"I'm not going to say I'm sorry for leaving you in nineteen-o-three," she said, making Kai shudder.
Her voice reverberated within his body, physically aching and ripping at the strings of his weakening self-control.
"I'm not. And I'm not going to apologize for stabbing you in the back or even attempting to kill you," she continued, clueless to how close to another bout of torture she was teetering. "Not after you came back and did the very thing I knew you would. The very thing I feared you would. These people didn't deserve this, Kai. Your sister didn't deserve this. Jo was a good woman, marrying an equally decent man whose life you ripped apart without even thinking."
Another shiver traveled through him instead of a nervous laugh he thought would slip out. Without thinking… He had a long fucking time to think, that was for sure. If anything, he'd thought about it thoroughly.
"I even know that this it isn't entirely your fault. That I—" he heard her throat click as she swallowed, "I'm mostly to blame. I drove you to this, obviously. I… whatever you suffered by the hands of those… things, those people… That's all I can ask forgiveness for."
"Forgiveness," Kai repeated dumbly. The pool of blood started morphing into a black patch of starless space, a crack in reality, making him dizzy. He was distantly aware he was losing it a little along the stitches. The smell of blood was suffocating, and her voice still rang inside his skull, words bouncing off the walls like dry peas. "Forgiveness," he repeated in a soundless breath, probing himself for reaction. He felt like someone threw a thick tarp over his raging emotions and they kind of lost their direction under it, groping their way around, not knowing where to step. And then laughter started in his chest, like a buzzing cell phone gradually gaining volume, as he turned to look her in the eye.
Bonnie studied him, unmistakably seeing him stiffen, half-expecting Kai to lash out at her, and grimaced when instead he started laughing like a manic. She'd heard it enough to know the difference and tonight, that lethal look in his eyes, the one he currently zeroed in on her, held none of its former frivolity. No, this was someone else, something broken, and something she now knew she had a part in creating.
He must have looked like a loony, he reckoned, laughing like a cartoon villain amidst the chaos he's caused, but none of the glee was real or heart-felt. At this moment, Kai wasn't sure where his heart was and if it was. "What the fuck is that forgiveness and why would you want it? Look," he spread his arms at the wrecked room.
She looked, agreeing with him internally, knowing there was no way to make up for murdering these people. How could there be?
"Is there a thing like forgiveness in the world like that? I dared to think so – and then you know what happened. So tell me, Bonnie," all gaiety drained from his face as he fixed her with a sharp, heavy stare, stepping away from the stage towards her, "why would I forgive you for dismissing my efforts as if I were shit stuck to your dress shoe? Why would I forgive you for handing a dozen chances per day to Damon and denying me a smidgen of that share?
Bonnie flinched slightly, recalling how earnest he seemed in his attempts to make nice with her, how afraid she'd been, how incapable of trusting that Kai could be anything other than the monster that haunted her nightmares.
"And why would I leave my damned family to live happily ever after when they never stopped plotting to lock me away to rot? WHY? They could've just killed me, for crying out loud, if I were that much of an ugly duckling to them, but they PUT ME IN HELL! What I did to them here is mercy compared to what they dealt me."
"You're right," she responded, taking an automatic step back as his voice rose, swallowing away the lump in her throat, forcing herself to forget what he'd done to her minutes ago and stick to her prior resolve.
Kai could smell it she was placating him, and for a second, thought he would launch himself at her to see how much of her blood he could drain in one gulp.
"They alienated and pushed you away for something that was beyond your control. It's harsh, it's lonely and it's hard. But do you honestly believe you're the only person in the world to deal with inattentive assholes for parents? That you're alone in feeling neglected and unloved? Say what you will, Kai. Pass the buck. Blame me. Blame your father for putting you in some hellish prison world. God forbid you can even blame your brother Timmy," she studied him, hoping—for some unknown reason—to see a flicker of what had been there before she dropped him in nineteen-o-three, "the one that struggled as you drowned him in your pool, you remember him, don't you?"
He did. It was something from another galaxy. Something he must have seen in some stupid thriller.
"I'm sure whatever he did to you was deserved and far less brutal than having to endure eighteen years of solitude. At least you have a life—something you can try to mend and heal from, what does he have? What does your sister, her twins and would-be husband have?" She knew she was playing with fire, that if he wanted to, he could snap her neck or worse, but she didn't care. "You think this is mercy?" she said, spreading her arms in the same way he had before. "It's simply proving what they always thought you were. What I believed you were."
In the dark abyss of his being, Kai sensed the dying out ember of anger brighten to life in the flare of helpless despair. He was never getting out of this vicious circle. Trying it before indeed was stupid.
"When does it stop?" she demanded. "With me? I clearly wasn't mature enough to embrace that concept. With you? Where? Did I truly break you that much?"
Kai stared at her, nonplussed, for a long moment of blankness. Then it hit him like a bat upside the head, pushing the baffled disbelief up like a giant air bubble rising from under water to the surface to release poisonous gas. A brief, uncontrolled laugh fell from his mouth, and he drew a deep breath, squelching the urge to resort to violence and just take it all out on her instead of having to cough up explanations that, obviously, were as useful as a condom with its end cut off. His lips drew back in a little sneer of a man who's found out that what he thought was a nightmare happens to be real. Then a glint of dour knowing flickered in his eye as he regarded her, pondered on pouring it out, decided to go with a point-blank. "Did it truly break you that much when he walked away?"
An incredulous and incomprehensibly bitter laugh automatically spilled from Bonnie's lips, her eyes unconsciously darting over her shoulder to where Damon still lay. Kai damned well knew that it hurt as he'd seen their friendship unfold as if it were his very own entertainment. Damon was her confidant and her best friend. She loved him. Just thinking about it now was like enduring that back-breaking pain all over again, gripping and twisting her heart, literally squeezing until she was left with nothing but agonizing frailty. She stared at Kai, studying his features, eyeing the significant smile that twisted his lips, like he'd shared something she'd missed by a mile.
And then, like a Mack truck, those cutesy little looks he'd given her, the weirdly endearing commentary about her palms and his insistence to 'go if you go' seemed to make sense.
It was like Damon said: "You're just not used to guys hitting on you."
He regarded her expression that was a quickly changing slideshow: hurt, bemusement, disbelief, ire, inquiry, shreds of feelings that had no time to grow roots and swept past and twirled around. She studied him, like someone would study their apartment upon discovering it has been redecorated while they've been away for lunch.
"You hardly know me," she began, suddenly finding the entire situation surreal, not wanting to voice aloud what she was thinking in fear of giving life to something she wasn't sure she was ready to hear the answer to. "I mean, I hardly know you. And what I do know is downright terrifying." In an odd panic, she took another glance around, suddenly saddened by what he was trying to imply. "Or it was. Is." She exhaled as if to focus. "I get it," she said, having assured herself that she'd come to the conclusion, that the comparison was easily explained, and that he was simply projecting. "I felt it too when you left me there. That place, the loneliness, it swallows you whole and breaks away pieces of who you are, who you used to be. It's only natural that you'd feel a connection to the people who'd shared that experience with you." And why was she even talking about this? None of this changed anything, nothing about his confession would bring these people back or revive Jo. What's done is done.
Head tipped to one side, Kai watched her trying her damned best to play a shrink, to humor him. To lie to him. Again.
"So… what now? Where are we supposed to go from here? Am I supposed to feel guilty?" She quirked up a brow, curious, genuinely wondering what he expected from her. "Because I do. And not because I didn't feel it back." She needed him to recognize that, needed him to know that although there was an attraction of sorts in the beginning, she never viewed him the same. Not after his happy family-hunting stories came to light. "Or that I didn't see it and couldn't fathom something like that, but because all of this could have been prevented somehow. That is the point of this, right? That why you linked me to Elena, why you can rally your victory in driving a wedge between Damon and I? You healed me so that he can despise me, so that I can hate him for not choosing me as much as you do me. Right?" She took a step forward, no longer feeling quite as scared as she was before, suddenly feeling as if she'd found all the answers and his entire game plan had been revealed.
With a feeble wonder, Kai discovered he could still be hurt more. Something cringed inside his chest, then a silent pulse went through his being, like a sonic wave after a nuclear explosion, deafening his feelings. And the only solid feeling he was left with was exhaustion. An exhaustion of a man who's been there from the day one of the earth. Too long to be. It started to seem to him he had accidentally switched his humanity off, but then a thin thread of hurt glistened in the distance, lacing through the fibers of his soul. He drew in a long breath, let it out, looked at her listlessly. "I linked you to Elena because of Damon, yes." He shrugged, a tiny fleeting smile with no joy in it creasing his mouth as he did. "Maybe, it was to make you both pay. Or maybe I gave you both a chance each. For you to see how he truly felt for you in return for what you obviously felt for him against all odds that were Elena and his inhuman temper that drove him to be the monster you only see in me."
Damon and what Bonnie might be feeling were the least of her concerns at this very moment in time. Even if she knew Kai was right. She did love Damon. How and to what extent? She wasn't sure, yet. She mentally shrugged off trying to decipher the standing of their relationship—still too hurt, still to numb—and what it never would be. And there it was again, the revealing repetition that she saw him as the enemy – what she was gradually starting to believe was the actual reason he was so hurt. Clearly recalling that during their not-so-horrible pre-peace thanksgiving dinner that his father referred to him as an abomination and treated him as such for years. He'd looked hurt sharing that piece of information, much like he was now, briefly surpassing his deceptive twenty something looks in essence. It made Bonnie wonder if that was why he chose to go this far, and if he was merely giving her what she'd asked for and believed she needed. A monster.
"And for Damon to pull his head out of his ass and notice the treasure at his feet he never noticed while staring anywhere but – and that I could only do by taking away his main fixation that was Elena."
Bonnie stared, uncertain of how to handle the backwards way in which he confessed to wanting to see her happy. It was a sacrifice no one else had ever made for her—and guiltily, as much as it hurt knowing her best friend's life was erased from existence for the next fifty or sixty years—another part of her was overwhelmed.
His face distorted momentarily with a scornful wince as her last argument refreshed itself in his mind. Ire – that had been slowly boiling under the thick crust like lava – now started bubbling towards the surface, sizzling as it mixed with hurt. Kai locked his eyes on hers in a penetrating stare. "No, Bonnie, I didn't heal you so he would despise you – I don't give a rat's ass about what he feels for you or Elena or anyone else. I healed you so you didn't die." He backed away from her in a tardy stagger, like a drunkard trying to get out of the closing pub, overwhelmed with equally strong urges to tuck into her neck and merely ghost away from here, away from her. He felt the veins of wrath and hunger swell under his eyes; the sharp tips of his fangs pricked his lower lip, gums itching savagely. "Get the fuck away from me before I take it back."