The Other Side wasn't Heaven or Hell.
It wasn't a final decision. It was a waiting room; a dreary lobby created by a scorned distant relative to deprive supernaturals of an afterlife and have them instead exist on earth as phantom observers; to be in the world but not of the world.
And this is where Bonnie had so many times voiced she would gladly go for the sake of the happiness and safety of her friends, behind the scenes of the living, who smiled and cried, who made love and fought, who got to experience life while she subsisted in the shadow of it.
For months she had convinced herself she was content following her loved ones, orbiting their lives, pretending their trials and tribulations were her own. It was make-believe, it was fantasizing color in a present of only gray.
She actually assumed she could continue on like this: months, years, centuries.
Then she witnessed the murder of her father. His throat slit from ear to ear. And she stopped following the living and imagining that the lives she watched were her own.
She was dead.
And the hopeless realization she was trapped with her loneliness made her state unbearable.
So, when the gatekeeper found her; prostrate and broken at the gravesite of her Father, bellowing her summoner's vow, with the ground underneath her seeping a blood circle around where she laid, she accepted, fastened her entire being around that promise; clung to each word as it led her out of the darkness.
BK
"This. Is. Klaus."
She blinks slowly up at him from her supine position, and before she recognizes him, before she realizes her savior has been her tormentor; he swiftly leans in, her lips grazing his chin and he slides his cold, broad hands under her bare thighs and neck, lifting her to her feet.
Only a breath between them, she squints at him, the delicate skin between her eyes creases, and she sees the world for the first time. The Original Hybrid. His red lips, wide animated mouth, and his white throat. She concentrates on the thick red and blue veins traversing down the side of his neck, and how the knot at the center of his throat moves with each formulated sound.
"What is wrong with her?"
She looks down the length of herself, her breasts and dark brown nipples, and naked arms and legs, she curiously runs her fingers down the firm middle of her chest, over the taunt stretch of skin at her stomach, and she glances up, her dark hair ashen from the dirt ground, curling over her shoulders, shrouding her oblique gaze.
He is staring at her. His blue eyes black in the torchlight.
"She been dead cher', give her a time. She a newborn."
The second voice comes from behind her. The timbre was not as dark as his, and she tries to turn to look for the source of the voice but wobbles, and the hybrid pulls her closer to him, to where her body is pressed securely onto his. Her lips get caught on the cotton of his t-shirt as she attempts to make sound come from her own mouth; but what escapes is a raspy whisper of air. And she feels his fingers, holding the back of her neck, the nails digging into her flesh, and she moans, wriggles from discomfort, and the fingertips loosen their grip, and hesitantly, they begin to caress her, like the hand is unsure if it could touch her in such a way.
"She does not remember me."
His chest vibrates when he speaks; her ear is on his sternum and she is enchanted by the hollow deep sound; she can feel his voice in her own body, and she knows she is alive.
"Souls been here since the start, cher', they don't remember blips and you a blip. When she get settled in her bones she will tho', just you wait."
BK
He slides his grey t-shirt up and over his head and tells her, "Hold up your arms," and she gives him an inquisitive look, and he notices in her mossy green eyes the moment she understands his command, and her lithe arms, the color of confections, like butterscotch or caramel, reach upward without a question of why and Klaus lips curl into a smirk as he briefly considers her lapse of memory fortunate.
'You have no idea what I can do now.'
Those were her words to him when she had trapped him for three days in the Gilbert living room, and he recalls vividly, his grief over his murdered brother, his thirst for the deaths of Elena and Jeremy Gilbert, and his determined pledge to tear the little witch limb from limb.
He remembers; even if she cannot.
And now, she belonged to him.
He rolls the shirt in his hands to the opening, placing the hole over her head, and he skims the warm curve of her neck as he untucks her hair from under the collar as he methodically plans how to use her. How she will be his sword and shield, the sharp blade to sever the head of his enemy. He is tugging her arms through the shirt like a father does a child when he is startled by her placing her soft palms on either side of his face; her thumb smoothing over his bottom lip.
He stumbles out of her curious embrace, his eyes narrowing on the little witch who looks sheepishly down at her hands.
Mama T hobbles over to stand in between them and puts her hand on her hip. She points to Bonnie and asks, "What she do?"
"Nothing," He scowls, "Nothing at all."
"Then why you scared?"
He stretches his mouth into a smile at Mama T and at the pair of green eyes that follow him, "If anything, I am amused," He says,stalking the perimeter of their ritual, sniffing the air scented with magic, that gunpowder smell, and it heightens his paranoia.
He runs his hands through this thick hair, and calls Mama T a fool for not hiding their location with a spell. Here they were, open kill, and he imagines how many soldiers Marcel will send to take down an old witch, and how many more will he send if he has the knowledge that Klaus is with her.
Klaus hushes both women, even though neither has said a word, and he peers through the dark, seeing only shadows, and he shoots a look at the elder witch, and asks if Bonnie's amnesia has affected her magic.
Mama T faces the hybrid, his strong brow set and his eyes hooded with that constant suspicion that has now reached a frenzy, and she chooses her words carefully, and calmly says, "Its inside of her when she ready," and she pats Bonnie's hands in her own, and encourages him to look at the young witch, "She full of magic, you can't see?"
And he looks at Bonnie in his shirt, hanging on her like a loose nightgown, and she did not look ethereal, there was no phosphorus spark, she was made of more than mystical elements like light and air.
A creamy shoulder is peeking out from where the shirt collar drapes, and he can smell her, the mix of his own bodily scent and cologne, and the salt of sweat breaking out over her skin, under her arms, and the intoxicating musk from between her legs, and the aroma of her earthy blood from the mosquito biting her neck, pulling her blood into itself until it is drunk and full.
He tears his gaze away from the girl, and informs Mama T that they need to leave.
"A blessing before we go," Mama T says, turning to the young witch, gently pressing down on her shoulders for her to genuflect. And picking up a bit up dirt, she spits into her palm, making a paste and she rubs the clay into the sign of the cross on Bonnie's forehead.
"Blessed be the woman who perseveres under trouble, because when she has stood the test, she will receive the crown of life that God has promised."
And Bonnie looks up at the deep coppery wrinkles in Mama T's face, the weathered lines and cracked lips, and she closes her eyes momentarily as Mama T continues to pray over her, and when she opens them, the old woman is replaced by a handsome young woman, her face like a shiny new penny, and as the fearless priestess chants the name of God over her, she looks past her, searching for the one she saw when she first opened her eyes, and she finds him, and she stares at his gleaming chest, and at the ink swallows tattooed on his pale skin, and how their wings begin to beat and flutter.
BK
After leaving Mama T's home, Bonnie stares out the window as Klaus drives over the bridge from Lower Riverside into By-River. She is absorbed by the lights of the dashboard illuminating the car, colors of green, yellow and red, and the sleepy drone of the tires on the freeway, and the street lights whizzing by and how with each burst of white light into the dark car, she catches her reflection in the glass, her eyes big and wondrous and simultaneously glimpses her face as it was underneath the sewer of a high school parking lot, the eyes empty sockets.
"Tonight, we'll rest and tomorrow we start your tutelage," He informs her, acclimating her quickly to the reason for her new life.
She makes no response, and he glances over at her, her forehead pressed to the window, and he asks if she requires food, and she shakes her head again, using gestures to communicate.
"I was dead." She whispers to herself, her breath quickening.
His jaw tightens, and he makes a right on to Basin Street, slowing the car down in front of the old cemetery over run with ivy and heavy rusted chains on the iron-wrought gates. He removes the keys from the ignition weighing his next move if this is it. If the witch is back and remembers who he is. He is ready to subdue her if he has to, if she tries to do anything stupid. He feels the burn of his eyes shading yellow, and he focuses on the empty street ahead of them, and how no one will hear her scream, and he says cautiously, "You were dead, that is correct."
Her heartbeat echoes in his ears.
"You found my body and you brought me back." She says, disbelieving he is the one. "Why," She asks.
He quickly thinks of the many ways he can answer her, how to play her like the pieces on his chessboard. He even contemplates what cruelty he can bestow on her, the witch who has tortured him, and how he can repay her for those past transgressions.
But it defeats his purpose and he answers her honestly.
"I need you."
"You need me?" She repeats; and although he is not looking at her; not observing how she shifts in her seat; he can hear her skin prickle. Hear her heart beat pick up. He inhales the delicious scent of panic excreting from her pores.
He is a predator. And her fear is potent, choking the air between them. His eyes won't relax into blue; they remain glowing, dilated and roused. He closes his eyes, imagining dead things, her being one of them, and his fingers deftly run over the console until both of their windows are rolled down and the night air clears his lust.
Composing himself, he runs his tongue under his fangs that rapidly retract, and he faces the witch with the dried mud crucifix on her forehead, crackling in pieces as she furrows her brow.
"Yes. You were needed hence why you are alive, breathing, sitting inside my vehicle in my shirt." He states, annoyed by the dirt cross's presence and being on her specifically. The symbol has never warded him off, and there have been many souls who have held it up upon sight of him, a demon, praying that the power of the god they worshipped would save them, right before he drained them and tore them apart. And on impulse he wipes away what is left at the center of her forehead, expecting her to cringe under his touch, but when she does not, when she allows his hand to linger and trace down the side of her face, he can't help but laugh at how the tables have turned.
"Mama T said you would need some time to get acquainted with your former self," Klaus says, examining Bonnie, looking at her for the first time without the weight of his grievances, her face no longer shrouded by what she symbolized—his thwarted revenge, an obstacle in his path.
And for most, it may be hard to appreciate how attractive someone is when they have tried to kill you, but he's a man, and he finds a way. He drinks her in—her supple skin, her graceful legs and arms, her rounded thighs, and pert breasts. Determines whether she is alluring with her sharp green eyes, or if she is innocent, with her heart-shaped face and slightly crooked pout. He concedes, she is beautiful. And he can appreciate it.
"Humor me," he suggests, his fingers gingerly tracing the contours of her mouth. "Do you have any clue who I am?"
"Klaus," she replies, her eyes unwavering from him. "That is the name you gave when I came back, and that is what Mama T called you. Klaus."
"But there is no recollection of that name?" he whispers, daring to press his luck.
"What recollection should there be?" She asks, earning a genuine smirk from Klaus. He withdraws his hand from her neck, not quite confident he won't have to quickly snap it — a dreadful prospect considering all the trouble he went through obtaining her.
Bonnie Bennett might be a newborn but she is aware of intrigue and this thrills him.
"I will not spoil the surprise for you," He starts the car, the engine humming over the silence on the dead street, "But I will tell you who you are and why your life is invaluable to me." He turns down narrow alleys and trash-filled backstreets, "You are a witch," He says, glancing at her awe of their surroundings as he drives through the fabled French Quarter with its Creole homes and Spanish courtyards, avoiding the police blockades and rambunctious crowds of Bourbon Street. "You are a prodigy, one of the most brilliant witches to grace this time, but unfortunately for you, you were using your talents unwisely and died " He states as matter-of-fact, "You see, Bonnie, a prodigy cannot fulfill her potential without training, and where I come into the grand plan of your resurrection is that I have a little problem, a meddlesome issue with a former friend of mine who believes he controls this city. So, I needed a witch, and I can only have the best, and the best was no longer alive, so, Voila. I gave you your life back; and on top of this gracious act, I will mentor you. I have known some of the most powerful witches over the years I have been on this spinning rock. I was even born to one. It's with me how you will exceed your potential. And all I ask in exchange for my generosity is that you help me take back what is mine. Do we have a deal?"
He waits for her to give him her word, anticipating her yes like it was binding. But she is looking out the window at the drunk revelers, decked in beads and showing skin, and she beams and asks, "Where are we?"
He possessively places his hand on her thigh, "New Orleans, love. Your new home."