A/N: I apologise for the insanely long wait to an update but I'll update more, I promise.
~~~oOo~~~
Jesus Christ was a martyr
~~~~oOo~~~~
Damon lay flat on the sheared green grass outside the library on the plantation. He lay belly up with his beaming face lifted up toward the flashing sky, big fat drops of rain beating down his face. This was the aftermath of the unbearable heat, the climax of the afternoon. Knotting his fingers around the squat green blades, he dug his nails deeper into the rich wet dirt and parted his lips to drink in the silver rain. He yelled to the thunderstorm, cried out to it as it filled his barking lungs, air and water collapsing them.
Stefan had teased that since he had saved Bonnie Bennett's life, he was now responsible for it. Damon had read the mockery behind his brother's phrase because they both knew darn well that Damon could not be responsible for anything-ever. Still he doubted that Bonnie had needed him to save her, given half the chance she could've clubbed that gator over the head and clawed her way out of that river. To Damon she seemed like a plucky little soldier, right down to her sprightly green eyes.
"Damon!" Stefan hollered, ducking beneath a curtain of wild Spanish moss and Damon's ears pricked up.
"Rudy Hopkins shot them two rapists; he's been arrested for murder"
~~~oOo~~~
The police officers told the Bennett family that they couldn't see Rudy and so they assembled around the police station waiting for the unknown while a crowd of white protestors gathered outside the station in the pouring rain also waiting for some news.
"It aint right, "Bonnie kept muttering, shaking her head, "it aint right" she spat, salty lips quivering. With her fists balled up tight against her sides, she was madder than a wet hen and none of them seemed to get it. Marcel was slumped up against the wall, muted eyes boring into the heads of the police officers meandering around the station like a herd of turtles. Bonnie couldn't understand why he wasn't doing nothing, he was just stuck there on that darn wall with his jaw muscle jerking everytime somebody uttered the word nigger as they passed the family. His newly shaved head glistened under the hot bright lights. He'd shaved it to mourn Emily at least that's what he'd told Bonnie. None of it was gonna bring Em back, not the covered mirrors around the house and certainly not the black buttons they'd taken to wearing on their clothes. Emily was gone; maybe she wasn't even part of Georgia like her grams had always promised.
"Hush, child!" he grams chastised, grabbing her clammy hand and squeezing it between her bony fingers.
"I aint gon' hush, this aint right" she cried, twisting desperately to free her hand from her gram's grip.
"Stop it, Miss Bennett" Sheila hissed, a steely gaze taking over them soft eyes of hers but Bonnie wasn't ready to listen. She bucked like a young mule, eyes shining with tears as she glared at the woman who'd raised her for her entire life.
"I don't care what my daddy done, those rednecks had it comin" Bonnie curled her hands into fists, struggling to keep her tears at bay.
"You don't fight hate with hate, caint no good come from that. Aint no medals where your daddy goin" Grams said slowly and with great patience.
"How's a black man ever going to get a fair trial in the south?" Bonnie shook her head, trying to step back from her nana but she lifted a liver spotted hand to her cheek and brushed the wet heated skin there.
"Everythin will be fine, you'll see" she smiled, the small wrinkles at the corner of her eyes creasing at the action.
"Mrs Bennett"
They both whirled around toward the voice and Bonnie's eyes widened when she saw the seersucker-suit gentleman who'd come to her house after Emily's passing.
"Mr Salvatore?" Gram's nodded, leaving Bonnie's side to attend to the man.
"I'll be representing your son-in-law" Mr Salvatore announced, loud enough for Bonnie to hear.
~~~~oOo~~~~
The stench of burning rubber and trash blustered over them, dead and rotting. The smoke and the smell struck his eyes making them water. They'd barely arrived at the police station when all hell had broken loose.
"Bonnie, "Damon called, his hands finding her in the swelling crowd. He held on and she held on, two kids lost out at sea. They moved through the riot, coughing, yelling, arms draped around each other before sooty hands found and tangled around each other.
"Why is there so much hate in the world?"
Damon turned around to see Bonnie, burning fire reflected in her big glassy eyes. Red and green, he could almost smell the combination they made. Above and beyond the burning, the rotting smells and screams and the cries, he caught the whiff of fire burning in her eyes. It didn't smell like the dry rot whose thick plumes were curling and filling up the air, it was alive and so vital, a smell he needed in order to live.
"What?" Damon shouted back over the noise, remembering that she had said something.
"Things like this aint supposed to happen to people like us" she said just as a crack of gunfire exploded through the air. Damon lunged to her side, arms covering her head as they hunkered down to the ground behind a car with broken windows.
"Are you okay?" he yelled with her gathered in his arms. He could feel the frantic beat of her heart through his thin tee-shirt, wet sticky heat pooling between them.
That's when they saw it, the burning man dragged along the asphalt, flames licking his flesh as his screams scaled the smoke riddled air.
~~~~oOo~~~~
"I watched a man burn to death today" Damon said quietly as wisps smoke from his father's cigarette curled up around them. His father took another wheezing drag, eyes narrowed as he listened attentively. Damon knew that his father had been there too, smelled the burning flesh and the dancing flames but he allowed his son to tell the tale because he sensed that Damon needed to tell it in order to believe it.
He turned out toward the window where the thrum of frogs filled the muggy evening air and said, "They put a rubber tyre round his neck, doused him with gasoline before they set him alight"
"They called it necklacin, I'd never seen somethin so darn tragic and filthy my whole life" his voice grew to a husky whisper as he swung his face from the window to regard his father. Giuseppe tapped a strip of ash from his cigarette before sliding the stick back into his mouth, clenching it between his teeth.
"It took him twenty minutes to die, I half expected him to kick out sooner with the beatin and all but he fought, for some darn reason, he fought to hell to survive." Damon continued, fighting the tightness in his throat but his voice grew thicker, huskier and his eyes stung as he trained them to the floor.
"It made me hate myself somethin awful, made me detest the color of my own skin" he sniffed and took to wiping his nose with the back of his shaking hand.
-oOo-
Grams said they couldn't wait to for Rudy's trial and so they buried Emily two weeks after Rudy's arrest. It was one of em muggy, sticky mornings where humidity cloaked around you like another layer of skin. Bonnie could hear the heat hiss around them, throbbing and polluting the air like sinful gospel.
"We will bury Emily today but never our memories of her" Grams explained, her lace covered hands squeezing Bonnie's shoulder. They all climbed into Rudy's car, her brother's suits sagging around their shoulders like wrinkled skin. Their shoes groaned when they walked and the car itself seemed to creak as it toiled the dust on the way to the graveyard. We are all the things we've lost, Bonnie thought as they passed a clump of colored folk baptising in calm, shimmering waters. Bonnie was the daydreams swaying languorously on the front porch-swing, the jasmine covering mailboxes brimmed with letters of condolences. She was the breathless air that suffocated everything with its magnolia spell. Them Baptists don't know nothing about saving me, she thought before she closed her eyes.
The service was quick with them standing amongst a forest of crooked gravestones, Spanish moss softening their steps. Her gaze strayed along to the sea of black faces dotted with a white face here and there. The sultry air bristled with tension just as much as it throbbed with mourning songs but when Emily's little white coffin descended to the ground, Georgia stopped and the whole world along with it.
~~~~oOo~~~~
"You lost?" Bonnie asked, cocking the rifle. Her red-bricked face and dust clotted hair seemed to amuse him but he hid his smile. She'd seen him at Emily's funeral and later at the church service sitting three rows down with his father and his strange brother.
"It's an awfully big town" Damon drawled slowly, grimacing against the sun. He was still leaning against his car, arms folded across his chest as his fingers drummed his elbow.
"Go on, git" she motioned with her head, pointing the gun at him
"You sure is full of beans aint ya?" Damon chuckled, pushed off the gleaming car and edged closer toward her.
"What's an educated Southerner like yourself doin talkin to folk like us, it don't fit ya" she countered, widening her stance on the porch. She looked dirty in soiled denim dungarees and worn out boots like she'd been plowing the land or something.
"Darn, you could start an argument with a rock" he teased, one foot on the first step, the other still safety fixed onto the gravel driveway.
"I call it how I sees it, and you just too big for your breaches" with her brows wrinkled, she pursed her lips and dragged her narrowed eyes over his form with his neat tee-shirt and jeans.
Reaching behind him, he pulled out a white envelope from his back pocket and waved it in front of her, "My dad sent me, I brought somethin for your grams"
"Well what is it?" she jerked her head, lowering her gun several inches from the ground.
"It's a note from your dad" he explained, his eyes never leaving hers.
Bonnie stretched put her right hand and hissed between her gritted teeth, "Give it here"
"I reckon I'll hold on to this till you let me in" he grinned then hugged the letter to his chest.
~~~~oOo~~~~
A/N: An update for He Said, She said will probably be up next week or later this week.