A/N: Happy Monday. See, it didn't take 3 years for another chapter. I'm getting better, lol. Anywho, thank you so-so much for the continued outpouring of love for this fic. And a special thank you to the guest reviewer who responded to that troll who doesn't understand what fanfiction is. Now, on with the show.


Intermittently the clouds blocked the moon giving dark things places to hide. For night was their womb and light their demise. Dew kissed blades of grass, dripped from leaves sprouting from tree branches that looked like pitchforks jabbing at the sky. Crickets sang their usual aria sounding like the official trumpeters of night. In all, nothing seemed remiss or out of place. Everything was as it should be fitting together like puzzle pieces.

But that wasn't exactly the case.

Ants were crawling all over her. Something odd was happening in her veins, expanding and she couldn't physically reach it to get it to stop. Innately she knew she was now a new thing although she couldn't explain why that was. She just sensed that she was the finished work, a daughter of cycles and seasons once more.

It didn't feel right.

It didn't feel like her.

Bonnie Bennett struggled to comprehend why she felt off. Twice she opened her mouth to share what she was feeling with the man whose stride she followed through the well-lit house, and twice she snapped her jaws shut. He couldn't possibly understand or care for that matter. That wasn't the type of relationship they shared. In fact, what was between them couldn't even be constituted as a relationship, working or personal. Still it couldn't account for why she was having difficulty looking at anything besides the scope of his shoulders, or his black hair bluntly trimmed at the nape that just skimmed the collar of his shirt.

She fell back on custom. He was a vampire and she was a witch. Therefore, they were enemies. And yet…that didn't feel right either.

Why do you feel…like you're so much more to me?

Damon could feel Bonnie thinking. She had to be confused. He often didn't care to revisit this memory, but when he was first turned and woke up after taking a lead bullet to the chest, at first he didn't think he had died. Yeah, he saw the blood on his shirt, but the skin beneath that was smooth and unblemished. He didn't feel changed or any of the things Katherine said he would feel once turning. It was a weird place to be caught between, alive but dead. He wanted to reach behind him for Bonnie's hand, latch their fingers together and be her anchor, her post she could tether herself to in the material world.

Wow, had he really just wished himself to be a hitching post? Inwardly Damon wagged his head. Right now it seemed appropriate though it failed to convey what he truly desired. Desire. It was one of the strongest emotions vampires were capable of demonstrating and taking out on others. In this case, the flames stoking his desire didn't have shit to do with sex or blood. This desire was the kind that could cripple, cut you off at the knees, and refuse to get off your neck. Love.

(Upstairs and all alone, Elena Gilbert drew her knees up to her chest and wept.)

The wind howled and it sounded like a pack of dogs had gotten into the house. Bonnie froze, startled gaze darting around. She stumbled and crashed into the wall. Damon was in front of her in an instant, holding her by the arms.

"It's all right, Bon. You're safe," he reassured her tenderly.

She wormed herself free and skirted around him. "I want to go home."

Damon sighed, "You should eat something first." He resumed leading the way to the kitchen.

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she trailed behind Damon. He rounded the corner. She hesitated. To her recollection this was her first time seeing the kitchen. The space was large, dark with a lone source of light pouring from a bulb over the sink. To the left was a fireplace, a table some three paces away, a wooden bowl of fruit perched atop its glossy surface. Across from the table was a hefty center island offering more seating, and a four eye range. The refrigerator was stainless steel, cabinet doors made of glass, and there were lots of shelves stacked with seasonings and decorative knickknacks. Her eye caught on what she guessed was a gallon-sized mason jar filled with Hershey's Kisses. Someone had a sweet tooth. Or fang.

Overall the room felt homey and lived in. When Bonnie looked at Damon who had rolled up his sleeves and unfastened the top two buttons of his dress shirt, she didn't see chef. He seemed the type to order in.

She wagged her head wondering why she was even thinking about that, why she cared. This kitchen was for show.

Damon sensed her hovering, feeling uncertain. He glanced at Bonnie, arching a dark brow. "You don't have to act like a stranger. Have a seat."

Bonnie scurried across the cold tile floor and plopped down on a stool. Tremors were slowly taking over her body and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself, hunched her shoulders. Warm, she wanted to feel warm and not as if she'd been shoved outside in winter.

Damon put on the tea kettle, rummaged through the overly packed fridge. People had been sending food to the house for three days straight, and from the smell of some dishes he questioned their edibleness. But he pushed things around and found a pot that contained homemade vegetable soup. He figured stuffing Bonnie with pasta or a meat heavy dish might not be the best thing to do since this body was brand new, still working the kinks out.

The thought gave him pause. He peeked at her again, saw her taking everything in, green orbs brimmed to the hilt with curiosity and apprehension. But her quaking shoulders made him frown. Damon quickly disappeared and reappeared with a throw blanket and a pair of thick fleece socks Stefan had gotten him for Christmas. Stefan knew he hated fleece socks.

Carefully Damon draped the blanket around her shoulders then reached for her tiny foot. Bonnie jerked at the contact.

"What are you doing?" she squeaked.

He showed her the socks. "Putting these on."

"I can do that myself." Bonnie stuck out a hand for the socks.

Damon held them aloft.

"Damon."

He shouldn't get excited by the way she said his name like a stern schoolmarm but he was shameless like that. Fighting off a smile, Damon deliberately flashed a truncated version of his vampire face. The sclera of his eyes did not go fully dark but veiny enough for them to turn red, and when he parted his lips the tips of his fangs were visible.

Her heart palpitated and Bonnie inhaled sharply. Other than that she showed no other signs of being terrified or worried he'd lunge for her jugular. But her hands did shrink away and curled around the blanket, drawing it more securely around her shoulders.

Happy he had won this round Damon grabbed the stool and twisted it more toward him so he could have better access. Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds before Bonnie looked away. There was no disguising how uneasy she felt being the sole focus of his attention, and it bought about a sad sense of nostalgia. She didn't know him as he was now. She didn't trust him and gotdammit it hurt.

Bonnie swallowed thickly, her throat terribly dry. She was quiet while Damon gently slid the fluffy socks on her feet. And he may have lightly brushed her instep when it wasn't necessary. The sensation that followed made her case of goosebumps worse.

"Are you ever going to get around to telling me what's going on?" she asked. "Why I'm dressed like this and why I'm here? Was there a party?"

"What do you remember?" Damon bustled around the kitchen making Bonnie her favorite tea. He kept quiet as the electric kettle heated and he found her favorite mug and plopped a bag in, got the honey out of the fridge.

Bonnie let her mind drift. What was the last significant moment of her life? No. That sounded too melodramatic. Who was the last person she saw and talked to? What had they talked about? The more she tried to conjure a memory the harder those memories fought to stay hidden. They were books on a shelf in which she couldn't see the title.

"Shit," she cursed. "I can't really remember. Will you just tell me?"

The kettle whistled. Damon shut it off. Automatically he brought his wrist up to his mouth but stopped. He didn't…he didn't have to spike her tea anymore with a few drops of his blood. Damon had resorted to doing that when the pain of her cancer was so severe she went through morphine like Kleenex. He had gotten so desperate at one point he practically begged Bonnie to let him turn her.

She laid her frail hand on top of his, her fingers ice cold, her voice whisper thin. "No, Damon. I don't want to live forever. I don't want any more second chances. I've had my share. More than most and I can say I never squandered them. Just let me…I want to rest. Can you do that for me? Can you let me rest?"

He could. But her daughters couldn't.

Damon stared at his wrist for a moment before lowering it and resuming what he was doing. "Can you," he cleared the lump out of his throat. "Do you remember what happened a couple of hours ago?"

"I was…I was in a coffin, I think. Who the hell put me in a coffin? Was it Klaus?"

"No, it wasn't Klaus."

"Was it you?"

Damon huffed a tired laugh. "Sorry, not the culprit."

"Then how did I get there?"

Should he tell her that fifty years ago it had kind of been her own fault without sounding insensitive? He bit back the words and presented Bonnie with a perfect cup of tea, soup, and a piece of artisan bread.

The confused witch tried to show some kind of decorum by not instantly pouncing on the tea or soup. She was ravenous. A hunger so strong like she hadn't eaten in a hundred years had come over her. She told herself to go slow with the food knowing if she ate too fast she'd get sick. The soup was delicious and salty, the bread was a nice touch, and the tea was good. Yet she wanted a glass of ice cold water.

As if he read her mind, Damon sat a glass of water in front of her.

Shyly, Bonnie glanced up at him, "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Does everything taste all right?"

"It's good. Did you make the soup?"

"As much as I would love to take credit, I can't. Someone else made it."

"Hmm…who put me in a coffin, Damon?"

Dammit, the distraction didn't work.

"Several variables put you in the coffin. But you're out and that's the most important thing," he hedged evasively and sat next to her. If he sat across from Bonnie he'd stare too intensely and it would freak her out more than she already was. Or he'd irritate her which the thought made his lips twitch.

It didn't escape her that Damon didn't provide a straight answer to her inquiry. Ordinarily she'd call him out but she was too hungry to get to the bottom of her memory-loss issue. She'd leave it for now, but once she was finished eating the interrogation would resume.

He watched her eat for a little while yet caught her staring at the jar of Hershey's Kisses.

"Those are a gift," he explained without prompt.

"Someone gave you a gift?"

Damon's eye crinkled making Bonnie realize how rude she must have sounded. She flushed

"Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. It was a sweet gesture whoever gave it to you."

"The kisses are a symbol."

"A symbol of what?"

He turned his head completely to regard her. "Life."

A stroke of heat infused in Bonnie's veins and she got the sense Damon wanted her to know something without having to tell her. Her mouth turned drier and getting these words out nearly pained her. "Are they from Elena?"

"No. They were for someone else." Damon stared at the jar, jaw tensing minutely. He came up with the idea that everyday Bonnie woke up after getting several opinions about her ovarian cancer diagnosis and none of them had been favorable, that he needed a way to turn that crushing negative into a positive. Each day her eyes opened despite sheltering and shielding the blinding pain she had to live through, together they added a Hershey's Kiss to the jar. There were two hundred and ninety-nine. He hadn't been able to look at that jar the day after she died. Now he had a reason to.

Damon got up, went to the pantry, retrieved a little foiled tear drop chocolate and added it to the jar.

Three hundred.

Bonnie didn't look away, her throat inexplicably growing thick with emotion. When she was about eight years old Hershey's Kisses was an addiction of hers. Right at the moment she was going to share that fact, because there was a heaviness to the air she didn't understand and made her uncomfortable, she saw Damon's head jerk a little toward the right.

He was listening to his brother and Caroline reenter the house. "I'll be back in a second." He walked to the living room where he saw Caroline place a leather duffel bag on the sofa.

"I brought Bonnie a change of clothes. Did I hear her voice just now?"

"Yeah. She's in the kitchen eating."

Caroline rubbed her frosty hands together just barely quelling the urge to rush off to go see her friend. This last year had been a whirlwind of uncertainty and breath holding. Each day that passed where she didn't get a call that Bonnie's cancer had taken a turn for the worse equaled a good day in Caroline's eternally optimistic eyes. But pain still found a way to dampen things. Seeing Bonnie wither away to a shell. Catching the fetid smell of the cancer, undetectable to human senses, eating away at her friend's insides. Those days had come to an end but the price paid for it, she hadn't seen it coming.

What happened now?

"Okay, what's the story because you know Bonnie is going to ask questions about what happened to her and Elena? What should we tell her? How much should we tell her?" she opened up the discussion.

Those were questions Damon didn't want to start thinking about but knew he had to. "We need to find out what she remembers. Does she remember anything beyond the whole cure/Silas/Qetsiyah debacle and go from there I guess."

He wasn't looking forward to telling Bonnie that her dad was dead.

"All right. You should know Caeden basically ordered me not to let Bonnie see Elena."

"Did she say why besides the obvious?"

Caroline shook her head. "No."

Stefan piped in, "Should she stay here or her house?"

"I don't think she should be on her own just yet. She can stay with me," Caroline volunteered. "My house would make it easier to keep her and Elena separated. If I took her back to her home, I'd have to go and hide all the pictures and photos albums first. She's already going to freak out on how much everything's changed. There's no need to spring on her 'Hey guess what? You're divorced with thirty-seven year old triplets.'"

"We tell her she's on a trip and calls every few days or so. That could buy us time," was Damon's solution.

"Bonnie isn't going to believe that. The girl whose life is constantly in peril suddenly decides to travel with neither one of you," Caroline wagged a finger between the Salvatore brothers, "by her side? Please."

"Like you said we tell her its fifty years in the future. If we work on the girls to reverse what they've done, get Elena to agree not to say anything it should work. There's no need for Bonnie to know what her children did to her best friend."

"What if it can't be reversed?" Caroline raised one of Damon's major concerns.

"Any way we slice it," Stefan interjected, "Bonnie is going to want to see or talk to Elena and Elena is going to want the same thing. What if for once we go with the truth? Give Bonnie a week to get acclimated and we just rip the Band-Aid off? Tell her we'll tell her everything after a week and we each take a day or two to talk to her, get her caught up. Explain to her what's going on and hope she has the patience to hear us out before wanting to skip to the end."

"That could work," Caroline agreed tentatively. "We should do the same for Elena." She zipped toward the kitchen. "I call dibs on talking to Bonnie first. You have fun with Elena, Damon!"

333.

Faora Bennett bade her sister a goodnight and sauntered the few steps towards the veranda, hunting for her key fob to unlock the front door. Her head jerked up and whipped toward the silhouette that emerged out of the shadows. A dizzying fusion of dread, fear and another emotion she wasn't entirely familiar with spiraled through Faora who glanced between the dark figure waiting for her and the sanctuary of her house. When that figure crooked two fingers summoning her Faora sighed and switched direction.

He was attired in all black with a fashionable grey coat thrown over his ensemble. On the right sleeve were three white stripes, distinct marks that listed his rank in the hierarchy of the family he presided over. Othello Gad, with his towering height and broad shoulders didn't just make people nervous when he passed them on the street, he enthralled them. What made him even more striking was that one eye was ice-white whereas the other was copper with dark brown flecks. A strong, broad nose mimicked the sharp angle of his jaw and square chin. His plump lips could usually be found ticked up in an indulgent smile. Put those features together against skin the color of basalt made one wonder if he might be what an archangel looked like. Physically imposing, ethereally odd, a mountain wrapped up in plain human flesh.

Symmetrically Othello was perfect but he unnerved Faora. She didn't trust overly attractive men because they rarely exercised within boundaries.

Just as she suspected, Othello unleashed his kilowatt smile, wielding it like a broadsword. Ugh, even his teeth were annoyingly nice to look at.

"Some say the cure to a bad day is a mother's love…" he angled his head like a curious bird scanning her from head to toe and back again. "Did it work?"

Curtly, Faora nodded which made Othello's smile broaden more.

"Then I'll return to collect my payment."

Faora bristled inwardly. The stupid shit she continued to let her sisters talk her into! She wanted to argue. It was right there on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't persuade her mouth to move in the way it needed to move, and she felt so aggravated with herself. If there was one thing Faye absolutely hated was being beholden to someone she didn't like. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Othello squeezed her shoulder.

"Don't look so grim, Faora. Not all deals with the devil means the forfeiture of your soul."

"Yeah, right," she shrugged his hand off.

"Hmm, well I guess you do know it's not exactly your soul I'm interested in."

"Look," she cut in archly, "it's been a long fuckin' day and the last thing I want to do is stand out here in the freezing cold going back and forth with you. A deal is a deal and I'm going to uphold my end of the bargain but do yourself a favor..." emboldened she shortened the gap between them despite internally flinching, "leave me the fuck alone when you get what's been promised. My debt to you will have been paid tenfold. Clear?"

Leaving those as her parting words, Faora walked briskly to her entryway, having found her fob and hitting the right button to unlock the door. She flew inside her home, the foyer lighting up the minute her foot crossed the threshold. She peeked outside to make sure Othello was gone. It was hard to tell from this angle, but well, it wasn't like a locked door could keep someone of his caliber out. Yet another reason she distrusted good looking men: they often turned out to be supernatural in some way, shape, or form. In this case Othello was a warlock. An obnoxiously powerful one.

Approaching footsteps caught her ear. A moment later bare toes came into view followed by the body they belonged to. He moved with economical fluidity as he approached, arms swinging in concert with his controlled and equally measured steps. He stopped several inches shy of colliding into Faora who was leaned up against the door. He blinked at her, blinked again as he checked to make sure the locking mechanisms were in place before reaching for her hands and pulling her forward. His cold lips lightly grazed her cheek.

"I'm glad you're home. Are you well?"

His accentuated voice was formal and to the laymen's ear, a little distant but she sensed warmth underneath his linguistically precise syntax. To reassure him she was all right, Faora nodded and brushed her fingers (surprised they weren't shaking), and carded them through the tapered ocher strands of hair next to his temple.

"It's been a long night, Cian. A long day. A long week."

Cian's austere features softened, cheek pulling upwards, light dancing in his dark brown nearly black orbs. "I can make it better for you," he promised playfully.

The two of them sat down together. Well, Cian sat down with perfect form and posture whereas Faora wilted on the couch, sprawling on her back. She sighed when Cian placed her legs across his lap and immediately began to massage her feet.

They lulled into quiet contemplations, but it wasn't all silent. The very distinct hum of machinery pierced Faye's ear, scrambled her concentration for an instant until finally she could ignore it altogether.

"You've been quiet, secretive, and anxious the last seven days," Cian added more pressure to the arch of her foot. "Will you finally tell me what you've been up to?"

Faora opened her mouth to respond but paused. She had to be careful about what she disclosed to Cian because everything said and did was recorded and stored. He was her household companion, a twelfth generation sentient robotic organism, aka a humanoid android. She looked at him with his precisely timed blinks, his programmed motor functions, his aesthetically pleasant but standard features designed to make him look like a young, healthy, and virile thirty-year old Italian male. Everything about Cian was to give off the impression of humanness. Appearance, personality, quirks. It worked. Beneath his swarthy flesh was an exoskeleton made of flexibly durable metal, tubes, wiring, and a million plus algorithms of coded human behavior, feeding him constant streams of information he could retrieve by oral command.

But he was so much more than the work of her company where she toiled as an engineer. Cian was her friend tailored to meet, anticipate, or ignore her needs if it was his wish. He was afforded more autonomy than other machines. An artificial free will.

Sitting up, Faora cupped his cheek. "Take me upstairs."

Cian's brows elevated. He knew what she was alluding to and the response in him was immediate. He clamped down on his arousal knowing what Faora requested was a stall tactic. He had heard voices outside before she came through the door. Picked up faint traces of saline, earth, decay, and a heavy natural perfume he noticed leaked through her pores after she had gone away with her sisters for a day or two. She had cried at some point and tampered with something that died. But what? Faora had her secrets and Cian respected those secrets. He just hoped that whatever she had been up to would not affect her safety or her continued work with the Lanthanum Group, the process automation company where he was created.

"Faye…"

She cut him off with a kiss that pled for him to not interrogate her, to accept everything at face value because if she started talking she'd say too much. Slipping her tongue into his mouth she tacked on the addendum that she appreciated his concern but not to suffocate her with it.

Faora pulled away, forest green irises watering slightly, "Please, Cian."

He stared at her searchingly. Sighing, he stood and scooped Faora into his arms bridal style. Just this once he would allow himself to be seduced. He would give her a reprieve to get her story straight and by morning, he'd get the truth out of her.

333.

She froze at the sound of ice cubes hitting the sides of a glass. So it was that kind of a night, she thought forlornly. Swallowing, Caeden Bennett retraced her steps bypassing the living room and found her way to the kitchen where she stumbled upon a very depressing sight.

Her husband sat slumped over his drink at the breakfast bar. He was still in his suit sans jacket; the sleeves of his laundered white shirt were rolled to the elbows. He worried his forehead with one set of fingers while the other tapped a jittery beat on the granite countertop. They stopped their agitated movement the second he sensed her. A brown eye slid to the right and landed on Caeden before narrowing slightly.

The hulking mask of her husband Shamir Saintgnue straightened, sitting tall like a judge behind his bench. The air crackled with tension, it left Caeden a bit short of breath.

Usually shortness of breath was brought on by her husband's good looks. He was about average height, fit and trim. His grooming habits were a bit more meticulous than hers. Every Saturday he had a standing appointment with his barber to get his hair and goatee shaped up, saw his aesthetician every three months, his dentist every six, and lived at the gym when he wasn't hunched over a desk poring through documents looking for where dishonest people hid their money. Shamir understood numbers, but what he didn't sometimes understand was his wife.

"Where were you tonight?" his voice was thick with fatigue and suspicion. "Where have you been this entire week? Every time I've come home you haven't been here. When I call…straight to voicemail. And don't tell me you've been at the hospital working. I know you haven't so what have you been up to, little wife?"

Caeden hated when Shamir called her little wife because he always did so in a patronizing and condescending tone. No, she hadn't told him about her mother's death and resurrection or what her sisters had done to bring her back. Shamir understood she was a witch or rather he felt she believed she was, but he didn't exactly buy it. He didn't like things that couldn't be easily explained. Caeden had always been careful about not doing spells when he was around, because Shamir was about appearances and he couldn't appear to be married to someone who was crazy. Anything having to do with the occult he shunned and labeled it as inherently evil. Though he was far from religious, there were certain practices that disturbed him. So he humored Caeden but didn't ask questions and left the room if he caught her going through any of her numerous grimoires.

Caeden had known of his aversion and entered into a marriage regardless. Two years of dating and three years of marriage they were strangers to one another. In a way. Her mom, though she had never come out to say it, it was implied she didn't approve.

"I know you love him, sweetheart, but how deep is that love if you have to hide who you are?"

But her lineage and birthright weren't the explicit reasons Shamir had trust issues. He was still punishing her for a mistake she made last year.

"I was with my sisters."

"Hmm," he murmured and sipped his drink. "It's nice to see all three of you have it like that to disappear without a word or a trace for seven days. What were you all doing?"

"Witch business."

"That shit again," Shamir sucked his teeth and guffawed.

"Shamir!"

He slammed his glass on the counter and rose to his feet. He approached and stared his wife in the eye. He loved her and sometimes he had a difficult time getting that message across, but he did. His Adam's apple bobbed and the anger in his eyes receded and was replaced with sorrow.

Caeden's breath hitched when Shamir touched his forehead to hers. She smelled the whiskey on his breath. His hand curled around hers coaxing the tension to leave her. It wasn't enough. She remained on edge.

The muscle in Shamir's jaw ticked. His chest heaved as he scrapped to get the words together he wanted to say. He stared deep into Caeden's eyes, holding her in captive in suspense until finally he confessed, "I thought you left…me. I didn't want to believe it because all your things were still here but when you didn't come home two nights in a row and didn't answer my call I thought…I thought I had pushed you away for good."

Her eyes shuttered closed in thinly-veiled relief. "You didn't. You haven't lost me, Shamir."

Goosebumps pebbled at his feather-like touch skimming her hips, her stomach which somersaulted at his touch. Caeden wanted to tell him the good news, but she lost her train of thought because he was kissing her spot. His hands were now up to her shoulders, caressed her neck a little before cupping her cheeks.

Shamir placed his lips at her ears, "Don't you ever leave me again."

333.

Bonnie was staring at that jar of Hershey's Kisses again. She resumed eating. But as she ate anxiety funneled through her body. She felt uncharacteristically exposed even while shrinking within herself. Her layers had been peeled back, but it felt even more primeval than that. Like coming across a stranger and never exchanging any dialogue but feeling judged, wanting.

What was taking Damon so long to come back? She wouldn't have to pay attention to what she was feeling if he was here.

"Bonnie?"

The blanket dropped to the floor the second Bonnie stood up from the stool after recognizing Caroline's voice. Externally her friend was the same. Five-eight, blonde hair that fell below her shoulders, blue eyes that were kind and layered with long black lashes, pale skin of the undead. However…something about Caroline was different. Aged.

She was seeing Bonnie but doubt lingered. Caroline had seen her share of body swaps through the ages. This case was disconcerting because seventy year old Bonnie had been placed into her eighteen year old self. For a second the two images were juxtaposed but in the end, youth won. Supple. That was the best way to describe how her longtime friend looked. Innocently beautiful. Enviously young.

Caroline took one step, then two and in the blink of an eye she was in front of Bonnie drawing her into a hug that the resurrected witch dissolved into like cotton candy.

Tears sprang. Bonnie couldn't remember the last time she was hugged like this, and that was one of the things she loved about Caroline in spite of her periodic neuroticism and bossiness. She was maternal at heart.

"I feel like I haven't seen you in so long," Bonnie sniffled.

Caroline mirrored her tears, "I know. It does feel that way." She pulled away, cheeks lightly flushed and a little wet. She wiped Bonnie's tears with the pads of her thumbs reveling in how real they were, how real her best friend was.

"Why are we even crying?" Bonnie laughed shakily.

"It's what girls like us do when we're extremely happy."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," the blonde vampire chuckled ruefully. "The more important question is, are you okay? How do you feel? How are you feeling?"

Bonnie drew away then, wiped at her nose. "I can't explain it. I feel like something major happened to me but I…I don't know what. What the hell is going on, Caroline? Damon won't tell me anything."

The moment of truth had arrived to tell Bonnie at least some preliminary information, the day, the month, the year. She couldn't lie and claim there had been accident. Could she come right out and say "you died Bonnie and you were brought back, but the year isn't 2012, its 2062." Yet staring at her friend who looked extremely vulnerable, Caroline lost her nerve. How could she unpack fifty years of memories or crack open the vault?

"Where's Elena?"

Another question with a hard and complicated answer.

Bonnie gripped her hands and Caroline winced because it felt like her bones were being grinded together.

"Why is Damon being nice to me?" Bonnie had leaned in to whisper.

A burst of laughter erupted out of Caroline before she could stop it.

Because he's in love with you.

"Sorry," Caroline sobered and almost started laughing again at Bonnie's annoyed expression. "It's been a long week. Do you want to get out of here?"

The answer should have been automatic yet Bonnie faltered. And her hesitation lapsed into a prolonged silence the minute she caught sight of Damon leaning against one side of the doorjamb and Stefan on the other. To her they were barring the way of escape. What did they want from her now? She was confused, exhausted, and still hungry.

"Yeah. I want to go home."

"You're just going to eat and run, judgey?"

"Isn't that what you do?"

Damon grinned broadly. He missed this, their banter. "Only on the nights I don't feel like sleeping over."

"Wow, such a gentleman."

"There should be more just like me."

"Then this would be hell."

"Nah, heaven. If you're a good girl I'll show you sometime."

The whole time they went back and forth Caroline and Stefan watched as if they were at a tennis match.

"Yeah this night has gone on long enough if you're propositioning me," Bonnie muttered despite feeling a strange heat bloom in the center of her chest.

"Well, all right," Caroline wrapped an arm around Bonnie and shuffled her toward the door.

Stefan, unsurprisingly, was the first to step aside. "Have a good night, Bonnie."

She looked up at him as if realizing he'd been standing there the whole time. "Oh, ah, you too."

One last hurdle remained. Getting past Damon. He shifted only a fraction, flattening his back against the doorjamb. The knotted muscles of his stomach bunched when Bonnie's arm lightly grazed him as she stepped into the hallway. Like magnets her semi-startled eyes found his that were alight with mischief but softened to something that spurred the flummoxed witch to hustle faster to the door.

After a quick outfit change, Bonnie breathed in the nighttime air.

"Ready?" Caroline handed her a jacket.

"Yes."

Bundled inside Caroline's car that looked like something out of the future, Bonnie slumped against the door, gaze locked on the side view mirror. She watched as the boardinghouse grew smaller the farther away they drove from it.

333.

Home at last. Loki toed off her shoes, dumped her keys in the bowl on the sideboard and ambled to the couch. She smelled the remnants of whatever Rafe and Tala, her lovers cooked for dinner on the air. Loki's own hunger didn't even stir.

With the twitch of her powers she ignited a fire in the grate. Her throat was dry and she could use a glass of water or an entire bottle of wine, but for the moment she was paralyzed by the hypnotic flames licking the fake logs in fireplace.

She willed her mind to go blank. No dice. She kept seeing the moment her mom's arm shot out of the coffin like she was the Bride of Frankenstein and her sitting up. So much power had flowed through her there was a scary moment Loki thought for sure she and her sisters would be ripped apart. But they held it together somehow. Came out on the other side with their mother intact. Everything had gone according to plan.

Or not.

Faye's question if they had done the right thing plagued her, haunted Loki. She seldom had regrets, stood firmly by every decision she made—good or bad. Her mother was alive. Her memories beyond the age of eighteen might be gone temporarily…But what would she do if it was a permanent loss?

Loki repeatedly smacked her open palm on her forehead. It was late. She was exhausted, confused, and another feeling she wasn't accustomed to enveloped her—loneliness. Even if she went upstairs and climbed into bed with Rafe and Tala, and let them take her mind off of everything the loneliness wouldn't budge. They would do an admiral job but she doubted their love would be sufficient enough to close the chasm Loki ignored had been widening this past year.

Her ears twitched at the pitter patter of little feet creeping down the stairs. Wiping any wayward tears from her face, Loki looked to the staircase where she saw a little hand holding on to the rail. Soon the silhouette of a small child backlit by firelight became her center of focus.

"Mommy?"

"Sieh, what are you doing out of bed?"

Sieh, her three year old son wandered to Loki rubbing one eye. He climbed on her lap and burrowed his head in her chest. "I had a dream about Grammy. Is she aw'right?"

Hugging Sieh to her, Loki looked at the fire again. "Grammy is…"

She doesn't know us, my precious boy.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are love.