For Good

“Yeah, it’s a long story,” Hayley said quickly, trying to sweep the subject under the rug. There was no way she could tell Bonnie what happened without exposing herself and she wasn’t sure how well she’d take the news that werewolves and vampires and whatever else existed. What Bonnie imagined instead was much, much worse, though. The werewolf crinkled her nose in disgust and shot her a surprised look. “Damon and I? No. No way in hell,” she defended herself rather quickly. So quickly, in fact, that she only remembered they had slept together. “Okay, well, there was this one time… But it was a spur of the moment thing. There’s no feelings involved or anything like that. And it won’t happen again. Probably.” She averted her gaze to avoid whatever look of judgement Bonnie was about to give her. Sleeping with Damon hadn’t really been her best idea, that was getting clearer by the day, but she couldn’t exactly take it back. “I will. At least for a little while longer.”

Bonnie schooled her emotions and somehow managed to overcome her urge to either gag or say ‘Ick!’ at Hayley’s revelations. In all honesty, she could hardly offer scorn or criticism over the action when her best friend had done almost the exact same thing. Of course, that had been under compulsion but. . .The thought came into her mind so violently that she could scarcely avoid the widening of her eyes. What if Hayley was under Damon’s compulsion? She seemed a relatively reasonable girl, so this hypothesis helped justify the action of hooking up with Damon. “Probably,” Bonnie notes, unable to restrain herself with a nod of her head. She shifts gears, however, unable to shake the idea that Hayley was perhaps under Damon’s hypnotic compulsion. “Have you ever had vervain tea?” Deciding that ending her comment there is perhaps a little too abrupt, she adds, “I’m only asking because you work at the cafe. It’s this really relaxing tea that helps clear your mind and it really relaxes you. My Grams used to make it sometimes.”

Elena couldn’t help the stare that she gave her friend when she talked about making Damon bleed. She was all for trying this new idea out but she didn’t know how she felt about getting his blood involuntarily. “How about we ask him first before you go and make him bleed without his consent” she suggested, listening to the girl talk about her Grams and what she felt afterwards and how it made her want to think outside the box. Her hand immediately moved over to her hand as she squeezed it slightly. “You are exactly correct but I don’t want you doing a spell that might hurt you in the end, Bonnie. I don’t want you to hurt yourself just so that we can find a way to get the upper hand on Katherine. I’m more than okay with not having the upper hand but having your safety.” Elena would never do anything if that meant it hurt the ones around her. She wouldn’t risk it no matter what and even the thought of Bonnie getting hurt in all of this made her want to stop it.

Nodding her head, she listened to how they needed all three for this to work and although it still blew her mind what kind of things Bonnie could do, she was willing to give it a chance. The only thing it could do was not work and that was something that she was willing to risk. “I am still amazed at what you know and what you are capable of doing. I don’t think I would have ever thought about that or figured something like that would work but here you are figuring it out.” The sooner that they got started on this, the faster they could figure things out but she didn’t want to rush the other girl considering that she had just done on the full moon. “When should we do this then?” she questioned.

Bonnie suppressed an eye roll at Elena`s comment. Sarcastically, she said, “You’re right. Since Damon was so big on the consent thing when he nearly tore my throat out.” She pauses, then adds, “And when he snapped Jeremy’s neck. And when he turned Vicki Donovan. And. . .” As she fades off, sure that her point is made, she latches onto the next item of conversation .”A lot more people will get hurt if I don’t do it, Elena. It’s not realistic to pretend that we don’t have to do start off strong if we want to finish strong.” Bonnie didn’t want to get hurt either, however. She’d left that out, wanted to provide an unshakeable front for her best friend. She was scared, had been since Grams had died. But that wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop her from doing the things that needed to be done. And this was one of them.

Bonnie grins at Elena’s compliment, pulling into the parking lot of the grill. She turns the car off and unbuckles her seat belt. “ It helps to have virtually no other distractions on my plate,” Bonnie tells Elena, somewhat modestly. She’d done a brilliant thing, in Elena’s opinion, but to Bonnie it was almost entirely a last resort. In all honesty, since she’d spent her entire summer focusing on the Katherine issue, she was a little disappointed that it had taken her this long to come up with a blood synthesizing spell. “You’ve got Jer, and Stefan, and everything else keeping your mind occupied. And, speaking of Stefan, I’m not sure about the timing yet, so could you put in a good word with him about my spell? He won’t be the biggest fan but I’m sure you could convince him.”

“Damn, you’re right. I totally forgot. I guess this requires a shirt?”

"I’m going to go with ‘yes’.”

“You should learn to knock, next time I might not be wearing boxers. What can I help you with?”

“Ummm,” Bonnie starts, momentarily losing her train of thought. “We’re. . .we have to work on this history project together. Mr. Saltzman paired us up today.” She shakes her head with a small laugh, “Sorry, your mom sent me up.”

Bonnie: SOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“And I’d happily die if it meant I didn’t have to hear your self righteous rants” Damon said with the roll of his eyes. “Me, I ruined your stupid spell? That’s really rich coming from you. Spell doesn’t work so I get the blame, real mature. I think you need to understand something here, I am in charge, and I can find another witch to do my plan. You’re disposable.”

Elena’s brow instantly furrowed at the mention of synthesizing Katherine’s blood. She waited for Bonnie to speak again in hopes that she would get the answers to the questions that were sprouting in her head. Could this actually work? The three of their’s blood to somehow be isolated and used to get the upper hand on Katherine. The thought alone was enough to make her want to immediately say yes and agree to this plan. She had a feeling that Stefan and Damon wouldn’t agree to that but Elena was fully on board with the idea. Anything to try and get the upper hand on Katherine and to maybe figure her out. “That sounds like the craziest plan ever but what if it actually works? I mean I’m all for giving up a little bit of blood if that means that we can get the upper hand on Katherine. I’m not so sure about Damon or Stefan. I mean I’m pretty sure that we could get Stefan on board but I don’t know how well it’s going to work with Damon.” Elena bit down on her bottom lip as she thought. “How did you figure this one out? I mean the whole synthesizing our blood and trying to form hers. Do you think it would be possible to just do it with my blood and not have to use theirs? Or it is absolutely necessary to have all three?”

Bonnie relaxed immediately at her best friend’s willingness to participate. That was Elena, Bonnie thought. The bright side to her unfortunate inability to judge others and protect herself was that she could wholly and completely give herself to those whom she trusted. With Bonnie, as much as she loved her friends, some of the things she’d done had come more from a place of duty than from a place of love — at least, since she’d become a witch. She smirks at Elena’s concern regarding Damon, saying with quiet conviction and a devil-may-care attitude, “I can make Damon bleed.” When Elena sought further counsel on the matter, Bonnie breathed out a bit of hair, glancing skyward as she thought about her response. “I decided to think out of the box for a change. Since Grams died, I’ve been. . .lost,” Bonnie admits, “And I think that feeling that way, and being so afraid and sad just made me search for answers in the grimoire, answers that couldn’t possibly be there. There’s no spell to defeat Katherine because no one has ever had to do it before. So I’ve got to make my own spell, do my own magic. And if you don’t have the ingredients you need, you’ve got to find substitutes, right?”

Bonnie turns onto Wickery Bridge, a few short blocks from the Grill. She shakes he head at Elena’s suggestion. “Maybe if I were older or stronger it would work, but as someone relatively new to the craft, it’s just too complex.” Magic was inherently dangerous; the kind of magic Bonnie wielded, even more-so. She wouldn’t run the risk of hurting her friends. “You’re Katherine’s doppleganger, that’s true, but you’ve got a different soul and your essential Elena-ness. It’s why we like you,” Bonnie says, raising a brow and smirking. “There would be nothing safeguarded in the science of the magic to make sure that I didn’t cast the spell on you, it would all be up to intention. And I’m not powerful enough to work magic based solely off of intention.” She shakes her head again even as she thinks of it. No she would need all three. “Your blood is simply a case; blood magic happens all the time, and it doesn’t always have to do with the nature of the giver’s blood. Add in Stefan’s, and whatever link you both have to Katherine appears, but it appears to be a coincidence. Add in Damon’s, have three separate blood samples with a common denominator — that becomes a pattern. And that’s what we need.”

“Maybe. Maybe I’ll stop by the school and see if there’s anything they can do,” she said, Bonnie’s determination given her a little bit of hope that maybe she could go back. Or at least she could convince Damon to compel the administrators into letting her join her former class. “Well, for someone who’s never experienced it, it’s pretty good advice. Thanks, I’ll give that a shot. If they’ll let me, that is.” Hayley chuckled, unable to argue with her logic. She was right, you couldn’t apologize for other people, that’s just not how things worked. “I know, I just thought I’d give it a shot. I know I should listen, he warned me himself, but I just don’t see the person he keeps warning me about. He’s been good to me, except for that one time he betrayed me,” she told her with a shrug. “But he explained that. And in his twisted Damon way, he was only trying to do the right thing.” Bonnie’s next comment rang some alarms in Hayley’s mind. It made her wonder if, perhaps, she knew more than the werewolf had originally thought. “What do you mean by that?”

“ Betrayed you?” Bonnie asked, raising her brows a little. The word threw her off, it was so medieval. The only possible reasons for using it involved something similarly medieval, like a coup or a romantic betrayal. Both seemed equally far-fetched in Bonnie’s eyes. The only way he’d have seized any sort of power from her was if she, herself, was inherently powerful. And in Mystic Falls, that was synonymous with being supernatural. The romance angle blossomed more and more in Bonnie’s mind as Hayley continued, speaking fondly of the ‘twisted Damon’ logic that, as far as Bonnie was concerned, put him in bed with terrorists and serial killers. “Is there. . .? Are you and Damon. . .?” Bonnie fades off, lets the look on her face finish her statement for her. She waves off Hayley’s concern about her comment, “Stick around. You’ll see what I mean.” You can’t miss it, Bonnie wanted to add, but then again, didn’t so many? Getting roped in with Damon, however, was going to make it relatively impossible for Hayley to live a normal life.

“Then it’s probably a duck” Elena finished Bonnie’s sentence before looking out the window for a moment. If anyone could understand where Bonnie was coming from, it was Elena but with this - with this she didn’t feel the way that Bonnie felt. Someone can be bad, yes, but can they change? Elena liked to think so. People make mistakes and although Damon’s mistakes were more on the bloodier side of things, does that mean that he doesn’t deserve a second chance? To see if maybe, just maybe there was something else about him that would override the bad things that he had done. He still had to be accountable for them but that shouldn’t fully determine if he was a good or bad person. This would be one subject that the two girls didn’t agree on and Elena already knew that she couldn’t convince the witch otherwise so she didn’t even try. She left that conversation at bay as the mention of Klaus caused her attention to turn back to her best friend.

Elena wished there was something that she could do to figure out who this Klaus person was, how the moonstone came into play with him and Katherine and why Katherine was so afraid of this guy. She tried to think about if she had heard something but nothing that even remotely related to that and although it frustrated her, she knew that they were closer to getting answers. They knew more than they did before and it meant that they had a chance to figure it out before it was too late. Katherine’s blood. That wasn’t going to be easy to get in the slightest because come on when will they be able to get her blood? “So, if we can get her blood then we can see her memories and figure out who this Klaus is?” When Bonnie said that she had an idea, Elena found herself being slightly scared but more curious. “What idea do you have that you need our permission for?” If she needed all their permission for this idea of hers then it had to be something risky.

Bonnie had been toying with the idea for a while. It first sprang into her mind when Stefan had warned her against an interview with Katherine, insisted that she stay as far away from the girl as she could get. Once she’d had her alone in the woods, however, it didn’t seem as if she’d ever need to think this way again. But she’d had to leave Katherine there, the vampire’s state too volatile to approach and extract what she needed. Bonnie had returned to her drawing board, and revisited an earlier plot that was of the so-crazy-it-just-might-work variety. “I think. . .I think I can synthesize her blood. Katherine’s.” Bonnie lets this hang in the air before she adds. “In chemistry, they explain how different elements when combined make different compounds, and how even compounds may break apart to form another compound if the situation calls for it. Well, mystically, that should be the same.” She thinks over her reasoning and presents her ideas, “You’re the doppleganger, genetically identical to her and linked through some sort of mystical energy. Stefan and Damon were the men she loved and turned, brothers. If your blood, the three of you, was combined, and if like attracts like, which it does, then the components of your blood that connect each of you to Katherine could be isolated and then used as a direct link to her. It could be used the same way her blood would be. Used to summon, to mindread, to link; used to get the upperhand.”

“I’m not scared of a little Bennet witch, you’re lineage only survived because of me” Damon said through gritted teeth, both angry and annoyed at Bonnie’s confidence at this point. “Well this rabid dog happens to be in Elena’s good graces, and I think you know Stefan well enough to know that if you kill me, he’ll most definitely seek some payback because you know, brothers and all” Damon said with a shrug. 

“Well, I’m sure the high school diploma will definitely make choosing a lot easier. I kind of wish I could go back,” Hayley told Bonnie with a sigh. It seemed unlikely that they would just let her go back in after years of being gone. She wasn’t exactly at the same level as the other students. “That’s pretty good advice. I just need to figure out how to fix what’s broken between the Lockwoods and I. That part might be a little more difficult, so if you have any wise advice for that I’m all ears.” Bonnie’s reaction to the mere mention of Damon’s name was intriguing, to say the least. Not to mention a little worrying. If she hated him that much, she was sure she had valid reasons. She didn’t exactly seem like the irrational type. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m just trying to figure him out,” she explained with a shrug. “I’m sorry, though. Whatever he did to you I’m sure you didn’t it. Everyone seems really confused that I’m friends with him, but I guess I just haven’t really seen that side of him you keep warning me about. At least, I haven’t seen too much of it.”

"You can go back,” Bonnie insisted. Regardless of where Hayley was in life or what she had or had not done, she seemed smart and capable. Bonnie would probably never stop pressuring her to finish her education, to get enrolled once more and try again. The brunette shrugs apologetically, “I’ve ever burnt any bridges so I’ve never really had to mend any. All I can say is be honest, and be there for them now since you couldn’t be before.” Bonnie shakes her head at Hayley’s comments about Damon, the very subject making her more than reasonably irritated. “You can’t apologize for him, and there’s no use in it. He’s done what he’s done, he is who he is. I’m tired of warning people about that, about Damon Salvatore. They don’t listen. No one does.” She shrugs, “People want to believe what they want to believe, and that’s up to them.” She thought about the hand the supernatural had in the town, and the way that there were several people in Mystic Falls who still didn’t have the faintest clue. “People are like that. Especially in this town. And not just with Damon.”

Caroline solemnly nodded. The idea of not seeing any of her friends again, or her Mother, because she didn’t give it her all against whatever they faced made her mad. The blonde had never lost someone and she wasn’t ready to feel it, she admired Bonnie for being strong and still helping them get out of the messes they were in. “No, I’m good. Super strength, remember?”, she nodded with a small smile, “and my car is just a few steps away”. Caroline rolled her eyes, “separating those two is going to be impossible, But if Elena says no, I can always convince Stefan to drop her by at my house”. She kissed her friend’s forehead, “being busy should not get in the way of us spending time together. Friendship over baddies and guys and social life… see you in five?”

Bonnie tried to smile at Caroline’s comment, but they both knew that whatever their enemies had on their side was often much stronger. They were faster, stronger, smarter, and had always been around way longer than their group had been. They were only in high school; it wasn’t fair what they had to deal with, how much loss and responsibility they had to face. With a nod, Bonnie agrees, “In five.”