Okay, so this chapter took forever to write because I had to go to my best friend's wedding. Sorry for the delay. It was also hella long and so has been split in two, but the other half isn't written. I'm not on my game. But it's here and its written so go me!

The songs used as inspiration for this chapter were "I Wanna Get Better" by Bleachers and "To Hell With You" by Sleigh Bells, which are both very high up on my Most Played list so give them a listen! Alright, no more delays!

Chapter 4: I Didn't Know I Was Broken 'Til I Wanted To Change

On the second morning in the Weirdest Place in Space and Time, Bonnie was awakened by fifty books being tossed systematically at her prone body until she awoke.

"Wow," Kol said when she jolted upwards, body clenching in an arc with her now very bruised hip at the apex. "I was on nineteen. You sleep like the dead, little witch."

Without a word, Bonnie swept her arm across the bed and nineteen books went careening into Kol's stupid face.

"Oi, watch it, love! Some of the books are almost as old as me." Even as he was saying it, he spiked an incoming book down hard onto the wooden floor of her room.

Bonnie glared, placing a hand over her hip and setting a light healing spell into the flesh there, then sat up. "What are you doing here? What are those?"

Kol tsked. "Now I know America's education is on the decline but I thought even you would recognize a book."

"I swear to God, Kol-"

"I don't think he listens in on alternate dimensions, sweetheart," Kol said dismissively. He had caught one book in each hand and brought them over to her. "These are the Algiers spellbooks we picked up yesterday. No point in going into town today with all these here."

His grin was reassuring and kind and did not at all fit his face. Of course he wanted to keep her away from whatever made him so nervous at sunset yesterday. Bonnie grabbed one of the proffered books and glared at him. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Is Elijah the only member of your family who isn't completely transparent?"

Kol nodded, not even missing a beat. "He likes to play the hero. That calls for a fair bit of trickery when you're a blood sucking monster. I, myself, take great pride in my own authenticity."

"I'm sure you do," Bonnie muttered. She sighed, placing the book on her bedside table. "I know there's something in New Orleans that freaks you out, Kol, but I don't really feel like walking three miles today to find out what it is. So, fine, we'll stay in. But you're helping."

Kol clapped his hands together and Bonnie daydreamed about magically sealing them together so he would stop doing that. "Excellent. Knew you were a reasonable woman, little witch. I'll just be downstairs then." He paused for a moment, leaning closer and turning his face side to side as if he was searching for something, then drawing back, looking confused and almost disappointed before he shook it off. "We've much to do, so no dallying."

He bounded out before she could respond, leaving behind a bemused Bonnie. She dressed slowly, choosing to shove the pager into the bedside table's drawer but keeping the hunting knife and the cure on her person. She didn't go straight away to the large living area where Kol waited, instead taking a detour towards the kitchen and grabbing one of the apples she had seen there the first night.

Kol had already taken up residence in his great leather chair when she finally made her way around, but she was happy to see that he had found a settee from somewhere in the house and placed it close to the fire roaring in the fireplace. She settled down into the cushions, only at the last moment remembering her manners and mumbling a 'thank you' to Kol that he did not return.

He seemed completely unaffected by what happened yesterday, and while that did bother her, it irritated her more than she wasn't used to this by now. Damon, Klaus, Silas, Kai; they were all fully capable of flipping on a dime, going from scary to overly-polite teddy bear in a moment. The ending was always the same: Bonnie would fall for it and end up with some foreign, pointy object lodged in some incredibly inconvenient location. Fangs in her neck, a knife in her stomach. They used her and then cast her aside like a broken toy.

She still couldn't decide, even after all these years, if she preferred that kind of disingenuousness or if she would rather it be like Elena's method, playing on her loyalties and her sense of righteousness to, using a lifetime of friendship to bend Bonnie to her will. It wasn't Elena's fault; Bonnie could say no anytime she wanted, she just never worked up the strength to. If Bonnie could help people, then she should, no matter what the price – that was her code.

But Elena, and Caro, and Stefan, they knew this about her. And they had raised the price for years until it was more than Bonnie's power could pay. So she auctioned off her life and happiness for her friends, and she didn't regret that. Not even when she was stuck with Kai, not now when all she had was Kol. Bonnie's friends were her family, and she would do anything for them. She just wished they wouldn't ask her to.

"You're not even reading," Kol said dryly, eyes never leaving his book. Bonnie broke from her reverie and huffed, opening the book flat on the velvet cloth of the couch and holding one hand over it, using the search spell to find certain phrases and starting from there. And so she and Kol passed the day away in silence.

The first person Kai went to was Damon. Bonnie was his best friend, and Kai was sure he'd be eager to jump onboard any plan that might save her. To his surprise and a disconcerting bit of anger, Damon seemed hesitant.

"Now's not a good time, Kai."

Kai just stared, open-mouthed, from his customary place in the dead center of Damon's overstuffed couch while Damon paced back and forth in front of him, drinking a scotch. "What?"

Damon grimaced. "This thing with Caroline-"

"What is wrong with you people?" Kai burst out. "Emotions are difficult, yeah. Losing your mom freaking sucks, sure, I got that memo, too. But I swear, it's like every time one of you gets so much as a hangnail you go for the humanity switch!"

"What affects Caroline affects Stefan affects me, Kai!" Damon nearly shouted. Drinking in Kai's entirely unimpressed face, he tried a calmer approach. "Look, if we can keep her sane for a couple of weeks, if we know we can leave her by herself, then no problem. But I won't leave Stefan and Elena, not even for a second, if I don't know one hundred percent that they're safe. Not again."

"Bonnie should be here by now, Damon," Kai tried to explain, but he was cut off when Damon suddenly hurled the tumbler in his hand at Kai's head. He stopped it half and inch away from his cheekbone and sent it soaring into the fireplace and then Damon's hand was wrapped in the fabric of his coat.

"Bonnie," the vampire snarled. "Should've been here months ago, but some psychotic little freak had to torture her first and then fucking abandon her. What's all this about, Kai, huh? Maybe you just want to go back to finish the job."

Kai rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's why I'm asking you to go with, so you can see the whole thing and then decapitate me. Assisted suicide, I hear it's all the rage these days. And she didn't give me much of a choice in the whole thing." The last bit tasted sour on his tongue, but it wasn't precisely a lie, or at least he didn't think so. Bonnie was adamant he not get out and he was determined to escape. Immovable object meet unstoppable force.

Damon sneered and released him, drawing up to his full height. "Bonnie always gives a choice." He turned and walked towards the fireplace, placing a hand on the mantle.

Kai smoothed out the wrinkles in his coat. Okay, so maybe the problem wasn't that Bonnie hadn't given him a choice, it was that her options were unacceptable. She wanted to keep him in that hell forever, and she would've left him alone in his half of the world. The thought of going back to a life of solitude, especially after meeting her, made his insides boil.

And now he was here, in a sea of people that he mostly hated, and the one person he wanted to see that wasn't related to him was the one person he threw away an eternity with. Kai had skipped most of senior English so he wasn't quite sure on the definition of irony, but that might've been it.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and placed his head in his hands. "She goes to Nova Scotia, she gets the magic, back to Mystic Falls, does the spell," he said into the heels of his palms. He lifted his head and looked at Damon. "That should've taken two weeks, tops. It's been a month."

"You don't know Bonnie," Damon said to the flames. "She's fine. She just gets a little caught up sometimes, making sure everything's perfect. She'll be here any day now."

"And if she's doesn't show up? Let me make this clear, Damon, I'm not going by myself. For one, I don't trust you or your sad little posse to let me back out and for another, Bonnie likely won't come with me."

"Why do you care?" Damon asked suddenly, finally turning around. "You were using her for her Bennett blood to get out and hey, look, now you're free. Woo. Leave her alone."

"Apparently if I do that, you'll be perfectly fine with leaving her there forever," Kai snapped. "I put a crossbow bolt in her stomach and after you were gone I listened to her crying while she choked on her own blood. Do you know what that sounded like?" His voice had begun to waver somewhere in the middle and he looked down, not able to look Damon in the eye. "Bonnie has this – she doesn't scream much, you know? But every time I hurt her there was this, I don't know, this hitch in her voice. Like every time I hurt her, she was surprised by it. And that's all I dream about. That hitch."

He expected a punch, a snarky comment, something, but after a long moment of silence he looked up to Damon's downturned face. The vampire's eyes were closed and clench, his breathing too perfectly even to be natural. Kai was suddenly both hideously uncomfortable and very curious; he'd not been the only person to ever hurt Bonnie Bennett.

Damon's face relaxed and he shook his head. "There's nothing – no one – that can hurt Bon over there. My brother needs me right now. I can't keep letting these things happen to him, Kai. It'll have to wait."

Kai wasn't used to get angry on behalf of other people, but in that moment he would've love to break every bone in Damon Salvatore's body. Relax. His handle on his emotions was still a little wonky and he felt like he spent a good portion of his days now standing in one place and monitoring each breath, willing his mind to go blank.

He did that now and when the magic finally fizzled out on his fingertips, he stood. Damon wasn't the only person who missed Bonnie, and besides, when Kai got her back he could use this whole thing as ammunition the next time she tried to tell him what good and selfless people her friends were compared to him.

"I'm waiting until the next full moon to go back," Kai said, buttoning up his coat. "If you change your mind and decide to maybe be a halfway decent person, rescue your best friend from the same hell hole she saved you from..." Damon's shoulders twitch a little, but otherwise no response. Kai shrugged. "Right. Pleasure as always."

Next up, Elena Gilbert, Damon's prettier and much dumber better half. At the very least he could probably trick her into going.

"Have we learned anything?"

Bonnie set her book down with a yawn, leaning back into the arms of the settee to stare at the ceilings. "Death curses are incredibly powerful and come from witches who perform primarily ancestral magic," she responded in a near-robotic tone. This was not the first time Kol had asked the question. "The Algiers apparently also worked quite a bit with the Treme coven."

He scoffed, just as he had the first three times he asked her that question. "I could've told you that, little witch. There's a thin line between a curse and a hex and an even thinner line between those who perform them."

"Death curses still have to maintain the balance, Kol. It would've taken the life of any witch who tried to perform it on her own. That means you were cursed by a coven. So we have that. Maybe the Tremes borrowed a spell? We'll check them out tomorrow in New Orleans."

"If it is a curse at all," Kol argued. "Maybe your pet theory is wrong. Was Damon cursed?"

Bonnie sighed and rubbed at her brow, thinking of Damon and the pregnant lady, of Kai and his stupid coven. This isn't your hell, Damon, it's mine. But in the end, May 10, 1994 had just been a coincidence of time.

Her head was killing her. She hadn't slept since yesterday, the two of them choosing to read through the night instead of prolonging their research another day. The fire had gone out hours ago and only now, when she had stopped reading and focusing, did she notice how stiff and cold she was.

She ignored Kol's question and held out a hand towards the fireplace. "Incendia."

The fire roared to life with incredible force, more than Bonnie had intended or even knew she had the energy within her to summon. As the flames escaped the pit, licking up to the mantle and all along the sides and baseboard, Kol darted out of his chair and had dragged her settee back by a foot by the time Bonnie managed to lessen the fire's fury. She stared at the flames for a long moment, then at her hand.

Why did this keep happening? Getting lost in the spell going home, unable to do a simple location, the vatos and aneurysms that she thrown at Kol that had been far too weak and now a rudimentary fire spell that was far too powerful. It was like her magic was out of her control.

"Well, you certainly like to keep things interesting, Bonnie," Kol said lightly.

Bonnie clenched her fist. The flames burned higher, brighter, turning blue at the base, and Kol hissed. She relaxed and the flames dimmed. She did this a few more times, growing a bit less uneasy every time the fire responded to her call. Bonnie was tired, that was all. She controlled her magic, not the other way around.

She turned to Kol, an apology on her lips for nearly scorching the vampire who had died in flames, but the words died when she saw the look on his face, gazing down at her. His eyes looked so sad, but the soft smile curving across his lips was even sadder. He looked wistful, and she wondered what he was missing. One thousand years was a terribly long time to miss something.

Then his face cleared and he roughly shoved the couch back to its original place, nearly jostling Bonnie from her seat, and crossing back to his chair and collapsing into it, picking up his decanter of blood and taking a long swallow.

Kol had been drinking from it nearly all night; it was nearing empty just a few hours ago. And now it was full again. Bonnie gaped. "How-?"

Kol raised his eyebrows and she gestured at the decanter. "Oh. It refills every night," he informed her. "Suppose it's a bit like those apples that keep popping up over and over in the kitchen."

Bonnie folded her arms, leaning back. "The Beauchantes had a decanter of blood just conveniently lying around, waiting to be caught in a magical time loop?"

"Look at this house, Bonnie. If Dorian Gray and Frankenstein were interior decorators, this would be their showcase. Doesn't the bottle of blood complete the room?"

The house was pretty dark and gloomy, but she expected that had Kol not smashed half the furniture and with the right lighting, it might actually be somewhat cheerful, in a Scooby Doo Villain kind of way. She tapped the fingers of one hand against her arm, waiting.

"Or," Kol said, looking into the ruby red liquid swirling in the decanter. "My brother had it on hand in 1820 and I nicked it from our house."

"Your house?" Bonnie asked, sitting up straighter. "In New Orleans?"

"Where else?"

"Well, why aren't you there?" Bonnie asked. "Surely it'd be more bearable at home-"

"I said 'house,'" Kol said harshly. "Not home." He grimaced and took another swig from the bottle. Bonnie watched him watching the fire. He looked so much like Damon on his worst days, when he was convinced that everything was hopeless. Sitting in one of the high back chairs he had pulled over from the dining room table they never used, bottle of whiskey in hand, drinking away his sorrows like it wouldn't take him hours to get drunk. Kol was different, though. His back was straighter, his eyes keener. He hadn't gone dead to the world.

"You're handling this whole prison thing really well."

He opened his mouth then seemed to absorb what she said, turning to her with surprise. "I tried to kill myself with a White Oak Stake, love."

"Damon used to drink. All the time. I would go whole days by myself because he had finished three bottles the night before and couldn't move off the couch. And-" Her mouth shut with an audible click around Kai's name, not wanting to explain how Kai had dealt with the prison world and not entirely sure she actually could. She had looked into Stefan and Elena's eyes when they had turned off their humanity as vampires, and Kai almost looked the same, but there had been flickers of an actual person lost in the dark.

I want to be more like you, Bonnie. And she had believed him, because his eyes were so blue then, like Matt's and Caroline's and Damon's. It was the first time she hadn't felt completely alone with Kai, like someone had actually been there with her instead of a million miles inside his own head, plotting and planning and manipulating.

"I tried to kill myself," she said in a near whisper, looking anywhere but Kol. "After Damon left and I was – I finished off all the bottles he didn't and when that was done…there was just me, in the whole world. It was so quiet. So I was going to lock myself in with the Camaro in the garage and go to sleep and never wake up."

She could hear the thud of the decanter as Kol placed it on the ground and the rustle of his clothes as he leaned forward. She hurriedly kept talking just so he wouldn't say anything. "You've done pretty well, for being alone. If it had been me or Damon, we would've…so, you know. Good job, I guess." She inwardly cursed herself for sounded so idiotic, but Kol merely chuckled.

"Thanks ever so, love." He sat back again and resumed staring at the fire and she waited out the struggle she saw playing across his face. When he turned once more to find her watching curiously, his face was caught between a smirk and a grimace. "It's not so bad, really. This place. My brother used to regularly stick a dagger in my chest and toss me in a box for centuries at a time. Compared to that, this is rather nice. At least I can move."

"But weren't you asleep?" Bonnie asked curiously, tilting her head. The glare she received for that was quite scathing, so she rushed to explain. "I mean, I've seen you – your family – in the coffins. You just look like you're sleeping. I thought it was like, I don't know, a magical coma."

"Do you think Niklaus would keep doing it if that's all it was, a nice nap?" Kol responded with a sneer. "That wouldn't be punishment enough for whatever imagined slight he felt against him.

"We don't sleep. Ha! We should be so lucky. I can still feel what it was like, ninety years of lying in a cold box with a knife in my chest that my big brother put there. And I swear I could hear them – Elijah or Rebekah or Klaus – standing over me, talking to me. They never talked to Finn, the twats. But sometimes they apologized to me. Sometimes they told me what an idiot I was. Elijah would say something daft, how it was only a matter of time before they set me free again, and Rebekah would make promises to stand by me, if only I behaved. Nik was always the worst. 'We'll be a family again, Kol.' I hated that. It made me want to scream. But I couldn't."

Bonnie tried to imagine what that was like, to be trapped in one place, to hear people but never respond, to be conscious of how vulnerable you were and be completely unable to do anything about it. When she had died the first time, after Kol was gone and she was fading away, she used to scream at people on her bad days. She would go to the Grille when Matt was working and run her hands along all the bottles of alcohol behind the bar, wanting to move just one so he would look at her, but they never budged and he never did. She would visit Damon at the boarding house and follow him around, asking incessant question that would've driven him crazy if only he could hear them, but he couldn't.

And then, when she was done, she would visit Elena and Caroline at college, sleeping so comfortably on those narrow mattresses, and cry huge, loud sobs at the foot of their beds. But her friends never woke.

Bonnie took in a shuddering breath. "I didn't know. I'm so-"

"Don't say that you're sorry," Kol snapped. "There's only one person who's ever going to apologize, and it is not you, Bonnie Bennett."

Bonnie nodded mutely, willing the silence to come back and envelope them again, before something occurred to her and her face became a mask of horror. "But, you said you found the daggers here. That you willingly daggered yourself. Why?"

Kol looked like a lost little boy, looking down at his hands with large, sad eyes. "I thought – it sounds so stupid now – I thought I might hear them again."

Elena was perhaps not as dumb as previously expected.

"I am not going anywhere with you," she stated bluntly, slamming another binder down on the desk she was working at.

Kai eyed her furious binder-tossing and resisted the urge to remove his hands from where they gripped the edge of the desk. "Not even for Bonnie?"

Elena snorted. "That's expecting me to believe that a sociopath would want to help anybody." Kai opened his mouth to protest and slam went another binder. "And, beyond that, expecting me to believe that you would want to help Bonnie, the girl you purposely trapped in the prison world in the first place."

"That's twisting the facts," Kai accused, pointing a finger at Elena. "It wasn't purpose, it was convenience."

Elena glared at him, slamming another binder down. "I don't trust you, and I don't believe you want to help. Damon and I are going to find a way to rescue Bonnie and when we do, you are never going to see her again. Are we clear?"

"Isn't that Bonnie's choice?" Kai asked.

Slam. "Are. We. Clear?"

"You're really enjoying this, huh?" Elena very nearly stomped her foot and Kai grinned, continuing. "Did you learn your intimidation techniques from Damon? Very impressive, I'm quaking in my sneakers."

"You're an ass, and I'm busy," Elena shot back. "Your sister is a slave driver."

"I mean, yeah, she raised my siblings when my parents were too busy. Which was all the time. She's got lots of practice."

"Oh, then she must've been so relieved when you murdered them," Elena simpered, sickly sweet with a wicked smile to match. Kai's smile dropped fast and Elena's next binder flew out of her hands and hit her hard in the face.

She batted it down, blood gushing from her nose that she stemmed with her sleeve. She glared at him, gesturing down at herself. "This was one of my very last gore-free shirts."

He shrugged. "My bad. So about rescuing your best friend?"

"If you think I am going to sit calmly with my eyes close while you chant around my head, saying God knows what in Latin, you're a moron," Elena said acidly, dabbing at her skin until her shirt came back clean. "But, oh wait, I already knew that."

"I'm trying to help," Kai insisted, frustrated beyond belief.

Elena leaned forward, canines suddenly very long when she opened her mouth to speak. "I don't believe you."

To his abject horror, Kai's cheeks and eyes began burning. He didn't understand. He was trying to help, to do a good thing, and they were spitting in his face. "I saved her before, remember?" he protested, hating how whiny his voice sounded.

"So we would help you out. What's in it for you now, Kai, hm?" Elena asked. She stared at him for a long moment, her fangs receding, and in those eyes he saw something of what the human Elena Gilbert must've been like. "I don't trust you. Just in general. It's a good, all purpose life rule that I've taken a long time to learn. But I especially don't trust you about Bonnie. I've let too many things hurt her. I'm not going to give you another shot. Goodbye, Kai."

And then she returned to her binders, effectively dismissing him. Kai straightened away from the desk, gaping at her, the burning in his eyes growing worse before, on instinct, he looked at the ultra bright fluorescent lights above him. After two deep breaths, the burn retreating and Kai could move, nearly stumbling out of the room and into his sister's arms.

"Kai?" Josette sounded concerned. "What are you doing here?"

"Launching a rescue mission," Kai responded, wincing when his voice cracked. "I'm having a little trouble achieving lift-off, though."

Jo propped him up against the wall, sighing. "You're not making any sense."

"I was following your advice," Kai snapped, pushing away from her. "About Bonnie. But I can't go alone, Sissy, I cannot go alone."

Comprehension dawned on Jo's face and he let her process this while he thumped himself on the side of the head. Come on, Kai. Stop being such a pussy. They don't want to come willingly? Then fucking make them.

"Stop that," Josie commented sharply, grabbing his hand and placing it down by his side. Kai looked up at her.

"Stop what?"

"Plotting. You're wearing your plotting face."

Kai sent her a nonplussed look. "This is just my face."

Josette rolled her eyes. "And what a face. So you asked Elena to come with you?"

"After I asked Damon yesterday."

"Damon said no to a way to save Bonnie?" Jo asked, eyebrows raising high in surprise. "He nearly took Ric's head off for screwing up one of his own a couple of months ago."

Kai sneered. "Seems he used up all his hero juice early. Says the timing's not right. Something about his moon-eyed brother and his bitchy Barbie vamp girlfriend-"

"Stefan and Caroline."

"What the fuck ever. He was a no go. And Elena…" Kai looked into the room he had just left through the window set into the door. Elena was staring down at a blue binder, tracing what looked like letters in the cover over and over. There was a B, then an O, then an N, then another-

Oh. Kai frowned, watching Elena draw her best friend's name three more times before turning back to his twin's face, her frown still an exact match of his even after all these years.

"You remember, when we were little, and you used to make those miniature storms?" He asked her, a small, grim smile gracing his face when she nodded. Josette used to drag him out to the woods, look at this Kai, and create these microscopic wind storms that he would always try to mimic. She always dried his tears when he failed, but she had stopped when they'd grown older and his tears had become shoves and hits. "You'd send that thing everywhere, no matter what was in the way. You tore up Mom's garden once and laughed. You remember how much fun you had, how great you told me it felt, how hard you smiled? I used to think your face would break. I used to hope it would. But after, you would get so sick. Too much magic. You'd crawl into bed beside me and you said it felt like-"

"I swallowed the storm," Josette finished, her eyes gleaming brightly.

Kai nodded jerkily, the waved his hand in a circle. "This – whole thing – it's like that. All the time." Jo stared back at him, face perfectly motionless and blank but for her shining eyes. Kai wanted her to say something, anything, but as he stood there and her face grew only more remote, he felt the air around them grow colder. He turned and walked away without another word.

Prison worlds were quiet.

When she first arrived in 1994 with Damon, there were many things that Bonnie thought would drive her insane. Damon was at the top of the list. Not having modern day technology was embarrassingly high, as was the fashion and the TV. No weather beyond the sweltering May heat. The lack of magic.

But it was the quiet that got to her the most. There were no birds, no cars driving down the street, no dogs barking, all the things that Bonnie had never noticed in the real world. But when they were gone, it was all she could hear. She couldn't sleep for it, and when she could she would wake up a few hours later to the unending pressure of silence.

It was better when Damon started rooming with her. He didn't need to breathe and so his body would stop whenever he lost consciousness, but he was a restless sleeper and she used to use his tossing and turning as a lullaby.

She had never had silence with Kai. He was always talking in that odd cadence of his. He left gaps in his conversations even when he knew she wouldn't fill them, and when she realized he had been making up responses in his head for so long he just assumed they were part of the conversation was the first time Bonnie had felt sorry for him.

When they were both gone the silence found her, got inside of her. She would lose hours of time sitting in one place and straining for the slightest sound. She was afraid to speak in case the sound of her voice drowned out another noise. When she came back to herself she would feel like she had been turned inside-out. Talking to that camera had probably been the only reason Bonnie had lived as long as she did, but she hadn't truly lost the quiet until Kol had found her.

Now, when she startled awake in the middle of the night, Bonnie thought the silence had finally caught up to her again, and she waited frozen in her bed for what happened next. The silence would get so loud it sounded like screaming – or maybe that had just been here – and then it was like the quiet inside and out would equalize and she would relax into sleep again.

But then she heard it. Music, so faint she could barely make out the melody, floating through the air. Bonnie sat up in bed, trying to figure out what time it was. She had finally given up on the Algiers' books and gone to bed around three in the afternoon, leaving Kol nursing his bottle of blood in front of the fire. She had changed out of her now slightly musty borrowed clothing, changed into a short sleeved chemise from the wardrobe in the Rose Room, and been asleep as soon as she hit the pillow.

She shoved the covers down and was out of bed in an instant, holding her breath. It was like listening to a radio with a bad signal, the music fading in and out, and as she crept out of her room and into the hall she realized she was only hearing the loudest parts of the song. It became incrementally louder with every step she took down the stairs, but it was still just a vague jumble of notes when she reached the landing.

She peered around the bannister into the living room area. Kol's chair was empty and the fire had long burned down. It was completely dark; Bonnie realized with a sickening jolt that there wasn't even a full moon outside. This curse wasn't even built around a reoccurring celestial event to draw power from.

For just a moment, she considered calling out to Kol, but she shut her mouth with an audible click and turned towards the door. She grabbed one of the several coats hung on the rack close to the door and shrugged it on then opened the door carefully and slid outside after creating the narrowest possible gap she could get through.

The music was clearer out in the night, the song starting to take shape. Bonnie shoved her feet in one of the many pairs of muddy boots sitting just outside the door and began walking in the direction of the sound.

Seventy feet away from the house Bonnie was almost positive she could make out the sound of a cacophony of trumpets. Two hundred feet away she had reached the gate leading out to main road to New Orleans and stepped out onto the dirt road. The wind whipped all around her, hair blowing across her face and coat and chemise flapping hard against her leg as she took one last look at the house, a tiny pang going through her at the idea of Kol waking up to an empty house again, before she shoved it down and began walking.

She didn't know how far she walked before the piano became audible, somehow sounding mournful despite the relative cheer of the song. From what she could hear, it was a bombastic, sweeping number, like the ones they used to play at the beginning of old movies, and it was coming from New Orleans.

Maybe Kol wasn't alone here. It would be impossible for anyone normal to make this much noise, but as far as Bonnie could tell, no one who got trapped in a prison world was normal. A clever spell could easily get all the instruments going at once, or even create the song out of nothing. If it was a witch, or another vampire, or even a werewolf, they might have information Kol and Bonnie didn't.

There was a noise, under the music. A muttering, endless noise that sounded so familiar but was impossible to place. The road was narrow but straight and Bonnie closed her eyes as she walked, placing one foot directly in front of the other and concentrating as hard as she could. Almost subconsciously she began walking to the rhythm of the music and a smile crossed her face. It was creepy as hell – ghost music – but it was sound that she hadn't heard in nearly a year and it was beautiful. In two worlds of unending sameness, Bonnie had forgotten beauty.

The music took a sudden, dramatic turn after what was probably a mile, the sound become darker and angrier. It was almost clear now, and when she opened her eyes she could make out a very dim glow coming from the direction of the city, almost as if someone had gone through and lit the street lamps.

And then the glow, the trees, the sky all disappeared, taken up by Kol suddenly filling the space in front of her, his expression as black as night. Bonnie's heart leapt into her throat and she stumbled to a stop in front of him. "What…?"

"You weren't there," Kol said, his voice dangerously even. "I couldn't hear you."

Bonnie opened and closed her mouth several times, then straightened her shoulders, gesturing beyond him. "Did you know about this?"

His gaze went to the side as he listened to the music for a few seconds. Then he closed them, breathed in, and hummed the next few bars perfectly.

He was too much of a coward to say it out loud. Bonnie seethed. "You knew about this and you didn't tell me?"

"I know what it is, and it isn't important," Kol responded, still in a too-perfect calm tone.

"Oh, really?" Bonnie fumed. "You know? Well, explain it to me, Kol, what it is?"

Kol stepped closer to her. "Not. Important."

"What the hell? There's music coming from nothing, there are lights from nowhere. Is someone else here?"

Kol's jaw tensed so hard she could hear his teeth grind from where she stood. The music filled the silence between them for nearly a minute as he stood there, unresponsive, and she stared back, not willing to back down on this.

"No," he finally said.

Bonnie released a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "So what's making the noise? The light? You didn't tell me! This is magic, and you didn't tell me!"

"It doesn't concern you," Kol bit out. Something in Bonnie snapped and her hand came up in a fist before landing solidly across his jaw. His head snapped to the side and Bonnie stepped away from him, holding her now pounding hand and suddenly panting.

Then, he began laughing, so loud it drowned out the music which was clearly reaching its crescendo. "All that magic," he said, working his jaw with his hand. "All that power, and you punch me." His laugh devolved in sad, semi-hysterical giggles and Bonnie looked away when she saw his shoulders shake.

"Oh, I'm sorry, love," he finally said, wiping at his eyes. "You're just so pathetic it curves straight around being sad and slingshots into funny. I didn't tell you? What could you do? You can't even control a simple incendia spell."

He was good, but Kai had been better, and Silas could outplay either of them without breaking a sweat. "Don't turn this around on me, and don't think I forgot how you nearly dragged me out of New Orleans that first night. You're scared? I don't know why and I don't care. I want to go home, and you are in my way."

Kol's smile gave way to something murderous. "I am not afraid. Certainly not of you. We are turning around and going home, and I'll take you to the Treme haven tomorrow."

"You'll take me now," Bonnie refuted, willing herself to stay calm despite the goosebumps rising on her skin from the sheer proximity of an Original's fury. "And on the way we can check out a light show. You're not scared? Prove it."

Kol sneered and then there was a familiar whooshing sound and Bonnie was suddenly flying across the earth, held tightly to Kol's chest.

"MOTUS!" she screamed, and the next moment she was sailing through the air before gravity remembered her. She hit the dirt hard, skidding along the rocks for several feet before coming to a stop flat on her back, staring up at the stars.

Dazed, she just lay there for several seconds, but soon the adrenaline began tingling in her arms and legs and she was rolling to her back, then up to her feet, then taking off at a run towards the light of New Orleans. She had no idea how far she had flung Kol and wasn't stopping to find out.

She had only made it about thirty feet before she felt arms around her waist and Kol pulled her to a stop, pulling her back sharply to him. "You're bleeding," he snarled in her ear, his voice such a low growl she could feel it down her spine.

"Come on," she said. No, she was begging, she realize with dismay. "Come on. You can't stop me. You know you can't stop me. Come on, Kol, this could be it, I could go home, please."

Kol shook her roughly. "This isn't it, I'm telling you."

"You don't know that!" Bonnie shouted. "You didn't even know where you were before I got here, how can you be sure?"

Kol fell silent, his arms loosening slightly around her but still locking her firmly in place. And to her sudden horror, all Bonnie could hear was her own labored breathing. The light was still there, though significantly dimmer than before, but the silence was back to claim her again. She sagged in his arms. She could feel Kol shake his head, his sigh against her neck. She was so scared, and so tired of being so scared.

"It's something better left here, Bonnie," Kol whispered. "In the dark, with the ghosts and the dark. I can't take it with me. I cannot carry it."

Bonnie closed her eyes, smiled grimly, and placed her hands over his, holding them tight before superheating them so fast she could already feel the blisters forming on his skin when Kol pulled away with a yell.

She turned to him, still smiling an odd, bizarre smile that didn't feel right on her face. "It's a good thing you've got me, then."

Kol looked up from his already healing hands to her. "You could kill me," she continued. "Snap my neck right now, and you'll never see it again, whatever it is. But my pet theory isn't wrong. This is a curse, Kol, and it was put in place to torture you. The best kind of torture-" she took a deep breath, remembering coming to in 1994 and how finding Kai's message hurt even more than the stab wound. "-is the kind that isn't visible. You kill me and you'll be so broken within a year you won't remember your sister's face." Kol flinched hard at that, so hard she almost felt guilty.

"I wasn't going to kill you," Kol said, which was not the protestation she was expecting. "I would never kill you."

"Then you'll help me? This could be it. A clue. Something."

He balked at that, his face so lost and scared and for a moment Bonnie wondered how old he had been when his father killed him and he next woke up a monster. Then it was gone, the thousand year old Original back in place, as Kol looked beyond her. "I am a Mikaelson. I do not suffer slights lightly. I'm going to make somebody pay for this."

"I'll take that as a yes," Bonnie said, then made to turn on her heel. Kol surged forward, grabbing at her elbow.

"Hang on, love. You're in a bloody nightgown."

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "No one's here to care about propriety."

"No, I mean a literal bloody nightgown. You scraped yourself up pretty bad, and I'm dead tired. Honestly," he promised at her skeptical look. "The music and lights are gone. We both rest up tonight, I'll take you into town tomorrow. We'll hit the Treme haven and then stay the night. September 28, 1821. It wasn't the whole day, love. It was just the night."

Bonnie wrenched her elbow out of his grasp. "I already walked this whole way, Kol, I'm not turning around."

"Er, actually…" Kol muttered, then pointed to his right. Bonnie followed his direction and then gasped. They were right outside the gate of the Beauchante mansion. She turned back, still open-mouthed, to Kol's smug grin. "Well, I am the fastest Original. One thousand years, never lost a race. Well, except for that one time Bex booby-trapped the woods. You do not want to fall into a spike pit going 200 kilometers an hour."

"If you're lying," Bonnie said loudly, cutting into his story before he could get carried away. He had done it again, switched on a dime and leaving her reeling. "I will-"

"Oh, save the high school threats, love," Kol said, walking over to wrench the gate open then gesturing with a grimacing smile. "We both know you can't live without me, either."

It wasn't a promise, but Bonnie trusted those even less than she did Kol. And the cuts on her legs were starting to burn with a worrying intensity. So she took one last look at the dying light of New Orleans, then headed back to the house, Kol on her heels.