The car wouldn't start.
Of course. The sleek, perfect, brand new car Bonnie stole waited until she was in the middle of nowhere to stop working. She turned with enraged force the key in the ignition and the only sound she heard was her phone ringing out in the tall wheat a ways out from the dirt lot she was parked in. She had thrown it because he wouldn't stop calling.
Bonnie was gone for three days, she hadn't missed anything, hadn't done anything drastic, was only on a standard one-woman road trip in a world where the chances of being harmed by something other than herself were slim, and Kai was apparently going crazy.
His texts evolved in this way:
Kai, Thursday 11:46 AM: Do you like cilantro? I'm thinking Mexican next week.
Kai, Thursday 1:28 PM: Bonnie.
Kai, Thursday 2:28 PM: Bonnie.
Kai, Thursday 4:28 PM: …Bonnie.
Kai, Thursday 7:28 PM: Whatever.
Kai, Friday 9:30 AM: But seriously.
Kai, Friday 10:12 PM: Where are you? I can't feel you.
Kai, Friday 11:59 PM: Fuck you too.
By the seventh "missed" call, Bonnie was convinced that his desperation to reach her was the shining cherry flag on top of a red flag sundae, and at that ridiculous point there was no going back. She had to find the ascendant and get home, without him. The next sound step was letting go of him, via ditching her phone.
It was all well and good and a functional plan to stay on the hunt and on the move so Kai wouldn't catch up…until the car decided to bail on her. It wouldn't have been that big of a problem if there were other cars around, but there weren't any, and she was a ways out of town.
Over the last couple of days, Bonnie had driven to Whitmore and searched every logical location for the ascendant. Liv's dorm room, Jo's apartment, Ric's apartment, the hotel where Gemini wedding guests may or may not have stayed, but all searches turned up nothing. It was already difficult justifying how all of these locations were logical because, as far as everyone understood, Kai was trapped in 1903 and not a problem. Whoever had an ascendant prepared for the off chance he'd turn up was a dedicated paranoid, and a genius. A powerful one, who Bonnie could only guess the whereabouts of on that day.
The negative inner monologue Bonnie had developed after months alone in 1994 was no help either. It kept reminding her that Kai had already searched for the ascendant. He knew his coven eons better than she did and if he couldn't find it, she was flattering herself to think that she could.
It was already evening by the time she pulled up to the last location on her list: the wedding barn. And by the lack of cars parked in the dirt lot outside, she guessed taking a single step further was futile. But she'd driven all that way, so she motivated herself with a why not? attitude and plowed ahead as planned. If she'd been smart about it and just left when instinct suggested, she wouldn't have used the rest of her daylight hours hollowing cabinets, gutting bridal suite closets and turning over rustic chests to no damned avail, all the while bracing herself for a panicky mouse or an unsuspecting spider to skitter from the commotion, knowing all too well that her apprehension was useless. There probably weren't even microscopic creatures. She was that alone. And she felt it. She felt her own hopelessness like a weight chained to her leg by the time she was dragging it out to the car in the dark. When it wouldn't start, she cried.
Too done to walk to the next place, she settled to seek what domestic comfort she could in the barn. Stay strong, she reminded herself. She ambled to the wine racks, selected a Moscato, dropped her ass in a chair, poured a healthy glass, toasted herself, drank and waited for morning.
She thought it arrived when a flash of light crossed her eyelids and she fluttered them open. It was still dark. She'd drunk herself to sleep before she ever found a bed. Her wrecked body was folded over on the wooden floor next to the table she was earlier sitting at like a civilized woman. She rubbed her eyes and rolled onto her back, feeling the alcohol stiff in her muscles. The boards on the ceiling were dark blue and lightening just barely. It was that four thirty shade she knew so well.
She took a deep breath. It was husky with phlegm from the joint she'd indulged in during her wine session. She recounted the events before that. The emptiness in the beautiful sunset falling over the barn; emotion had claimed her like the alcohol. She didn't really want to leave her phone in a field; she resolved to search for it when the sun rose.
As if attuned to her thoughts, she heard it ring. But the sound wasn't distant, like a cellphone hurled passionately into a wheat field should sound. It was tinny and clattering and so very near. She lifted her head and turned toward the direction of the sound, and screamed.
Kai was kneeling at her side.
Bonnie scrambled to her feet and dizzily backed away. The newer memories she'd made with him swirled up in her brain, telling her not to panic, and she wanted to let them convince her. But the remnants of his horror, like always, overtook. His poker face aided in the unease. He had a way of smiling at her; she didn't know whether he was glad he found her or ready to quit playing with his food and just kill her already. She realized too that they were standing in the last place they'd been together in the real world, and that memory was a bad one. She couldn't look at him without seeing the blood streaks on his face and staining brightly on his tux. She couldn't look past the uninvited guest who rocked her world to damnation.
In his left hand, he held his phone up to his ear and in his outstretched right hand, her phone, blaring, screaming for her.
So it wasn't a good-news poker face.
"It's for you," he said.
Twitching, she took her phone from his hand, half expecting him to drop it and grab her instead. But he didn't. Into his own phone, he falsely pleaded, "Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up."
Fine, she thought, I'll play. And she swiped the green telephone on her screen.
"Hello?" she dulled, boring into his eyes. He returned the tone.
"Hey, Bonnie. It's me, Kai."
"Hi, Kai. What's up?" She hated him so much.
"Oh, nothing. I'm just…wondering where the fuck you are!" he barked.
"Calm down!" she barked back, remembering that she was done bowing down to him, especially when he got carried away with anger. In response, he launched his phone into the wall behind her. The throw was so forceful the phone broke clean through the wall and clattered somewhere in the other room.
He went to the table and picked up her meager runaway bag, dumping its contents out and filtering through them. "Booze shooters, nice, Bon. Votive candles. Pot…really? Map. Granola bars, damn it. Were you going on a bender or planning to leave me for good?"
"The ascendant's not in there."
"Trust me, I know," he said. "Because there isn't one. I told you that."
"But I don't trust you."
"If you wanna go back so bad, why didn't you look for the ascendant months ago? Why'd you have to wait until we…"
"Until we what?"
"I thought we were getting along."
"I'm sorry, Kai. I just…can't live knowing that my best friend is suffering."
"We're all suffering."
"I need to go back. I need to find a way."
"And kill yourself."
"No."
"That's what it takes. And fuck everybody over there who thinks you're noble, because you're worth too much to keep dying for them."
Coming from somebody like him, the compliment was crushing. Hot tears formed in her eyes and gushed down. She didn't have the energy to wipe them. She hated the feeling in her that he wasn't wrong. She didn't care how noble it was or wasn't to die for the people she loved, and she didn't blame any of them for how much she loved them. But she wondered, in a small dark corner of herself, if any of them would die for her. If any of them would exhaust themselves unrelentingly for her sake. She couldn't expect them to; they were all great people meant to go on and do great things, and when she thought of her own future she often drew a blank. Ensuring everyone else's happiness most fulfilled her. Sharing a world with Kai, however, had taught her to take a little more for herself and she dared to think maybe her friends didn't put as much effort into her happiness as she did theirs. Maybe she deserved better than that.
She didn't want to taint her memory of them by thinking about it any further.
"Stop crying," Kai told her. "Come on. Snap out of it. You're killing me with this."
Bonnie turned her back to him. There were long lace drapes over the tall window on the wall. The sun rising was turning them yellow.
"You want me to give up," she muttered. "But it's not me."
"Well, make it the new you. Because whether you like it or fucking hate it doesn't matter. You're stuck with me. Sorry I'm not worthy of your eternity. Sorry I'm not Jeremy." Jeremy's name out loud cut Bonnie. "Well," Kai beat, "Sorry, not sorry. Jer-bear looks good and all, but come on. This." He motioned to himself with a conceited smirk.
"You're right," Bonnie agreed. His eyebrows rose. "It's useless." She tried to ignore how he drooped quite visibly when he realized it wasn't his statement that she was agreeing to. "And anyway," she continued, "I probably won't last long here. If the pure fucking misery of being stuck here with you doesn't kill me, you will. However it happens, eventually, I will die. And Elena will wake up."
Kai frowned down at his shoes. He seemed to be holding back another of his terrible thoughts. Bonnie walked to the window and fingered the curtains apart just an inch. She wanted to look out on the gold wheat outside, check the sun's progress.
"You're talented, you know." She felt her voice reverberate against the glass. She could see his reflection, see him perk up to the compliment, ready for her to expand on it. "It's a great spell," she continued. "Well thought out. No loopholes. Truly, I'm impressed. You really know how to ruin a girl's life."
He turned his head down again. So shaming him worked. Maybe over time she could train him like a dog.
"Do you need a ride home," he asked without tone. It was almost a whisper. Even in his voice, the poker effect discomforted her. Was he offering her the ride because he felt bad, or because he needed an opportunity to hurt someone to make himself feel better?
"I did," she admitted. With the loud whip of much fabric, she ripped the curtains apart, exposing the entire window. The rising sun's light cast into the room, leaving no shadow but that of Bonnie and her arms wide open across the window. She heard Kai yell, heard the sizzling of his flesh, his whooshing retreat into the safety of darkness in the hall. "Not anymore," Bonnie concluded.
She walked to her splayed bag and began putting her things back in.
"You fight so dirty," Kai scolded from his hiding spot. He sounded frustrated, and mildly awestruck. "Where are you going now?" he asked.
"It's daytime," she stated. "I can see where I'm going and I am no longer drunk, so I'm walking home." Then she remembered Kai drove there to find her. She slung her bag over her shoulder and looked at him. "Or I'm stealing your car." She held out an open hand. "Keys. Gimme."
They stared each other down, her hand waiting and his eyes dark while the last of his skin healed from ash to its normal color.
"Don't leave me alone," he whined. "I hate being here."
"It's called guilt. You should hang on to that feeling. It makes you just a little bit redeemable."
"Bonnie, please."
Not caring for the puppy desperation gleaming in his eyes, she made an impatient motion with her hand. He sighed, fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them onto the floor behind her. She gave him an incredulous glower before turning to bend over and pick them up. She felt his eyes travel over her ass and quickly stood upright.
She made to leave without saying another word, but something occurred to her and she turned to say one last thing to him. A little something to let him know she didn't completely hate him.
"When you ruined the daylight ring that I made for Elena, Jo made her a new one."
He seemed disinterested. "And?"
"It's no Bennett exclusive. You can figure it out. But if you suck that much, maybe I can teach you. …Just not today."
A loud laugh burst out of Kai and dissipated into small giggles as he said, "I'm like super fucking powerful, how has it not occurred to you that I lied and am perfectly capable of making myself one of those stupid little rings?"
She faltered. "Why haven't you?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Don't feel like it. I want you to do it for me."
"Because?"
"Because the idea tickles me."
Bonnie wanted to laugh at his word choice but wasn't sure of her emotional footing in this conversation. "It tickles you?"
He shrugged again in response, eating up her annoyance.
"You're so weird." She started feeling exasperated and ready to leave.
"You're weirder," he bantered thoughtlessly.
"You're weirdest," Bonnie shot back with little time to consider how dumb of a comeback that was. She was now eight years old. Kai seemed to think it was funny. Seeing the genuine curve to his lips brought one to hers, as hard as she tried to fight it. It wasn't a smile, but it wanted to be.
"Before you go," he started. She groaned. "While we're on the subject, I need your witchy opinion. Do you think this ring can be spelled?"
Kai leaned casually against the wall, holding up the backside of his left hand.
"I'm sure you can make it work," she said.
He protested, "Well this one was passed down in my family." He turned his attention down to the ring. It has other magic in it, if you can see the markings on it… Do you think it will affect the other spell?"
Bonnie squinted but couldn't see anything through the obscuring shadows. She took a few steps closer.
"Look," Kai said, holding his hand closer to the edge of darkness. Intrigued by the idea of old magic and getting a peek at another coven's heirloom, she went to him and took his cold hand. The ring he wore was a plain black band but she couldn't see any discernable markings.
"I don't see anything," she said, really zooming in before turning her enlarged pupils up at Kai. He was looking down at her, seeming to be very pleased with himself.
"That's probably because it's from a quarter machine," he whispered.
His hand in hers slipped free so he could clutch both of her shoulders.
The loss of control was immediate. Her body bowed to the pain of this deepest-reaching drainage and her knees gave way. His other hand was there to catch her at the waist. Everything good inside her, momentarily, disappeared. All sensation curled in against the onslaught of Kai's magic scouring her. She willed herself not to scream, and to implement resilience against these episodes of his, these clips and chips at her magic. This time she knew that he would never stop siphoning; he didn't care that she didn't like it. It was a way of life. It would remain as such until it killed her.
The window Bonnie had just exposed burst into a million shards of glass that danced the wood floor as gust of wind had its way. All other loose things around them picked up and moved at the wind's insistence. Papers made their own tornado; the lace curtains turned to beautiful billowing ghosts; Bonnie's short hair feathered over her tightened face and she looked pleadingly at Kai whose eyes were closed in concentration. He wasn't just taking. He was using.
The wind roared stronger yet and Bonnie, unable to root herself or breathe, stumbled in its current. She bumped into Kai and the two witches collided with a wall. The chairs at the table fell over and slid across the floor. Scared now of the demonic gust, despite its cause, Bonnie held onto Kai for dear life, assuring her dignity that she would slap him senseless when he finished this tantrum.
Just as easily as it started, it stopped. Kai let go of her and panted against the wall, his eyes still closed and mouth open in savor of the power. Objects settled and the curtains died back down to their limp selves moping against the wall. Before she let anything else happen, Bonnie gave Kai the ferocious slap she envisioned.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" she shrieked.
He tightened his jaw and snarled a Kai-typical threatening retort, "Not that it hurts or anything, but I wouldn't do that again if I were you."
"I get it. You're dangerous."
Catching her breath, she stepped over debris and away, away toward the sunlight where he couldn't reach her again. But it was gone.
The wind he pulled from the sky brought clouds with it, like a weather vacuum. Outside the window, only grey swirled above. It was no longer a sunny day in hell, but an overcast one.
Acquiescent to distraction, Bonnie rushed to lean out of the window frame. Careful not to press her palms in the jagged glass still jutting off the wood, she craned her neck to stare up at the sky in amazement. She knew she should feel terrified, and she shouldn't be in awe but in escape mode. It had just been so long since she saw storm clouds. And these swelled with promise. Would it...?
A flash of light blinded her wide eyes. Thunder then cracked its presence and bowled around the sky, its greatness something inspiring and Bonnie felt like she might hyperventilate. Then came the whispering from above, trailing down. The first droplet landed on her cheek like a kiss. Thousands of its brothers came tumbling after. Rain.
Still too shocked to display emotion, Bonnie jumped out the window hole and let her boots fall heavy over the dirt as she stocked her way into the falling water, wanting to stand where it would wet her the most, where for the first time in too long she could feel close to nature, feel it reaching back and touching her like she so often touched it to no answer. The droplets fell heavier, and heavier, and she tilted her face up to them, needing them to bathe her, drown her, wash her of all pain. She never realized until then how much standing in the rain could feel like a conversation with god, whoever or whatever god was. It was transcendental.
She almost forgot about Kai. Remembering him and how they got there, she turned and he was standing in the window watching her. He wasn't smiling, or proud of himself in any way. In fact, the grey light on him almost made him look somber. He seemed to be lost in thought while he watched her, and it appeared he didn't like what he was thinking.
"Kai," she croaked in astonishment. He was twenty feet away, but he raised an eyebrow at his name on her lips, breaking through his drowse. He stepped over the low wall beneath what used to be the window to go to her.
"It's raining," she murmured the obvious. He nodded. She felt her excited heart pound, the pressure of her blood teasing spasms in her lungs tugging big air through her nose and all of these things moving her chest and she knew she might smile soon. "You can do that?" she asked.
He shook his head, "Not alone." He put his hands on his hips and looked up. Bonnie watched the rain adopt and drip over and wash him like it had her. Just as feeling it on herself had felt close to god, seeing it on him made him look just as close. Not redeemed, or forgiven, but simply accepted by nature. Coddled in all his flaws by nature's dripping arms. She knew these were dangerously tolerant thoughts. At the same time, they gave her the kind of comfort no amount of money could ever buy. It convinced that happiness was possible there, even with Kai. She was feeling it already. And she didn't know how long it would stay in her, or how long the rain would grace them. But she knew better than to waste that time.
Like the water rushing over Kai, Bonnie reached her hand out to him and tentatively placed it on his jaw. He glared skeptically, and his stubble poked the fleshy pad of her palm, but she didn't take her hand back or avert her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she broke. "I'm sorry I left. I didn't mean to hurt you." The way he tilted his face down and his eyes peered up into hers with new interest struck Bonnie as endearing. He was listening. It warranted an apology of another kind, something she wanted to say in 1994. Even after he had drugged, kidnapped and stuffed her in the trunk of his car just to cook her Thanksgiving dinner, the details he shared from his childhood were enough, momentarily, to make her feel sorry. Lately in particular, she found herself wondering what kind of man he could've been if his coven had instead nurtured his siphoning ability, rather than shame it. She wanted to tell him this one thing that he needed to hear. She doubted anyone had ever said it to him. "And I'm sorry your family didn't think you were good enough." A shadow crossed his features. "You are," she concluded, lifting her eyes up to the weather in reference.
She quieted the warring, stubborn part of herself demanding that he and anyone else who ever wronged her say their eternal apologies before earning one from her. She quieted it and put it away. Whatever he did was done, and like rain could be diluted in a thousand new, better doings if she let them. Maybe he would do the same with her wrongs.
Water collected on his lips, as on hers. She realized her hand was still on his face and let it fall, slightly embarrassed by the cheesy way she was acting. Instead of waiting for him to respond, she turned and tipped her face back up for another taste of rain. Then Kai spoke.
"Don't make me a daylight ring until you want to," he said. "The world's half yours, but…I don't want to leave your town, or you." He hesitated, for once not totally prepared to splurge everything on his mind, before he said, "I've been thinking maybe the daylight can be your half and moonlight can be mine, and it's your choice whether you invite me over to your half or not."
Bonnie could no longer suppress her smile. She hoped talking would cut it off. "Let's go home."
When she sat in the passenger seat of his coupe, she apologized for getting the seat wet. Her clothes were sopping, but so were his, and he didn't care. The windshield was foggy and with two wet witches in the small space, the air fell lousy with moisture. Kai started the car, turned the heat dial and rubbed his hands together. Bonnie was so preoccupied with the rain that she forgot the cold. She remembered that she missed it too, but as it crept into her bones and stiffened her joints, she was ready to scare it out with heat. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror and loved how wet her hair was, how it dripped, flattened around her sodden face. Her lips looked nearly blue and she worried, briefly, about pneumonia.
The windshield wipers swiped across in front of them. He put in a CD. Bonnie couldn't deny that she'd thought about him a lot over the last couple of days, not entirely sure whether the plan was to leave with or without him, or how long she wanted to be gone if she couldn't find the ascendant. It hurt her. After all her mind and her body went through since his return to Mystic Falls, the wormhole of redemption and acceptance, it hurt to walk away from. That pain alone told her that it had happened: they were in some kind of relationship.
She watched him tuck his sleeve into his fist and wax circles of visibility in the foggy windows, paying no attention to her, listening to music… it was so normal. He looked in that moment like a normal guy. But he wasn't and never would be, even if he tried. He couldn't be. But Bonnie understood now that she liked it that way. She liked him that way. She liked him fucked up, temperamental and explosive. It made the times he was sweet to her even sweeter, and the times he was honest that much more true. Whether having these feelings was a good or bad thing, she had them. Whether she was truly bad inside and finding her niche in him, or he was truly good inside and finding his light in her, this was happening. Bonnie had a feeling it was a little of both. Lights and darks bruised the both of them in different ways at different times. Collectively, they were just a grey, hot mess.
The need to warm herself was beginning to agitate her. The world thrashed in water outside, and inside the car it was nervously calm. She looked at Kai and how his wet shirt clung to him. With all the water hung up on the two of them, it refracted the way his hum vibrated her and it set her teeth on edge. He was too close to her. He wasn't close enough.
Whether it was the right or wrong move that he happened to look over at her, she didn't know. His look was innocent, something meant to check her before he started driving. Whatever the look, that darkness in his eyes crooned to her. His magic, lively from recent accomplishments, radiated. Hers, now starved and withered, grasped for his. She noticed his lips set apart in rest, beads of rain shining across his jaw, cut through by the rivulets coursing down from his hair. As if her physical form was the fat to her magic's muscle, she leaned toward him. With more emotional charge than she expected, he met her halfway and took her mouth up in his.