...

It was still dark outside when Bonnie awoke from a deep, if troubled, sleep. When she saw that Enzo's eyes were shut, his breathing even, she gently untangled herself from him to get a blanket. She walked as if through molasses, like in a dream. Something didn't seem quite right. Was she perhaps actually dreaming?

"Bonnie."

She'd know that voice anywhere. But she couldn't see…

"Bonnie."

It was as if a fog lifted and then she was there: Grams. This, then, was not a dream, but the psychic plane she had visited before.

"Grams, what are we doing here?"

"Bonnie, I won't be able to stay long. This plane is starting to disintegrate. Your spell, the magic you sent out in that blast, is coming undone. Your adversary, Arcadius, he's starting to seep power from what you created. If you don't stop him, this all will come to end."

"How do I do that? How do I stop him?" Bonnie was shocked. She felt desperate. So Cade was still there, and he was growing stronger. While she still hadn't even figured out what exactly her blast had done.

"Oh, child. I wish I knew. Just know that-"

There was a loud screeching sound, so loud that it made Bonnie scream out in pain.

The next thing she knew was that she was laying on the floor, a worried looking Enzo kneeling over her, cradling her in his arms.

"Bonnie. Bonnie!"

She frowned. For how long had he been calling her name?

"Enzo?" His name came out as a question. She tried to sit up, but her head was pounding like crazy and he gently hindered her from getting up.

"Take it easy, love."

She was ready to cry. What the hell just happened? What had that horrible noise been?

She saw his face fall when he saw her tears. "What is it, love? Come on, let's get you up…"

Gently he put both arms around her and slowly pulled her into a standing position. She was dead weight, her legs wobbly, her head dizzy. "I'm so sorry," she said, still crying, "your arm… you're gonna hurt your arm more!" She started crying harder.

"Bonnie," his voice was so soothing, so calm, "It's alright. You're going to be alright. Whatever it is, we will figure it out. Together." Enzo was worried about her, for her. He hadn't seen her this vulnerable in a long time. And while in theory, he loved the idea of playing the knight in shining armor for once, helping the damsel in distress, it wasn't so great when the damsel was the woman he loved more than anything.

He had nearly freakin' lost his mind when he saw her become lifeless like a rag doll and start bleeding from her nose and ears. For a moment then he had believed he'd lost her. No torture, nothing else had ever been that terrifying and unbearable.

Now she gazed at him, and he wanted to hug her so close that their bodies would become one. Just her skin against his almost didn't seem enough. Instead, he made sure he was extra careful with her. He had no idea what was wrong with her and he didn't want to aggravate her any further. He should probably get her to go get checked at the doctor's, if not the hospital. Of course she would only put up the same fight he had…

Bonnie was so overwhelmingly grateful that she didn't have to go through this all alone, that she had him. That he was holding her now and she didn't have to be strong for once. At the same time she was so very terrified. She had so much to lose. Everything.

She couldn't let that happen.

...

[Three years ago...]

...

"So, how is this gonna work?" Bonnie huffed, strutting about around Enzo, looking into all the cabinets, checking behind all doors, even examining the toilet bowl. An involuntary appreciative expression appeared on her face. He smirked.

"It's… very clean," she admitted, but quickly remembered that she was angry and annoyed with him. "Are you gonna lock me up here, with these stupid pills and no magic and nothing to occupy me but this stupid guitar?!" She pointed as she was pacing in front of him. "Because this is going to get real old, real soon."

"You're not my prisoner, Bonnie."

"Right…" she rolled her eyes at him. "And what else would you call this?"

He sighed. Not this again. He decided to toss her the bag of fast food he'd grabbed on the way and leave her alone for a bit. He had other matters to attend to, and he couldn't deal with her annoying bickering anymore. "The door is open if you want to leave."

"Hey!" He heard her call out as she barely caught the bag. He turned on his heels with a wave of the hand. "Bon Appetit, Ms. Bennett."

With that he was gone and Bonnie let out a slightly suppressed scream. That stupid vampire-son-of-a-bitch!

…

The next day, when she woke up after having fallen asleep waiting for him on the couch, he was sitting across from her, watching.

"Creep," she scolded him. She expected another smirk, an off-hand comment. But he looked almost… hurt?

There was a cup of tea waiting for her and some buttered toast. Nothing fancy, but it was breakfast, and she was hungry. She took the bread and started eating. She noticed a backpack sitting by the door. Between bites, she asked, "Are you going on a hike or something?"

"We are," was his curt answer.

She coughed. "Okay?"

...

"Okay" was also what she said hours later, when the snow had surprised them on that hike that she couldn't believe she had agreed to. They were in the middle of friggin' nowhere. She was cold, hungry, and her feet felt raw from the slightly too big hiking boots Enzo had provided her.

"I need a break!" She announced and to her utter dismay, she started crying; right in front of him.

For a moment he just stared at her. His expression looked kind of stricken, maybe shocked.

"I thought you wanted to go out and not be 'stuck' inside. I wanted to show you that you are free," he quietly explained as he walked back through the snow toward her. "I would never lock you up, Bonnie. It's part of the reason I'm doing all this. So that you don't end up locked away." He gritted the last words out between clenched teeth.

"You think I'm upset about that right now?" Ugh, that vampire! He looked so flustered and forlorn. She almost felt pity for him. "I'm upset because I'm hungry, and it's cold! And my feet hurt so bad I don't think I can walk another mile, or even another step! I just want to go back to the stupid cabin already!"

She stood there, her face a crying mess, probably with mascara smudges everywhere, when he towered over her, contemplating. Then he moved to take off her backpack, made her sit down, took off her boots and socks to examine her feet. Her heels were rubbed raw and she saw him make a face as she grimaced in pain.

He was kneeling in front of her, tending to her broken skin with gentle hands while she watched. When he looked up next, she felt a strange prickle at the back of her thighs and calves, but she forced herself to ignore it.

He moved to prick his wrist with his canines, but she grabbed his arm before he did.

"I'm not going to drink your blood," she announced, unsure why Shen felt so adamant about that. Maybe she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of having done something selfless for her. Maybe she wanted to keep up the image she had of him.

She caught him roll his eyes, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he quickly put her socks and boots back on, then hoisted her up unceremoniously so she could piggyback. She felt a little ridiculous, but she was not above accepting this kind of help.

The way back took them quite a long time, at least a few more hours, and he carried her the whole damn way in silence.

...

The next morning, when she woke up in the nice comfortable bed, there was no tea. No breakfast. Enzo was still fast asleep on the couch. He hadn't even taken his shoes off, or his jacket. She sighed, then went to find a blanket that she could put over him. He didn't stir when she did, and when found herself staring down at him for a little while. The corners of her mouth moved into an involuntary half smile. He was kinda cute when he slept...

She shook her head at herself.

'What am I even doing here?' she wondered to herself. 'Why am I trusting him of all people?"

She had no answer to her questions. And with nothing else to do and her feet still sore, she hobbled over into the little kitchen and decided to make some breakfast for them. For the first time since getting there, she wondered whether he had a stash of blood bags hiding in the freezer or something.

Living with a vampire should be interesting...

...

...

"I love you too, sweetie! Tell Damon you two should come over for dinner sometime!"

Miranda had given her daughter a quick peck on the cheek, then let her get on her way. She must be so relieved about the news of her boyfriend's discharge from the hospital the very next day. What a scare the whole ordeal must have been to them. Damon was so young still. The young shouldn't have heart attacks. Well, technically he was older than she was, Miranda realized. She shook her head at the baffling thought. Part of her had never gotten used to vampires being real.

She followed Elena with her eyes until she hopped into her car and drove off, vanishing after the first turn of the road.

Once Miranda was back inside, she went about her tasks, cleaned up a little clutter here and there, then sat down at the computer, starting the layout for the invitation to the next Founding Families event.

She stared at the screen for a long time, unable to come up with anything. Elena's strange questions still rang in her head, and she tried to make sense of them.

Elena wanted her to come to some type of gathering tomorrow at the Salvatore's house. "Not exactly," she had answered when Miranda had asked her whether it was to welcome her boyfriend back.

"Did you know about dad's… other activities? When he wasn't at work?" She had wanted to know at some point. As plain as that. "Other activities." Miranda had almost spilled her drink.

The vampire hunting… she'd felt guilt creep up inside of her. She hadn't been strong enough to deny anything, so she had told Elena the truth. That, yes, she did know about it. She'd known about it for a long time. If you're a founding member, you couldn't not know about it.

Had she liked what her husband was doing? Not particularly, no. Of course not. But it was like that with any type of hunt. It was necessary, or else the vampire population would get out of hand and decimate the humans.

Now that she knew about Elena's history, and Damon, it was harder for her to explain it away. It felt wrong to her now. She'd never before realized that there were different "types" of them. That not all vampires were monsters.

She shivered involuntarily. She could only hope that Grayson hadn't really known that, either. Although, if she was completely honest with herself - and she really really tried not to be, she doubted he hadn't at least once noticed that one of the presumed monsters he killed was just a victim of its own nature.

Elena had asked her a few more questions. Prying. For what, Miranda had no idea. It had almost sounded as if that wasn't all she'd meant with Grayson's "other activities."

"Elena..." She had at one point taken her daughter's hands in hers, "please tell me the truth. Did he… have an affair? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"What?" She had asked, baffled, then laughed her beautiful clear laugh. "Oh mom. No! I'm sorry, no. It's… nothing like that. It's really all good."

Yet Miranda couldn't quite shake the feeling that Elena hadn't told her everything.

Then there was Elena's weird request to not bring Grayson over to the meeting. She'd said it was because of the presence of a few former vampires that didn't feel comfortable in the company of a hunter. Miranda figured it was probably the tall dark man that had tried to attack her husband the very same day they'd returned from wherever they had been.

...

But when Grayson came home later that evening, she slipped up when she mentioned she'd have to go over to the Salvatore's house because she had promised Elena she'd be there.

They were sitting together at the dinner table, talking about their respective days and their plans for the next, when she brought it up. She felt her face flush when she noticed what she'd done, but he seemed quite unaware.

"Oh? What for?"

"Nothing special, honey, just a welcome home party for Damon, I presume? I said I'd bring over some cupcakes."

Grayson raised an eyebrow. "Damon didn't strike me as the kind of guy that cared much for welcome home parties, or cupcakes."

"Well," Miranda began, busying herself with her cutlery. She didn't like feeling like she'd done something wrong, but for some reason that was exactly what she felt like right then. "He may not be, but maybe his friends and family."

"When did you say you'd have to be there? At five?" Grayson asked between bites. She nodded.

I'll be back before you know it. And I'll bring dinner." She smiled at him.

"Actually, I could make some time tomorrow. I'll see whether I can make it there by five. And afterward, I'll take you out to dinner."

They smiled at each other. Miranda's heart fluttered, the weird guilty feeling gone. How she loved that man. He always made time for the important things, for his family. She couldn't wait to go out to dinner with him. A real date night.

Elena surely wouldn't actually mind her dad showing up, would she? Maybe if Miranda made sure he'd stay out of that one dark man's way... She smiled to herself.

Yet somewhere deep within her, a nagging feeling of uneasiness remained.

...

...

When she'd first been sucked into the darkness, she had been so annoyed. So angry! She had been on her way to some type of redemption after all, and then - bam, it had all been for naught. There was Nadia to think about. Nadia, who had also died, yet who she couldn't seem to find in this god forsaken afterlife.

Stefan. Damon…

She had been so angry.

But then the darkness had opened into something else. All wasn't over. It was just… different. At first, she had suffered. Pain, angst, panic, the horrors of her life had all been back to haunt her, hunt her down. But when she had thought she was ready to finally give up and break, her anger had been back; to save her.

She'd thought how unfair it was that she was here, in this hellhole, to rot and suffer, while her stupid doppelgänger and the two obnoxious love struck Salvatore brothers, her former lovers, or whatever she should call them, were still out there in the real world, living the good life.

Apparently, he had sensed her potential: Arcadius, who, apparently, was the devil. Or rather, that's what he liked others to believe. She scoffed.

It had been so easy. Once he'd walked up to her, in her despair, in her random corner of hell - which at that moment had been the goddamn church she'd once been locked up in to burn - he'd taken an interest in her. And from then on, it had been child's play.

Katherine Pierce, or Katerina Petrova, was no novice in the art of seduction. And she was good. At first, Arcadius had still believed he was the one in power. While she had started to play with him, attend to his more primal needs, she had started to run her own business, right under his nose. She had begun to get people to work for her. She had been ready to complete the last part of her plan, where she would trick him into letting her go, when something had shaken their little piece of paradise among the horror, and their plane of existence had started to crumble and vanish.

She had been so upset. All this, all this work, the suffering, the seduction, for nothing?

But she had forgotten that Arcadius was her lover now, and, more importantly, that once he had been a very powerful psychic - and still was...

So when that blast started to tear their world apart, he had swept her up and used his own powers to get them from their breaking shifting world into the one that was being created around them.

It was going to be their world.

And how pleasantly surprised she had been when she had learned that it was none other than stupid little Bonnie Bennett who had created that world. Through her, Katherine would get to the others as well.

She'd just have to get rid of boring old Arcadius along the way. For now, though, she could still use his magic for her own plans.

...

...

It had been a week since the news about Cade and his companion had transpired. His companion that had to be Katherine, going by what the twins had told them.

Damon was finally allowed to leave the hospital, under strict orders to not overexert himself and with shiny new diet restrictions that he hated. He'd been in a grumpy mood when Elena picked him up, but that changed as soon as he saw her.

"Can't wait to share my bed with you again, gorgeous," he muttered suggestively as she gave him a 'kiss hello.'

"Me neither." She buried her head in the crook of his neck for a moment, before they disentangled to grab his stuff and hurry out of the hospital. Damon had had more than enough - and to think he'd gotten lucky with being released 'early'... He rolled his eyes to himself.

"Let's get you home," Elena said, before she drove him straight to the Salvatore's house. "Fair warning, though, we are having a meeting there. Stefan, Caroline, Bonnie and Enzo, Alaric, Matt…" she counted off a few more names, much to Damon's dismay. He had definitely had other plans with Elena on his first day back in freedom. Plans that did not involve the presence of all their friends and family.

"Can we at least get a quickie in, before they all come over?" he whined.

Elena gave him a look. "You're supposed to take it easy for a little while longer, Mr. Salvatore. Need I remind you that you just had a heart attack? I don't want to be one of those women killing their husbands by having sex with them!"

"Did you just say 'husband?'" He grinned at her.

"You know what I mean…" She flushed, concentrating back on the road. They were almost there.

"I know that the doctor did not mention celibacy, so…" He grinned again, wiggling his eyebrows at her. Elena couldn't help but grin.

When she finally parked the car, he unfastened his seatbelt and quickly leaned over to kiss her ear. Then his lips wandered.

"Damon… they're all already in there," she tried and pointed at the other cars, but leaned her head back anyways, allowing him more access. "Damon…" She moaned. She didn't actually want to stop him. She was a little worried, but…

...

Fifteen minutes later, she smoothed his hair a little before they entered through the heavy front door. She had run her fingers through it a little too vigorously earlier.

"Okay, now you look decent again," she declared, and he gave her another kiss for good measure.

"Thanks, gorgeous. See, this kind of 'taking care,' I like much better."

Their good moods didn't last too long. When they walked in, a grave atmosphere greeted them. Elena leaned in to Damon and whispered, "No stupid comments, please, okay? After Vickie… committed suicide, and Jo running away… tempers are a bit, uh, short. And don't tell Stefan I told you about the thing with Klaus."

He looked resignedly at her, but allowed her a quick, "alright."

"Hello friends - and family! What did I miss?" he said as a way of greeting upon entering the big living room area.

Stefan, who had sat slumped in on himself on a chair they'd brought out from the kitchen, was the only one getting up to give him a hug.

"It's good to see you back here, brother," he said, and Damon noticed the younger one extending the hug a little too long.

"Likewise, Stef." He looked around. A few waves here and there, a warm smile from Bonnie, but other than that, it all looked like a pretty bleak welcome back party. Despite that, it felt good to see them all. He hadn't known what a blessing being alive and healthy was until he'd had that scare. Nothing was for granted.

"You're just in time for the good part," Alaric stated, but his expression was far from happy or excited.

"Alright, I'm dying with anticipation." A nudge from Elena made him change the direction of his sentence. "I mean, I'm all ears."

With that he and Elena sat down on one of the couches, and he gave a nod in Matt's direction, who had scooted over to make room for them. Damon honestly felt sorry for the kid. Whatever had happened with Vickie, it had aged him roughly ten years since Damon had last seen him.

The others didn't look too great, either. Lockwood looked like he'd just gotten there straight from a bar crawl, Bonnie looked exhausted and worried, Enzo still as pale as the last time he'd seen him at the hospital. Stefan had huge shadows surrounding his eyes, and Caroline was ominously sitting closer to Bonenzo than her supposed boyfriend.

Oooh. He raised an eyebrow as he saw their other guest in a darker corner of the room. That explained it. Valerie was there, too. Let the fun begin.

...

I have so much fun writing this at the moment and it makes me happy to see some of you following along for the ride.

Special thanks, as always, to shadowdancer. And to Anna. Your feedback keeps me going. :)