Bonnie had spent hours going through all her old journals, trying to find the right date to send herself to. When her consequences wouldn't kill everyone else. Or at least kill the fewest people. It had to be before Damon and Elena first got together. Once Damon had her, he would never let her go. Which meant it had to be before the end of November, twenty ten. She started from the time she met Damon. While they could maybe prevent the tomb vampires, Elena was still a doppelganger. The originals would still be coming, and it was only her spell that saved Elena's life during that ritual. No matter how upset she was at Elena right now, she didn't want her dead at seventeen, so after that would be best and that was in...she checked her journal, April twenty ten. That narrowed it down a bit more. She would need her magic to deal with the ghosts after that, and then that would lead to Esther getting out since she'd used the ghosts as a way to get her own messages through and that would just be a huge disaster.
No, Bonnie's best bet would be to stop the ghosts before they started. She did a little reading back to remind herself how that whole mess started and realized that it was her resurrection of Jeremy when he died that created that fissure and allowed the whole mess. Which meant that the only way to prevent that would be to let Jeremy die. She sat there and tried to work through the problem a dozen different ways. Trying to figure out a way to save Jeremy's life, without magic, if she went back. Since the cost of making this trip would be to lose her magic permanently, it made things so much more difficult. There was also the chance that her interference in that time would prevent Damon from getting the cure for his werewolf bite if she pulled too many strings and while it would be kinder to let him die there rather than live the hell he lived later, that would be even worse than Jeremy dying.
She wondered for a moment if it would be kinder to Elena to go back before the ritual and let her die, but then remembered that Damon had fed her his blood and she had no way to stop that. She hadn't even been there and Damon wasn't likely to listen to her. Which meant that without Bonnie's spell, she would be dealing with the loss of Jenna and Jeremy while in the midst of the emotional tailspin of transition with the enhanced emotions of vampirism and no. That wasn't an option. That would be even more cruel than letting her lose all her family and then Stefan to Klaus in one fell swoop. May first it was. She would aim for when she took Jeremy away to try to revive him and then just claim she couldn't do it and let everything else play out.
Bonnie got everything ready for the spell, fighting to ignore the monitor on Damon's health that was going off again. In about an hour none of this would matter anymore. Once everything was ready, Bonnie took a few deep breaths, readying herself for the last magic she would ever do. The Bennett witches would end with her after two thousand years of magic. She forced herself to remember why she was doing this, helped by the incessant pinging of Damon's health tracker. When it suddenly went silent, that was the impetus she needed to get moving and she started the spell, not letting the consistent ringing of her phone that started a moment later distract her either.
Half an hour later, she was back in the abandoned house where the witches were burned, getting ready to cast the spell to resurrect Jeremy. She let herself fall to her knees and sob. The absence of her magic hit her hard. It wasn't like before. Now she knew that it had always been there, even if she couldn't access it, but now it was gone completely. The spirits had taken their due. Even worse than that though was Jeremy lying there dead. She had time though. She could wallow for a while. She had to stay here until everything else played out anyway. As she noticed the sun set, she forced herself to pull together. It was helped by the death that had happened just before she came back. That was why she was doing this. So that he wouldn't have to suffer that. To avoid so much suffering, but especially his.
No matter the ache in her soul where her magic should be, no matter the pain of seeing Jeremy there dead, it was worth it. For Damon and for all the others that would be saved this time around. Even for Elena who would never have to become that person she did in the future. For Stefan whose life could be saved. For all those Silas killed now that he could never be released without Bennett magic. Sure, she had distant cousins and all who would carry on the name, but the family magic had died with the main line. With her magic. As long as her mother never got hers back of course, which she shouldn't without Bonnie poking around for it, and she wouldn't this time. No, she would leave her mother to the peaceful life she wanted. That she should have had last time.
Bonnie picked herself up, but had no choice but to leave Jeremy there for now. She would send someone after him later, but she couldn't even levitate his body anymore and there was no way she was strong enough to carry him. That didn't mean she had to go far. She got outside where she had a cell signal and called Caroline. Just because she couldn't feel the witches there anymore didn't mean that they wouldn't screw up the cell signals. It had taken a wifi booster with the open window to be able to video chat from the computer the last time she was there when she was playing dead. Bonnie knew that Damon had just gotten the cure and that he and Elena were learning about Stefan's deal and trying to cope with that and since she needed a vampire to move Jeremy, Caroline was the only option.
Not that she would have called Damon yet anyway. She needed to get in his good graces a bit first. To prove herself to him. Caroline was always her go to in this time when she needed a vampire anyway and after a quick phone call, she was on her way. She got there and immediately pulled Bonnie into a tearful hug, sad that they couldn't save Jeremy and Bonnie cried again with her. Caroline was also sad that her mother would have to live with killing a kid like that. She was already dealing with some major guilt after Caroline had reversed the first compulsion on her under the circumstances and this would crush her. Once the two girls had exhausted their tears for the moment, Caroline went to get Jeremy's body. Her mother would have to help cover this one up too. Like Jenna and John, Elena deserved the chance to lay him to rest the right way rather than putting him in a shallow grave somewhere to be forgotten.
Bonnie let Caroline handle that and went home to rest. Between the fact that it was the middle of the night when she'd done the spell to jump back, the hours she'd spent in an emotional breakdown, and everything else she was dealing with, she was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep for days. And eat. Food first. She just hoped she had something simple and easy at home /to/ eat. With her lucky lately she'd get home only to find that she needed a shopping trip. She gave Caroline one more hug before leaving and heading home, remembering at the last minute that she was still living with her father, little though he was around. She hadn't moved into her grandmother's place yet. She needed to figure out what she was going to do about that soon too.
She had a lot of things she needed to figure out, she realized as she drove home. One major priority was who would be getting her grimoires. Or at least who would get a copy of the daylight ring spell. She would need one herself soon enough and unless she managed to prevent it, so would Elena. She didn't even want to consider how annoying it would be if she turned without that. The grimoires could wait, but she needed the daylight ring sooner rather than later. She would still be a target for anyone with a grudge against Bennett witches and even if she didn't have hopes for a future with Damon, she needed to be able to protect herself. Vampirism was her best option for that and after so long in the supernatural world she could see the benefits of it now. Especially after seeing how difficult Damon's adjustment was back to human. The one thing that would have never made it worth it for her she'd already lost anyway so she might as well. She wasn't letting Damon turn her though. She wasn't risking a sirebond due to her feelings for him. No, when the time came, she would ask Caroline to do it. She had a lot of other things to put into place first though.
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... REDO
FanfictionTwenty years after Damon takes the cure and marries Elena, Bonnie realizes that they can't go on like they are and takes drastic measures to fix it, despite the cost.
