Author's note: Since the original series first started running back in the 1970s, I've decided that will be the decade that the 'modern era' that Carol and the OC are originally from is set in. I'll try not to make everyone too OOC. This is just part of the back story for my OC, Bonnie Chance. (BTW, this earthquake really happened. All information on it was found/taken from earthquake. usgs. gov)

Chapter 1: Prologue

May 22, 1971
Several miles outside of Bingöl, Turkey

"Bonnie!" A beautiful brunette woman called out to her eleven-year-old daughter.

"Yeah, Mom?" The little redhead called back, looking up from the book she had been reading beneath the shade of a tarp.

"Supper's ready, go let your father and the other workers know!"

"'Kay!" Bonnie said, dog-earing her place in the book before jumping up to head over to the dig site. As was the usual case whenever they discovered some new ancient ruins, her father the archaeologist was always right in there in the dirt with the rest of the diggers, practically living in the ruins for all the time he spent in them. Not that she could blame him. She liked to help out, too. "Hey, everyone!" Bonnie called out in Turkish as she arrived at the edge of the dig, smiling as she looked down into the maze of rooms they had excavated. "Supper's ready!"

"All right, everyone. I guess that's our cue to quit for the day." Her father said good-naturedly, earning a couple of cheers from the rest of the hungry and tired men, who wasted very little time straightening up upon receiving their dismissal for the evening. "Hey, Bonnie!" He called up to his daughter as she turned to leave. "Before you go, come and take a look at this!"

"What is it?" Bonnie asked curiously, carefully descending the stairs on the temporary scaffolding they had installed.

"I found this hidden in a compartment on one of these walls." He said once she was next to him, showing her the small statuette he was carefully cradling in his hands.

"Oh, wow…" Bonnie breathed, impressed. "It looks like one of those ancestor worship idols from ancient Sumer, the ones with lapis lazuli eyes."

"Yes, some ancient cultures believed blue eyes were a sign of the gods." Her father said, pleased with her reaction. "And if you look even closer, you can also see traces of red ochre still clinging to the crevices in between the carved braids hair."

"Oh! You're right. Isn't that really unusual?" She asked, blinking in surprise.

"It is!" Her father said excitedly. "I think the woman this represents was a blue-eyed redhead. I'm Thinking of calling her 'Bonnie'." The real Bonnie sweat-dropped and smiled wryly.

'I had a feeling that was coming…' She thought, a little embarrassed. Her parents were always trying to name stuff after her. "But I didn't know they had any redheads in this region back then." She said, changing the subject.

"Well, there are actually some records of accounts from the Greeks that indicate there were some redheaded Thracians, but those are from a later era… Maybe—"

RUMBLE…

"!?" They both gasped in alarm when the earth quaked fiercely beneath their feet, knocking them off balance, as the walls around them trembled. Bonnie's eyes widened when she realized part of the thick and heavy brick wall behind them had split and was falling towards her.

"Bonnie!!"

CRASH! WHAM!!

Bonnie opened her eyes after she hit the ground, surprised to find herself relatively uninjured and underneath something warm. She glanced over her shoulder and gasped. It was her dad. He had thrown himself in between her and the wall at the last minute. Blood was running down the side of his face, and his arms were shaking from the effort of holding himself up under the weight of the stone to keep her from being crushed.

"Crawl out… Quick!" He snapped urgently. Bonnie quickly did as he said.

"H-Hold on, Dad!" She said shakily, running to get something to push under the wall to hold it up. "I'll find something to use as a lever or—!?"

The earth quaked, even more violently than before, and Bonnie heard the sound of more stone crashing to the ground she was thrown into a face plant. Bonnie grunted in pain and tried to get a purchase of some kind to hold herself steady, feeling as though she could be thrown off the earth from the force with which it was shaking. All around her, the ruins that had been preserved for thousands of years beneath the sand and dirt crumbled. And then, it happened. Her eyes widened in horror when she felt something hot, wet, and sticky begin to soak one of her socks, and a trickle of crimson liquid rolled past her face in the sand.

… No…

As soon as the quake stopped, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and whipped her head around to check on her dad. The wall he had been struggling to hold up was now lying completely flat. Heavy debris and a ton of sand had fallen on top of it during the second tremor. Bonnie's father had been crushed to death.

"NOOOOOOO!!" She screamed with so much anguish, that those who were left heard its echoes far beyond the boundaries of their camp. Bonnie screamed again, clenching some of the sand in her fists and throwing it away in a fit, desperately trying to pull the rubble off of her father as it began to rain. He wasn't dead! He couldn't be dead!!

"Miss Bonnie!" One of the workers shouted as the came running back after hearing her scream. "Miss Bonnie!"

But Bonnie couldn't hear him. She was in shock, numb to everything around her except the pointless battle of digging her father out.

"Miss Bonnie! Stop it, you'll hurt yourself!"

"He's not dead… He's not dead…!" She repeated over and over again like a mantra, like if she believed in it hard enough, she could save him.

"Miss Bonnie!" The worker yelled, shaking her.

"No! He's not—"

SLAP!

Bonnie stared up that man with wide eyes. She raised a hand to touch her stinging cheek, stunned. She saw the fear and guilt in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Miss Bonnie. But your mother needs you."

"My… mom…?" She asked numbly.

"Yes, your mother. She is injured." He said, lifting the petite girl onto her feet.

"!" Bonnie gasped when what he was trying to tell her penetrated her shock. "What? Where is she!? Please take me to her, Tarik!"

Tarik helped her climb out of the ruined dig site and lead her back to their camp, which had been completely and utterly destroyed. Lots of people had apparently been injured, but fortunately there didn't seem to be any dead since the camp was mostly just a collection of tents, which weren't that heavy on their own.

"Mom!" Bonnie cried out when she spotted her mother being loaded onto the back of a truck her father had rented on a makeshift stretcher, along with some of the more severely injured so they could be taken to a hospital.

"A shelf of artifacts fell on her." Tarik explained quickly as Bonnie hopped in to be with her mother. Bonnie gasped when she saw what had happened for herself. Shards of broken pottery were sticking out of her mother's abdomen. The workers had done their best to patch her up without making it worse, but she was still losing blood.

"Mom…?" Bonnie said with a trembling voice as tears welled up in her eyes.

"I-It's all right, Bonnie." Her mother tried to reassure her with a weak smile.

"No, it's not…" Bonnie sobbed. "Dad…"

"Shh… It's all right." Her mother said, pulling Bonnie close so that she was laying next to her with her head on her shoulder. "Momma's here. Daddy wouldn't want us to cry…"

"Is that everyone?" The driver asked Tarik.

"That's everyone." Tarik answered. "Now get them out of here. And don't forget to send help for the rest of us!"

It was an excruciating ride into the city for Bonnie's mother. Every little bump and turn caused her agony, and her white bandages were soon dyed completely red.

"Listen to me, Bonnie…" Her mother said in a weak voice. "The greatest tragedy in life is not death."

"Mom, don't talk…!" Bonnie said. She wanted her to preserve her strength.

"It's what we let die inside of us while we're still alive." Her mother continued. She knew she was dying. She just wanted to talk while she still had the strength. She has some things she needed to tell her daughter before she left. "In life, you're going to be lied to, left out, talked about, and used. You have to decide who's worth your tears and who isn't." She said as Bonnie clung to her. "… But don't let the world make you hard. Don't let the pain make you hate. Don't let fear control you. And don't let bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even tough the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place…" Her eyes closed, and Bonnie's mother breathed for the last time just as the city came into view. Hot tears streamed down Bonnie's face as the cold rain began to pour down in a torrent, pelting against her back, as it drowned out the sound of her cries of anguish.

As the sun dimmed over the great Anatolian region of eastern Turkey on May 22, 1971, a destructive earthquake struck near the quiet city of Bingöl. It was about one second before 6:44 p.m. (local time) when the magnitude 6.9 tremor broke the quiet of the evening, leaving that city and much of the surrounding area in rubble. Some 15,000 of its population were now homeless, a thousand or more were dead, and 90% of its structures lay destroyed, an all too frequent occurrence in Turkey's high Anatolian Plateau. Rescue efforts were hampered by heavy rain. Survivors told harrowing accounts of entire families still covered by ruins. Days later, Bingöl troops and volunteers continued to search through the broken shells of homes for victims. Despite their losses, the people working the dig site for Bonnie's parents had been lucky.