A/N: Thank you for the reviews, alerts, and favorites-they are much appreciated. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I disclaim Vampire Diaries.

Run

Kill or run. Bonnie stood before a glowing portal. Flickering orange seeped into the night. Smoke made a pattern in the air. Screams echoed all around. What was the plan again? Damon would find the tomb vampires and she would destroy the watch? Somehow nothing went according to plan. Maybe because Damon created it. Damon.

Heat buffeted hair away from her face. Stefan ran past her in a blur of movement.

"Stefan, wait!"

He paused at the entrance. "He's my brother, Bonnie."

Bonnie watched him disappear into the glow. I know, she said. The fire was so strong. Her desire was strong too, her desire to know the vampires were burned, dead, no more. No more trouble, no more death, no more—a face flashed ahead of her thoughts, white and frozen, small. Bonnie jerked back a step.

Elena brushed past her. Bonnie automatically reached for her, pulling her away from the heat.

"Bonnie," Elena struggled, "what are you doing?"

"The fire is too strong, Elena."

"Stefan is in there!" Elena tugged at her grip. "Bonnie!"

Bonnie never wanted Elena to look at her like that, like she was a monster. She closed her eyes. Focus. The fire was so strong. It licked everything. Ate and spitted. She needed energy. Through her hold she touched Elena's panic, her anger, the promise of devastation. Bonnie wanted to control it. She needed to control it.

The door to the basement blew open. Stefan shrank back from the flames. He sensed Damon down there. Fear stripped away the caution. The fire would impede his speed but it was no matter if he reached Damon. Stefan stepped forward and the flames receded. He hastened to Damon and sped out as the fire grew at his back, expanding, singing the hair at his nape.

Bonnie released Elena a second before Stefan burst out of the building with Damon on his shoulder. Elena ran to them, grabbing onto Stefan and touching Damon. All three looked at her. She read their glances: grateful, angry, puzzled. They would be fine. Her brain buzzed. The face came again, but with more detail. She couldn't place it; her memory was black there, but soft. Fire filled her eyes. She glanced back, finding Damon throwing her a relieved nod. The fire grew brighter.

Kill or run. As it happened, they only watched it all burn.

Elena ran a hand over her face. Part of it was still warm. The building John bought was now a charred out skeleton with gray smoke rising off of it. Fire crews meandered around the building, talking and waiting until it was stable enough to venture inside. A burn like that—bodies are incinerated. Metal melts. Gonna be a tough one. The words of the fire marshal sounded in her head.

"Hey," Stefan said. Elena shook her head.

"I don't understand. John? Bonnie?"

Stefan rubbed her back. "It makes sense, the John part. And Bonnie too. Witches and vampires have a complicated history."

"So complicated that she would lie to me? She would risk killing you and Damon?"

Stefan brought Elena closer to him. She rested her head on his shoulder. There was nothing he could say to help her with this. Betrayal for a human—it could be dealt with in a number of ways. For a vampire, it was similar to a stake near the heart. Even after one pulled it out, the ghost of it was still there.

Elena lifted her head and looked up at him. "I'm going to get my things, go home. It's been a long day."

"You want me to come with you?" Stefan asked out of courtesy. Elena smiled and kissed him lightly. "I think we need to be around family tonight. I'll call you when I get home."

Stefan watched her go. Family. He had no clue where Damon went. Gut reaction told him somewhere he shouldn't go, to do something he shouldn't.

Damon watched from the porch as Elena strolled up the sidewalk. She looked faintly perturbed, as though a minor event put a damper on the whole evening. Jeremy paced upstairs. Jenna and John fought another battle in the war of the pale threats. He leaned against the house, listening to a family on the verge of imploding, watching the girl he loved approach another set of problems.

He shifted slightly. A moment came hurtling towards him. The words were on the tip of his tongue. The revelations tingled the inside of his mouth. Would she listen? He almost died so yes, Elena would accommodate him. She would listen and then…the moment would decide.

Damon slipped into the moonlight, about to call her name as she climbed the porch steps. His lips parted to exclaim but his voice died.

Elena jogged up the steps and reached for the doorbell but then turned. She found Bonnie instantly. They stared at each other and Elena turned and rang the doorbell. Jenna opened the door.

"I think I lost my keys."

Jenna rolled her eyes. "Great. Well, at least that's a legit excuse to change the locks so John can't get in. Com on," she said, reaching out for the dress bag Elena carried.

The door shut. Damon turned his ear to the night. The moment hung over him, but there was something wrong. The knowing was instantaneous—he fucked something up. The day streamed before him and then narrowed to a specific point, a point he barely noticed.

Bonnie tore through the house. She tossed down frames and collages and yearbooks as she inspected them. Photo albums lay half opened on the floor. The face shocked her optic nerves and so the afterimage remained every time she blinked, every time she examined a photograph. There must be some relevance; it must be someone she knew. They were going to die; they were going to stare forever out at her, lips twisted in a scream.

When every photo, every picture had been scanned, Bonnie went upstairs to her room, yanked off her jacket and kicked off her shoes. The room to the bedroom closed and candles flared as Bonnie began to pace.

There had to be an explanation. The face was too vivid to be a dream. And it wasn't a premonition. Was it a memory? Bonnie twisted her fingers. A memory. A memory. A cold place. A cold dark place with a single bluish white light. Bonnie halted midstep.

The scene emerged through a black fog. Damon stood at the bottom of the stairs. She stood in front of the freezer. The metal handle chilled her fingers. The door lifted easily. The first thing Bonnie saw were eyes. Brown eyes. Dull. They were fixed on a point beyond her. Ice lined the eyelashes. Bonnie breathed. The eyes attached to a face. A small, waxy face. A child. It was impossible to discern the sex. Flecks of blood dotted the cheek.

There were two children, one a girl. The purple bow still clung to her long curly brown hair. Her eyes were closed, but her throat was not. A man's body laid at the bottom, his head at an awkward angle. A large pink blotch of frost extended from where his chest would be to his side.

Bonnie blindly searched for what jammed the fridge door. It was a small booted foot, belonging to the child. She pulled at the stiff jean leg and the foot dropped into the makeshift coffin. Bonnie shut the freezer. The darkness was merciful relief to her eyes. But then the small face with the brown eyes stared beyond her. She looked to Damon. Upstairs were vampires. Down here was death. Bonnie thought of fire and nothing else.

Light and sound burst into her consciousness. Bonnie eased herself off the ground and groped for her cell in the half-light of morning.

"Yeah?" Her voice was gravel.

"Bonnie, I need you to come to the hospital."

Dread evaporated the remaining fatigue from her limbs. "Matt? What happened?"

The silence stretched a second too long. "Matt?"

"There was a car accident. Caroline was hurt."

Bonnie covered her face with a hand. Hurt. Matt had been doing this since childhood—turning stab wounds into scratches. Using the decoder of years of intimate knowledge, hurt meant critical condition. Hurt meant slim chance of survival. Hurt meant it was time for family and friends to gather around as though their presence had some mystical healing property.

Maybe Bonnie had access to some mystical healing properties.

"Okay, I'll be there. Ten minutes."

"Okay," he said. She heard the relief and thought of how empty relief could make you feel.

"I'll...I'll be there in ten."

Bonnie sat in the middle of her room. She saw the top of her head in the dresser mirror? Yesterday there was a full-bodied girl with long brown hair and paper bag skin and greenish brown eyes reflected in the glass. Where had the rest of her gone?

The closer Bonnie came to the hospital, the less sure she was of her ability to handle anything more than Caroline having a couple of broken ribs or limbs and a severe concussion. As she approached the third floor ICU nurses' station, Bonnie battled the beginnings of a panic attack.

The nurse looked up from a computer with a mild smile. "Can I help you?"

Bonnie started to shake. "I'm a friend of Caroline Forbes."

The nurse wheeled her chair to the far side of the desk and lifted a blue chart. She examined a sheet for a full minute before returning.

"Ms. Forbes is in surgery. I suggest you take a seat in the waiting room."

Bonnie followed the pointed finger. Matt emerged from the room, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked up and saw her. They stared at each other and then Bonnie had her arms around his middle, her face near his armpit, tears burning her nose and eyes. Matt moved a hand up and down on her back while the other gently massaged an arm. Bonnie heard him swallow and eased up.

"The nurse told me she's in surgery. How bad?"

Matt shook his head. "She collapsed, at the accident scene and," he rubbed his eyes the same way he rubbed his neck, "and she hasn't been awake since. Internal bleeding they said."

Bonnie laid her head on his chest. It occurred to her, listening to his heart beating and the strong intake of air whooshing through his lungs, that from the moment that black crow flew across her path the first day of school, she became estranged from the life she used to know, from the people that used to color her world, from herself. Caroline had to be on the operating table for her to hug one of the best people she knew.

"I'm glad you're here Bon," Matt said.

Bonnie was glad too.

An hour into waiting Bonnie left Matt twisted asleep in a chair and went in search food. The journey to the cafeteria was a confusing trip down a rabbit hole of hallways and locked doors. When she finally arrived, it was a pleasant shock. For all the drab white and tea rose colored stripes, the cafeteria was all glass and clusters of wooden tables. There was a strange clash of smells from the various foods, but it was a good strange.

Bonnie mulled the food offerings and was about to grab a tray when she saw Stefan weaving through the tables with a Styrofoam cup balanced on top of a covered plate. His face was partway between melancholy and his normal placid mask. Bonnie dropped the tray and followed him up to the third floor ICU. She thought he would turn down the corridor to the waiting room but he went straight. Bonnie watched him nod to a person hidden in a room and walk through the electric doors dividing the ward.

She saw Stefan stop at a set of chairs at the far end of the wall. He sat the plate on the chair next to him and then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked up the same time Bonnie looked over. Elena swung towards him, turned, disappeared, then did it again. She had a hand in her hair. She was distressed. She always put her hands in her hair when distressed, as though she were about to tear it all out.

Bonnie stood by the doors. She stared hard at Elena, willing her to notice. Stefan's eyes slid to hers and he straightened. Elena paused and turned. Her eyes widened then narrowed but the face around it collapsed. They gazed at each other for no more than a few seconds but for Bonnie it seemed like years. Elena blurred. Bonnie blinked. She was gone.

Bonnie left the hospital. Her head pounded with every step; her stomach was a clenched muscle. She fell to her knees near her car and vomited. All that came out was water and acid.

"Hey, you have a chunk there in your hair."

Bonnie glanced up. Damon stood a few yards away, hands hidden in black jeans. She straightened to stand but a spasm of pain shot down her back. The nerves in her legs tingled.

"How long have you been standing there?"

Damon shrugged. "About as long as you've been kneeling over your vomit. What are you doing, divining forgiveness?"

Her eyes fell to the tip of his shoes. They were scuffed and the leather around it creased as he rocked on his heels. The boots came closer. The panic from earlier returned with blinding acuteness.

Bonnie got to her feet, keeping her back to him and her head down. "What are you doing here?"

"Elena is here."

Bonnie gripped her keys. "Of course." She got in her car. The key was in the ignition. Her hands pressed against the steering wheel. She looked out and found Damon's face framed in the window.

"Where are you going?"

He asked this as he looked at her. Bonnie got the feeling he was really looking. His eyes didn't move in their normally cartoonish way. They skated across her face to come back to examine the block of her eyes and eyebrows and eyelashes. The heat steadily wavered between them, not as hot, but it would get there, eventually.

Where was she going? She asked Damon's blue eyes. They had seen more than a century. She had seen only seventeen years, thirteen of which she could say she firmly remembered. Where was she going? Home? There was no one home. To Grams? She was dead and the house empty. Bonnie raised her eyes to the hospital. Everyone she had left was in that place, a place she just couldn't go into right now. Where was she going?

"I don't have anywhere to go," Bonnie answered. It was such a relief to say something completely and totally honest. Damon straightened. His black shirt rippled in the breeze. The ring he wore caught a bit of sunlight. He tapped his hand on her car door.

"Come with me then," he said. He peered down at her. "You can live the life of a pariah for one hour."

Bonnie drew her lips together. Come with me then. There was something serious behind his usual leer. It reminded her of a memory she had discovered, a dark memory, a recollection that involved that same leer. Anger built in Bonnie the longer she stared into his blue eyes.

"I can't, sorry," Bonnie said. Damon stepped back as she started the car and pulled out of the parking space.

She came to the stop sign. Damon filled her rearview mirror. Her head was light and her chest tight. She needed to get out of this place. She needed…pie.

Damon rarely walked. He liked, as he thought of it, to zip from point A to point B. There were certain advantages to zipping, advantages he compacted under the heading 'Purposiveness'. Walking meant thinking, meant meandering, meant soaking in the environment. It was an activity Damon loved to do as a human. He would forego the horse or the carriage and cut a path through the woods instead of following the dirt road. He walked through fields and meadows and bush, hands in his pockets, face tilted towards the sun or moon in various states.

Bonnie's car disappeared around the corner. The hospital stood tall and white before him. There were things going on in there, things he had no real part of. Damon put his hands in his pockets and started walking.

Mystic hadn't changed much. Except now the apothecary building was a charred out mess and the roads were paved and there were about fifty more storefronts and twice the amount in residences. The main street still, if he was correct, led home.

At some point a dip appeared and the cement turned into packed dirt. Buildings dissolved into trees. The light grew sharper, cleaner. Memory overtook him.

It was night, hot and humid. Torches flickered through the trees. Dogs bayed. He sunk low against a fallen log. A heart beat loud in the air. Breath came out in crashing, rapid bursts. Damon squeezed the small hand holding his. Big brown eyes blinked back at him, the whites brighter than the moon. The torches dropped off down a slope, away from them. He waited another five minutes before grabbing up the little shaking body and running.

He ran to a river and submerged them both in the icy water. It was harder traveling across the water. They nearly went under twice, the force of the river sometimes paralyzing his limbs. Damon and his charge reached the other side and rested on the bank. He was hungry. His charge shivered, both from the cold and from tears. The faint call of dogs reached him and Damon took the child and flew into the woods.

They traveled silently. At some point the child fell asleep in his arms. Damon was glad. The breathing was low and even, like the heart. It calmed him. It was early morning when Damon reached the appointed place. There was a steep recess into the earth, surrounded by rock crawling with the thick roots of thousand-year-old trees and lichen. He climbed down, careful not to jostle the child, and landed on fragrant soil. A flame flickered a few yards ahead. Damon approached with caution.

"That is far enough," a voice called out. A tall man stood beyond the fire. Long black hair flowed over his shoulders. His upper body was painted blue. He wore stitched black cotton pants and no shoes. There was a belt around his waist, a knife tucked into the band. Damon placed a firm hand on the back of the sleeping child.

"I was told there would be another, a woman."

"Only the child was there."

The Indian stared at him with hard black eyes. He raised a hand and threw a handful of dust into the fire. It spit and sparked, flashed white then changed into a waving wall of flame. Damon drew back.

The Indian lifted his eyes to the wall. His dark eyes pierced Damon suddenly. "The woman has been taken. I must take the boy. Pass him through."

"This is insanity. He will burn," Damon said.

"He will not burn. He will be protected by his mother's fire." The Indian opened his arms. "The boy."

The boy moved, waking. Damon set him down and squatted before him. "Simeon, this is where we must part. This man will take you further to safety."

Simeon blinked, turned to see the wall of fire, and looked to Damon with shaking eyes. "It will hurt me," he whispered.

"No, it will not. Come, take my hand," Damon directed. The hand slipped in his. Together they approached the fire. It was excruciating. His flesh began to sizzle. The Indian stepped forward and reached out a hand to the boy.

"Come through, Simeon. It will save your friend."

Simeon hesitated, but pushed his hand through the flames. He quickly looked to Damon, amazed. The Indian grasped the boy's hand and drew him through. Damon sprang back, in a daze from the pain. He looked at the ring on his finger as his hand went from black to red to white.

"The ring works. This was only a precaution against your kind, in case you were followed, in case you thought to come with him. She had no need to worry, I see this now."

Damon gazed at the Indian. Simeon clutched at the painted hand.

"Will he be safe? I promised his mother that he would remain safe."

The Indian turned. Simeon looked at Damon, his brown eyes filling with tears. Damon leapt to his feet. The world went dark in an instant. His eyes adjusted and there was no one, nothing, not even the hint of smoke from the fire.

The woman has been taken.

Damon blinked rapidly. The sun broke apart the night. He stood on the opposite side of a two-lane road. Across the way was Goosie's. Bonnie sat at a window booth, eating something that made her close her eyes and grin.

So this was where his feet led him. Damon toyed with the idea of disturbing her. He needed a distraction and what better than a guilty witch with a confused set of sensibilities? He set a foot on the black hard top. Bonnie took another bite. All the trite digs and worn conversation starters died with the movement of her jaw. If he went in there, something would happen. He knew it. The moment still clung to him. Memories were assailing him. He might kill her. He might...Damon slipped his hands into his jean's pockets and turned towards Mystic Falls. She can have her cake, Damon said.

There was comfort in pie, so Bonnie ordered a whole apple and currant pie, warmed, with a bowl of vanilla ice cream and a tall glass of tart lemonade. It was instant, gratuitous bliss.

Of course, bliss was dependent upon what created it. The bubble popped with the clink of the fork against the bottom of the metal plate. Bonnie pushed the plate and the bowl aside and laid her cell on the table. She told Matt to call her once he heard news. Good or bad, she would return to the nightmare that was swiftly becoming her waking life.

Her cell phone rattled on the Formica.

"Matt?"

"She's okay, Bon. She made it through. She's in the ICU."

Bonnie pressed a hand to her mouth and nose. Tears spilled over her knuckles. She inhaled deeply, swallowing the rising tears. "I'm coming back."

Matt told her the room and Bonnie paid as quick as she could. Fifteen miles from Mystic Falls and the sky turned a magnificent storm grey. Bonnie groaned as hard drops of water hit her windshield. It would rain the day she forgot her umbrella at home. She turned on her lights. Through the downpour she saw a figure ahead. The familiar gait, the boots, and the leather jacket told her who it was. Bonnie debated passing him but found herself pulling alongside him.

"Need a ride?"

Damon glanced over at her. She counted to five silently. On four he got in. His hair was plastered to his head. Rivulets of rainwater ran down his neck and disappeared beneath the black t-shirt he wore. Damon scrubbed his scalp and drops of water sprinkled the side of her face.

"Thanks," he said.

"What were you doing out here?"

"Walking."

"Walking?" Bonnie asked. Damon peeled off the leather jacket. "And when it started raining, why didn't you scamper off?"

"Vampires don't scamper, Bennett. They zip. Well some zoom, but that's beside the point."

"The point is?"

"Why you stopped."

Quiet filled the car. The air became muggy. Bonnie had difficulty breathing. Damon stared at her. His eyes heated the side of her face and neck. Her hand itched to rub at them but she gripped the wheel and shrugged.

"I'm going to the hospital," Bonnie responded.

"Okay."

Bonnie said nothing. The quiet stretched. If she didn't know any better, she would think they were so accustomed to each other, they didn't need to speak. It was a little strange, though, to find him as she came back. Bonnie opened her mouth to comment but the quiet was too thick to overcome so they sat there, wondering about each other, about themselves, about the people waiting for them back in Mystic Falls, and about what tomorrow would look like.