"It's okay. It's going to be okay." He buries his face in her chocolate hair, and whispers this in her ear for the eleventh time. It goes unheard, because it looks like her high-pitched sobs are just about enough to make the whole room tremble in agony. It's only when he repeats this again, just simply out of habit, that she does listen.

She suddenly pulls away, escaping from his embrace, and looks up to him with her beautiful doe eyes. He sees them now, he sees how they glow and sparkle with unshed tears. He sees the pain, the confusion and then...then, he sees the cruelty.

"It's not okay! You wanted her dead. You-you wanted her dead from the start!" She screams through gritted teeth, and the only thing that really shocks him is the fact that he can understand her even though she is sobbing, screaming, and inhaling loudly all at once. "You don't get to tell me it's okay." And so he doesn't. He doesn't say anything anymore. He just looks down as she falls to her knees, and observes silently.

"Oh, God. She is dead. Everyone's dead. She's…"She bursts out, and she covers her eyes with her hands. In this moment, Damon analyzes the situation and thinks that the correct thing, the best thing to do would be to kneel down next to her and hold her. He does this, but it's a selfish action, because the only thing he can think about is that maybe if he does this, she won't hate him with such passion. He doesn't think about a dead Bonnie, or the pain and despair settling in his lover's eyes. He thinks about himself.

She lets him come closer, wrap his arms around her, and this makes it okay for him. Just for him.

The entire situation just seems surreal to the older Salvatore. It's like dreaming when you know you are asleep, and that the world you are in doesn't really exist —It's that pointless feeling you get you understand nothing you can do will have an effect on anything, because when you wake up everything's going to be the exact same.

And he hears the passionate cries with such clarity, and he sees the colors of the room burn so bright. He understands this is not a dream, he does—but he doesn't.

And there is just one thing he is absolutely certain of. One thing inside his head he can't shake off no matter how badly he tries:

Nothing will ever be exactly like it was. Ever.

He thinks it would be absolutely wonderful to know precisely why it won't be the same. Elena, in the other hand, seems to understand the reason perfectly. He wishes, but just for one second, that he could feel the way she does –the unnerving despair, the astonishing guilt. Everything.

Then he reminds himself that his humanity switch is on, and that he should be feeling some sort of sympathy for the petite witch, at the very least. He doesn't and the thought of this is disquieting. It unsettles him.

He feels nothing. He owns no emotion.

And yet, though he goes to bed with a clear conscience, he doesn't sleep at all.

And in the middle of some lonely nights, he thinks it would be good for him to talk to the self-righteous little witch. But he doesn't think this because he misses her, or because he feels guilty that she's dead-walking through the ghost world. He honestly doesn't even know what he would say to Bonnie, and he can't really affirm that he would care to know the answer.

He'd like to talk to her nonetheless.

But not in the way humans talk to the ill and the dead. He wouldn't dare visit her grave. He sees no point in using his tongue and wasting words with somebody who can no longer acknowledge his existence. Not that he ever did see the point in chatting with the girl, though. Not that she ever did notice he was there. He feels the need to remind himself that she never was anything but a fragile mortal to him. One of many stuck in the bottom of the supernatural food chain, who so happened to have a few powers of her own.

The next day, right after sundown, he accidentally falls asleep over the modern and oh-so-uncomfortable sofa of the Salvatore mansion, and realizes that in dreams he can feel. He sees scarlet colored blood and ice-cold chocolate skin, and suffers. He wakes up in a rush, with a cold drop of sweat running down his temple.

The gut-wrenching feeling vanishes as soon as he wakes up leaving no sign of ever existing. He longs to feel it again, and so he closes his eyes shut, but the next time he dreams of her Damon wakes up knowing he felt nothing.

Even though Elena is so close he can feel her warmth burn his skin, that night Damon doesn't sleep at all. He's right back where he started. He wraps his arms around the porcelain vampire at his side, and buries his face in the delicate soft hair. Her scent is everywhere. It fills his nostrils but it no longer brings him peace of mind, rather the opposite.

And for unknown reasons, bloodshot green eyes don't leave his mind.

Damon knows that he should be glad that Elena's her old dry-eyed self again, but he's not. He thinks it's sad that nobody's grieving Bonnie Bennett anymore. She deserved better than that. He doesn't blame Elena though, he supposes that after so many dead relatives it's common to get used to loss, as disquieting as that may sound.

He looks down and observes her take silent sips of coffee. He had always enjoyed how her eyes reveal only part of the black sea they are when she's tired. Today, he doesn't feel like enjoying much of anything. She's really quiet and that's good because he is just not in the mood for chit-chat. Lately, he hates it.

Then, out of the blue, he hears the sound of her lips parting but fails at anticipating the words that come out of them after.

"I thought you cared about her. Bonnie, I mean."

Why would anybody think that is beyond him. He replies with a deep sigh that only encourages her curiosity.

"Don't you? I mean… I always thought you did. That night, when you came back to the woods to find her... I know it was for me, but I thought—"

"I don't care about her."

And he says this because it's easier than explaining what he can't even understand himself. It's easier than telling her that he doesn't care about Bonnie, and he doesn't care about her either. It's easier than listening to her analyzing the fact that he just doesn't care about anything anymore, and ending with a mistaken conclusion. It's just easier.

He swallows with a dry throat and without a second thought he leaves her alone; knowing that she will probably misunderstand and think that he walking out the room means it hurts him to discuss Bonnie. Damon's the one to blame for this and he knows it, she cares about him and he can't keep her away forever. He can escape her for a while though, and this is what he does.

Halfway through the hall he's just not that sure what he's escaping of, and he's doesn't think it's Elena.

Damon sleeps alone that night, and figures his night-eyed lover's either angry or determined to give him his space. Needless to say, he doesn't care which one it is so long as he can be alone. He enjoys the silence more than he should. His mind is empty of any thought, and he only manages to lose consciousness for a brief moment.

He hears a dreadful scream. The sound is so horrendous that when he wakes up he continues to hear it inside his mind, playing over and over like a skipping record. That night the nasty thing haunts him and cripples him with misery.

Damon doesn't get it. He had gotten used to feeling nothing.

The morning after that, his little brother calls him and uses a dispirited tone of voice to tell him he has some worrisome news for Elena, and that maybe he should be the one to tell her.

Damon disagrees but doesn't protest. Lately, it takes him a lot of effort to focus on anything. He figures it must be lack of sleep, but it's not like vampires actually need it badly so he is not so sure about it. He hears the words his brother mumbles but doesn't pay attention to them until the word 'Bonnie' pops up.

"…Her body, Damon." Stefan says through a heart-felt sigh. "It's not decomposing. It's exactly like we found it."

"But she's dead, right? Not in a witchy-coma-thing but dead dead. Right?"

He hears his brother's gasp through the metallic apparatus and figures that what he told him must have sounded extremely uncompassionate in Stefan's ears. It was a perfectly validate question, though.

"She's dead." Stefan replies, shattering the silence. "I talked to her mother and she thinks it might be some sort of…punishment. The witches won't let her cross to the other side, but they won't let her live either. In that place, they can do whatever they want with her. She's in-between. I mean-"

"Not dead. Not alive either. Yeah, gotcha." Damon replies in a dry tone. A weight had just been set upon some unacknowledged part of his chest. He wants his brother to shut up. He wants him to shut up and never talk about her again.

And Stefan, being the good brother he is, tells him the absolute last thing he needed to hear.

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be sorry for me, little brother! I'm not the one getting tortured by centuries-old grumpy dead witches. Can you imagine the kind of punishments those judgy little things can perform? Not fun." He says in a gracious tone, stretching the first letter of the last word with his tongue.

Even though he tried his hardest, Stefan doesn't sound as disgusted by that last unsympathetic sentence as he should. Instead, he limits himself to say "Tell Elena I'll fix this." Then, he hangs up.

Time sits still until he decides to make his way to the bedroom she's sleeping in. He knows exactly which one he prefers in the entire Salvatore mansion – besides his own, of course – and realizing that he knows this, that he knows her, feels cruel.

Which is good, because cruel is a feeling. Sort of.

And of course he finds her there, digging her fingers in a white cotton pillow. He sees her chest rising and falling with her breathing rhythm, her eyes closed shut and he decides that maybe, maybe it's just not a good idea to wake her. Maybe he should figure this one out on his own.

And he's almost proud when he leaves the room, because he saw her, stared at her and felt something. Except his pride is nowhere near happiness, no. He is worried. He is worried about someone he's sure he swore to hate.

Damon denies this as he texts his brother and asks him where they should meet. He denies this as he reads the reply and sighs. He denies this while he gets in the car and makes his way down to the worst possible place.

Hello, Mystic Fall's morgue.

She's almost breathing. He stares at her intensely, sees her in all the ways and manners a person can possibly see another. Every inch of her - and somehow this thought keeps wandering aimlessly through his head, like there's no other thing to acknowledge about the body laying on the shimmering stretcher. No other thing to acknowledge about anything in that particular scenario.

She's almost breathing.

The witch's cute. Had he never noticed that she was cute before? The mere thought of this is horribly wrong, and he won't dare say it out loud - she might hear him, because she's almost breathing and all kinds of not-gone yet. This is what he feels. This is what he thinks:

Bonnie, who is not alive – what everyone knows – and is not actually dead or gone at all - what only Damon thinks he knows –, is beautiful.

He takes his time to appreciate her now, dismissing his brother's unnecessary presence.

There's a metal stretcher underneath her, supporting her stiff weight. It's a head and a half longer than her body. He sees how small she was now. How small she is. A white cloth covers her from neck to toes, probably placed there by Saint Stefan - it's alright, he's glad it's there. Her hair lays over her shoulders in a dark mess. Her full lips are parted slightly, and there are dark circles surrounding her eyes.

She looks exactly like she did when she died. Damon understands why this is a problem but somehow, he doesn't quite get it. Bonnie looks alive, why on earth is that a bad thing?

He remembers the sound of her erratic, wild heart and realizes now that he no longer hears it. Her heartbeats had always been so strong whenever he was near. Hate, he assumed. Now, they are completely gone and he feels like there's something horribly wrong with this quietness. Like it's impossible that such a lively thing could have been silenced forever.

There's something restless about her. He sees this now. The silence she's in, the stillness, it's not real – it's not what she's feeling. She's trapped somewhere, and he wants to find her. He wants to shake the death out of her.

Death is not where she belongs.

Stefan walks by the side of the stretcher with a detached rhythm. He sees his brother's ice blue eyes piercing holes through Bonnie, staring at her with black fever, and wonders if he missed something all these years. He wonders if there was more to them than bickering and teaming up during crisis.

The thought drives him mad. Stefan had been the one to make the call; he was the one who forced him to come to this wicked place and see her like this: immobile, silenced, dead.

The younger Salvatore breathed out a sigh. He swallowed dryly and set his eyes on Bonnie. He had been so busy trying to protect Elena from the death of her best friend that he had almost forgotten how much of an impact the petite witch had had on everyone's during her unfairly short poor excuse of a life.

The sight of his brother looking down at the stiff figurine Bonnie had become made his stomach turn. It killed him not knowing what was running through his head, was this one of his games? Or had Bonnie's death actually wrecked him?

Stefan regrets this the minute he thinks about saying it. He regrets it while he opens his mouth and feels words clogging up his brain, diminishing any other thought or possibility.

"Brother," He bites his lower lip. "There's something we can do."

Elena awakens to the incessant sound of the phone and rolls over on the bed thinking it'll eventually stop. After eighteen long minutes she realizes she was wrong, so she pulls the sheets away from her legs and makes her way to the living room, where she finally finds the damned thing. For her misfortune, the ringing stops right before she has the chance to pick up.

The voicemail is loud and clear:

"Come to Bonnie's house."

That's it. That's all. Stefan doesn't tell her the reason, but the fear hidden behind his tone of voice makes her skin crawl. She knows him better than she should. Better than she wants to.

She slips out of Damon's over-sized t-shirt in a rush. She puts on the first thing that comes to sight when she opens the closet. She's not even sure if the jean she's wearing is actually hers. It doesn't matter. It takes her a little over thirty minutes to realize she didn't even check if Damon was in the mansion or not. And while she thinks this, she is less than two feet away from Bonnie's place.

Elena knocks. Stefan answers. He explains everything about Bonnie's situation thoroughly before she even gets a chance to enter the house. When she does, she's in tears. Apparently, so is her best friend's mom, who's there with some girl named Lucy Bennett, and Damon.

Confusion overpowered her as if she had been knocked senseless. Everyone looked at her, as she entered, and the only thing she could think of was that everything was so very Bonnie it hurt. The couch, the framed pictures on the walls, her CDs, her books, they were parts of her. Somehow, it seemed unfair that, wherever she went, wherever she was now, she hadn't taken all these things with her. Instead, they lay there as a constant reminder of her death.

One. Two. Three. She breathed burning air. Her lungs screamed. One. Two. Three. She breathed again. It was cold. She didn't choke. She was okay. She would be.

"So… what's the plan?"

Silence rushes in. It's Damon the one who stands before her and breaks it. "We need a sacrifice," He clears his throat but his voice is rough and dry. Is he scared? She can't tell. It takes him several seconds to talk again. "We agreed it'll be me." He says flatly.

Her beautiful doe eyes widen, but she can no longer see clearly through them. She was always blind somehow, because Damon, the Damon she claimed to know so well, would never sacrifice anything for Bonnie Bennett. And the Bonnie she knew could not be brought back to life. She was no longer in this world, she was one hundred per cent gone. Except she wasn't.

Elena looks into his ice-blue eyes, and finds nothing. There's nothing there for her. Not anymore. Not since she told him he had always wanted Bonnie dead.

"What kind of sacrifice?" She blurts out, feeling disoriented again.

The blue-eyed vampire looks not at her but through her as if she were made of glass. For a second, the only thought that comes in her troubled and confused mind is that maybe she is transparent after all, because Damon is absolutely oblivious to her presence. She is puzzled when she discovers she feels relieved.

She turns around and her wide doe eyes look for Stefan's. When he puts his hand on her shoulder, a shiver is sent down her spine. He tells her that she should sit down before hearing the rest and she obeys. She likes the way it sounded like: as if he'd prefer to have her next to him on the couch to explain everything thoroughly, but if she didn't want to sit down, he would tell her anyway.

He places himself on her right, and throws a glance at Damon. His older brother nods and he starts.

"When a mortal's blood is drunk by a vampire, and this vampire shares its blood with the mortal too, a bond is created between them. This bond connects their lives together, meaning that if something happens to the vampire, something similar will happen to the human that's connected to him."

She nods, and he continues.

"But this connection is very weak, so the repercussions are minimal. And it's only one-sided. If something happens to the human, the vampire shouldn't experience any change. Understand?"

"Yes." She replies.

"Bonnie and Damon are—" Stefan clears his throat, "were connected. He drank her blood the night Emily possessed her, and Bonnie drank his when Silas bit her and he saved her. That's why he's the only one who can do this for her."

"What's this? What can he do?"

"The spell Bonnie's cousin will perform is called sanguis et cinis—that's Latin for blood and ashes. She'll make their bond stronger, and then," He breathes a sigh, and continues, "then he'll have to drink some of her blood, for them to connect again. This is dangerous because drinking from a dead Bonnie can cause her to unknowingly pull him right down into death with her. But Bonnie's not really dead—"

"She's in-between, right? Between life and death…" Elena looks around her, waiting for the approval of the men and women beside her.

"Exactly," Stefan continues, "so this shouldn't happen." He says this in a steady tone, but Elena can sense his worry. "He'll have to drink until they are connected in such a way that both their heartbeats align, causing Bonnie's heart to beat again, and therefore causing her to wake up."

"-Or causing them both to be dead." Says Elena, flatly.

"No." Lucy interferes, her voice trembling, "They will both be alive."

Damon gazes down and stares at Lucy through lidded lashes. The colors of the candles she's lighting make wild patterns with the fire and he can see black dots before his eyes. For his dismay, he's drowning in the sight; perhaps because it makes everything real. So very real that he can't stand it.

He places both hands over his eyes and lets confusion overpower him. He is sacrificing himself for the sake of a woman he despised. Hating her, refuting her, arguing with her, it made him whole. It made him Damon. He got to explain the reason and the suffering behind every horrible thing he had done, every single thing no one dared to ask. She got to feel good about her moral compass by throwing him against walls. It was a deal he enjoyed. He thinks she enjoyed it too.

He doesn't know why, but he's one hundred per cent sure that he won't feel anything ever again if he doesn't go through with this. And knowing that this is all about the petite witch, and not her best friend, provides him some sort of peace of mind.

And he would have liked to ask if the nightmares were a part of their bond. He would have loved to know because he thinks the answer's no, he is almost sure it was her call for help, and it unsettles him to know he was the only one who listened. The blue-eyed Salvatore also believed vampire-mortal connections were created not only by blood but by feelings, too, and he was almost certain Lucy didn't mention that because Elena was in the room.

He wouldn't dare ask this either.

At the moment, he wants Stefan to stop looking at him as if he were something to decipher. He can sense his eyes piercing wholes through him. He would like to make a snarky remark about that, but he'll let this one go. He knows he's scared.

Instead, he nods in his direction and while Stefan's lips smile, his eyes remain still.

He gets lost in the patterns again. He enjoys the memory of green eyes and sun-kissed skin. He clings on it while he can.

Then, when they bring him the real thing and lay it down on the floor -the actual Bonnie Bennett, made of skin, bones and something like fairy dust – He contemplates no other option than to kneel down beside her, take her in his arms, and sink his teeth in her neck.

The very last thing that flicks through his mind is that there must be a special hell designed for those who drank from creatures as magical and fragile as she.

But he was going there nonetheless, wasn't he?

Mildly awake green eyes flutter open in the midst of a war. It takes her a minute or two to realize she's lying on the floor with scarlet blood splattered all over her neck. She can't will herself to move a muscle. She just stays there, listening to the shrill sound of a scream and a woman's corrupted sobs.

She chokes on the scream she suppresses when she realizes Elena's the one crying. She supports her weight with both arms and her every muscle cries at the movement. Bonnie is so confused that for a short while she simply forgets that she was in some sort of hell only two minutes ago.

She's not sure the reality's better.

The wild witch remains motionless, absolutely overwhelmed, staring at the scene playing twenty feet away from her. Nobody seems to recall she's awake from the distance, because they are dealing with something greater and irreversible.

It's only when she hears the words "He's dead." that her blood freezes completely.

The muffled sobs fall quiet for a moment. Stefan comes in the picture now, and wills Lucy to sit down. She looks absolutely bedraggled. He has tears behind his eyes; Bonnie can see them through the void. When she brings her hand up to her neck, and feels two small marks on it, her heart starts hammering.

Elena is one hundred per cent hysterical, clinging to Stefan for some sort of comfort he can't provide at the moment. He just looks at Lucy intensely, like he's desperately begging for an explanation. She provides.

"He knew this would happen from the start—" Lucy begins, as Elena starts crying again.

"That's what the spell is about: One life for another, her blood, and his ashes." Bonnie's mother chokes on her own voice. "I told him Lucy had lied. I told him that if we went through this, he would not survive. He said her death haunted him. That it was unbearable. He said he wanted to do this anyway."

Bonnie doesn't think its Jeremy, but she can't think of no other man. Her entire body is trembling with madness. It drives her insane not to know what they are talking about. Except she doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to know at all.

"I think the bond they shared was much deeper than just blood," Lucy cuts in, "I know it's impossible, but I think he loved her."

The younger Bennett walks slowly in their direction, lacking everything but determination. Breathing through corrupted lungs, she steps forward a dozen times. When she reaches them, they all stare at her with both sorrow and fascination. Silence falls between them.

That's when she sees the body on the floor.

Damon's staring at her. A broken eyesight framed with disheveled black hair locks. His face not pale but grey, looks like shattered stones; and his lips are painted with the scent of her blood.

Motionless. Silenced. Dead.

Everything comes rushing back. The tortures, the dreams she had about him. In her little piece of hell, she had seen him a million times when he was not even there.

She blacks out.

It has been seven years since the sacrifice. Bonnie is locked inside her room. In fifteen minutes her shift at The Grill starts, but she just doesn't have the strength to get ready. Instead, she's staring at her grimoire, reading over and over again three words: Sanguis et cinis.

Four years ago, when Matt and Jeremy left for college, half the population of Mystic Falls found out vampires were real. The town turned chaotic, accusations rose from every man, woman and child, and three vampires from Mystic Falls were discovered and brutally murdered.

Elena and Stefan were found somewhere in Virginia, legend says both of them were lit on fire. Bonnie doesn't doubt it, because she helplessly saw how Caroline burned to the ground with her own pair of eyes. She thinks Tyler died too, but nobody ever spoke about him again.

She tried to help them all. It didn't work. Her magic disappeared the moment Damon died. He took a part of her with him, the most important one. She can't leave this town now; people are always suspicious of the ones who leave, and she's sure a lot of neighbors wouldn't mind killing her too, just because she was a friend of the vampires.

She flips the pages of her grimoire, searching for a spell that can make it all go away. There's just no way, she can't bring anyone back, she can't make it all okay. Truly, she can't do anything, because she doesn't even have as much magic as she once did. She's surrounded by candles that might help, but it's a long shot nonetheless.

The Bennett witch's lips curve into a small, calculated smile when she finds the spell she's looking for. Her grahms told her once that it would take her anywhere she wanted, if she had her heart set on it. Even if she did manage to regain some magic through the years, she's less than sure she can do it.

Bonnie tries, nonetheless. She just wants to get out of this damned town. When she makes the spell, she doesn't have any place in mind. She can't think of anywhere she would like visiting, she just mutters the word "Home."

She opens her eyes in a rush. Bonnie figures she must have blacked out somewhere in between the spell. She brings her hand up to her face, and the tips of her fingers touch blood under her nose. She knew she wasn't strong enough for this, but realizing it hadn't worked was heart-wrenching.

On top of that, she is confused and disoriented. Bonnie stands upright. Everything's so bright and vivid it burns her eyes. She doesn't know where she is. The white dress she has on is stained with splatters of blood around the collarbone, as a result of the massive nose bleed.

She finds the contrast between red and white endearing, just like everything else in the room. Bonnie wipes away the blood. Then, she sees the outlines of a person's shadow. There's nothing more in sight, so the petite witch walks towards it.

Even after years, she could've never confused him with anybody else. Ocean blue eyes hid under thick black eyebrows; shimmering dark hair and a thousand watts smile to top it all.

Damon.

"Well, isn't it too soon for you to be here, Witchy?" He inquires with a smirk, acting as if he already knows everything. Bonnie thinks he does.

She smiles, and mutters the word Home again.

"My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover."― Charles Bukowski

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#

Guys, I cheated. I haven't actually watched the episode in which Bonnie dies (I can't bring myself to do it!) I have no idea what happens to her or how, so I wouldn't say this is set after the finale (because of the whole Silas thing and everything, too) So, it's a bit AU maybe?

OKAY. This took longer than expected, I apologize in advance for the grammatical errors. I'm argentinian and my mother tongue is spanish. Also, this is one of my first english fanfics, and though I do feel ashamed because it can never compare to what most of you write (such beautiful words, such endearing stories! How do you guys do it? I need a pamphlet for that) I think it's a great way to learn the language. If you guys liked it, even a little bit, could you please review? Reviews keep me inspired (and quite honestly, they make me so happy too). And if you didn't like it, or if you found grammatical errors or OOC characters, can you review, too? I love knowing everything I do wrong, so I can improve (: I am trying to learn english, after all.

Thank you for reading, little birds!