Gift

1

Bonnie Bennett thought she wanted to be around people again, but the people she usually hung around left a lot to be desired. Kai was trapped, probably being passed around like a blunt among Lily's desiccated brethren—that thought managed to eek a smirk out of Bonnie. Still, it had been a night of walking in on her friends getting Biblical, a sight she'd wouldn't wish on anyone. Mounting heaps of awkwardness aside, all it did was augment how lonely she truly was.

She drove around Mystic Falls aimlessly and ended up outside of her childhood home. It had been put up on the market. No one had bought it yet and Bonnie hoped no one would. Her car idled outside as she noted everything about the house she hadn't noticed in the eighteen years she lived there. The fact the last number on the house was slightly crooked. One of the posts on the veranda was lopsided.

Memories surfaced. Falling down the brick stairs when she was ten and scraping her knee. The porch swing that had been in serious need of oiling that typically scared her awake whenever a strong wind blew by and caused it to move back and forward. Her house was a house but it had never truly been a home. Bonnie had always felt more comfortable under Grams' roof, and now that comfort was gone as well.

She pressed her foot on the accelerator and pulled back out on the road. Bonnie realized she would have to let go of Grams. Not what she meant to her, she could never do that, but at some point she would have to stop using Grams as a crutch, move on and finally live.

Bonnie had held herself back and for what? What was the point when everyone else around her lived out their fantasies or nightmares at whim? For too long she had been controlled either by the bounds of magic, duty, responsibility, and then out of fear of losing the last visages of the life she had been brought up in that turned out to be one disappointing lie. There were no threats skulking around wishing her or those she cared about harm. The harm was now them. Stefan and Caroline...who at the moment was probably licking some chick's blood off each other's fingertips. Needless to say, they were without their humanity, and yet somehow still found time to bang one another senseless.

Damon and Elena, Bonnie wouldn't even permit herself to go there. Back in 1994 she and Damon had talked about lots of things, but the one topic he always wiggled himself out of was any serious discussion about Elena. Bonnie understood why. It was painful being separated from the one you loved. That's why she hardly brought up Jeremy. She hadn't been in the mood to hear any scathing comments from Damon about her relationship, or the young man she had chosen to fall in love with.

Yet where was that love today? Jeremy was off in New Mexico living out his dream of becoming an artist, and here she was still wedged in the middle of matters that were really none of her business.

Bonnie's hands tightened on the steering wheel as she thought of the gift she had given Damon tonight. The cure. Twenty-four hours ago he had disregarded her request never, ever to bring Kai up to her again, to even have the audacity to utter his name, but what did Damon do? Brought the sociopath right to her at the moment she was dealing with culture shock and trying to get her bearings under control.

She remembered being so relieved seeing Damon thinking he might have detected the distress in her voice and merely showed up provide comfort in the only way he knew how. Unfortunately, Bonnie had been proven wrong the minute Kai came scurrying around the corner and gave her that piss poor apology as if that was supposed to erase every demeaning and humiliating thing he had done to her.

In that moment she felt more than just betrayed, but as if she was being flayed alive while her mind replayed her horrific ordeal in the prison world. Bonnie realized she shouldn't have been surprised by Damon's single-mindedness. However, it hadn't hurt any less that the one person who was supposed to understand, have her back, threw her under the proverbial bus because he wanted something. His wants trumped her comfort, her peace, her self. Damon had let her down.