Chapter Text
Bonnie backs herself into what remains of the dining table, before setting herself down into a chair. Calmly, as if there aren’t several bodies lying before them, Kai joins her at the table. The distinct smell of blood invades her nostrils and a portion of it is caked down his neck. They lock eyes as her mind whirs, trying to process, well, everything.
Kai begins to tap a finger on the table, eyes closed, first in staccato, then to a slower, steady rhythm. The front door is still wide open and she tiredly waves it shut. Just her and a newly transitioned vampire-witch, heretic-whatever.
Newly transitioned.
His taps start to speed up.
Her heartbeat. He was playing out her heartbeat.
The taps grow faster.
She reaches over to stop his hand.
He opens his eyes.
“Let me heal your ankle.”
He picks up her foot with cold hands and places it in his lap, hovering his hands over it. She winces, looking away as she feels the tendon reknitting together, then hisses in pain as she feels it unravel again.
“Kai.”
His eyebrows furrow, and he presses his magic deeper into her ankle.
“Kai,” she says again, shifting her leg. “It’s okay. Let me do it.”
She draws her leg back and starts working on herself. The only sound in the house is her whispered chants, and she follows his gaze across the room, passing over the bodies before landing on Liv’s. She swallows thickly, then looks back at him.
“Luke’s not happy,” he says.
His jaw clenches, eyes darkening again, red veins wriggling under his eyes.
“Me neither,” he growls.
Her knee is scraped up as well, bloodied. She heals that too for good measure.
His gaze moves over to James Parker’s body.
“We have over 20 ascendants in our archives. Do you know how many are left?”
She knows it’s a rhetorical question, but the beginnings of the answer are already clear to her.
“None. I felt it. They’re all gone,” he says, glaring at his father. “He opened the 1930 prison world and let him out under a guise. Then he destroyed the rest. Aunts, uncles, cousins, whatever.” Kai looks up at her, eyes unrecognizable. “I would have been in mine forever.” Both his sclera are still red, black veins wriggling around his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
His fangs descend, and the lightbulb shatters above her. Bonnie leans back impulsively, but then stops herself. She drags her chair forward, closer to him. Reaching out, she cradles his chin. His skin is cold as ice, and she knows if she felt her way down to his heart it would beat no longer.
“Your heart rate just picked up again,” he mumbles.
She doesn’t let go.
“When did you start drinking vampire blood?” she asks.
“Moment I arrived. It was my failsafe.”
“And Heretic,” she spells out. “I thought it was a myth?”
His eyes shift back to their normal blue.
“Heretics,” he says, “are not just a bedtime story apparently.” He looks down at his hands. “It makes sense though. Vampirism powers the magic. How is that any different from a siphoner who feeds on it?”
He burns the bodies in the back but preserves Liv’s, muttering something about burying her next to Luke back home. She doesn’t bother with a glamour. Let Susan call the cops. But her neighbour's window is empty this time. Almost like everyone knew to stay away from whatever Joshua had planned to happen here tonight.
Her fingers close around the talisman on her neck as she stares at the flames.
This was how Grams was able to send her to 1994. Did part of her know the truth behind these worlds — and gave this to Kai as her way of finding him again? But she couldn’t have, at least not the full truth until Joshua had hinted he wasn’t going to release him. No Bennetts could have known. Her hands tighten. They wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be complicit in helping to create such a thing.
Wouldn’t they?
Bonnie’s not surprised when Alaric shows up with Jo on her doorstep the next day, fury in his eyes.
“Is he in there?” he asks, looking into the house. She imagines he’d push past her if he could.
Jo only has worry in her eyes.
“What did he do? Jo’s heart stopped beating for a good minute before it resumed. He’s lucky the girls are safe.”
“Where. Is. He. Bonnie?” Alaric asks again.
Her eyes slide from him to Jo.
“Did you know?” she asks her.
Jo’s mouth parts. “He said nothing would happen since I had given up my magic.”
A thud sounds upstairs and Bonnie closes her eyes.
Alaric turns to Jo. “Wait, you knew that he was going to do this?”
“My father, yes,” she lowers her head.
Bonnie shakes her head. “No. Did you know about the prison worlds?” she asks.
The confusion on Jo’s face is enough as an answer as she’ll get.
“It’s probably best if you guys leave,” Bonnie dismisses them, not waiting for any response before shutting the door.
The days and weeks that follow are quiet, but Bonnie remains hypervigilant. Not because of danger, but Kai’s new transition. Frankly, she’s worried he might turn it off. His humanity that is. He’s got to know it exists.
She wouldn’t be surprised if he did either.
He sets off abruptly one day, and she hears through the grapevine that is Elena Gilbert that he announced that any Gemini who don’t want to follow him exile themselves or face sudden death. Including Jo.
She decides not to ask him about the outcome.
Jo shows up on her doorstep again, alone.
“I need to talk to him.”
“Isn’t he your twin?”
Jo sighs. “Tell him I want to rejoin the coven.”
He shows up the next day in response to her text, an answered text that stands out among all of her unanswered ones. She doesn’t let that fact sour her thoughts, because it could be the difference between tethering him to the ground that is humanity or solidifying that he has no one.
The three of them gather in her living room.
“Kai,” Jo says.
“Sissy,” he replies. There’s no bite to his tone.
“Did he, did he kill Liv?”
“He would have done whatever it took to get to me.”
Jo’s face shutters in anguish.
“You are going to need your magic back,” he says, then turns to Bonnie. “Can you get me what I gave you back in 1994?”
She nods, understanding and heads upstairs, returning with the knife. Jo stiffens immediately as Bonnie descends the stairs with it, holding it carefully with two hands. Kai picks it up by the hilt, blade up, and it’s as if the room holds its breath as he stares at it, then breathes as he hands the knife to his sister.
“Are we even now, Jo?”
Jo nods, closing her eyes. A tear escapes the corner of one shut lid.
“Clean slate,” Jo whispers. “We’ll start over.”
Destined to merge, but yet remained the only ones left standing. Jo wipes her eyes as she leaves. Kai turns to Bonnie, a blank expression on his face.
“Her twins are siphoners,” he says, almost casually. “And she knows I’ll outlive her. And them.”
Bonnie slips out the daylight ring and weighs it in her hand. Tungsten, durable and functional. She had spent the better half of the afternoon putting it all together, where most of the time was choosing one that could match what was already on his hand; not one of the gaudy ones that seemed more befitting for a Salvatore. Spelling it was the fastest part.
She places it on the table when he shows up again, another infrequent visit where she feels like she needs to cram as much demonstrable of an ‘I’m still here’ as possible.
His eyes slide to the ring. He picks it up, inspecting the dark element. He fishes out his necklace, which holds a similar style of ring and stares at the two. It’s a long moment before he speaks.
“I made my own so you wouldn’t have to.”
Kai brings a stack of books over to Bonnie’s house and they comb through his family tree, highlighting the number of times a member's name mysteriously disappears and cross-referencing it to a destroyed prison world.
He deduces that if the coven eliminated each siphoner during each generation, nature would find a way to bring it back in the next. But if they were kept alive yet magically isolated to prevent reproduction, then the bloodline shouldn’t produce any more siphoners.
But nature seems to always win in the end.
Her head shoots up as he turns to another page.
“Graham.” She turns to look at Kai.
“He’s fine,” Kai immediately answers.
“He must have found out what was going to happen to him one day. Why didn’t he tell you?”
“Maybe because I’m the son of a man who would've done it,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face. “The kid was scared shitless when he first came to me. I should’ve known, I should’ve dug deeper.”
She squeezes his shoulder, the first time she’s gotten to touch him in weeks. His shoulder tenses for a second then relaxes.
“You were focused on other things.”
Her mark has long since disappeared from her arm. A small part of her wishes she could have it back.
Everything comes to a head the next time he comes around.
“Are you avoiding me?” she asks, back to him as she chops vegetables.
“I’m right here, Bonnie.”
“C’mon. Let’s not beat around the bush—“ Her knife slips, slicing open the tip of her finger. “—Ow.”
Bonnie sticks the finger into her mouth to numb the pain. But Kai, who she guessed was somewhere behind her appears next to her silently, eyes monstrous and fangs descending.
She takes her finger out of her mouth.
“Kai,” she frowns. “Careful.”
She heals the wound quickly, watching the skin draw back together. He shakes his head immediately afterwards, and pounds his fist on the counter, making her jump.
“I hate this,” he seethes.
She narrows her eyes.
“When was the last time you had blood?”
He doesn’t answer her.
Bonnie’s eyes widen. “None since you transitioned? But you’d desiccate yourself.”
“I have a theory that if I draw out enough magic from the vampirism - it will make me just a witch again.”
She shakes her head, muttering a reversal spell and her cut starts to reappear on her finger. Veins start wriggling immediately around Kai's eyes.
She holds her finger out to him. “You don’t want to drink it - but your body is telling you otherwise.” She keeps it held out. “Have some.”
Kai’s grip on her finger is instantaneous and he slips her finger into his mouth, sucking steadily from the wound. She doesn’t know how long they stand there until he abruptly pushes away her hand, looking away and blinking till his red eyes disappear. He keeps his gaze averted as he licks up the smear of blood on his lips.
“I should go,” he says roughly. “I could kill you.”
Bonnie scoffs. “Good luck with that. I’ve dealt with vampires before.”
A flash of hurt passes over his eyes, something that would be easily missed if Bonnie hadn’t become familiar with them.
“That’s not what I meant—” she quickly says.
“I know. But I should go,” he murmurs.
Before she can blink, he’s gone.
Caroline visits a couple of days later and the two of them find themselves out in the garden, hands in the dirt.
Caroline keeps pausing every couple of minutes to scrape the dirt under her fingernails, and Bonnie shakes her head, holding back a smile.
“You know, there is a spell for that Care,” she says.
“Oh thank god,” Caroline exclaims. “I was about to make up an excuse to make lunch or something instead.”
Bonnie returns to her seeding, Caroline resuming not long after and they fall back into amiable silence.
After a moment, Bonnie finally speaks.
“You may recall that I was quite the bitch when Katherine turned you. Which seems so stupid in hindsight. But I never asked you how it felt, becoming a vampire.”
Caroline lifts her head and holds out her hands. Bonnie waves her hands over them and the dirt fades away. Caroline looks at them approvingly.
“I get why you felt that way, Bon,” she says. “Becoming a vampire sucked at first. New teeth crowding your mouth, the bloodlust, I felt downright gross. But all the other perks soon overshadowed those feelings. I mean, have you seen any wrinkles?”
Bonnie snorts.
Caroline looks down. “Even though his execution was poor, it almost seems right that my dad was trying to burn it out of me. It’s unnatural. I am unnatural.”
“Just as unnatural as me,” Bonnie says gently. “I can make things fly and go boom.”
The two share a laugh before Caroline gives her a knowing look.
“Is your question related in any way to the newly immortalized coven leader who’s been making trips to the boarding house?” Caroline asks.
Bonnie looks up at her in confusion. “Kai’s been visiting Damon?”
“I knew it,” Caroline exclaims. “Not Damon though. He’d just tell him to find a co-ed or snack on you and get over it. He asked Stefan about drinking animal blood.”
Bonnie lets the information wash over her.
“You’ll have to explain how all of that happened, but he seems really worried that he’s going to lose control,” Caroline comments. “Stefan told him it’s normal, especially when you’ve recently turned. It heightens all the emotions. Sadness felt like complete despair, happiness felt like being on top of the world.”
Bonnie wonders what devastation might feel like.
She sighs. “I think he really detests being a vampire.” She’s decided to not disclose the fact that he still has magic as well and it seems like Kai’s similarly kept it that way too.
“As I have gathered. He talks about us as if he isn’t one of them,” Caroline says.
Bonnie nods, exhaustion suddenly rolling over her.
“Do you ever wonder how different things would have been if Stefan had never shown up in the principal's office?” Caroline blurts.
Bonnie tries to imagine it, but cannot begin to picture the trajectory of their lives without that fateful day.
“Everything changed in more ways than one,” she acknowledges.
“Maybe my parents would still be alive. Your dad, Sheila too.”
There was no use dwelling on the past. “Maybe we'd never have become close friends,” Bonnie replies.
“Maybe you’d never have died.”
Bonnie looks up at Caroline.
“But maybe I wouldn’t have fallen in love with one of my best friends,” Caroline shrugs before her mouth curves up in a content smile. “Stefan has too by the way. We’re good now.”
Bonnie pats the last bit of soil over her new seeds.
“Maybe I’d never have come across Kai, either.”
“Maybe you could have,” Caroline nudges her. “Don’t know if you needed vampires for that one though.”
The idea comes to her as she finds herself flipping through the Gemini grimoire again. She stops every third page or so to jot down notes in hers. It’s amazing how little tweaks here and there can completely transform the intention of a spell.
It starts to occupy a good portion of her time, enough that Kai eventually starts to catch on. He slowly closes the space he has placed between them with each visit, from opposite sides of the couch to standing next to each other to caressing her neck or brushing a hair behind her ear.
She doesn’t bring it up to his attention, doesn’t point it out because if it’s his way of getting a further hold on his control, she’s not going to interfere with it. Plus she still sees the flash of hesitation in his eyes when he moves to kiss her neck.
He peers over her shoulder when he visits one day, as she’s poring over her notes. She feels him tense as he reads over her work.
“What are you doing?” He asks, a hint of anger in his voice.
“I’m creating a spell, just like you taught me,” she replies, not looking up.
Kai grabs the paper from the desk and reads it properly.
“This could kill you,” he says. “Are you crazy?”
“Just as crazy as someone who would put a spell that could hurt him if I got hurt.”
“That’s different,” Kai counters and the look in his eyes makes her sure he’d burn up the paper if he didn’t think she’d unleash a wave of anger at him. She has copies of her notes in her closet though. Just in case.
“Is it really though?” she looks up at him. “Kai, look at me.”
He’s still glaring at the paper and she holds out her hand. He grabs it reflexively, then finally slides his eyes to hers.
“I’m Qetsiyah’s ancestor. If she can make the spell for immortality, if Ayana Bennett can lay the foundation for the spell that created vampirism, I most certainly can make the spell that reverses it,” she says. “I can do it right. I can do it properly. It might take some time.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt to have a little help,” she smiles. “What do you say, Gemini?”