Sacred Geometry: the epilogue
THE EPILOGUE
Bonnie and Elena would spend months training their gifts together, trying to prepare for unavoidable ‘invasion’ from the Originals - it made their friendship stronger than they could have predicted, filling that gap that had existed between them since Sheila’s death. They could once more to call each other sisters, and to know it was no lie.
Unfortunately, their newfound closeness, along with the supernatural existence they now shared, excluded their ‘third musketeer’ Caroline in ways they could not quite manage to prevent, despite their trying hard.
Not enough for Caroline, they would discover later. When Klaus came in town, and put Bonnie in the terrible predicament of killing Greta Martin, witch and one of Klaus’ many lovers-creatures, in a direct fight, his ‘punishment’ would collect Caroline as first casualty of the war between the Original family and their gang.
Turned by Klaus, who used her insecurities, her jealousy of Elena and her feelings that the latter had nearly ‘stolen’ Bonnie away as she stole everything else, to turn the blonde against her old friends, Caroline became for a time a quite vicious vampire.
Especially after Klaus’ constant provocations of Stefan into violence, reopened ‘a Ripper stage’ of his life that had Liz Forbes among its first victims. Caroline turned off her emotions then, and it took all of Bonnie’s magical and emotional power to keep her in check as she made the whole town to pay for her grief.
But in the end, Caroline’s genuinely loving and joyful nature proved to be the one thing even the all-powerful Klaus could not corrupt. Good memories of her mother and of her friends, summoned in a staged ’intervention’ that saw the use of both Bonnie’s spells and Elena’s gift of Persuasion, brought her back to her heart.
She never forgave Stefan tough, nor did she accept that Bonnie and Elena’s choice to stand by him and not by her.
She returned to Klaus as an extremely controlled vampire with a renewed self-esteem his manipulations could not touch. He was enthralled by the change, the way Caroline’s human OCD enabled to keep her inner monster in check nearly flawlessly, the way she now stood up to him in defense of her old friends.
The seducer became the seduced, once more, and his newest childe basked in that fascination she exercised, exploited it to convince Klaus to return to New Orleans with her in tow.
Caroline Forbes took extraordinarily well to life as his mafia princess there. Having a guy who covered her with gifts every day and acted needier than her was a dream coming true for many decades.
For Stefan, his road to recovery was long and hard. Elena was able to use her power to help him through, Persuading him down the edge every time he was falling over. In the long run, that made their relationship much stronger.
Bonnie and Damon came through the hardships of that year as an ‘official’ couple. They became best friends and lovers, at least when they weren’t at each other’s troath. Love for them remained a battlefield.
Yet, when the Travelers came to town, bringing the rumor of a Cure along with them, at first, and then its reality…. Damon decided to fight for it and take it, despite Stefan’s opposition.
Damon remained vampire until Bonnie was ready for college and set to leave Mystic Falls and its dangers behind. Then he took his magic pill, and actually went to college right along with her.
Ironically, he was the one who set out to become the next Occult professor of the Bennett Family. Bonnie studies psychology and became a therapist. They lived in Salem until they were old and wrinkly, both of them, in a small house with one huge garden Bonnie spent a terrible amount of time and energy on.
They had three daughters Damon insisted to be a stay-home-dad to as Bonnie pursued her career, and all their friends wondered at how they never considered marriage although they were incredibly committed to stay together.
Their daughters grew into brilliant witches, and when Damon eventually died, it was in his sleep, smiling, as he looked his grand-daughters playing since his wood chair on the porch.
Bonnie had not the chance to mourn him - his ghost just refused to leave the house, his woman, or this world. She was glad for it, and for the fact she could still hear his voice and see his face, being an advanced necromancer.
It became a running joke in the family that even death could not part Damon Salvatore from the people he loved.
Necromancy remained a strong talent in the new Bennett line, that would be guarded for the centuries to come from Uncle Stefan and Fair Godmother Elena.
When Bonnie died, it was emulating the first and only hero of her life, Sheila Bennett. A car accident had left Melissa, her middle child, in a coma, her soul lingering in a limbo. Bonnie consciously sacrificed her life-energy to bring Melissa back. Damon supported her through it, and he was there when she crossed over.
He took her hand as the door to the Other Side opened for her. “I will come with you” he promised as she looked back and around for last time to their home, to the heritage they were leaving behind.
“We had such a life…” Bonnie could not avoid being amazed at it, now all was over. So much sorrow and so much joy, a family they were thick as thieves with, a heritage set to outlast them. Amazing friends that made it all possible and so many adventures, a wonderful love-story even death could not put a damper on.
They had it had all. How had she not noticed until it was the time to leave?
“No regrets. Two centuries behind me, and there were no years I spent better than those I was mortal again in. We did it all, witchy. I am glad I have loved you, even the days you have not made it easy, you old shrew.”
“So the older neurotic coot says. Your antics gave me more white hairs than any of our kids, or their kids for the matter, but I have adored you for it.”
“I wish we could have a last drink to well spent time.”
“Thank you for waiting for me.” - her throat clenched on the words because she knew that if he had not, as human … he could have ended somewhere else entirely, in an Afterlife she could not reach him to, now instead she will bring him with her … or stay down here with him
“hush woman, it is now or never.”
They both glared at the transparent Door hanging in the air, and glanced to each other in a mute question of whether it was better to just keep haunting the house, together. Then, in just as mute decision, they walked straight through it, hand-holding, and they let the Other Side to shallow them up, with identical squared jaws and jutted out chins.
Death turned to be truly the Next Great Adventure. Another beginning. Sheila surprised them right away by being on the other side of the door to receive them.
Damon and Bonnie joined the crowd of witch ancestors in a small ghost town struck in between different timelines and worlds. It was the strangest place to get used, at first, and the transition was not made any smoother by the presence in there of several witches Damon had killed in his vampire days. But you got to be as young or old looking as you pleased, and that was a blast. Besides, they got to watch over their family, to guide and protect generations of it with advice and plots. Ancestor politics turned to be a challenge they were up.
Also, Grams forced them to finally tie the knot.
It was by many details a strange ceremony, but the oddity suited the Salvatore’s pretty well.
Eternity stretched in front of them - better to be prepared.
Among the living, Bonnie’s death produced a domino effect.
Elena and Caroline met at her funeral, and they finally reconciled.
Persuasion had kept Elena young and beautiful, but living. She had pursued her dream to become a writer, at first using her power to further her career as journalist and ‘help’ people to confide in her. She had her fun with that until her youthful appearance began to look suspicious, then she settled as romance and erotica novelist under several pseudonyms. She and Stefan had married in an extremely romantic and expensive ceremony right after the birth of their first niece by Bonnie and Damon. They often regretted the impossibility to start a family of theirs ( no fertility ritual or potion had ever succeeded with them) but they consoled each other and themselves pretty well with a great sex life and traveling all over the world.
They were happy, and they kept in frequent touch with Bonnie and Damon for as long they were alive - all festive occasions were celebrated together with the Salvatore-Bennett clan, and when Stefan and Elena visited, they never failed to cover every single relative with gifts from each of the places they had visited in the rest of the year.
Bonnie’s death hit them both hard, it was the end of an era.
It inspired them to take a risk, tough - the following year they adopted a child during one of their travels in a war-torn country.
Caroline regretted she had never let her friendship with Bonnie to bend as she was alive, but the grief brought about a positive life change. Not only she forgave Stefan and made an effort to start over with Elena, but she left Klaus and his family murderous lifestyle, gave herself a chance to be fully the good person she had never really left behind. She moved to London, exchanged human prey for blood bags, and studied for a career as fashion designer.
In the centuries to come, she and Elena became like the sisters they weren’t in their teenager years, although in a different way Elena and Bonnie used to be.
Life went on, and there was a place for new bonds along with the old ones.
Bonnie Bennett managed to stay present in her friends’ lives from the grave. She popped often in their dreams when they were having a major life-crisis, even if her cryptic-speak, as Caroline came to fondly call it, could be terribly frustrating.
--
In Mystic Falls, a Traveler witch called Liv inherited Bonnie’s role as Keeper of the contract before she left. She was chosen by the land wrights, much to everyone’s surprised. Although Bonnie had disliked her fiercely during their acquaintance, she did well by her role.
Pearl inherited the Salvatore boarding house when the brothers both moved out following Damon’s taking the cure. She made it a boardinghouse again and kept it going along with her daughter Anna and Harper.
Ben was killed by Caroline in her ‘bad vampire’ stage, in a fit of temper spurred on by his bravado.
As the Resurrected vampires could not leave the land they were bound to, they had to use enchanted jewelry to set glamour on their looks changing every twenty years or so. The land magic still protected and hid them in ways they never quite understood.
Anna enjoyed the experience of that changing normality and the family life she had always craved. She and Jeremy remained a couple, much to everyone’s surprise, through the years. Even if he moved to Portland for a time, to attend an Art School. He worked freelance as illustrator after that, but normal, for him, was quite never enough. He grew a sinister reputation as vampire slaying vampire, getting off the violence of the kill and the draining of another predator. Anna on occasion got off watching him as he killed, and made violently love to him afterwards. She pet-called him her beautiful monster, and he never stopped seeing her as his Juliet.
Mystic Falls gained a reputation as a sleepy, incredibly quiet small town .
Yet, when Caroline and Stefan and Elena made it a habit to return to their hometown at the passing of every century, finding refuge in the old lake house that had once belonged to Elena’s parents, they always found themselves in a net of secrets, lies and supernatural danger. Darkness just never left that place, and it never slept despite the appearances. It just learned to hide better its traps. They learned to love it for what it was - their very cradle and birthing chamber.
Katherine?
She was another who never changed. She came every few centuries in their lives, just when they had managed to forget her, and she brought back with her all her deceptions and twisted games. She became the dance partner nobody wanted but nobody could refuse. Or kill, and not for their lack of trying.
Eventually, she just seemed to drop off the face of the planet for good.
Nobody but the Original family kept in casual contact with, knew that one day, she had just got bored of everything , removed her ring and walked into sunlight. The reward of a life lived without any attachments, Elijah would have commented in passing.
He couldn’t know he was , maybe, slightly off the mark.
Bonnie and Damon had the misfortune of finding her on the Other Side, and reach a different conclusion.
Katherine Pierce didn’t change.
Even in the realms beyond the door, she created her peculiar brand of havoc tirelessly. The difference? Her grand-daughter Nadia, that strayed never too far away from her side. Her son Kai who possibly worse than good old Kat was, an eventuality even Damon would have not considered as a real possibility.
Even the devil has loved ones, and love is all what leaves a trace, when the show is over and the curtain falls.
--
Soundtrack to this chapter: If I Lose Myself- One Republic
I will follow you into the dark- death cab for cutie
Share the love - c.cremonini
AUTHOR NOTE:
Damn, I am moved. I will miss this story, its characters (and its readers too ;) ). To weave this little tapestry of words was a delight, and I grew fond of this little universe of mine , this darker Mystic Falls.
Kudos to all who caught the parallels with various seasons and oh, I nearly cried as I wrote the scene where oldBamon crossed over, nearly like their canon counterparts too. Raise your hand if thinking of Kai as this Katherine’s son, and of their post mortem unholy alliance, makes you to fear the world’s fate.
*mine is the first hand up*
Sacred Geometry was always supposed to have an open ending, and I was tempted to go with a sequel that showed *this* group of beautiful and scarred heroes fighting the Originals for the town. Maybe someday I will get to write that story, but with college work starting up again so soon, I can’t take that commitment, and frankly I wanted that the readers that stuck around to see this finished had a clear last picture of where those characters were headed. Down to the bittersweet ending. If we can call it an ending, since the adventure goes on and on… forever. That’s what I loved about writing this epilogue; everything is over and it is not at same time.
Life goes on, but nobody is forgotten, and everybody gains a place, a tale of their own. The end is not truly the end, but more like the beginning of yet another tale. Sacred Geometry at work, indeed.
I might decide to return to this universe so dear to me, (next summer? For the het big bang? I have thought of it, at least) and write about Bamon and their big, complicated family joining them on the Other Side when their own race ends. To have them together again for a new grand adventure. Or to go deeper into the war against the Originals. But *this* tale is still complete as it is, and I hope you enjoyed it as such! Thank you for reading.
Bonnie and Elena would spend months training their gifts together, trying to prepare for unavoidable ‘invasion’ from the Originals - it made their friendship stronger than they could have predicted, filling that gap that had existed between them since Sheila’s death. They could once more to call each other sisters, and to know it was no lie.
Unfortunately, their newfound closeness, along with the supernatural existence they now shared, excluded their ‘third musketeer’ Caroline in ways they could not quite manage to prevent, despite their trying hard.
Not enough for Caroline, they would discover later. When Klaus came in town, and put Bonnie in the terrible predicament of killing Greta Martin, witch and one of Klaus’ many lovers-creatures, in a direct fight, his ‘punishment’ would collect Caroline as first casualty of the war between the Original family and their gang.
Turned by Klaus, who used her insecurities, her jealousy of Elena and her feelings that the latter had nearly ‘stolen’ Bonnie away as she stole everything else, to turn the blonde against her old friends, Caroline became for a time a quite vicious vampire.
Especially after Klaus’ constant provocations of Stefan into violence, reopened ‘a Ripper stage’ of his life that had Liz Forbes among its first victims. Caroline turned off her emotions then, and it took all of Bonnie’s magical and emotional power to keep her in check as she made the whole town to pay for her grief.
But in the end, Caroline’s genuinely loving and joyful nature proved to be the one thing even the all-powerful Klaus could not corrupt. Good memories of her mother and of her friends, summoned in a staged ’intervention’ that saw the use of both Bonnie’s spells and Elena’s gift of Persuasion, brought her back to her heart.
She never forgave Stefan tough, nor did she accept that Bonnie and Elena’s choice to stand by him and not by her.
She returned to Klaus as an extremely controlled vampire with a renewed self-esteem his manipulations could not touch. He was enthralled by the change, the way Caroline’s human OCD enabled to keep her inner monster in check nearly flawlessly, the way she now stood up to him in defense of her old friends.
The seducer became the seduced, once more, and his newest childe basked in that fascination she exercised, exploited it to convince Klaus to return to New Orleans with her in tow.
Caroline Forbes took extraordinarily well to life as his mafia princess there. Having a guy who covered her with gifts every day and acted needier than her was a dream coming true for many decades.
For Stefan, his road to recovery was long and hard. Elena was able to use her power to help him through, Persuading him down the edge every time he was falling over. In the long run, that made their relationship much stronger.
Bonnie and Damon came through the hardships of that year as an ‘official’ couple. They became best friends and lovers, at least when they weren’t at each other’s troath. Love for them remained a battlefield.
Yet, when the Travelers came to town, bringing the rumor of a Cure along with them, at first, and then its reality…. Damon decided to fight for it and take it, despite Stefan’s opposition.
Damon remained vampire until Bonnie was ready for college and set to leave Mystic Falls and its dangers behind. Then he took his magic pill, and actually went to college right along with her.
Ironically, he was the one who set out to become the next Occult professor of the Bennett Family. Bonnie studies psychology and became a therapist. They lived in Salem until they were old and wrinkly, both of them, in a small house with one huge garden Bonnie spent a terrible amount of time and energy on.
They had three daughters Damon insisted to be a stay-home-dad to as Bonnie pursued her career, and all their friends wondered at how they never considered marriage although they were incredibly committed to stay together.
Their daughters grew into brilliant witches, and when Damon eventually died, it was in his sleep, smiling, as he looked his grand-daughters playing since his wood chair on the porch.
Bonnie had not the chance to mourn him - his ghost just refused to leave the house, his woman, or this world. She was glad for it, and for the fact she could still hear his voice and see his face, being an advanced necromancer.
It became a running joke in the family that even death could not part Damon Salvatore from the people he loved.
Necromancy remained a strong talent in the new Bennett line, that would be guarded for the centuries to come from Uncle Stefan and Fair Godmother Elena.
When Bonnie died, it was emulating the first and only hero of her life, Sheila Bennett. A car accident had left Melissa, her middle child, in a coma, her soul lingering in a limbo. Bonnie consciously sacrificed her life-energy to bring Melissa back. Damon supported her through it, and he was there when she crossed over.
He took her hand as the door to the Other Side opened for her. “I will come with you” he promised as she looked back and around for last time to their home, to the heritage they were leaving behind.
“We had such a life…” Bonnie could not avoid being amazed at it, now all was over. So much sorrow and so much joy, a family they were thick as thieves with, a heritage set to outlast them. Amazing friends that made it all possible and so many adventures, a wonderful love-story even death could not put a damper on.
They had it had all. How had she not noticed until it was the time to leave?
“No regrets. Two centuries behind me, and there were no years I spent better than those I was mortal again in. We did it all, witchy. I am glad I have loved you, even the days you have not made it easy, you old shrew.”
“So the older neurotic coot says. Your antics gave me more white hairs than any of our kids, or their kids for the matter, but I have adored you for it.”
“I wish we could have a last drink to well spent time.”
“Thank you for waiting for me.” - her throat clenched on the words because she knew that if he had not, as human … he could have ended somewhere else entirely, in an Afterlife she could not reach him to, now instead she will bring him with her … or stay down here with him
“hush woman, it is now or never.”
They both glared at the transparent Door hanging in the air, and glanced to each other in a mute question of whether it was better to just keep haunting the house, together. Then, in just as mute decision, they walked straight through it, hand-holding, and they let the Other Side to shallow them up, with identical squared jaws and jutted out chins.
Death turned to be truly the Next Great Adventure. Another beginning. Sheila surprised them right away by being on the other side of the door to receive them.
Damon and Bonnie joined the crowd of witch ancestors in a small ghost town struck in between different timelines and worlds. It was the strangest place to get used, at first, and the transition was not made any smoother by the presence in there of several witches Damon had killed in his vampire days. But you got to be as young or old looking as you pleased, and that was a blast. Besides, they got to watch over their family, to guide and protect generations of it with advice and plots. Ancestor politics turned to be a challenge they were up.
Also, Grams forced them to finally tie the knot.
It was by many details a strange ceremony, but the oddity suited the Salvatore’s pretty well.
Eternity stretched in front of them - better to be prepared.
Among the living, Bonnie’s death produced a domino effect.
Elena and Caroline met at her funeral, and they finally reconciled.
Persuasion had kept Elena young and beautiful, but living. She had pursued her dream to become a writer, at first using her power to further her career as journalist and ‘help’ people to confide in her. She had her fun with that until her youthful appearance began to look suspicious, then she settled as romance and erotica novelist under several pseudonyms. She and Stefan had married in an extremely romantic and expensive ceremony right after the birth of their first niece by Bonnie and Damon. They often regretted the impossibility to start a family of theirs ( no fertility ritual or potion had ever succeeded with them) but they consoled each other and themselves pretty well with a great sex life and traveling all over the world.
They were happy, and they kept in frequent touch with Bonnie and Damon for as long they were alive - all festive occasions were celebrated together with the Salvatore-Bennett clan, and when Stefan and Elena visited, they never failed to cover every single relative with gifts from each of the places they had visited in the rest of the year.
Bonnie’s death hit them both hard, it was the end of an era.
It inspired them to take a risk, tough - the following year they adopted a child during one of their travels in a war-torn country.
Caroline regretted she had never let her friendship with Bonnie to bend as she was alive, but the grief brought about a positive life change. Not only she forgave Stefan and made an effort to start over with Elena, but she left Klaus and his family murderous lifestyle, gave herself a chance to be fully the good person she had never really left behind. She moved to London, exchanged human prey for blood bags, and studied for a career as fashion designer.
In the centuries to come, she and Elena became like the sisters they weren’t in their teenager years, although in a different way Elena and Bonnie used to be.
Life went on, and there was a place for new bonds along with the old ones.
Bonnie Bennett managed to stay present in her friends’ lives from the grave. She popped often in their dreams when they were having a major life-crisis, even if her cryptic-speak, as Caroline came to fondly call it, could be terribly frustrating.
--
In Mystic Falls, a Traveler witch called Liv inherited Bonnie’s role as Keeper of the contract before she left. She was chosen by the land wrights, much to everyone’s surprised. Although Bonnie had disliked her fiercely during their acquaintance, she did well by her role.
Pearl inherited the Salvatore boarding house when the brothers both moved out following Damon’s taking the cure. She made it a boardinghouse again and kept it going along with her daughter Anna and Harper.
Ben was killed by Caroline in her ‘bad vampire’ stage, in a fit of temper spurred on by his bravado.
As the Resurrected vampires could not leave the land they were bound to, they had to use enchanted jewelry to set glamour on their looks changing every twenty years or so. The land magic still protected and hid them in ways they never quite understood.
Anna enjoyed the experience of that changing normality and the family life she had always craved. She and Jeremy remained a couple, much to everyone’s surprise, through the years. Even if he moved to Portland for a time, to attend an Art School. He worked freelance as illustrator after that, but normal, for him, was quite never enough. He grew a sinister reputation as vampire slaying vampire, getting off the violence of the kill and the draining of another predator. Anna on occasion got off watching him as he killed, and made violently love to him afterwards. She pet-called him her beautiful monster, and he never stopped seeing her as his Juliet.
Mystic Falls gained a reputation as a sleepy, incredibly quiet small town .
Yet, when Caroline and Stefan and Elena made it a habit to return to their hometown at the passing of every century, finding refuge in the old lake house that had once belonged to Elena’s parents, they always found themselves in a net of secrets, lies and supernatural danger. Darkness just never left that place, and it never slept despite the appearances. It just learned to hide better its traps. They learned to love it for what it was - their very cradle and birthing chamber.
Katherine?
She was another who never changed. She came every few centuries in their lives, just when they had managed to forget her, and she brought back with her all her deceptions and twisted games. She became the dance partner nobody wanted but nobody could refuse. Or kill, and not for their lack of trying.
Eventually, she just seemed to drop off the face of the planet for good.
Nobody but the Original family kept in casual contact with, knew that one day, she had just got bored of everything , removed her ring and walked into sunlight. The reward of a life lived without any attachments, Elijah would have commented in passing.
He couldn’t know he was , maybe, slightly off the mark.
Bonnie and Damon had the misfortune of finding her on the Other Side, and reach a different conclusion.
Katherine Pierce didn’t change.
Even in the realms beyond the door, she created her peculiar brand of havoc tirelessly. The difference? Her grand-daughter Nadia, that strayed never too far away from her side. Her son Kai who possibly worse than good old Kat was, an eventuality even Damon would have not considered as a real possibility.
Even the devil has loved ones, and love is all what leaves a trace, when the show is over and the curtain falls.
--
Soundtrack to this chapter: If I Lose Myself- One Republic
I will follow you into the dark- death cab for cutie
Share the love - c.cremonini
AUTHOR NOTE:
Damn, I am moved. I will miss this story, its characters (and its readers too ;) ). To weave this little tapestry of words was a delight, and I grew fond of this little universe of mine , this darker Mystic Falls.
Kudos to all who caught the parallels with various seasons and oh, I nearly cried as I wrote the scene where oldBamon crossed over, nearly like their canon counterparts too. Raise your hand if thinking of Kai as this Katherine’s son, and of their post mortem unholy alliance, makes you to fear the world’s fate.
*mine is the first hand up*
Sacred Geometry was always supposed to have an open ending, and I was tempted to go with a sequel that showed *this* group of beautiful and scarred heroes fighting the Originals for the town. Maybe someday I will get to write that story, but with college work starting up again so soon, I can’t take that commitment, and frankly I wanted that the readers that stuck around to see this finished had a clear last picture of where those characters were headed. Down to the bittersweet ending. If we can call it an ending, since the adventure goes on and on… forever. That’s what I loved about writing this epilogue; everything is over and it is not at same time.
Life goes on, but nobody is forgotten, and everybody gains a place, a tale of their own. The end is not truly the end, but more like the beginning of yet another tale. Sacred Geometry at work, indeed.
I might decide to return to this universe so dear to me, (next summer? For the het big bang? I have thought of it, at least) and write about Bamon and their big, complicated family joining them on the Other Side when their own race ends. To have them together again for a new grand adventure. Or to go deeper into the war against the Originals. But *this* tale is still complete as it is, and I hope you enjoyed it as such! Thank you for reading.