As the week goes by she doesn't feel it return and it's good riddance too. No niggling or creeping crawling up her spine to make her think she's not alone.
In fact, all she feels is… nothing.
Well, not nothing.
There's the odd bout of sadness, sometimes she catches herself crying at night, and there are a good few pinches of boredom too. There are only so many times she can play Monopoly with Damon and it always ends with him cheating because he doesn't understand the rules enough to win. Those feelings she can take, they come and they go but at least then she's filled with something.
It's when they're gone that she has nothing left to feel but the emptiness, and the more she starts to dwell in that void the more she can feel it consume her.
An empty girl in an empty world, and isn't it just the saddest thing? Bonnie refuses to start pitying herself so she distracts herself instead. Every morning she now spends meditating, trying to get back in touch with her magic— once she swears she almost feels it. Every afternoon she goes for a walk, maybe even a drive outside of town depending on her mood. There's only so much of Mystic Falls a girl can see, and without the people, the town just doesn't have that same feeling. It's hollow here and she wants to go home.
Then in the evening, she shares a drink with Damon in an attempt to forget the uneventful day. Sometimes she swears she gets close to that feeling. Tugged in a certain direction until she can get ahold of her senses and talk herself out of an imaginary ghost hunt. There's no one here, no matter how much she wants there to be. She wants it badly enough that one afternoon she imagines the lingering smell of ribs coming from the Mystic Grill, only to be disappointed by an empty kitchen when she investigates. She never even liked ribs at the Mystic, burgers were her go to order. That's when she decides staying with Damon most of the time would probably be a good idea. Before she goes smelling anymore phantom foods.
'It was the Secret Service.' Damon slurs over the Scrabble board.
'No,' Bonnie slaps her hands down on the coffee table a little too hard and their tiles jump in place. 'No, because they got the guy. Lee Harvey Oswald—'
' —Didn't make the kill shot. He missed. Some bozo in the squad behind accidentally fired and killed him.'
'So you mean to tell me, there's been a massive conspiracy all along?' She takes a sip of her vodka and soda, sneering right back at Damon as he mocks her choice of drink with an eye roll.
'Yup.' He pops.
'That the most controversial presidential assassination was a blunder made by the very people meant to protect him?'
'Yes. What's so hard to believe about that, I was there.'
'Oh my god you're not lying…' Bonnie realizes.
'I'm not lying.' Damon sings as he arranges six tiles on the board with less than delicate fingers. 'Specter. That's nine points to me.'
Bonnie doesn't bother pointing out the fact that he just placed six tiles yet still has five more on his rack. She checks Scrabble off the list of games he's found a way of ruining. He takes a victory sip of his bourbon and she rolls her eyes. That's enough Damon for tonight.
She doesn't bother turning on the hallway lights when it's dark anymore. What's there to be afraid of? There's no one here but them. She wouldn't have even turned on the room lights except for the fact that tonight she feels like reading something before bed. Bonnie loves reading, she always has since she was a kid wolfing down Harry Potter.
Stefan loves reading too. There are shelves upon shelves of books in his room, the witchy and non, alike.
Except here's the thing, they both have wildly different tastes when it comes to the non-witchy. You would think that Stefan, being the immortal ripper that he is, would drift toward the classics or books that tackle intense issues, he seems like he'd like the philosophical views. But his shelves would disagree.
Stefan loves romance novels. Not the, heaving bosoms, make love with the stable boy, kiss in a passionate haze, kind of romance novels— although she wouldn't mind one of those books right now, she's getting very pent up being stuck here with no one for company but Damon.
More like the cheesy, slow burn until a sweet chaste kiss at the end kind of books— or bittersweet longing filled with sorrow and a tragic love. And an odd sprinkling of mystery. The guy loves his Agatha Christie.
Bonnie likes love stories, to a point. True to her nature, she prefers stories with a supernatural twist. The closest thing she can find to her tastes is gathering dust, up high on a shelf.
Dorian Gray.
It's stuffed into the shelf in such a way that it looks like it was shoved there in anger. She gets up to the chapter where Dorian keeps seeing a face in the window, and she's mad enough at his poor life choices to understand why it had been shoved so indecorously when suddenly she hears something. Her head whips toward the window and she forgets about the book completely.
She feels it.
Crawling up her spine, invisible claws scratch over her rising goosebumps, and the feeling of being watched returns.
Fuck.
She's ecstatic.
She doesn't know why she called for Damon. It was instinctive. What did she expect him to do? Feel it with her? But she's suddenly so full of hope she needs to share it.
In a flash, he's at the doorway
'I heard something.' She explains, sitting up, eyes wide with excitement. Excitement that she expects Damon to share, but when she spies the disappointment on his frown her stomach drops. She knows what's about to happen.
'That's it?' He slurs.
'It was a squeak,' she sighs.
'Probably the wind.' He explains away, ready to drop the subject, down another bottle, and go back to doing nothing but wallow and drown in self-pity.
He's the one that's really useless.
Not her.
Probably the wind?
Bonnie clenches her fists to contain the annoyance shaking inside her. She doesn't know why she's so irritated all of a sudden but she is. And it's damn annoying given how happy she'd just been seconds ago.
Probably the fucking wind.
'Damon since we've been here, every day from seven-thirty until nine, there has been no breeze. It's the same day repeating, remember?' She snaps back, equally pissed off.
How stupid does he think she is?
Damon rolls his eyes and makes a bit of stumbling over to the desk and pretending to check it.
'Nope.' He grumbles when he turns up nothing. 'Guess it was your imagination.'
'I didn't imagine it, Damon.' She spits out, as her annoyance turns to anger.
That hope she was so full of is turning, congealing into something nasty inside her that wants to lash out at him but he beats her to the punch.
'Yes you did. You imagined the noise, just like you imagined feeling your magic. Now admit that we're alone and let me get back to drinking away my pain.'
'God-damn-it.' Her words are breathy as she stumbles off the bed, and takes Ms Cuddles by the paw. She shoves past Damon to the door. 'I don't know why I even bother.'
As easy as that, she's storming through the corridors with Damon following her. Damon stops at the threshold of the door to watch her yank the handle of a car she hijacked a few weeks ago and almost sloshes his drink.
'And this time, don't come back.' He yells after her.
As if she would want to.
The car tyres screech as she speeds off, trying to get away from Damon as quickly as possible and keep the familiar embers of anger inside her alive. She heads to the only place she can think of where they might spark up into a fire.
Grams' home was one of the first places she searched when they arrived. It had no answers then, and none now. But she's not here for answers, not really. She's always felt the most connected to her magic there. Bonnie sits cross-legged in the middle of Grams' living room, surrounded by candles with the Grimoire on her lap and keeps trying and failing to summon her magic. She realizes she's only really here for comfort.
Grams may not be here physically, but right now it feels like she's here in spirit. It's like walking with a ghost through these empty rooms that are devoid of people, but filled with signs of life. After giving up and slamming the Grimoire closed, she goes through the usual routine of wandering through the house.
Every time she notices something new.
This time it's a warm cup of coffee on the dresser in her nursery. Someone was in here with her, judging by the mussed baby blankets in the crib, just before they disappeared.
Or maybe they were never really there.
Maybe this is a fake set in a fake world, designed to torture them like the hell that it is. Maybe Damon is right. All this time she's been denying this is hell because if she faces the fact that it might be, then she has to face the fact that she's just as bad as Damon.
After some more moping and denial, and a bit of cooking, she puts on The Bodyguard and settles down to watch it again.
Bonnie's watched this movie so many times that she knows who's going to say what and when. It's when she's mouthing along 'the atomic number of zinc is thirty' that she feels something.
That feeling like she's being watched is back.
A quick look around the room confirms that she's still alone, but the feeling is still there. It's not Damon. Damon's presence feels different. It feels cold and biting, and she never quite feels safe around him. This presence feels warm, so warm that it's almost like it's burning, and alive. Damon's presence is very much a dead one, it has this clammy, gloomy feeling to it.
This one feels so alive that it feels electric.
No.
It feels like magic.
Bonnie shakes it off. She's imagining it, the room is empty and there's no one outside. There is no presence.
Maybe it was the wind.
She goes to sleep cradling that lie. What else is she meant to do about a feeling that she doesn't have the privilege of acting on? How the hell can she even act on it? What's she meant to do about feeling watched?
Talk to the ghost?
In the morning, when Damon turns up on her doorstep to grovel apologetically, she takes a second to think about it— like she has a choice. The alternative is to stay here with Casper. At least when Damon's around she knows there's someone else instead of being paranoid about it.
As time passes, she realizes that it's just a feeling and Bonnie doesn't know if she likes it or not. It's just there sometimes, not always. Now she's experienced the world without it, she's more aware of when it's with her.
Goosebumps rise along her arm, and butterflies unfurl in her stomach as she feels it while she's making her coffee. Damon's out this morning. All she was treated to was a shouted;
'I'll be back with dinner', and the door slamming behind him.
She doesn't know where he's going and to be honest she doesn't care. It gives her a chance to mope about the place in peace.
Then she feels it. One.. two…three… then there are too many bumps to count, popping up along her forearm.
What is she meant to do about this? What can she do? Again, the only thing that comes to mind is talk to it.
Fuck it.
'Hello?' She starts out loud.
Not even crickets.
Bonnie's not above talking to herself. Sometimes she is the best person to talk to. But talking to a ghost, especially one that's not feeling chatty, makes her feel self-conscious. She sighs and pours coffee into her mug, shaking her head.
'Great. Just great.' She mutters to herself.
It doesn't help that she had the lousiest sleep last night. She keeps dreaming that—
BANG!
The coffee spills over the edge of the cup as she jumps with the noise. Turning around, coffee jug in one hand, she looks around the kitchen to see the cause. On the floor lays a pan on its side.
Bonnie pulls herself together and picks it up. It's when she has it in her hand and goes to return it that she remembers that the pans are kept in the counter cupboard.
The cupboard door is closed.
So where the hell did this pan come from? Bonnie drops it onto the shelf and shuts the door as quickly as she can, backing away with a sudden shiver.
Then she turns around and goes back to her coffee cup. Except It's not where she put it. It's on the counter sure but…but… It's— she could have sworn she put it a few inches to left…
'Stop it,' she chides herself.
She's just looking for something weird now. But the pan…
BANG!
Bonnie doesn't even flinch this time. Everything in her goes cold and she doesn't want to turn around and see what's happened this time, even though a part of her is excited. This means she was right. There's something here with them.
Maybe even someone.
But she's also a horror movie hater. She used to swear up and down that if she was ever in a haunted house situation she'd get the hell out and run home screaming. Which, considering how many actual horrors she's lived through and done the complete opposite, is ironic.
Screw it.
If she can face Silas in his terrifying Freddy Krueger-looking form, then she can face whatever this ghost is. Bonnie turns around slowly, and for good measure grabs a knife. She creeps slowly through the house. No calling out for it, she's seen too many movie characters die that way. As her footsteps creak, it occurs to her that a knife probably isn't the best weapon against a ghost but it's not like she can use her magic.
With each step she gets further and further away from that feeling. So Bonnie closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she does, she can sense it morphing. The butterflies in her stomach seem to want to go in a particular direction, so she obeys, only to find herself back in the empty kitchen.
She sighs and drops the knife on the counter.
This is stupid.
Bonnie reaches out to the left of her to take a sip of coffee. But her fingers swipe air where the handle should be. She looks down. Her mug isn't there at all. She looks around the kitchen.
Nowhere.
But just outside the open backdoor— did she open that?— she can see the mug sitting on the patio floor getting bigger the closer she gets. But she never steps over the threshold. For all she knows it's a trap and someone is waiting to snatch her the second she goes outside.
Bonnie stares at it, dumbfounded. Until the hairs on the back of her neck prick up, goosebumps return and decorate her arms in seconds…
'BOO!'
She yelps and spins around, fist striking out.
Luckily Damon ducks in time.
'Watch it Bonster you don't wanna kill your only company.' He teases as he walks around the counter to pick up the knife she dropped. Damon wipes his fingers over the blade. 'Unless of course, that's your plan?'
'Did you move my cup?' She asks, ignoring his sarcasm completely.
'Of course, because it brings me great joy to screw with you and move your things. In fact, there's nothing I like more than wasting my time moving your dishes when you're not looking. The other day I had a real stinker of a time hiding spoons in your draws.'
Bonnie doesn't reply to his sarcasm. She folds her arms and waits for his real answer.
'Not.' Damon rolls his eyes. 'Believe it or not I have better things to do.'
Not, she rolls her eyes.
'Why would a "ghost" move your cup of coffee Bonster?' Damon questions, narrowing his beady glare as he reads her mind.
Bonnie shrugs, but she's less confident than before, and mumbles, 'Maybe it prefers tea.'
'Or maybe your slow descent into madness is going a lot faster than anticipated.'
'I'm not going crazy Damon!' she snaps.
Which begins another argument.
Bonnie would like to say with absolute certainty that she is a nice person. Maybe not good, not 100% of the time. She's killed too many people to claim that, and she's not about to be dubbed a hypocrite. But then why does she get so much excitement from arguing with Damon? Alright maybe not excitement. It's more like a burst of energy.
Feeling angry, irritated, or even annoyed by Damon is still a hell of a lot better than feeling the nothingness this world seems to bring. So unfortunately she's starting to live for the moments when she and Damon argue, and that flare of energy rips through her veins. Sometimes she goes too far with her insults. She'll feel a sting of guilt when the hurt flickers across his face. Usually she storms out then because she'll be damned if she's ever going to apologise to Damon fucking Salvatore.
The next time it happens she doesn't even bother to waste the sudden rush of angry fire on him. She runs to her room, shuts the door and pulls out some candles. This is what it was like when she was first trying to tap into her magic. Like an explosion under her skin trying to find a way to pour out of her. But it still doesn't work. She can feel it simmering under her skin, but it's not strong enough to rip through. Great. He can't even get her mad enough.
Damon might actually be the worst person she could have been stuck with.
No, that's not fair of her. There are worse people.
That's what she tries to remember the next time he's drunk snarling at her and hissing through grit teeth about how dead they are. Sometimes he can go whole days without getting angry. Sure he'll get annoyed or irritated but it's nothing compared to that classic Salvatore rage. But there are worse people to be stuck with.
Silas.
Silas would be someone worse to be stuck here with.
Silas would probably try to kill her or maim her, or force her to do his evil magical bidding. Although maybe that would actually help her get her magic back. Maybe Silas' antics would be more useful in getting them out of here than Damon's constant moping and denial. Alright so maybe Silas wouldn't be so bad.
Klaus.
Klaus Mikaelson would definitely be way worse to be stuck with, she reasons to herself one night when she and Damon are arguing.
It starts when she hears singing. Damon is nowhere to be seen, probably getting drunk somewhere, and she's just sat down to an evening of reading and wine. She'd wanted to listen to some music but her CD player seems to have joined the growing group of things that keep misplacing themselves around the house.
Suddenly she hears someone right by her ear, humming a melody she kind of recognizes. The voice is low, male, and she feels it pooling in the bottom of her stomach. Whipping her head around, she can't see anyone there. Then the humming gets fainter like it's moving away from her. Bonnie drops the book and closes her eyes. She follows the humming. It's hauntingly beautiful, but she didn't think Damon could sing like that.
It's because he can't.
He can sing, sure, but more in an Elvis kind of way. The voice calling to her, drifting through the halls of the Salvatore Boarding house, and leading her into the dark garden, lit only by the twinkling stars above, is…
It's ethereal.
Soft, calming, and beautifully cold as she gets closer and closer to the noise. Humming, humming, humming, until the tune blends into lyrics and a lightbulb goes off in her brain as she matches the words along to the tune.
'I know that when you look at me,' she half whispers half sings…. 'There's so much that you just don't see…'
Son of a bitch. It's Whitney Houston. From the Bodyguard.
Frantically searching the garden, she stops singing to find the owner of the humming. She still can't see anyone.
But it feels like they're standing right in front of her.
Huh. Maybe Damon's right. She is going crazy.
"But if I come to you…" Another voice suddenly starts singing lowly.
She's not imagining it, she can hear the ghost right now. Bonnie doesn't know what to do about this, it's basically confirmation that they're not alone. Suddenly, close enough to raise goosebumps, she feels the words ghosting over her neck, 'Tell me, will you stay or will you run away….' And suddenly she's screaming for Damon.
He arrives in seconds. The singing stops and the yelling begins. Damon insists there was no voice, and she insists there was.
Damon puts his finger up to wag in her face as he gaslights her when suddenly his face straightens up and he's stone-cold sober in a second. His head turns towards the trees as his ear twitches.
He really reminds her of a dog sometimes.
'I hear it.' He says and suddenly zips into the trees, leaving Bonnie alone and in anticipation.
Finally.
She was right. Her chest feels so light with vindication and a million different scenarios are running through her mind.
Her hair flies around her face as she blinks and Damon's suddenly standing in front of her, with an icier expression than before. Slowly, he lifts his hand to show her the tangled CD player and headphones playing The Bodyguard soundtrack.
He drops the CD player into her hand and she hold the headphones up to her ears. Whitney's voice is all distorted like the CD's been looping too long and it sounds demonic. Nothing like the humming and the sound she heard.
'Was that the song you heard?' Damon bites.
'Yes, but—' She doesn't even get the chance to defend herself or explain why the voice couldn't possibly belong to that hellish CD.
There's swearing, and yelling, things get thrown, and she leaves for the thousandth time.
Klaus would have at least ripped this world in half to prove there's no one here, instead of rolling over and denying it like Damon does.
Retreating to Grams' house provides her with more comfort than Damon could. She's done this so many times that by now there's a routine. Pull out the candles and try to tap into the anger and use it to fuel her magic, fail at that then make some dinner, and then watch The Bodyguard and fall asleep.
She remembers when Damon came by while she was sleeping and put a blanket on her, so he's not entirely heartless. Maybe he's not all bad.
Maybe he's got more human in him than he likes to admit to. Maybe he isn't the worst person to be stuck here with. She can think of worse.
Katherine. Katherine Pierce would be worse.
Although Katherine wouldn't deny evidence smacking her in the face. She was so resourceful there isn't a doubt in Bonnie's mind that she would have made it out of this empty world. She was too slimy not to.
Bonnie shuts off the TV, she hasn't got another rewatch in her, and heads to bed. She's so exhausted from arguing with Damon and having the vindication snatched right out from under her that she falls asleep in no time.
When her eyes next open the only light she has comes from the yellow moon, casting dark shadows down onto the empty garden of the Salvatore manor. Floating along with the yellow-rays, drifts the humming again and she feels it pooling in her stomach again.
She doesn't bother looking for the voice, having been burned before. She really wanted to believe the voice belonged to someone. How could she have heard the CD all the way from her bedroom when it was outside? Maybe her senses are heightened in this purgatory. All the better to drive her crazy, if she can hear the dead silence crisply.
Or looping CDs.
The humming floats over and she listens to the deep voice and hears it like she heard it the first time it whispered in her ear, not like the broken voice from the CD and lets the sound wash over her as it get to the chorus and the humming turns to words again.
'I wanna run to youu,' He sings, because there's no way this voice is the same voice as the one from the CD, 'But if I come to youu…'
Fingertips graze over her cold shoulders and Bonnie looks down to notice she's just in her silk pyjama vest and shorts. She can see the warm, white fingertips curling over her, bare shoulders and the green strap of the vest, she can even feel how electric their touch is as he sings against her skin with his voice. His big hands cover her entirely and she wants to look up to see who he is.
But she can't move her head.
Dream Bonnie is completely stuck as this person holds her in place, humming gently in her ear. She knows she should be fighting this, she should be scared. But his hands start running back and forth over her shoulders, warming her up, and his breath ghosts over her neck to send shivers down her. She keeps her eyes open and they dart around the garden, desperate to find something with a reflection so she can see the stranger.
It might be Damon.
And that would make this a whole lot creepier.
But he doesn't feel like Damon.
He feels like magic.
'Tell me will you stay,' he sings, and his breath is replaced by the feeling of smooth skin sending her neck tingling and shooting straight into her wet core, as he runs his nose over her neck and inhales her. 'Or will you run away?'
She's on that rollercoaster again, teetering before the drop, and her toes curl as his hands move down her sides and she plummets.
Bonnie shoots bolt upright, flushed and panting. She's back in her empty bedroom.
