"And if the breeze won't blow your way, I will be the sun

And if the sun won't shine your way, I will be the rain

And if the rain won't wash away all your aches and pains

I will find some other way to tell you you're okay."

- My Brightest Diamond, I have never loved someone

The night she finds Jeremy in the arms of a ghost, Bonnie doesn't stay to argue, she doesn't call her friends, in fact she doesn't even go home.

She drives and drives and by the time she ends up at a small bar that pulses with blue light and jukebox tunes her tears have already turned into salt dust.

Predictably, they don't ask for her ID; bars on this side of town rarely did.

Soon, she is lost in a crowd.

(Anna is dead and yet she's the one who feels like a ghost.)

She slips off her jacket, sways her shoulders to the music. It doesn't take too many drinks until her fingertips and toes start to tingle. She could fly, maybe. Like Tinkerbell, she thinks, and giggles a little.

"Hey there beautiful."

Hands, a face, a low, sweet voice. She turns into the stranger's arms with a smile, traces fingertips like glitter along his shoulder.

She feels buoyantly hollow, nameless and alluring.

"Let's dance."

And so they do. And she doesn't quite fly but after that last shot of tequila there's a mist of feathers in her head.

"My name's Jake, what's yours?"

It's then she glances over her companion's shoulder and sees him, watching her from the bar, a faint smirk (or was it a smile? she can never tell with him) on his face.

Klaus.

Bonnie feels her eyes narrow, her spine stiffening.

What was he doing here? Didn't he have a whole town - no, a world - to terrorize now that he'd acquired enough blood for his hybrid army?

And yet here he is, looking her over in the most blatant kind of way - her skinny jeans, the purple camisole top she'd pilfered from Elena ages ago and never returned, her gloss-covered mouth - as though she's a fruit he might want to peel.

Their gazes lock and stubbornly refuse to let go. Klaus angles his head, as if to say, your move.

"You're so fucking hot," Jake whispers along her ear, "god, and you smell so good."

And in that moment, Bonnie decides that Klaus (and Jeremy and Stefan and Damon) have commanded her attention enough.

She lifts her chin at the hybrid and thinks, recklessly, the way a bird leaps into the sky for the first time, If you want me, come get me.

Then she turns away, and kisses Jake on the mouth. And kisses him again, and again, and again.

Later, she would wish she had never issued such a challenge, even in thought.

Later, later.

Several weeks pass until the night Klaus tells a tense audience at the Salvatore boarding house what his terms are for leaving Mystic Falls permanently.

Damon and Stefan gather protectively around Elena. Caroline huddles into Tyler, who is now Klaus' sired.

Perched on the couch, Bonnie is tired, and deprived of sleep, and doing her best to avoid Jeremy's remorseful looks, when Klaus' gaze swivels her way.

"The witch," he says, almost casually, as if he were shopping for a new shirt.

Shock ripples through the room. Elena sobs in protest.

Bonnie, who has long learned the taste of inevitability, remains silent.

Jeremy is immediately a wall of muscle between her and the hybrid. "She's not going anywhere with you."

"Doesn't seem like she's going anywhere with you either, mate." And Klaus gives her a mocking kind of look, and Bonnie flushes, recalling the night he'd seen her with Jake. The night that no one, not even Elena and Caroline, knew about.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jeremy postures, folding his arms.

And the next instant, he is flying across the room, crash landing on a table. Elena rushes to his side. Bonnie makes to follow but it's a beat too late, and Klaus, she knows, has seized on that second of hesitance like a wolf with a lamb. His eyes burn with a knowing light, as though she has exposed some part of herself.

Bonnie braces herself for an attack, but instead he grasps her chin and forces her to meet his gaze. His words fall like golden dust, promising flight. "You will want for nothing. Grimoires, travel, clothes, whatever luxuries you fancy. All I ask in return is a tiny bit of witchy help."

'A tiny bit of help'. Bonnie resists the urge to laugh in his face. She ignores the lavish promises and cuts to the chase, "I won't kill for you."

Klaus flicks a strand of hair off her shoulder with a glinting smile, "Leave the killing to me, sweetheart."

He does not bother to address anyone else in the room, does not even spare them a glance.

"You have one week to say your goodbyes. When you're ready, you apparently know where to find me." He whispers that last in her ear, and she can hear the amusement in his voice.

Then with a wink and a dimpled grin, he's off, swaggering away from chaos in that cool way Bonnie both hates and (is shocked to find) envies.

Elena flies to her and she is enveloped in a teary hug. "No, no, no no you can't do this, we'll find a way to -,"

Bonnie holds her, mumbles something reassuring.

The silence in the room is full of ghosts.

It's both the longest and shortest week of her life.

She finds herself inexplicably exhausted, lying in bed many hours after the sun has climbed the sky. Whole afternoons are slept away on the couch, and she is yawning as soon as night falls.

Her life is being pulled up by the roots, and she almost feels too tired to resist.

Her appetite has grown mercurial (hardly surprising, she thinks, considering what awaits her) and she wakes up feeling sick to her stomach. Of course, she keeps all this from her friends, who are still in denial about her impending departure.

The appointed morning arrives like any other. Rudy has to leave for a month long business trip, and is full of excitement about corporate mergers and the future of Mystic Falls. Bonnie sits across from him at the breakfast table and tries to enjoy her pancakes.

"Are you gonna eat, honey?"

"Umm...I guess I'm not very hungry," Bonnie smiles it off, sipping some orange juice.

Rudy frowns a little, "You've been tired a lot lately. You coming down with something? I can postpone my flight-,"

She fights the swell of panic. Rudy absolutely could not be here when Klaus arrived. All her careful planning would be ruined.

"No, no I'm fine. I'm just...stressed about finals. But Caroline's coming over later and we're gonna hit the books."

"You sure you're okay?"

Bonnie bites her lip. She's usually much better and suppressing her emotions, but lately everything makes her want to bawl.

"I'm sure," she changes the subject. "How're the pancakes?"

Rudy's eyes soften, "They're wonderful. My turn to make breakfast next time. I gotta spoil you a little before you go off to college."

Bonnie can think of nothing to say, so she pours him more coffee and wipes her eyes at the kitchen sink.

Where is he?

Bonnie checks her watch impatiently. Klaus is almost an hour late. She gives Caroline half that time to figure out the ruse she's sent the gang on and barrel back here.

Bonnie doesn't want to risk anyone getting hurt if her friends decided to antagonize Klaus, nor did she want the hybrid to witness her saying goodbye. He already knows too much about where her heart lies.

Still, it's hard not to want to pick up the phone and call her friends, to cry and beg them to come get her.

This is for the best, she tells herself over and over. This way, no one has to get hurt.

Except maybe you, a small voice nags in her head.

I can take care of myself, she repeats like a mantra.

She is rather surprised when Klaus arrives, not in some ostentatious sports car as she'd imagined, but a moving truck.

"What, no minions to help you move?" she mutters.

"It will be a rather cold day in hell, little witch, when I entrust Caravaggios and Mesoamerican relics to 'minions'." He pauses, looking her over. She is huddled on her porch in an oversize sweatshirt and jeans. "And where are the rest of your belongings?"

Bonnie gestures at her blue Herschel backpack and suitcase.

Something crosses his face, but he keeps his thoughts to himself. As he lifts her luggage off the porch steps, a large, heavy book slides out and thuds to the floor. She hurries forward but Klaus already has it in his long-fingered grasp.

She tries to snatch it back but his hold is iron. "Let go," she grits out.

Klaus raises an eyebrow, surveying the leathery tome so close to falling apart. She wants to scream and claw at his hands. She wants to set his truck, with all those stupid paintings and relics or whatever, on fire, because no vampire has the right to touch what he's holding so casually: Sheila Bennett's Grimoire, marked with her loopy handwriting, still smelling faintly like old-fashioned jasmine perfume.

Suddenly, she feels her throat tighten, a rush of tears flooding her eyes.

Bonnie bites her lip hard enough to break the skin. She would not cry in front of him. And just like that night at the bar, she lifts her chin and refuses to be cowed. She barely feels the tear that escapes down her cheek.

Her voice wavers then gains strength.

"It's a family heirloom."

He glances down at her small hands gripping the book's spine, and releases the Grimoire so suddenly she almost stumbles.

"Then you should take better care of it, love. Have it re-bound, restore those tattered pages. I know a papyrus worker in Venice -,"

Bonnie clutches Sheila's legacy to her chest. Her words come laced with a coldness she didn't know herself capable of.

"I don't need any help from you."

She brushes past him and climbs into the truck.

As they leave Mystic Falls behind in the rearview, Bonnie reaches for something, anything inside herself to stave off the looming emptiness. She tries to hold on to her father's smile, her friends' laughter, the pretty blue dress from her sixteenth birthday, the winged recklessness that night at the bar when she had felt, briefly, like nothing could ever, ever hurt her unless she let it.

But it all slips through her fingers like sand.

She turns off her phone, ignoring the dozens of missed calls and texts from Caroline.

The highway stretches before them and afternoon melts quickly into night. Curling into the seat, Bonnie holds tighter to her grandmother's Grimoire and tries to remember a time she felt safe.

A/N: What do I do the day before classes begin? Drop a new Klonnie fic of course because I make excellent life choices. I've wanted to write this for a while, because I wanted a Klonnie babyfic where the focus is less on biological inheritance and more on found families. This won't be super plot heavy, but rather focuses on Klaus and Bonnie and their relationships to other people and each other (and of course, pregnancy/baby cuteness). It's AU from the beginning of S3, and while you'll recognize some events as they pop up, the timing and import will be radically different. Hope you stick along for the ride! (And gimme some sugar aka let me know your thoughts ) xoxox Enjoy loves!