A/N: Oh my goodness, you guys. This pairing. It just wouldn't leave me alone…and then this happened. Sorrynotsorry. I honestly have no idea where this is gonna end up, but thank you if you take the time and go on this creepy, crazy journey with me. Small note: this starts right after the episode where Damon comes back (6x05), assuming that the Ascendant got smashed too badly to be put back together and used again. Okay? Okay.

XXX

"Oh, good, you're awake. I was so bored waiting. I'm awful at sitting still. Which is, you know, fitting, I guess, since that's all I've really been doing for the past twenty years. Twenty years of waiting and sitting still and being bored. Now that's hell."

Five seconds of consciousness, and already Kai was talking too much. Bonnie tried to sit up, but quickly remembered why she shouldn't when the sharp, stabbing pain in her stomach came rushing back, worse than the last time.

The last time I wasn't thinking about the arrow in my gut, she reminded herself. I was thinking about getting Damon home. And honestly, I was kinda expecting to die. Being dead already and all. But this, right now, wasn't death. This was pain and same old Salvatore boarding house in 1994 and, unfortunately, Kai. She'd traded an annoying companion for a psychotic one. Great.

"Shh, shh," Kai held out a hand to stop her sitting up when he heard her sharp intake of breath. "Don't move. You'll ruin my suture."

Perplexed, Bonnie pulled up her still-bloodsoaked shirt. In the center of her stomach was a wound, with uneven, crisscrossing stitches holding it together.

She turned back to Kai, who was sitting across from her, rolling something between his hands. She was still a little foggy, but could see that it was late afternoon, judging by the orange light coming in through the windows, and she was sprawled on one of the Salvatore's living room couches, the ones so soft that you sunk in to the cushions, feeling comfortable but also sort of suffocated. She looked back at the jagged stitches in her stomach.

"You did this?" she said.

"Huh? Yeah," said Kai, who was still fascinated by whatever he was holding and not looking at her.

"Why?" said Bonnie. "You could've just let me die."

"I guess I could've. But, what's the fun in just letting somebody die, you know what I mean?"

"Not really," Bonnie said coldly. The more awake she got, the more aware she was of who she was talking to.

"Well, anyway, I couldn't have you and your magic dying on me, now could I? I'd just be stuck in this bland boring hellscape forever with nothing to do."

"Right." Bonnie sighed, sinking down in to the cushions again. "And I'm guessing you want me and my magic to get you out of here. Well, if you think I'm gonna let—"

Kai cut her off, striding over and kneeling down next to the couch to show her what was in his hand. "Yeah, I'm afraid that's no longer an option, Bon-Bon. See this here?" He held up a tiny jagged piece of metal, about the size of a stick of gum. "This is the biggest piece left of what used to be the Ascendant. Thanks to you and your little martyr act, the rest of it has been crushed. In to dust. And poof"—he put his hands up, expanding out as if away from an explosion—"blown away. No more ruby slippers. No more going home."

"Oh, how sad," Bonnie smiled ruefully. "I guess you'll miss out on that big family reunion you had planned."

Something seemed to flicker in Kai's eyes, something that made Bonnie almost want to flinch away from whatever he was about to do. But instead, he let out a breath and smiled back at her, running a sharp edge of the metal piece across her cheek, light enough that she was only aware enough to be nervous.

"Guess so," he said. "But lucky for me, I've got you to distract me now."

"What, you want to be best pals now?" Bonnie said, stubbornly ignoring the fact that Kai and the piece of metal were both making her skin crawl. "You tried to kill me."

"And you tried to kill me! Isn't that great? It's got a great symmetry to it."

"You know," said Bonnie, shoving Kai's hand away from her face, "I think I'd rather live on the other side of the planet, if you don't mind."

Kai paused, pulled back to a standing position. "If that's what you want. Go ahead. Don't say I didn't try to be friendly."

He left the room abruptly, taking the metal piece with him. Bonnie lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell had just happened. She'd counted on his stubbornness, had been expecting to wait until she was healed and then make a break for it, maybe to Florida. Florida sounded nice this time of year, and if she wasn't going home, at least she could wait it out somewhere with palm trees and beaches and a soft, salty breeze, and she could hide away so Kai couldn't find her and try to use her magic again…

Instead, he'd just given up, apparently. Weird, but she wasn't going to pass up an opportunity staring her in the face.

It took some time, but Bonnie eventually worked herself up to a sitting position that didn't make her feel like she was being stabbed all over again, and once she'd tried that out, she slowly placed her feet on the ground, one by one, and gripped the arm of the couch to get to a standing position. Once she was up, it wasn't so bad. It felt good to move again. She grabbed a jacket she'd left by the door, and hopefully before Kai had had time to reconsider, she was out of the house, heading she didn't know where. All that was important was that it was away.

She didn't notice anything was off until she got nearly to the edge of the sweeping lawn outside, when she was just starting to enjoy the cool breeze and the sunshine filtered through the trees, trying to remind herself that there were still good things, even in this eerie, empty world. It was then that she felt a sort of resistance on the ground. Like she was suddenly walking through wet sand, instead of grass. She looked at the bottoms of her shoes, wondering if she'd gotten something stuck there. But no, there was nothing.

She continued on in to the street, and the more she did, the more she felt it; a resistance, as if she were trying to pull two ends of an elastic band apart. By the time she got to the other end of the road, she couldn't move any further forward at all.

She tried anyway, willing her arms and legs to press on, but it was impossible. Her heart sank slowly as she fought against whatever was holding her. She should've known it was too easy. An infuriated cry sticking in her chest, she marched back the way she'd come.

Five minutes later, she was bursting through the front doors of the Salvatore house again, immediately meeting Kai in the front entryway, who was crunching gleefully on a handful of pork rinds.

"What did you do?" she said, trying to remain calm even as her hands were shaking with rage and frustration.

"Figured it out, didja? How far did you get? Ten feet? Twenty?"

"What. Did. You. Do," Bonnie repeated.

Kai tilted his head thoughtfully. "Well, while you were knocked out, I may have borrowed some of your magic. I figured you owed me for stitching you up. And then I remembered this little gem of a spell from when I was a kid. My parents used to use it when I wanted to leave and they wanted to, you know, torture me. Basically, wherever I go, you've gotta go, too. I figured this would be a great way to make sure I don't lose track of my magic charm."

"Magic charm?" Bonnie repeated, her voice lowering nearly to a whisper. To anyone who knew her well, that would be a danger sign.

"Yeah. I've been thinking of a nickname for you. I mean, Bon-Bon is nice, but it's more Damon's thing, and I wanted something that was just, you know, mine—"

"What good is magic to you? The Ascendant doesn't work! You can't get out!" said Bonnie.

Kai smiled indulgently at her. "Bonnie, come on. You know as well as I do that every spell has a loophole. There's always something you can do. If you have magic, that is. There's something. Trust me."

"Right," Bonnie said, her voice rising to a shaky yell. "Trust you. You're a murderer, a liar, a psychopath, you shot me with an arrow, stole my magic, and now you've trapped me here with you. But yeah, trust you."

"Hey, you know, you have to admit it hasn't been all bad, me and you. Remember before you found out about the whole family murder thing, you liked me a little bit."

"That is—" Bonnie started, but Kai kept talking, inching closer, reaching for her hand.

"Even Damon noticed. I think that's why he was a little touchy. I think he's gotten to be kind of protective of you, which is really sweet, when you think about it…"

"Would you shut up?"

"I guess I have some competition. But now, it's just you and me here. The only two people in the world. Kind of romantic, isn't it?"

He had taken her hand, fingers threaded through hers. But he didn't have very long to enjoy it, because as soon as he'd said "romantic", Bonnie had taken her other hand, already balled into a fist, and punched him in the nose.

The shocked look in his eyes almost made the whole crappy day worth it, as far as Bonnie was concerned. Kai let out a yell of pain and surprise, his hands flying to his nose, which was already starting to bleed. At that point Bonnie figured she was all in, so she kicked him in the stomach. Hard.

He crumpled on the ground, and one last kick to the head left him totally knocked out.

It was sort of alarming how satisfied the sight of a bloody-nosed, unconscious Kai made her. But she wasn't about to hang around and wait for him to wake up. She stepped past his immobile form, muttering to herself as she went, "At least I can shower now without him hanging around."

XXX

It was dark out by the time Kai finally came to. Bonnie had been upstairs taking a much-needed nap in one of the spare bedrooms, but she could still tell when he was up and about judging by the bangs and thuds coming from downstairs.

In retrospect, maybe pissing off a psychopath that she literally couldn't run away from or kill hadn't been the smartest move. But, damn, it had felt good.

After a few minutes of listening for movement downstairs, her stomach working itself into knots as she waited for the stairs to squeak under his Converse shoes, she finally decided she might as well get it over with and go downstairs.

Bonnie found him at the cluttered kitchen table, apparently staring off in to space while he held a bag of frozen blueberries to his head and a slightly bloody handkerchief to his nose. She had to clench her jaw to keep from smiling at the sight.

"There she is," Kai said as soon as she'd walked in. "My magic charm. That also likes to beat me up."

"Yeah," said Bonnie. She hovered by the edge of the door, hesitating over how safe it would be to come in. "I would say sorry, but…you know…"

"I get it. I do," said Kai, dropping the blueberries and the handkerchief on the table. "I annoy people. And then they annoy me, and then, sometimes…" He mimed stabbing an invisible person in the stomach, twisting an imaginary knife. "But this is a weird situation. Cause, you know, you literally can't kill me. And I can't kill you or lose you, because then I'm stuck magic-less again, and that really sucked the first couple of decades. So, here we are."

"I could always kill myself," said Bonnie, stubbornly holding his gaze. "No more Bennett magic. No more Bennett blood. Then you'd really be stuck. I'd call that a noble cause, dying to stop you from ever getting out—"

Kai shot out of his chair, sending it screeching back on the tile floor. "You can't—" he started to say, but caught the desperate note in his own voice and instead let out a roar of frustration, coming toward her from around the table, forcing her to back against the wall. "God! Why do you have to be so noble all the time? What the hell difference does it make to you what happens to my family?"

"I don't want people to die! How complicated is that?" said Bonnie.

He laughed, a strange sound in the tense, echoing room. "Right. But you'd kill me the second we got out of here without flinching."

"And you'd do the same to me," Bonnie replied.

Kai smiled, though the light didn't reach his eyes. "And you thought we were so different, didn't you?"

Bonnie felt like the breath had been taken out of her. She stood there, unable to say anything, and the silence stretched on and on until she started to think it must reach everywhere. Which, come to think of it, it did.

Finally, Kai broke the silence, back to a chipper tone as if nothing had happened. "Well, anyway, before we kill each other, want a drink?"

XXX

Three drinks in, miraculously, Kai was starting to get less creepy and the world seemed less quiet.

Seven drinks in, things were warm and cozy and who cared about Kai because everything was spinning anyway.

"To the Salvatores' weirdly huge liquor cabinet," Bonnie said, holding up a glass to clink.

"To alcoholism," Kai agreed, clinking with her. Both of them were sprawled on the living room rug, surrounded by CDs, bottles, and glasses. Bonnie had smiled, thinking that if Damon were here he would have freaked to see the disorder, not to mention all the fluids and glass next to the CDs. Damon was very protective of his CDs.

After taking a swallow of what was probably bourbon (Bonnie wasn't good with drinks, but it wasn't like it mattered right now anyway), she leaned back on her elbows, enjoying the spinning ceiling and the R.E.M in the background. "You know," she said, slurring her words together slightly so that whole sentences melded themselves together, "when Damon and I got here I thought he was the last person on earth I'd ever want to be stuck with. But now I realize that's not true. You're the last person I'd ever want to be stuck with."

Kai raised his glass in mock toast. "Back atcha, Bon-Bon."

"So funny how that keeps happening to me," she said. Nestling her glass into the carpet, she laid her head down, eyes closed. "I feel like I've died a lot. Do you ever feel like that?"

"Oh, yeah," said Kai. "Though for me, it just never takes. I've tried shooting myself, drowning myself, suffocating…that one where you leave a car running in a closed garage, whatever that one's called…I think I'd recommend that one, by the way. If you're gonna kill yourself, that's not a bad way."

"I'll make a mental note," Bonnie said.

"Never died permanently, though."

"Nope," said Bonnie. "Me, neither." Her eyes were closed, her head slumped to the side. Kai watched her steady breathing with half lidded eyes. He was lying on his side, head held up with one hand. "Have to try it sometime…" she said with a yawn, and then slowly slipped into sleep.

"Bonnie," Kai whispered, as softly as he could manage. "Are you awake?"

There was no answer except for her deep, slow breath. Kai smiled to himself. "Good," he said. He sidled up close to her, as if they were sharing a pillow.

"I have a secret to tell you," he said. "You won't tell anybody, will you?" Again, silence.

"Okay. Here it is. See, I lied about the magic charm thing. You're right, I am such a liar. The thing is, that Ascendant was the only way I've ever known of to get out. And you blew that for me, Bonnie. And now I might actually be stuck here forever. Magic or no magic.

When you wait twenty years for an opportunity, Bon, it kinda pisses you off when it gets taken away from you. So that's really why I'm making you stay."

A piece of hair had fallen across her face, and Kai tenderly tucked it back behind her ear.

"This place was supposed to be my hell. But now I'm gonna make it yours."

Bonnie hadn't heard a word he'd said, if the peaceful look on her sleeping face was any indication. Still smiling in a fond sort of way, he kissed her softly on the forehead.

"Sweet dreams, Bonnie."

XXX