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: Thank so much to everyone who has been reading, reviewing, etc. I truly appreciate it!
Things get really intense in this chapter, so I just want to reiterate the TRIGGER WARNING I gave at the beginning of this fic: There will be talk of suicide and other sensitive topics, so please, please heed the warning I'm giving you if this is something you do not want to read!
For the first time in a long time, she wakes up in the morning and nobody's knocking on her door.
It's actually a relief.
She lays in bed for most of the morning, staring at the ceiling, her mind a blank. Then, her phone starts ringing. Bonnie sees that it's Elena calling and she almost doesn't answer it, but she does.
"Kai is back in town," Elena says in a clipped voice.
Bonnie can tell that Elena is angry about what happened the night before, but she doesn't care. For the first time in her life, she can't find it in her to give a single damn about what Elena Gilbert thinks. It leaves her with the feeling of a huge weight being lifted off her chest.
"And let me guess: You want me to do something about it?"
"No, we actually have that covered. Jo thinks that she can beat Kai in the merge."
At first, Bonnie's totally confused as to what Elena is talking about, but she quickly remembers all that Elena had filled her in on when she'd first returned.
It's a dumb plan. Anyone with half a brain should have been able to recognize that. If Kai won the merge, then he would have Jo's power and become the new leader of the Gemini Coven. And they'd all be irrevocably screwed.
"So, how long have you been hiding it?"
"You're going to have to be a bit more specific," Bonnie replies.
"How long have you hated me?"
"Wait, what? Is that what you got out of everything I said last night?" Bonnie asks with a frown.
"Yeah, well, you made yourself pretty clear last night," Elena says. "So I'm just wondering how long you've felt that way."
"I don't hate you. I don't hate anyone. I don't have the energy for it." Pause. "Maybe you just need to get over yourself and realize that not everything's about you."
She hears Elena's angry inhale on the other line, but Bonnie stops her from saying anything.
"I've come back after spending months in some prison world and now I'm trying to figure out how to fit back into the real world and I'm always looking over my shoulder, wondering if the sociopath who spent weeks torturing me is coming back and now that he has…you're wondering if I hate you?"
Elena tries to say something again and Bonnie still doesn't give her the chance.
"I loved you. You were always family to me. More than most of my blood relatives were, even. And I gave you everything I had. And now I don't have anything left to give and…" The tears have started flowing freely again. It felt like all she does lately is cry. "How…how can someone I care about so much care so little for me?"
Bonnie doesn't wait for Elena to respond. Instead, she hangs up and throws her phone against the wall, not caring about the screen's glass shattering or the dent that it leaves in her wall. She then buries her head under her bed covers and goes back to hiding out from the world.
No one tells her when the merge is taking place. Not that she's surprised by that. No one tells her anything unless they want something from her.
It's not that hard to figure it out, though. The merge required a celestial event and once Bonnie found the soonest one, that took care of the when. As for the where…well, her magic has long since advanced beyond needing blood to locate someone.
When Bonnie arrives, everyone's already there, including Kai. Apparently the merge has turned into some macabre spectator sport.
Everyone's surprised to see her.
"Bonnie,"
When Bonnie arrives, everyone's already there, including Kai. Apparently the merge has turned into some macabre spectator sport.
Everyone's surprised to see her.
"Bonnie," Kai says with a wide grin as if he didn't stab her and leave her stranded the last time he saw her. "Honestly, I wasn't expecting to ever see you again. I can't say I'm not happy to be wrong, though. You were so much more fun and interesting to play with than the rest of these losers."
Every word he says makes Bonnie's stomach churn and for a moment, she thinks she might actually end up emptying the contents of her stomach then and there. She pushes back the bile that is rising in the back of her throat, though, and squares her shoulders, fixing Kai with a determined look. Her hands are jammed into the pocket of her jacket and she fingers the pocket knife in there.
"Well, I certainly didn't want to miss the opportunity to watch you die," Bonnie says with a grin that almost borders on maniacal.
"See," Kai says, stepping closer to Bonnie. "That's assuming dear Jo here actually survives the merge. And let's be real: She won't."
"The merge isn't happening and you are going to die tonight."
And with that, she makes her move.
She pulls Kai's knife from her pocket and lunges for his neck. The squish it makes is frighteningly satisfying to her and she doesn't even flinch when he blood begins to spurt out, splashing onto her.
Elena screams and she hears someone shouting, "No!", but she doesn't know who.
She pulls the knife out of Kai's neck and sinks it back in. She moves rapidly, stabbing him anywhere and as often as she can.
Part of her almost wants to laugh. For all his boasting, for how truly frightening Kai was, for him to be brought down by a little pocket knife—his own pocket knife…it was fucking hilarious.
Suddenly, someone wraps their arms around her and easily pulls her off Kai's body.
"Let go of me!" Bonnie shrieks, struggling. "Let go!"
"Bonnie, Bonnie!" Damon says in her ear. He wraps his arms around her tighter in an attempt to stop her struggling. "It's over," he tells her. "He's dead."
She stops struggling and Damon loosens his grip. Everyone looks at her in horror. Bonnie takes one last look at Kai's lifeless body before she shrugs Damon's arms off her. Then, she begins to run.
Even when she begins to tire, she forces herself to keep running until she reaches home.
Her thoughts are an incoherent, jumbled mess and she doesn't know what to do with herself.
Kai was dead. He was dead. He couldn't hurt her or anyone else anymore.
She should feel happy, relieved, elated.
Yet, she still felt so hollow.
Kai's death only fixes a small part of the problem.
It doesn't change the fact that her life is a total fucking mess. It doesn't erase the months of solitary confinement, the weeks of torture. It doesn't bring her father or Grams back to life.
She doesn't really think about it when she heads straight for her father's liquor cabinet and begins to rapidly down the bottle of whiskey. She relishes the burning feeling it leaves in her throat and in her belly.
The novelty of it soon wears off, though, and she lets the bottle drop to the floor, ignoring the broken glass.
She sees the pictures in her home and this time it's like they're mocking her. She begins pulling them off the walls. Little chunks of plaster come off with them and the glass frames shatter as they hit the floor. She moves through the house like a hurricane, trying to break anything she could get her hands on.
Then, before she really even thinks about it, she's standing in front of the kitchen sink, a knife pressed against her wrist.
Before, when she had been trapped in 1994, she'd thought about what would happen if she could actually die. Would she find peace? Would it just be oblivion, where she simply didn't exist at all anymore?
She couldn't deny that the idea of oblivion sounded the most appealing right now.
She looks that the shiny metal gleaming in the dark. The cold, hard blade is a sharp contrast to the thin, fragile skin of her wrist.
She thinks back to the book she's been reading, The Bell Jar, and the part where Esther tries to slit her own wrist. She could remember most of the words verbatim in her head:
I thought it would be easy, seeing the redness flower from my wrists…But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.
She gets it.
Oh, God, does she get it.
She could rip into herself, break herself down bit by bit and still not get to the worst, most damaged parts of herself.
"Are you going to do it?" Damon asks her.
"How'd you get in?" she replies, not moving. "You've never been invited in."
"You died twice. It kinda negates the whole invitation thing. You still haven't answered by question," he says, not missing a beat. "Are you going to do it?"
"I don't know," she whispers. She still hasn't moved. "Maybe."
Despite her words, the knife suddenly drops from her hands, clattering loudly in the sink. She clutches the edge of the sink so hard, her fingers turn white.
"I don't want to keep living like this."
"Kai's gone." She can hear him moving closer to her. "He can't hurt you anymore."
"It's not that. It doesn't really fix anything. I don't feel better. What's the point in any of it?"
Damon honestly doesn't know what to tell her. He's done the whole existential crisis thing more times than he could count and the only think he's learned is that there really isn't an answer. Telling her that wouldn't solve anything, though. It would just make things worse.
"Come on," he says, switching the subject. "Let's get you cleaned up. Trust me, the longer you let blood dry on you, the more of a bitch it is to get out."
Okay, so that's not helpful at all, either.
To his surprise, she lets him lead her upstairs into bathroom. He starts the shower and then stands there, unsure.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been grinning and making some cheeky comment about potentially getting to see her naked. Instead, he awkwardly clears his throat and tells her that he'll be standing outside to give her some privacy.
Bonnie watches his retreating back. Once the door is closed, she sits down on the closed lid of the toilet. Eventually, she gets the energy to start pulling off her blood-stained clothes.
When she steps into the shower, she can't even find the energy to stand up. So, instead, she curls herself into a ball on the floor and lets the water rain down on her.
She doesn't know how long she lays there, but it's long enough that the water turns cold and her skin begins to prune.
Bonnie hears the bathroom door open and she assumes that it's Damon checking to make sure that she's actually still alive.
"Bonnie," Caroline says, pulling back the curtain and shutting the water off. "C'mon, you can't stay in there. It's too cold now." The blonde helps her out.
She hands Bonnie her favorite pair of pajamas to change into. She then begins to blow dry Bonnie's hair, meticulously making sure that there were no snags or tangles.
"I said some horrible things to you," Bonnie says softly.
"Well, considering all that horrible things that have ever been said to me, what you said doesn't really rank."
"It still hurt you, though."
"Yeah," Caroline says quietly. "It did."
"And you're still here anyway?" She didn't exactly mean for it to come out as a question, but it did.
"Of course I am," Caroline says, looking down at Bonnie. "You're my best friend and I love you. And I know you're not okay right now and it scares the hell out of me that I don't know how to help you, but, still, I want to."
"All I do is cry anymore," Bonnie says, trying to furiously wipe away the tears.
"Because sometimes we all need a good cry. Or several good cries."
Bonnie begins to sob and Caroline hangs onto her tightly.
He sits in the hallway outside her room, listening to her breathing, to the gentle thump of her heart.
He could have left a long time ago. Caroline would stay the night with Bonnie, so there's really no need to be here.
He hadn't told Caroline what Bonnie had been almost ready to do, but seeing the destruction Bonnie had wrought upon her own house was enough to make Caroline even more concerned.
Back when they had been stuck together in 1994, he'd sometimes check on her at night. He'd never admit it, but a part of him had always been afraid that she'd disappear or that, every single time she had walked away from him, she wouldn't come back and then he would have been truly alone.
Then, when he had been sent back and she was still stuck there, he had been desperate to get her back. And it wasn't just because of guilt like Alaric claimed. Because, yeah, he did feel plenty of guilt, but…she was the only reason he was still alive.
Despite being trapped with seemingly no way out, she had remained optimistic and hopeful. She would argue with him, make fun of him, play board games and video games with him for hours. She would even do silly little things like make fake newscasts when she found an old camcorder.
And to see that insanely optimistic girl feeling so lost and hopeless…it hit something inside of him, something that he can't quite describe.
So he sits there and continues to listen to the sounds of her breathing and to the beat of her heart.
A/N: So, this chapter was by far the most difficult for me to write. However, it is a major turning point in this fic.
As you've probably noticed, I've been getting a lot of inspiration from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. It's an extremely difficult read because of the heavy subject matter, but it's beautiful and tragic and it's one of those books that will haunt you and really make you think.
Thanks so much for reading and, as always, reviews are very much appreciated!