A/N: Hi guys! I'm so sorry for the long wait. What's it been, 6 months? That's not okay. Not only have I struggled with finding the time to write, I've also lacked the inspiration, until recently. I tried to make this update a bit longer thank the others. Thank you sooo much for sticking with this story. I love you all! I'm not sure when the next chapter will be out, but I promise not to make you wait as long. I'm really sorry, again, and enjoy :)

The early morning sun filtered into the boarding house, chasing away shadows and illuminating the aged décor inside. Stefan Salvatore sat patiently in one of the aged seats, his hands in his lap, watching the hands on the clock tick.

She was late.

Stefan frowned deeply. Just as he made a move to retrieve his phone from the pocket of his jeans, the doorbell chimed. He rolled his eyes; of course she would arrive just as he was about to call her.

Standing to his feet, he made his way to the front door and pulled it open.

"Lucy. Thanks for coming." He stepped aside, allowing Bonnie's cousin to enter the house. She glanced around warily as she moved past him, her eyes moving rapidly over the foyer. Stefan gestured for her to continue into the house, following closely behind her. She hovered by one of the aged chairs in the main room, her gaze locked on Stefan's, her hand twitching as if she were preparing to blow him away if he posed even the slightest threat to her. Stefan smiled warmly, trying to put her at ease. The awkward silence was broken by the sound of footsteps descending the staircase; moments later, Damon joined them, wiping his face with a weary hand as he approached.

"You're late." Stefan rolled his eyes and let out a faint groan at his brother's lack of tact. Lucy glared hard at Damon, and for a moment Stefan worried that she was trying to set him on fire. After a tense silence, Lucy stuck her hand into her bag, bringing out a small ring box.

"I've got the ring, where is she?" Damon's eyes moved swiftly to the staircase that he had just descended.

"She's upstairs with Caroline." Lucy started in the direction of the stairs, but Damon quickly blocked her path.

"Damon…" she growled out in warning. He lifted his hands in a surrendering gesture but didn't move.

"Just, hold on a second. Before you go up there, I have to warn you that she's not in great shape. She didn't turn of her own free will and she's been refusing to take any more blood since she turned; she's sad and angry and hungry and that makes her volatile. You need to be aware that she can come at you at any moment and if she catches you off guard, she could rip out your throat in less than a second. You need to be on your toes at all times, whether she's family or not, got it?" Damon's eyes were blazing with barely restrained irritation at Lucy's flippant attitude and he was determined to make her see that her life may be at risk.

"Damon," Lucy stepped forward, her voice low. "I have taken more experienced vampires out in the blink of an eye. I can handle a 9 hour old newbie, don't worry." She shouldered past him, continuing for her journey to the stairs, but Damon grabbed her arm and swung her back around to face him.

"She is your cousin; family. That means that she is your weakness, and if it comes down to it, she will play on that. You need to understand that this isn't just any old vampire. This girl is a Bennett, just like you; she shares your blood which means that you need to be twice as guarded as anyone else because she will manipulate the hell out of you in an instant if it suits her." Lucy snatched her arm from his grip and, with a withering glare, marched up the stairs in search of Bonnie. Damon knew that she understood.

As he started after the Bennett witch, he noticed Caroline emerging from the kitchen.

"Barbie, what are you doing down here?" She glanced up at him.

"My mom just called; she wanted to know how Bonnie was doing. Bonnie was asleep and I didn't want to wake her, so I came downstairs, since she's got supernatural hearing now, and all." Damon frowned.

Something was wrong.

A strange scent slowly filtered into the air, the acrid smell of smoke and…burning flesh?

Bonnie.

Damon raced up the stairs as fast as he could, overtaking Lucy in his haste to get to the woman he loved. His heart pounded in his chest, threatening to burst out of it altogether. He threw open the door to the room which had been allocated as Bonnie's and almost collapsed when he saw her standing in front of the open window, blisters forming over her skin as she began to burn to death. With a roar of anguish, he sped towards her, pushing her out of the glare of the sun. Stefan stood in the doorway, his mouth open in horror as he took in the scene before him. Bonnie shrieked, a high pitched wail, clawing at Damon, 'let-me-go's and 'I-want-to-die's tumbling from her mouth in a slurred stream of anguish. Damon crushed her to his chest, relief and rage warring within him, churning his insides to the point where he thought he would throw up.

"Calm down, Damon." His brother's voice rang through the haze that had descended on his mind, bringing him out of his reverie. He felt his hands shaking with supressed emotion and looked down to see that Bonnie had stopped fighting, sobbing into his shirt as she healed slowly.

"Go and get some blood, Stefan." He all but growled at his brother, firing him with a look so stony, the younger Salvatore left without complaint. "Lucy; the ring, please." Lucy cautiously stepped closer and dropped the small object into the palm of Damon's outstretched hand. "Thank you." The tone of his voice was a clear dismissal and Lucy quickly scurried away, her head bowed. Damon turned to the young girl in his arms. The weeping had stopped and she was staring straight ahead, blankly.

"What the hell were you thinking, Bonnie?" he hissed, sharply.

No response.

"You think that dying will make this situation any better? You think that killing yourself is the solution?" His voice rose as the anger began to return in full force. Yet Bonnie remained still, her face devoid of any emotion, as if she couldn't even hear him. "Answer me, dammit!"

Slowly, almost painfully so, she turned to face him and her lips parted.

"I'm a monster." She whispered. Damon's heart clenched in his chest and his grip on Bonnie slackened. She slipped from his grasp, but he quickly grabbed her wrist, slipping the lapis lazuli ring onto her right index finger before she could start to burn again.

Stefan stuck his head around the door, his eyes wary.

"I brought the blood," he said, tentatively extending his hand which clutched a plethora of blood-filled plastic bags. Damon strode up to him, snatching the items from his outstretched limbs and slamming the door in his face. Turning back to Bonnie, he stalked over to her, tearing open one of the bags and holding it in front of her face.

"Drink. Now." Veins crawled under her eyes and she snatched the bag from between his fingers, raising it to her mouth and gulping down the contents in record time. Damon turned his back to her, attempting to calm his residual rage at her suicide attempt. Breathing deeply, he tried to imagine calming scenarios, anything to take his mind off Bonnie's brush with death.

"I've finished." Bonnie's soft voice pierced through the haze of his anger and he fought with himself to keep his temper in check before he turned back around to face her. Her eyes were firmly fixed on the ground as she held the empty blood bag firmly between her shaking fingers.

"Bonnie." She flinched slightly, the shaking of her hands increased, but she refused to look him in the eye.

"I'm sorry." She whispered through dry lips. Her injuries had faded, leaving her skin flawlessly smooth again. However, he knew that her scars ran deeper than just the physical. He felt his anger drain from him as he took a cautious step towards her-and another-and another. After a few tense moments passed, she tentatively looked up at him, her green eyes swimming with fear and something else. "Please don't hate me. I'm sorry." He reached for her, his fingertips gently brushing her elbow and down her forearm, before grasping her hand and tugging her towards him. He wrapped her in his arms, inhaling the scent of her hair as he mumbled,

"I could never hate you, Bonnie. Not even if I wanted to."

Lucy paced the length of the living room, anxiously wringing her fingers as she awaited news on her younger cousin's well-being. A hand on her shoulder halted her in her tracks.

"Lucy, I'm sure she'll be fine." She glared at Stefan, shrugging off his grip and shuddering at the feeling of death that ran through her at the contact.

"This is all your fault. All you vampires ever do is destroy people, you suck them dry until there's nothing left." She spat out the word, vampire, as if it left a foul taste in her mouth. "You and your godforsaken brother have been terrorising my family for centuries, acting as if you're entitled to our powers just because you made some pathetic promise to one of our ancient ancestors, which you didn't even uphold, a few millennia ago. Bonnie was innocent in all this. All she ever wanted to do was help her friends, and this is the thanks she gets. The one person who she bent over backwards the most for is the one who killed her, just because she was jealous. You all make me sick." She was breathing heavily by the end of her rant, her chest heaving as she glared murderously at Stefan and Caroline.

"Lucy-"

"Save your empty words for someone who cares, Stefan. You claim to be oh-so-noble, but you're just as bad as your brother." Stefan flinched. "You clearly don't care about my cousin, so I guess I'll just have to take her to California with me, where she can be around people who actually value her life."

"No way in hell." The three of them turned to face the new occupant of the room. Damon had his arms crossed over his chest and he was shooting daggers at Lucy, his blue eyes flashing dangerously. He descended the last few steps and stood toe-to-toe with the irate witch. "Bonnie isn't going anywhere and she sure as hell isn't travelling across the freaking country just because you hate us." Lucy growled deep in her throat.

"You are so SELFISH! There's no way that you are too blind to see that Bonnie could still be in real danger."

"I'll protect her."

"Yeah, because you did so well at that before." She scoffed in his face. "Move out of the way, Damon, I'm taking my cousin back home with me." Lucy tried to walk around him, but he stepped into her way, blocking her path.

"She's resting, and I wasn't kidding around when I said that she isn't going anywhere with you." Lucy's whole demeanour changed-a dangerous glint appeared in her eyes.

"You're trying my patience, Damon. Move out of my way, or I'll have to move you." Stubbornly, he stayed in his position. "Very well." In less than a second, Damon was on the floor, writhing in pain as Lucy administered to him the most painful aneurysm he had ever experienced. This one made Bonnie's seem like nothing. He screamed, curling in on himself as Lucy looked down on him with disdain.

"Lucy, stop, please!" Stefan's voice cut through her murderous haze and she let up on popping the blood vessels in his brother's brain. She leaned down and her lip curled in derision at the whimpering vampire on the floor.

"Don't test me, Damon. I don't take kindly to insolence." Straightening up, she brushed down her clothes. "I'll wait until Bonnie wakes up to ask her to move with me." Stefan nodded, helping his brother to his feet. "Let's get one thing straight, though; I'm not like Bonnie. I won't allow your pathetic little gang of teenagers to walk all over me, or her, anymore. If she says no, I will simply stay here with her. Things are going to change around here, because I am not going to let you people hurt her anymore." With that, she turned and slammed out of the boarding house, leaving a stunned silence behind her.

Caroline frowned deeply, irritation bubbling in her veins.

"What a bitch."

Matt sat in a back alley behind the Grille with Jeremy, a bottle of tequila dangling from his fingers as he took a swig straight from it. Wincing at the burn, he passed it over to Jeremy and swiped a hand across his mouth.

"So."

"So."

An awkward silence ensued.

"Look, man, I'm just going to come right out an ask you." Jeremy sat up straighter.

"What's up?"

"Is it true? That you were hitting Bonnie?" Jeremy's heart stopped. "It's just that, I overheard her yesterday, when you went to go and talk to her and she said some stuff and I just wanted to know-is it true?" Jeremy cleared his throat and looked down at the ground, afraid to meet his friend's eye.

"I…yes." He felt the shift in the air and saw Matt scoot backwards, further away from him.

"Are you kidding me?" When Jeremy didn't respond, he knew he had his answer. "That's messed up man." Matt stood to his feet. "I can't believe that you'd do something like that, to Bonnie of all people. I mean, she's sacrificed herself for all of us at least once, and, dude, she's tiny. What the hell is wrong with you?" Jeremy balled his hands into fists, attempting to hold back the guilt at his friend's words. Of all of them, Matt was the least judgemental, so for him to say these things cut Jeremy more than he cared to admit. "I can't even be around you right now." He turned to leave, but turned back to give one parting shot. "I hate to say it, man, but Damon freaking Salvatore is a better man than you right now." With that, he was gone.

Bonnie awoke with a start. She breathed deeply as she attempted to calm her speeding pulse. She had just had a horrible dream that Elena had killed her and turned her into a vampire. Looking around her, she frowned at the room that she was in. Was she in the boarding house? Was she is Damon's room? In his bed? She was just about to call out when Caroline's head poked around the door. One look at her sympathetic face and Bonnie knew that her nightmare was a reality. She was a vampire.

"It was real." She breathed out. Caroline rushed over to the bed and pulled her into a hug. Bonnie was wide eyed; she couldn't cry, she couldn't scream, she couldn't move. She was paralysed. Her pulse wasn't racing; she didn't have one at all, anymore.

"I'm so sorry, Bon. I'm so, so sorry." Bonnie shrugged out of the hug, moving further back against the headboard of the bed.

"Is Elena…" Caroline shook her head.

"No, we haven't seen or heard from that bitch since Damon kicked her out. Good riddance, too." Bonnie breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn't have to face the doppelgänger so soon after she had murdered her in cold blood. "Lucy's here though. She made you your ring." Bonnie glanced down at the aforementioned item which adorned her finger. The band was silver and elegant, understated, with the rock planted in the centre. "She actually wants to talk to you about some stuff." Caroline looked nervous and slightly sad as she spoke the last sentence.

"What's wrong?" She looked away and Bonnie quickly grew frustrated.

"I'll let her tell you." With that, Caroline hopped off the bed, waited for Bonnie to climb out of it, and quickly led her out of the room, down the hallway and down the stairs, into the living room where Lucy and Damon were having an intense stare-off whilst Stefan stood off to the side, downing bourbon like his life depended on it. Bonnie looked around warily as Damon strode over to her, tugging her into his arms.

"What's going on?" She glanced at each of the other four people in the room, willing someone to explain the weird atmosphere to her. "Someone tell me what's wrong, right now." Lucy stepped forward and Damon's arms tightened around her.

"Bonnie, I wanted to talk to you about something." She frowned.

"What is it? Why are you talking to me like someone died?" Lucy laughed and shook her head.

"No, nothing like that. I just…I wanted to know if you'd consider moving to California with me." For a few minutes, all was silent as Bonnie digested this.

"California?" Lucy nodded. "Why?"

"Well, obviously, I would be there, and you're going to need your real family around you at a time like this." Bonnie didn't miss the glare she threw at Damon as she placed real emphasis on the word. "And I think it would be safer out there for you; Mystic Falls is a magnet for all things supernatural and dangerous, and you're vulnerable right now." Bonnie considered her words.
"What about my friends?" She whispered.

"What, you mean the girl who killed you, or the two brothers who exploited your powers until you were a shell of yourself." Bonnie flinched and Lucy sighed, rubbing a weary hand down her face. "I'm sorry, that was…uncalled for, but I really don't see what's tying you here, apart from maybe Caroline."

"Thanks," the blonde piped up and Lucy threw a small smile at her over her shoulder.

"I know some supernaturals out there, Bonnie. They're great people, and they can help teach you control-"

"We can do that right here." Damon was shaking with supressed rage. He had heard enough and he didn't need to allow this bitch to feed Bonnie any more lies and idealistic propositions to steal her away from him-them. "We can protect Bonnie here, and she's got so many vampires to teach her control that she really doesn't need any more."

"Of course, how could I be so stupid? Why don't we just ask the Ripper to teach her all about control?" Lucy's tone was dripping with sarcasm and Damon rolled his eyes at her.

"Stefan isn't the only vampire in town, in case you hadn't noticed. You're standing in a room with two other, perfectly controlled ones, right now." Lucy scowled at him.

"Yeah, you'd be great at it. Just teach her to drain random people dry, just because. Please, you're no better than your brother."

"STOP!" Bonnie was glaring at the two of them. "Stop it, right now, you two." They both turned away, like chastised children. "Lucy, thank you for all of your help, but I don't think I could leave with you." Lucy looked up at her, her expression disappointed. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I know you've built your life here, but promise me you'll at least think about it." Bonnie glanced at the three vampires all looking at her, their eyes pleading with her to say that, no, Lucy, I won't think about it. I've made up my mind that I'm staying in Mystic Falls, but the idea of moving away, where doppelgängers and Originals and hunters didn't plague her appealed to Bonnie, more than she cared to admit. So, ignoring the desperate expressions on her friends' faces, she nodded at Lucy.

"Okay. I'll think about it."