Note: Ok so I lied! There's going to be 3 parts :) I was going to tack on the ending in Part 2 but I felt this deserved its own section. Also, in this AU, Katherine is Elena's mother. And THANK YOU to everyone who left reviews, I was surprised by how many there were, and each one warmed my heart.
"'no'
might make them angry
but
it will make you free."
- Nayyirah Waheed
The dream was always the same.
She ran across a sea of grass. Her mother stood against a windless sky. Her mother's face was the face of Death.
It was her fifth night back in the Petrova castle. Her small, spare room had once felt like a second skin, now she itched within its confines. Already she missed the delight of voluptuous bed furs and the luxury of hot, perfumed baths. She missed the sweetness of pomegranates (having only snatched two in her haste to leave the castle, one of which was already consumed while the other she hoarded like a precious jewel).
There were other things she missed, but they were not easily named. Her tongue faltered and language refused to give them shape. Only her body could speak them, could throb with longing that haunted her dreams, could burn inside out with a hollow ache that threatened madness.
She missed him. The gods would curse and spit on her, but she missed him.
How could her life have turned in on itself in the span of a few weeks?
Her old friends spoke in ghost voices, looked at her with ghost eyes. Even their gestures - Elena's brief hug the night she returned windswept and riding a half-dead horse, Stefan's pitying glances, Karoline's sugary words - felt ghostly. They were not real. She was not real.
She thought of Klaus, alone in his luxurious castle.
They would eat you alive.
Only Damon, of all people, looked at her like he saw her. Like he knew something the others didn't.
"Why are you here, Bonnie?" he asks one night, after the others had gone to bed, Elena giving her an apologetic look before following Stefan.
I thought Elena needed help. I thought something horrible had happened. I thought it was my duty.
None of the answers held any water. Elena was perfectly fine, happy even. The castle was intact, the small kingdom was not aflame with invaders.
"I needed to know."
Damon waits for her to continue. Instead she puts down her glass and pushes back her chair. It was so clear now. Yes, she needed to know.
"Know what?" he shouts after her.
But Bonnie is already halfway down the torchlit hall.
If ghosts were her due, she would wrest from ghosts the only thing they knew. The only thing that gave them a semblance of life.
Memory.
In all her dreams, her mother is Death.
Where did you go why did you go
There's always the terrible, burning hope in her heart, fuelling her feet as they speed over waves of grass.
Mama wait Mama stay
Hope flares brightest in that moment when she reaches for her mother, when she's finally close enough to reach out and touch her shoulder.
That moment before the face that turns to meet her, her mother's face, is the face of Death. An eyeless skull.
And that's when the horror always takes her from within, a chasm yawning inside her, a long soundless throat hungry to swallow her, bone by bone.
Where did you go why did you go.
This time, Bonnie holds still. This time, she stares into the empty eye-sockets. This time, she swallows the darkness whole. The sockets grow wider like twin pools of black water, consuming all light.
Shapes appear through the shadows, then voices, then faces.
They turn, the shadows shift, and it's her mother, Abigail Bennett, standing with Elena's mother Katherine, last Queen of the Petrova clan and a male vampire in court dress.
An argument is ongoing. Her mother is making conciliatory gestures, her body a protective barrier between Katherine and the increasingly aggressive male vampire.
For a moment, things seem to calm words 'Elena' and 'safe' are discernible. Abigail nods, holds out a ring for the vampire. Katherine looks relieved. The vampire steps up to Abigail and takes the ring from her hand.
Then he slaps her hard across the face.
It is a gesture of pure arrogance. A gesture that requires no justification, because power never does. There is a sound like a twig snapping 's no pitched battle, no desperate heroic gesture. There is no grand tragic moment.
He snapped her mother's neck.
She lies across the stone floor at Katherine's feet, her head twisted like a ruined doll. And the grass outside is still green. No clouds gather in the eyes of heaven. The winds do not cease howling. The sun grows no dimmer. Her mother dies. No different than an ant, a spider, a worm.
And she stares at her mother's dead face. And her own eyes look back.
Bonnie tries to scream but her voice is gone, her neck broken. No breath passes through her torn windpipe.
She awakes clawing at her throat, sucking in great gulps of air. Looks down at her hands, touches her face, her breasts, her legs, her thighs. Whole. Flesh. Alive.
Her mother's face was the face of Death.
At last, she understood.
When Bonnie walks out into the night, the Petrova castle behind her is alive with flags of fire. Fire streams from the windows, smoke wraps the turrets. As she steps off drawbridge, the water in the moat turns to livid flame, ringing the entire castle.
She can hear the screams. Taste fear and confusion in the air. She walks through the night like a scythe. Her mother may have died like a snuffed candle, but she would burn for both of them.
They would remember her name.
The woods welcome her like silent friends. She steps through tangled shadows beneath tree branches twisted in torturous embrace. Her green cloak drags across wet leaves and earth, her bare feet are coated in mud.
When finally she stops, Bonnie feels a great trembling overtake her. She shakes so violently she has to grasp a tree trunk for support. It feels like her soul is boiling beneath her skin, hungry to shake loose her body and vanish into the night.
She wonders if anyone will find her if she dies this night. If the forest will eat her flesh like she was no more than organic matter.
Would anyone look for her? Would Klaus?
Klaus.
She looks up at the sky and finds the full moon slipping through clouds. Through the blackness gathering behind her eyes, she stays focused on that lovely silver halo. If she could live one more night, she tells herself she would spend it eating pomegranates, she would consume the illusion of desire, she would take, and take, and take again.
Bonnie crumples to the floor.
Note: Part 3 is almost done! Also, I know several of you wanted or expected Elena to be responsible for Abby's death, and I guess in a way she is. But the whole point of how Abby died is this question of responsibility, and power, and the way the lives and bodies of women of color remain dispensable. R&R if you have a moment xoxoxo