Hi, sorry I'm late. I actually really like this chapter. I hope you do too. But I think I might have to change the genre with how creepy its getting. (I watched the Darach season of Teen Wolf while writing this, which probably explains it. You can insert the evil choir anytime you want, I swear it fits.)

Songs for this one are "The Devil Within" by Digital Daggers and "Who Are You, Really?" by Mikky Ekko.

Chapter 8: I'm The Heavy Burden That You Can't Bear

By the end of it all, Bonnie was too tired to even be particularly horrified she might be trapped in an Expression-created prison world. She wanted away from the bodies and away from the vampire that killed them. Kol led her silently to a large house on the far end of town that she guessed was the Mikaelson mansion and showed her to what seemed to be one of the thousands of guest rooms.

"No clever name?" she teased, but her voice came out flat and hoarse. Kol winced through his shrug.

"The Bennett Boudoir," he offered, voice equally dead. "I'll see you in the morning, sweetheart."

She flinched at the pet name, though she had never done that before, and fell asleep still flinching at every noise she heard.

Kol was not there to wake her up in the morning, but she could hear the distant sound of glass hitting glass. She took her time going downstairs, tracing her hand along the walls. There were pictures every couple of feet, some paintings of New Orleans life, some of Viking ships rolling in the sea. One of a young boy who bore enough of a resemblance to Kol and Elijah that she knew was probably poor dead Henrik.

There were engravings. Rebekah's barely collected smile there, Klaus' brooding forehead here. One of Kol balanced precariously on top of a horse with his arms out and a certain blurriness to his smiling black and white face that suggested he was laughing, and had been for quite some time. She stared at that one for a long time. He looked so young and so happy and she wondered if she was looking at the last time he felt like that.

Kol was in the wide, galley kitchen when she finally found him, clanging around pots and pans, putting eggs and bacon on a plate. "I hope you're hungry. I just remembered I'm allergic to eggs."

Bonnie sat down at the table placed in the corner of the room, nonplussed. "You're a vampire."

"Yes," Kol agreed. "But when you spend fair amount of your childhood in what you now call…what is it, anaphylactic shock?...because your siblings keep feeding their egg-based disasters into your mouth every few month, you develop a very deep aversion to the wicked things."

Bonnie was suddenly very grateful she'd never had siblings. "Your siblings suck."

That earned a bark of laughter from Kol. "Very true, but in this case, they were young and didn't know what it was that was harming me. Rebekah, in particular, thought I was faking it to insult her cooking. Which I would've done, it was horrid stuff." He came to the table with a plate piled high with eggs and bacon and a platter of bread and butter he placed between them. "My father, however, wasn't very keen on his son being laid low by something so mundane as food. Once we had figured out the problem he developed this maddening habit of sitting me down once a week and forcing me to eat an entire plate of eggs. Not even cooked."

Bonnie, fork halfway to her mouth, stopped and stared at him in horror, but he just smirked and waved it off. "Finn was always waiting in the wings. Once I was coughing and wheezing on the floor enough to properly disgust Mikael my brother would swoop in and lay his hand on my chest, healing me. He so loved being the hero. I think that's where Elijah must've gotten it from, for he certainly didn't get it from our parents."

Bonnie didn't what to say, to any of it. She stared at the eggs on her fork dubiously but in the end was too hungry to resist. Kol stayed simple with butter on toast, and they ate the rest of their meal in silence.

"Do you have anything I can change into?" Bonnie asked him as he collected their plates and dumped them in the sink. "I don't really want to stay in these." The horror of the past day had seemed to creep into her clothes. She could smell the copper tang of her blood and the rot of the corpses on her.

"Nothing that would fit you," Kol said. "Except for Bekah's things, and all she had were dresses."

Bonnie would bet that Rebekah probably had enough clothing in this house to fill an entire room. There had to be something there she could manage in, even if it meant running around in a dress. "That's fine."

Kol raised an eyebrow but otherwise remained unruffled as he led her upstairs to a separate side of the house. There was a long hall, scattered with Klaus' drawings and various articles of clothing. More than one violin, the strings cut or the wood splintered. A goblet of blood, still fresh, on a side table that Kol scooped up and swallowed the contents of in one gulp.

"Nik told me this was Bekah's," Kol said, stopping in front of a door. "You're more than welcome to any of her belongings. In fact, please do. Take joy, as I do, that somewhere far away in time and space, my sister has suddenly grown inexplicably furious. I'll be across the hall, ripping up Niklaus' gauche paintings."

He sauntered off to do just that and Bonnie entered Rebekah Mikaelson's cold room. According to what Kol had told her, by 1821 it had been abandoned for more than a year, and the absence was felt. Dust had gathered everywhere. The bedclothes were still unmade from the last time Rebekah had crawled out from underneath them.

Bonnie found four dresses folded carefully into a trunk at the foot of the bed, all silk and satin and far too nice to wear running around New Orleans. Rebekah probably would've done so anyway; Bonnie could remember the Original kicking ass thoroughly in four inch heels. In the wardrobe she found more of what she was looking for: thin muslin dresses made for more casual wearing. She picked the thickest she could find, a blue that was probably beautiful on Rebekah but a little too light for her skin tone, and a new shift, and quickly changed. The dress was very fitted around the bust but luckily Bonnie was smaller than Rebekah all-around, so she didn't feel too constrained. She kept the boots but gave in and pulled on some stockings, lacing the tops tightly enough so there was no danger of them falling down.

She tried taking a step to go round up Kol and nearly tripped on the hem, stumbling ungracefully onto one of the chairs Rebekah had laid out in a miniature seating area. Cursing, she tugged the dress off again and pulled out her knife. The original plan was to only take off as much as she needed to walk comfortably, but by the end of Bonnie's hack job the dress fell to just above her knees. She grabbed a coat, longer than the dress now, and shoved the knife, the Cure, and the pocket watch into the pockets.

Kol laughed when she found him in Klaus' room, stabbing at paintings with a sword. "Oh, I am definitely telling Bex about this. Her head will explode."

"I'm sure her apparent past addiction to ruffles is more than enough shame to bear," Bonnie answered, fingering said eyesores that ran along the sleeves and bust. Kol merely smiled, watching her like he was amazed she was here. Where else was she to go now?

Bonnie dropped her hand. "We need to go back to the theatre."

The smile was wiped from Kol's face instantly. "Why?"

"Because if it was Expression, it would leave a mark. There's a reason why the corpses are still there when nothing else is, Kol."

"It's not Expression," Kol argued. "It can't be. Your past experience has made just made you paranoid. I killed twenty people-" Here Bonnie flinched hard and his speech slightly stumbled. "-and the fact that twelve ended up on stage is just a coincidence."

"And that will be super awesome if it turns out to be true. But we don't know. At the very least we need to examine the bodies, see if we can find a clue."

Kol's mouth set in a stubborn line and he turned back to Klaus' painting, slashing a neat line from one end to the other.

"Kol," she said, irritated. "What's the first rule of magic?"

"There must always be a balance," Kol intoned dully.

"Right. If there's an entrance, there's an exit. If there's a lock, there's a key. If there's a hole, then there's a ladder. We just have to find it."

"The Ascendant? If there even is one," Kol added darkly. Bonnie shook her head.

"I told you, this isn't like the Gemini spell-"

"And I've been wondering about that," Kol said, turning to her and swinging the sword around with a flourish. Bonnie eyed it warily, the keen look on Kol's face making her nervous. Her trepidation did not go unnoticed and Kol smirked, sauntering forward while still swinging the sword in lazy circles. Bonnie fought hard not to back up. "You have all this knowledge of the Gemini spell, and yet you yourself knew hardly anything about the Gemini Coven. And since the Geminis have no reason to harm a Bennett witch, nor would they throw a Bennett witch into a world in which her blood is the key to getting back out, and despite what you've said I seriously doubt Damon Salvatore did anything worth attracting the attention of the oldest coven on Earth, I have to wonder about how either of you got there, and how either of you knew to get out." By the time he was finished talking, the point of the sword was resting at her breastbone. Bonnie inhaled and felt the edge, razor sharp, pressing into her skin.

"You're scaring me," she accused, eyes blazing.

Kol's smirked only widened. "You know I'd never hurt you. It's not me you're scared of, love."

Kai's face swam in front of her suddenly and her arm flew out. The sword flew from Kol's grasp and was buried deep in the far wall in the next moment. Kol and his smirk were unmoved. "What is wrong with you?" she snapped at him.

"An answer for an answer, darling," he sang.

"We fell in," Bonnie bit out. "It was an accident. Then we figured a way out."

"How? Gemini Covens don't have grimoires and besides, you wouldn't even begin knowing where to look," Kol pointed out, voice gratingly calm and logical.

Bonnie felt the insane urge to stamp her foot. "You-" Then she realized what he was doing and gasp on a hysterical laugh. "You're just trying to distract me. Because, once again, the big bad Original vampire is a complete coward. Scared of a few bodies, Kol?"

"Insulting me won't work this time," Kol snarled testily. The two glared at each other for a long moment, neither willing to back down, and then Kol looked away, towards the mid-morning sun shining bright through the window. "I told you that some things were better left in the dark and you made me drag them into the light anyways. Magic is balance, Bonnie, and we are magic. Your shadows are mine as much as mine are yours."

I cannot carry it, Kol had said, and she had promised to help him. She didn't trust Kol to help her carry Kai's memory; there was no one strong enough in the whole entire world to bear the brunt of Kai. When he had drained her, her mind chased her magic as it escaped into him, trying to reclaim it, and she had seen. Kai was an endless darkness that years of loneliness and emptiness had given weight and form to, and she could still feeling the impressions of it lining her every cell, pressing her down into the earth every time she thought his name. If she talked about him, that would mean that Kai actually happened to her. He wasn't a nightmare and the pain that she had been pushing down would have to be felt.

Kol was watching her carefully, head tilted and eyes wondering and curious. "What is it like – to go through life terrified?"

"You'd know better than I do," Bonnie shot back. After last night, there wasn't even a drop of remorse within her to regret what she said. But Kol merely smiled sadly and nodded.

"I do," he admitted quietly. "Quite the exhausting ordeal, is it not?"

She was tired. She wanted to go home and sleep for years, no nightmares, just happy dreams of family and friends and safety. She couldn't let Kai haunt her like this. She had to stop giving other people, other forces, that kind of control. The fact that doing this seemed to be so hard made her a little disgusted with herself.

"I'll make you a deal," she told Kol. "You come with me to the theater, and I'll tell you about the Prison World." She stuck her hand out and tilted her head expectantly, her expression brooking no negotiation.

Kol regarded her for a moment, thinking it over, then his hand grasped her. "A deal, then. I look forward to hearing what will in the end most likely be a horribly dull story."

Kol brought along a book for the walk to the theater and on the way had her lift it in the air, sometimes high in the air and sometimes as low to the ground as she could manage. More than once she magically hurled it into parts of his body when his teasing grew too much. They reached the theatre in short order and she levitated the book into her hand in short order.

The corpses were still there, not that she expected them to disappear. Kol's jaunty walk slowed somewhat when he reached the first body, the woman in blue and green, and he stepped over her carefully.

"Do you regret it?" she asked him, pressing the book to her chest like a shield as she followed over the body.

"No," Kol said, inspecting the man with his throat slashed out, sprawled over three seats in Row Four.

Bonnie had expected as much. "Did you know them?"

"No. Random choice," Kol elaborated. "Well, not truly. If they looked particularly happy I was more inclined to choose them. But then again, a few of them were homeless, starving, might have even wanted to die."

"That should've been their choice," Bonnie said adamantly.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Kol said amenably. "It is the greatest gift in the world, to choose one's death. Few are so lucky." She could almost see his father running him through in the shadows behind his eyes. Then they cleared and he turned to her. "What you're holding actually contains quite a few spells of revelation. I can't sense any magic here, and neither can you, but something in there should be able to sort anything out."

Bonnie looked at the book in her hands, reading the title out loud dubiously. "Tales of the Asylum?"

Kol hummed, rifling through the pockets of Row Four Man. "The witches' private joke. Anyone caught with anything remotely like a grimoire back then would've been shipped off to the lunatic asylums – and that was in a best case scenario, mind you. They disguised the spells inside other books. Go on, take a look." Finding nothing, he climbed the stairs to the stage one at a time and began examining the bodies.

Bonnie walked to the edge of the stage, placing the book down, and began flipping through the pages. There was nothing at first, just horrifying 1800s science, until she got to page 94.

You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done. What am I?

It was repeated, over and over again, all over that page and the one next to it. She blinked hard, leaning back from the book, and turned to the next page.

You throw me out when you use me

And the next.

And take me in when you are done

Another. Another.

What am I?

Bonnie's breath came quicker and quicker the faster she flipped through the pages, a sob somewhere in her throat. This couldn't be right.

You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done what am I? You take me in you throw me out what am I? Am I done when you take me in what am I? When you are done you throw me out what am I? When you use me what am I?

She closed her eyes, squeezed them hard, and turned the page. She could hear her breath hitch in her lungs as she opened them.

WHAT ARE YOU?

The words were large and red and glistening on the page. The taste of blood filled Bonnie's mouth and she screamed just to get it out, sending the book flying away from her with a frenzied thought.

Kol was at her side in a moment, pulling her around by the shoulders just as she clapped a hand on her mouth to stifle her scream and the sob it ended on. "What is it?" he asked desperately. "Bonnie, what happened?"

She lowered her hand. Kol watched how it shook. "The book…I…" The vampire blurred away and she turned to see him with the book in hand, flipping through the pages with a confused expression.

"I don't understand, love," he said, looking up at her. "It's all…it's what I told you."

"But I saw-!" Bonnie burst out, then clamped her mouth shut, eyes wide and burning. Oh God, she was going insane. "I saw – it said –"

Kol's brow furrowed and he looked through the book again. Then, slowly, he brought to her, crouched down, and showed her a page. It was completely normal except for a random burst of French in the middle of the page that must have been the spell. Bonnie took a stumbling step back and shut her eyes.

"What did it say, Bonnie?" Kol's voice came. She shook her head, digging the base of her palms into the hollows of her eyes. "What did it say?"

"'You throw me out when you use me,'" Bonnie said shakily. "'And take me in when you are done. What am I?'"

She heard Kol rifle through the pages one last time then the thud of him setting the book down. "A riddle?"

She nodded, the rush of her heartbeat finally started to quiet in her ears. "Over and over. Oh, God, oh God." Kol tried to saw something and she lowered her hands, shaking them hard. "What is happening to me?"

"Maybe the book had a safeguard. Maybe there is magic here and its messing with your own. Or maybe after a year of this, psychosis has finally taken hold." For that last bit he earned her fiercest glare and he grinned. "You're right. The psychosis has had you for years."

"Kol-"

"This world," Kol cut in, grabbing her wrists to still her. "Is one hundred percent certifiably bonkers. There is a flagon of blood that refills itself everyday so I don't starve. You're fine."

"I'm not," Bonnie insisted, but his words did calm her slightly. She took a few deep breaths and pulled on Kol's grip which he immediately released. "Do you know the answer to it? The riddle?"

"Not off hand, but I'm sure I'll think of it. At some point. I am terrible at riddles."

She didn't know either, but she loved word games. She was sure she would figure it out. Bonnie's nerves began to untangle from each other and she looked around, wanting to get away from her temporary insanity as fast as she could. "Did you find anything?"

"Didn't finish looking. Care to try that spell?" Kol asked, holding the book up. Bonnie gazed at it nervously.

"In a minute."

Kol sighed, hanging his head. "Bonnie, love, you can't –"

"I said in a minute, Kol," she said loudly, voice still trembling but firm. Kol stared at her for a long moment then nodded and stood, loping off to one of the bodies. Bonnie glared at the book, racking her brain to think of any revealing spells she might know on her own.

There was one, though she doubted it would work. Still, it was better than cracking open the Book of Bedlam. She turned so she could observe most of the theater. "Phasmatos Oculacs."

As she expected, nothing happened. The spell was designed to reveal magical objects, not spells themselves. She sighed resignedly, starting to turn back to the book, when she noticed something glittering at poor broken Ophelia's throat that hadn't been there before. She gingerly stepped closer, reaching a hand to the silver chain that was far too fine for the dirty neck in hung from. It burned where she touched in and she withdrew her hand with a hiss.

"Something wrong?" Kol asked from far upstage.

"There's a…" Bonnie steeled herself and reached forward again, tugging at the chain until the entirety of it was pulled free from Ophelia's dress and hair. "It was cloaked. It burns."

"It burns?" Kol asked incredulously, suddenly right beside her. Bonnie dropped the exposed necklace onto Ophelia's hideously crooked torso and stared at the pendant revealed.

It was two curved bars of silver hanging from a third, straighter bar. "What is that?" The girl probably could've sold this anytime she wanted and bought herself food for a month. "Why was it cloaked? You said they were all human."

"They were," Kol said. His voice sounded oddly hoarse and she looked to find a very shaken Original. "She didn't cloak it. This is the…this is the sign of the Kindred. This girl was under their protection."

"You mentioned them before. Said I could raise an army of the dead with their powers."

"Very powerful necromancers," Kol said quietly, hand reaching over to the necklace.

"Necromancers?" Bonnie said, alarmed. The corpses. The spell had left behind the corpses. "Kol, we should-"

"This cannot be," he was muttering, and then his hand closed over the pendant.

There was a moment of silence where Bonnie thought that perhaps she had overreacted and then came the most terrible noise. Bone scratching on bone as Ophelia's broken neck rotated until her dead eyes gazed lifelessly at Kol.

Bonnie was frozen in horror as the dead girl's mouth opened slowly and a voice that could not be hers began to speak. "Aven…sa fuis…sa belise…de la mer..."

"What is that?" Bonnie gasped, prying Kol's fingers off the necklace. Ophelia's hands scrabbled against the seat as her arms hefted her mangled torso up. Her head fell sickeningly to the side but her eyes remained on Kol.

The witch and vampire stumbled backwards as Ophelia stepped forward, broken legs bones grinding horribly. "Aven sa fuis…sa belise…de la mer…"

The voice was not alone this time. Bonnie turned to find Row Four Man rising from his sprawl, holding his throat together. The woman in blue and green sitting up, her front covered in so much blood the dress had turned black.

"Aven sa fuis sa belise…de la mer…"

Up on stage Horatio's body clambered to his feet while his rotting head on the floor spoke the words. Polonius with no care to his exposed intestines. Claudius, his skin unnaturally red from the poison he had drunk.

In their shock they allowed Ophelia too close and her hand wrapped in the fabric of Kol's coat. He stared down at it as if he couldn't recognize what it was. Impossible malevolence entered those cold dead eyes as her grip grew tighter.

"MOTUS!" Bonnie screamed. Ophelia flew backwards, bones finally breaking through flesh when she landed amongst the chairs, but still her chant continued.

"It's a boundary spell," Kol said, broken out of his trance, pulling Bonnie close. The voice was legion now, the twenty corpses like an unholy choir. "We have to-"

He tugged Bonnie up and ran full speed. He didn't even bother with the doors, breaking through them and skidding to a halt on the street, holding onto her tight. The chanting grew in force and in number, louder and louder, until it stopped.

"What?" Bonnie asked softly, stupidly. "What?" Kol placed her on her feet and walked towards the door, only to be stopped by an invisible force. "Were they trying to trap us in there?"

"No," Kol said, voice equally hushed. He looked back at Bonnie and the world lurched horribly at the terror in his eyes. "I think it was to keep us out."

They started gathering at the boarding house around three o'clock. Not just Matt and Caroline and Damon, but everyone.

Kai sat on the dining room table, legs crossed, watching them all mill about. Damon and Stefan talking intensely, Elena giving Matt and Caroline a message for Bonnie when they found her. His two sisters group with their boyfriends as Josette went over the spell for the thousandth time, making sure the strength of doing it wouldn't kill her last two siblings.

Kai was content to stare at the lighter in his hand, flicking it on and off and thinking of Bonnie. He had bought a bunch of dollar lighters from the store last night and had already gone through one or two trying to catch another glimpse, but he hadn't seen anything. Maybe it was the prison world interfering, or maybe it was just that he wasn't using a candle. Or maybe Bonnie was dead. He preferred the first two options.

The voices faded to the background as he zeroed in on the flame. He didn't even need to say the words anymore. But he was met with the same darkness as before. He released the igniter and stuffed the lighter back in his pocket, looking up to see Josie's careful gaze.

Kai half-smiled and pushed off the table, sauntering over to where she stood. "Still nervous, Sissy?"

"Why would I be?" Jo asked, probably rhetorically from the expression on her face. "The last time you went to the prison world you came back trying to kill me."

"The last time I went to the prison world you helped throw me in there," Kai shot back. "That victim card can only be played for so many hands, Josette." His sister's face twisted in shock and anger. Eighteen years of being the good twin to his bad had prepared his sister well for a life of martyrdom, he saw. No wonder she fit in so well with this bunch.

"What time do you wanna start?" Liv cut in loudly before Jo could say something back. Kai slowly tore his gaze from Josette, thinking it over.

"I was going to wait until sundown but it's not really necessary. We can go whenever everyone is ready."

"I'm ready!" Caroline Forbes chirped from where she stood by Stefan. "The sooner we save Bonnie the better." Matt nodded on her other side.

"Sooner's fine with me."

They all turned to Damon, who, true to form, had a glass of whiskey in his hand. Under the weight of their eyes he grimaced, tossed back the rest of the drink, and placed the glass heavily on the table. "Let's get this show on the road."

"Awesome," Kai said, excitement and the odd nervousness filling him up. He grabbed Liv's hand blindly and pulled her along with him as he walked towards the center of the room. Matt and Caroline gave Stefan a fist bump and a kiss on the cheek, respectively, while Elena received two giant bear hugs from both before they came to join him. Tyler wandered over with Liv to wish them both well. His hand was tight on Matt's shoulder when he gripped it but the other boy didn't seem to mind. Damon swooped down on Elena, kissing her fiercely before releasing her and hugging his brother, clapping him on the back, then came to stand on Matt's other side.

"Kai," a voice said softly, and he turned to see both of sisters watching him, their faces serious. Josette stepped forward. "You be careful, okay?"

"Be good," Liv added, grinning slightly. Jo's mouth quirked a little as well as she took his free hand.

"They're depending on you. And so is Bonnie. You have to be – better, alright? Just be better, Malachai."

"Jo-" he started, annoyed, then clamped his mouth, her words sinking in. When he looked around the room he could see the anxiety and worry in the lines of the faces they were leaving behind. And they were all counting on him to not only bring these people back, but Bonnie as well. He didn't much care for any of these people, but if someone was carting off one of his sisters to some prison hell dimension he'd want them to be the best man possible for the job.

Instead these guys got him. Life was a bitch. He squeezed Josette's hand in his and tried to smile for her. "I'll try, Sissy."

She smiled back softly and then her face hardened, her voice slipping into teacher-mode. "And if you end up staying longer than three days, find some way to tell us, do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Kai said sarcastically. She rolled her eyes, released his hand, and stepped back into Alaric's waiting arms. He turned to Liv, freeing the hand he still had wrapped around one of hers. "Alright. Rule number one: you absolutely cannot touch me at any point during the spell." Liv nodded smartly. "Rule number two: you absolutely do not stop chanting until we are completely gone. Easy even for you, right Livvy?"

"Don't be an ass," Liv retorted. "I've got like, eighteen years of practice on you." Kai merely answered that with a sardonic smile and turned back to the others. He tugged the very mangled Ascendant that he had been spending his nights repairing out of his pocket and held it in front of him, pulling out a small vial in the other.

"What is that?" Matt asked, dismayed, staring at the ruby red liquid inside.

"Bennett blood," Damon answered. "Remind me to send Lucy a Thank You card, by the way," he directed at Stefan and Elena, who smiled tightly.

"Hands, everyone," he cajoled. Damon was the only one to really understand, placing the tips of his finger on the Ascendant, and Matt and Caroline soon followed suit. Kai dug a finger through the plastic film at the top of the vial until it broke then dumped the blood on the Ascendant. "Liv, with me. Sangima Mearma, Et Mos Mundo, Carcerima."

He had already told Liv the spell, so she picked it up quickly, and their chanting filled the room as the air around the four grew lighter and brighter, until all Kai could see was white. There was the familiar sensation of be tugged upwards violently and then four sets of feet landed roughly on the hardwood floor of the 1994 boarding house.

Kai opened his eyes. Damon seemed completely unfazed but both Matt and Caroline were looking around in wonder.

"Seriously?" Caroline asked suddenly, gesturing wildly at the room around them. "This is the same furniture!"

"Your grasp of the obvious is inspiring," Damon said snarkily. "We need a plan."

"Someone should go to Bonnie's," Matt offered. "See if she's been there recently. Care can do that in like five minutes."

"I can," Caroline said, preening. She looked around at the boys, seeing the agreement on their faces, and nodded. "And I will." Then she blurred and disappeared.

"Check out the cave," Kai told Damon. "If there's any evidence that she actually did the spell, it'll be there." The vampire looked like he would dearly love to argue but sped off anyway, leaving just Matt and Kai.

The blond boy looked at him uncomfortably. "I don't have super speed or strength or anything-"

"No, but you do seem like excellent moral support," Kai said teasingly. "So you're going to help me perform every locator spell that I know and keep me from killing myself."

"Alright. Can do. What do we need?"

The two boys wandered around the house, gathering up the objects they needed, until they reached Bonnie's bedroom. "We just need something personal of hers. I used her grimoire before, but the spell didn't work, so we'll try something else," Kai told Matt, keeping his voice hushed for reasons even he didn't know. But Matt just nodded quietly and pushed the door open.

It was the same as Kai had seen it before, dusty and abandoned. It still smelled very faintly of the lotion Kai could remember Bonnie slathering herself in, a kind of clean lemony tint to the air. Matt picked up the tube where it lay on her vanity and chuckled gruffly.

"You know she's used this stuff since she was like, eight?" he said to Kai, waving the tube. "I think it was embedded in her skin after about four years. We were lifeguards together, and I could never get the smell of chlorine out of my hair, but Bonnie always smelled like this." The blond popped open the lid, sniffing lightly at the air. When he set the tube down, his hand was shaking. Kai turned away.

"I should've told Caroline to pick something up," he thought out loud.

"We can always send her back. Caro likes to be busy."

There wasn't much that was personal of Bonnie's in the room, nothing with a strong enough connection to make the spell foolproof – except for the lotion, but there was something inherently uncool about performing a locator spell passed down for generations with a bottle of processed chemicals.

Kai opened the drawer of her bedside table, rifling through the contents. Large and small candles, a pair of socks, and –

"Aha," he said softly, pulling the polaroid out. A family smiled out at him, mother and father and child. Complete and happy.

"Oh, wow," Matt said, having seen the picture. He came over and pulled it out of Kai's hands, staring at it. "I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Bon with her mom and dad together." On the bottom was written 'Bonnie, age sixteen mos.' "Will this work?"

"Let's hope so," Kai said, grinning slightly at the picture. It must've been easy with just three people. He remembered trying to squeeze in eight people, three of them below the age of ten, into numerous family photos. It had been a nightmare; the only thing that had kept him smiling was imagining murdering them all. But Bonnie was a cute baby, and her parents looked happy. He wondered what had happened to mess it all up. Well, not all of it. Bonnie was still pretty cute.

They trekked downstairs to find a pacing Caroline in front of the fire. "There's nothing there but about an inch of dust," she told them manically. "And it is so quiet I could scream. I have super hearing and I can't hear anything. Do you know how frustrating that is?"

"No," Kai said, completely deadpan. "I can't possibly imagine."

Caroline made a face at him and followed them when he walked to the large table set in front of the windows that he and Bonnie had done the locator spell for the Ascendant on. The map was still there, with the line of his blood that he cleansed with a wave of his hand.

"Attempt number one, then?" He asked the other two. Caroline perched on the other side of the desk, watching interestedly, while Matt stood beside him, eyes glued to the map.

Attempt number one was using a drop of Lucy's blood to find Bonnie on the map. "Phasmatos Tribum Nas Ex Veras, Sequita Saguines, Ementas Asten Mihan Ega Petous."

Kai held his breath as the drop wavered, then choked on it as the blood lifted off the map entirely, leaving no stain, and rose higher and higher into the air, reaching Kai's eye-level before bursting apart.

Tiny flecks of red liquid landed on the map, almost impossible to see. There was one right where they were in Mystic Falls, one in Nova Scotia, one in Portland, another in what looked like Manhatten, New York, and the last in coastal Louisiana. Kai stared at the map, wide-eyed and mouth open.

"What the hell?" Caroline finally asked. Matt leaned over and into Kai, looking closer at the map. "I've never seen a locator spell do that!"

"Neither have I," Kai said distantly. "That's…really weird."

"Really weird?" Matt repeated incredulously, straightening and looking at him. "That's all you got, Coven leader?"

Kai sneered at him, bumping him away with his shoulder. "Unclench, Donovan, I'm not done yet."

Attempt number two was one of the Gemini's own locator spells. He placed the Polaroid on the table, filled his hand with sand, and closed his eyes while he held it over the map. "Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem."

The magic worked through him, loosening his hand around the sand so it could fall on the map and hopefully track Bonnie's progress and destination. When the sand was completely gone, he opened his eyes.

The sand was running along the map from where he had loosed it, to five different points. Mystic Falls, Portland, Nova Scotia, New York, and Louisiana.

"These must mean something," Matt guessed. "Obviously she was in Mystic Falls, and we know she went to Nova Scotia."

"I took her to Portland," Kai added, gazing at the map.

"So what are the other two? That's New York, right? And this is what, New Orleans, maybe?" Caroline asked, head tilted over to read the map upside down. "Maybe she's at one of those places now?"

Kai stared at the map, a pit forming in his stomach. As much as he'd like Caroline to be right, if Bonnie was in one of those towns the line would've led them straight to there. Three of those places were ones she had visited in this Prison World and the others…

His gaze fell on the sand and blood covering New York. He heard the stories, but they were just that: stories, to make the Gemini Coven sound powerful to the other witches. Who would dare mess with a coven who had trapped a ripper and her followers in a hell dimension for all eternity? It was a ghost tale Joshua Parker had told him late at night to keep him in line, but Kai had never listened. If he had, maybe he wouldn't have ended up in here all those years. And maybe Dad had been telling the truth.

Maybe Bonnie wasn't dead. Maybe she was just lost.

"Bonnie was there!" Damon announced, suddenly very there in the room. The other three jumped slightly, having not even seen him blur in. Damon grinned, near maniacally, and held up an ancient camcorder. "And she left us a present."

Both Matt and Caroline looked a little puzzled at the contraption as Damon brought it over, flipping open the video screen. "I've been rewinding it the whole time over. We should be able to see everything that she did."

He placed it on the side of the table that Caroline was, facing them, and beckoned Matt and Kai over before sitting down in the only chair over there. Caroline rolled her eyes, zipped away, and was back in a flash with two stools from the kitchen, one for her and one she handed to Matt. She smiled sweetly at Kai and shrugged.

"You're very mature," he told her, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "I can see why Stefan likes you so much." The smile fell from Caroline's face and she whipped her head around to face the video screen.

Damon pressed play. For a long moment there was just static and black and then Bonnie's determined but pained face filled the screen. "It's day 278 inside this stupid prison world," she told them. Caroline's hand flew to cover her mouth as she heard her best friend's voice for the first time in nearly a year. On the other side, Matt inhaled sharply, leaning in closer to the screen. "I have two broken toes, nine blisters, and an ear infection, but I don't care."

Damon huffed out what might have been a laugh at that, and Kai couldn't quite fight a smile. Broken bones and infections were probably small potatoes compared to the other prices Bonnie had paid, but her determination was commendable.

"I have phesmato'd the crap out of this magic Canadian rock and-" Her smile lit up the screen. "I have my magic again." She started reached for something just out of sight and when the flicker of the decanter caused some lens flare Damon actually did laugh.

"That's my girl," he muttered.

"And when that eclipse hits 12:28, I'm going home." She poured herself a drink and toasted the camcorder. "You hear that, me? Home." She threw back the drink, picked up the camcorder, and the screen went dark for a few seconds.

"So it did work," Damon surmised. "Then what the hell happened?"

"You're one of those awful people who talk all through the movies, aren't you?" Kai asked. Damon craned his neck to glare at him and the screen flickered back to life, grabbing their attention again.

The view only showed the woods, swinging back and forth, and they could hear Bonnie's labored breathing. Then it cut out again and Bonnie was suddenly in the cave, looking at the camera again.

"This is it. I'm ready. And there's no one to stop me." Kai could see Caroline glance at him out of the corner of his eye and ignored her. He didn't stop Bonnie before. She was the one who refused to do the spell. "I have magic, and the Ascendant, and the eclipse." The camera suddenly jolted and Bonnie appeared to trip and they could hear a crashing sound in the background.

"What-?" Her voice came, and then "No, no, no."

The camcorder dropped to the ground, looking up at Bonnie, as she pulled out knife and sliced her palm. Above her the sky was alternating between night and day, the eclipse and what looked like the Northern Lights. Kai felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. They could only vaguely hear Bonnie chanting to herself, trying to concentrate. The sky stabilized on the eclipse and Bonnie looked up, her voice becoming impossibly softer.

Her head dropped down, her face clenched in concentration and pain. Every once in a while she seemed to jerk as if hit but an unseen force. When blood began to dribble out of her nose Kai lurched forward.

"That shouldn't be happening. None of that should be happening."

The sky darkened, the Lights appeared, and then it lightened again, the eclipse nearly past its apex. All of the sudden Bonnie sobbed and a light flooded the screen. When it dimmed, Bonnie was no longer there, and neither was the eclipse. It was dark and snowing, the Lights changing from blue to green in the sky.

"Oh my God," Caroline whispered. Damon held up a finger, edging closer to the screen, and then they all heard it. Footsteps, crunching in the snow. A shadow fell over the screen, and then a woman appeared. Tall and beautiful and familiar looking, dressed all in scarlet. She leaned in closer to the screen, clearly confused, and the features of her face became clear. Damon sat up, ramrod straight, as the woman reached for the camcorder. Just before she made contact she popped out of existence and they were left with a view of the fading eclipse.

The camcorder went dark and the four were left in silence, before Damon suddenly whirled. The next moment Kai was against a wall, a foot off the ground, with red eyes and canines an inch from his face.

"What the fuck was that?" Damon snarled, shaking Kai by his shirt. "That woman-"

"Damon!" Caroline shouted, rushing over to pull at his arm. Damon tried to throw her off but she just wrenched harder.

Kai could barely speak with the way the fabric of his shirt was bunching around his neck, but he didn't need to. He focused on Damon and watched with pleasure as the vampire's suddenly yelled in pain, dropping Kai to clutch his head.

Caroline turned to him next. "Kai, stop it!"

He did, after another ten seconds. Damon was on his knees by then. Matt, sensibly, had stayed back during the fight but now came to stand between them, opposite Caroline, the two blonds looking between both men in near unison.

"What was that, Kai?" Matt finally asked. "With the Borealis and the woman?"

Kai stared down at Damon, wondering what the vampire already knew. "There was a story the older Geminis liked to tell their kids – about a prison world they had made in 1903 to lock away a vampire gone mad."

"NO!" Damon shouted, shooting to his feet. "You're lying. That woman – that woman…" His voice trailed off and his eyes grew large and wide and sad. "She died. We buried her in the ground."

"I don't understand," Caroline said slowly. "You know her."

"She's my mother," Damon said. Kai sucked in a breath sharply. That bit hadn't been included in the stories. "And that – she's not –"

"Well, hey," Kai began. "At least now we know Stefan comes by it honestly." Damon stared at him dumbly and Kai sighed. "Your mom's a Ripper."

Damon fell back a step, hands flying up as if to stop the words from reaching him. Kai watched as the vampire crumpled in on himself, eyes becoming bright as flames. "No. No. I buried her, I – I know my mother. She wasn't a vampire."

"Damon, man," Matt said sympathetically. "She's on the tape." Damon's head snapped to him, glare fierce, but the human didn't back down, and maybe that was what made the truth finally sink in. Damon stumbled past them into the living room and to the couch. The other three followed him, crowding on the other couch as none were willing to sit with him.

"So that's what happened to Bonnie?" Caroline asked, when Damon didn't lift his head from his hands. "She's in that other world? How do we get there?"

"But she just disappeared," Matt pointed out. "If she'd gotten stuck there, why would she disappear like that."

"Well, the cave was similar but it wasn't the same," Kai said. "She might have gone to the 1903 equivalent of Mystic Falls." Still, he doubted his words even as he said them, glancing at the map on the table. New York was accounted for. But what about New Orleans?

But the 1903 world would explain the cold he had felt, and the fear. "All I have to do is find the 1903 Ascendant. Shouldn't be too hard."

They all glanced at Damon, waiting for his input, but the vampire still didn't speak. "Maybe we should sleep on this?" Matt suggested quietly. "You've done a lot of magic already and Damon-"

"Good plan," Caroline agreed readily. "We'll meet back here in the morning and decide when to jump over to 1903. Deal?"

It took a moment for Kai to get his mouth working. He saw the logic behind getting some rest, but he still felt like he was wasting time. "Deal."

Matt took one of the upstairs bedrooms while Caroline zipped off to her house. Damon picked up the entire decanter of scotch and made for the stairs, and Kai knew the vampire would be sleeping on his twin mattress stuffed in Bonnie's room tonight.

As for Kai, he pulled off his shoes, leaned back into the couch, and pulled out his lighter, flicking it on and thinking of Bonnie.

The whole city was watching them now.

At least, that's what it felt like. Bonnie had wanted to break the seal on the theater but Kol persuaded her not to, promising to take her to one of the Kindred hideouts. The entire walk there she had felt breath on the back of her neck, touches on her arms, whispers in her ear, and Kol didn't seem to fare much better, head constantly twisting this way and that.

"Can my secret wait?" she had asked him at some point, realizing she had a promise to keep. To her surprise, he merely nodded.

The necromancers, surprisingly, did not camp out in a cemetery. They did, however, occupy the bottom floor of Beauregard's Retreat. Bonnie stared up at the cheerful yellow house and wondered why she was so discomfited.

"It's an insane asylum, sweetheart," Kol told her softly.

Bonnie grimaced. "These are lovely people you pissed off, Kol. Really." Kol had no retort for that and she sighed. "Are we going in?"

It was a pleasant house, all light yellows and blues. Very calming, but she supposed that was the purpose. It had two living rooms and a positively massive kitchen.

"I'm checking the downstairs first. You are not to come down until I say it safe, understand?" Kol told her. She nodded and he zipped away.

Bonnie had never been very good at waiting around. She knew she should stay put and not touch anything, knew that Kol might actually murder her this time if she set something off, but her foot was already on the first step of the stairs before she could stop herself. She found herself on the second story landing in no time, magical barrier up and ready to hurt someone – something – if need be.

The second story was completely different from downstairs. Its walls were stark white and lined with scratches and gouges and smears of bodily fluids. The first door she opened led to a tiny room with bars on the window and shackles on the bed and she backed out quickly. It was all a lie. The warm and welcoming downstairs – how many had sent their loved ones here for help, fooled by first appearances.

The next three rooms were much the same, but the one after that had a much smaller bed, with a doll lying on it, and writing on every wall but one. It all seemed to be in French, and very broken French at that. Bonnie could make neither heads nor tails of what this poor girl had gone through, but some part of her wished that she didn't have to go through it for long.

The girl had only been big enough to write on the bottom four feet of the wall. Bonnie found countless bits of charcoal littering the floor and picked one up, staring at the blank expanse of white before her.

A faint buzzing filled her ears and her hand rose.

Another lighter sputtered out and Kai sighed, throwing it to the table. "C'mon, Bon Bon." He pulled out another and lit it, concentrating.

The charcoal grinded against the paint of the wall as Bonnie traced out the letters.

You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done. What am I?

Kai jerked back, his finger slipping off the igniter and the flame going dark. What was that? He had seen her hand, writing those words on a white wall, but why would Bonnie be writing out a riddle?

His brow furrowed as he tried to think of the answer. He had heard this one before. His finger lit up the lighter again and the flame consumed his entire vision.

You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done. What am I?

Bonnie's head ached tremendously, like something was pressing in on it. The riddle had to mean something, but she couldn't quite figure it out.

The pressure grew more intense and her hand spasmed around the charcoal. She knew this sensation. She had felt it before, chasing her magic into a deep and endless black pit of a mind better left alone.

Kai's eyes drifted closed, and picture grew more clear. He could almost feel the breath moving in and out of Bonnie's lungs. The riddle – he knew the answer.

Bonnie, let me in.

No, she thought fiercely, panic rising up in her. Kai couldn't haunt her anymore, she wouldn't let him. She was just going insane, that was all.

There was the incredible urge to fall. Her fingers trembled on the charcoal. She could have the answer if she just fell.

Well. Bonnie always had been terrible curious.

Her magic surged to meet his across time and space and Kai felt like he had been hit by a truck, but still he held on, focusing on the flame.

Bonnie fell for a very long time. And then, somebody caught her.

She came to consciousness quickly, still facing the wall. Her hand had dropped to her side and she stared at the new writing on the wall with dawning horror.

"Bonnie?" Kol called from downstairs. She heard him vamp speed and soon his was right beside her. "I am going to start handcuffing you to things. What-?"

She pointed silently to the wall.

You throw me out when you used me and take me in when you are done. What am I?

Scrawled beneath, in her own handwriting, was the answer:

YOU ARE AN ANCHOR.