Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries nor am I making any profit from this. Characters, etc. all belong to their respective owners.

A/N: Here it is! The last chapter! Thanks so much for coming with me on this journey! Mentally, this was a difficult fic to write because of the subject matter, but I truly hope I did it justice!

Enjoy!

To say that she's surprised to get an invitation to Jo's baby shower in the mail is an understatement, considering she barely even knows the woman and especially considering that Elena is the one hosting it.

Her first instinct is to call Elena and tell her she can't make and then maybe mail Jo and Ric a gift or something.

Yet, somehow, she finds herself in a hospital conference room with blue and pink streamers and other baby-themed decorations all over. Doctors and nurses ooh and ah over Jo's ever-growing baby bump. There's stupid baby shower games that they all get roped into playing (and that Caroline mercilessly makes fun of with no shame, much to the other guests' horror, making Bonnie wonder if Caroline actually crashed the event instead of being invited).

"I know he hurt you," Jo says, reaching out and gently placing a hand on Bonnie's arm when no one else is really paying attention. She doesn't need to ask her Jo means by he. "He hurt me, too."

Bonnie doesn't respond, but she thinks back to when Kai had told her about what he did to Jo and the rest of his family in graphic detail.

"At first you're always thinking about it, always looking over your shoulder, doing everything you can to forget about it…and it never completely goes away, but it does get better. I can promise you that."

Bonnie nods and smiles gently, but she doesn't know what to say.

"Sorry that you had a maniac twin brother? Hopefully neither of your babies ends up being like that? Sorry that you're little brother and sister may have to kill one another to become leader of your coven? Maybe your coven should try getting out of the dark ages because given their tradition, it's no wonder that you guys ended up with such a psychopath?"

Yeah, none of the seemed too appropriate.

So, instead, she plasters on a smile and thanks Jo and wishes her luck with the babies.

"Thank you so much, both of you," Bonnie says to Stefan and Matt as they haul in the last box into the apartment.

Most of the stuff in her house she had either thrown away or put in storage, but Stefan and Matt had been kind enough to help her bring the rest into her new abode.

"Any time," Stefan replies with a smile.

"You seem super chipper today," Bonnie comments as she pulls an air mattress out of a box so that she can set it up later. She'd ordered a new bed, but it wouldn't come for a couple of days.

"Caroline turned her humanity back on," Matt explains.

"She did?" Bonnie asks, her mouth dropping open. "Why didn't she tell me?"

"I think she feels a little guilty about having done it in the first place…she's been avoiding almost everybody," Stefan tells her.

"Well, I mean, considering what others are like with their humanity turned off…her little stint doesn't really rank at all. Sorry," she adds with an afterthought when she sees Stefan wince.

"No, no, you're right," Stefan says.

"So, are you and Caroline ever going to…?" She laughs at Stefan's expression. "Oh, come on, I might be going through some things, but even I haven't been that obtuse. Everyone can see it from a mile away. Neither one of you is exactly subtle."

"And that is my cue to leave," Stefan says, ignoring Matt's sniggering in the background.

"No, come on, I'll buy you both lunch as a thank you. And I'll give Caroline a call and see if she wants to join."

"Okay. And then you can tell me all about you and Damon," Stefan says with a small smirk.

"What do you mean?"

"Stefan and Caroline aren't the only ones around her lacking subtlety," Matt supplies. "Why do you think Elena's been a bit…"

"Okay, so what sounds good for lunch?" Bonnie interrupts, quickly rushing out the door. She tries her best to ignore Stefan's cackle.

Still, though, she can't help but smile. It's all so very normal and happy.

Things really were looking up.

"Isn't this kind of small?" Damon asks, his eyes sweeping around the apartment.

He had unexpectedly (but welcomingly) dropped by that night with dinner for her and a bottle of bourbon for himself.

"Not really. Sorry, but not all of us can have a massive boardinghouse like you and Stefan do," Bonnie says dryly, working on unpacking a box.

"Yeah, it's a shame, isn't it?"

She snorts a little and laughs. But then, her laughter dies away and she takes a deep breath, preparing herself for what she's about to say next.

"So, Maria, my therapist..." Bonnie begins hesitantly, focusing intently on the box she was unpacking.

She never really spoke about therapy outside of telling Damon that she was getting it. And, honestly? She doesn't know why she's bringing it up now. Maybe because Maria had suggested she find someone she trusts to talk to about everything that happened as well and, as crazy as it sounds, she trusts Damon more than anyone in her life at the moment, but still…

"...she thinks that telling someone in detail about what Kai did would help me…"

"What? So you can relive it all again? I'm not psychiatrist, but…"

"She thinks that it'll lead to acceptance and understanding of what happened, that it'll somehow make me less afraid. I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it…"

Bonnie takes a deep breath and moves away from the box, a little closer to Damon. She lifts up her shirt enough to show the scar left from Kai's arrow.

"This was from the arrow…you were there for that part, but then after…" she takes a deep shaky breath and drops her shirt, looking somewhere over Damon's shoulder.

She could stop now. She could stop now and go back to unpacking and act like she didn't just open this can of worms. It'd be easier for both of them.

"I woke up back at the boardinghouse and he was trying to fix the ascendant to make me send him back home again. Of course, I told him I wouldn't, so he started siphoning my magic. And that feeling…it's like someone reaching down inside of your soul and trying to scoop it out. I stabbed him in the next and went to the hospital to try and patch myself up and fix the ascendant. He followed me there, I tried to fight back, and he found me in your car and strangled me. It was like straight out of a goddamn horror movie."

She draws in another shaky breath and looks straight at him. To be honest, she never thought she'd see Damon Salvatore actually look horrified. She knows that he's had to have heard worse, seen worse…maybe even done worse.

"Then, he tried to make me do the spell again to send us home. And I was so afraid what would happen if he did end up in our world. So, I put my magic in Ms. Cuddles and sent her back to our world. That made him so angry…he drugged me, stuffed me in a trunk. Then acted like we could go our own separate ways. Except, Jo had hidden her magic in the knife he had used to cut her spleen out. And he had the ascendant, so all he needed was Bennett blood to make the spell work. So…"

She lifts up her shirt and shows the other scar. The one just a few inches below her heart.

"And the sickest part of it all? I honestly don't know whether it was worse to be tortured by him or to be left there all alone with nobody else, going weeks without speaking, then sometimes just talking to the goddamn walls…I thought that if he was dead it would all just go away, but…"

She presses her hands over her eyes, not quite bearing to look at him any longer. Because she didn't want to see. She didn't want to know how damaged he thinks she is.

Bonnie hears him moving and she's sure that he's going to leave, but instead she feels cool hands over hers, gently prying them away from her face. He leans down, pressing his lips softly to her forehead.

Then, what he does next is even more unbelievable.

He kneels down in front of her, pushing her shirt up slightly. Then, he presses his lips even more gently to the scar on her stomach and then presses his lips to the scar underneath her heart.

She collapses into his arms, sobbing and he holds her tightly. But, in a way, she feels a little freer than she has in a long time.

They wake up the next morning on the air mattress, bathed in warm sunlight that was streaming in from the sliding door that led to the small balcony.

Damon blearily blinks his blue eyes open, squinting a little bit in the sun. "Hey," he rasps, half asleep.

Bonnie doesn't say anything at first because as she looks at him, she's overcome by another realization. This time, it was one of those sudden, sweeping ones.

"You know, I think I finally figured it out," Bonnie murmurs, staring at him. His eyes almost seemed clear in the sunlight.

"What?"

"For so long I kept trying to figure out the point of everything. I kept waiting for this big moment to hit me where I could say: Yes, this is worth living for. But I think I realized that it's not really like that. I mean, I guess for some people it is. But, really it's just a bunch of little moments that make you realize that one way or another everything will be okay and that life actually is nice for the most part. Like, having a good drink, or friends that will help you paint a wall or move into the new apartment, waking up in sunlight next to somebody you love."

She hadn't quite meant to say that last part aloud, but once it was out she's glad. She doesn't know how he'll react and maybe she should feel guilty because of Elena and she doesn't know where he stands with Elena (hell, she doesn't even know where she stands with Elena), yet she just doesn't.

Because she's fallen in love with Damon Salvatore. And she's okay with that. She's more than okay with it.

"Somebody you love?" he asks, his voice still a little hoarse with sleep. A hand reaches out to slide along the soft skin of her cheek.

"Yeah," she whispers.

He leans over and presses his lips against hers. She lays back, letting his weight press down on her a little. His lips were soft and cool and she felt like her heart would burst from happiness.

She knows that maybe she's not entirely recovered. Maybe there was no such thing as 'entirely recovered'. She'd still have nightmares and flashbacks and it'd always be something hard to talk about, but it did get better.

And she knows that everything's going to be okay.

The End.

A/N: And there it is! The end!

First off thanks to anyone who's been reading, reviewing, etc. this fic! I very much appreciate it! Writing this was quite a journey for me and a little terrifying because I'm touching on such sensitive subject matter and I really wanted to do it justice (and hopefully I did)!

So what's next?

Well, I'm going to go back to updating my Bamon fic, Lego House (you can hopefully expect regular updates, but there probably won't be any rapid-fire updates).

I've also got some new fics in the works. I've been planning a Bamon fic that pics up at the end of season 6 and it'll be written in epistolary format. I'm also planning a Damon/Bonnie/Kol fic where I shanghai the plot of season 4 of Teen Wolf and put my own twist on it (if you're not familiar with Teen Wolf, basically what happened was that a massive hit was put on all supernatural creatures). And I'm sure other fic ideas will pop up for me along the way.

Anyway, thanks so much for reading!