Author's note: Hi everyone!
I'm so very touched by the positive responses to the last chapter – and this story in general. It's a very unusual tale, so the open-mindedness has been delightful to me as a creator. It's going to get even stranger (though not right away), as the sci-fi elements really come rolling in. :D
With that, I just kind of want to make a little blanket statement. The plot's going to get even wilder at some point, so if this is something that you don't like (and haven't liked about this story thus far), no hard feelings – and we can part as friends. We're all entitled to like different things. But I just wanted to be honest about this, in case anyone is looking for something else in a story.
The Astral Plane returned to daylight around Elena, switching every few minutes between incandescent sunlight and the glorious, meteor-filled night sky. The waterfalls around her continued to roar soothingly while she floated in the base of the river, speaking with the mysterious girl who had become so adept at pulling her out of the place where cosmic knowledge seemed to penetrate everything.
She took the girl's hands in her own, hoping to at least offer some measure of comfort. The paradox she described sounded cruel and awful, indeed.
"It's okay," the girl murmured, evidently guessing her thoughts. "We're still together – in a way, he'll always be a part of me, just definitely not in the way that either of us wanted."
"What happened?" Elena asked.
"We were fighting a monster, a few of us," the girl began. "It was a monster that was capable of erasing someone from existence entirely. Then, in a convoluted series of events, another monster brought some of them back – and he," she bit her lip, not knowing if this Elena was familiar enough with the mechanics of the Gemini coven to understand, "cast an old curse that was originally placed on a coven, forcing us to merge –"
"Like the Gemini coven?" Elena's eyes widened in surprise. "I didn't realize it was a curse," she added morosely. "How awful. I knew some members of it, back in college," she added with a touch of deep sadness, thinking of Luke, Liv … Jo. She missed her old mentor dearly, owing much of her passion for medicine to the brilliant powerhouse whose tour de force presence easily dominated any lecture hall she was in.
Jo Laughlin was an utter inspiration, and Elena missed her dearly. The night that Kai had placed her under the sleeping spell, she had to say goodbye, however temporarily, to all that she knew and loved.
But the entire world, Elena reasoned, had suffered with Jo's loss, who was as much an inventor of invaluable medical equipment as she was a brilliant physician. And yet the world continued to turn, and there was hardly a whimper to acknowledge such profound loss – outside of her immediate social circle, and those in the world of medical academia – it appeared that her beloved mentor was profoundly undervalued.
Perhaps things could be different this time.
Maybe they could –
"Are you okay?" asked the girl, sensing Elena's disappearance into her reverie.
Embarrassed, Elena reached out contritely. "I'm so sorry – yes, I'm familiar with the Gemini coven. I was just thinking of those I knew. I –"
"Jo?" the girl asked knowingly, tiling her head to the side.
"You know about her?" Elena asked, bewildered. Ever since she passed, Alaric had all but barred mention of her, despite making one of the twins her namesake, fearful that any reminiscing would shatter his heart anew, and he would be left but a hollow husk, when he had to be a father. The years following Jo's death had been unkind to him, Bonnie explained during their ingredient-gathering trips – and he had, in turn, become quite callous.
He let his rage out on all the supernatural, despite his own daughters being siphon witches. Bonnie even told her that he once gave into his hatred so maliciously that he staked – someone. Bonnie was tight-lipped about the vampire's identity, evidently having gotten caught up on the moment, and revealed the information unintentionally.
Perhaps it wasn't anyone she knew, since all her friends, sans Stefan and Enzo, were there to greet her when she finally awakened. Maybe it was one of the new friends they'd made and lost, like Mary-Louise and Nora – heretics who were once bitter enemies but managed to become almost companions.
"Yeah, I heard a lot about Jo Laughlin," the girl said simply, refusing to elaborate more.
"Who told you about her?" Elena asked, both with ardent curiosity and in hopes of getting a little additional information from her mysterious interlocutor.
She simply shook her head and tapped her lips with a sad caricature of a smile. "I can't," the girl explained. "She won't allow it."
"Who's she?" Elena finally asked, her patience getting the better of her.
The girl sighed. "A witch. I've been on her hit list ever since I made that artifact – a crude parody of an ancient relic, mind you. Mine doesn't work exactly like those ancient ones do, but at least it gets the job done. She's been trying to make it so that I was never born – thus erasing my impact on history."
Elena gasped, unconsciously drawing her hand to her mouth. "How cruel! Is she afraid that you'll damage the timeline?"
"No," the girl scoffed. "She's afraid that her biggest and cruelest pet project will be reversed. The second Althea's coven learned about what I made, they immediately set about making it happen."
Elena drew closer on instinct. They were finally getting somewhere. "What does she not want reversed?" she breathed, her voice barely a whisper.
The girl opened her mouth to speak, but immediately looked distressed. Instead, she pulled Elena closer, to whisper in her ear.
"Another poem?" Elena laughed. "I never heard that one. Who wrote it?"
"It hasn't been written yet," the girl answered cheekily. "At least not in your time."
"Are you a poet?" Elena prodded, wondering if perhaps her charming interlocutor had been the originator of the mysterious rhyme.
"No!" the girl laughed. "Not at all. My expression's more in the," she bit her lip, wondering if she'd be giving away too much information, but then smiled, "the visual arts."
"Painting? Sculpture?"
"Painting," the girl confirmed. "Runs in the family," she smiled sadly.
"Did this witch know your parents?" Elena asked, almost timidly, having just learned that someone had spent years trying to pretend this girl had never been born. "Did she hurt them?"
"No," the girl replied, shaking her head. "They were long gone before I came on her radar." At Elena's stricken look, she took her hands in her own soothingly. "Hey, it's okay. Witches had been trying to destroy me for years – before I was even born. I'm tougher than I look," she grinned reassuringly.
As soon as the three newcomers entered the space, everything appeared instilled in chaos. Bonnie was both physically and magically wrestling an Expression witch. Elena and Damon seemed caught in an intense exchange.
Sheila immediately cast a barrier spell around their perimeter in the tunnel. Seeing that Stefan was about to step forward to disengage his brother and Elena, she held him back. His head was hardly cool enough at the moment to deal with this present matter in a way that wouldn't be damaging. "Wait," she hissed. "Stay and observe. We need to figure out what's going on before we come bouldering in."
"Why are you doing this?" Elena asked Damon, her voice laced with tears, completely unaware of the new arrivals. None of this – none of any of this made any sense to her. How could there be such an abrupt change between the man who killed Vicki Donovan and terrorized the town and this – him. And yet, there was something achingly familiar – something she had first seen in her kitchen, when he was the only person to see right through her – how much of a shell she'd become, how the hobbies of her past life were hardly of any interest.
"You know, you should quit cheerleading. You looked miserable out there."
And when she told him she was sorry about Katherine's demise, he looked almost stricken, touched – so vulnerable, and real, and raw. At the time, she thought that they'd made a connection. He made her laugh, and they touched each other's hearts. A small part of her had even wished she had met and gotten to know him instead of Stefan. And then when he showed his malice, she assumed that it had all been a lie – a cruel and cunning act.
But perhaps it wasn't?
And now he would be dead because of her, too. Because she impulsively consented to the exchange.
Just how many more people would she kill?
"Saving your life is the best thing I can do with mine, in this world, or any other. I love you, Elena – who you are now, and who you will become, no matter who that is," Damon smiled, and this time, it appeared genuine.
"But –"
"I love every version of you, and you'll be okay," he said with a bit more urgency, sensing that his words were falling on deaf ears. If she had been so hard to convince that first time, why was he so naïve and hopeful that he would be able to do so within a span of one conversation now? Because he had no choice, he reasoned.
Elena squeezed her eyes shut, letting the tears cascade down her cheeks, and prayed that her future self would find a way to save Damon.
She found herself realizing, with stunning clarity, that she wanted to know him.
"How do I take her place?" Damon asked the witch, without taking his eyes off Elena.
"Just step into the circle, and consent to have the temporal magic taken away. You have to search within yourself, and really mean it," the witch groaned under the strain of Bonnie's painful search of her psyche. "The transfer will be instantaneous."
"Damon, wait!" Bonnie called, having finally discovered the counter-spell for the wood-attraction enchantment. She tossed the witch aside, running to her friend's side. She placed her hands on either temple, closing her eyes, and whispered, "phasmatos finem incantantionis lignum attractionis." For a second, her eyes beheld an otherworldly shade with a spark of gust of wind, and just as suddenly all reverted to normal. "The wood-attraction spell is gone," she spat, looking at the witch, then softened, looking at her friends again. "Elena's right, Damon. We deserve to say goodbye to her. Bring her out." She had no intention of letting either of her friends die, but Damon was a vampire, with superhuman speed at his disposal. Once he made the decision to step into the sacred circle, she'd only have seconds to stop him, and she had hardly the strength to knock him out after mentally wrestling for so long with the witch.
This would allow her to regroup, and for them to plan.
"I'm ready," Elena whispered, ardently hoping that this was not the last time she saw him.
Damon nodded, allowing his vampiric features to take over. Elena watched in fascination as crimson flooded his eyes, and dark veins appeared across his face. His face elongated, piercing his waiting wrist. "Sorry I don't have a glass for you," he smirked, as his face returned to normal.
"That's okay," she smiled through her tears, finding herself surprised that it was genuine.
She took his wrist, but before she could bring it to her lips, he pulled her closer to place the gentlest kiss on her forehead. To him, the gesture was achingly familiar – a relic of yesteryear, when he despaired that his love would never be returned and that he would forever be alone, forgotten, unwanted. Since then, he'd had his heart's truest desire, much to his everlasting surprise. If only it could last.
To Elena, the gentle touch only filled her with more grief and determination. She would have faith that her future self would find a way to reverse this.
She had to.
"Bye," Damon whispered as he pulled back, an echo of a memory teasing his mind as Elena pressed his wrist to her lips and drank. Unable to resist, he added with laced affection. "And I still want you to get everything you're looking for."
"But you're clearly a witch," Elena prodded, confused. "Why would witches be so eager to destroy you?"
"It's a long story," the girl sighed. "I'm more than a witch. I'm –" she stopped suddenly, as a feeling of profound discomfort coated her features.
"Is someone hurting you?" Elena asked, worriedly. "Is that why you look so distressed when you answer questions sometimes."
"Not exactly," the girl replied, her breath shuddering with relief as she looked around wildly. "She put a kind of psychic barrier around me whenever I enter the Astral Plane – there are certain trigger words, ideas – they're almost like taboos. If I say them or allude to them too much, I'll be kicked out, and getting you back here would be that much more difficult. I see it shake and dissipate with warning when I come close to violating one."
"This is about me?" Elena asked, bewildered.
"There's so much you need to know, Elena," the girl breathed, desperation clearly written on her face. "You're here for a reason – even the loophole that allows your psyche to demerge was placed for a reason. You have to learn that –" she stopped again, gritting her teeth and visibly frustrated.
"How do you pull me in here, anyway?" Elena asked curiously, tilting her head to the side to study the girl.
"Oh!" she smiled finally, evidently relieved that she can perhaps tell her this. "Looks like this isn't a trigger! So, the way I pull you in is by calling –"
Suddenly, the Astral Plane around Elena dissipated, and she distinctly felt herself being pulled.
Elena's eyes widened as she dropped Damon's wrist, becoming unfocused just like before – when her soul re-merged with her future self.
"A swirling world I've seen before," she breathed, walking forward, looking at Damon and yet not seeing him. "And in it was a metaphor," she continued, as the air in the room seemed to dissipate with tension. The only truly focused party was Enzo, who was apparently recording the entire exchange on the mobile phone Bonnie had given him. Bonnie had to admit that he had gotten surprisingly good with technology very quickly.
"A thousand hopes, a million dreams – all vanquished, ripping at the seams. Their souls in silent woe abide, awaiting justice on the Other Side," she whispered, falling into Damon's arms, who caught her swiftly and with profound worry on his face. Last time, she seemed a lot more alert.
"Elena?" he whispered nervously, wrapping her in his embrace. "Are you okay?"
She gasped, closing her eyes tightly, as memories if her younger self's detached psyche flooded her consciousness. Like before, it only took a few seconds before her dark eyes fluttered open, taking sight of her favorite gaze in all the cosmos, brighter than all Blue Giants and more vivid than a summer sky. She drew close to kiss him, allowing herself to get lost in it before they had to deal with the inevitable.
"I love you, too," she whispered when she had to finally pull away to breathe. "And you're an idiot if you think I'm letting you go through with this," she added, affectionately cupping his cheek. "You made me a promise, remember?"
Stefan watched the entire exchange, profoundly bewildered and disturbed. This was real. All of it was real. They really loved each other – in the future. In about a decade. Or maybe even less? His brother really came back to save him.
He was going to lose his brother.
This was the Damon he longed to see since he'd been human, and he was going to lose him. The thought of his girlfriend suddenly changing affections paled woefully in comparison to the idea of Damon being gone forever.
And suddenly Stefan felt like everything was chiseled out of him and he was nothing but a hollow husk of stone.
"Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn't have made the deal with Grabby Witchy over there," he replied, trying and failing to look affronted.
"That was a teenage version of me, whom she manipulated brilliantly," Elena stressed, unwilling to let go of him. She may only be a human, but she dug her fists into his shirt deeply. No way was she letting him escape onto the magical circle. "Besides, me doing this would actually make more sense. If I'm gone, Klaus has no reason to stick around. No one will get hurt. If you sacrifice yourself, there's a good chance I'll die, anyway, just because we'll lose one of our best fighters," she attempted, having a sinking feeling it would fail. "Think about this logically."
"Logically!?" he barked. "Seriously, Elena? You have the gall to preach to me about logical behavior when it comes to self-sacrifices?"
She winced, conceding his point. Sure, she didn't have the most stellar track record, but her point was still valid. Maybe if she was able to stall him, the exchange would begin regardless. Pressing herself flush against him, she began kissing him ardently, trying to walk him toward a twist in the tunnels. Maybe if she distracted him sufficiently, and pressed him against the wall at just the right angle, she could break his neck and, therefore, keep him alive. She they both moved deeper in, they caught sight of the Lockwood cells, having the same idea of locking the other inside, unbeknownst to them.
In the distraction of Elena's soul re-merging, Bonnie noted with lament that the witch made her escape. She had a theory, but she wasn't quite sure. "Is there a way to save them, Grams? Can I do it?" she asked with marked vulnerability in her widening eyes.
"That's up to you, darling. You can save them both. There's a way out of this where no one has to die, but you know what you'd be giving up," her grandmother softly replied.
"I'd be giving up a lot more if I lost another friend," Bonnie smiled resolutely, through her eyes were filling with tears. Oh, she would miss it so much.
"It's not forever," her grandmother murmured, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.
Bonnie nodded, knowing what she had to do. "Somnum nunc," he whispered in the direction of Damon and Elena, watching with satisfaction as they both dropped to the ground without consciousness. With a touch of worry, she noted the uncomfortable positions in which they both fell, and levitated them to rearrange them to rest comfortably in each other's arms, deciding that they'd probably like waking up this way.
Looking hesitant for a moment, she turned to her grandmother, taking her hand. "Grams…" she suddenly felt like a little girl again. She was so scared. What if something went wrong? What if she lost her magic forever?
"I would never let anything bad happen to you, dear. Go," her Grams shooed her, and without another thought, Bonnie stepped into the circle, allowing that her temporal magic be taken away.
As the party raged around him, a man in the body of his considerably younger self began to feel almost revitalized – as though his very soul were healed.
The witch did it. Perhaps she'd get to live, after all.
Bonnie opened her eyes in alarm. What was she doing in the tunnels? Oh God, she was surrounded by vampires – Stefan was here, and at least Damon was unconscious. Was he holding Elena? Did he kill her!? She'd end him for this.
She looked around wildly, her eyes stopping on her grandmother, feeling a palpable sense of relief and safety. "Grams!" she cried. "Be careful! They're vampires."
The room's conscious occupants – Stefan and a young woman she'd only caught glimpses of before with Jeremy previously – eyed her with alarm, bordering on fear. Another older man stood away from them, with a cell phone, watching the exchange with curiosity, though there seemed to be something almost sad in his features. She hadn't seen him previously. Idly, she wondered how she could have missed someone so attractive, before she forced her mind to focus on the matter at hand.
Her grandmother, strangely, looked quite serene and passive.
"Just calm down a moment, dear. It'll make sense in just a few minutes," she said.
Bonnie felt herself floating – peacefully – through everything. Was this what Elena felt? She was immersed, embraced in a profound sense of knowing. Everything would be okay.
Suddenly, she was in a meadow – in the Astral Plane, Bonnie realized suddenly.
A rather shocked-looking teenage girl stood before her. "Wow! I didn't think I'd find you here! I wonder what you're tethered to."
"Who are you?" Bonnie asked the girl curiously. She was obviously a witch, but there was something almost – familiar – about her.
"One of your favorite students," the girl cheekily replied, producing a whistle. It looked so familiar.
Suddenly, the Astral Plane dematerialized, and Bonnie was whisked away.
Bonnie stood alert. Maybe her grandmother was enchanted? That had to be it. Maybe these vampires made a deal with a witch to cast a spell on her Grams, taking her consciousness. Oh God, she was standing in a magical circle. That's it! Time for answers. She turned to Stefan, her eyes narrowing, and icy rage filling her voice, "Phasmatos inc—"
Suddenly, the magic within her sang, nurtured, born anew. Nature was everywhere, after all – free, abundant. And just like that, Bonnie's soul was whisked away from the Astral Plane, and re-merged with that of her teenage self.
"Whistle…" she whispered, before shutting her eyes, as memories began to flood – and flood, and flood – until she realized where she was.
"Welcome back, my dear!" her grandmother cheered.
"You gave us quite the scare," Anna finally spoke, after being stunned into silence by the day's events.
"I wasn't worried for a minute," her grandmother rushed forward, taking the witch into her arms. "Your soul is tethered here by Nature – the magic that we practice. It's grown and nurtured in every witch it touches – but this is especially true for Bennett witches. I knew it was only a matter of time."
"So, my temporal magic?" Bonnie asked.
"Will come back," her grandmother finished. "Is already coming back. But the temporal magic you brought back with you couldn't be separated, so you lost that, too."
"So, I'm back to the power level I had as a teenager," Bonnie answered glumly.
"But with all that knowledge you gained. Don't worry, dear. It'll come back. You'll grow and cultivate it anew – and you'll have your friends to help you this time," Sheila urged.
"And no one had to die," Bonnie sighed with profound relief.
"I feel like that was unnecessarily eventful," Enzo finally spoke, breaking the silence of the space, though he secretly loved the drama.
"Let's go wake up our sleeping beauties and get out of here," Sheila suggested. "This place always gave me the creeps. This is where the Original vampires were created," she mumbled, mostly to herself. "Steeped in all sorts of nasty magic.
They all found themselves recuperating at the Boarding House soon after, ultimately deciding to call the day a 'win,' despite losing their only lead in learning the identity of the time-displaced man who arranged this whole debacle.
At least no one died.
Damon and Elena sat cuddled in each other's arms on the parlor's couch, blatantly disregarding the stares of the room's other occupants, ranging from amusement to annoyance to bewilderment. They were just happy that the other was alive.
"I can't believe you were going to lock me in one of those cells," Elena mumbled, snuggling into him.
"I can't believe you were going to snap my neck, and lock me in one of those cells," Damon counted, placing a kiss on the crown of her head.
"I took a video," Enzo grinned. "All of this is so weird. You recited another poem – an even more abstract one this time."
"That's actually a really good idea, Enzo!" Bonnie beamed. "I doubt any of us remember any of the text, given everything else that was going on."
"You also said 'whistle,'" Sheila pointedly addressed Bonnie. "Any idea what that's about."
Bonnie only shrugged in return, unable to recall anything but the feeling of peace and a girl with stunning, blue eyes.
"Hey, why are you being so nice this time, Witchy Senior?" Damon asked Sheila, with eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I distinctly recall you being a lot more antagonistic my first go around."
"Maybe I would have been a lot friendlier, if you weren't such an asshole," Sheila sassed in response.
Bonnie was shocked that her grandmother even knew such language, but Damon only shrugged, conceding her point. He was kind of a massive douche back then – even he could admit it.
"Drinks? Pizza? 'We're all alive' party?" Anna suggested.
"It's not over by a long-shot," Sheila warned, pouring herself a tumbler of bourbon, much to Damon's chagrin. Why did everyone always go for his stash? Why not choose Steffie's? Maybe because Destroyer of the Deer Dominion had inferior taste in everything, he sulked.
"Aw, Damon, what's wrong?" Elena teased, kissing him on the cheek. "Did they not appreciate your jokes?" She knew that if she asked him anything that made him genuinely vulnerable, he'd withdraw within himself. That had to be done in private, with only trusted eyes and ears around. This – the world of banter and teasing – this was where he thrived. It was where they were first drawn to each other, at a roadside bar in Georgia – where an errant spark grew into the fiercest wildfire, beyond their strength or scope of comprehension.
It consumed them.
"No," he pouted in what he sincerely hoped wasn't a petulant voice.
"They don't know what they're talking about, humorless idiots," Elena reassured, kissing his cheek.
"Jury's still out," Bonnie snarked, trying to get a rise out of him.
Damon mock-glared at his best friend, and then returned to kissing Elena, content for the first time in days. And as a bonus, Stefan didn't look like he was going to kill him. He almost looked … relived? Maybe everything would actually be okay.
"I told you I keep my promises," Damon whispered in Elena's ear.
"Yeah, like you could have predicted Bonnie's intervention," Elena rolled her eyes in response.
"Maybe I'm just that good," he leered.
"Maybe your ego's grown to natural disaster-level proportions again, and requires considerable cooling off," Elena replied, at which point, a few drops of water burst forth from her palm and onto Damon's face, shocking them both into silence.
"Ego sustained, one drop of ancient, elemental witchy-woo at a time," Damon quipped, grabbing Elena's palm and kissing its pulse point, earning a shudder and a jolty laugh.
So, the purpose of this arc was to de-power Bonnie, as some people guessed. I realized way back during the Augustine arc that she's just way too powerful for this story at this point, and would be able to allow everyone to overcome everything too easily, which is boring. I've kind of a pet peeve about characters that are too powerful or too smart or what have you for the plot, so I knew that I needed a way to take her powers down a few notches.
Let's keep in mind that this is post-S8 Bonnie, who pulled a deus ex machina to wake up Elena with "I finally figured this whole witch thing out." No other explanation. So, her powers here kind of reflected that, until now.
Now we can rebuild Bonnie's powers from a smaller base, in a way that makes more sense. Yay! And it can be a fun little story as she teaches Elena to use what little power she has until the Travelers curse is re-broken (if it is), and she's flooded with an abundance of magic yet again.
I made myself promise that I wouldn't go to sleep without finishing this chapter for some reason. :D It's really late (early?) here.
I dropped a few more hints about the identity of the girl on the Astral Plane. I'll reveal it very deliberately and explicitly before the arc is over, too. :D
So, in Legacies, it was revealed that twins in the Gemini coven have to merge because the entire coven is cursed. The lore in this story is that the creature that cast the curse also did that to this girl and the boy with the fire wings.
So much love to you all. :)