His steps are light but the old wood stairs slightly creak, giving away his presence. There's hardly any light inside the building, and he sees the flame of a candle burning in a corner of the basement.
"Bennetts?" he calls their last name looking around to catch both silhouettes approaching him, "I know that the waiting amplifies the pleasure, but let's not overdo it, shall we?". Being inside an abandoned house with two women would usually be fun, he thinks, what a shame he just turned monogamous.
"What do you want?" Abby asks taking one step in his direction and revealing herself.
Damon fakes a smile, "So nice of you to come," he says looking at both the women, "Did you have a nice trip?"
Lucy grins sarcastically, with the confident attitude gained from her power "Salvatore," she just addresses him with a hint of curiosity.
"The less I hear from you the better I am, so let's cut the crap, shall we?" Abby says, crossing her arms under her breast, "What it is that my daughter left unfinished?"
She can't even look at him as she refers to Bonnie and he grins at her clear guilt. That's good, he thinks, she should live all of her eternity crushed by remorse.
"You mean, aside from her own life?" he asks, making her turn. Her sharp eyes try to pin him down but Abby doesn't have that kind of power over Damon.
"You followed me all over the country and asked me to come back with Lucy for a reason, you better tell me what it is before I remember what you did to me and decide that I have no intention to help you and your friends."
"You came here for Bonnie," he simply says.
"Yes, I know I did. She would want me to help Elena and Caroline and that's why we're here!" she spits, pointing her index towards the ground like she's putting a period at the end of a line.
"No," he says slowly, almost spelling it out, "I meant, you're here to bring Bonnie back."
She looks incredulous; her mouth almost hangs open as she openly stares at him.
"That's not what you told me," she says looking at Damon and then at Lucy, and back again
"I lied. Shame on me."
"You're out of your mind," it's all the youngest Bennett says.
"That's a common thought," he replies with a condescending smile, shrugging.
"I can't do that," the witch replies.
"I'm sure you underestimate yourself. I mean, if you're half as good as your cousin then you can do this," he says, eyes shining, "And you will."
Abby shakes her head, looking at him.
"If she died for a magical cause the power of the witches would have had a chance to save her, but she died for a natural cause and I can't change that. Even if I did, she could do it again," she says, clearly talking about Bonnie's imaginary problems with bulimia, "She was just a teen-age girl and she wasn't strong enough for this kind of life. I don't want to disturb her peace now that she has found it."
"What you don't want to do is look in the eyes of the daughter you abandoned and think 'this is all my fault', because you're the one who's not strong enough," his voice is so cold and stark that it could cut her in half.
"How can you-"
"But on a more pleasant note, Bonnie did die for a magical cause. She had become a black magic addict and that stuff weakened her heart so much that... well, you know the drill, I suppose," he says waving his hand in the air, like he's talking about some trivial thing.
"Even so the witches' powers would have balanced the effects on her body," she says, reasoning aloud, "As a witch Bonnie's body was equipped to endure power and it would have made her able to survive it. Even if it wouldn't keep her heart pure, it would have at least saved her life."
Damon face is a blank mask.
"I found a way to disable her powers."
"You what?" she explodes "For how long?"
"A bit more than two months," he says watching her pass her hands through her hair.
"You killed my daughter," she whispers, with eyes wide open on a point on the dusty wall.
"Funny that you remember her to be your daughter only now," he says, sarcasm dripping from every word, "You didn't even know her!" He accuses her, "Do you know how she used to take her coffee? Do you know her worse fear or what it was that kept her awake at night? Now that she's gone is there any fucking difference in your goddamn life?" he's beyond angry at this point, choking on longing and guilt, "Because there is in mine and I'm not going to stay put as you paint yourself as the pitiful mommy!" he says, gritting his teeth "Black magic abused her. It was making her become someone else and I couldn't let it happen. So if you want to blame me, then suit yourself, but I'm bringing her back and you're going to do your part for once in your miserable life. I swear."
His breath is hard and heavy as he keeps his rage at bay. Abby stands looking proud and stony but he knows she dwelling with her remorse and he doesn't want to ruin the blissful moment for her. They just stare at each other, while Lucy stays still, like a movement could make it all fall down, and that's when Stefan clears his throat to signal his presence.
Damon and Abby turn to him, to see him standing at the feet of the stairs with a body bag in his arms.
"We're here," he says, slowly walking ahead and placing Bonnie's body in the middle of the room. Rigor mortis has long disappeared and her muscle are decomposing, making her body lighter and a lot more fragile, this is why even if it's an easy task for him to carry her, Stefan is still very careful and delicate. He can remember her face now hidden by the cadaver pouch and he has the strange urge to caress her deteriorated cheek and tell her that he's sorry and promise that everything will be alright, even if he has no way to know that.
He gave in to his brother way too easily, he knows, but Damon is alive and this means something to him, while Bonnie is not there anymore and whatever they do now it can't hurt her.
"My baby..." Abby murmurs, kneeling by her side and reaching to the zipper to push it down, but Stefan's hand on hers stops her. He looks at her and shakes his head. It takes Abby a few seconds to let it go.
She stands and turns her back on them sharing a look with Lucy; the girl takes her grimoire inside an old bag left in a corner of the room and they both remain with their back turned. Both Salvatore can guess Abby's hand brushing her cheek to take away a tear but they don't say a word.
"We can give it a try," Lucy says.
"See? This is the right attitude!" Damon piques in, and she turns her head over her shoulder to give him a killing look.
"But I don't know what it can come out of it."
"What do you mean?" Stefan asks.
"That she's been tainted by black magic and if it's still in her body it could influence my magic. This not counting that the witches might have other plans for her. They could keep her with them or who knows what else. I don't have the power to bring her back myself. No one has it. We better hope they're feeling magnanimous."
"What if there's still some black magic in her body?"
"We can do something about the functions of her body, but I don't know anything about her soul. I'm calling on a power that's not my own, so it has a will I cannot bend to my wishes."
"You mean we could just shoot a remake of Pet Sematary?" Damon asks, trying to resort to humor to not let his hopes crumble "She could come back as some kind of zombie?"
"That's exactly what we're saying," Abby says, "She could become someone else. Will you let that happen to her?" she asks, using his own words against him, "Do you really want to risk this? Rob every one of the beautiful memory of her just because you need a magical handyman?"
"That's not why I need her back," he says. Abby's lashes tremble and she looks into his eyes and wonders how she could miss it. How she could be so blind to his feelings - well, she never thought he really had any in the first place, she supposes. How strange that her own daughter could somehow tame the heart of the undisciplined guardian of their bloodline.
Lucy looks at him fashinated, finding a little pride at thinking that a Bennett did this to him; the wildest Salvatore, the impenitent playboy, the one who succeeded in freeing himself from Katherine's influence after a few lifetimes under her malice. She can even detect a light taste of envy in her mouth, watching this handsome creature, so full of devotion, ready to challenge black magic and move war against a host of witches just to bring back her little cousin.
"Will you be able to do what you have to do in case what we bring back is not Bonnie?" Abby asks grave, and Stefan turns his eyes of his brother waiting for his answer.
"If it comes to that, I will make the right choice," he promises.
Concentrating to call all that power takes time and Abby stays sitting on the ground, with crossed legs, mirroring Lucy's position; the open book lays on the ground next the body bag; the youngest Bennett chants for at least half an hour and Abby's eyes do not move from her face. Damon and Stefan can't do much but stare.
Damon has been waiting, and not sleeping, from the moment Bonnie died. Abby will do what she has to, he think, and she will bring Bonnie back and they will take from the point where they left. He will remember this month and half as an unbearably long day in which she's been sleeping. To live the rest of her life with him will make her consume a lot of energy, after all. She needed her rest, didn't she?
He will have to rest too, eventually. Once he has had enough of her to last for a few years he will fall asleep into a bed worn by their constant making love, with Bonnie in his arms, and he will wake up to find her still there. Yes, that's a great plan. He can do that. He could manage to waste a few hours sleeping if he can wake up to her smile. With all the things he will do to her. He will make sure she has many, many reason to smile.
Sleeping when Bonnie was not there meant to accept that another day had passed without her. It meant to let her go as Damon fell into oblivion, because vampires don't dream and so he had no chance to find her into his sleep either.
It had been one long, cold, sleepless night since she went away and now she's coming back.
He cannot consider the option of her coming back into some other form then her stubborn, passionate, generous self. He cannot think of having to kill her himself. He wants to bask into this thing that's so similar to joy, and not think about being separated from her again.
Lucy is half into her chanting when he realizes what's happening and he holds his breath even if he has no need to breathe in the first place. The ground shakes as her voice becomes harder and threatens to break. Power bends her backwards, the plastic of the body bag enlarges like a balloon filled with air and then loses its volume like what's inside got crushed to the ground.
"What's happening?" Damon asks, but his voice comes out distort, as Stefan's voice calling out to him.
Damon sees Abby falling on her back and the ground swallow her, but he's not certain because everything is blurry in front of him and he can taste bourbon on his wet lips and smell fear and guilt over a sweet scent. There's a ticking of a clock in the background, like the one they have in the reception room of the boarding house.
He moves to keep his ground as everything blurs and crumbles and he walks toward the only clear sound he can hear; an erratic heartbeat. His hands find a door and go down to find the knob and turn it. When he opens the door he finds himself staring into a pair reddened green eyes.
Bonnie has dark shadows under her eyes and she is slightly trembling. He can't say a word as he smell her honey foam bath, and guilt and fear she has no reason to feel. He's so madly happy to see her alive, standing in front of him on the front door of the boarding house that he can feel his heart bursting in his chest, like it's swelled so much that his body wasn't able to contain it anymore.
He smiles, taking a step, ready to hold her and bury his face in the hollow of her neck and promise her anything she will ask him but she doesn't give him time to do any of that before making one blood vessel explode, and then another, and another.
He cries out in surprise and pain but she just stands there, keeping her mind on the task of making him suffer. After almost two months without her she will have to come up with something better than this.
"Bonnie!" he screams again and this time she snaps out of her state.
Damon falls on his knees, looking up at her, thinking that whatever Abby did it backfired and Bonnie came back just to torture him with her beauty and the ghost of what she once was, to force him to kill her, again. But then she talks, out of breath, and a cold realization creeps into his bones.
"I have every right to hate you and leave your sorry ass to die in the most painful way a human mind can conceive" she says, and unlike the first time around he can't even bring himself to try and utter a word, "You've been killing and torturing people for the most part of your miserable life and you deserve everything that's coming to you!"
He knows this speech by heart. The first days after that night he kept reliving that moment over and over until he could even count the breaths she took between a word and another. And now he watches in fascination her anger, her beauty, and her life.
"I can hate you!" she screams, and he's helpless against her frustration.
"Everything I had, you took it away from me!" she says, trembling from head to toe "The moment you came to Mystic Falls my life became a living hell!" she accused, even if the rational part of her knew it wasn't entirely true "You killed the only family member I had that recognized I was alive and cared about me! You made a vampire out of my mother! She was nothing more than collateral damage and you expected me to accept it because you decided so."
He doesn't know what to do so he says his line like a consumed actor.
"It was for-"
"Elena, I know!" she screams into his face "I know! And every day I have to choose between her life and someone else's. Between her life and mine, and I hate to care so little about mine! I should matter too but I don't. But why did you bring my mom into this? Why? Why did you have to snatch it away from me just when I was so close? I just wanted it for a while. I just- I just-." Damon struggles to keep himself from saying that he does care, that there's nothing that matters more than her, and that he's sorry for pain caused to her. "She was still my mother... there was something left for me after all..." she adds with a weak voice, and he realizes their time it coming to an end, and she's going to leave him again.
Hey stranger, when may I call you my own?
I know I don't know you, but there's somewhere I've seen you before
Whatever your name is, whatever you do
There's nothing between us I'm willing to loose
She shakes her head and then turns to leave the Salvatore's patio, but Damon walks after her, like his mind cannot conceive to lose sight of her now, to stop feeling her presence now that she's back. Even like this, even now that she hates him with all of her passion, even now that he's the only one between them to love at all.
"Bonnie, wait," he calls out to her, barely brushing her elbows with his fingertips, but she ignores him. A few feet from her car her legs go out from under her and she falls into oblivion faster than she does into his arms.
Now I'm drifting out over deep oceans
And the tide won't take me back in
And these desperate nights I'll call you again and again
He looks at her unconscious form in his arms, head lolling. He yearns to kiss her forehead, her cheek, her mouth, but he can't. She hates him and wants nothing to do with him, and he can't force her to feel otherwise. Not now. So he keeps her up against his chest, making sure her head rests against his shoulder, and he walks towards the open door of his mansion. It's so very painful, and yet so good to feel her breath at the base of his neck. Her steady heartbeat against his chest it's the echo of a distant memory, and the sky is about to turn coral above them.
Hey stranger,
when may I call you my own?
#
Note: The song I used in this chapter is "Between us" by Peter Bradley Adams. This said, I am not pleased to let you know that my muse has run away, if you find her please send her back to me.