I'll Be Your Last

Bonnie...

A/N: Thank you so much for your kind comments and support!

I was happy to see Elena the next morning, standing in my doorway – until I noticed the tears. She was wrecked and seemed to be struggling to tell me something.

I jumped up and ran to hug her. “Elena, what is it?”

She just grabbed me and started to sob. It was devastating to see her this way again considering all she’d lost. She’d had been doing so much better all summer since Jeremy had returned to the land of the living and she’d decided that she loved Damon. Bonnie was off visiting family for the summer. Stefan had left town, losing her to his brother had been painful I knew, but it made things easier for her. Silas was taken care of. The originals had left town.

I couldn’t begin to guess what was up.

I didn’t immediately notice Damon slip into my room and close the door behind him.

“Damon?” I asked, hoping he would let me know what horrible thing had happened.

“Hey, hey,” he said, prying Elena away from me and pulling her into his arms, trying to soothe her.

“Caroline, you might want to sit down,” he told me.

Okay, this was really bad.

Elena tried to speak then, sitting on the edge of my bed, but she choked on the words. Damon sank onto the mattress behind her. His blue eyes held none of his usual snark as he studied me.

“What?” It had to be incredibly bad if he was struggling. “What’s happened?”

“Caroline, Bonnie is dead,” he finally answered.

“What?!” That couldn’t be right. How could that be right? Bonnie graduated with us. She made it through the entire Silas ordeal. She’d just gone to visit family for the summer again. Right?

“She’s gone. When she brought back ---“

“She can’t be gone!”

“Caroline, – “

“No! Bonnie’s not dead. She can’t be dead.”

Damon’s eyes slid closed, his expression pained. “I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath, an image of Bonnie’s beautiful face filling my mind. Pain and loss had returned to shatter us all again and tears began to sting my eyes.

“What happened? When?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself in a vain attempt to hold my world together.

Damon swallowed hard, holding Elena as she cried.

“Apparently, bringing Jeremy back and keeping him here when she closed the veil was too much for her. She used that expression stuff Shane told us about. It killed her,” he explained.

Tears were spilling down my face, falling harder despite my attempt to blink them back.

“Are you sure?” I tried. “I mean – “

“We’re sure,” Damon’s voice was low, not entirely steady. “Jeremy was the one who told us. He was there with her.”

Damn it, Bonnie. All of us had been through so much, lost so much. Bonnie had been no exception in the loss department. She’d lost her Grams, her estranged mother. Jeremy. She’d been our savior, and our pawn, in all the supernatural games that had dominated our lives since the Salvatore brothers came to town. She’d been one of the best friends a girl could ever have.

And now she was gone. It wasn’t fair. She’d deserved so much more.

“Wait?” Something occurred to me. “Are you saying she’s been gone all summer? Because she closed the veil after graduation, right? She’s been gone all this time? Why? Why is Jeremy only telling us now?”