She spat out the toothpaste in the sink, and heaped a fresh glob on the toothbrush. She'd been brushing her teeth for near ten minutes. "What, Damon? What?"

"Well, what's with the mouth-scouring? I'm not infectious, you know."

"I don't know. For all I know your blood could be a reservoir for every transmissible disease to ever plague mankind."

"Ouch."

She went back to scrubbing her teeth, then she spat again, put down the toothbrush, turned to face him and glared. With one hand she reached under her hair and pulled up the necklace. "Did you know?"

"Did I know what?"

Her eyes hardened. "How could you?"

"I thought you could handle it," he answered with a shrug. "You're the big bad witch, right? You can do anything, so I thought, hey – why not?"

"As long as you get what you want, right?" she jangled the chain and set all the pretty, annoying, accursed diamonds rattling. "How'd you get this, by the way?"

"Found it."

"Liar."

He couldn't help the grin that spread over his face. "Am I speaking to Bonnie here or–?"

"It's okay. I'm back in control," she smiled, deviously. "But Mags says hi."

Huh. Damon tensed. He'd had a plan for this, but Bonnie wasn't following the script. Not at all. "Mags…" he whispered the name, looking for a spark of recognition on those judgy angry eyes. Nothing… It had been there before, but it was gone now. "You… You spoke to her?" he frowned.

"I'm not possessed. Mags is still dead and gone, don't worry. She says hi, is all."

It had taken the combined efforts of Stefan and Tyler to pull her off of him. By the end, she'd broken his left collarbone, two of his ribs and bit off an ear. There was something utterly seductive about a woman biting off your ear and sticking her tongue down the hole. He'd lost his shit entirely when she'd pressed a finger into his eye, but the thing with the ear had been nice. He hadn't minded that too much.

Healed and cleaned up, though, the regret was starting to set in. Another missed opportunity to add to the books. One step forward and a hundred steps back. He'd gone all the way back to the fucking Ice Age. "Hi? Mags was always a bit of a blabber mouth. I can't believe that's all she said."

She smiled at him, all rainbows and butterflies. "Well, she had a lot to say about you, Damon. Wanna hazard a guess?"

No. He did not need to hazard a guess. Red Magwyr, the wicked witch of the South Pacific, had come waltzing up his path one day, looking for a fresh victim and/or a good fuck. He'd given her both, settled in perfectly into the role of Favoured Guinea Pig without a single complaint. He'd needed a witch to help him with the tomb and she'd needed a vampire to refill her blood prescription. At one point, she'd actually had him strapped into a chair in a blood bank, literally donating his blood. How many of those bags had he filled out? He'd bent over backwards for her, facilitating every fancy she could come up with.

Needless to say, she hadn't been near so helpful in recovering the then love of his life from the tomb. The first time he'd mentioned it, she'd laughed in his face. The second time, she'd been stoic and the third and last time she'd seemed positively hurt. Jealous, almost.

Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. There was truth in that.

"I had to kill her," he said flatly. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was the victim. He'd been the victim then and he was the victim now. "And don't start casting judgment down on me. My fingers are still blue." He held out his hand towards her, the one that wasn't broken. "Just give it back, and I'll bury it. It's supposed to be a talisman. I'd thought that of all people you'd be able to overcome the curse of Mags' lust and insanity, but…" he trailed off with a smirk and a shirk of his shoulders.

She shrank away from him. "I'm not giving it back."

"Yeah, you are. It's mine. It belongs to me–"

"How'd you figure that? She wants me to have it."

"She's dead. Her wants are irrelevant."

"It belongs with a witch. You don't understand, but what you did– You throttled her to death with her own talisman while you were…"

Yes, while I was making sweet, passionate love to the angel of a lady, I reached around with my free hand and twisted the fucking chain around her neck till I couldn't twist it anymore. Twisted it till her face looked like a plum. Then I bit her and tried to get back some of my fucking blood… Then I–

"She put some of her spirit into the diamonds. It's not just the black magic, but a piece of her own soul as well."

"Like a horcrux?"

"… Exactly like a horcrux, Damon," she answered flatly, with a suppressed eye-roll.

"And?"

"And what?"

"And does this help us somehow? Does she have any advice? A hidden grimoire tucked away with a 'Kill Klaus' spell. An 'Anti-Hybrid' potion? Did she have anything relevant to contribute to the issue at hand? You said she 'spoke to you'," he used air-quotes there, "What about? A six hundred year old witch comes back from the dead to talk to you - anything relevant or just chit chat about how good I am in the sack? 'Cause I'm willing to give you a demonstration, if you're curious." He zoomed up to her, looming and trying his damn best to combine 'hot' and 'intimidating' into one smouldering look. He had her by the chin, used his thumb to smudge away a white trail of drying toothpaste... Damn… He'd had her right where he'd wanted her. Fifteen minutes ago that mouth had been ready to devour him but he'd been too chicken to make good on it. 'Carpe fucking diem, Damon. Carpe the fucking diem.' He kissed her, too craven to go for a full kiss, he settled for the corner of her lips. "Threesome with Jeremy, threesome with a horcrux," he said against the side of her face, "Threesome with Stefan even. I'll be flexible. Just–"

"Klaus."

"What?" he stopped dead and pulled back. Or got pushed back.

Definitely, pushed back. He slammed into the wall, uncomfortably if not painfully.

"Klaus," she said again. "He's 'the Apocalypse Walking'. We need his guts in order to do the resurrection spell."

"What?"

"We need Klaus' guts!" A mirror broke all on its own.

Stefan raced up the stairs at the noise and barged into the room. "Damon! You–" His brother, paused, one arm still on the doorknob. "Bonnie? Everything's–"

"Everything's peachy except we need Klaus' entrails in order to resurrect Geraldine," Bonnie snapped angrily. "Any ideas?"

"We ask him for it," Damon suggested.

"Hello Mr Klaus, can we have a handful of your intestines for a spell we're doing to resurrect a demon slayer to hunt you down? Pretty please?" Stefan mocked. "Something like that Damon?"

"I wouldn't know what he likes. You're the one he kidnapped."

"Implying?"

Damon shrugged, "I'm just saying. He kidnapped you. Then he released you. Things can't be as bad between the two of you as all that."

"Yeah, Damon. We're tight. We're real buds. He's like a brother to me."

…

The two brothers remained in the bathroom for a while. Bonnie'd marched out and they were supposed to have followed, but they'd lingered. Damon propped against the wall where he'd been flung like a sack of refuse earlier and Stefan in the doorway, as proud and perfect as ever.

"Well, congratulations," he said, blocking the way of escape. "I mean, this is vaguely somewhere in the territory of what you wanted, right?"

"You figure?"

"Yeah!" Stefan shifted his frame casually and feigned pensiveness, creasing his forehead just to be annoying. "I mean," he hitched up his eyebrows. "Apart from the lack of fire and sprinklers going off, you almost got exactly what you wanted!"

"I'll admit to certain flaws in the plan. Satisfied, Stefan?"

"Flaws? What flaws? It's working out flawlessly as far as I can see."

"The good part, though–"

"The better part, you mean."

"The better part," he said straightening himself, "is that she's strong as fuck. If there's anyone who's at the moment capable of disemboweling Klaus, it's her. Mags might have been a depraved psychobitch, but she could work the fuck out of her black magic. If she's going to team up with Bonnie, then that's better for us. The odds rise in our favour."

"And you get to resume your sado-masochistic lifestyle in the meanwhile… Win-win for you."

"No! Do I look like I enjoy getting my eyes gouged out?"

Stefan didn't answer.

"Well, I don't. Despite the evidence, brother, I have limits. If I want abuse, I can go find Katherine. I have a new plan."

"A new plan? Why? The last one was genius."

"Okay! Noted! Now listen - the chain's a horcrux."

"A what?"

"Horcrux? Harry Potter?"

"You read that?"

"Have you not?"

"No," he shook his head and looked off. "As it's marketed for children, I, being a century and a half too old to qualify, decided against it. But I can see how it would appeal to you… Go on. The talisman does what?"

"It has a piece of Mag's consciousness in it. It's not an actual possession. But she and Bonnie can communicate!"

"And we're excited about this because…"

"Because we are this close to having our very own black magic witch. All we have to do is keep feeding her blood and Mags'll do the rest. We resurrect Geraldine, Geraldine kills Klaus, Bonnie kills Geraldine afterwards. And we're all happy ever after. I'm looking out for us! Bonnie'll be our bodyguard. No decent vampire goes anywhere without a badass, black magic wielding witch. Klaus has two. Bonnie needs all the help she can get. She needs to level up! We have to guide her, help her access as much power as she possibly can."

"The fact that you include me in this disturbs me immensely."

"I'm going to mold her into the perfect witch."

"And this…molding…" Stefan waved his hands lethargically around.

"- Is going to involving blood-letting and sex, yes."

"Okay," Stefan sighed. "I agree. This is definitely a better idea. More perfect than the last one. We shove Bonnie down the slippery slope of black magic and hope she lands on her feet and on our side. She's either going to lose all sense of morality and become your supernatural lover or end up EVIL AND INSANE and KILL YOU. Kill all vampires, more precisely, including myself. At this point, I note that Bonnie's already coming into this with a massive hatred towards all our kind, but besides that… This is pure genius, Damon. There is no downside to this… None that I can see, at least. I cannot imagine this backfiring. Not at all. This is so genius I can smell it. I can smell the genius on you. And oh… You still–" he pointed, rolled off some tissue, and wiped under Damon's chin, very brotherly-like. "She missed a spot."

And I must take a break... Tomorrow is Monday... Yay, yay, yay! Next update before Wednesday for the latest. A bonnie POV coming up to clarify the situation.