Yellow Ledbetter

Once more, with feeling

Pain, he realises, comes in a spectrum- much like a rainbow. All these different types and variations with lots of different shades to them, but they all meet at the inevitable white blur. It hurts. He hurts. So while he hurts he categorises the pain in two main types. Physical and emotional. Kai would like to say with absolute certainty that emotional pain is worse than physical pain. Physical pain will always have an end, even if the end is death. Emotional hurt can last a lifetime, and get worse as it goes on. But right now, as his body is being drained of blood, ichor ripped from his veins by what feels like hundreds of knives piercing his flesh, he doesn't remember emotional pain feeling this crippling. Even if there is an end coming, this moment is eternity. He is trapped in a cycle of suffering, hot behind his eyelids, and nothing will make it stop. He can't speak, holes in his neck and shredded muscle bleeding out. He can't move, limbs frozen in horror and agony as he sees blurry figures feast- an arm and a leg each to make sure he isn't crowded. He can't think beyond the torment. The first thing he did was try to use magic, that's how he learnt what it feels like to be siphoned and he's sorry to every single person he ever took magic from.

Her face, contorted in pain, is the image he latches onto to help him get through this. Her face in pain, her face when she's angry, her face when she's smug, happy and upset, all flash through his mind. Her face, completely remorseless as she abandoned him here, is the last thing he can focus on before finally passing out.

Great emotional intelligence is a curse more than anything. Because now it means Kai can look back on thoughts in hindsight, with a new perspective. Sometimes those thoughts should have been left alone. Like the events which lead to him getting stuck in yet another prison world. She's not so lonely in her title anymore. This one doesn't even have wifi. He keeps replaying the look on Bonnie's face and just how out of character the whole thing was. Stabbing him and leaving him here isn't a Bonnie move, it's so sneaky and underhanded, she wouldn't even pretend to roll a six when Damon wasn't looking. She can blame the flip in personality on him all she wants but he's not entirely to blame. Something reeks of Damon Salvatore and it's not just his old bed, which Kai is now sequestered in. That smells more like mold than anything else. Everything smells like mold in 1903.

Bonnie's already got this mean streak, let's not forget who threw the first pick-axe, couple that with Damon's poor morality and bingo bango there's your answer. Damon must have convinced her to stab him and leave him here.

Let's not dance around his feelings and say what this really is.

She's becoming more like Damon.

And Kai is jealous.

Because he knows that deep down, the whole reason she looks past Damon's flaws and spits on Kai's is because she cares about Damon. She came back for Damon 13 times. Maybe she's even got a thing for him. But Bon Bon is too loyal to Elsa to do a thing about it. Bet if it was the other way around old crazypants wouldn't be so dutiful. Unfortunately Bonnie can't see past any of that.

He explains all of this to Nora.

One of his Heretic hosts.

This Prison World is not unpopulated. Which in a way is nice except his cellmates have taken to using him as a walking bloodbag. He's taken to letting them so long as he has their help to get out of here. These guys don't frown on his past, monsters don't judge other monsters. Besides, after almost killing him on the first night, it's not like he has much of a choice anyway.

They take it in turns feeding on him little by little until they're completely undesiccate d, in the meanwhile he's set up in Damon's original bedroom complete with photos of him on the dresser in old-timey soldier get up. Grandpa was a war hero.