A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed! Here's the epilogue!

Disclaimer: These characters are the creative property of LJ Smith and The CW. I am not profiting in any way from their use. The only thing I own is my plot.

Chapter Fifteen - EPILOGUE

. . . .

. . . .

"So, in my opinion, and you know my opinion's the only one that really matters, the best representation of vampires on tv was on Buffy, but at least the ones on True Blood are somewhat scary. And they don't sparkle."

That was the first thing Bonnie heard when awareness came upon her.

The voice continued on a critique of the various vampire shows and movies that had come out in the previous twenty years. As she listened to the speaker, she started towards wakefulness, and she recognized the voice.

"Damon?"

"Spike was a total badass until -"

"Damon?"

"You're awake?"

"I guess I am," she answered, opening her eyes. The light was too bright, and she snapped her eyes closed again, and then blinked them a few times to allow them to adjust to the brightness of the room. She wasn't in direct sunlight, but it was clearly day.

"Don't you ever do anything so monumentally stupid ever again," Damon told her, standing up and pacing around the room. "What the hell were you thinking? You know those daggers kill vampires who use them."

"I don't want to be a vampire," she whispered. Of course she had known; she'd planned to dagger Klaus as a human, but once she'd been turned, she'd found the idea of dying from daggering him to be ironically poetic. Even from across the room, Damon could hear the distress in her words. "How am I still alive?"

"Because of a little divine intervention," Damon answered, stalking back over to the bed and sitting back down in the chair next to it.

"What?" Bonnie asked. She attempted to sit up, and Damon reached over and helped her to lean forward while he readjusted her pillow for her. She snuggled back in, feeling slightly more comfortable, and she looked around. She was back in her bedroom at Klaus's house.

"When you collapsed," Damon answered, "I tried everything I could think of to bring you around. I gave you some of my blood. I tried giving you some of Klaus's. Nothing worked." He was quiet for a minute. "And then this woman appeared in one of the antique mirrors in the living room."

"A woman?" Bonnie asked. "Anna?" Anna had appeared to her through mirrors; it had been how she'd found the Eye of the Jackal and the spell to re-curse Klaus.

Damon shook his head. "Not Anna. Tall, with long blonde hair and a sad face."

Bonnie had a feeling she knew who the woman was.

"She spoke to me," Damon continued, "something about nature and restoring the balance, and then she said something in Latin. And I saw you stirring, so I picked you up and brought you up here. I looked for the woman again, but she was gone."

Bonnie didn't know what to make of her extended unlife. She hadn't planned to survive the daggering. She didn't want to be a vampire.

It was almost as if Damon could read her mind.

"Don't even think about doing anything stupid," he told her. "We're going back to Mystic Falls as soon as you're feeling better."

"But-"

"No buts," Damon said, cutting her off. "It's been incredibly boring back there without you."

"Damon-"

"Eternal unlife isn't really all that bad," Damon said, ignoring her. "Give me a chance to convince you of that."

"Why would I let you do that?" Bonnie asked. "Even more, why would you want to do that?"

"Because a hundred years from now," Damon answered, "I'll be stuck with just Stefan, Caroline, Katherine, and Tyler for company. I know you don't like me, but surely, you can't be that cruel."

Bonnie snorted. "So you want me alive for selfish reasons."

"Of course," he said. "Do you think I'm altruistic or something?" Bonnie snorted again. "Seriously, though, Bonnie, let me show that it's not as awful as you think it is, and if I fail, I'll let you walk yourself right out into the sunlight. Hell, I'll even give you a shove."

Bonnie fought to keep from grinning at Damon's sales pitch. She didn't want to be a vampire, but at the same time, she wasn't ready to say goodbye to everyone just yet.

"Besides, Elena would kill me if I came home without you again," he told her. "An undead you is a thousand times better than a dead-dead you."

Speaking of dead...

"Where's Klaus?" Bonnie asked, looking around the room. The only thing out of place was Damon. "Did he stay dead?"

"The dagger stayed in," Damon answered. "And he's down for the count. I arranged for him to be coffined and taken by ship. The crew was instructed to lose his coffin in the middle of the ocean."

Instead of feeling relief that she wouldn't have to worry about Klaus hunting her down for eternity, all Bonnie felt was sorrow.

. . . .

. . . .

The boat swayed steadily with the waves, and the tired crewman wandered down to the cargo hold. The ship was mostly empty, but there were a couple of things in the cargo hold, and he was tired, but not so tired that he was ready to go to sleep. He took a swig of whiskey from his flask and stumbled around the room as the boat shifted.

He bumped into something, and he turned to look at what it was. It was a coffin. Plain, simple, stained brown.

"Dead body?" he whispered, mostly to himself. He couldn't believe they'd be carrying a dead body, but one never knew these days. Curiosity got the better of him, and he slid the latch open and lifted the casket lid.

It was a dead guy. Fairly handsome, young-looking, with a strange silver dagger sticking out of his chest. His breath caught for a moment, and then he laughed at himself for being stupid. He started to close the lid, and then he thought again and propped it back open.

"You won't miss this," he said to the dead guy as he gripped the silver dagger. It took a bit of work to pull it free, but once he did, he stood and admired the weapon. It was a lovely blade, and it looked to be solid silver. It was sure to fetch a pretty penny with his contacts.

He started to close the lid on the casket, but before it was all the way down, something stopped it.

"Crap," he said, lifting the lid again in order to fix whatever the problem was so he could just close the coffin and leave.

The problem grabbed him as soon as the lid was up and sank its fangs into his throat.

THE END

A/N: It's kind of open-ended because I may write a sequel, but I have a lot of other fics in the pipeline so it will probably be a while before I get to it.