Consequences

Life pays for life.

Shane's voice repeats again and again. It's all Bonnie can hear in these woods. She can't hear Tyler or Jeremy, if either of them is saying anything. Tyler is still with April's body, staring down at her. She can't see his face in this darkness and he's not being at all forthcoming about his opinion. She can't even hear the rustle of leaves or the sounds of midnight critters. It's silent except for Shane's voice.

It's limitless.

That's what Expression is.

No limits. No boundaries. No spirits to impede her way.

She thought she was done with consequences.

If these are the ones she'll get now, she'd rather have the spirits. With them, the only person who got hurt was her.

Bonnie can't see anything but April's white skin and the green of her dress.

"What do we do?"

Jeremy's voice is clear as he steps closer to her, where she sits on the ground with her head in her hands. She doesn't speak. Neither does Tyler.

"What do we do?" he asks again.

More silence.

Jeremy repeats himself again. Third time's the charm. Tyler looks up as if he's just now remembering Jeremy's there.

"You guys go home," he says. "I'll take care of April."

"Take care of her how?" Bonnie asks.

Tyler tosses Jeremy his keys. "Take my car. I'll take April's back to her house and leave the body there. Someone will find her tomorrow."

Someone. What someone? April's parents are dead. She's just as alone as they are.

Bonnie looks back and forth between Tyler and Jeremy. "We can't do that," she says, like she has another idea. She doesn't. She has no ideas, no thoughts except April is dead and she killed her.

"Do you want to leave her here?" Tyler asks.

Bonnie shakes her head. They can't leave her. But putting April back in her house and waiting until the morning for someone to realize she's not where she's supposed to be is just as bad. She shouldn't be dead at all.

"She was supposed to go out with Elena and Caroline tonight," Jeremy says.

That explains her dress. She wasn't supposed to be out here.

"We've gotta hurry," Jeremy adds. "The fire department, the sheriff, they could already be headed in this direction."

That's right. They just killed Stefan and turned the boarding house into a torch. They can't dawdle in the woods with April's dead body while their cars are parked alongside the road, in full view of anyone that drives past.

"Okay," Bonnie says. She stands up, wiping her hands off on her jeans. It feels like there's more on them than stray flecks of dirt. She doesn't look back at Tyler to see him lift April into his arms. Jeremy touches her shoulder as they walk back to the road, trying to offer her some kind of comfort. But she knows he doesn't know what to say.

None of them knows.

Jeremy can hear Bonnie crying. Or he could, before she turned on the shower, and was drowned out by the spray of the water. When they got back, she went straight into the house and into her bedroom without talking to him. A few minutes later he heard her going into the bathroom, crying. He tries to think of the times he's seen Bonnie cry. Three times now, more or less.

He can't just sit downstairs while she's crying upstairs and not do something.

Jeremy goes into the bathroom where the steam is so thick it's almost a fog. "Bonnie?"

"Yeah?" she calls, her voice thick with tears.

He steps close to the shower curtain. "It's gonna be okay," he says.

April's body is still clear in his mind. When will it not be? It's as vivid as Stefan's and Damon's. She genuinely liked him, liked everyone it seemed. She got to live in this town blissfully unaware of what happens here, blind to the death and the vampires and the supernatural. She died not knowing she'd been in danger from the very start. The minute someone crosses the town line, they're at risk. When April was born here, she was at risk. When she fell in with them, she was at risk. And it's not just the vampires with the power to hurt her.

Jeremy's seen Bonnie's magic in many forms. He's seen it whimsical and awe inspiring. He's witnessed something religious, as close to religious as he's ever gotten, something beautiful and terrifying. And lethal. But he's never seen it save Bonnie's life before, not like this.

"Bonnie," he says. "Can I open the curtain? I just - I just want to hug you. I don't want you to be alone."

She opens it herself and doesn't try to hide her body at all. He can't tell where her tears end and the water from the showerhead begins.

Jeremy steps in fully clothed and he wraps his arms around her. "It's okay," he says as her arms slide around his torso, where his shirt is already sticking to him. "It's gonna be okay."

Bonnie's fingers clutch at his shirt. She's always been small but now she seems smaller, as if she's folding in on herself. "I only thought of her for a second," she says. "I didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't know. I didn't mean to."

Jeremy touches her hair and rests his cheek on her head. "I know."

"I'm sorry," she says into his chest.

She's not talking to him.

"I'm sorry, April. I'm so sorry."

Bonnie's sitting on the porch when Tyler gets back. There's a blanket thrown over her shoulders and she's in furry boots and sweatpants, her hair, shiny and wet, is pulled back into a ponytail. She's obviously been crying and she looks exhausted. He just wants to tell her to go to bed. When she wakes up, it'll be just as bad as it is now but at least she'll have gotten some sleep.

It's been a long day.

"Where's Jeremy?" he asks when he reaches the bottom of the steps.

"Taking a shower." She looks up at him. "Did it go okay?"

"Yeah."

If Elena and Caroline were going to look for April, they weren't doing it tonight. April's bedroom still looked like a little girl lived there with the pastel colored walls and stuffed animals. She never got around to redecorating. Maybe she never intended to get around to it. Maybe she liked it the way it was. There were only a couple of years between them. Sometimes Tyler forgets that he's just as much of a kid as April was. He's died, too but April will never get to come back.

Seeing April's body was like a punch to the gut. He didn't even know her, not really. She was just a name, just a face, just Pastor Young's daughter who he never had reason to think about. Now she's a dead name, a dead face, and Pastor Young's been dead for awhile, too. And Tyler put her body back in her empty house after Bonnie accidentally killed her.

"Say something," she says.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. What are you thinking?"

Tyler sits down next to her and looks out at the street. From here it's so quiet it could be considered idyllic. There's not a hair out of a place and the whole street is still. Before tonight, before finding April, it might just look quiet. Now it looks somber, like everyone got the secret memo to mourn and is taking it very seriously. But no one knows yet, that April and Stefan are both dead. Bonnie, Tyler and Jeremy are holding their breaths, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even when it does, they still won't be able to breathe. They have things to hide and sympathy to fake.

"I'm thinking," Tyler says, "that you shouldn't be too hard on yourself."

"Why not?"

"You would have died if you hadn't done it," Tyler says.

If Bonnie had died, he doesn't know what he'd be doing right now. Killing Stefan, that's for sure. But after that? What would he do after that? What would matter after that, with Bonnie gone?

"I should have," Bonnie says.

"No," he says immediately. "You're right where you're supposed to be."

She's alive, and she's with him.

"But April should have?"

"No," he concedes. "But-"

"When I killed that man to save your life, you said I shouldn't have because I didn't get to make those kinds of decisions," she reminds him. "This isn't different from that. This is worse than that. April didn't do anything wrong. She didn't deserve what I did to her."

"Bonnie-"

"What's different, Tyler? Tell me what makes this okay when it wasn't before."

It's her this time. He can understand the desperation, the need to see him alive again. If she had died tonight, he would have wanted her back. If someone could have brought her back, he would have demanded it. But if there was a way for Bonnie to save herself, to never have to die in the first place, he'd take that, too.

They all would. They just didn't know it would cost this.

When Tyler doesn't say anything, Bonnie shakes her head. "Stefan was right. We killed them for what they were," she says, "and all the things they did. Then I do this."

"This was an accident," he says. "You made a mistake."

"One that cost April her life."

"I made a mistake like that once," Tyler says. It all started with killing Sarah. If he hadn't done that, he wouldn't have been a werewolf, and he wouldn't have been a hybrid. "It's hard. You're here and you don't know why they're not."

"I know why April's not," she says, "because I killed her."

Tyler moves closer to her but she doesn't acknowledge him. "What happened to April - what you did - was terrible. But you're not like Stefan and Damon. What you're feeling right now proves that you're not. You can be sad for April - we're all sad for April. But don't wish yourself away, Bonnie. I'm not sad you're here. I need you."

He swallows. Everything he says to her is loaded and important where it never was before. It's been that way for awhile but now she's in a position to understand the importance. He's never been nervous before. "I want you."

When will everything he says to her stop being a confession?

Her eyes are still focused on the street.

"Bonnie," he says. "Look at me. Please."

She turns her head and he can see the tears in her eyes, threatening to spill over. "It's gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay."

Bonnie nods. "I know," she says. It's not convincing, not with the tear that trails down her cheek before he brushes it away.

"You are," he assures her. Then he presses a kiss to her forehead, as if to prove it to her.

As he pulls back, she's leaning in. He doesn't realize until her lips are on his. The kiss is fast and slow at once, and so soft he's not sure it's happening until it's over and he can feel her breath against his mouth. He's too stunned to move but she's not.

She stands up and pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "I'm going in."

He listens to her go, taking in the creaking boards of the porch, the click of the door as it opens and closes. He follows the sounds she makes into the house and into the kitchen where she makes herself a cup of tea. When it's done she carries it with her to her room. For awhile, she drinks it quietly. She might have finished it when she starts crying.

Bonnie forces herself to leave her room. Downstairs Jeremy and Tyler are most likely talking about her, brainstorming strategies to get her through this. She doesn't want them to, and she imagines it'll be harder to do with her in the room. Once she's stopped crying and her eyes no longer feel hot with tears, she joins them downstairs. They pretend like they haven't been talking about her when she turns on the TV and tries to watch something. Anything. But it's late and there are only infomercials. And every dark haired girl on the screen is April Young.

It happened so fast, the three of them going from so high to so low.

They should be at that bar, drinking together and laughing over flammable beverages, downing shots to Stefan's death. But they're not and it's hard for Bonnie to imagine a time when she will ever do that again. It seems unfair somehow, to be capable of happiness and fun when April isn't capable of anything anymore. They're on the couch together, Jeremy on her left and Tyler on her right. Eventually they both go so still she knows they've fallen asleep.

She wants to call Shane, wants to hear what he has to say about it. She wants to know why this happened at all. But it's late and it's not fair to wake him up and make him work her through this grief, too.

Mostly she wants to go to sleep. Hopefully she won't dream of anything. Not April, not her body in the trees, or the shine of her dress. She just wants to sleep. It would be nice to take a break from the guilt and the sadness and just spend a few hours blissfully unaware of anything around her. Just a few hours of that is all she wants.

Jeremy and Tyler are here but they can't understand how she went from being completely satisfied, to totally shocked, to overwhelmingly - painfully - disgusted with herself.

Bonnie turns her head to look at Jeremy. He's an easy sleeper. It doesn't take much. Tyler is a different story. He's seemed tense lately, never relaxed about anything. She thought when they succeeded with this plan, he would be able to relax at least a little. He would be able to breathe. But that went out the window when she killed April. She wants it to be enough, that they're on her side. She wants their support and their acceptance to become hers but it's not working. She tries to memorize the feeling of Jeremy's arms around her and Tyler words - and their gentle kiss - on the porch but she can't think of those things without thinking of all she deprived April of.

She gets Jeremy. She gets Tyler.

April gets nothing.

Welcome to Mystic Falls, where everyone's a killer.

Jeremy awakens to a phone ringing. He doesn't open his eyes as he reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt for his phone. He only opens one eye to see Elena's name flashing across the screen, right underneath the glaring 7:03.

No, he thinks, pressing ignore. It's too early and he's still half asleep. Whatever Elena has to say can wait until noon.

But then Bonnie's phone is ringing, too.

Jeremy feels her shift next to him on the couch as she shrugs off her blanket. "It's Elena," she says, when she picks her phone up from the table.

"Of course it is."

Bonnie puts the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

Here they go. Here comes the frantic relaying of the news of Stefan's death.

"What happened?" Bonnie asks.

Jeremy and Tyler both sit up, waiting for confirmation.

"I'll come over soon," Bonnie promises. "Yeah, I'll tell them. Bye."

After she hangs up, she stares at the phone for awhile. "They just found out. Sheriff Forbes told Caroline. Caroline told Elena."

"Do they know about...?" He almost doesn't want to say her name because he's so worried about the effect it'll have."

Tyler doesn't say anything. He got to hear the whole conversation anyway.

"Yeah," Bonnie says, letting out a shaky breath. "Caroline went over to check on her after she heard about Stefan. I have to get over there."

"You don't have to," Tyler says finally. He rests his chin on his knuckles. "Maybe you shouldn't."

"And if I don't how will that look?" Bonnie asks. She's supposed to be there. She's Elena's best friend, and she can't not be there. Bonnie not being there is abnormal. "I have to go."

But she doesn't have to go by herself. "I'll go with you," Jeremy says.

"We'll all go," Tyler adds.

It's easier to pretend if they're all doing it.

And they do pretend.

Bonnie hugs Elena when they come in. She's been crying. Caroline's already there and even though her eyes are dry, they haven't been that way all this time. Bonnie looks surprised when Caroline hugs her, squeezing her as tightly as Bonnie's human body will allow. Of the three of them - Elena, Caroline, Bonnie - Bonnie is the only one who looks fine.

She hides it well.

After April's funeral, Caroline insists they all go to the Grill together, to be "normal". They haven't spent a lot of time together since Stefan died. Elena and Caroline are grieving together. Despite the hug they shared at Elena's house, Caroline and Bonnie are still on the outs so Bonnie keeps her distance. She's grateful for it. Faking sympathy for Stefan is harder than it was for Damon, maybe because this time Bonnie was tied to a chair, interrogated, and then bitten. And she's got real grieving to do.

"My mom says they're looking everywhere," Caroline says, "but they don't have any leads yet." She drums her glossy, bubblegum colored nails on the tabletop and shakes her hair from her eyes. "But we said we weren't going to talk about that anymore today, at least not for the next few hours."

"Yeah, I know," Elena says.

It's been a week since Bonnie, Tyler and Jeremy killed Stefan and watched the boarding house go up in flames. The investigation is being "handled" but that's code for ignored. The way the Council sees it, they're down two vampires without any work on their part. Up until now Damon's and Stefan's deaths were blessings. The only reason they're looking now is because of April, the victim of an unidentified vampire. It wasn't long before Caroline reminded Sheriff Forbes it could have also been a hybrid.

Because apparently there's a spare one running around.

And now the Council is looking for a hybrid, a witch, and a shadowy third. Caroline and Elena are more insistent than ever on getting to the bottom of it.

"We thought they just wanted Damon before," Caroline said, that day at Elena's house, "but if they went after Stefan, who's to say they won't come for us, too? We have to do something."

"Do what?" Bonnie had asked. "We don't even know who they are."

Ever since, they've been trying to figure that out.

Bonnie knows there's nothing to find but it still makes her nervous, to listen to Caroline and Elena talk about her, Jeremy and Tyler as separate and mysterious beings. For as long as Bonnie can remember, the only threesome she's ever been apart of is hers with Caroline and Elena. Theirs seems to exist on an entirely different plane now. She is different people with both of them. Maybe she's the real Bonnie with Jeremy and Tyler, who know this dark side of her, the side that killed Damon and Stefan and murdered April Young.

If Elena and Caroline knew...

Bonnie's relieved that they're changing the subject. She hasn't had to talk about that night much. Jeremy and Tyler try not to bring it up, since it's been tainted by April's death. She'd do anything to go back to what it felt like when they killed Damon, when it was all electricity and secret smiles and hidden happiness. Now she barely has to pretend to be saddened by something. Luckily for her, Caroline and Elena assume it's because of Stefan. As far as they're concerned Bonnie was the closest thing he had to a friend when he died. And they're both too wrapped up in their own mourning to analyze Bonnie's.

Tyler and Jeremy are sitting to her right and Elena and Caroline to the left. Matt is at the end. It reminds her of middle school, back when this was what it looked like. Not this exactly since she hardly ever spoke to Tyler and she wouldn't have hung out with Jeremy, still Elena's stupid little brother, for anything. But there were no vampires then. She can pretend they're those kids again. They are oblivious and innocent. Bonnie has no idea about magic, Tyler hasn't even imagined the pain of turning on a full moon, Jeremy's never wielded a stake, and Elena and Caroline have never tasted blood.

They are normal.

But it's an illusion.

"I'll be back," Bonnie says after ordering a burger and fries. She disrupts everyone by moving. Tyler and Jeremy have to get out of the booth to let her go. As she heads toward the bathroom she hears Caroline coming toward her.

"Hey," she says, reaching out to touch Bonnie's hand. They stop and stare at one another, smiling politely and awkwardly.

"Hey."

"I'm glad you came out with us," Caroline says. Even in all black and prepared to mourn, she shines.

It's not like Bonnie could have just not come. If she didn't go, Tyler and Jeremy wouldn't go. If Tyler and Jeremy didn't go, the other three would ask questions.

Caroline nods. "I'm sorry about everything. I shouldn't have acted like that about the Tyler thing."

She doesn't even know the half of the Tyler thing and Bonnie's not about to tell her, not if Caroline's about to bury the hatchet and send them on their merry way to best friends status again. She doesn't need to know that Bonnie's kissed Tyler twice now and still doesn't have a name for what's happening between them. She doesn't need to know that there's still something with Jeremy and there's no name for that either. Lying to Caroline is becoming so easy it kind o bothers her.

"I just..." Caroline says, letting her voice trail off. "I'm just sorry, okay? After everything it seems stupid. Stefan and April are dead. There are bigger things happening here. There are always bigger things happening here. But you're my best friend, Bonnie. I don't want us to stop being us because of a boy."

But Tyler's not just a boy.

"I don't want us to either," Bonnie says. It's true. She wants Caroline, with her sunshine and her strength. She doesn't know what Bonnie's done and if Bonnie has her way, she never will. She wants to believe Caroline would say what Jeremy and Tyler did. It was an accident, a terrible accident, but she shouldn't hate herself for it. But how can Bonnie expect Caroline to believe that if Bonnie herself doesn't believe that?

"You're not wearing your necklace," Caroline says.

Bonnie looks down at her chest, where Qetsiyah's pendant had been. She took it off the morning after April died - the morning after she killed April - and she hasn't put it back on. It's too much of a reminder, a reminder of her magic, of Expression, and of the price April had to pay for Bonnie's life.

"The chain broke," she lies.

"Oh," Caroline says. "Well. Anyway." She throws her arms around Bonnie's neck and squeezes.

When Elena gets home, it feels like more of a tomb than usual. Jeremy's still not coming home and she's beginning to realize he's not ever going to. He likes it at Bonnie's more than he likes it here. He just won't admit it. He's just being nice, humoring his big sister when the mood strikes. She tells herself to stop asking him to come home but she knows she won't. It's not home if Jeremy's not living there with her.

She does some cleaning even though the house is mostly spotless. Since she heard about Stefan, she's been doing a lot of cleaning. It keeps her mind off of it, and cleaning seems like a better way to go than making a bloody mess throughout three counties. Caroline seemed worried Elena might go there, and she seems surprised Elena's holding it together so well.

Grief has almost become second nature now. She expects the next death to break her. Who will it be? Caroline? Bonnie? Jeremy? Matt? If Damon's and Stefan's didn't, the next one will surely do it. Not that there will be a next one. There will be no more. She has to make sure of that.

Lately she's been thinking about that switch Damon and Stefan used to talk about, the tiny little one that turns humanity on and off. It keeps her conscience on and illuminated, keeps her control powered and humming. It's a slippery thing. She can't seem to get her fingers around it. Maybe she's not trying hard enough, a side effect of not wanting it that much. Humanity has never been crippling to her. Maybe it was for Damon at a time. Maybe it was for Stefan all the time. For Caroline, it is easily wielded. It can be the same for Elena and it has been thus far.

From her purse her cell phone vibrates, and Elena can hear it trembling against the leather of her wallet. She speeds to answer it. The number, from out-of-state, isn't one she recognizes.

"Hello?"

"Am I speaking with Elena Gilbert?" a woman asks. Her voice is low and sounds like what Elena imagines velvet may sound like, if velvet had a sound.

"Yes," she answers. "Who is this?"

"My name is Ramona," the voice says. "I have a message from Stefan Salvatore."

"From Stefan?" She can see his face, as clearly as he'd been standing in the doorway the last time she saw him. He'd wanted to talk but she'd rushed him out, told him she didn't want him there if he was going to risk Jeremy's life. She wanted him gone until he figured himself out. It wasn't fair for him to pretend Damon's death didn't hurt them both, for him to drag them all down with him. "Is he...alive?"

"No."

It was a stupid question anyway.

"But I was tasked with contacting you if Mr. Salvatore did not speak with me within a week," Ramona explains.

Elena sits down at the dining room table. "What's the message?"

"Prior to his death Stefan came to me in need of some assistance," Ramona says. "During our time together we were able to determine who murdered his brother, who was very dear to you as well, as I was told."

"Yes," Elena agrees. "They both were."

The list of people she's lost has grown and it keeps growing. Her parents. Jenna. Alaric. Uncle John, even though she hated him. Isobel, who only loved herself. Damon and Stefan, who seemed to make it all bearable.

"Who?" Elena asks. "Who killed them?"

Neither Damon nor Stefan were perfect. Elena knows she's far from it, but she's a vampire now. Whether a cure exists or not, if it's meant for her or not, she is a vampire for now. What's the point in being a vampire, coping with the bloodlust, if she can't protect the people she cares about? What's the point if she can't get her own vengeance? What's the point if she's just going to sit here and let this phantom triad destroy her life and the people in it? What's the point if she can't take care of herself?

"A hybrid, a witch, and a hunter," Ramona answers.

Ramona lists the names like they mean nothing. To her, they might not mean anything. She doesn't know them, hasn't spent her entire life in a town with these people. She hasn't seen Tyler Lockwood in hallways since Kindergarten, hasn't had sleepovers with Bonnie since they were toddlers, hasn't had Jeremy as a brother for all these years. She doesn't know them as an ally, a best friend, and a brother. Friends. She only knows their names.

Ramona adds, "I believe you know them well."

But Elena may know them less than Ramona does.

Welcome to Mystic Falls, where it's hard to know who your friends are.

End

And that's a wrap. Thanks for sticking with me this long. It's been fun, more fun than I expected actually. This being my first fanfic and all, it's been a really great ride. I'll have the first chapter of the sequel, Kill Klaus, up soon so be on the look out for it.

You'll be able to find a link (8Tracks) to a mix I made for this on my profile sometime this weekend.

Just as a little teaser, the first chapter of KK is titled Happy Birthday, Bonnie.