Bonnie was exhausted as she emerged from the rocky tunnel, her eyes unconsciously scanning the surrounding forest for other life as she made her way back to the boarding house. What if Kai was wrong? What if during the interchangeable weather change they made it back home?

She practically leapt through the front door of the boarding house, her heart sinking as she took in the recognizable décor she'd gotten to know over the last couple of months. She shrugged the backpack off her shoulders angrily, barely resisting the urge to throw it across the living room or to break the fifty-year-old vase to her left. She gasped softly as strong hands snapped her away from her rising anger and back into reality. She hadn't even heard Kai walk in behind me.

Kai caught up with her in the living room and turned her to him by the shoulder. He didn't like the way she started at his touch, but given what she knew about him he wasn't surprised. He held her by the shoulders as she faced him, and didn't let go even when apprehension was all there to read in her look. "I know how you feel right now – believe me, I had too many tries on my hands to make these feelings my constant companions."

Bonnie stared at her former enemy turned temporary accomplice, craving to lash out, to make him pay for leaving her here to begin with and for getting her hopes up a third time. This was his fault – this was Damon's fault!

"But you right now have more than I've ever had before you and Damon got here: you have hope that is actually solid. I've been out, and I'm back – against all odds – and that means we'll get out of here."

How can he know that for sure? Bonnie thought indignantly. He'd been stuck here for eighteen years and they were both powerless—well, at least she was, his magic happened to be temporary. Which made her wonder how she could fathom relying on it? Tears sprung to her eyes, eradicating any and all of the irrational hatred that seemed to encompass her from head to toe on the walk back. She needed to stop doing this.

"Whatever happened today has an explanation," Kai insisted. "It has to have one. I'm willing to place the first bet on how little magic you had in you. We'll make sure you're loaded full tomorrow and try again. We'll make it. Do you understand me? We WILL make it out." He let go of her shoulders slowly, holding her gaze, and tried a small smile. "At the very least, we have two brains to think it over and come up with as many solutions as we can 'cause one of them will certainly be the right one. Okay?"

Bonnie nodded and gradually relaxed in light of his inspiring pep talk. "Okay," she murmured in uncharacteristic compliance. She dropped the bag to the floor, backing away from the ascendant to make her way to the bar. She needed a stiff drink. No doubt, he did, too. She remained quiet while she poured them drinks, thinking it over, trying to ascertain and remember what they could use to their advantage.

Kai watched her trundle to the table with decanters, put two glasses in front of her and pour the liquor into them. She looked like a girl in a trance. It wore him out just observing her perform this task. She carried the tumblers over to him, handed him one, and settled on an arm of the couch.

"What if we were to find a way to permanently anchor you to this prisoner world?" she asked.

Horror closed its icy hand on Kai's heart – so sudden it was like the very cells of his body reacted before the sense of what she was suggesting reached his mind. He froze with the damn glass in hand like some kind of a fool struck by Medusa's gaze as she busted him stealing one of her treasures, staring at Bonnie, wondering if she was coherent enough.

"To latch this place onto your current DNA?" Bonnie continued. "You'd be up to scratch again, right? Power-wise, I mean. Perhaps we could do this the conventional way. Chanting, ingredients…"

A quiet, nervous laugh of disbelief escaped him, and he took out a half of his shot in one gulp, then dropped on the opposite couch. In spite of how dreadful the idea sounded, he tried to mull it. "I don't think my change is reversible, no matter the methods. But even if it were – what exactly would we achieve with it? You have no magic of your own, and if you reverse me – you got nothing left to cast the spell. And then this splendor," he made a roundabout gesture with my free hand, "becomes our tomb forever with all hope buried and rotten. Forgive my dullness, but I fail to see the point."

"I'm not looking to reverse you. That wouldn't do either of us any good," she said, hoping to make him understand where she was coming from. "We need your magic to get out of here." She walked over to the fireplace and picked a candleholder off the mantel. "As you demonstrated yesterday, you have magic, it's just not in this plane—it's stuck between both worlds." She set the candle down beside him on the small table. "Now, if we could find a way to bring you and your new qualities all the way over, wouldn't that stabilize the power you already have within you and make it useable where we actually need it?"

"It's not stuck between the worlds, Bonnie. It's all in here, in me, I feel it. This world is blocking my use of it. There's a difference. And I have not a slightest idea how to rewire a whole fucking prison world because I have no idea how it's been built, to begin with. My coven crafted it in alliance with other powerful witches, including your grandmother who provided her blood and, I'm sure, a lot of magic support. So, unless you can find any diaries of hers where she describes in detail how a world like this can be created, we can't do shit about how it treats my renewed status."

Bonnie grimaced and focused her attention on the painting hanging on the wall across from her, trying to tend to another option and to keep from throwing something. She was quick to anger lately. She even considered what he said about her grandmother and her possible journals. Maybe she documented what they might need to correct things? Or another note on how to escape this place. What Bonnie knew of magic, if there was a means to create, there was a lot a means to destroy in case something didn't go according to plan. At least most the time.

Kai finished his drink and put the tumbler beside the candleholder. "What we CAN do is try to master the power transfer. It's a little past two, we've got time to practice. Maybe we won't blow it tomorrow, then."

"Alright," she said, ignoring her drink and the weariness worming their way into her psyche. "Where do you want me?"

He rubbed his palms against his thighs absentmindedly, musing on how to go with it, then got up and held his hands to her. "Okay, let's start with simple ways."

When she stood before him and took his hands, Kai closed his eyes, concentrating within himself first, feeling the power circulating like a huge shark trapped in a tank. Then he added his awareness of Bonnie to it, he sensed her with him, her hands in his, and the warmth they shared. It almost started off the siphon power of his, and he had to gently stop himself without losing the focus. When he felt ready, he took a deep breath, released it in a long exhale, and prepared to chant.

"Essentia magus mea delego…" There was a faint pricking in his palms; they got warmer, and Kai had to restrain the pesky power again before repeating the chant. He lowered his voice gradually as he exercised the spell for another five minutes. Nothing new came up: no rush of magic, nothing he felt that could indicate his bidding being done. Finally, he broke it off and asked Bonnie, just in case, "Feel anything?"

"Your hands are a bit clammy," she indicated, offering him a feeble smile. "That's about it." To be safe, however, she turned to regard the lamp poised upon the table next to the couch. "Motus," she said half-heartedly and then extended a hand, repeating the word in hopes of sending it careening into the nearby wall or floor.

Nothing happened.

Kai swallowed hard, staring between the lamp and the girl, trying to get his thoughts together. That was bad. Worse than he was ready for. And why in nine hells? It did work before.

She turned back to him. "What's option two?"

He felt a hot flare of annoyance at how calm she appeared. If there was any time for panic, that looked good enough. Not that it would help, but he was tempted. "Okay," he muttered, considering his options, then gave Bonnie a sharp look. "Blood sharing might help. We need a knife. Think you can remember where you buried them? Because this time I'm surely in no mood for spoons."

"I don't need to think, I know where they are. Wait here. I won't be a sec."

Bonnie walked out, fumbled somewhere in the kitchen while Kai couldn't quite stand on one spot and paced around to get calmer. He needed to focus and the fear – horror of being stuck in the very place he only had managed to escape not too long ago – kept sinking its razor teeth in him, ripping and gnawing.

Bonnie jogged toward the kitchen, forgoing the cutlery outside the window and retrieved the butcher's knife she'd hidden in a bucket beneath the kitchen sink the day before. She returned to the parlor, strolling toward him this time, brandishing the knife to showcase she'd found it. she changed hands upon her approach and raised the knife to her right palm, slicing into it with fluidity, gritting her teeth as she did. "Doing that never gets any easier," she commented, hesitating, if only for a second before extending the knife toward him, handle first as her parents taught her.

Scared of failure and almost smelling it coming, Kai sliced the blade across his left palm, then tossed it on the couch.

"Back to holding my hand?" Bonnie asked, unfurling her bloodied fingers.

He sucked a deep breath and took them. Closed his eyes, concentrated through stinging and fright, uttered the spell in a low voice. Then repeated it. And again, clinging to the words and sounds and the pain and warmth in his palms.

Bonnie closed her eyes, focusing on taking the power from him, of trying to push her energy in a certain direction and feeling utterly useless.

Once Kai got deeper into the chanting, there was something he felt was happening, as though it was a hair away.

Not enough… not enough.

He wasn't sure what it meant, but the persistence of the thought broke the concentration, and he felt being pulled out of it. When he took his hands away from hers, he knew something did happen. And that thought – not enough – made sense. Kai was suddenly sure it was a mere trifle of power if any that slipped through their connection. "It's like there's a tube going from me to you and it's too fucking narrow," he shared. "There's gotta be a way to widen it…" He was staring at his bleeding palm, the crimson trickle dropping off the edge of it to the red rug on the floor; it stung and throbbed with heat of a wounded flesh. There was something he was so close to grasping it almost hurt his mind. He pushed, subtly, not to blow the clue away…

Then he raised his eyes to Bonnie inquiringly. "How are you with healing spells? Mending cut wounds with magic? Ever done that before?"

She opened her mouth to tell him she was okay, that it was one of the few things she'd taught herself on account to all the bullshit she had to deal with in the beginning.

Not giving her much time to respond to that, Kai shook his head briefly and nodded toward the couch where the knife lay. "Normal way doesn't seem to work well enough, so we have to recreate the first time." A slight tremor went through his belly at what he was going to suggest, but he was desperate enough to ignore the alarm bells of self-preservation. "You'll have to stab me."

"What?" she parroted dumbly, scowling at the mere thought of his insinuation. "No," she took an involuntary step back. Contrary to belief, she wasn't the blood lusting type. It was one thing killing Kai because she believed him a family-murdering psycho, but it was quite another stabbing him for the sake of doing so. She unfurled her hand, sliding it behind my back to still the tremor that raced through her. "How can you be sure that would even work? And what if it doesn't work and you simply die again? This place is unstable! What if you don't come back?"

He had no answers for her, but the doubts concerning venturing such were fading away quicker than he could have expected a few minutes ago. He stared at her acutely. "Do you wanna stay here forever? With me? Or you're willing to fight for your freedom? Take the damn knife before I change my mind because this crazy idea is all I got."

Bonnie had only spent half a night in Kai's company and some of a day but if she was being truly honest with herself, he wasn't half as bad in the conversational department. It was his sociopathic tendencies in the beginning—when they first met—that had been the thing to put her off. She couldn't trust him then – not that she did now, not completely. She hardly knew him.

As she kept eyeing him like he were a lunatic, Kai softened his tone a bit. "Stab me somewhere I might survive if it'll make you feel better, but we have to try it. Unless you have a magic wand up your sleeve."

As much as Bonnie wanted to go home, to get out of this place, she made no move to take the knife.

"And what will that accomplish exactly?" she asked, unable to see the pattern he was seeking. "Maybe we should try the less manic approach. There must be another… safer and less body damaging option we can try." She took another determined step back and then put distance between us as she headed for my drink, moving her hand from behind her back to pick up her glass. She took a large sip, peering at him over the rim of the glass, waiting for a logical and non-manic explanation while simultaneously grappling for a solution herself.

Kai rolled his eyes and held his hand out to her, showcasing the cut. "This was our less-damaging option. It could have worked – it almost, almost did – but it wasn't enough. And when I came here yesterday, dying, it worked. Do the math. It's the only logical thing to assume right now when other variants I could think of have failed us."

"There is nothing logical about this," Bonnie mumbled into the liquid she was swiftly downing, shaking her head. They'd spent all of ten minutes on working on a solution and the best they could come up with was internal bleeding? She didn't like it. She wouldn't do it. She refused.

Kai turned and picked up the knife. The familiar physical anxiety rushed through his body as every time he took his life before. Seemed like an eternity ago, but right at this moment, it was all too fresh in his memory once again. Torturously fresh. Kai weighed the knife in his hand pensively and looked at Bonnie. "My ability to consume other witches' powers is not a sharing one. I've never learned to give it back, and didn't think I was able to at all. And now that it doesn't work in the slightest when I'm in my strength, I presume it only worked yesterday because I was weakened enough to let it happen."

"Or maybe—" she chipped in as she set her empty glass back down on the table, the words hardly heard as he continued to explain what he thought was the issue.

"My body won't give it up unless we make it. Understand now? And no, I don't know for sure, and there's only one way to find out."

He swallowed and stabbed himself in the side. Pain exploded like a poisonous star in his abdomen, drawing a gasp and a grunt as he yanked the blade out and dropped it on the floor.

"There is—" she cut in once more, her eyes widening as he suddenly stabbed himself. "Are you crazy?!" she gritted out in panic as the knife landed with a soft thud on the rug. She crossed the space once more, wanting to simultaneously punch him in the nose and apply pressure to the wound.

"Take my hands," he uttered, fighting to reclaim the focus for the task. His left side drowned in wet warmth, blood soaking the shirt.

Bonnie hesitated for a second, deciding not to waste his sacrifice, her head reeling to try and remember the healing spells she'd taught herself sometime before. "This is by far your most ridiculous plan," she added for extra measure, gripping his slippery fingers, her eyes closing for the chant.

As soon as Bonnie obeyed, he closed his eyes, grasping at the ache to ground himself in it instead of holding on to the power he had to give up. He chanted more in a whisper, instinctively saving strength.

It wasn't long before the concentrated warmth flooded Bonnie's body and introduced her to the familiarity of a magically encouraged high.

Kai no longer knew how many times he had to repeat the spell before the familiar tingling sensation touched his palms and warmed them up. It was happening, he realized distractedly, but it was still a slow process. His system was indeed struggling to give away its own. Kai tensed his abdominal muscles, intensifying the pain, and felt a faint surge in the transfer. His head was starting to swim the more he dipped into the meditation, maintaining the enforced flow. It seemed his blood ran out quicker the more magic seeped out of him into Bonnie's palms. Soon enough time became irrelevant, and pain softened as if someone pressed a cool compress to the wound for relief. He didn't realize he was going down when the rest of his consciousness snuck out.

Bonnie opened her eyes as his hands became slack and his body swayed precariously away from her. His face looked ashen and scrunched with pain. She jerked her hands from his, grabbing the front of his shirt and his shoulder and forced him down onto the couch before he could pass out on her. She ripped the bottom of his shirt to clear her bloodied workspace, quickly removing her own in order to press the cotton material to his wound.

"Obsecro te reddere spiritus sui," she repeated over and over as she concentrated on slowing down the rapid blood flow, drawing his pain into herself as she'd done for Elena all those years ago. She ignored the nauseating sensation as it shot through her and marveled as his side skinned over, doing away with the evidence that he had carelessly taken a knife to his abdomen or was close to being anemic. Unfortunately, it did nothing for his consciousness. Bonnie expelled a sigh as she sat back on her haunches, studying her hands for a minute, hoping her attempt at rescuing him didn't diminish the sacrifice he'd made.

She pushed off the carpeted floor, heading for the downstairs bathroom to rinse her hands, get him a glass of orange juice to help get his glucose back up and tend to the bout of internal achiness she knew would take a bit of time to subside.