Look, I got nothing other than inspiration for this totally left me and then suddenly came back. I am the worst. I know.

Songs for this chapter are Signs by Bloc Party and Wait by M83.

Chapter 9: In My Dreams I See You Again

Kol followed Bonnie as she slid down the wall on one knee, eyes still trained on the words written above her. "We need to leave, sweetheart," he told her, and his voice held just the tiniest tremor.

The heaviness had retreated from her head and she, foolishly, tried to chase it. Kai.

I know it was you.

I'd remember you anywhere.

"Bonnie."

"Kai," she whispered out loud. Her breath misted out in front of her. Her lips were numb. Everything was numb, and she was so scared. You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done.

Someone knew who – what – she used to be. There was something out there and it knew her.

"No, I'm Kol," the Original said, aiming for charming and almost succeeding. "Come on, love, take my hand and let's away, yes? This place isn't safe."

"Nowhere's safe."

"That is true," Kol admitted, hand brushing against one of her own, wrapped around the knees she drawn up to her chest. "But I imagine, on the sliding scale of vulnerability, with one being the warm embrace of your friends and family and ten being – I dunno, let's say the warm embrace of my friends and family – that being outside a witch haven is a least a point below being inside."

He was babbling, and the whole time he did so he carefully pried her fingers away from her knee and wrapped them around his own. Bonnie laughed shakily, gripping the pale digits tighter. "A four, maybe. Not so scary."

"For ones such as you and I, a four is a day in the park," Kol answered with a tight grin, and between the two of them they got her to her feet. Bonnie turned to look over her shoulder at the words written on the wall.

YOU ARE AN ANCHOR.

"I'm not anymore, though," she told Kol as they headed down the stairs. "I was, but my world – the other side – it disappeared."

"Very likely that sort of magic left an imprint on you. Perhaps that's why you're having so much trouble with your own – between the Expression, the ancestral witches, and Qetsiyah, you have quite a lot of scar tissue built up, little witch."

Bonnie's legs were still shaky, so she held onto his hand. Not that she was sure she'd be able to extricate herself from his tight grip if she tried. "Aren't are scars supposed to make us who we are?" She asked him semi-rhetorically. It wasn't just her lingering nerves making her shake, she realized; the house was freezing.

Quite literally. There was ice creeping up the banister when she reached to place a steadying hand on it. "Kol."

"I see, darling."

The wood was cracking and groaning from the cold by the time they reached the landing, ice creeping along the floor to the door, filling in the cracks and frosting over the windows. Kol wrenched at the slippery knob twice before giving in and kicking the door to splinters, leading her out.

She tore her hand from his to turn and face the house. The doorway quickly filled with a sheet of solid ice, an odd green cast to its sheen, and the windows glazed over. She could see handprints form and just as quickly fade away.

Slowly, the siding, the wood and brick, the porch, all glazed over with the same white-green shine, and a deadly cold filled her from where she stood not three feet away. She backed up quickly, into Kol's waiting grasp that pulled her even further away.

The entire house had turned into an ice sculpture in front of their eyes and she knew without him saying that there would be no getting back in. With one last skittering crawl of ice, the air grew silent.

They stared at it for a very long moment. "Well," she whispered. "We made somebody nervous."

"Nice change of pace," Kol replied in a mutter. "Let's go, sweetheart."

She turned to face him, caught for just a moment at the way the white-green shine of the ice turned his eyes nearly grey, and then a horrible scraping sound filled the air and Kol's eyes widened. She revolved on one heel neatly and put her hands out, ready to blast at whatever produced that sound, but froze as she realized what was causing it.

A long line was being carved in the ice that had filled the destroyed doorway, straight and steady and nearly three feet long. As she watched, two other lines joined it, both branching out from the bottom and angling downward, mirror images of each other. It looked almost like an upside down branch.

Kol sucked in a sharp breath and she looked back at him. "What is it?"

"It's a rune," he told her after a long moment. "Yr. Some people consider it the first letter of my name."

"Some people?"

"Well, I suppose if something was trying to scare me-" Kol laughed then, but it was hoarse and strained. "They wouldn't draw the more commonly used calc symbol. It means 'well-being.' Would feel a bit disingenuous, right?"

"And..." Bonnie glanced at the rune. "What does that mean?"

He grimaced and looked down at her, his eyes so very bright in the light. The word came out of him like he had fought it every inch of the way.

"Death."

"Kai, man, are you okay?"

Kai groaned loudly, cracking his eyes open to glimpse the world hanging at a sickening angle. His body was caught on the overstuffed cushions of the couch, halfway between sitting and laying. Matt Donovan swam briefly in his vision before he felt hands on his shoulder, pushing him upright.

"I feel like a mosh pit."

Matt frowned. "Like you've been in a mosh pit?"

Kai coughed. "No, like a literal mosh pit. And not those pussy ones you have nowadays, like what the fuck even is a Coachella. I mean like the riot-at-the-Satyricon, trashing-the-Met kind."

"Clearly hasn't affected your speech," Matt said dryly. Kai glared up at him through slitted eyed. "Seriously, man, what'd you get into last night? Your face is all bloody."

Kai's hand instinctively went to his nose and he felt the familiar texture of dried blood there. He muttered a curse and waved a spell to clean himself up and help wake his body up.

"I was -" He started, but his voice caught as his eyes found the empty lighter sitting just beside him. "I-"

He had found her. He had seen her, even if it was just a hand. You throw me out when you use me and you take me in when you are down. Isn't that how it had gone? A riddle. And he had given her the answer. She had let him in enough to help her.

He could still feel the echoes of her now, falling through his mind. It was different than it had been before, when she had tried to chase her magic after he siphoned her. Back then she fell and fell and fell and he would have to let go of her just so she wouldn't fall forever. Stupid, stubborn, brave girl, so morally outraged at his theft that she'd kill herself just to right his wrongs.

It was like there were ledges in his mind now, cracks where Luke's consciousness had broken through, places where emotions and feelings could get caught instead of disappearing like they used to. Places where stupid stubborn brave Bonnie could hang on.

His mouth had curled up into a grin without him realizing and now Matt was looking at him like he was crazy. "Kai..."

"I saw Bonnie," he told the younger boy in a rush. "I helped Bonnie. Everyone kept telling me the lighters were stupid, but I was right, like always."

Matt's bright blue eyes had gone wide. "Whoa. Slow down and explain."

"Let's wait until Damon gets up and Caroline gets here. I'm not big on saying things twice."

"You, turning down the chance to talk some more?" Matt scoffed, but he sat down on the opposite couch and they settled into an amiable silence until Caroline arrived and woke up Damon to bring him downstairs, where Kai finally relayed the whole story.

"I don't get it," Caroline said, a frown marring her pretty face. "What's the answer to the riddle?"

"It's 'anchor,'" Kai told her, a little perturbed at the immediate and identical dark looks that crossed their faces. "What? Are large, ship-stopping pieces of metal something we need to be scared of?"

"Bonnie," Damon said, then shook his head. "Bonnie was the Anchor."

Kai raised an eyebrow. "Bonnie is a person."

"To the Other Side," Damon finished on a glare and a growl. "She inherited it from Qetsiyah-"

"Inherited being the nicest possible term," Caroline cut in acidly.

"-Which meant she was what the spell that created the Other Side was bound to. It was...it wasn't pleasant, but it saved her," Damon said, looking down at the ground.

"Saved her from what?" Kai asked. Caroline looked at him, opened her mouth, and then her eyes grew wet and she looked away. "Damon?"

"When you met her," Matt suddenly spoke up, voice jumping all over several octaves. "That wasn't the first time Bonnie had died."

Kai felt his mouth fall open a bit as his brain tried to work through Matt's words. All that came out of him was a strangled laugh. "What?"

"She died," Matt said, frank but clearly still so painful to him. "The day before we graduated high school. Wandered around as a ghost. Let us think she was okay for the whole summer before we found out."

"Of course she did," Kai said faintly, trying process pretty, vibrant Bonnie, so small and getting smaller as her body wasted away. He had pictured her dead more than once in the prison world but knowing that it had actually happened-

He vaunted off the couch and began to pace. "But you got her back, clearly. By making her the anchor?" Damon nodded grimly. "Then – that riddle..."

They were just missing too many variables. Kai reached in his pocket for one of his lighters and flicked it on. "I can try again, see what's she's doing now-" Before he could get off one chant Matt snatched the lighter from his hand. "What the hell, Matty?"

"You passed out the last time you did that, and we still need to get to 1903," Matt reasoned. Then he frowned. "And don't call me Matty."

"Shut up, Matty," Damon said dismissively, nodding at Kai. "Give it a go."

Caroline stood up. "No freaking way, we aren't getting stuck here because Kai has an aneurysm from using too much magic."

"Um, it is my magic," Kai pointed out, but he was summarily ignored.

"We need as much information going in as possible, Blondie!"

"We're not walking in blind, Damon, I'm sure Kai has more information on it back home." Matt's voice was tinged with a tired frustration he had obviously cultivated over many years.

"It's one spell," Damon said, gesturing at Kai. "He can do it, can't you, buddy?"

"Not your buddy," Kai deadpanned, but it went unheard as Caroline gave an irritated shriek and marched right up to Damon, poking a finger into his chest.

"Asking a witch to overextend their magic to help you out is what got us here in the first place," she snarled up at the older vampire. "No more risks, Damon! No more bloody noses, no more passing out. We need Kai. He's the only one who can get us to Bonnie."

"Bonnie would do it if she were here," Damon snapped back, but his voice shook all over the place, which kind of ruined the effect.

"Bonnie's an idiot," Caroline said bluntly. "Who never looks out for herself. Which is why she needs us, and we need Kai."

Which, Kai considered, by transitive property, meant than Bonnie needed Kai, too, which was a bizarre and novel concept.

Caroline whirled on him, Finger of Doom pointing in his direction now. "You. What do you have to do to get us to 1903?"

"We go back home, I magick up the Ascendant, I take us there," he answered quickly, feeling a little nervous in the path of all that righteous anger. No wonder she and Bonnie were such good friends.

"Will that take a lot of magic?"

"Fair bit, yeah."

"Will it wear you out?"

"I'll be fine."

"Kai."

He cleared his throat. "Look, your concern is as touching as it is freaky, but you've made your point. No more Vision Exchanges. At least not for now." Matt and Caroline nodded, and Matt, as decent and trusting as ever, handing his lighter back over.

"We should head back to the cave, the eclipse is around noon," Kai continued. "We'll only be back in the real world for an hour or so."

"Do we have time to make a few stops before we go?" Matt asked. Everyone's attention fell on him and he shifted uncomfortably. "There's some stuff at my house. My dad's. My mom burned it after he left but it should still be in this world. I'd like to take some of it. Baseball cards, watches, nothing big," he added to Kai, his brow furrowing. "Can you do that?"

"I can do anything," Kai said, his voice coming out strangely soft. Matt nodded and began picking his way around the furniture to the door.

"I'll meet you guys at the cave," he called. Caroline watched him go and nodded, zipping out after him, leaving Kai with Damon.

Kai eyed the vampire, raising the lighter in his hand. "I can do the spell, you know. It won't kill me."

But oddly, all Damon did was grimace and shake his head. "It's fine."

"What, seriously? Damon -"

"You once told Bonnie that she always came back," Damon cut in harshly, butane-blue eyes locking in on his. "I thought the same thing. That's why she died. Too much magic. Not just once, but a hundred times. Enough so that she convinced herself she was invincible. Convinced me, too. She wasn't. She died. The one time she didn't come back. I can't tell you how much that – that sucked. I know you can handle it, but the spell after that, and then the one after that? I hate to say it, but Barbie's right. Save it for Bonnie, Kai."

Kai watched him disappear upstairs, flabbergasted, and slowly sunk down into his seat on the couch. It was weird that they cared, but he got the sense that it wasn't really for him. It was guilt, for all the times they didn't tell Bonnie no.

He flicked the lighter on, staring in the flame absent-mindedly, comforted by the glow. He didn't even need to say the words anymore, just thought of her and closed his eyes.

He'd pull back as soon as it got bad, he promised himself. He just needed more clues as to how she was doing.

The pressure filled up his head again, making his ears pop. Come on, Bon, he thought. Fall with me again.

And then, in his head, so loud and so scared, the shape of her thoughts:

Can't be you – a fireplace overflowing with flames – can't find me here – a large bronze brazier that smelled of brimstone and suffering – fall forever – a theatre strewn with bodies – can't get back up – a house made of ice -

A glimmer of recognition and a new spike of fear - Kai - A man, not him, his age, but not, smiling, but not.

He huffed out an angry laugh. She still talked right over him, even with time and space between them. Open your eyes, Bonnie.

He knew that like him she would only feel the shape of it, the sharp weight of his magic pressing in, and he felt her fear pressing back. He scared her so much he felt his heart nearly crack.

Kai needed to pull back, and soon. His finger, slick with sweat, began to slide of the igniter, to put the lighter and this spell away, when the blackness behind his lids abruptly shifted.

There was a map in front of him, of a city he didn't know, and a man, the one from before, leaning over it. The man he looked up to, who frowned at him and tilted his head and said "Little witch?"

"Little witch?"

Bonnie lurched, shoving Kai out of her head. What she thought was Kai. What she hoped wasn't Kai. How could he have found her, and why did he keep finding her? Was he checking up to make sure she was still miserably tucked safely away in his prison world?

He wanted in, so far in, but it would never work that way with Kai. His native siphoning abilities made it impossible for him to do anything but take. He wouldn't get anything she didn't give him.

So why had she given him anything? Why did she keep letting herself fall?

Logically, she knew Kai could do very little to hurt her from where he was. The worst he could do with what he knew was use it to taunt her friends.

But the best he could do...

She sighed to herself, not letting her go there, not letting herself believe in Kai again. She did it once and got a knife in the stomach for her troubles.

"Keep going," she said to Kol, who was watching her apprehensively. They were in a study in the Mikaelson mansion, poring over a map, trying to find a connection.

He gazed at her a few seconds longer then nodded. "As I said, the theatre is here." He pointed towards the small X he had placed on the map. "The Kindred Haven here. The Treme and Algiers covens here. The Treme grimoire also listed some other coven locations, I've marked them with just a dot, and before you point it out, yes of course they make a pentagram. I've also taken the liberty to mark where the French Quarter and the Ninth Ward Covens make their home."

She took the small piece of charcoal from his hand and made the mark for the Human portion of an Expression triangle over the theatre. Kol sighed in exasperation. "Bonnie, love, we don't even know-"

"We don't know anything, just humor me, Kol."

He acquiesced, letting her trace the symbol for demons over the Algiers coven and witches over Treme, then connected the three lines, but even she could tell they weren't equidistant from each other. She carefully waved her hand over the lines and symbols, clearing them away, and looked again.

Kol sighed and gestured. "Might I?" She made to give him the charcoal but he merely grabbed her hand and traced an unerringly straight line between the theatre and the Kindred haven. "And from there-" He smoothly led her hand in two lines from the theatre and the asylum to connect at an unmarked place on the map.

"Where is that?" She asked him, looking up to gauge his reaction.

"It's nowhere. An old meat-packing district, truly, love." He released her hand and she placed the charcoal down, clearing the marks once again. Kol stepped back, taking a deep breath and shaking his head. "Perhaps we're looking at this all wrong. This thing out there, it knows we're onto it. Beauregard's might have nothing to do with it. But this begins and ends with the massacre at the theatre."

"We have to get back in there," Bonnie said, her voice hard and brooking no argument.

To her surprise she saw the same look in Kol's eyes. "Agreed. This thing is no longer content with torturing me; it's set its sights on you, too. I promised you safety, little witch, and I keep my promises."

Bonnie smiled through the slight jolt his words sent through her. "Oh, you do?"

"Oi, I try, love, give me some credit," Kol said back on a laugh, hand going to his heart, all mock-affronted. His smile dropped a little as their gazes held. He was terribly frightened, too, she realized, and out of his depth. "You should get some sleep," he told her. "On the couch there, I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"I don't think I can sleep," Bonnie said, even as she headed to the couch and laid herself down. It was suprisingly comfortable for 1800's furniture. "Tell me a story, Kol."

"I think the one owed on story-telling is still me, darling," Kol said, settling into his chair, gaze fixed on the map. Bonnie frowned at him until she realized what he was talking about and huffed, rolling on her back to face the ceiling.

"Promises, promises," she whispered to herself, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Kol's lips twitch up into a grin when he glanced at her. She took a deep breath, then another, then closed her eyes.

"Once upon a time," she began, then her words filled up her throat and she choked.

He's real, she told herself. He's real and he happened to you. He's never going to stop happening to you. You will carry Kai until the day you die. Time to get used to the weight.

She inhaled and opened her eyes back up. Kol had given up any pretense of studying the map, staring at her intently now.

"His name was Kai. My prison world was never mine, and it wasn't Damon's. It was Kai's. He was sent there by the Gemini Coven after he murdered half his family. He-"

Her words trailed off, so reluctant to give life to Kai. "He wasn't evil. That was the worst part. He wasn't. He was a sociopath. It's not like he didn't know better, because he did, but he just couldn't figure out how to care about it. If he had just been bad, I could've – I don't know. But he felt nothing, not even when he hurt me. And he hurt me a lot. I wanted – it was so pathetic – but I wanted him to give a damn. Nobody ever had before, and he couldn't. I was the only other person in his world. I was his whole world. And he still didn't care. He stabbed me, and strangled me, and threw me in a trunk, and drugged me. And then, when it was all over, then came the very worst part. Because then he left me. Alone."

Bonnie laughed, and when it came out horribly strained she realized she was crying. "No. The worst part is that I keep referring to him the past tense when he's out there right now in the real world, and I'm not. He is and I was."

Kol was suddenly by her side, briskly wiping away her tears with one of his handkerchiefs. "You very much are, Bonnie Bennett. Fatalism looks good on no one."

"Whereas boundless optimism is all the rage," Bonnie countered weakly. Kol sat down on the floor and leaned back wearily against the couch and Bonnie fought back an insane urge to run her fingers through his hair, to make him relax for five seconds.

"There are few things worse than being hurt for no reason," Kol said quietly. "Did this Kai at least give you the dignity of having a reason?"

"He did," she said softly. "He had been stuck there for nearly twenty years and he wanted out. I should have just let him go. I should've gone with him."

"But then you wouldn't have found me," Kol pointed out, then he made a face. "Gods above, I owe this man a favor."

"Well, Kai owes me about twenty, so you can just pay me back instead. Skip the middle-man."

Kol laughed, tipping his head back to look at her. "I don't think that's how life-debts work, sweetheart, but I can appreciate that kind of mercenary thinking."

Bonnie smiled softly at him, eyes drooping a bit. Now that she had told him about Kai it was like a great weight she wasn't even fully aware of had, if not disappeared, at least lessened.

"Get some sleep, little witch. In a few hours you're cracking open an ancestral ward."

"You realize Jo's in the middle of a lecture right now," Liv said, her voice jumping all over the place as he dragged her along.

"This face, right here? Not my caring face, Liv," he tossed back at her. Getting back to the real world had been easy enough, but Damon had demanded they have a group meeting before going into the 1903 dimension. Kai, due to his forbidden foray into Vision Exhanging, readily agreed, needing the time to regroup and possibly siphon his little sister.

Liv snorted in derision. "You don't have a caring face, Malachai."

"Exactly!" And they both burst through the door of Jo's lecture room, startling the twenty or so teenagers and one very angry pregnant lady.

"Josie," he called cheerfully. "I'm pulling rank. Let's go."

Josette gaped at him like a fish for a few moments before collecting herself. "Kai, I have class right now-"

"Yes, and I expect thank you cards from all of them for saving them from it," Kai said, gesturing out towards her students. "I also really dig gift baskets. Those little soaps are awesome. Move it or lose it, Professor."

And that's how Kai ended up in the car with his two extremely irate sisters, Jo making excuses over the phone to the dean in the back seat while Liv rubbed her arm where he had grabbed to siphon and glaring at him.

"If I had asked, you would have said no," he said placatingly to her. "And I have to do two spells in the future, one quite large, so I needed the extra juice."

"I would have helped you with the ascendant spell, stupid," Liv snarled.

"We're headed into hostile territory, Olivia," Kai told her, the sterness in his voice surprising even him. He sounded like his father. God, he hated that.

He saw Josie lean forward in the rearview mirror. "You're what?" She hissed at him. Then into the phone: "I'm sorry, Dean, the family emergency is becoming a crisis. I'll call you back."

She ended the call and he let out a laugh. "Oh, my God, Sissy, you're so dramatic. It's not a crisis. I'm just heading into the 1903 prison world."

"What?!" His sisters yelled at the same time, in the same voice, with the exact same amount of anger and shock. Kai winced. He was so sure he had already mentioned that part.

"Kai, we have no idea who's locked up in there!" Jo said in a near hiss.

Kai shrugged as he made a left hand turn. "Actually, we do. I knew a Ripper lived in there, learned that info when I became Coven leader. And Damon identified the lady as – get this – his mom. Those Salvatores just won't die."

"You think I'm letting you walk into a prison dimension with a Ripper prowling around?" His twin questioned incredulously.

Kai took the time to glance askance at her over her shoulder, then looked at Liv. "Have we not all kept company with Stefan Salvatore, the vampire who turns Ripper over a glass of spilled milk? Also, when did I suddenly become some helpless damsel incapable of defending myself?"

"The moment you became responsible for all of our lives, Kai," Liv answered peevishly, but he could tell she was already settling down. Josie, who had spent over half of her life worried about Kai, was still pretty keyed up.

"Sending you to 1994, where you can't die, is one thing, but-"

"Sissy, we could be hit by a car right now, I could die on impact, you two would die slow, agonizing deaths, and Bonnie would be trapped forever," Kai said shortly. "None of those things makes me happy. But I can't do anything about the first three. I can help free Bonnie."

He could feel Jo weakening but she still remained ramrod straight. Kai swallowed his pride and met her eyes in the mirror. "Josie. Let me do this."

Another few seconds of tension and then she relaxed. "Okay. You're right."

"Of course I am."

"Don't push it."

They drove along in silence for the next few minutes until Liv, who had been staring resolutely out the window, suddenly turned to him. "Would it really make you unhappy if me and Jo died?"

Kai glanced at her, brow furrowed, and waved a hand in the air dismissively. "I mean, if it was because of me, sure. If it's because of some dumbass stunt you pull, I'm reserving the right to put some really awful jokes in your eulogy."

Liv opened and closed her mouth several times, trying to settle on a reaction, before she sat back in her seat and sighed. "Just no puns."

"Puns are fine for me," Jo added tiredly from the back seat jokes. "But any knock-knock jokes and I'm haunting you forever."

They pulled into the Salvatores later, where Alaric and Tyler were outside conversing as they waiting for the Parker sisters to emerge. Inside, he found the 1903 Ascendant sitting in the summoning circle he had set up, transferred there by one of the members of the cadet branch of the Gemini Coven. Kai did not envy that lady when Joshua Parker figured out what she had done.

Matt was the first to approach him, breaking away from Caroline and Stefan. "Hey, man, I'm not going to be joining this go-round."

"What?" Kai asked stupidly. "No. You have to. You're the only one I like."

Matt startled and then laughed, only semi-awkwardly. "Thanks, I guess, but a human wandering into a Ripper's world? Not smart. Besides, it's Stefan's mom. He needs to go."

"Dammit, Matty, stop being so sensible."

"Can't help it. I got all my crazy out early," Matt replied easily. "Drowned myself so I could see my dead sister. Bonnie saved my life. Bring her back to me, okay?"

He held out his hand for one of those weird frat boy handshakes and Kai grasped it, clapping Matt hard on the shoulder. "Doing my best."

Matt nodded and released him, wandering over to Tyler and Liv. Kai tinkered with the Ascendant as Stefan approached. "You sure you're up for this?" He asked the permanently brooding vampire.

"Sure," came the steady response. "My very dead mother is apparently alive and kicking in a prison world. It's weird. I'm used to weird."

The other member of the Gemini Coven had primed the Ascendant with his own power to prepare it for use, now Kai shot his magic into it to revive it, watching with pleasure and a small measure of exhaustion as it sprung to life.

"We're close, then?" Stefan said, voice rising hopefully. "Bonnie's in that dimension."

"Don't know where else she could be," Kai said, and even if it didn't come out very sure he heard Caroline squeal with delight and Tyler laughing in relief.

"I'm going to have to call Jeremy," Elena told Damon, both of them wearing million-watt grins. Kai told himself to remember to break Elena's phone.

"Caroline," he called, stepping to the center of the room.

"Yes?" The blonde replied in the same indulgent tone.

"You can't come."

Caroline scoffed indelicately. "Wasn't going to. Elena's decided she's taking my place." The last part slung out accusingly to her friend on the other side of the room.

"Elena can't come either."

The girl in question tilted her head, eyes wide and beseeching. "Why not?"

"For one, you promised to watch out for my sisters. For another, we don't know what kind of shape Bonnie will be in. I can't carry more than three people by myself, and if she's too far gone, that's what I'll be."

"I-" Elena said, and he raised his eyes from the Ascendant in warning. "Yeah, okay."

"See how easy things are when you people just listen to me?" Kai said, rolling his shoulders. "Damon, Livvy, get over here. Time's a-wasting."

"Three day rule still stands, Kai," Jo warned from somewhere behind him.

"Be careful," Liv said when she stepped up beside him.

"If something happens to me," he told her, and she shook her head. "For my eulogy: I'm a huge fan of dead baby jokes. Write that down, since you won't be able to tell the funeral home. Since, you know, you'll be dead, too." Liv shook her head even harder, trying to cover a laugh. "What? Jo will, too, she'll never know. Think of Dad's face, Liv."

"Oh, my God," Liv said, biting her lip. "Just go already."

He wanted very badly, for just a moment, to tell her he loved her. But he faced forward instead, met the bemused faces of the Salvatore brothers, and began chanting.

It was cold when he stopped, snow landing on his eyelashes. Stefan and Damon weren't really dressed for the weather, but didn't seem to bother. Kai himself was thankful he'd put on a coat and knew a heat spell.

"Bonnie first," he said, and the brothers nodded, looking around as he pulled out the necklace Caroline had snatched from their dorm room and held it in his hand. Damon handed over the vial of Lucy's blood and a map while Stefan looked around. They were standing in a forest, covered in snow, somewhere north.

He hoped Bonnie was still in town. Despite all his doubts, the others' excitement had been contagious. He hoped she didn't flay him alive when she saw him. He hoped she still had the energy to flay him alive.

He muttered the spell and dropped the blood on the map where he'd flattened it on the ground, waving the necklace over it as he chanted. He watched, disbelievingly, as once again the drop separated into five locations.

"What the hell..." Stefan murmured, leaning over to get a closer look.

Kai clenched the necklace in his hand. "Do not fucking do this to me again," he hissed at the map. He wiped the paper clean and tried again, nearly screaming in frustration when the drop split again.

"I've never seen a locator spell do that," Stefan said, squatting down to get a closer look. "Here's Mystic Falls. That's – what, Portland? Nova Scotia, New York, New Orleans. Bonnie can't be in all these places at once."

Kai opened his mouth to tell Stefan he was an idiot and then stopped. "Bonnie's been in all of them."

Damon looked from him to the map and back again. "Mind explaining that one, Kai?"

"She's been to Mystic Falls, obviously. I took her to Portland. She went to Nova Scotia to get her magic back. She appeared in this prison world on the video tape, that's New York. The only one unaccounted for is New Orleans."

"So," Damon said, excitement nearly tripping his words on the way out. "So she's in New Orleans?"

"In this world or the other one?" Stefan asked, looking between them and the map.

"Judging by the things I saw in my vision, I'm going to guess this one," Kai said. Then he frowned, remembering. "But I saw -"

The brothers Salvatore looked at him expectantly. "Look, I took another look-see when you were upstairs," he told Damon, who rolled his eyes. "I saw a man with Bonnie. Brown hair, brown eyes, British sounding, called her 'little witch.'"

Stefan's permanently creased brow furrowed deeper at that, head tilting and eyes roving as he thought. "Little witch?"

"Sounds like he knows her pretty well," Damon grumbled. Stefan shook his head minutely.

"Sounds like-" And then he paused, both of the vampires heads snapping up as they became instantly alert and tensed. "Damon?"

His brother nodded once, speaking lowly. "To your left. I'll circle around. Kai, stay here."

They blurred out of Kai's vision before he could respond, and he stood there floundering.

"You two are the fucking worst," he spat at where they once stood.

It was so quiet he heard the twig break almost before it actually happened. He spun, hand out, to find the woman from the video. Lillian Salvatore, in the flesh. She approached him slowly, head tilted at the precise angle her son did just a few minutes ago, and stopped within ten feet of him.

"Oh, man," Kai said on a exhale. "Do I know some people who will be happy to see you."

Lillian smiled and his heart stopped cold. "Funny," she whispered. "I was about to say the same thing."

And then there were hands on his arms, in his hair, tugging his head back so a pair of teeth could drive into his neck. Fangs in his wrists, at his side and the whole world was spinning, a mad whirl of red and pain. My sisters, he thought. Bonnie.

Kai screamed.

It had taken everything she had to bring down the ward, casting every dissolution spell she knew until she simply began hammering at it with offensive magic until it broke, and now she waited, tensed and guarded on the street as Kol darted in to steal the necklace off of Ophelia.

He emerged a moment later with the object in hand, and she winced when she saw how deeply it had burned into his hand. She peeled it out gingerly and nearly shrieked when it burned into her as well. "Still has active magic on it."

"Protection spell," Kol offered breathlessly, waving out his hand as it healed. His eyes constantly moved back and forth along the street, watching. Waiting.

There were whispers in the dark now.

They followed them everywhere, a murmur that could be heard but not distinguished. Everything around them tremored delicately, as if the world itself was threatening to fall apart if they kept searching.

"This could lead nowhere," she warned him unnecessarily.

Kol nodded, stepping away. "Won't know until you try, love. Just remember – it's your magic. Nobody can control you."

Whoever cast the spell over this necklace was probably no longer alive, but since magic in New Orleans was built on ancestral magic, Bonnie could still track its source. Whoever did this, whoever lost this girl, probably had a good reason for hurting Kol. She was hoping she could find some answers wherever they ended up.

She clenched the necklace in her hand and called upon powers she hadn't in a very long time. Tendrils of black crept along her hand and into her arm as her fist caught alight, the magical fire binding with the necklace. It hissed and sparked, and one of the sparks fell to the ground and shot off to her north, leaving a trail of fire behind. She looked at Kol and nodded, and he had picked her up and shot off after it before she could blink.

The journey abruptly ended a few seconds later in front of a beautiful house, the prettiest she had seen yet, large without being ostentatious like the Mikaelsons'. Kol set her down and they worked to tear the necklace out of her skin and she flung it to the ground, using the last whispers of Expression in her veins to heal the wound shut.

Kol finally looked up to where the trail of fire ended and then staggered to the side. "No," he whispered. "This can't be right."

"What? What is this place?" Bonnie asked him.

"The Dowager Fauline's house," Kol replied after a very hard swallow. "I – no, this cannot be -" He blurred and disappeared into the cottage and Bonnie had not followed two feet after him before she heard an almost inhuman howl emerging from within.

"Kol!" She screamed, rushing up the front steps and into the house. She nearly tripped over the body lying just in the entrance to the living room. It was a young girl, her throat neatly slit, her face perfectly serene as she stared lifelessly up at the ceiling. Bonnie slowly righted herself, facing a living room filled with several more corpses.

They looked so comfortable, sitting in chairs, one at the piano, a pair lying on the ground holding hands. She was up to seven when the sound of sobbing reached her ears.

"Kol?" She called quietly. "Kol, please." She stepped gingerly around the dead women and girls, rounding the corner to the dining room.

She passed an elderly lady sitting at the head of the table and a young man placed at the other end. Nine. Ten was sitting at the tiny table in the kitchen, holding hands with Eleven. She kept moving, into the hall and into the bedroom at the end.

Number Twelve was small, and blonde, and pretty, and so very still except for the rocking of the man in whose arms she lay on the bed. Kol was cooing to her softly, 'darling' and 'love' intermingling with his sobs.

"Kol," she whispered. The weight of his grief was overwhelming and she could only watch out of the corner of her eye as his rocking slowly stopped and he dropped a kiss on the poor girl's forehead.

"Mary-Alice," he gritted out. "My beautiful fool. Darling, darling, please don't. This wasn't it, this wasn't the end for us. What did you do, love, what did you do?" He ran a finger gingerly along the cut at her throat and then, impossibly gentle, laid her back down on the bed, righting the body just so, making sure the curls were perfectly placed, crossing her hands over her stomach.

Bonnie almost couldn't bear to watch. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

"She -" His voice caught as a stubborn curl wouldn't lay right. He pressed it back again and again and his shoulders shuddered dangerously as it rebelliously sprung back. Finally he gave a wretched little smile and sat back on his heels. "That's my girl."

Kol climbed off the bed unsteadily then just as quickly sank to the ground. "When I rose against my brother, Mary-Alice was the first to follow me, to stand by my side. She helped me. Whatever I needed, she helped me. I'd never met anyone who would do that, not since Finn. I didn't – when Nik daggered me I would have thought he killed her, but he left her alive. Only to end up like this." He curled in on himself. "It's all my fault."

Bonnie hesitantly crossed over to him, kneeling beside him. "Kol," she murmured, pulling at his shoulders, turning him into her. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. She didn't know what else to do, so she coaxed his arms around her and his chin over her shoulder and held him just like that.

It seemed to take a very long time for the rigid set of Kol's body to release but when it did it was all at once as he collapsed into her, arms crossing behind her back to hold her tightly for just a moment before he pulled away, clambering to his feet. She followed quickly, watching him carefully, but he merely wiped at his eyes and shook his head.

"Astrid," he was saying to himself, pushing past her. "I forgot – when I saw Mary -"

He prowled the halls, looking at each corpse and growing a little more relaxed every time he didn't find who he was looking for. "She must have escaped Niklaus' wrath. She was always smarter than me and Mary put together." He chuckled, right through a sob and back into a laugh.

"Kol," she began. "Kol, there's twelve of them."

"I know," he whispered brokenly. "Twelve witches, twelve humans. Two-thirds of the Triangle. We're trapped, and someone murdered my best friend to do it." He turned to her, and his smirk was in place but it was all wrong now. "Someone is going to wish they'd never been born."