Whew. Tough chapter, guys. Hope you enjoy it. The line Damon reads is the last stanza of Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death." Please enjoy.
The floor was damp beneath her cheek. Cold metal encircled her wrists. She stirred and chains chimed. The movement hurt; her veins were full of frostbite. She didn't move again.
Memories returned, fragmented and sharp like shards of glass. Bonnie laying in her arms, weightless and motionless. A gaping hole, the white bone of a spine gleaming through the crimson gore. The endless scream of horror that issued from her own throat. Clawed hands digging into her wrist, tearing the skin open and pressing it to those pale, bloodless lips. An endless moment of anticipation, the certainty Bonnie would cough and sputter, that the light would gleam in her eyes again.
No heartbeat. No heartbeat. No heartbeat.
Damon tried to take the body from her-no, not a body, Bonnie, it was still Bonnie—but she threw him back with an effortless shove. It couldn't end this way. Bonnie couldn't end this way. Her thoughts ran in frantic circles. Meaningless. They were all meaningless when put up against the dead girl in her arms. Eighteen years of friendship, of laughter and slumber parties and floating feathers and fighting side-by-side and birthdays and funerals couldn't end in a ball of fire, a rush of the sweetest blood.
Damon ripped the body from her arms. Elena screamed obscenities, tried to hold on, but there was a sickening snap and Bonnie was gone and she couldn't be gone and there had to still be a way, and if Damon took her, if he put her in the cold, hard ground, then that would make it all real and it couldn't be real.
Then there was a hole in her memory, a glittering blackness among the shards. She remembered pain, remembered her body thrashing on the ground, crashing into the bookcases in a shower of splinters and a hail of books. Damon, trying to hold her, trying to contain her, everything spinning out of control. He left and she was alone and Bonnie was gone and then more blackness. More pain.
Damon had returned with something in his hand, something he jammed into her neck and ice had spread beneath her skin and around her heart, froze her eyes shut and plunged her into nothingness. Now here she was, chained and bound like the animal she was. This was where she belonged. But even if she was imprisoned for a thousand years until her veins turned to dust and her body withered, Bonnie would still be gone. And she would still be a murderer.
"You're awake." Though her eyes were closed, she'd know that voice anywhere. She'd died for him. She'd killed for him. Even he would be disgusted with her now. After all, if there was one thing Damon believed in, it was loyalty. Elena was a traitor. How could she choose the life of an eighteen-year-old girl over the life of an ancient monster? Even if it was a monster she loved. A monster like the one who lived inside her, the one who had broken free and exulted as Bonnie's heart gave one last tormented, sideways beat before it stilled, the one who was filled with fierce and terrible joy as the death rattle moaned from Bonnie's lips.
She didn't speak. There was nothing to say.
"I know you feel a little weird," he said his voice soft, that tone people used with children and animals and the mentally ill. Elena wasn't even sure which of those categories she fell into anymore. Maybe all of then. "It's vervain. It'll pass." So that explained the burning ice crawling under her skin. Vervained and locked in a dungeon. Elena wanted to laugh. She was sure she'd never laugh again.
Elena opened her eyes. Damon sat beside the bars of the cell, legs stretched across the narrow space. He was near at hand, but gave her as much space as the cramped space would allow. He didn't offer words of comfort. He was just there, and that was better than all the smothering affection in the world.
"Bonnie is really gone this time." It wasn't a question. Elena knew the answer, but she had to hear him say it. Damon could work miracles; he'd brought Bonnie back from the "dead' once and maybe he'd been able to do it again. Maybe the blood had been enough, or maybe there was a spell, like the one that had saved Jeremy. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
"Yes." The confirmation didn't hurt as much as she'd expected it to. Perhaps she simply lacked the capacity to feel any more pain than she already did. One more loss. After all the bodies stacked up behind her, how could one more loss hurt so much? Because this time, the blood was on her hands. She'd thought—or the animal that lived in her skin had felt—she could survive as long as she had Damon. Now she wasn't so sure.
"Where is she?" Even speaking was an effort, the ice making her tongue thick and sluggish. Bonnie didn't belong at the bottom of the quarry or thrown into a ravine. She deserved to be alive and laughing and whole and happy. She never would be again.
"Next to her grams." Under the willow in Mystic Falls Cemetery. Near Elena's parents, just a stroll down a grassy hillock and past the little reflecting pool. Earth and wind and water. Bonnie would have approved. Bonnie was dead.
Damon reached for her, but she flinched away. "Don't touch me." He was alive, and she was glad. But she couldn't stand for him to touch her, for him to even look at her. Not because it was his fault. Far from it. Every bit of this comedy of horrors was entirely her fault. No, Elena didn't deserve kindness, didn't deserve compassion. She'd had none for Bonnie when her teeth sank into her soft, warm flesh. Damon's very presence made her happy, and that wasn't an emotion she was permitted to feel ever again.
Damon moved away from her. He sat next to the bars of the cell, hands folded in his lap. They were silent. Elena didn't know how long. She lapsed in and out of waking, more razor-sharp memories flitting before her eyes.
The soil was cool and damp as the two girls poked holes in the dirt with chubby fingers. "I'm bored," Elena whined. "Can't we go to Caroline's and play Barbies?"
Bonnie placed a seed on the soil, and with the single-minded concentration of a child, drew soil over the buried treasure. "You go. I want to finish."
The girls knelt on the ground behind the Bennett house. Elena's jeans were muddy and her back hurt from hunching over the tiny plot they'd carved out of the sod. "Why does it matter? It's just a bunch of stupid flowers."
Bonnie heaved a long-suffering sigh. "They aren't flowers. Well, they aren't just flowers." She picked up one of the packets of seeds—plain white paper labeled "rue" in flowing cursive script. "I found them in my mom's stuff. Grams said they're magic." She pressed another seed into the earth.
"Only babies believe in magic," Elena retorted with the worldly wisdom of a seven year old.
"I guess I'm a baby."Her friend shrugged as she planted the last few seeds, staring at the mounds of soil as if green tendrils would emerge at any moment and burst into glorious blossom. "But I want to see them grow."
Damon's voice, rhythmic and even, drew her from the garden and back into the dungeon. He didn't seem to have moved, yet a book was open in his hands. "'Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads were toward eternity.'" Blue eyes flicked to her. "Hi."
"You're all right?" Flashes of his face shining with sweat and streaked with blood, flickering flames reflecting from his milk-white skin.
"I'm fine. Because of you." He stared at the book for a moment before his gaze met hers again. "Thank you."
"Don't you dare thank me for that. Don't you dare," she hissed.
Damon shrugged. "I'm glad we're the ones still standing. It was only a matter of time. I tried to tell you that." His voice gentled. "The world dealt you both shitty hands. You bent. She broke."
"You don't care. You don't care that she's dead," Elena said. Of course he didn't. Damon had never liked Bonnie, had hated her from the first, just as Bonnie had hated him. Maybe he was even glad, even glad she'd spared him the trouble of murdering the meddlesome witch the moment her usefulness ran out.
Silence. "Do you want me to lie to you? Is that what you want? Will it make you feel better if I tell you I'll miss her?"
Elena didn't answer. She lay her head back down and let the ice grow around her until the numb, clean cold overpowered her.
It was the night of their first high school dance. The theme? The 1940s. Elena was going as Rosie the Riveter, tough and strong with a kerchief tied 'round her head, while Bonnie had chosen to go as a pinup girl, her hair falling in gentle waves, her skirt scandalously short. They were going to be the hottest things Mystic Fall High had ever seen. This was the night they'd been waiting for, the night they became teenagers, the night they grew up. But Bonnie's eyes were sad and thoughtful as she applied bright red lipstick.
"What's wrong, Bon?" Elena asked, rolling her shirt sleeves up over her elbow. "Aren't you excited? Tonight's gonna be awesome."
"Maybe for you," Bonnie said, puckering her lips and adding another dab of crimson. "You've got a date. So does Caroline."
It was true. Elena and Matt had gotten more serious since they'd started high school—after all, what could be more perfect than the JV quarterback and the cheerleader?-and Caroline had been fooling around with some junior. But Bonnie was quiet, a little shy. She hadn't found anyone she clicked with yet.
"So? Just because we're going with guys doesn't mean we're going to ignore you." Elena flopped onto her vanity chair beside Bonnie, nearly sending her friend tumbling to the floor. "You're my best friend, Bonnie. That's way more important than any guy."
Bonnie smiled in the mirror. "You promise? You promise you won't ditch me?"
Elena held her pinky out. Bonnie linked it with her own. "Promise."
The smell of blood brought her back. Damon was kneeling beside her, a tumbler of the thick liquid in his hand. "You've got to eat something, Elena."
Her body wanted, needed, craved that blood. It would make her strong again, make her ready to fight and defend what was hers. Her mind knew she could never accept what he offered ever again. Every sip of blood brought the animal closer to the surface, increased the chance she could hurt someone else she loved. She turned away.
There was a growl and then she was in Damon's lap. One of his arms was clamped around her chest, preventing her from squirming free, while the other pressed the glass insistently to her lips. "Starving yourself isn't going to bring her back. Drink, dammit."
Elena tried to turn her face away, but she was too weak. Her body won over her mind again, and she let Damon tip the stuff down her throat.
The blood was nothing compared to Bonnie's, nothing compared to the fear Elena had tasted in Bonnie's last moments, the sweetness of Bonnie's magic pouring out of her veins.
Elena turned her head to the side and vomited red bile.
Elena's empty pillow was thrown to one side, its feathery contents in a heap on the bed. Bonnie was smiling and babbling something about a secret. Elena had no idea what was going on, but was willing to go along for the ride, despite the damage to her favorite pillow. "Grams just showed me this," Bonnie said. "You're gonna love it."
Bonnie lifted her hand, and a single feather rose after it, floating gently. Impossible. This was impossible. But it hovered there, weightless and defying everything Elena was supposed to believe. Elena tore her eyes from the feather to her friend's face. Bonnie's brow was furrowed in concentration, but beneath it all was joy and delight. This was magic. There was no other word for it.
"Bonnie, what's going on?" Elena asked, needing to make sense of it all. But Bonnie just smiled and spread her hands wide like a conductor before an orchestra. A handful of feathers drifted into the air before dozens more followed, swirling like snow. Elena couldn't help but laugh, hands covering her mouth. It was impossible. It was beautiful.
"It's true, Elena. It's all true, everything my grams told me. It's impossible, and it's true." The feathers danced around them in a gentle cloud. They laughed.
A dam deep inside Elena broke open. Sobs racked her body. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Damon tried to hold her, tried to comfort her, but she pushed him away. She cried, a wordless and endless sorrow defined by absence and guilt and loss. The tears never seemed to end.
There was movement. Damon left and returned. It didn't matter. Elena still wept. Damon's hands clutched her face. "Look at me, Elena. I need you to look at me."
She squinted at him through eyes nearly swollen shut with tears. "Good girl. That's a good girl. You asked me about the switch. You can feel it, can't you? You can feel how you can just take all the pain you're feeling and shut it away. Can you find it?"
Too dazed to fight, she nodded. She felt it. It was less a switch and more a trap door, somewhere deep inside her icy heart, a bottomless well where she could sink every last painful feeling that threatened to tear her apart.
"You need to turn it off. Just for a little while. Just until you can cope." He was afraid. Afraid she'd tear herself apart with grief, afraid that she'd break as Bonnie had, shatter into a million pieces that could never be put back together again and he'd be left alone. He was afraid.
"I can't," she stuttered. It was the easy way out. It was cheating. She deserved this guilt, deserved this heartache and grief. She deserved to feel this misery and loss forever. "I won't feel anything. I won't feel-"
"I know. But it's just for a little while." His hands were gentle and strong, but his voice had an undercurrent of panic mixed with the deepest sadness imaginable. " It'll all be there waiting for you when you're ready for it. I promise," he said. "Please. For me, Elena. Turn it off for me."
Elena couldn't fight anymore. The tears in her eyes dried instantly. There was no longer ice in her heart; there was no longer anything at all. Oh, there was something lurking there, but it was muted and distant. She ignored it. She was clean. Pure. Empty.
A smile curled across her lips. "Unchain me," she said.