Sacred Geometry : chapter 12
Title: Sacred Geometry
Author: Sky Samuelle
Characters: Bonnie and Damon-centric, but Katherine, Jeremy, Elena and Stefan will be nearly as heavily featured. This is probably as close to an ensemble fic as I’ll ever get.
Pairings: Bonnie/Damon, Stefan/Elena, Jeremy/Anna
Rating: Mature
Timeline: Post 1.22
Summary: Mystic Falls will never be the same again after Founders’ Day. Not with Katherine and Jeremy allying to resurrect Anna and Pearl. Not with Stefan and Elena on the receiving end of Katherine’s sick games. And Bonnie and Damon? Well, they are stuck at the epicenter of everything. Currently on- Bonnie keeps struggling to handle the most primal aspects of her witch nature, and Damon does anything but help.
AN: Soundtrack to this chapter is ‘Real’- Goo Goo Dolls (a truly perfect Bamon song, listen it if you have the chance). Thank you to everyone for your wonderful reviews! You make writing this story so much more enjoyable!
Chapter 12
“What’s up with you lately?” Bonnie ventures to her best friend during one relatively uneventful evening. “You’ve been strange lately.”
The witch would have probably noticed before Stefan asked her to talk to his girlfriend if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with her own private issues. Stefan is worried for her, says that something is off with Elena even though he can’t pinpoint what. Bonnie agrees that Elena has been sending off the same vibe she did when she was striving to look ‘okay’ after her parents’ death. Which is kind of acceptable since Jeremy turned and disappeared; and Katherine keeps sending little gifts and psycho love letters to Stefan. Bonnie feels guilty for not being more supportive, but it’s not like Elena is not permanently attached to her boyfriend’s side. Almost like she is…avoiding her, but that is not possible. Elena and Stefan don’t even suspect about that night.
“Strange is the new normal in this house,” Elena answers offhandedly, twisting a chestnut lock between her fingers. “I’m just weary of all these crises. I’m tired of wondering if Jeremy will ever even call me. I’m sick of Katherine stalking my boyfriend and sending him her creepy letters reminiscing about their past. I don’t feel like talking about this stuff all the time. ”
Looking at her, Bonnie is reminded for a moment of the privileged popular queen bee she was just a year ago. Which might be good, bad, or neither. Everyone needs to shut down sometimes. “Okay.”
“How’s it going with Damon?”
“What?” For a moment, Bonnie is startled by the question. She keeps forgetting her little training sessions with the vampire are common knowledge although no one but her and Damon know why they are so necessary.
“The offensive spell-work practice. Are you making any progress?”
Elena sounds hopeful, like she is picturing all the ways they might get Katherine out of the picture already. It irrationally irks the witch. “My aim with fire balls sucks,” she shrugs. “Managing to not kill Damon for real is progress enough for now.”
It might come across as a joke, but there’s more than a little truth behind those words.
If Damon wasn’t as powerful and experienced as he is, she would be worried. Sometimes, when the spells work through her, she gets so very angry that it’s hard to keep it all in and let the rage out in a controlled, steady manner. Sometimes, when she tries to contain the power, it physically hurts her so badly that she feels like she is going die. She finds herself unable to talk about it, with anyone. Not solely because no one but Damon and Gwen knows about her recent study in Dark Magic. Her weakness fills her with shame. It’s bad enough that Damon sees it so frequently.
Elena leans on Bonnie because Bonnie has always been stable, accommodating, the voice of reason when things went from bad to worse. Bonnie is afraid of losing any more constants in her small world. She is scared of being seen as weak, un-trustworthy, a threat.
“His antics take a lot of getting used to.”
Elena smiles lightly, basically transpiring fondness and slight nostalgia. Bonnie is not entirely sure how much of her accurate reading of her friend is due to her life-long companionship and how much is due to her developing powers. Either way, she makes a point of writing the thought out of her memory. Since forging her weird, inconstant and private understanding with Damon, she feels uncomfortable passing judgment on what she has privately christened as ‘The Triangle of Doom.’
Stefan has not been with Elena long enough to know that the girl is not used to denying herself anything, and while Elena’s intentions are always good and her love for Stefan plain as day to see, Bonnie wonders how long her friend will be following her advice and keeping her distance from Damon.
She feels almost a little bit guilty at the possibility of Elena missing him, because although she still believes her advice is right and genuine, the fact that she has slept with the older Salvatore brother makes it look otherwise.
Which is stupid because it’s not like Bonnie has stolen him or whatever and while Elena can enjoy Damon’s attention and company, her relationship with Stefan still stands sacred.
Does Elena lust after Damon despite that?
“Are you glaring at me?” the brunette in question inquires, amused, shaking the witch out of her inner monologue.
“No,” Bonnie replies collectedly, “but I was thinking we need ice scream, cookies, and a good romantic comedy. It’s been ages since we had a normal girls-only evening.”
The proposition both distracts and intrigues her best friend instantly. “It’s a great idea. I can’t even remember the last time we went by the video store.”
Her degree of enthusiasm leaves Bonnie feeling even guiltier.
Two-timing two brothers is gross. Elena wouldn’t do it. Not even inside her head. I’m becoming paranoid because of… that other thing. Damn, I knew nothing good could come out of having sex with the devil.
Underneath the guilt, deep down in that dark, primitive core of herself where her Power sinks its roots, a more basic instinct tugs at her. It’s territorial, angry, ferocious. It doesn’t recognize Elena as an equal, and it dislikes being challenged by a mere human.
I’m human too. -the witch tries to convince herself.
Grams’ firm voice echoes in between her thoughts, a memento from one of her first lessons: ‘Spell-work is what we do, Bonnie, but Witchcraft is what we are. It permeates and shapes every part of us: how we feel, how we think, how we act and react.’
Sometimes Bonnie thinks moving on from Grams is so hard because, blood ties aside, in the Craft Sheila was the mother who gave her a new life. She was the first one of their kind to welcome and accept her, the one who taught her to understand and accept herself. Even before knowing the truth, Bonnie had always felt a sense of belonging when she was with her crazy grandma, so unexplainable and yet evident that even her parents seemed a bit upset at it sometimes.
She starkly refuses to feel like that about Damon someday. Even if she is forced to share that part of herself with him for now, she won’t let this entwine their lives so permanently.
--
The forest is so dark in the night despite the pale moonlight filtering through the evergreen foliage that Bonnie is strongly reminded of a premonition she had long time ago, when Emily was poking her ghostly nose in her dreams. The mental picture is as a vivid as an actual memory, but it stirs no fear, only more power.
She can feel everything: the moon’s subtle, feminine energy descending from above like an affectionate, cool caress; the Hearth under her feet, like a generous, life-giving gravity; the trees and the plants all around her, vibrating with a gentle force.
An owl calls for his mate somewhere in the distance and she can feel the love echoing in that call too, so different and yet the same as its human equivalent. Her senses locate both the birds easily.
She is at the very centre of an infinite spider’s web, and its invisible threads make the entire world reverberate through her body. It’s hard to retain consciousness in the face of all that unadulterated power- it’s not hers but it might take her over effortlessly if she didn’t keep her mental barriers up. The learning process is frustrating, but Bonnie is determined, and she trusts that determination more than anything. A witch is just as strong as her self-discipline, Grams would say.
She waits for the moment she starts to feel smaller, because that’s how it feels when the Power is slipping through the cracks of her barricades to possess her: she responds by expanding her aura, strengthening its margins and her sense of self by mentally chanting her name.
She is almost ready when another Power source charges at her, cutting through the wilderness with a thunderbolt-like speed.
“I was not ready!”Bonnie snaps, molding the energy at her disposal in a gleaming shield of light that temporarily blinds her adversary but just slightly delays his attack. She heats the shield so that when his hand reaches to grab her, his palm and fingers blister.
Damon jumps back, his vampire face doing nothing to dissimulate the patronizing smirk that bares his sharp monstrous teeth. “If this is the best you can do when you’re caught by surprise, you’re an easy meal.”
“Hardly.”
She charges at him with a telekinetic push, but right before he can crash against a tree trunk, his body dissolves into a grey mist.
It’s a trick that gets him out of trouble every damn time she gets close to doing any real damage to him and it annoys her very much; she still has not figured a way around it.
Bonnie glances around warily as the mist grows thicker and closes in around her. She needs to force him to rematerialize if she wants another chance to attack him.
Stretching her arms ahead, she chants the Gaelic term for ‘wind’, raising a breeze that disperses the fog with increasing persistence. She can sense his resistance as the mist resiliently filters through the breeze to surround her again, and she boosts her magic to feed the wind until a miniature hurricane rises around her frame. For a full five minutes their Powers are at a stand-still. She grits her teeth and focuses with greater intensity, expending more effort to clamp down her sudden appetite for destruction, wanting to gain the upper hand. Then she exerts herself just a bit more and, inch by inch, she sweeps the mist away without losing the control over her aggressive instincts.
Damon’s body reforms at her left: his soundly, sardonically clapping hands are the first one to materialize, and the witch concedes to him one begrudging extra point for scenic effect.
“Not bad,” he comments, his tone far more patronizing than flattering, “but it hasn’t truly resolved anything, has it? Hit me with something real now, little girl---”
Bonnie does her best to comply that wish, cutting him off with a telekinetic punch aimed at his chiseled jaw. His lips are bloody but he’s laughing as he staggers.
“Unoriginal but effective, I got to hand it to you, Bennett. That all you got?”
She goes for another punch, but he’s good and fast enough to sense the direction of the shifting air and evade it. Instead of being disappointed, she feels a wild excitement bubbling up inside: she can see the same emotion reflected in Damon’s gaze, and it feeds hers.
Smirking, she sends out a few tendrils of her aura so they descend into the warm and welcoming soil …and laughs as two brown earth-made claws grab the vampire’s ankles. After trying to kick them off him, he turns a stubborn, mocking glare on her, flashing his fangs threateningly.
“Don’t expect me to be gentle when I wipe you out. You can’t keep those on forever---”
“I didn’t plan to”
Her invisible hand slaps him hard across the face, and then she hits him even harder in the stomach. It takes three blows to make his knees buckle and drag a soft grunt of pain from that bloody mouth.
She is faintly disturbed at how good it feels to bring him down to this. There’s a twisted, endearing quality to the murderous intensity he keeps looking at her with, and she doesn’t understand or even wonder why but she wants more of it.
So she adds the finishing touch, strengthens the vice of the earthly claws around his ankles and then has them drag him down to the ground.
Exhilaration surges through her as she watches the vampire fall, a sign that she is getting drunk with magic again. It doesn’t feel wrong. It feels natural, like shedding your clothes for a shower after an exhausting day. This is what a witch is meant to be after all: a vessel for her gods’ ancient power.
She is tempted to attack again, with something more satisfying, more spectacular. But she glances at Damon, face down, no longer watching her with ink-black, red-ringed irises, and releases him from her hold. Then she breaths slowly out and lets every link she has to the Web go.
Bonnie sways, overcome from the backlash: suddenly she feels bereft, not quite certain of what is real and what is not. She has let go too fast, as per her usual mistake.
She notices the predator rushing up toward her too late to react accordingly: her back is already uncomfortably pressed against a trunk, and cool fingers are loosely splayed around her throat, exercising a slightly painful pressure just to prove a point.
“I win,” Damon growls, licking his lips.
Bonnie would object but it’s complicated to do with his hand pressuring on her larynx and every inch of her flesh heating exponentially…not metaphorically, but literally. Her body temperature always seems to increase to blatantly non-human levels after a fight.
He frees her throat just to dip his head down and graze it with his fangs. She should be terrified, eager to fend him off given their ‘precedents’. But that other alien half of her is in charge, and it recognizes his right to bite her, so she turns her head so the curve of her neck is entirely exposed.
Right at this moment, she wants to feel his fangs sinking into her flesh, her blood sliding down his throat.
She can feel his smile on her skin while his mouth nuzzles her neck, but he doesn’t bite her. His fangs barely press on her flesh before what had started as a playful nip turns into Damon suckling on her neck like he is set on marking it with a hickey the size of Texas.
Bonnie stifles a moan, closes her eyes and allows herself to enjoy the sensation for few moments. It feels natural, like the culmination of a dance they started without meaning to. Which of course brings her back to the real reason she shouldn’t be…indulging. Especially since Damon is getting ahead of himself already, pinching her hip and cupping her breast.
She focuses her mind on the task and sends him flipping backwards.
“Not nice, Elphaba.”
“If you insist on copping a feel, you might at least bother saying my name.”
“I’ll keep it in mind for next time, Bonnie.”
His eyes are back to their normal blue and shining with all sorts of bad intentions.
“There will be no next time.”
He nods and advances toward her with a roguish grin, and she backtracks at the same pace.
At a point he gets fed up with it and dashes at her, trying to entrap her again against a tree. Bonnie foils his plan with a timely slap- a real, completely human slap, which does not hurt him but still slackens his jaw.
“If this is what turns you on-”
“It doesn’t,” she grits.
“You know you’re lying, I can smell-”
Bonnie doesn’t really want to know how that sentence ends, so she slaps him again. “At least try to contain yourself, little witch,” he says giddily.
“Look, I know you don’t really listen to what anyone says, but you can believe me now: you and me are not going to have sex ever again.”
Damon has the gall to sigh and roll his eyes like he thinks she is being unnecessarily difficult. “Why are you fighting it so hard? I want you, you want me: let’s sweat it out. ”
“It doesn’t work like that!”
“It does when you aren’t a bossy, sexually repressed, martyr-complexed witch!”
They don’t get any further in their argument because they are soon alerted to another presence in their relative proximity. They were so preoccupied with each other that they had not heard it coming, so when a familiar voice sneaks in the discussion they turn toward its source so fast that Bonnie’s neck cramps.
They don’t jump apart regardless---perhaps Damon even instinctively leans closer to his ‘sparring partner’.
“I’m really sorry about the interruption,” Jeremy breaks in, finding the startled expression on their faces more than a bit discouraging, “but I really need to talk to both of you, away from any ears.”
Inwardly, the young vampire crosses his fingers and hopes they won’t try killing him once he has finished his carefully rehearsed speech.