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Mystic Falls, Virginia.
The minute Bonne turns eighteen, she clears her rooms, dumps her belongings into cramped trunk of her Prius, and drives off into the forest-blotted road, with a terribly creased map from the seventies—Gram’s annotations scrawled all over on its yellowed margins—on her lap.
She doesn’t say goodbyes. She doesn’t write dear-john letters.
—
Blackwater Ridge, Colorado.
There is a massive, intimidating world beyond her tiny cosy Mystic Falls town, as it turns out. There is more than witches, vampires, and werewolves, she learns, when Bonnie is confronted by sharp large yellow teeth, thin as needles, in the unhinged jaws of the gas station salesclerk, and its breath—decayed flesh, putrid copper, and diseased—stank to high heavens.
Someone shot it dead with a flare gun to its forehead.
Bonnie kicks the clerk off. The lifeless body thumps onto the grimy tiled floors. She dusts off imaginary dirt from her shoulders, her skirt, her cardigan. "What are you doing here, Stefan?"
She knows the answer. The whole Mystic Falls folks know about it. Elena chose Damon.
"Just enjoying the fresh Colorado air," he says, coolly. As if he didn’t stalk her car from Virginia to Colorado—the T-100 Triumph monstrosity might as well moonlight as a lighthouse, beaming his presence to anyone with a pair of eyes. "Like any fresh high school grad."
"Whatever."
Bonnie drags the salesclerk by his feet, zig-zagging across the aisle, staining the floor with warm, gushing red liquid. Dead creatures don’t magically become lighter when they died. Bummer. She could use telekinesis. But that’s almost cheating. "If you’re gonna stalk me," she huffs, taking a breath, "then do me a favour and be a good little sidekick."
Stefan laughs.
Bonnie glares.
"Your wish is my command," Stefan retorts, breezily grinning, as he tucks the gun into the back of his waist. He easily tosses the dead man over his shoulder, walks towards the door, "oh, Bonnie, you might wanna take care of that," he remarks, jerking his chin at the cctv.
Bonnie scowls again.
—
Elizabethville, Ohio.
Her car breaks down in a half-dead town in the rust belt. The mechanic—a toothy smiling middle-aged man with grease-stained beard—won’t be able to fix "these smenschy electric cars, miss, for another two weeks, those spare parts are practically none in this area", and spits at a spot inches away from her boots. Absolutely fucking lovely. "Twelve hundred dollars," she nearly shrieks.
"Call us, when it’s done, and the cash is yours," Stefan smoothly cuts in, beaming.
"You didn’t have to," she stage-whispers, pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to massage her headache and financial woes away. "I’ll pay you back when I have the money."
"Call it even after you saved me from that revenant back in Minnesota."
Even the motel conspires against her, because why there is only one room left, when the town is close to being abandoned by its denizens. She begrudgingly accepts. Snatches the dangled key fob from the receptionist. Forces herself to scrape a smile. "Thanks, we’ll take it."
She takes the bed. He gets the makeshift cot made up of two armchairs.
Hours later, they’re prowling the streets in search of a decent warm meal. There’s a lesbian couple—beautiful, ethereal, and dangerous—promise the out-towners that the diner around the block serves the best pierogies in Elizabethville. They just need to follow the couple a little bit further—
Stefan holds the blonde Vetala tightly, letting its razor-teeth sink into his incredibly toned arms.
Bonnie thrusts Gram’s silver knife into its chest, twisting it once.
The blonde crumbles into ashes, while its brunette mate screeches into the air, into their ears. Bonnie raises one hand, pins the Vetala against the closest wall. Stefan stakes his silver pocket blade into its heart, and twists. The Vetala too disappears into wind.
"I’m not hungry anymore," Bonnie says.
Stefan nods. "Me too."
—
Whitefish, Michigan.
Whitefish is mostly flat, and dominated by a large corps of sugar beets, the thumb-shaped region of the "mitten" Michigan. Somehow, there’s an infestation of unnatural cannibals plaguing the town square, enough for the priest to pledged the town’s entire vault as a reward.
"Our gratitude is in your hands," the priest declares, solemn.
"Not too soon, padre. We haven’t killed a single cannibal yet," Stefan says, smirking.
Bonnie doublechecks their reserve of weapons—swords, check, spears, check—and fingers a crossbow, musing on it before settling on silver axe. She has the fire spells, all six variations, memorised.
Stefan strokes the silver stake seductively, grinning.
"You know wendigos are vicious than werewolves, right?" Bonnie retorts, slapping his chest with enough force to crack a bird’s wings.
Stefan shrugs. "If I die, then I die." Then he lets the corners of his sensual lips curling into a hearted smile. "But we both know you’re not going to let that happen."
She hates the fact that he’s abso-fucking-lutely right.
Later at midnight, they’re hiding behind a dumpster, next to the local morgue, and her new boots are chafing against her heels. The frost-lined air is biting into her bones; she rubs herself warm.
Stefan looks at her. Hard. Contemplating. Like he’s about to say something profound—
There. Flickering in and out, a pair of glowing bright-white eyes. Then, a voice calls out to them, sounding eerily like Grams first, then Damon next. It takes a while, but Stefan gains the upper hand, impaling steel nails into its arms, its legs, onto the huge wooden cross outside of the morgue.
"Would you do the honours?" Stefan says, handing her the silver stake.
Bonnie smiles, a slash of white teeth at the squealing wendigo. "Don’t mind if I do."
—
Cold Oak, South Dakota.
Bounty hunting—the bare minimum requirement is a high school diploma she already owned—is pretty lucrative. Much better than trying to earn tips through part-time waitressing in trifling rustic towns. Sure, Stefan is a walking bank. But there’s something deeply satisfying getting her own income.
Surrounded by miles and miles of dense forest with knotted roots and jagged thorny branches, Cold Oak is as good as a ghost town. Population, twenty-seven, counting Bonnie and Stefan.
Still, she sharpens her stake.
Stefan is a gentleman. Even as his thirst tightens around his neck, burning his throat, he insists on catching a buck once they settle into their motel room. The night outside is still, peaceful even. For once, she can hear herself think.
"Here," she says, offering her wrist.
"I can—"
"No, you won’t." She rolls her sleeve up to her elbow, exposing the underside of her slender arm. "I need you healthy and strong, not weak because you decided to be a vegan vampire."
Stefan whines his refusal.
But Bonnie knows he will surrender, his resolve already amidst of collapsing, when she walks up to him, eyes flutter as she looks at him, lips pursed, and eyebrow arched. "Now drink up."
He takes her wrist, gingerly at first, and bites into her flesh.
He drinks, and drinks, and Bonnie manoeuvres them both to the superior-sized bed, carefully to lay flat on her back, while Stefan purrs. Their heartbeats synchronising, echoing within the room’s walls.
—
Crystal Cove, Oregon.
By now, she’d traded her trusty Prius for a red sexy Ford Mustang, upgraded the usual twin-bed suite for a superior king suite, and Stefan has sold off his T-100, advocating for a Porsche, when they need the extra wheels. They’ve settled into a rhythm of sorts. She’s the brain. He’s the brawns.
Someone has a vendetta against the local fishermen. Picking them off one by one at night, and their carcass, bloated and blue, floating face-down at the pier the next morning.
The mayor offers the choice of a private residence by the beach, or a cheque for 100K.
Stefan tells her, wherever she goes, he’ll happily tag-along.
Bonnie doesn’t decide immediately. Her mind jumping into formulating plans and counter-plans for their next gig. She’s at the counter, lips pursed. Her grimoire splayed under one hand, and a glass of chardonnay cradled in between her palm.
"So, what are we dealing with?" he asks, craning his neck over her shoulders.
She looks up, half-smiling. Pushes the grimoire towards him. Sipping her chardonnay, coquettishly, she taps at a hand-drawn illustration of a figure—half-fish, half-woman—and the grin grows impish. "Are you a good swimmer?"
"Been swimming since the 1900s."
"Good, you’re bait."
Reeling in mermaids is a lot harder than she’s expected. They don’t flock to Stefan, floating on his back, six hours straight since midnight. He’s all wet, spiky hair flat, sticking to his temple. Stefan is cut like an Adonai Grecian statue. Lean. Flat-muscled. His grandpa-inspired swimming trunk dropping lower around his hipbones, as he heaves himself onto the pier, and Bonnie has to look elsewhere.
He whistles, side-eyeing two women at the end of the pier, staring at a rugged fisherman.
The taller one between the two, is dark-haired, tanned, with a gaze that is silvery-green. Her companion is a contrast; blonde, pale, and blue-eyed that reminds Bonnie of the midday ocean. Something about them tickles her familiarity bone.
"Don’t you think they look like someone we know?"
"Hayley and Rebekkah," Stefan says, drying his hair with the hotel’s orange fleece towel. Wringing the water out from his towel, he shakes his head sideways, and snickers, "What’s next? A witch Hayley."
"Shush," Bonnie hisses, nudging her elbow at his ribcage.
The women march up to them, determined, menacing. Their scaled skin shimmering as the sunlight is refracted from the calm waters, streaking them in half-beams. Their claws retracting into human-like fingernails. The mermaid-who-isn’t-Hayley adamantly insists, "We didn’t kill those men."
"Someone else did," adds the not-Rebekkah mermaid, who asks them to call her Emma.
"Thought fishermen would be your type," Bonnie mumbles.
"That’s stereotyping," Cleo fires back, bares her pointedly sharp teeth.
Stefan hums. "Okay, so who’s been killing the fishermen? Because the mayor isn’t happy, and he’s paying a lot of get rid of what’s killing the local folk. Dead and mangled fishers by the pier is highly suspicious, made us think it was the work of half-fish people."
"It’s not us and we can help you," Emma offers, flashing a brine-tinted smirk.
"One wrong move, and we’ll hunt you, got it?" Bonie replies, deadpan.
Mermaids, as it turns out, are a lot smarter than Bonnie gives them credit for. They quickly whittled the long list of suspects into a handful of three, using the oldest trick in the book—seduction with a little fear-driven blackmail on the side. It boils down to three, including the mayor’s beloved son.
Cleo produces a waterproofed paper slip from her wetsuit, the epitome of a working professional. "Here’s our invoice. We’ll accept either cash or wire-transfer. Your choice."
Bonnie gasps at the fee. There’s like an extra zero to the five-figure sum.
Emma grins, winking at Stefan. She’s been staring at the Salvatore vampire since they started this partnership—Bonnie’s assistant is off-limits—and briefly spares Bonnie an innocent smile. "Didn’t think our services would come for cheap, do you?"
"Fine. 60-40, and that’s non-negotiable."
Cleo takes Bonnie’s hand and gives her a firm handshake.
Ben Pownell, third generational wealth and the mayor’s only son, is their culprit. Underwater grapevine mentioned that he killed a siren in a fit of rage, when the siren spurred his advances. Driven mad by the siren’s song worming its way around his skull. Now, he is murdering fishers.
Plot twist, he is a vampire. Tearing his victims apart, tossing the bodies into the waters, because he can. Because he’s on a personal vendetta against the merfolk of Crystal Cove.
"This is a lot more complicated than some vampire on a spree," Stefan mutters.
Bonnie nods, sagely. "Messy."
Later, as they attempt to save another fisherman from a watery grave, Pownell puts up a great fight against Stefan, while Bonnie steadies her aim, inhales, and readies to pull the trigger. Pownell yanks Stefan along, when he’s knocked off from the pier, plunged into the deepest part of the lake. As they sink, the merfolk seizes Pownell, and drags him even further, until the air bubbles stop.
Bonnie jumps after Stefan, everything else be damned.
She pulls him up to the shore, pressing her hands down against his chest, and breaths into his mouth. Blows. Counts up to sixty when—
He coughs up water, scraping a hand over his face. "You didn’t have to do that."
"Do what?"
"You know, CPR, I’m gonna heal anyway," he points out, oblivious.
"Maybe I want to."
"Want to do CPR?" Stefan squawks.
"God, you’re so dumb." She exhales, rolling her eyes, and squeezes water from her shirt. Fuck. Now that Ben Pownell is dead, no way his father would wanna pay up. She just ruined a good pair of high-heeled boots. But that’s nothing. Stefan’s compulsion gift can remedy the negation to pay, if it happens. The tips of her ears are steaming red.
Stefan blinks. "Wait, what?"
"Nothing."
—
Fort Douglas, Wisconsin.
Ultimately, Stefan didn’t get the Porsche. "Bennett and Salvatore" is painted in lurid gothic golden-trimmed script, at the sides of a sleek black Ford Bronco. This time, Bonnie accepts the unpleasant task to investigate a string of suspicious suicides at the local asylum. Stefan squints at the building—peeling white paint, barricaded windows, brick facades on the lower parts of the hospital—and mumbles, "Lovely place."
Bonnie scoffs, though the corners of her mouth slip into a half-smirk. "Behave."
Stefan salutes. "Yes, ma’am."
"So, we are going in as patients. Vampires, witches, crazy talk, you know, whatever we’ve been doing for the last three years. That’s surely gonna get us admitted on the spot. See you later, J.T Kirk."
Bonnie goes in first.
Samantha Sutherland is officially diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, latest resident of Glenwood Springs Psychiatric Hospital. She goes through a series of psychical examination and one-to-one therapy sessions before they let her roam freely around the recreation hall.
She reunites with Stefan during group therapy.
"Found anything yet?"
He shakes his head.
For days, they lay low. Gathering intel independently. Her cell is on the second floor, across from his. Some nights, she would sneak into his room, while Dean is fast asleep, and Stefan’s eyes black from thirst. Stefan’s roommate hung himself from the arts room’s ceiling fixture a week later, and his body is in the morgue. They break into the morgue, cloaked by Bonnie’s spell, and Stefan starts sawing Dean’s skull open.
"Does this brain look right to you?" Stefan picks up the shrivelled brain up with one hand.
"Looks like it’s been sucked dry."
Bonnie motions for him to return the brain back, chants a neat spell she learnt from a witch in Kansas to seal open wounds, even after a person is dead. The jagged lines healed itself. She jerks the white sheet over the dead man’s head, motions to leave. "We have ourselves a wraith. You still have your silver cross?"
He tugs the silver chain out from under his patient’s scrubs.
She arches a brow at him. "Thought they said no outside personal items. They took my stakes, pens, and Gram’s hairpin."
Stefan rolls his shoulders dismissively. "May have compelled them to let me keep it."
Three weeks into their stay at the hospital, finally, finally they hit a breakthrough. Wraiths cannot hide their true-selves from mirrors. Bonnie plots a trap with crayons and a blank page in her adult colouring book. Her hallucinations have been teetering close to reality. Under her eyelids, Sheila admonished but she is never cruel. Bonnie lies awake on her bed, and ruthless Abby who never leaves, gleefully reminding Bonnie the consequences of entering into a consortium with a Salvatore. Bonnie eats her cereal, behind Stefan, she sees a half-burned Emily dutifully reminds her the price to love an abomination is worse than death. Bonnie shuts her eyes. These apparitions disappear into nothingness. Slipping out from her room, into his, she sits at the edge of his bed, brushes her hair from her neck.
"Sorry, I’m late," she whispers.
Stefan latches onto her neck, as if it’s his lifeline or something, already draining her blood into his—and she could feel it, her blood being pulled into one frenzy direction, to her neck, into Stefan—and their heartbeats rocking to the cadence of the passionate unknown, and love, maybe.
She sits. Secrets curling around her spine, one by one, they’re slithering into her throat. Her tongue is heavy and thick.
"I want more," Bonnie confesses.
"More what?"
She sighs. She should have switched the topic at this instance. Being in an asylum isn’t the right time, or place, for her to be spilling her secrets like this. Reedy. Melancholic.
"I want us to be more."
Stefan retracts his fangs. The protruding veins around his eyes ebbing, and his red-blood sclera fade into egg-white normal. Her blood is still on his chin. His puzzled expression softens. He rubs his neck, sucking his breath in.
"Not feeling blood-buddies," he says, mumbling when he finally opens his mouth.
"What the hell is blood-buddies?"
"We’re not fucking each other. So, can’t call ourselves fuck buddies, can we?"
"Touché."
Stefan closes the distance between them, touching her chin lightly, pressing his lips on hers. He smiles into the chaste kiss. "Ask me again, after we kill the wraith."
The thing is, she doesn’t.
—
Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Bonnie doesn’t ask the question again, until they’re knee-deep in dust-covered cardboard boxes, and mottled yellowed records, and its contents written in some elegant scripts somewhere between Spencerian and Palmer that only Stefan can read in the county court’s basement.
"So, have you think about it?"
Stefan sits, cross-legged on the floor, wearing a spider-cobwebbed crown, and his fountain pen—cigar-like, heavy red, and lavishly decorated with a star-shaped diamond—stuck behind his right ear, folding his lower lip over his teeth. His arched brow is enough, conveying his cluelessness in that one look.
She frowns. "About us?"
He laughs. Genuinely clutching his belly when he lets out more laughter, and his posh pen flies off from his ear, rolling into the side of the dilapidated boxes. "I don’t know what to tell you, Bon. Aside from the fact I’ve been drinking from you, and only you. And we’ve been scratching each other’s back since Cold Oak."
Bonnie huffs, hacking coughs when she inhales stale dust. "You never said anything?"
Stefan quirks a brow. "Do we need to?"
She can’t help to smile. "No, we don’t."
—
Twin Peaks, Washington.
They never settle at one place too long. Few weeks here and there. Maybe months, if the problem requires more drastic action, and the pay wasn’t an issue. He never pops the question, but Bonnie finds a ring in her jewellery box one morning. She wears it when they have a fancy dinner at the lodge.
By nightfall, they strip each other down to the barest of clothes, taking each other, smearing blood—his, hers, theirs—all over their tangled bodies. Wordlessly. Silently.