Note: my 45 minutes oral and double exam from hell went bad, but I'm still very grateful for your support and your prayers so I thought I could show my appreciation with chapter 15. I hope you'll enjoy it.
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She looks very small sitting on one side of the sofa; her eyes down in her mug while she puts a stray of hair behind her ear. She looks so tiny that he thinks that the mouth of the monumental fireplace behind her could just swallow her whole.
Stefan has one knee down on the floor and his right hand brushes her knee gently as a supportive gesture.
"What did I miss?" Damon asks, entering the room.
Bonnie closes her eyes for a few seconds before letting her lashes go up again, but she doesn't look at him.
"Everything's fine," Stefan answers him, but he's clearly reassuring Bonnie, using a very gentle tone, "Her stomach is troubling her a bit, but it will be fine after she rests for awhile."
There's a thin layer of perspiration on her forehead and she looks paler, but she manages to press her lips together into a fake smile before saying, "Yeah, I'm feeling better already."
"Do you want me to accompany you to your room?" Stefan asks in a low tone as not worsen her state, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek.
Damon can only stand there and watch his brother take care of her.
"There's no need to, I can do that by myself," her voice is tense, like she can't resist more than that and yet, she is unable to admit that there's something she needs help with.
So typical of her – Damon thinks – she could be on the verge of death and she would still answer that she could handle it by herself. He doesn't want to compare her to Elena, doesn't want to have any doubt about who's better in his eyes.
"I know," Stefan answers like he didn't notice the change in her body-language, "But it would be very generous of you to make me feel useful every now and then."
She doesn't nod because the motion could make her feel sick again, but she rests her hand on his shoulder and he picks her up, holding her with one arm around her waist.
"Thanks," Stefan says with a smile.
Damon moves to the side to let them pass by, and tries to not look at their backs – failing.
It's doesn't bother him to not be the one helping her; the one she's pressed against. It doesn't bother him if Stefan puts her to bed, brushes away the hair from her forehead, or sits on her bed, waiting for her to feel better; really, it doesn't.
Bonnie is not his prerogative.
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"How's Elena?" Stefan asks, fixing himself a drink while Damon is sprawled on the sofa.
"Oh, little brother, are we jealous?" he asks, fishing for a little satisfaction, "I'll let you know, she had a big smile on her face when I was done with her."
Stefan grins bitterly, sitting opposite his brother.
"I'm not jealous," he says, and Damon thinks that he's probably telling the truth.
Stefan has nothing to do with petty feelings. Even if he believed Elena actually favored Damon, he would never feel jealous; hurt, destroyed maybe, but not jealous.
Sometimes it gets on Damon's nerves; it's like his brother is too superior, his own feelings are too inferior, and he can never get it right because they love just so differently.
Stefan loves with all of his trust; Damon loves with all of his desperation.
Stefan treats love like a treasure that is not for him to keep in the first place, so if he ever looses it he can't blame anyone. Damon thinks that if you try enough, if you do enough, if you hold on enough, it will submit itself sooner or later; it has to.
God knows that he has tried hard enough.
"I know everything's changed," Stefan admits and Damon can't help but listen because this is something important for his brother, "Turning has been a big deal for her, and now she's curious about her actual nature," he pauses to add, "I suppose it's possible that she is conflicted about new possibilities."
"And with possibilities you mean me?"
"Probably," Stefan answers seriously after a long moment.
Damon cannot answer to that, cannot begin to understand what he'd feel if Elena turned up to his door, asking him to elope or something like that. He fantasized about that sometimes; he had fantasized, or at least he had tried to fantasize about her accepting his love and the dark, thrilling adventure he offered her.
But Elena, more than anything, loved of him what she could turn into Stefan, and so in his fantasy, his character was castrated or she was completely out of hers and the pieces never really fit. Now that she is a vampire, now that she has as much darkness inside as he has in his past, maybe she can really choose him.
He likes to think that.
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He wants to stay there sprawled on the sofa, enjoying his drink, staring lazily at the amber liquid trapped by the walls of his crystal glass. He wants to stay there, relish into the memory of Elena's eyes looking into his, taste the crumbles she's so good at letting fall from the table and into the mouth of her loyal dog. Rejoice in Stefan's doubts – even if Damon swearing that they are true still won't make them possible, because he knows better.
He wants to do all those things and not wonder if Bonnie is sleeping; but the mind works in its own way.
Damon is there, recalling about the girl he loves – about Elena – and suddenly, a voice inside his head asks why Bonnie didn't look at him when he came back. He is wondering if there's a chance that Stefan is falling behind in Elena's heart – and a whisper of bitter curiosity asks him if Bonnie loved the feeling of his brother's body pressed against her and if she would rather it was his brother taking care of her.
And, for him, acting was never the step that came after thinking.
This is why he goes upstairs, wearing a sarcastic smile and his best poker face; he'll have fun with her nerves, the words are already playing on his tongue: 'Did my little brother kiss it better?' Or maybe, 'Did you two enjoy playing doctor?'
It's not like he cares, of course, but he'd like for her to recognize the fact that he tried to help. He'd like for her to stop wearing that hard expression almost all of the time.
He wants to give her a piece of his mind, when he finds her on the floor, on the doorstep to the guest bathroom. Her whole body is shivering violently, her eyelids batting uncontrollably. From the sound she makes he realizes she's choking on something.
"Bonnie!" he says, slipping one hand under her head to raise her towards him, kneeling and bending over her, "Can you hear me?"
There's a violent breath in, in this new position and her eyelids slow down their batting.
"Y-yes," her voice is broken, but he can hear the fierceness in it.
He pulls down the neck of her sweater to see the thick blackness of the veins throbbing with the lack of dark magic in her system. There's a hiss coming from her throat, like her lungs are overwhelmed and she's choking again.
Damon pulls her up, holding her around her waist. She holds on to him with her hands on his shoulders and tries to bow her head to the side, desperate for air.
Her head is weak and it swings a bit on her neck. Her legs don't steady her and Damon doesn't dare to leave her. Her head is nothing more than a dead weight, and her eyes roll back into her head showing white.
"It's the withdrawal again," he says trying to reassure her, "it will pass soon," he says before feeling the throbbing of her stomach against his lap.
"Fuck," he mutters while she spasms into his arms. There's something choking her from the inside and if it doesn't come out right now she'll suffocate.
"You need to throw up!" he says, dragging her into the bathroom and bending her over the toilet. One hand presses against her stomach while holding her up, and the other brushes back the hair from her face while he orders, "No fuss. Let it out!"
On the cutting pressure of his hand her body jerks from the pain and her eyes wet but she doesn't cry. Her mouth waters and he angles his wrist to focalize the pressure into one point. She breathes hard and her hands reach out to hold on something but the spasms prevent her from finding anything.
"Com'on," he says, "Com'on, do it."
Her mouth waters, and her pained cries are suffocated by something that invades her throat as well as her mouth. Her spine bends violently while a black, dense substance falls into the ceramic.
It takes almost two whole minutes for her spasm to calm down and her body to go limp. Damon sees the substance, as dark and dense as pitch, moving against the ceramic, forming trickles that stretch out fast to try and enter a new vessel, and so he holds Bonnie up, pressing her back against his chest, letting her head rest against his shoulders while he watches in amazement the sinister show.
She pants from the effort and the throbbing inside her body is much lighter. The substance in the toilet eventually starts to move slower until it becomes harder; Damon flushes the toilet and watches it disappear before dragging Bonnie to the washbasin to clean her mouth with water.
He uses his own hands to bring the clean liquid to her lips and she spits it out immediately, shaking her head and trying to push him away.
"What?" he asks confused, still not letting her go completely, "Are you feeling sick again?"
Her breath becomes harsher and she bows her head to not look him in the eyes.
"I did-" a cry chops off her words, "I did that. He was- I did, oh God, h-how could I?"
Black magic is not clouding her mind anymore and everything is getting clearer now. Everything. She sees Klaus' rotten body and Bruce and everything else; it's like a cubist painting suddenly making sense in her eyes.
Damon is starting to put the pieces back together too, but he decides that he is not interested in it. Not anymore.
"You did nothing," he says in a tone that is almost jovial, but she is not listening.
"I did- that boy, you don't know-"
He cuts her off before she can actually admit anything.
"Yeah, I'm gonna cry over him another time," he says bored, "You need to rest right now," but all she does is keep her face down and shake her head, holding herself up against the washbasin.
"I can't," she cries out. She'd rather have him listing all of her faults then have him trying to diminish something so shameful.
Bonnie feels so dirty, so hypocritical. No one will ever forgive her; she knows she cannot forgive herself. Every certainty is lost.
Grams must be so ashamed of her.
She's always been the one repeating to Damon that he was a killer, a monster. He was not to be trusted. She always syndicated his choices, his every move; she accused him to be irresponsible, selfish and cruel. Oh, look who's talking, a voice inside her head tells her. At least he never hid the dirt under the carpet.
"They won't forgive me, how could they?" she whispers to herself.
"This is not the moment for a conscience crisis," he reminds her with no result.
"I even lectured you-"
"That's okay," he cuts her words, "It's not like I was really listening," he assures her, trying to calm her down, "Or like I didn't deserve it all," he shrugs, still not letting her get away from him, "Now let's go to bed, okay?"
He wants to joke about what he can do to her to make her forget, but it doesn't seem like a good moment for that and then she talks again.
"I can't-" she repeats, "I-I'm a… a monster," her voice is disgusted and his patience is over. That's it.
He holds up her face, holding her chin between his thumb and his index finger, forcing her green eyes to look into his, icy with rage, "You say that again and - I swear to God - I'm gonna raze this miserable town to the ground," he hisses, "Then you'll really have something to feel guilty about."