So, all the fic has made me realize is that Bonnie, like Stefan, is a fantastic straightman. If those two ever got scenes together again it would just be a complete dead-pan fiesta. Which I am totally game for.

Thank you for all the reviews, they mean a lot to me. They really do, considering how much I'm probably butchering the show's continuity and lore (but let's be real here, y'all, I can't actually mess it up more than Plec has.)

This chapter is incredibly long and I'll admit, a bit overwrought, but I couldn't quite figure out what to cut out so you'll have to bear with me, I guess.

And finally, a little something extra. I thought up this fanfiction because A) I miss Kol and B) I was listening to Night Riots' 'Contagious' nearly nonstop after the finale because it is my Bonkai anthem but also fits Kol like really well? So I would suggest giving that a listen, but for this chapter, the songs that inspired it the most were "Dreams" by Bastille ft. Gabrielle Aplin and "Family" by Noah Gundersen, which you all will know as the song that played when Elena burned Jeremy's body along with the Gilbert house. They're beautiful songs, so give them a try!

Chapter 3: Listen Carefully to the Sounds of Your Loneliness

"I wonder if you know I'm dreaming about you," Bonnie said, running her hands along the clothed edges of the hangers. Of all the places in the Salvatore boarding house, this walk-in closet was her favorite. It was cozy and dark and she felt safe in here. Wide open spaces freaked Bonnie out.

No, that wasn't it. Empty spaces freaked Bonnie out.

One time Damon had found her actually sleeping in this closet, wrapped tight under a mile of blankets. She expected him to laugh at her, and he did, but the next night he drug a twin frame and mattress into her room and shoved it into the corner closest to her own bed and fell asleep on it without a word. Bonnie slept in her own bed from then on out and it didn't take Damon quite so much alcohol to go to sleep after that. They never spoke about it, never even said 'goodnight' when darkness fell, but he never left and she never asked him to.

There was a chuckle from the room outside. "Wherever I am, I'm flattered but not surprised."

Bonnie smirked, finally chose two variations of the same plaid shirt, and walked out of the closet. She held one up to her chest and then the other. "What do you think?"

"I think Eddie Vedder would be proud," Damon said snarkily, then gestured at the more blue one with his glass of orange juice.

Bonnie chose the other one just to laugh when he rolled his eyes and began buttoning it over her tank top. The last button done, she sighed and went to sit next to Damon on the bed. "I wish this was real. Not the shirt, obviously, the shirt is hideous. When I get back I'm going to find this shirt and burn it to ash. But this. You. I wish it was real."

"When you get back," Damon repeated dully, staring at his glass.

She wondered if his defeated expression was just a manifestation of her own fears. She bumped shoulders with him, trying to cheer him – herself? – up a little. "Do you doubt my witchy badass-ness?"

Damon took a long time to respond, and as she waited with a fading smile for him to reassure her, something began prickling along the back of her neck, up into the branches of nerves in her mind. She had the irrational urge to look over her shoulder, but there was no one in this world but her and Damon.

Well, and Kai.

As if on cue, Damon turned to face her, eyes burning brighter than flames. "Someone's close."

Bonnie sprung upward, one hand flung out and a vatos on her lips. The lamp on the table next to the rose-red couch exploded along with all the panes of glass in the window it was placed under, but Kol, who had been seated there, was already across the room before the first broken bits of glass hit the floor.

"What's this? Vatos first, motus later?" He asked, laughing at her. "Quite the violent little thing you've turned into, witch."

Bonnie dropped her hand and shrank back to the headboard, tucking the covers under her arms and staring at Kol with wide eyes. "How long have you been there?"

"Awhile. You talk in your sleep, by the way. It'd be almost adorable if it wasn't about Damon Salvatore." Kol made a reproving noise, shaking his head at her. "Aren't there rules about that in girl world? First commandment of the Holy Bible of Girly: thou shalt not covet the best friend's man."

"Why?" Bonnie demanded, completely ignoring the last bit of his tangent. If Damon and Kai had taught her anything, it was not to rise to the bait.

Kol shrugged, looking nonplussed. "Because teenage girls are more territorial than hippopotami?"

"No-"

"Well, yes."

"No, Kol, why were you watching me?" Bonnie finally got out.

The light in Kol's eyes disappeared and he fiddled with the clothes she had just noticed were in his arms. "I wanted," he said softly, "to make sure you were real."

His words were like a knife in her chest. An old wound to whose ache she had grown far too accustomed. She never thought she'd have something in common with Kol Mikaelson, but she'd never thought she die twice either. Life was strange, and hers was even stranger.

The room had turned heavy with their silence and Bonnie cleared her throat, casting about for something to say to break it up. "Wait," she said, quirking an eyebrow. "Did you just compare my gender to hippos?"

Kol grinned widely, relief flashing fast in his eyes at her deflection. "No, darling, I said you were worse than a hippo."

Bonnie scoffed and rolled her eyes obligingly. Kol's grin grew unbearably smug and he stepped forward until the tops of his thighs were pressing against the bottom edge of her mattress.

"I brought you clothes," he said, picking each garment up one by one and flinging them up to her. "They belonged to the youngest son – Edgar? Edwin? Er, actually, maybe it was George. – Anyway, he was skinny as a rail so they should be fine."

Bonnie picked up the trousers he had thrown at her. Edgar/Edwin/George had not been a big man but even so, they would have to be tightly belted to fit her frame. "Why do I need to change at all?"

"Because you reek," Kol said matter-of-factedly, still rifling through the clothes hanging on his arm. Bonnie's mouth dropped open, maintaining her offended expression pointedly until he looked up, at which point he sighed dramatically and dropped the clothes. "I don't mean – well, yes, I do mean, you trekked through the mud and god knows what else yesterday – but your clothes are covered in blood, love."

"And it smells bad?" Bonnie asked, caught somewhere between amused and being genuinely offended.

"It smells-" Kol stopped, taking a deep breath in, eyes drifting closed as he did. Bonnie felt herself trying to push even farther back into the headboard as tiny black veins protruded and then receded around his eyelids. Kol was not like his brothers, or even Damon, who screamed danger! through every pore of their beings, but neither was he Caroline or Elena, whose true nature was so good and warm it could be felt through their cold vampiric exterior.

He was not so different from Kai, she realized. Affable and clever when he wanted to be but never kind. Just enough danger to make you curious enough to get close and just enough charm to make you trust him when you got there.

Bonnie had made that mistake once, and gotten a knife to the stomach and nearly half a year of unbreakable loneliness for her folly. She would never be that foolish again.

"It smells potent," Kol said, finally opening his eyes and focusing on her with an intensity that made her spine tingle uncomfortable. "It wouldn't be very nice to tease me, Bonnie."

"Fine," she spat, seizing up the pants and one of the many shirts he had brought in and swinging her legs out from underneath the covers to the side of the bed. "Get out so I can change." Kol looked a little confused at her capitulation for a moment before his customary smirk returned and he gave a sarcastic half-bow before backing out of the room.

Luckily for Bonnie, the pants had a large waist band spanned by two belts with a generous amount of leather to cinch it together. The shirt was heavily starched and scratchy but blessedly clean and she stripped out of her plaid button-up and tank top quickly. There had been a water basin on the table with the lamp that had exploded with it, the water drenching the rose-printed pink rug that match at little too well with the rose-printed white duvet. Bonnie was too proud to go and ask Kol for a new one but not proud enough to not find the cloth that had been draped over the basin where it had been flung by the door and dip it in the water, scrubbing at her arms, chest, neck and face before sliding the white, long-sleeve shirt over her head.

Kol hadn't been wrong; her 1994 clothes were covered in mud and water stains, one whole sleeve drenched in her blood from where she had cut too deep with the knife. She unclipped Kai's pager from one of the belt loops, mourning the loss of the camcorder she had been toting around with her that she had dropped when crossing worlds, then she tossed her dirty clothes into the cold fireplace, muttering an Incendia to set them alight before dragging her boots over and sitting with her back to flames to put them on. First, though, she turned the left one upside down and let the cure fall into her hand.

It weighed practically nothing and looked completely inconspicuous, and it boggled her mind a little to be sitting here with the cure to vampirism, something she and her friends had fought for nearly half a year to obtain, resting in the palm of her hand. She didn't know what she was going to do with, wasn't even sure why she had gone out of her way to get it. Damon, for all that he might secretly be jealous of the seemingly quaint lives humans lived, loved being a vampire, and Caroline had adapted so well to it that Bonnie couldn't imagine her taking it either. Elena had rejected it the first time through, reveling in her new found abilities and immortality, but maybe her opinion had changed.

Maybe she could give it to Stefan, even, let him finally be free of the Ripper curse that plagued him. He'd always been the most human – and the most monstrous – of them all.

Or maybe, Bonnie thought, hunching in on herself, maybe she'd keep it to herself, until the next time she forgot just how monstrous the monsters really were. Until they showed their real faces. Then she'd find Klaus, shove it down his throat, and then stab him in his beating human heart, and listen to them all die with him. She would be selfish and save her friends somehow, and she'd wash the blood off her hands with a smile.

It was a horrible thought, one that almost felt like it didn't belong to her, but it wasn't the first time it had occurred to her, and Bonnie burned with shame and something else. Something strong and red and hot that made her raise her head high and her magic pulse along her skin. Power.

"Little witch?" Kol called, knocking on the door. Bonnie jumped, fist clenching hard around the cure. "I know eighteenth century fashion is a little overwrought, but's just buckles and buttons, darling."

Bonnie relaxed with an annoyed, overly-loud sigh, shoving the cure deep into the ridiculously large pockets of her trousers along with Kai's pager. She could practically hear the smile in Kol's voice when he spoke next.

"But you know, if you need a hand, mine are very capable. Very quick and nimble and deft."

She rolled her eyes and began tugging on her boots, tucking the pants into them, and tying the laces. "I'm coming out," Bonnie called, standing. "Hands to yourself."

Kol gave her a once-over when she emerged. She noticed his shirt was a deep green and his pants perfectly tailored. He even had on a vest, black and grey, which she would have found hilarious if he didn't pull it off quite so well. He looked dashing and she looked-

"You look like you're playing dress-up in daddy's clothes," Kol said dryly.

Bonnie would've replied – hopefully with something witty and biting though nothing was coming to mind – but she had a sudden flash of her four-year-old self being chased around her house by her father, wearing his favorite sweater and giggling as she stumbled over the hem. She remembered that afterwards, after Dad had finally caught her and swung her up into his arms, she had realized how badly she had stretched it out and cried into his shoulder, apologizing over and over. But her father put it on then and there, dabbed her tears with his sleeve, and wore it when he took her out for ice cream and even after that until it startled unraveling at the hem. And they shared a smile every time.

Bonnie lowered her head and bit the inside of her cheek, consciously pulling each breath in and pushing the next out until the burning behind her eyes receded. She would not cry in front of Kol Mikaelson.

"We'll get something to eat in town," Kol said, unaware of her turmoil. "The stocks at the grocers get refilled every day, strangest thing, but I guess they wouldn't want you to get out of eternal torment through something so mundane as starvation."

He led her through the endless maze of halls she had only barely paid attention to last night and down the stairs to the foyer which was predictably destroyed. She almost thought of teasing him for it but held her tongue, remembering the many, many temper tantrums Damon and Kai and even she had thrown over the past year.

Kol picked up a canteen of water he had obviously prepared earlier this morning and the opened the door, stepping aside so she could exit first. The house had a large wrap-around porch she hadn't seen last night that remind her of the large plantation mansions that dotted the outskirts of Mystic Falls, like the Lockwood's, but the pillars and railings were all polished dark stone instead of wide white wood and it was only marginally higher than the ground. When she got off the porch she turned and started walking backwards until she could get a full view of the house, tilting her head.

It reminded her a bit of one of those ancient cathedrals, or the castle in Beauty and the Beast and she marveled at it not sinking into the wet earth. Kol watched her appraise it for several long moments before coming to stand beside her.

He looked at her, then to the manor, then back at her, then at last at the house, cocking his head at the exact same angle she had hers. "It belonged to the Beauchantés. They always were a bit odd. A bit…hm, how to put it? A bit…Addams Family?"

Bonnie nodded to show she understood the reference and he continued. "I do like that show, it's amazing how much I missed trapped in a box for ninety years. Well, it would be amazing if I hadn't already been through it. Twice." His tone was, as always, light and joking but the seething undertone was unmistakable and Bonnie shivered at that kind of anger being so close to her. Kol didn't notice. "They were lovely, regardless of their oddities. Held the grandest masquerades. Bekah would've loved them."

Even Bonnie knew Rebekah was his favorite sibling. "Hard to believe she'd miss out on something like that."

"Oh, she was daggered," Kol said, waving at hand dismissively but voice deceptively tight. "You know, Nik and his moods."

Personally, no, she didn't know; Klaus was a spoiled and spiteful little boy housed inside the most powerful and resilient body in the world that was indulged and enabled at every turn by a brother who should be smarter than that. He didn't have moods, he was just a super-powerful asshole. But saying this out loud to Kol would probably not be helpful – Mikaelson Family loyalty tended to emerge at the most inconvenient of times.

"So," Kol said, clapping his hands. Bonnie sincerely hoped that was not a habit of his; any more jumpstarts and her heart would just give up and quit. "Speed or scenic?"

Bonnie furrowed her brow, trying to puzzle out what that meant. Kol gestured at the path they were on and she got it. "Oh, right. Scenic, please. Vamp speed makes me want to hurl."

Kol made a face. "Thank you for sharing, darling. Shall we, then?"

Bonnie started trudging down the long road leading away from the estate and to the main thoroughfare. "You sure we couldn't just use a carriage? You could pull it, you're strong enough."

"The irony of an African-American asking another to pull them along in a cart like he was some beast of burden is not lost on me, I assure you."

"Wow. That was really low. I'll just walk on this side and feel awful about my entire existence."

Let it never be said that Kai Parker was a coward, but –

Kai Parker was a coward.

He could use the remains of the Ascendant to go check on Bonnie, make sure she was alright and on the right path and coming home. He even could send himself back physically and drag her back himself, if he was so inclined.

Or, he could sit on his couch and catch up on all the episodes of X-Files that he'd missed.

Kai sunk even deeper into the cushions and shoved another handful of pork rinds into his mouth, grimacing as he chewed. God, he hated this brand. He'd been so excited the first time he'd gone into the Mystical Falls supermarket to get some cause the ones he'd gotten there in 1994 tasted even better than the type he used to stock up on in Portland, but they hadn't been there. Just this generic, off-brand crap that tasted like sandpaper. He'd even gone to bug Damon about where the 1994 brand could be and been told they probably just stopped carrying them, now get out of my living room, you freak.

And what the hell, were Mulder and Scully actually going to hook up? He watched the X-Files for aliens and monsters and overly-complicated deaths, not for almost kisses and unspoken declarations of love. On screen, the two main character's faces got so close they were practically touching, their eyes heated and their voices mere whispers.

"Boo!" Kai shouted, and threw a pork rind at the screen before turning the whole thing off. He immediately regretted it, because once the silence set in, all he could think about was Jo's words.

Thing was, he didn't want to see Bonnie. Besides the fact that she would try to kill him on sight, which trying to stop would take an effort Kai wasn't really looking forward to committing, and besides the fact that she had put an ax into his chest when he'd been nothing but helpful, the last time he saw her she was walking into the Salvatore's garage to turn the car on with the doors closed and die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

He'd never seen her cry like that. He'd shot her with a crossbow, he'd drugged her, terrorized her, stabbed her with a knife, and he'd never seen her cry like that. He'd never seen anyone look as destroyed as Bonnie Bennett had at that moment, and he'd done that to her.

There was a low swoop of now-familiar guilt in his stomach and he kicked at the coffee table in front of him. "Shut up, Luke," he muttered. But it wasn't Luke anymore. He'd never say it out loud – he was saving it up for when Liv got mouthy and really pissed him off and he needed to shut her down, because that was an inevitability – but there was no Luke. A merge was a merge, not like some weird nineties co-parenting of the psyche bullshit.

Just pieces of his little brother, seeping into his own sub-conscious. The first couple of days after the merge it had been louder, more obvious, like there were foreign objects stuck into his brain – a feeling that Kai actually knew pretty well with the numerous and inventive ways he had tried to kill himself over the years. He had even cried when writing Josette a letter apologizing for all he'd done. But now Luke's pieces were part of Kai's puzzle. They belonged to him.

It was odd, because if what he felt now was hell, and it was, he knew he was still waiting for the worst of it.

He'd never liked his siblings, but they were his little brothers and sister. He'd helped change their diapers, he'd sung them to sleep with Josette, he'd helped them fix their skateboards, played soccer with them, and even let Annabeth rope him into a few tea parties. And he'd murdered them like it was nothing because it was nothing.

Jonah was the eldest after himself and Jo. Seventeen and thin. Bit of a dork, really, had one of those ancient IBM computers that he was constantly fiddling with. Kai had wrapped the power cord around his neck and hung him off bannister.

Then there was Annabeth, blonder and prettier than Caroline Forbes could ever hope to be. She was fourteen and better at cloaking spells than even Kai was when he could manage to steal a little magic. Annie played a good game of hide and seek that night but she had always been shit at dodgeball so it was no real surprise she couldn't avoid his hunting knife.

Theo was his least favorite brother, and that was saying something, because Luke never stopped screaming as a baby. Theo was the golden boy, good at everything, and he was only eleven. His father liked to lament about what a shame it was that Theo wasn't a twin. Theo was the smartest, had the strongest magic, but he also was the bravest and that had been his downfall. He'd tried to protect Annie, so Kai sucked him dry, beat him to death with a baseball bat, then hung him beside their brother.

He'd lied when he told Bonnie and Damon he saved Zachariah for last. Zach was eight and was the cleverest little shit that'd ever been. He was just so sneaky, always playing practical jokes on his siblings and parents. Never Kai, Zach was terrified of Kai and was the first to hide on May 9, 1994 when he saw his eldest brother prowling the upper halls. Zachariah died last because Kai couldn't find him, and probably wouldn't have if half-dead Annie, the dumb cow, hadn't called out to Zach from where he was peeking out from his hiding spot in the cupboard under the downstairs bathroom sink.

He could remember, with perfect detail, Jonah's face when the cord wrapped around his neck, Theo's face when the bat came down, Annabeth's face when the knife went in, Zach's face under the water, but for a long time it had been like watching a movie of someone else's really bloody life. It wasn't his hand that did all those things. It happened a long time ago, to someone else.

There was a complete disconnect in his mind between Jonah's favorite lullaby and the angle of Jonah's broken neck, but this missing piece would fall into place, too. And Kai knew it, could feel it lurking on the edges of his mind, and hated it. Hated himself. Hated hating himself and was sick of the whole goddamn thing. He had half a mind to bore out his brain with a hand-drill just to see if he could get all this emotion crap out, if only Jo hadn't murder-proofed his apartment after one particularly bad mood swing.

"I don't understand," he said dumbly, staring at the floor.

Josette looked hopelessly lost. "Kai, I'm…she was always frail, and after you murdered half her children…"

Kai let out a bark of laughter. "Yeah, let's blame on me, not on the man who kept making her have children into her forties."

"She had a choice and she-"

"Had a choice?" Kai yelled, rising from the couch and looming over his twin, glad to feel the thrill of excitement when she cringed back into the cushions was still there, if muted. "You think any of us had a choice when it came to what he wanted?"

His mother was dead. He should've guessed it, when Luke and Liv and Jo could only talk about Joshua Parker, but he'd hoped she'd finally wised up and left the abusive son of a bitch. But she had lived out the rest of her days at his side and died and Kai had missed it, locked away in some prison world.

He hated her so much. She hadn't even had the guts to participate in the spell that sent him away. She'd abandoned him to her father, just like she'd always done. He didn't even get the chance to tell her how much he hated her, he never got to see her one last time.

"Kai?" Jo had straightened, one hand reaching forward. "Kai, please calm down. I didn't know this would upset you so much."

Kai started laughing. She sounded like she used to about twenty four years ago, watching him with palms out while he stalked from one wall of his room to the other after something had set him off. Baby Theo had filled his Nintendo with jam, or Jonah had mastered some spell Kai couldn't, or Annabeth had run off crying to Daddy after big brother accidentally zapped some of her magic and Kai got ten lashes.

She looked exactly the same now, and Kai laughed harder. There was salt water in his mouth, coming from tracks of water scalding a path down his face from his eyes. He wiped at his face furiously, laughter dying completely as he stared at his slick fingers.

"Kai-"

"Where is she?" Kai interrupted harshly, rubbing his fingers together.

"In Portland. With the others."

Kai blinked and a fresh rush of wetness fell. He hated this, every single moment of this. He couldn't even think straight. He shoved the heels of his palms into his eyes and let out a roar of frustration. "How do you do this?"

Jo stood up, not touching him but ghosting her hands over the outline of his shoulders. "I just do. A lifetime of practice."

"No," Kai snarled. "This is exhausting, it's useless, and I can't – can't breathe around it. It takes up too much room. How do any of you people survive?"

Jo's look was unsympathetic and grim. "Life sucks, Kai, and then you die."

"I've done the first part," Kai said. He held out a hand and the glass of wine he had tactlessly given his pregnant sister flew into his hand and shattered, leaving only the sharp pointy stem. "Maybe I should work on that last bit."

He wasn't really going to kill himself. Well, probably not. Kai was a big fan of himself and his ongoing existence. But at that moment, stabbing until he found his tear ducts and ripping them out sounded like an A-plus plan. He was gonna let the Luke drain out of him and then he'd be better.

"Malachai Parker!" Jo snapped, seizing his hand in both of hers. "You will do no such thing. You do that and our entire family dies. Bonnie dies," she added when the first part didn't seem to affect him. "And Dad wins. You're telling me you stabbed and clawed your way out of the prison world to give up now?

"I'm sorry. Do you know how much I loathe saying that to you, how little you deserve it? But I am sorry that Mom is gone. That she's gone and Dad is still here."

Kai nodded, temporary insanity lifting. He pushed the glass stem into his sister's hands and sat down, wiping away the last of his tears. Jo leaned down to place the stem on the table, thought better of it, and went to the window to throw it out to the alley below.

When she came back she had her coat over one arm and he hadn't moved an inch. She sat beside him with a sigh. "I see you've inherited Luke's flair for the dramatic."

"Please, that's all me." Kai felt bone tired now. "Sissy?"

"Yes?"

"Our mother died."

Another deep sigh, one he felt in his own lungs. "I know."

"I hated her." Josette could always tell a lie from the truth.

A hand on his shoulder. "Sweetheart, she hated you, too."

He had told her she didn't have to worry. "I was just trying to psych you out, Josie," he had told her as she wandered around replacing all his silverware with plastic forks and spoons the next day and ransacking his bathroom for painkillers. "I'd never kill myself. I'm too pretty to die."

"You're an awful liar, big brother," she had shot back. "Always have been, 'cause you didn't know how. Why would you? You never lied! Every batshit insane thing you ever said, you meant it. 'I'm gonna murder my whole family!' 'Oh, that Kai he's such a kidder!' No."

"That…was that supposed to be me, that first voice there?"

Jo had rounded on him, fire in her eyes. Somehow losing her magic had made his sister ten times scarier. Or maybe it was the baby crazy getting a head start. "Shut up. I have a good life and I am happy and you have done enough to me, do you understand?"

Kai nodded mutely and let her do her job without another word. And now, here he was a week later, staring at his black TV screen, surrounded by cheap pork rinds, and kind of glad she did. Cause right about now those steak knives would've looked really appealing.

He had to do something about this before seriously lost his mind. This guilt thing that was eating him up – maybe Josette was right. He couldn't let his emotions torture him. Kai had always been the proactive type and there was only one solution.

"Bonnie," he whispered. Just the name made his whole stomach clench painfully. Or, wait, no, that was something else entirely. Kai felt his whole stomach lurch and was off the couch in an instant.

Three minutes later he was still hovering over the toilet, puking up twelve hours' worth of shitty pork rinds. He rested his sweaty forehead on the toilet, texted Liv to tell her he was dying and could she please bring some him soup, and thought about who to take with him to retrieve Bonnie Bennett from his prison world.

If he was going to be a good person he was damn sure going to have an audience.

"Kol," Bonnie said, whole sentences forming in her mind to describe what she was seeing. But all that came out was his name again.

"Right here, love," the Original pointed out. "And yes, I see it."

Bonnie had never been to New Orleans, but even if she had, before or after Hurricane Katrina, she doubted it would've looked like this. Red brick and stone buildings rose high on either side of the abandoned street she and Kol had followed into town, the dirt road soon giving way to brick. It was all classic Southern architecture, the history so rich she could feel it even in a ghost town like this.

She was bouncing on the balls of her feet before she could quite calm herself down but the pensive look on her companion's face sobered her. Of course Kol had seen this a thousand times by now. He had seen it full of life. And for what she guessed was quite a long stretch of time, it was the last thing he saw before his brother slid a dagger into his heart. She didn't quite feel sorry for him – no doubt the streets of New Orleans were much safer with Kol neutralized – but she could understand. Once upon a time that she could even do that would've appalled her, but since meeting Kai she'd developed a keen appreciation for the wonders of empathy.

"So, where to?" she asked. Kol broke free from whatever vision he was seeing and glanced at her before leading her to the first crossroads and stopping, folding his arms and looking at her determinedly.

"Who performed the spell for your prison world?"

"It wasn't mine."

"Fine," Kol gritted out. "Damon's prison world. Whose spell was it?"

Bonnie hesitated before answering. "The Gemini Coven."

Kol looked surprised at that, letting out a low whistle. "Damon Salvatore has made the most interesting enemies."

"How do you mean?" Bonnie asked. Lending a largely non-magical life, she was still pretty in the dark about the other magical clans around the globe. Besides, the Bennetts were clearly the most powerful, so she thought the others weren't worth much thought. Now she was a little embarrassed with herself.

It was a feeling Kol apparently shared. "Oh, only that the Gemini Coven is the one of the oldest and most powerful families in the history of the entire world. They've existed as long as the Travelers, they predate mine. That some insignificant gnat like Damon did enough to get their attention and hold it long enough to curse him to an eventual prison world – that's a gutsy gnat."

"Damon Salvatore in four words," Bonnie muttered under her breath. Kol caught it and grinned for a moment before growing serious again.

"This is voodoo territory, Bonnie. Sacrificial, ancestral magic. I'm talking slaughtering babies in the middle of pentagram. Stuff the Geminis wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole."

Bonnie choked on a hysterical giggle, thinking wait until you meet Kai, but then what Kol was saying slowly seeped into her brain. "So what you're saying is: there's no Gemini books here that could help us."

"It's not impossible, but it's doubtful. Covens tend to respect each other's boundaries," Kol said, before smirking at her. "Well, except for the Bennetts. You'll find evidence of their sticky fingers in every pot."

Bonnie resisted the urge to wave her squeaky-clean fingers in his face, knowing he had a point. "My blood was a part of the spell to activate the Ascendant in 1994-"

"What?"

"My world," Bonnie said, then shook her head. "The prison world. It was in 1994."

Kol looked horrified. "You poor thing. I missed the nineties but the whole thing looked dreadful." His look turned considerate. "So why was that Damon's hell?"

It wasn't, she thought grimly. Even when Damon was telling his story, his face grim and sad and his voice all hoarse, she hadn't really believed May 10, 1994 had been the worst day of his life. Damon had three lifetimes of bad things and she could name ten moments off the top of her head in just the time she'd known him that would easily top murdering a pregnant woman he cared nothing for.

It hadn't even really been Kai's hell. It just happened to be the day he got thrown into the prison world because it was the day of an eclipse. It wasn't made for him, and it wasn't tailored to torture him in any specific way. It was just what it said it was – a prison.

But Kol's world…it was different. Kol had died nearly two years ago, so if the world had been created at the time of his death, or for him while he was waiting on the Other Side, it would look like 2011, and they would be in Mystic Falls. The spells were different. The one used on Kai could not be the same as the one used on Kol.

"Also," Kol said, when it became clear she wasn't answering him. "I've never met a single member of the Gemini Coven in my life. Why would they curse me?"

"Favor for a friend?" Bonnie suggested absently, still trying to puzzle it out.

Kol snorted. "Unlikely. Witches love me."

That got her attention. She stared up at him, one eyebrow raised incredulously. Kol saw her expression and grinned, raising his hands innocently. "It's true. In 1901 I even led a whole group of New Orleans witches against my brother. We failed, obviously." The last part was directed at his feet, but Kol soon looked up again, meeting her eyes. "But I respected them and they knew that. I've always held witches in high regard; my mother was a witch and the most wonderful woman I knew – before she lost her mind and tried to kill me. I knew several of your ancestors as well, all powerful, accomplished women whom I deeply admired."

Bonnie felt a little taken aback and knew her mouth was hanging open but was a bit too gobsmacked by the stark honesty in his voice to think to close it. Kol gestured at her. "And then there's you, little witch. You're okay."

Her hand flung out and whacked him on the chest before she could stop herself, a laugh bursting from her. "Okay?!"

"You've yet to kill me," Kol pointed out. "So, that's a plus. But you hit like a drunken toddler. That's a minus. But I an being serious, Bonnie, when I say that I cannot think of why a witch would do this to me."

"I cannot seriously have to explain the ripple effect to you, Kol," Bonnie said. "So you respect witches. But what about their families? You've killed thousands of people, and you think not a one of them was the brother, sister, parent or spouse of a witch? All it takes is one distraught coven leader and you've got yourself a prison world."

But he would've been thrown into it right away if it was the Geminis, she reasoned. The spell wouldn't have waited until he died…because it's not a spell.

"It's a curse," she said out loud. Kol cocked his head to the side and she explained. "The prison world was waiting for you when the Other Side collapsed, yes? And the Other Side was its own sort of prison world. It was waiting for you, Kol, it wasn't a spell. It was a curse. A lot of witches use the terms interchangeably but-"

"A curse has a trigger," Kol finished for her. "I know my magic. Something has to happen for it to take effect. In this case, I'm assuming, my death. Why do you look so pleased?" he asked, because she was grinning.

"That's not how the Gemini spell works at all. This is different. Which means there are different loopholes, different ways to escape. It isn't hopeless."

"Darling, it never is," Kol said with a sigh. "So I've been cursed. Well, the best coven to go to for a curse was the Algiers. I must warn you, their magic is quite…black. You should be fine, just pay attention." He turned his head towards the sun, high and just to the left, reorienting his body to face north, then looked down at her. "How would you like to see a steamboat?"

Kol did not meander from his path and Bonnie wasn't quite comfortable asking him questions, but luckily he loved the sound of his own voice and cheerfully told her stories about many of the places they passed. More than one story ended with "and then we killed them all," which he thankfully started omitting as the distance she put between them grew over five feet. He never mentioned Elijah or Klaus by name but sometimes he would go very quiet after a particularly jovial story.

He hadn't seen Rebekah in a year, hadn't seen Klaus or Elijah in nearly two. She wondered if he'd been able to hear Klaus' screams of grief when they sealed him up in the Gilbert house for three days with his little brother's charred body from the Other Side. Bonnie didn't have siblings, unless she counted Elena and Caroline, which she did. But she knew that Elena losing her had not destroyed her best friend the way losing Jeremy had. She knew that Damon could survive losing Elena, and had survived losing Alaric, but would walk into the sun the instant Stefan was gone from the world, and vice versa. Sometimes she remembered Klaus screaming and she was very thankful she was an only child. Sometimes she remembered and was so jealous she couldn't stand it. No one would ever mourn her like that.

The smells changed, the tinny but clean smell of freshwater filling the air. "The West Bank," Kol announced. She could see the large stack of a steamboat in the distance but before she could take one step closer Kol veered sharply to the left, down a dark side alley.

The entrance to the Algiers' stronghold of course required magic, which Bonnie took a good hour trying to figure out until she finally pulled a Gandalf and got Kol to translate the French written all around the door jamb.

"Ahem: Friend or foe, we will all burn the same. Or thereabouts, my French is absolute shite."

At which point she cast a fire spell to no effect. Noting the dark smears on the door, she pulled Jo's hunting knife from her boot, made a generous cut on her arm that even made Kol wince, smeared it across the door and then set it to boiling. When the blood had burned away, the lock clicked open.

"These people are hardcore," Bonnie muttered, set her skin to knit back together with a wave of her hand, and pushed forward into the dark beyond.

The candles lit themselves as they passed, which was an admittedly neat little trick that Kol ruined by, annoyingly, oh-ing and ah-ing at every burst of flame. The long hallway finally let out into a dimly-lit, very high ceilinged great room edged with shelves with no glimpse of the brick wall at all to be seen behind the stacks and stacks of books. There was a great brazier in the middle of the room, placed dead center in a pentagram carved into the floor. Bonnie raised a hand but Kol grabbed it immediately.

"Don't light that," he warned, casting a wary eye about.

"Why not?"

"That brazier is the birthplace of some very dark spells, and one should not go meddling with it unawares. Who knows what lingers within it? Don't touch anything, Bonnie. Just – give me a moment."

And then he was a blur, racing around the room, zig-zagging and jumping high. The first crack of electricity sent Bonnie skittering back to the entrance but Kol just ran a hand through his newly-heightening hair, shook it off, and kept going.

"Why are the wards still active?" she asked after he'd tripped another, a nasty little hex that made him cough up about a gallon of water. If Kol had needed to breathe, he'd be dead.

Kol shrugged, sucking in a huge gasp of unnecessary air. "Did 1994 lose all its magic?"

Bonnie thought of Qetsiyah's blood all over Silas' tomb, thrumming with power, and the duplicate cure resting within. "But that was a carbon copy world."

"So is this," Kol argued, annoyance flashing on his face that she was still pursuing this. "Everything's exactly the same as I remember it, and my memory is flawless." When he saw he had satisfied her, he began running again.

There were more flashes, some of lightning, some fire, some of purple and gold that slowed Kol down the most. But they only went off once, and when he had made a completely unhindered circuit he raced back to her side.

"You may proceed," he announced with a cough. Bonnie nodded, setting off for the nearest bookshelf, then turned.

"Thank you."

Kol just shrugged. "I can't lose you now, little witch. I want my freedom, too." This was completely what Bonnie had expected, and yet it still made something inside of her hurt, something that she had shoved down deep the moment her grandmother died saving Stefan Salvatore. Kol clapped his hands cheerfully, Bonnie's glare only invigorating him. "So, you'll take this side and I, that? Looks like I'm in for a bit of speed-reading. What words am I looking for? Prison world? Ascendant?"

Bonnie just stared at him. "Or we could just…" She held out both hands and thought curses. To her dismay every single shelf began shaking all across the room and she dropped the search spell. Death curses, she refined, relieved when only about two hundred books dropped to the floor. Kol, for his part, looked impressed. "Magic. Look for something about curses trapping spirits, activated by death, something like that."

Kol nodded smartly and zipped over, beginning with the largest tome he could find. Bonnie tried a few more search spells. Alternate dimensions. Containment. Mikaelson. The seventy or so books that fell from those she added to the piles she was picking up and placing next to Kol. He glared at her every time she walked away.

"I'm helping, I swear," she promised, but when he looked down again, she placed the books down and began seriously examining the room. The Algiers' grimoire had to be here somewhere. She cast out a quick pulse of magic, hoping to hear something respond to her, but all she got was a twitch of Kol's shoulders and an inquisitive glance in her direction. Manual search it was. All the books looked mostly the same, and she couldn't feel the presence of any cloaking spells or misdirection hexes. She could hear Kol turning rapidly through the pages and told herself she'd only look for one more minute before she sat down and started reading.

She crossed over one of the points of the pentagram and every hair on her body rose. She stepped outside the lines and the feeling disappeared, then back inside again. It was like tiny electric charges all across her skin, and the feeling only grew stronger the closer she walked to the brazier, until she was standing over it and could feel it humming in her ears.

The brazier was bronze on the inside, shaped like a giant cup with a hollow stem. The gleam of it was hypnotizing, and she leaned over it to get closer. There was something in the shimmer of it that made her head swim. Her hands gripped the edges to support herself and the buzzing stopped, along with anything else. All she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears.

It was like the harder she looked the more she saw. There was something in the stem, covered by the wood for the fire and ash, resting on one of the grates. Square and small and covered in gears.

The ascendant! She reached out to move the chops of wood but they wouldn't budge, no matter how she pushed. The mix of potions and whatever else the Algiers had thrown in here had warped them in such a manner that they were melted to the surface of the brazier. Something about it seemed wrong – wood couldn't melt into metal – but she dismissed it, focusing on the problem at hand.

Just burn the wood away, she thought. Just light the flame and you can have what you want.

Her blood was so loud in her ears as she raised her hand above the wood and opened her mouth. "Incen-"

Suddenly there was a hand over her mouth and she was being dragged forcibly backwards. Kol. She threw an aneurysm at him, a vatos for good measure, but he didn't slow until they were over the line of the pentagram, where he dropped his hands only to grab her shoulders, spin her around, and forcefully shove her into a bookshelf.

"What part of 'don't light it' was so difficult for you to grasp?" He snarled at her, canines lengthened and three inches from her face. Bonnie tried for another aneurysm and his hand came up to wrap around her throat.

"The ascendant-" she choked.

"Do you have any idea what you could've unleashed?" Kol roared, seemingly unaware of how tightly he was gripping her. The edges of her vision were starting to go black. He could probably barely feel aneurysm number three.

"Please," Bonnie gasped. "Ascendant…in the bottom."

Kol growled and released her to check. Bonnie sagged against the bookcase and massaged her throat with her hands. Her heart was still all she could hear, and as Kol ran his hands along the edges of the obviously-empty brazier she thought she could pin-point the moment it broke. There wasn't even any ash on his hands when he raised them. It had been a vision. It wasn't real, and she wasn't going home tonight.

"I thought – I saw –" she managed to whisper, the words burning on their way out.

Kol wouldn't even look at her. "You were deceived. It tricked you."

"It's a thing-" she protested, but that only seemed to make him angrier.

"It's magic! It is just as alive as you and I and it wants. The entirety of Algiers magic starts from this brazier. Do you see that hole in the ceiling?" He pointed upwards to a large circular hole in the ceiling, the edges of it caked in soot. "When I lived here, the entire city would shut down if the people saw smoke rising from this building because we knew that the Algiers were dealing with demons. Spirits older than all my siblings' years put together."

Bonnie looked at the brazier with new found horror. Why couldn't she feel it? Something that old and powerful and she had just walked right into its snare without even a prickle of warning. "I didn't know," she said hoarsely, then glared at Kol. "You didn't tell me. How was I supposed to know these people had the root of all evil hanging out in their basement?"

"I told you their magic was dark. I told you to be vigilant. And you're a Bennett," Kol said as if it was obvious. "You're supposed to be powerful. I thought you would've known. The others had always known."

The useless one is here. Thank God. I've watched you try to do magic for months now. What are you gonna do, fail at me? It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for you.

Bonnie closed her eyes, forcefully shoving Kai's ghost out of her head, trying to feel for something, anything about the brazier. But there was nothing.

"Just because we're in some alternate hell dimension," Kol said. "Doesn't mean the spirits can't find us."

Bonnie just nodded, sinking down to the floor and picking up one of the books closest to her. "Next time, tell me."

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…I'm no fool, little witch." Kol responded, his voice a sing-song condescension that grated on her thread-bare nerves.

Bonnie, pride brutally stung and battered emotionally and physically, wouldn't have stopped her next words even if she had thought them through. "And how many times did Klaus dagger you again, Kol?" Kol's mouth shut tight with an audible clicked and she grinned sweetly, meanly. "Shame on you."

He turned on his heel without another word and returned to his own pile, flicking through the pages at an even faster rate than before.

They remained that way for hours, Bonnie finding a few interesting leads but nothing truly worthwhile. Kol had two stacks going, the larger one which assumed was useless, and a much smaller one filled with hopefully relevant material. He had just tossed another onto the large pile when the light suddenly dimmed. They both looked up at the now very red noon sky.

Kol was up in an instant. "We need to go back."

"What, why?" Bonnie asked, her voice still not completely returned. Kol grimaced and began looking around until he found what he was searching for: two large satchels, one of which he tossed at Bonnie.

"Put the important ones in there, you can read them at night." When Bonnie didn't move he took a step towards her only to be halted in his tracks by her upraised hand and an immobilizing spell. He rolled his eyes. "I know what you can do, love. I can break this, and we both know it. Now I don't fancy a walk home in the dark, do you? So let's get on the road before we lose the sun."

"There are plenty of hotels in the city, why can't we stay here?"

Kol glowered at her, fighting against the spell. His left arm moved an inch. "Because I hate this city! I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."

"Neither do I," Bonnie argued. "Which is why it's in our best interest to stay here, keep searching, and find some damn answers so we can go home."

"You think I trust you in any part of this city?" Kol asked incredulously, making a tiny step forward. "After what you pulled today? You'd probably sneak away, fall into a Kindred nest and mix together the precise right ingredients to raise an undead army completely by accident. And I'm not leaving you here; if you found the way out on your own, whose to say you won't just abandon me? Besides, we won't find anything if we're dropping from exhaustion. In fact, we'll probably miss something important."

She knew there was something he wasn't telling her, and she knew she should keep pressuring him, but maintaining the immobilization spell on an Original was draining her already exhausted reserves. Her throat ached fiercely, the edges of the cut on her arm had reopened, and she was still very shaken by what she had almost done today. She dropped her hand.

Kol was next to her the next second, shoving her own small pile into one satchel. He made a move to help her up and she shoved herself away, which actually made him pause in his movements and look at her. She saw his eyes dart down to her throat for the briefest moment and then to her great relief, he moved away, going to fill up his own bag.

They were out of the city before sunset. Bonnie turned to look at it, the sun hitting every piece of glass and lighting up the entire city. She could almost see it as it was supposed to be, alive and vibrant. If she listened hard enough, she could almost make believe the faint strains of a lone piano.

"Little witch."

She turned and followed Kol.