Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries nor am I making any profit from this. Characters, etc. all belong to their respective owners.

A/N: Thanks so much for all the reviews, favorites, etc.! I really appreciate it!

"Good morning," Caroline says cheerfully the next morning, a box of donuts in her hands. Bonnie notices instantly that it's not the typical bubbly, cheerful Caroline. It's the 'maybe, just maybe if we keep smiling we won't notice we're crawling on broken glass' Caroline.

When they sit down at the kitchen table, Caroline opens the box to reveal numerous bear claws. They had always been Bonnie's favorite. She doesn't really want one, but takes one anyway.

"I can't even begin to imagine how hard everything has been on you," Caroline begins.

Bonnie doesn't reply. Instead, she begins to pick apart the doughnut in front of her.

"Uh…me and Elena put together this Christmas/welcome back party for you tomorrow night at the Salvatore boardinghouse. It won't be that big…just our usual group."

It always amazed Bonnie how easily Caroline could push down her problems and everyone else's problems in favor of a good time.

She almost says no to Caroline and her party, but she hesitates. She's definitely not ready to just jump back in and move on, but maybe this could be a start.

Or it could be the perfect disaster, says a little voice in Bonnie's head.

"Okay," Bonnie says hesitantly, despite her inhibitions.

Caroline's nervous, but hopeful expression breaks into a wide smile.

"Great! I will be here tomorrow to do your and makeup. It's going to be so much fun! You'll see."

Bonnie gives her a small smile even though she's not so convinced.

"Definitely this one," Caroline says, pulling out a pretty, lacey forest-green dress that fell just above knees out of Bonnie's closet. Bonnie can't recall if she's ever even worn that dress.

Elena had come over as well and was currently working on turning Bonnie's hair into loose waves. She hasn't bothered to get it cut in a while and it managed to just brush her shoulders now.

Caroline had skillfully applied a smoky look to Bonnie's eyes, making the earthy green of her eyes pop. A neutral color had been applied to her lips.

When it's time to leave and go to the party, Bonnie insists on driving herself so that she could go home early if she wants to.

Caroline and Elena don't find that encouraging in the least, but they let it go. They were relieved that Bonnie even agreed to come to the party in the first place.

Everybody's already there, waiting for her. They take their turns welcoming her back, but look at her like she's a ticking time bomb.

Jeremy remains silent, apparently still not too thrilled with their non-conversation the other morning.

"I never got a real chance to thank you," Stefan says with a small smile. "For saving my life, for bringing Damon back."

She quirks her lips up slightly and gives a small nod.

"Hey," Matt says when he comes up to her. "Sorry I didn't come to see you earlier. I can't even begin to tell you how much I've missed you."

She looks at Matt, the ever earnest All-American boy that was perfectly happy to provide support when needed, but never overstepped his bounds.

God, she's so happy to see him again.

"I've missed you so much," Bonnie tells him, wrapping her arms around him.

It's as if that somehow casts relief on the entire room because everything is noticeably less tense.

She stays mostly to herself, engaging in conversation when people occasionally talk to her.

At one point she sees Elena with a piece of mistletoe, holding it over Damon's head with a coy smile. Surprisingly, Damon doesn't quite take the bait, though. Instead, he presses a small, chaste kiss to her cheek, leaving a noticeably disappointed Elena in his wake.

Bonnie can't even begin to fathom what that one was about given that Damon could barely shut up about Elena when they were trapped in 1994.

"You could use this," Damon says to her, pressing a glass of bourbon into her hand.

She hates bourbon and Damon knows that, but she figures that if nothing else it'll take the edge off. So, she forces herself to take a sip and chokes back a cough.

She thinks about asking Damon what the whole thing with Elena was about. Instead, she asks him, "Why does Alaric look like he's going to stab you any second?"

"It's a very long story."

She gets the impression that it really isn't all that long of a story, but he just doesn't want to tell her for whatever reason. She doesn't care enough to press it, though, so she just shrugs it off.

"Caroline hasn't lost her touch when it comes to parties," Damon says. It's almost painful how he tries to make small conversation.

"Yeah, well, the world could be literally blowing up around us and Caroline would still be trying to dance it off."

"You're morbid tonight…whatever happened to having hope?"

It's like those words suddenly chopped down the dam on every emotion she's repressed over the past years.

"Hope? You want to talk to me about hope?" She spits out, her hand tightening on the glass. Damon's eyes widen as he realizes the big mistake he's made. "What the hell has hope ever gotten me?"

She must have been louder than she thought because the room suddenly goes dead silent and everyone's looking at her.

But she doesn't care.

"My entire family is dead. Minus my vampire mother—which thanks for that by that way, both of you," she snaps, gesturing at both Stefan and Damon, "—who couldn't care less about my existence."

She turns to everyone else. "I spent an entire summer dead and none of you even noticed. And, okay, yeah, I was the one who tried to hide it, but seriously none of you found any of it strange? It's not weird that I would suddenly take off with my mother, the mother who most of the time can't even be bothered to acknowledge my existence? It's not weird that I would respond to your texts, but never pick edup the phone when one of you called? Really?"

"And then," she continues, her voice rising in volume. "When I was brought back to life, I was forced to feel the worst pain imaginable over and over again. Enough to make me wonder if maybe I had been better off dead in the first place. And no one even acknowledged it or asked me if I was okay." Her voice cracks a little bit, but she doesn't stop. "And then I died again so I could bring you all back to life."

"I sent you back here because I didn't know what to do, so I did what I could," Bonnie says, turning back to Damon. "And I was happy that at least one of us got back, but…I was trapped alone with Kai for weeks. Can you even begin to imagine all the different ways he tortured me? And then you dangled this hope of having a chance to come home in front of me and then it got snatched away and I was left alone."

"And now I'm back, but for what?" Bonnie snaps as she turns to Caroline who was already crying. "So that you can continue to throw your stupid parties in an attempt to ignore how much life really sucks?"

She turns on Elena. "So that you can have someone to try and validate your insane co-dependence on anyone with the last name Salvatore?"

Jeremy's next. "So that you can have someone to blame for how broken your life is? Because, yeah, me calling you on the phone to tell you that I'm dying was fucked up. I know that, I do. But you trying to blame me for your bad choices—that's fucked up, too."

"But, really what does it matter in the end?" She says, looking around the room. "I mean, it's just Bonnie, right?"

Alaric and Tyler suddenly look incredibly uncomfortable and she doesn't even want to begin trying to discern what that's all about.

No one has anything to say in response to her entire tirade. Not that it would make a difference.

"So, no, Damon, I don't have any hope. It doesn't make a difference."

As she turns to leave, the tears she's been trying so hard to suppress since last night finally come out.

She ends up in the graveyard.

She hadn't really intentionally gone there…she doesn't think. She had just gotten in her car and drove and this is where she ended up. So, she kicked off her high heels in the car and walked out into the graveyard.

There's a headstone there for her that her friends had put up.

Bonnie Bennett

1992-2012

Beloved Friend

As far as tombstones go, it's nice she supposes. It's made of smooth granite and its new enough that time hasn't worn it out or faded it at all.

"This is a bit morbid," Damon's voice says from behind her.

"Why'd you follow me?" Bonnie asks. She doesn't turn around to look at him, though. Instead, she keeps her eyes trained on the stone in front of her.

"The party got a bit boring after you left," Damon says dryly. "Why'd you come here of all places?" he asks her.

She shrugs before turning to look at him.

"It's not every day you get to stand on your own grave," she finally replies with a small shrug. She turns away from him again, moving to the tombstone next to hers. It was her father's.

"About what I said at the party…" Damon begins.

"Don't bother," Bonnie interrupts. "It doesn't matter. It was all going to come out sooner or later, I guess."

She continues to look at her father's headstone.

Rudy Hopkins

1961-2011

Beloved Father

She almost wants to laugh at the epitaph they had chosen for him. She had cared for her father and she greatly missed him, but he hadn't exactly been devoted or all the interested in being a father to her for a majority of her life. And now it wasn't like he'd ever get the chance to fix it.

She thinks back to the night before when she was looking at all those pictures in her house.

A small sound comes out of her. It's some mixture of a laugh and a choke.

"Bonnie…"

"Don't," she snaps, holding up a hand. She's visibly shaking as she tries to hold it all in. "It's fine. It's fine."

"Not it's not," he takes another step close.

"Will you just stop!" she snaps. The tears are flowing out of her again and she just desperately wishes that they wouldn't. "I can't stand it, okay? Everybody looks at me as if I'm either a ticking time bomb or as if there's something seriously wrong with me because I'm not ready to jump right back into the swing of things."

Damon stops and watches as she desperately fights with herself to get her emotions under control, refusing to let him see her face. He honestly has no idea what he's supposed to do or say.

"Well…what do you want?" He asks her.

Bonnie freezes up a bit. She honestly can't remember the last time someone's asked her that.

What did she want, though?

She could go back to school, 'give it the ole college try', and all that. Or she could even just leave town and try to start over, but where would she go? What would she do?

She turns back to Damon. She knows that she must look like a crazy person because she's standing barefoot in the middle of a cemetery in a party dress, the curls in her hair falling out, and she's sure that her makeup is streaked all over face.

"I don't know what I want," she replies.

And maybe deep down that's what actually scares her the most.

A/N: This chapter came more from wishful thinking that maybe, just maybe, one day Bonnie will finally get an awesome moment to call everyone out on their bullshit.

Thanks for reading and, as always, reviews are very much appreciated!