Chapter 2.1
"What did you think about?" Damon asked her. "You know, in all the melodrama before we rode the cliché train right into the light."
The rain had stopped some time ago, and they had been walking for a while, not nearly as long as they'd been walking in the desert, but the fact that they still hadn't seen anyone else frustrated Bonnie to no end. Because not only were the streets clear of traffic and the sidewalks vacant, but there were no windows on the buildings. Flat sheets of metal blocked off doorways, and she was beginning to question whether they would ever find anyone else.
So she answered his question. Not because she particularly wanted to, but because she needed a distraction.
"I was thinking about my Grams," she said as they passed yet another storefront. Or what she thought were storefronts. Without windows, it was hard to tell. Whenever she spotted a sheet metal door with a blank sign hanging over it, "store" was the only explanation she could think of.
"Your Grams? Why not Jeremy the Boy Wonder? The thirteen year-old pre tween thing no longer do it for you?"
"Jeremy wasn't that much younger than me," she said, angry that she still felt the need to defend their age difference even though she would probably never see him again.
"Oh, but he was. Age isn't about years. It's about experiences, and you, Bonnie Bennett, have lived more than most."
"I guess the century-old vampire would know."
"The century-old vampire wrote the book that inspired the screen-play that turned into the movie," he said.
Smiling, she stared at him for a moment too long. It had been a while since she'd thought about killing him, and that, to her, felt like progress.
"So what did you think about when you realized it was all over?" she asked.
"I thought about Elena," he said and jumped down from the sidewalk. "And then I thought about Elena grieving, and then I thought about Stefan, and then I thought about Stefan and Elena together. Then that bright light couldn't come fast enough."
He was looking straight ahead where another line of buildings divided the street into a giant V, like a delta at the end of a river.
"You don't think the two of them will get together now, do you?" Bonnie asked. She hadn't given much thought to all of their My-Brother's-Girl drama, but as she listened to Damon talk about it, it was clear to her that the subject still caused him a lot of pain.
"I don't know, Judgy. Will anyone throw a funeral for my incinerated body? Will Jeremy finally start to grow facial hair? Will my brother step in and comfort my grieving girlfriend? We shall never know."
But Bonnie knew.
Elena loved Damon more than anything. So much so that she probably would have traded all of Mystic Falls if it meant she could swap places with Bonnie. She would have gladly wandered endless roads forever as long as Damon was beside her.
Something stopped Bonnie from saying that out loud, and she blamed it on her fatigue. They had made it to the literal fork in the road, and now, all she really wanted to do was sit down.
"I recognize this place," Damon said, staring up at the bottom side of the V-shaped building where there were giant white boards, blank and oddly out of place.
"You do?" she asked.
"You don't? It's Time's Square."
Her eyes narrowed, darting from building to building. She had only ever seen Times Square on television on New Year's Eve when she'd watch the parade with her father. Even watching it on a box in pajamas in her living room, it had looked more life-like than this. There weren't the trademark advertisements along the buildings, and the severe lack of people made it even less recognizable, but she guessed it could have been Times Square. Maybe in a post-apocalyptic future. Or a parallel world.
"I spent a lot of time in the big apple," he said, mostly to himself. "I'm the rot that turned it bad."
It almost sounded like Damon was scolding himself, which was new to Bonnie. She decided to ignore his comment and focus on one thing at a time.
"So is this some sort of weird nega-earth?" she asked.
Damon's brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth to speak, but a loud noise interrupted him. It sounded like a door closing, and then there was a loud buzzing, like a power generator had been switched on.
The white boards that had been blank crackled with static noise, and suddenly Damon and Bonnie were staring at her face multiplied several dozen times on the sides of the buildings and stretching toward the sky.
She gaped at her own wide, blinking eyes. The green in them was so vivid, though the rest of her seemed to have been washed out by the rain. Although her dark hair was chaotic and her dress looked more gray than white, she still looked like herself, which surprised her. She felt as if she'd lived a million days since her death, and she thought that it might have changed her somehow.
"Looks like they found us," Damon said, looking up at the mass of green eyes and brown skin.
She hated the way he said the words. It made it seem like there was something wrong with being found. Hadn't that been the point of all the walking? For someone to find them and tell them what the hell was going on? The weight in Damon's voice implied that there was a threat, and that they were vulnerable, but she was certain that they weren't in any danger, or maybe she was hoping.
"You're the Bennett witch," someone said, the voice deep but somehow melodic.
Bonnie turned to see who, or what, had spoken, but Damon was at her side, holding his arm out in front of her. Defending her?
"Who the hell are you?" Damon asked.
"I'm Samael," the voice spoke again, "and there's no need to be alarmed."
Bonnie peered around the black of Damon's shirt, and saw a tall, skinny man with dark hair and olive skin. He wore a bright red tank top and weird shorts that bunched around his knees.
"Actually, there is a need for alarm," Samael amended. "We shouldn't be out this time of day. I can explain better when we're safely indoors, but I do insist we hurry."
Damon was still tensed in front of her, but she stepped around his guarding arm so that Samael could see her, and she could fully see him.
"I'm Bonnie," she said in order to prevent him calling her the Bennett witch again. She wasn't a witch anymore, and even when she was still a witch, it bugged her that it was the only thing people ever seemed to know about her.
"Bonnie." Samael approached her, a warm smile on his face. "We've been expecting you."
"A likely story," Damon said behind her. "I'm Damon Salvatore. Was anyone expecting me?"
Samael had shocking light brown eyes that reminded Bonnie of butterscotch or gold. Those eyes looked past her and zeroed in on Damon's face, then he looked away as if he were bored.
"You need to follow me," he said. "Apex will start soon, and I'd hate to explain to the elders that I'd lost you."
Bonnie didn't miss that he was talking specifically to her. She looked at Damon, who had saved her from drowning and kept her from going insane back in the desert. She reached for his hand and pulled him to her side.
"Okay," she said, "we're ready."
Wherever she was going, Damon was going, and she wanted Samael and anyone else to know that.
Chapter 2.2
Bonnie stood in the center of a large meeting hall. The room was circular with rows of seats that wound up toward the glass dome in the tall ceiling. Although the room could easily fit a hundred, only the first row of seats was occupied by Samael and seven other people he referred to as the elders. As if calling a group of people in shorts and tank tops who didn't look any older than Bonnie herself "elders" wasn't ominous at all.
"Have you made your decision?" a man in neon yellow with oddly sharp teeth asked. He was bald with dark brown eyes, and Bonnie was half sure that he was eldest of the elders. His chair was gold with red velvet accents. It was flashy and unattractive, and clearly a sign of his position. The others simply sat on the bench-like seat.
She thought about the question, and then about the answer.
"It's imperative that you make the right choice," Samael had said when they'd arrived inside a white-stone building that looked like a church with its steeple and arches. He had immediately pawned Damon off on someone else, a woman with blonde hair and flip flops, who Damon was all too eager to follow.
"Making the right choice is the only thing that will secure your place here," Samael had continued. They'd been standing in a hallway, one similar to many others he'd led her through.
"And where is here?" she'd asked.
"You'll know when you make the right choice." Then he'd opened two heavy wooden doors and led her into the meeting hall.
Now, she stood in front of these odd people, who had, so far, said very little, and all she knew was that her Grams had orchestrated this. When the Other Side was collapsing, the woman—along with every witch who had died since the beginning of time—had worked their magic one last time to secure Bonnie's transition from the human realm to this new place. She still did not know its name, nor did she know exactly how different it was from the world she'd left behind.
"If I say yes—" she started.
"We'll take it away," a woman said, her tone and look very serious. "Every memory of your past will feel like nothing but a dream, and this will be your home. The only home you've ever known."
Bonnie's eyes narrowed, and she took an unconscious step backward. That was the part that got to her. Her past feeling like a dream? It might have hurt her to think about her life on earth and the fact that she could never return, but she wasn't sure she wanted to forget.
"What about Damon?"
None of the elders flinched at the mention of his name. If the choice was so important, why didn't Damon have to make it, too?
"This is what Sheila wanted," Samael spoke up when he noticed Bonnie hesitating. "She was the mastermind behind all of this so that you could find peace here. She knew that this was as close to living as you could come now. There are no real alternatives."
It was true that her Grams had wanted her to find peace, but Bonnie didn't think it would come at the price of leaving behind her old life for good, forgetting that it ever existed. That to her seemed worse than death.
But if this was what her Grams wanted….
Bonnie had ignored her grandmother's wishes before in the past, pushing her magic too far, using Expression. Nothing good ever came from ignoring the woman's advice.
"Promise that Damon can stay, too." She knew that her Grams hadn't mentioned 176-year-old narcissistic blood-addicted vampire when she'd contrived a plan to save her, but this was the deal breaker. Damon belonged to her best friend, and even though she knew he would never see Elena again, she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she knew anything bad ever happened to him.
The man in the ugly chair fixed his posture and stared at her coolly.
"Yes, of course. Your friend Damon will come to no harm at our hands. We're already planning a meeting for him where he'll have a choice to make as well. You have nothing to worry about."
His reassurances quieted the last bit of resistance inside her head. Bonnie's Grams wanted her to find peace. The woman must have known that there was no way she ever would if she spent all of her time wondering about Jeremy and when—not if because he was young, and it would happen—he would move on and find another girlfriend. Hopefully, one who would not die. There was no one Bonnie could move on with. Her only hope was to forget how much she'd loved him, and how much he'd loved her.
"Okay," she said. "My choice is yes. I want to stay."
Samael smiled wide. All seven elders, minus the one in the chair, moved to their feet and hugged her, wrapping her in their arms and heady floral scents that reminded her of her Gram's garden. The smells immediately put her at ease.
Then the bald one stood from his chair. He had something in his hand as he walked toward her. A needle?
The other elders tightened their hold on her.
"I'm Ben," he said. "The oldest soul here."
Someone pulled on her wrist, and Ben slid the needle into her arm. It hurt as much as any shot ever had. When he pulled it out, there was no blood. Only a small drop of clear solution that rolled to her elbow and dropped on the marble beneath their feet.
Bonnie swayed slightly, but the arms held her tight.
"Welcome to Elysium," Ben said, "or as we like to call it, Heaven."
Chapter 2.3
Each hall inside The Pemberly, looked much the same. Red carpet, soft pink walls lined with gold floor molding, and framed portraits of moving landscapes.
Bonnie paused in front of one of the frames. The scene: churning gray waves, crashing against rocks. It made her think about the ocean where Damon had saved her, and then the nagging in her chest grew worse.
She'd woken up after the weird ceremony in a room, her room. Her initials were embroidered in the fluffy pillows and spelled out in the cream marble floors. She'd felt different, lighter. Not as heavy as she'd felt when she was drowning in the ocean. But the thought of the ocean always brought her back to dark hair and blue eyes and mocking smiles. She would see Damon's face and her heart would start pounding, and she knew that nothing in Elysium would feel quite right until she found him.
So his face haunted her as Samael and another girl, Paula, explained to Bonnie that she could only go outside after dark or risk oblivion when Apex started. She wouldn't die, she would just evaporate. There would be nothing left of her. Not even a trace.
Paula showed Bonnie how to access the building directory, and how to pull the shutters open on the long windows that lined her bedroom wall. She had to be careful not to leave them opened during Apex which was when the day was brightest. Paula had even taken the time to explain to Bonnie why she didn't need to eat, but no one—not Paula, not Samael, and not Ben—had explained to her how she had managed to blink herself from place to place. And wondering about that only made her wonder more about Damon.
Paula eventually left Bonnie alone so she could get cleaned up. She couldn't pass up the chance for a shower, nor could she pass up the chance to stare at the mirror when she caught a glimpse of herself. Her hair had grown back, inexplicably, falling in waves down to her shoulders. There was a greenish bruise where Ben had stuck her with the needle. Her head was a little fuzzy, but she was still herself. Nothing had changed.
Now, she was following the instructions she'd memorized from the directory in order to find Damon.
When she came to the room, the door gaped. Inside, a fire burned in the fireplace and Damon sat with his leg draped over the arm of a chair. For a second, she thought she could remember something. Another grander fireplace. Damon pacing in front of it. But the thought slipped away.
"Nice of you to show up," he said without looking at her.
She felt a weird relief to hear his voice. It wasn't familiar to her because nothing was familiar to her, but a voice meant that the face in her head was real. For a moment, she thought she'd been imagining him.
"Why is it so dark in here?" she asked, sitting in the chair beside his. Other than the fire and light spilling in from the hallway, the room was a den of shadows. It made her shiver, and she realized that the fireplace wasn't giving off any heat.
"Is it dark?" he asked. "I didn't notice."
She may not have recognized his voice, but she recognized the tone. Sadness.
Suddenly uncomfortable, she stood and walked around the room. There were bookshelves with lots of books and globes and it all looked so…old.
"Something's changed," she said, running a hand along the leather bindings of books. "They asked me to make a choice, and I did."
Damon flashed to her side. His eyes pierced hers through the darkness, and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
"You're being vague, like every other space case I have had the displeasure of meeting today, which—surprise!—concerns me. What changed? What choice?"
Bonnie explained to him what the elders had said, and what Samael had said about finding peace. That reminded her that she had bargained for Damon's safety as long as he was willing to make the same choice she had. That fact didn't bring him the same serenity that it had brought her.
"So you're telling me that you have no memory of Mystic Falls?" he asked, baring his ultra-white teeth.
She shook her head, no.
"No Jeremy, no Grams, no Elena, Caroline? Elena? You've only saved her life half a million times."
The names did not sound familiar.
"When I woke up, you were the only thing I could remember before coming here." She didn't understand his anger. She was just so happy that he was safe. So she reached for his hand. He pulled it away, but she reached for it a second time, and this time he let their hands hang, intertwined, between them.
"It's okay," she said. "This is Elysium, Damon. We're in Heaven. We don't have to worry about anything ever again."
His jaw tightened. Light from the fire danced in his dark eyes as he glared at her.
"What the hell have they done to you, Judgy?"
She frowned at the anger in his voice, and squeezed his hand tighter.
"Do you trust me?"
This, to her, was a given. She knew that she trusted him. More than she trusted anyone in Elysium. If he felt even an ounce of that for her, then there was no way he would question her decision.
"Not like I have much of a choice," he said, "but believe it or not, yeah, I do. I have for a while."
"Then you have to believe me. This is good. It's great." She was smiling harder than she needed to, hoping to erase the sadness from his expression or at least the worry lines from his forehead. With him looking at her like that, it made her feel a weird kind of pain. A pain she didn't altogether understand.
"Do me a favor? Don't go making any more choices without me. I trust you, no one else. We're not in Kansas anymore."
"Is that where we're from, Kansas?" Although she couldn't remember anything before Elysium, she was certain that there had been something before. She just didn't know what.
Damon surprised her by laughing. He pulled his hand away a final time and turned back to the fire.
"Then again, an amnesiac former witch might not be all that bad. You're funnier at least."
A former witch? It sounded familiar, but she couldn't focus on that because there was a voice screaming inside of her head telling her that she was offended.
"Well, Damon, you were never funny at all," she said, unsure of whether or not that was true, only that it seemed to fit. "Follow me. I know where you can get cleaned up."