Bonnie shot up into an automatic sitting position when her alarm went off, banging away at the flat button on the top of the small radio. Nausea hit her immediately, a familiar—and horrid—sensation working its way up her throat. She untangled her legs from the sheets with clumsy haste and ran for my in-suite bathroom. She dropped to her knees on the tiled floor in front of the toilet, spending ten unpleasant minutes bent over the porcelain bowl exorcising the former day's bourbon raid and another ten brushing her teeth once done.
The screeching of the alarm clock yanked Kai out of his dream just before Liv put her poker through his gut for the tenth time. He snapped his eyes open and stared at the ceiling, still feeling the wet, hot blood all over his stomach. He even skimmed a hand over it to make sure the nightmare hadn't oozed into reality in the best traditions of the Elm Street.
It had not.
He pulled his clothes on, splashed some cold water in his face, and went downstairs. The worries of yesterday crept in, whispering that Bonnie wasn't there, anymore. Nor was the ascendant back in the caves. Only they were still here – at least Bonnie, who joined him in the kitchen in fifteen minutes, looking as if she would gladly sleep through the day.
Kai took the big pan with sizzling eggs off the burner and smiled at her. "Morning, sunshine. Let's have our last breakfast here and get the hell out, whatta ya say?" He picked a pitcher with orange juice off the kitchen island. "Get us glasses. Oh, and… where did all the forks go? There's none in the drawers. I'm really loath to eat this with a spoon."
Bonnie didn't expect to see him cooking. "I got rid of them," she answered his question, her cheeks flushing slightly as she removed the two glasses needed. She walked over to him, setting them down before him on the counter. "You'll have to make do with your hand. Or… I could fashion you something with paper and two sticks, though I imagine it would be similar to a spoon," she joked, in high spirits and indifferent of their rocky alliance. Today they were on the same team.
Kai side-eyed her with a jibing squint, heaved a sigh, and took two spoons from the drawer, handing one to her. "I think I shall do us both a huge favor and spare you a few hours of handcrafting some major failure of a cutlery piece."
Bonnie chuckled softly and cut around the egg yolk, using her index finger to push of the egg white onto it, unruffled by the extra hassle. As much as she believed Kai's story, as eager as she was to get out of here, she still wasn't sure she could fully trust him.
"It's all gonna get cold and I cranky," he continued. "I'm cranky when hungry, so you don't want me hungry when my focus's important to you. You're welcome." He sent a spoonful of fried eggs into his mouth, closed his eyes in elation and chewed. The addition of a gulp of juice was heaven. He felt like he hadn't eaten for days. "Oh, it's good."
She watched Kai spoon egg into his mouth, relieved to see that sleep had helped to some extent and that he was looking better. She expelled a soft hem of gratitude, bit by bit feeling the queasiness start to diminish and work away the haze. She hadn't eaten correctly in days and her drinkathon hadn't helped issues. "It is," she chimed in, neglectful of her manners as she virtually inhaled what remained on the plate.
"So tell me," he said, "how come you got rid of the cutlery?"
Bonnie was still chewing, egg yellow messily dribbling down her chin, not at all cooperating with the spoon.
"And when did that awesome idea strike you? Was it some kind of a pact you made with yourself to become a wild woman that eats with her hands and cuts food with her nails?"
She wiped the sticky sauce away with the back of her hand and walked to the sink to wash up. She set the plate down, rinsed her hands beneath the water and washed her face. "Yesterday," she responded after a second's hesitation, patting at her wet hands with the dry-up towel. There was no point in lying or pretending it vanished into thin air without her notice. She turned around to face him, a small smile on her lips. She wasn't at all embarrassed. "I decided—at last minute—that after our last dinner date, that we could do without cutlery or anything remotely pointy."
Kai had to laugh. That made perfect sense, and he had a subtle feeling he had already guessed as much deep down. She had all the right in the world to be paranoid about his presence around her.
Bonnie peered down at her chest to make sure she didn't miss her mouth too much. She wrinkled her nose at the discovery of one or two yellow dots threatening to seep into her shirt. "Dammit," she cursed softly and retrieved a wet cloth to wipe them away. She tossed the rag aside and walked back over to him, picking up her juice. "Luckily, come supper time, we won't have to worry about that issue as I'll be home and ordering in tonight."
"Yeah, hardly I'd have any business being at your place tonight, so you can spare your utensils." Kai finished his breakfast and carried the dishes to the sink. For a moment, he wanted to just leave it there, but then the inclination for order took its power and he quickly washed it up. "Hope you got your bags packed, Bon, 'cause NOW we're going home." He nodded at the door leading out from the dining room, heading for it. The early light was still dim outside. He looked at her over my shoulder. "Got a flashlight? Just in case."
Bonnie picked up the travel bag she'd packed the night before, stuffed with a small medical aid kit, a water bottle and two pieces of fruit. "No," she said and gestured to follow her. She headed for the garage, slipping inside without an issue, ignoring broken glass from the bottle she'd smashed the day before, flipping open a few tool cupboards until she found what she was looking for. She removed two sizable handheld torches, checked that they turned on and tossed him one. "Now we can go," she announced and walked out of the garage onto the gravel driveway, headed for the adjoining forest that lead off the estate and in direction of the caves, a bit disappointed they couldn't cut their hike short and drive straight up to it. That would save a lot of time.
The road to the caves took them a bit longer than Kai recalled from the previous times. It was as though they weren't certain of the surroundings anymore when it was twilight and the dawn was just starting to take hold of the sky. They maneuvered between the trees and bushes in silence, both wondering what they would do if the ascendant was broken beyond repair, or – for whatever impossible reason – was no longer there at all.
But it was. Not in one piece but a few, though it was there. Once they gathered the parts and settled at a big flat boulder to assess the damage, it looked repairable. While they were putting it together, Kai couldn't quite squelch the concern about our magic sharing that they would have to try once the tool was ready.
"Do you still have any power?" he asked, clicking a small wheel into its place by the slightly trembling light of the torch in Bonnie's hand.
"I can feel it," Bonnie responded, helping him hold things in place with one hand, the other casually turned over, an elbow braced upon her knee as if she could somehow study it in the palm of her hand.
Kai cast a surprised glance at her. Wasn't it supposed to fade over the night? As little as he thought he'd passed to her – it should have. Or perhaps they got the way it worked wrong.
"But it also feels as though it's fading, like it's temporary…" Bonnie elaborated, affording no other way of making him understand her meaning. Perhaps it had something to do with his DNA shift and his transference? Or maybe she was just nervous she wouldn't be able to get either of them home. She'd done this twice before. Both times failed.
"It makes sense," he said, gingerly turning the ascendant over to check if he had assembled it right and it would hold until they tried to use it. "You haven't cast much with it last night, so, I suppose, it lingered till now. We'll try to make do with what you have before trying anything else. Well," he looked at her and extended his hand with the ascendant towards her, smiling, "I hope it's working, though there's hardly a way to check before the damn eclipse starts. Which is…" he glanced up at the lightening skies, "some hours away."
Bonnie reached out to take the ascendant from him, trembling slightly as she did, and returned his smile. She was scared, not of him or what he might do – not in this second – but of being stuck here another sixty-three days or worse. "I guess we wait," she replied, easing around in search of a place to make herself comfortable. She refused to leave the cave, quite content to spend the next few hours listening to Kai entertain her with all the modern comparisons he'd endured. He sounded as if he was settling in decently enough. And for the second time since his arrival she was glad for it as it kept her from thinking about their first altercation here and when her hopelessness started.
They settled on the ground among the rocks and talked. Kai did most the talking, relying his first impression of how he found the world when he got back. It felt nice to have her listen – he found she was the one he actually cared to have as a listener. He never thought about it before, and it struck him as both strange and a sort of amazing.
She glanced up through the crack in the rock overhead to where the sun was starting to slid into position and rose off the flat boulder she'd been using as a chair. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as she once again sliced into her palm. She hated this part. She raised the wounded hand above the device, dropping a few droplets upon the center, and started chanting, smiling as it started to whir and click into position. She stopped in the middle of the beam, her eyes once more finding their way to the sky before falling on Kai. "You coming?" she asked, my fear temporarily shifting into that of excitement. "I'd hate to accidentally leave you behind, when you came all this way to get me."
He stood before her and felt a subtle genuine smile of appreciation take hold of his mouth. He cupped her hand holding the ascendant as she closed her eyes and began to chant.
"Tu patria nobis deprecor," Bonnie murmured with unrestrained determination. She repeated the sentence – and comparable prayer – over and over, until she could feel every word reverberate through her body and spill from her fingertips.
A gust of wind swept around them, the lights got dimmer and dimmer with every second. Kai felt his chest tighten in anxiety, eyeing her features as she frowned in concentration. His skin broke into goosebumps and he became aware of how chilly the wind was. It was unusual. Something cold and wet touched his cheek, landed on his eyelashes. Felt like… snow?
Bonnie opened her eyes, goosebumps breaking out across her flesh as the wind picked up around them. She stared up through the crack, surprised to see it still dark and the sky colorful.
Kai's breath caught in his throat so abruptly it felt like someone punched him. A trembling throe went through him, right through the middle of his body from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, like the axis of the globe. He gasped in pain, staggering two steps back; the ground wobbled beneath him, and he belatedly felt pain in his knees as he fell on them, thinking he would pass out.
Bonnie was hardly able to register the change and the fact that she could no longer see the eclipse when all of a sudden Kai gasped and staggered away from her. She scanned his face, her eyes wide and seeking external damage. "Kai!" she exclaimed in fright as he dropped to his knees, his face a mask of noticeable agony. She closed the distance been them without thinking and quickly dropped the ascendant beside her. "What's wrong?! What's the matter?" she took his face into her hands, forcing him to stay conscious and to focus on her.
There was a tempest inside his head and body; heavy waves clashing against cliffs, raving within his skull. As though from a few universes away, there was a voice calling his name, asking what was wrong. He saw Bonnie's face, blurred out by the pain he was dipped in, and it seemed he was looking right through her, like she were a ghost. For a frightening moment, he thought she was, and he was still lying on the Salvatore boardinghouse's kitchen floor, bleeding out, while Jeremy shook his shoulder demanding something he could no longer deliver.
When the pain subsided, Kai felt the cold hardness of the rock his back was leaning against. Bonnie's face, pale and worried, hovering before him, her palms cupping his head. He sucked in a deeper breath, gingerly, expecting it to explode with more suffering anywhere in his body, but he felt okay. Weak and shaken, but okay. "What the hell happened?" he muttered, casting a glance at the ascendant, then up, at the crack in the ceiling. The rays of sun, thick and direct, were shining down on the spot where they were supposed to teleport from a moment or so ago, like some giant paint brush stroke a lighter shade through the twilight of the caves.
"I don't know," Bonnie responded in a bemused murmur, releasing her gentle hold on his face to pick up the device and stand. Whatever it was, it was over now. "Are you okay? Can you walk?"
She stared at him a minute longer awaiting his response and then quickly moved to stand beneath the crude hole in the rocky ceiling, peering skyward, bathed in sunlight and freaked to see the eclipse over and done with. Now what? Had we teleported? Did the experience change every time? I know something shifted out there, I'd seen with my own two eyes.
Still concentrating on his breathing, Kai watched her stare up into the hole. Sunlight washed over her like some kind of a biblical blessing they show as a special effect in the movies. Only this time it was the evidence of their curse continuing.
As soon as he thought it, his heart picked up and his chest tightened again with a horrid knowing. He didn't have to check to know, but he extended a hand towards the closest rock and did just the same. "Motus," he mouthed, and shivering was all the rock did.
Bonnie peered at the lifeless device in her hand and glanced in way of their exit. "Let's get out of here," she said, snatching the small backpack off the ground, tucking the device inside.
Kai slowly rose to his feet. "We're still here, Bonnie. Still trapped. Something went wrong, and we gotta find out what and how to fix it before the eclipse tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," she uttered to herself in an inaudible whisper, all power seeping from her legs as she slumped onto the rock. She wanted to cry and rage and scream.
He stilled as the flashes of what he'd seen rushed through his mind, and looked at her. "There was something… really weird happening. Was it just me, or you saw it, too? Was it snowing?"
When she looked at him, her eyes were welling up. And he recognized all the things he had gone through himself on the early stages: exhaustion, despair, pain, horror and a starting apathy. He was sure there were more, but deciphering them all was not on the top of his priority list right now.
Bonnie stared at him in silence, hardly seeing him through her blurry vision. She hadn't found it in her to keep talking, to motivate any kind of debate as to what might have happened, and raised a hand to her eyes, annoyed by her wishy-washy emotions. How easy did she expect this to be? It was a prison, for heck sake!
"I saw it. I mean, I saw something—colors mostly," she answered, at long last, once again averting her attention to the hole, half-expecting it to change again as if on cue. It didn't.
Kai scowled in misunderstanding. He couldn't remember seeing any colors because he majorly saw red and black while writhing in pain.
"At least I think I did." She hardened herself and pushed off from the rock, ignoring the increasing pang of disappointment once again encasing itself around her heart. "And my magic is gone," she commented at random, no longer feeling that comforting tingle, a hand outstretched before her to focus on the ground, to shift the sand around a little. "Motus," she said.
Nothing, not even a wisp of wind or warmth to immolate any kind of casting.
"Let's go," she repeated, no longer feeling optimistic or even happy. She turned on her heels, not bothering to discuss things below as she headed for the man-made exit, straining slightly as she hauled herself up and over rocks, navigating things slowly so she wouldn't break her ankle.
She strode ahead of him, and he let her be alone with her disappointment and, he was sure, all the rest of the emotions he remembered all too well were seething there with it in the common cauldron. There was nothing he could do to ease it; not in the woods.