Pray For The Wicked : Kol Mikaelson [2]

163: Christmas Through Your Eyes

Minor TW: Discussion about depression (From start of conversation with Cami until arrival at Caroline's dorm)

It had officially been a month since MJ had come back to life, and she was doing better in the small ways. She was showering. She was eating. Her appetite was tiny, but it was something. And, if she woke up with an ache across her body, tearing up for no obvious reason, she forced herself up and to the sofa. Sure, being sofa-ridden wasn't much better than bed-ridden, but it was baby steps.

The randomly wanting to cry was the worst part.

Trying to work out what was making her emotional was like a fast-track path to spiralling into an abyss of dark thoughts. But it needed to happen. Because Jo said that crying was healthy. Because even though her eyes would sting the following day, it would cause the rest of her body to untense, knowing it was being listened to and allowed to function normally, rather than pushed further down – MJ's standard coping mechanism.

The spare room in Ric's apartment was now decorated.

On one of her, 'I'm not leaving my bed' days, he'd come in with the idea to waste the afternoon making it feel homier, and...the plan had actually worked to lift her spirits.

And he'd 'forced' her to use his credit card to buy her flight to New Orleans. A sign of peace. Because she was allowed to go home.

He wasn't the happiest about it, but he was tired of arguing about it too, and he seemed a little less distressed after listening to her talk him through everyone else she'd befriended the past year. MJ had hidden certain details about each of them to limit the Mikaelson connections they all had, but that was just common sense.

Their shopping trip had also involved popping back to Mystic Falls to grab some of her possessions from his old apartments, then the odd thing or two from the Lockwoods. She was still planning on keeping those places as her places for when she inevitably visited, but it was nice to make the spare room feel personalised.

Some new wallpaper up, bedsheets and towels that matched colours she liked, and even a few pieces of wall art, as well as a desk and whole bunch of new stationery he'd bought for her.

She'd gotten way too excited about the stationery.

Other than trying to manage her low spells, MJ was on the constant lookout for Kai – i.e. not sleeping, and trying to save Bonnie. She'd been given the broken pieces of the ascendant to mess around with, but there wasn't anything MJ could do. Only Bennett Magic seemed to be able to fix them up properly.

She'd handed them back to Damon to make a bit of a point.

'Look at what you let happen.' 'Look what I have to fix.'

The prison world still existed; that was what mattered; MJ just needed to find a different way in.

Something she was failing to do.

"What about binding it with Bennett blood?" Kol's face was on her phone, propped up on the desk as she studied some texts in front of her, "If Kai Parker only needed blood to get out, not magic – that implies it's the biological, not the ancestral that matters."

She straightened up.

"So, use Bennet blood to bind it back together."

"I'd have the channel the blood to do that, though," MJ bit her cheek, "I can't channel Bonnie."

As a Floare Siphoner, she couldn't channel any ancestral witch.

"Blood isn't Bonnie, though," He reminded her, "It's nature. You can channel water and air."