nurse said when she came in about twenty minutes ago to check."

Stefan parked his feet next to the chair Caroline sat on and observed Liz Forbes as she passed the time in a deep, medically induced slumber. She was pale white, the same color of the sheets almost while a thick white bandage covered nearly the entirety of her neck. The artificial up and down movement of her chest via ventilator was a stark reality of the fragility of human life.

Stefan laid the flowers on the rolling cart and then pulled up the other vacant chair in the room. He took Caroline's hand and the two of them simply watched Liz for a long while.

"When it comes to family, she's all I have," Caroline said. "Biological family. I mean, there are cousins and uncles, aunts, and whatnot but no one we're close to. The Forbes' goes back to pre-Civil War days, there's even a rumor of a super great-grandfather who fought in the Seven Years War, but that's my dad's side of the family. My mom…did you know her maiden name is Moeller?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"She was born Elizabeth Anne Moeller on July 18, 1961. She's the oldest of two sisters. One sister died, the youngest, my Aunt Clarissa. She died in a car crash when I was ten. I haven't spoken to my other aunt, Aunt Gretchen since I was sixteen. I've been seventeen for almost four years and she has no idea," Caroline huffed out a tired laugh. "There's just so much about our lives she'll never know and we can't ever tell her. I could call her right now, if her number hasn't changed, and tell her, her sister needs her, and she might hop on the next flight and be here. She moved away from Mystic Falls the first chance she got and never looked back. She always had a bad feeling about the town, that something wasn't right, and begged my mom to move after she and my dad divorced. Maybe my mom should have listened to her. Maybe…"

"Maybe you wouldn't be a vampire right now if your mother had taken her sister's advice."

A beat of silence passed before Caroline replied with, "Maybe."

"Liz will pull through this. She has you as her daughter and you're one of the strongest people I know."

"Platitudes…that's all anyone can say at a time like this," Caroline rose to her feet and loomed over her mother, brushing a few strands of hair off her pallid cheek. "How are we going to beat this thing, Stefan?"

"I don't know but we will. We do eventually."

Shaking her head, Caroline proclaimed, "It's Bonnie who saves and its us who kills."

Hours after leaving Ezra's and checking in with Caroline at the hospital, Bonnie wandered through her home. Avoiding. Avoiding the inevitable she could no longer put off. Damon had gone on an errand so she couldn't use him as an excuse. The band-aid needed to come off. Climbing the stairs, she headed to the spare bedroom where she had stashed the stack of her dad's letters. Padding on bare feet to the small wooden desk perched under a pair of windows, she pulled out the chair and made herself at home. Books were piled atop as well as Grams' stationary. An old-fashioned inkwell and quill were among some of the items on the desk, but Bonnie never touched them. They were just a few of the last remaining items she had of her grandmother.

This morning though she picked up the quill and ran her finger along the soft albeit stiff feather. Her thoughts turned inward. Loneliness built up in her chest, pushing out the fear. In those letters she would discover a side of her dad she had either never seen or would find familiar or learn something that could potentially break her heart. She felt sympathy for her mom although she stumbled in the dark about what her parents' relationship had been like. It dawned on Bonnie that her parents might have never been married. She had assumed. Abby, to Rudy Hopkins had been persona non grata and Bonnie herself had had no memories of her. For all she knew, Abby could have been the side chick, a fling which resulted in her birth, or they had casually dated.

Well, there was a way to find out.

Sliding open the lone desk drawer, Bonnie unearthed the letters. Held together with twine, there were ten total. Her fingers made quick work of untying the knot and extracting the first letter out of its envelope that had yellowed and softened with age. The handwriting was definitely her father's when she unfolded the letter.

Taking a deep breath, Bonnie began reading.

"'Dear Naila, I hope this letter finds you well and in good health. I can't remember the last time I sat down to write a letter. It almost makes me feel like I'm back in grade school, when having a pen pal was part of the curriculum, or writing to your first crush and wanting to let out everything in your heart but the fear of rejection enabled you to keep it bottled up.

"'I'm not the most open guy, but I did want to put pen to paper and say that meeting you feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Our talks over the phone, the prospect of seeing you in person, nourishes something inside of me that I had no idea had been empty this whole time.'"

Armed with a crowbar and daylight, Damon stood in the entryway of the Salvatore family crypt peering at his mother's unopened coffin.

"'I don't mean to put any kind of pressure on you, and if your feelings aren't mutual just say the word and I'll stop. I just hope we can have a friendship, a bond or connection of some sort, as connection is what drives us, and at this particular stage in my life, I'm in no position to squander a friend.'"

At Whitmore Hospital Caroline and Stefan traded stories about their childhood, getting to know one another in a way that would have seemed impossible years ago. The gulf that formed between them after Stefan's flight from their hometown was mending in measurable increments. Unbeknownst to either of them, their conversation was being absorbed.

"'As per your request, you wanted to know what ticked me off, what I loved about my childhood, what I was good at and what I needed to work on. All right, here goes nothing.

"'Lying ticks me off. I know being honest can seem like the hardest thing to do, and sometimes people don't want to tell the truth to avoid hurting someone; but in the long run it just makes situations and problems worse. Trust someone enough to handle what you have to say, and then respect their choice if they decide to have nothing further to do with you.'"

Damon crossed over to the coffin and wedged the flat end of the crowbar right under the hood and pushed down. The crack of wood splintering, the smell of rot flooded his senses urging him to move quickly before he changed his mind again. Finally, the nails had been removed and all that needed to happen now was pushing the hood off. He did and with no hesitation bracing himself for two outcomes.

The vampire's brow knitted in a potent mix of disbelief, anger, confusion, and acceptance. Nothing was in the coffin. Not even the imprint of a body ever being within. The padding inside was tattered, a product of the wear and tear of time. So that was that, then? His mother became a vampire in 1858 and roamed the streets and continued to do so to this day.

"'What did I love about my childhood? Ten cent franks, baseball, and going to the movies for less than a dollar. I grew up in a rural town, still there by the way, and it's the stereotypical place where your neighbors knew your business, and everyone gave you a whooping long before you got to your mama's house. But once a year and usually during the summer, dad would load up the four of us and we'd head to the beach for two weeks. For us that had been the height of luxury. For a lot it still is. My childhood hadn't been idyllic, but it could have been much worse.'"

Over at Mystic Falls General, Dr. Romana Phyllis shucked her mask and gloves, and gave final instructions to the nurse before vacating the examination room. The last twenty-four hours had been frightening. What, with patients crashing and the staff being unresponsive as they too came under an unexplained attack. She knew what they were saying in the news. No one was willing to admit the dark and supernatural truth about it. No, it would just be brushed off as another gas leak, a power outage. Fatigue made her shoulders sag, but she had one final patient to check on.

"'What am I good at? Being a product of my past. Which is what I also need to work on. I was taught to think analytically about almost everything, rationalize, play devil's advocate because the game, my dad said, was already rigged. So, a lot of people see me as rigid and uncaring, but that simply couldn't be farther from the truth. Seeing my people being mistreated burns, and fills me with such a quiet rage that I fear if I gave into it for a second, I'd lose everything fundamental about myself. And I wouldn't mind, and that's the part that scares me. I want to tear things down brick-by-brick, and rebuild, but I have to be smart about it. Yet one of the smartest choices I can say I've made is not talking myself out of getting to know you.'"

Cherise Tomlinson had been brought in at 1:48 a.m. with an apparent gunshot wound. The person who found her, a local kid Dr. Phyllis knew as she often frequented his place of business, Matt Donovan claimed to have found her on the side of the road. Cherise's next of kin had been notified and were overjoyed she had been found but had a ton of questions that Dr. Phyllis simply had no answer to. Cherise had been rushed into surgery where it was also noted she was extremely dehydrated and suffered minor frostbite on her feet and a few of her fingers. Unsurprising as she hadn't been properly clothed in the freezing temperatures and had been missing for days.

Sanitizing her hands, Dr. Phyllis ambled toward the sleeping young woman. Something on the monitor distracted her for a second so she missed Cherise's lids popping open and revealing swirling mercury irises. When the doctor gave her undivided attention to Cherise, the formerly missing woman's eyes were closed.

"I don't know what you may have been put through, but I hope it's truly over now, and you get justice," Dr. Phyllis professed.

The revenant inside of Cherise remarked it was far from over.

Bonnie paused and breathed slowly before continuing, "'This may be too forward, but I have to let you know. I'm compelled to. Hearing from you has become one of the highlights of my day, and I hope that you think of me as I think of you. The pull I feel toward you is intense, something I've never experienced before, a feeling I never really believed was real. You hear about it in the movies, read it in books, but to actually feel it for yourself, there's no words. Indescribable. It has me operating out of my comfort zone and for a pretty straitlaced guy like myself it's terrifying, but I am unafraid. Why? Because I'm looking at the end and at the end, you're standing there. Please, be well. Your friend in all things, Rudy.'"

A floorboard creaking, jolted Bonnie. When she whipped her head in the direction of the door, she smiled.

"You're reading the letters," Damon pressed his shoulder into the doorjamb.

"I am."

"Well, it's official. My mother's a vampire."

"And I learned that my dad didn't leave this world not knowing love."

"Good morning."

"Good morning."

Damon crossed the room to kiss Bonnie's lips and kneeled to rest on his haunches. "From the snippet I heard, it sounded like your dad was sprung."

"Yeah," Bonnie shifted her gaze to the letter, "it's weird because I didn't think he was capable of being that open with his feelings. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't shy in letting me know what he disapproved of."

"Aren't all parents?"

Bonnie became so still, Damon instantly went on alert. Little by little her face crumbled and tears flowed as heart-wrenching sobs tore from her chest.

"Bon, what…" he didn't know what to do except for pull her into his arms to console. "Talk to me. What's wrong?"

"Silas…he took him away from me," her voice cracked with the pain of losing so much. "I'll never get that time back. I'll never see any other side of my dad besides the one in my memory. I'll never get to ask him for advice, or learn anything else about his life before I was born. He'll never see me graduate college, start my first real job…If the time ever comes, he'll never walk me down the aisle, never play with his grandchildren. I can't make any new memories with him," she sobbed.

The sound of Bonnie's agony constricted Damon's larynx, and the most he could do was squeeze her tighter. Her tears rolled from her bloodshot eyes and dropped on his neck and wet the shirt underneath. Regret caught fire within him, and Damon wished so many things had turned out radically different.

"Give me twenty-four hours to make this better," he bargained.

Bonnie shook her head. "Nothing can make it better."

"Let me try."

Bonnie pulled away. She could see Damon's earnestness reflected at her and his sympathy, which made her heart hurt even worse. He would do anything for her, anything in his power, and if it was out of his realm of expertise, he'd find someone who had the solution. She loved that about him, loved that he cared, but at this moment she needed something he couldn't give her.

Her father.

Damon watched as Bonnie got to her feet and moved a million miles away.