A/N: To quote Romeo "Why does thou leave me so dissatisfied?" or something to that effect. This is post 6x17. I know I should be working on Part 3 of my latest Bamon Vigne series but I am having major muse/plot issues with that so it's taking longer to come together. So I wrote this up mostly in rebellion and because of feels the episode evoked in me. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: These characters (except my OC) belong to LJ Smith/CW Network. Copyright infringement is not intended.

Bonnie Bennett thought she wanted to be around people again, but the people she usually hung around left a lot to be desired. Kai was trapped, probably being passed around like a blunt among Lily's desiccated brethren—that thought managed to eek a smirk out of Bonnie. Still, it had been a night of walking in on her friends getting Biblical, a sight she'd wouldn't wish on anyone. Mounting heaps of awkwardness aside, all it did was augment how lonely she truly was.

She drove around Mystic Falls aimlessly and ended up outside of her childhood home. It had been put up on the market. No one had bought it yet and Bonnie hoped no one would. Her car idled outside as she noted everything about the house she hadn't noticed in the eighteen years she lived there. The fact the last number on the house was slightly crooked. One of the posts on the veranda was lopsided.

Memories surfaced. Falling down the brick stairs when she was ten and scraping her knee. The porch swing that had been in serious need of oiling that typically scared her awake whenever a strong wind blew by and caused it to move back and forward. Her house was a house but it had never truly been a home. Bonnie had always felt more comfortable under Grams' roof, and now that comfort was gone as well.

She pressed her foot on the accelerator and pulled back out on the road. Bonnie realized she would have to let go of Grams. Not what she meant to her, she could never do that, but at some point she would have to stop using Grams as a crutch, move on and finally live.

Bonnie had held herself back and for what? What was the point when everyone else around her lived out their fantasies or nightmares at whim? For too long she had been controlled either by the bounds of magic, duty, responsibility, and then out of fear of losing the last visages of the life she had been brought up in that turned out to be one disappointing lie. There were no threats skulking around wishing her or those she cared about harm. The harm was now them. Stefan and Caroline…who at the moment was probably licking some chick's blood off each other's fingertips. Needless to say, they were without their humanity, and yet somehow still found time to bang one another senseless.

Damon and Elena, Bonnie wouldn't even permit herself to go there. Back in 1994 she and Damon had talked about lots of things, but the one topic he always wiggled himself out of was any serious discussion about Elena. Bonnie understood why. It was painful being separated from the one you loved. That's why she hardly brought up Jeremy. She hadn't been in the mood to hear any scathing comments from Damon about her relationship, or the young man she had chosen to fall in love with.

Yet where was that love today? Jeremy was off in New Mexico living out his dream of becoming an artist, and here she was still wedged in the middle of matters that were really none of her business.

Bonnie's hands tightened on the steering wheel as she thought of the gift she had given Damon tonight. The cure. Twenty-four hours ago he had disregarded her request never, ever to bring Kai up to her again, to even have the audacity to utter his name, but what did Damon do? Brought the sociopath right to her at the moment she was dealing with culture shock and trying to get her bearings under control.

She remembered being so relieved seeing Damon thinking he might have detected the distress in her voice and merely showed up provide comfort in the only way he knew how. Unfortunately, Bonnie had been proven wrong the minute Kai came scurrying around the corner and gave her that piss poor apology as if that was supposed to erase every demeaning and humiliating thing he had done to her.

In that moment she felt more than just betrayed, but as if she was being flayed alive while her mind replayed her horrific ordeal in the prison world. Bonnie realized she shouldn't have been surprised by Damon's single-mindedness. However, it hadn't hurt any less that the one person who was supposed to understand, have her back, threw her under the proverbial bus because he wanted something. His wants trumped her comfort, her peace, her self. Damon had let her down.

But she had given in, given Damon what he wanted. The deal had only sweetened marginally when he spelled out the rest of the terms of her tagging along to 1903. The relief she experienced in feeling that knife sink into Kai's back and hamstring, Bonnie had felt wild and in that moment could understand a vampire's desire to kill. The power, the adrenaline, the blood. Hurting something that had hurt her, Bonnie wanted to relish the moment but then Kai had to do his stupid disappearing act, but she didn't care. Seeing the fear in his eyes had been enough. That moment was eerily reminiscent of when she told Silas bygones and snatched her hand away as he was sucked into oblivion.

Another layer of rock and ice encased Bonnie's heart. Something could only hurt her if she gave it power to hurt her. She vowed nothing would ever again. She had to start looking out for herself.

Tonight had ended leaving her in a quagmire of feelings she didn't fully understand.

Walking in on Damon and Elena, her best friend's neck in Damon's mouth, that look of rapture on Elena's face, pure bliss, Bonnie felt a twinge of envy. For too long all she knew or got a chance to feel was fear, loneliness, being expendable, a means to an end, depression. Periods of happiness had been just that. Periods. Non-lasting.

"I guess it's time to change it," Bonnie said aloud.

Her friends' issues wouldn't become her issues. If they were bad enough to get themselves into sticky situations then they were clever enough to get themselves out. She had been gone for ten months and they survived, just barely, without her interference. They would be quite fine without their resident witch living unhappily in their back pocket.

"Screw them all."

His—well rather Elena's ingenious plan to use his mom to trigger an emotional response in Stefan who would then trigger an emotional response in Blondie was not exactly working out how Damon envisioned. Came as no shocker really because his plans had a seventy percent failure rate no matter how exact he had the logistics worked out. Something invariably went wrong.

The infamous Lillian Salvatore wouldn't stop harping in his ear about her "family", constantly pestering Damon on when they would return for those who helped recondition her humanity. Damon knew he was running out of time before Lily figured out he had no intentions of going back for the ones she claimed gave her a new lease in life. After that it wouldn't be long before she took her anger out on him and the town at large. It had only been five days, but Lily could no longer be distracted with the marvels of the post-Victorian world, and consequently they hadn't made a dent in getting Stefan back on the straight and narrow.

Holding her ripper side at bay was about a day or two of expiring.

The other issue that had been weighing heavily on him, pressing uncomfortably on his heart was the cure. He held the ticket to giving Elena her humanness back and he had yet to tell her. Damon could blame his procrastination on a number of things, but they were just poor excuses to hide the truth. He knew that a human Elena wouldn't or couldn't love him the way Vampire Elena could and was learning to do once more. Things were better than ever between them, and to throw this monkey wrench into the pot, Damon didn't want to risk losing her. He understood there was a fifty percent chance Elena's feelings, whatever they were at the moment may remain, or severely diminish since vampirism was like steroids and heightened emotions. That was just another problem he didn't need to juggle at the moment. So Damon made a promise to himself. As soon as things were squared away with his mom, Stefan, and grudgingly Caroline then he would tell Elena about the cure.

Pleased he mentally handled one issue which really he hadn't done anything but make a conscious decision to stall, Damon eyed his phone. He needed to talk to Bonnie, but unsure of her head space and the fact he hadn't really apologized the way he should have, he could say he was avoiding her. To be fair, it couldn't be construed as avoiding if neither one of them had picked up the phone to call the other, and she hadn't stopped by the boardinghouse since that night. He was curious as to what she was doing with herself, but again his plate was full on things to worry about.

So he stood in front of the stain glass window peering out into the backyard. A floorboard creaked garnering his attention, and Damon glanced over his shoulder not the least bit surprised to find his mother staring at him cautiously and inquisitively.

"You seem like you have a lot on your mind."

"I do," Damon cleared his throat.

Lily eased her way into the living room, "Something you want to talk about?"

At her query, Damon turned, faced the woman who gave birth to him, the woman he mourned, the woman he missed more than he cared to admit, the woman who lied. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and that at the end of the day he was no better than Lily, Damon could understand her reasons for staying away from him and Stefan. Didn't mean he had to cooperate and be the loving son she remembered. He was petty like that.

His eyebrows furrowed into peaks. "Just thinking about how to fix Stefan. The same as yesterday and the day before."

"Oh, I thought maybe you might have been thinking about that long-haired girl...Eloise."

"Elena."

"Right," Lily looked away, stared at the furnishings.

It was at this moment Damon realized he had been robbed of the opportunity of introducing his mom to the woman he'd court. Sure and she and Elena met in the prison world, but Damon was thinking of when he became of age as a human to start wife hunting and bringing a woman that would have been of his choosing to meet his mother. He could care less if Lily approved of Elena, and he was sure she'd probably balk if she discovered Elena had been with and loved Stefan first. That wasn't the issue. The issue was he missed well over a century with the woman who had made such a huge difference in his life, or would have had he not been led to believe she died when he was seventeen.

"You seem really smitten with her," Lily said.

"She's…smittable," Damon rolled his eyes at his own lame attempt at humor. "She's not exactly the one on my mind though. I mean, I'm thinking about her…"

"She's not the one giving you problems. Look, Damon I understand your hesitancy to trust me given on account of what you've been told. But we all go through a period of darkness. That doesn't mark us but how we come out of it, the path we choose to walk down that does."

Damon said nothing but nodded. "Want a drink?"

"No thank you. Alcohol is one of my triggers."

"Noted," Damon placed the top back on the decanter and made yet another notation to hide the booze, lock it up somewhere tight.

Lily came closer to her oldest with eyes that nearly matched her own. She had wasted what felt like centuries thinking of the moment of seeing her children again once learning they had suffered the same fate as her. Giuseppe was probably rolling in his well-deserved grave, and Lily had the mind to dig him up and spit on him, but there was no need to be macabre.

Damon was troubled about a myriad of things, that was plain to see. And what was also plain to see was the fact he didn't exactly want to talk to her about it. She could let that prickle her ire or simply let it roll off her back. Lily figured being a mother to Damon was not what he needed right at the moment. But she'd try anyways.

"Talking helps the most in easing a troubled mind. I used to say that to you whenever you and Giuseppe would quarrel. It may be dated advice or the opposite of what you want to hear, but I'm sure you can think of one person you want to talk to whether it's Elaine…"

"Elena," Damon corrected.

"Sorry, I should be better with names," Lily smiled ruefully. "Or maybe you can speak with the brown skinned girl, Bonnie."

Oh, you can remember her name, Damon thought suspiciously. "Yeah only problem is I don't think she wants to talk to me."

Lily arched an eyebrow. She may not have made her presence known in the house, but she listened. Heard things. Bonnie's name had been mentioned quite a few times, and she picked up on the change in her son's timbre when talking about the girl. He was extremely fond of her.

"Why? Did you two have a falling out?"

"No, not…exactly…maybe," Damon was confused. "I did something and didn't really apologize for it. I'm not one of her favorite people at the moment."

"When do you plan on making things right? You're friends with her, yes?" Damon nodded. "Friends are valuable things, Damon. You can't handle friendship lightly and still expect someone to be there for you. If you've done something to wrong her then you know it's up to you to make it right. Post haste. I'm going to go upstairs and rest."

She was gone in the blink of an eye leaving Damon standing in his living room breathing heavily through his nostrils.

Picking up his cell, Damon put in a call to Bonnie. It didn't ring once before it was routed to voice mail.

"Great," Damon muttered under his breath. "Hey, Bonnie it's Damon. Can you give me a call back? It's…it's not urgent, I'd just like to speak with you. I still owe you a real apology. So if you want it, you know where to find me," he hung up and flung his phone on the couch. "Real smooth, Damon. Real smooth."

Two days later and he still hadn't heard from Bonnie. Damon didn't know how to process that. He had replayed their last conversation over and over in his mind. Her words had been spoken light-heartedly, and she had draped her hand over his while he held the chest containing the cure in his clutches. That couldn't have been a farewell, right?

Slyly Damon questioned the others if they had heard from or seen Bonnie. The consensus had been a resounding 'no'. He told himself not to panic. Bonnie had to be somewhere around here. But if she hadn't been staying at the dorm, definitely hadn't been freeloading at the boardinghouse where the fuck was she?

Cruising down fraternity row after receiving a drunk dial from Elena pleading with him to come pick her up, Damon grit his teeth and found a place to park. In front of fire hydrant no less. Loud rap music could be heard from blocks away and Damon was unfamiliar with the song, but not unfamiliar with the scene of sweaty coed bodies dry humping one another, red Solo cups raised in the air.

Several girls eyed him hungrily; a few were bold enough to touch him. Damon ignored it all, pushing people out of his way, shouldering past high football players, drunk basketball stars, and unconscious nerds who didn't know their limits.

Damon craned over bobbing heads searching for Elena but she found him first, jumping on his back nearly knocking him off his feet. She placed a cold, drooly kiss on his cheek making him wince.

"Hey," she slurred and unfortunately assaulted Damon with alcohol breath. "You came!"

Prying Elena off his back, he swung her in front of him taking in her dazed appearance and scanty apparel. "Let's go."

"Wait I have to tell Bonnie."

Something blew up in Damon's head. "Bonnie's here?" he started a new search among the revelers looking for that petite witch.

Elena nodded and her nods turned into bobbing her head, off beat, to the next song to start playing. "Dance with me Damon," she began swaying in front of him.

Damon held up a finger in front of her face to get her to focus. "If Bonnie is here we need to find her. We can't leave her here by herself."

"Oh, but she's not here by herself. She came with someone," Elena batted her eyelashes and burst out into laughter. "It's about time. I was starting to feel bad for her. She's the only one who doesn't have someone. Well except for Tyler but who cares about Tyler. Even Matt is seeing someone."

Damon slowly turned his head toward Elena. Her eyes were closed, arms thrown up in the air while her body did something that could barely pass as dancing. The older immortal wondered how much she had to drink and he didn't mean booze.

"Be a good girl and wait here, Elena while I try to find our little friend."

Damon doubted if Elena heard a word of what he said. She was lost in her own world, but he had no qualms leaving her unattended at a frat party. If some guy tried anything she didn't want, she could eat him. Problem solved.

Moving through the press of bodies, Damon searched the rest of the living room, kitchen, dining room, the backyard. No sign of Bonnie. Traveling upstairs he came across couples and triplets, a bedroom filled with dudes playing video games of all asinine things to do at a party, another room where some explicit activity was taking place and being filmed. Damon could smell the scandal coming.

Heading up to the third floor, the environment was much more subdued. Less people, one room that housed a pool table, but at the far end of the hall was a balcony. Damon caught sight of a familiar silhouette.

Quietly he advanced down the hall keeping his eyes on the prize. His ears were tickled by the sound of Bonnie's laughter. The kind he couldn't be sure he had ever heard before, not even in 1994. Bonnie smiled, snorted, or chuckled. The most anyone could coax out of her was a giggle, but true honest to God laughter was rare. He had to say he liked the sound. A lot.

Damon stood about a foot away from the threshold. He couldn't see the guy Bonnie was talking to. Their backs were to him and he was inclined to believe it wasn't Bonnie at all. This girl, yeah she was Bonnie's height, but her hair was thick, wavy, and came to the middle of her back. She was wearing a waist length leather jacket, a tight black skirt that stopped right underneath her ass with fuchsia fishnet stockings, and sky high heels. The Bonnie Damon knew didn't show that much leg. And for a moment he found it impossible to look away.

"I'm glad you invited me, Cristiano," she said. "I'm having a much better time than I thought I would. The last party I went to…didn't end so well."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm glad you're here. I didn't think you would show up."

"Well you made an offer I couldn't refuse."

"If given the chance I hope to make more."

Something about this conversation bothered Damon, and his eye narrowed. Cristiano? Seriously?

Damon cleared his throat. "Bonnie?"

Her laughter instantly died and a minute or two may have passed before she pivoted around to face him.

Don't ask Damon why he was finding it impossible to breathe or even remember his name at the moment. But he stared at Bonnie and she stared right back. His life had just gotten another complication.

A/N: OMG if this ain't clichéd, but let me live. Most importantly let me know what you thought of this. I can say I'm on the fence of continuing. Black girls need love too and that's the main reason I started this because I'm tired of witnessing everyone get love on this show but my queen. I'm freaking exhausted while writing this, but nevertheless thank you so much for reading. Love you.