Love And Other Delicate Things

Don't Go Into The Woods

Bonnie trampled through the woods under the thin light of a crescent moon cut bright into a black, cloudless sky. Millions of stars blinked overhead. She moved slow, cautious of the brambles in this area of the forest, her mind troubled by the unknown and by a war raging inside her conflicted heart.

Grams never warned her about the original vampire family or how dangerous and alluring vampires could be. Bonnie learned those lessons on her own—and sadly, too far gone to turn the flood of her emotions. 

She reached the clearing and the cliff. The falls gurgled just below and Bonnie closed her eyes and drew long deep breaths in through her mouth. The earth’s magic rush up from the waters, from the rich, dark soil and the thick roots of centuries old trees. Her heart raced beneath her rising and falling bosom. The energy tingled her palms and her fingertips.

Magic!

Being a witch excited her at times. Having the power. Controlling the power. It made her drunk once or twice. She feared it as much as she feared him, as much as she feared tonight.

Dusting off a log, Bonnie sat, folding her arms across her petite body. Clandestine meeting in the woods by a romantic waterfall, a teenage girl should be giddy and expectant, not bursting with trepidation and plagued with thoughts of grief. 

“I see you got my message, love.”

She shuddered at the sound of his voice. It repulsed and enticed her at the same time. Bonnie stood up and breathing in calmly, turned. He stood a yard away from her, his hands reverently at his sides.

If her friends knew she were here with him…

Bonnie didn’t want to think about that.

“Klaus,” she said.

The ancient vampire, one of the first of them, the most special of them, ambled over to her dressed in leather and an air of supreme confidence. How very Klaus of him, she thought. Somehow though, his odd swagger soothed her. No longer nervous about dying, Bonnie worried about what the rise in her pulse meant now that all the terror had fled her body.

Klaus came within a few inches of her. His eyes, alive with desire, drank in the sight of her face. Her heart thundered loud and fast, betraying her true feelings to Klaus’ keen ears. 

Lifting her chin, Bonnie refused to wilt. So what if he could hear her heart whisper her affections for him—especially when his eyes had betrayed him so many times before, as they betrayed him now.

“You look ravishing,” he said in that sly foreign tongue. “So beautiful. Is it any wonder why I would do the things I do?”

First the vampires warred with the humans, then with the werewolves and now they were fighting each other. Bonnie just wanted the fighting to end. 

“Klaus, this is insane. Even for you,” Bonnie said to him.

He frowned. “You think I’m mad?”

“I think you’re angry.”

“And why shouldn’t I be?” he growled. Bonnie chewed her lip. He turned his head just off to the side and after a long still moment where it seemed the only sound was the water rumbling over the cliff, he said, “I love you Bonnie Bennett. When I’d set out to come to Mystic Falls.” Klaus paused, looked at her and then said softly, timid for him, “I had not planned on it, but since then I came to believe that fate had decided to be kind to me…this one time.”

Bonnie pulled in a breath. Klaus’ eyes glistened in the moonlight and her hard spine turned to jelly. She wanted to hold him and let him hold her.

One thing Grams, and life, taught her from a young age was that often, you don’t get to have the things you want.

She blinked and said, “I can’t do what you want me to do.” She hesitated then said, “And I can’t love you back. Not if this is what you want. I can’t.”

Tears welled in her eyes. Bonnie tried to hold them back, but they insisted, poured down her face. Klaus stepped towards her. As she wept, he stared, his eyes tracking the emotions on her face.

“It kills me to see you like this. Pains me to see your face stained with tears.”

Klaus snaked his arms around her waist and she fell into his embrace. He lowered his face and nuzzled into the crook of her neck, kissing the skin there. His soft lips lulled her into a daydream and then Bonnie’s breath hitched. 

Would he bite her?

No. 

Klaus never did.

His mouth climbed up her neck, his tongue tasting her flesh. Klaus pressed little kisses along her jaw and at last his mouth met hers, parting her lips with his tongue. Bonnie pulled down on his neck and kissed him harder. She took another breath and in an instance felt her back against warm earth and Klaus’s cold dead weight on top of her. 

She grabbed his leather jacket, pushing it off his shoulders while he unbuttoned her jeans.

“Wait,” she said.

He growled by her ear. “Bonnie, please.”

She sucked in quick breaths and cupped his face, forcing him to open his eyes. “I won’t do this for you,” she told him.

Klaus kissed her, just a light, moist brush against her mouth, but then he came back for another and then another. Bonnie’s head spun and her eyes squeezed shut. A fiery sensation coursed through her limbs, burning hottest in the middle of her body.

Control it, she instructed herself.

Bonnie pushed Klaus away and sat up. “No. I won’t do this either.”

Klaus crouched on his hunches reminding her that he was as much wolf as vampire. He brought a hand to his face and looked her up and down. As he did, Klaus’ features hardened. Love no longer swelled behind his eyes. Bonnie recognized it as fury instead.

“I have waited a long time for this.” He shook his head, cast his eyes down to the dirt and said, “I cannot walk away from it, Bonnie.”

She balled her hands into fists. She could clobber the stubbornness out him. Bonnie brought her face close to his, hoping to reach the part of him she fell in love with, the part she knew loved her. 

Klaus kept his eyes fixed to the ground and away from her gaze. 

Crying again, Bonnie wiped her face and told him, “I’m sorry.”

She scrambled to her feet and stomped away, stepping over the log and heading back towards the thicket growing underneath the trees.

“Bonnie,” Klaus said. “Bonnie, come back here. Please!”

When she didn’t answer, he called out for her again. She wouldn’t look back.

“BONNIE!” 

For a heartbeat she feared him again. She hurried back through the woods, less concerned about scraping against the prickly bushes. After a while she realized that he was letting her go—although she heard his footsteps trailing behind her at some distance. 

Klaus followed her to her car. As she drove home, she caught shapes of a man’s figure in the mist, in the edges of the shadows along the road. When she got to her house she sensed him outside her bedroom window and she knew it had been him lurking on the periphery of her life all those times before. 

Was this their fate?

It seemed Klaus was wrong after all. Fate showed him no mercy.

Bonnie sat on her bed. The thought to walk over to the window and pull back the curtains crossed her mind, but her feet refused to take the first step. 

He was still out there, below her window, hoping she’d come back to him. 

Bonnie reached her hand across the space and turned out the light.