make a hybrid (out of you)

Loyalty wasn't supposed to be this fickle. When Bonnie had sworn allegiance to her friends, she had meant every word – and she had proven it multiple times. Were she still a witch, several discolored scars would've lingered, instead of fading beneath the surface. Mystic Falls would always be home, and she would protect it with every ounce of her life.

Instead, Damon had become more important than a whole town, and she found herself hastily packing her things while Niklaus hovered over her shoulder.

"You actually went to class?" He held up a few textbooks, rifling through her introductory psychology text with more than a passing glance.

Bonnie snorted, grabbing the last of her clothes and stuffing it into a duffel. "I sure did. Made me feel more human."

In hindsight, she had been an idiot to willingly repeat high school. Some façade. All that effort, for - for a guy who shouldn't be dating her? Damon had said it multiple times. He was too old to care about the inner workings of the high school circuit; he had no stake in their melodrama.

So was she. Perhaps that was why she was drawn to that nerd, the one always studying in coffee shops or reading weird tomes about alchemy when he thought no one could see him. Hopefully, he also wasn't a stupid nerd.

He wouldn't chase after her, plead with her to come back – because that young woman would be gone, and Fair Lady would've taken her place.

Niklaus motioned for her to leave as she slung her bag over her shoulder. Bonnie nodded, watching him head outside, before she blew a kiss to the photo of her and Damon on her mirror.

"Stay safe, Salvatore."

To create a hybrid, Niklaus had to feed a werewolf his blood, then kill them while the blood remained in their system. This, Bonnie remembered from his (constant) rambling and ranting while they prepared to build their stronghold. In the olden days, Niklaus would've sliced their throats and BAM, instant army.

Now, with the advent of smartphones and the Internet, he had to bide his time. People noticed when their outstanding werewolf members of society vanished. People also noticed sudden displays of power - and they couldn't always tamper with everyone's memories.

Niklaus had already borrowed a car, from one of his last meals in Mystic Falls, and so they set off on a road trip to recruit hybrids. Niklaus had grand plans, of a whirlwind tour across forty-eight states (Hawaii and Alaska were out of the picture) – but Bonnie wanted something simpler.

"Start small," she had told Niklaus as she unpacked her car charger. "Stick to the southern states, and then move west as time allows."

Had anyone else commanded him, he would have snarled and his little nostrils would've flared up in that tell-tale rage – but when he looked at Bonnie, there was admiration in his eyes. "If you say so," he conceded, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

From Mystic Falls, they headed south, intending to recruit a few packs from Atlanta before they set their sights on the west coast. Unfortunately, even humanity-less vampires tired of the empty highway, with only mile markers and other eighteen-wheelers to greet them. Niklaus would preoccupy himself with podcasts – NPR, the BBC, and something called Night Vale(?). After listening to one too many men grumble about the state of the world, Bonnie inserted her headphones and listened to her growing pile of voicemails.

She hadn't told a single soul of her departure. No one, not even Damon, should've known about her sudden road trip. Yet, Anna must've figured it out. Anna must've said something to Damon, or Stefan or – someone, because word spread in Mystic Falls like wildfire. (You tell a girl about your deal with Niklaus, and she goes and tells your entire social circle.)

Most voicemails, she ignored. No point in listening to them prattle on about a life she had left behind. Except, whenever Damon's name flashed across the top of her phone – her fingers would slide right, and his voice would come through, loud and clear.

"Hey, Bon-bon…. Any reason you decided to go on a road trip with your ex?" His tongue clicked, in that typical disapproving way of his. "Seriously. I know you've had stupid ideas before, but… this one takes the cake."

She couldn't tell him why. If she did, he would follow in his blindingly obvious Camaro – and she couldn't afford that. Niklaus had already promised Damon's safety. Damon couldn't throw her last gift away so callously. Her breath grew hitched, during that long pause where he hadn't said a single word.

Damon was going to pack his things and follow her; Damon was going to waste her gift; Damon was—

"On second thought, don't tell me. Just stay safe."

She would rewind those last 10 seconds over and over again, until his reassurance had been seared into her brain.

Damon hadn't left her a voicemail since. But she craved his voice, so she went into her phone's archives and listened to older voicemails, left over the course of the past year. He'd sent her dozens of them, some more annoying than others. Her absolute favorite was one left months and months ago, last fall—

"So, Bon-Bon. The PTA wants me to make brownies. BROWNIES. I can't believe they think I would spend the time and effort to help those sad little soccer moms...…"

Not even three hours later, he had left another voicemail. "I can't fucking believe I made them brownies."

(She had laughed so hard that she snorted blood out her nose. Trust Damon to break at the iron will of Mystic Falls High's PTA.)

Her phone had once buzzed every ten minutes with a dumb kitten fact (because she had subscribed to the service, you see), or some recipe for bourbon-infused tea, or… or jokes about their old life. Jokes that somehow lost their meaning when she was traveling along the open road with only remnants of another life beside her.

Taking one earphone out, she willed another text to arrive. Something, anything – something to tell her that Damon still cared, even if she was long out of his reach.

Nothing came. No one else mattered anymore. Elena and Stefan and her old crew had sent numerous texts, and even Grams had fretted over her "aunt Bonnie" from time to time. Problem was, she couldn't acknowledge them.

While Niklaus favored her, he could care less about the rest of "those dirty dishrags," as he had called them once. If she even once alerted him to the ties that still bound her to Mystic Falls, he would potentially lash out and slaughter them all without a second thought.

If Niklaus could hear the voicemails, or even read over her shoulder, he showed no signs of it. Instead, he turned the radio up, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as jazz echoed throughout the car. As he kept pace with other cars along this stretch of the road, Bonnie could've sworn that for a moment, this felt almost human.

There they were, two immortals cruising along the highway as if they were a young couple on vacation, with scattered papers in the glove compartment and folded maps in the backseat. They had a destination, and a goal in mind – but they sure didn't care about the way they went about it.

Well, Bonnie did. Kind of. In the glove compartment, they had manila folders for each group of potential hybrids. Bonnie had insisted upon it, rather than storing such sensitive information on their phones.

Not because it was more practical (it wasn't). Not because it was harder to hide (it wasn't). Some small part of her knew, that if she digitally stored her tidbits of knowledge on her phone, Damon would have officially rubbed off her.

The idea – especially now, with her switch flicked off – terrified her.

Two months ago, before Tyler had bitten Anna, Bonnie had spent the afternoon at Damon's, watching him categorize every page in her old grimoire.

"There's a few apps that can do it for us," Damon had murmured, sitting close beside her and scrolling down the app list. She snuggled close to his chest and watched him, step-by-step. "See, there's this one right here…."

He was awfully cute when he gushed about technology. To Damon, things like smartphones and tablets could only help a witch (or wizard) with their true potential. Technology was a tool, like a double-edged sword, as he photographed each page and digitally highlighted the relevant paragraphs and diagrams.

Sometimes, she forgot he was a regular witch and not the technological kind. Every time her phone broke down, she would hand it to him without a word and watch him tinker with the screen until it lit up again. This ability, she thought, was far more magical than his ability to summon fire.

"Bon, are you even listening?"

She shook her head, unable to wipe that guilty smile off her face as she leaned in for a kiss. "You're adorable."

The edges of his cheeks grew red as he sighed and set her phone in her hands. For a millisecond, she could see the rage in his eyes – and then he returned the kiss.

"You could pretend sometimes, you know," he said, letting go only to breathe.

"It doesn't come close to the real thing. Your app's nowhere near as affectionate."

He let a laugh escape his lips as he pulled her onto his lap. "Damn shame. It could've put me out of a job."

"You're irreplaceable, Day." She couldn't think of a single person in all of her years who had remotely resembled the man before her – and frankly, it was part of his charm. He was his own force of nature, with an iron will that only suburban soccer moms could shake.

His cheeks had flushed at the compliment – and when he kissed her again, she couldn't have imagined that it may have been their last.

Their leads had been continuous dead ends: in Blacksburg, their so-called werewolf had been gorging on wolfsbane and apple cider for months. In Johnson City, the whole pack were avid watch collectors. Like the Blacksburg guy, they reeked of apples and wolfsbane. One of the pack members, hunched over a watch and repairing it with intense focus, reeked the strongest – though it masked a cologne that almost felt familiar.

"I reckon you won't find your wolves here," the leader of the group had told Niklaus as he leaned against the door. "Try Knoxville?"

Like in Blacksberg, Niklaus had groaned and turned on his heels. "Fair Lady? Do me a favor and do what you will with them."

Although Bonnie had lost her humanity, she hadn't lost her cruelty: as she slashed wooden doors and furniture into pieces, she avoided the very people she was told to dismember. After all, Niklaus had compelled her to be "his," not to obey his word.

She pointed her index finger at one, turning on her heels and waiting until he shrieked before returning to her Niklaus.

He was waiting for her underneath the shade of a magnolia, with a petulant expression and flared nostrils. "Another dead end."

Bonnie nodded.

As they walked back towards the motel room they would stay in, Niklaus kicked a car into the nearest tree. "Why aren't any of them actual werewolves?"

"I don't think our informants lied to us." Bonnie was almost certain of it. She had smelt the fear off each person she questioned. She had heard their heartbeat unnaturally rise as she licked her lips and made idle remarks about her hunger.

No, the informants had told her the truth: they had believed these people to hold the werewolf gene. Even if they were werewolves, one gaping problem remained. Niklaus couldn't create hybrids from people who actively used the one herb werewolves were weak to.

Niklaus let out a snarl, pulling out his keys and tossing them into Bonnie's hands. "Let's hope the next city is more… receptive to us than the rest of them."

Each city was starting to blur together. Small towns were almost all the same in her mind: the only people idolizing them were ones who never lived there. Mystic Falls was the rare exception because it was home. No matter how many times she set foot on that soil, she could feel the earth calling to her in a yearning way it never did anywhere else.

"It can't yearn for you, Bonfire," Niklaus had said, with a slightly amused tone as they got out of the car and headed towards their next lead. "You said you lost your connection to nature?"

"I did." She frowned. "It… it feels different, Niklaus. I can't really explain it."

His expression had softened as he reached for her hand and held onto it. "If you say so."

Her phone buzzed – presumably with another text or mindless voicemail from her former friends.

Niklaus raised an eyebrow at her. "Aren't you going to answer that?"

"Nope. We should go ahead and find who we came to Memphis for." She took a lazy glance at her phone, before tucking it back into her jeans pocket.

After weeks of radio silence, in the early stretches of August, Damon had left her a text: I love you. Stay safe.

She never found the energy to wipe it off her screen.

When they drove into Memphis city limits two nights later (they'd taken a brief detour in Nashville), Niklaus was almost brimming with rage. The city on the edge of the delta was always humming – and as the sixth stop on their whirlwind tour, Bonnie almost hoped they would find an honest-to-god werewolf this time.

After she and Niklaus compelled their way into a hotel room, they wandered around Midtown - and Bonnie couldn't fight the adrenaline. Underneath the rows of bright, hanging lights, crowded streets buzzed with hundreds of conversations. If energy alone could feed her, Bonnie would've stood here forever. The awe didn't last long: without her humanity, their lives were so fleeting that she almost pitied them. Their entire lifespan was one flicker in her lightbulb; she would blink, and their sparks fizzled.

Niklaus shot her an amused smile as he pulled her back from the crowd, from the coffeehouse around the corner, and towards the side streets that would lead them towards their werewolf of the hour.

"Some things never change," he murmured in her ear.

Bonnie couldn't find the energy to feign embarrassment. "It smelt good."

"The people, or the coffee?" He shook his head, gesturing towards one of the bars in the district.

This space, nicknamed Cooper-Young, was young and vibrant. Bonnie faintly remembered it and its heart and energy: college students would gossip furiously about local happenings at school, while young professionals would release stress through one too many tequilas. It would've reminded her of Mystic Falls, were Mystic Falls larger and not limited to the small group of kids she knew.

"Both," she said, after some deliberation.

They passed the people, rushing towards a home in the very edge of the neighborhood. The drunken neighbors paid them no heed; good, Bonnie thought. Niklaus would've fed on them, and they couldn't afford Memphian blood on their teeth.

Niklaus rang the doorbell, holding in a breath as they waited for the sound of footsteps. He hadn't needed to breathe for over a millennium. Yet his hitched breath made him feel more human than hybrid, like a flickering light rather than the old lover who had promised her eternity.

Then the door opened, revealing a tall woman with boundless curls and a guarded face. "Yeees?"

"We're so sorry to bother you, but our car ran out of gas - and our cell phones can't reach anyone." Niklaus held up his phone, motioning for Bonnie to do the same.

She obliged, holding up a very dead cell phone. Niklaus's smile was so genuine that for a second, she almost forgot how he captured his targets.

The woman sighed, folding her arms. "Wait right here. I'll bring it out to you."

"I thought you country folks were supposed to be more trusting," he said, with a slight pout.

The woman laughed. "Midtown isn't exactly country, sir. You'll want to try Fayette County."

Out of the corner of her eye, Bonnie caught sight of a young man stepping through the living room. He was rather tall, though gangly, with a distrustful expression as he caught sight of Niklaus and Bonnie.

Niklaus would have leapt for the threshold, if the barrier were down – as it was, neither of them could step inside. The young man approached them and folded his arms. "You guys lost or something?"

"You could say that." Bonnie smiled sweetly at him. "Could you let us in, please, um…"

"Ray. Ray Sutton." After a few seconds, understanding registered over Ray's face as he glanced over his shoulder and said, "I've got this, Keisha."

He closed the door behind him – and Klaus pounced, nicking his wrist before forcing the young man to swallow his blood. Ray would inhale the salty, warm blood, before coughing it back all over Klaus's pristine white shirt.

Klaus grimaced, nearly stepping back at the splatters all over him. "I just bought that!"

Like the other not-werewolves, Ray smelt strongly of apple cider, with a hint of wolfsbane wafting from his wrists. As Bonnie reached out for Ray's hand, a gleaming, gold watch brushed against her fingers. Its cold metal stung her finger-tips, leaving behind clear, sticky residue. Bonnie peered down at it - specifically, at its crescent moon inset, underneath the hour and minute hands.

To herself, she murmured, "What's this?"

"A present from a friend," Ray replied, in-between coughing fits that spit out more of Niklaus's blood. "Stella always hated it when I was late."

Stella…. Stella…. Bonnie had heard of a Stella, a few years ago. Damon had mentioned two cousins that lived here, Stella & Morie Salvatore. While Bonnie doubted that this Sutton really knew Damon's cousin, it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility.

"She gave this to you?"

Ray nodded, in-between coughing fits as he tried to pull away from Niklaus; some blood dripped onto the edge of his nose. "Kind of. Her cousin made it for me."

Her stomach dropped to her knees. So she hadn't thought wrong – somehow, Damon and Stefan were involved in the creation of these golden watches, the ones that smelt like wolfsbane and accompanied every lead they'd tracked.

"Why isn't he digesting my blood?" Niklaus growled. "Why aren't any of them digesting it?"

"No idea." Bonnie furrowed her brow, tracing over the watch with her fingertips. "Maybe none of them were werewolves."

"Normal humans would've swallowed it just fine." Niklaus stomped a foot on the ground, ignoring the indentation as he shook Ray around like a limp doll. "Mere mortals and werewolves alike have feasted and lived to tell the tale. He should've been a bloody vamp by now, not some... some man turning his nose up at my blood."

Bonnie sniffed. "You mean coughing up your blood."

"Same difference!" Niklaus flung Ray against the front porch, sending the swing onto the wooden platform – and the front door onto the ground.

Ray stared at Niklaus, then at his door crashing down the front steps of his house. "Uh, are you..."

"NO," Niklaus hissed, puffing up his chest and pointing his finger in his best impression of a terrified kitten. "I'm not repairing your bloody door! Come, Bonfire, this isn't worth our time. Just like the last four cities."

He sidestepped the door on his way out, not bothering to wait for Bonnie as he stormed towards the crowds. (With those narrowed eyes, he could've killed the whole neighborhood.) Bonnie caught up to him, latching onto his hand and walking beside him in relative silence.

Niklaus huffed, taking a deep breath as he intertwined his fingers with Bonnie's.

After a few seconds, she slowly said, "We'll find one. They can't all be dead ends."

"I don't understand." Niklaus's anger melted into confusion as he led Bonnie back into the crowds. "We spent the whole summer trying to create more hybrids, and for what? Nothing?"

She couldn't imagine a world with hybrids: their mere existence felt like a story snatched from a teenager's spiral notebook. Everything in nature had a balance. Vampires were balanced by werewolves; witches were balanced by spirits; and even doppelgangers were balancing some unknown entity. Hybrids tainted the balance. If Niklaus continued to bend the rules that governed the world, the world would inevitably collapse upon him.

Bonnie couldn't figure out how his supposed benefits would outweigh the risks. Instead of vocalizing such doubts, she pressed her lips together. "How many more leads do we have?"

"A few. Memphis had three packs, though I don't doubt Sutton alerted them to our presence."

"That'll work." Bonnie wasn't keen on enacting Klaus's scheme, much less fulfilling it - but his childish anger was enough for her to concede. If he wanted to create his own monsters, she couldn't stand idly by. "We'll go to them, one by one. Where's the next one?"

"On the other side of town. I've got her address here."

Bonnie glanced at Klaus's phone, memorizing the address to heart. "Let's go. The sooner we get there, the less time Sutton'll have to warn them."

A slow smile spread across Klaus's face as he jumped back into their car. "Now that's the Bonfire I remember."

By the time morning broke, they had two dead ends and one no-show: their last lead in Memphis was on the east side of town. Niklaus had fed at their dead ends, allowing Bonnie to dissemble a few victims along the way.

Compared to vibrant, humming Midtown, East Memphis was a sleepier haven, filled mostly with businessmen and school children. Far more residential, too, with numerous passers-by that glanced at them every few minutes or so.

"They're staring a bit too much," Niklaus growled as they continued to walk past various stores. Their destination – a store their lead worked at – was at the far end, and they couldn't race each other with bystanders near.

Bonnie shrugged. "They don't like the idea of us together."

Niklaus's gait grew more confident as he slid closer to her. She should've recoiled at his touch, at how he held her hand and swung it in clear daylight. Yet she couldn't blame him. Nearly a century later, people still objected to Niklaus and Bonnie. She never planned on rekindling her spark with him, but she couldn't ignore the sudden glances and hasty retreats of people on the street.

They gave her and Damon the same looks. At least with Damon, their age difference (or perceived difference) was the main culprit. With Niklaus, there was no mistaking the true source of strangers' disgust.

Niklaus sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Hmph. They should mind their own damn business."

Just before they headed inside, two young men ran towards the opposite end of the shopping center. From this angle, Bonnie couldn't see much – just the backs of their heads. One, a dark-blond young man, almost reminded Bonnie of Stefan – he even had the same silver band ring, and the same (familiar) scent of roses.

The other young man was talking on the phone, to someone Bonnie couldn't quite hear. His voice was oddly familiar as he said, "-the watches. We delivered the last one. Yeah, see you soon."

Niklaus shot them a bemused glance. "Is it just me, or is everyone obsessed with watches lately?"

Bonnie shrugged. "I guess so."

Watches had been the one constant between leads: every supposed werewolf had one around his or her wrist. They were as ubiquitous as lapis lazuli rings and necklaces.

Bonnie glanced down at her necklace before holding it up to the light. This lapis lazuli necklace, carved in the shape of a bird, was a painful reminder that she would never rejoin humanity's ranks, and that she had (involuntarily) betrayed nature. For nearly a century, she lost the ability to hear birds sing or feel dirt seeping through her fingers.

To survive, she had burnt her bridges and erased her heritage.

Damon had once told her, that she was creating something new, but his world was a beautiful fantasy. Nature had long since forgotten her, and the pain wouldn't quite leave – even a century and a half later. She yearned to feel the dirt between her fingertips, and the rising temperature of her blood as she willed fire to sprout from her palm.

A whole century and a half had passed, and yet, she dreamt about what would never be hers again.

Niklaus glanced down at her wrist, adorned only with a charm bracelet Damon had gifted her. "Would you like one, Bonfire?"

Bonnie shook her head, letting her necklace fall. "I think I'll be fine."

"Figured." Niklaus closed the distance between them, now that they were alone, and pressed his lips against hers.

He tasted like remnants of salty blood - and even though she could feel his passion, she couldn't return his affection. Her gaze had caught the young men as they rushed into an all-too familiar old, blue car. The old model wasn't strange; people loved their vintage, blue Camaros. As the young man climbed into the passenger seat, he motioned towards Bonnie. Then the driver lowered his sunglasses at her.

The earth might as well have collapsed beneath her feet, because she knew that judgmental stare anywhere.

Damon - Damon freaking Salvatore - was here, staring at her as if their relationship had meant nothing.

If her life were a TV show, it was supposed to be a riveting period piece, not some trashy teen drama that Elena watched religiously.

("But the boys are hot!" Elena had whined, when Bonnie switched the channel every time. "I have to know which brother she ends up with, Bonnieeeee, don't look at me like that….")

Bonnie could've sworn she couldn't feel a thing: not Niklaus's passion, Stefan's anxiety, or even the panic firing across her neurons. But she could feel the betrayal and disgust radiating from her boyfriend. The expression didn't last long – his face melted into an unreadable mask as he and Stefan drove off.

The humanity "switch" was supposed to be like a light switch: you flip it on or off, willing your brain to adjust for the lack of neurotransmitters coming your way. You lose all your emotions, thriving on logic and reason and the general calm that beings above humanity reached. Or so the legends claimed. Now, Bonnie wasn't so sure - not when she could feel the guilt rushing to her cheeks.

Damon drove off long before Niklaus broke the kiss - long before Bonnie could rush after him.

She blinked back tears, holding back the swirling chaos that would flip that damn switch back on and- and -

"I must've lost my touch," Niklaus murmured as he wiped her tears away. "It's alright, Bonfire. I've got you now."

No, she wanted to say as she fell into his arms. He really didn't.

Author's Note:

Long time no see, everyone! I'm sorry this update took way longer than I expected, but I still hope you enjoy it. :) As it was conceived before I saw the Originals, the quick and short version is that these wolfsbane watches are my world's equivalent of Moonlight Amulets (but you know, easier to hide + a lot bigger, since they're watches).

As always, please let me know how I'm doing (even for the stuff you may dislike!) with reviews, favs, and follows - your support has been so, so appreciated, and I hope you enjoy what's to come.