Timeframe: A few days after the Season 6 finale. AU.

Author's Note: This is a standalone one-shot. It's not connected to Yibbum or Long Shadows. It's just something fun I wrote in half an hour to answer a prompt from a friend on Tumblr. I hope the ending isn't too much of a tease.

"How is this possible?" Stefan looked as befuddled as Bonnie and everyone else felt.

Kai's brows knotted further, and Bonnie could almost feel the impatience radiating through his black coat but he just answered curtly. "Apparently, it's a side effect of a heretic's head being chopped off. He comes back – as both versions of himself – the witch and the vampire. Thanks for that, Damon."

Damon narrowed his eyes. "So there are two of you now?"

Kai sighed. "Do I need to use smaller words?"

Damon's hand jerked. Bonnie could tell that he was a hair's breath from attacking. "I can't tell the difference. You sound pretty Evil to me."

He sprang to his feet and a split second later so did Stefan and Caroline, trying to get between him and Kai. But they needn't have bothered. Damon didn't even get close. He was already on his knees, his hands on his head groaning in pain.

Kai's hand was up, and his eyes were rueful. "I said I was the… relatively good one, not the stupid one."

Stefan and Caroline came at him and he shoved them with magic across the room.

"Kai, stop."

His head turned sharply to her, and his eyes seemed to bore into her. Those were the first words Bonnie had said since he showed up an hour ago with his incredible story.

He lifted his hand, and Damon collapsed, gasping. Stefan helped Caroline to her feet. The three vampires turned to face him.

Bonnie sprang up and stood between him and them, her hands stretched out, pleadingly. "Guys, stop. We don't have time for this. If he's telling the truth, there's an easy enough way to prove it."

"Really?" Damon snarled. "How?"

She turned to face Kai and held that scorching gaze with her own. Then, not breaking eye-contact, she drew out from her jacket the knife that was never far from her.

He raised an eyebrow. "Don't you need to be standing behind me to use that, Bon?" There was no hiding the bitterness in his voice.

"So you have his memories, too, right?" she asked.

"There's no 'he'. We're the same person. Or at least we were until Damon chopped off my head. Smart move, Damon."

Damon growled but Bonnie barely heard him. All her attention was fixed on the man in front of her. She didn't want to miss a single thing.

With one swift move, her gaze still on Kai, she slashed her palm.

He exclaimed, taking a step forward and grabbed her hand. "What the Hell, Bonnie?" He shouted.

In one swift whisper, he murmured the spell and she felt the pain vanish. She looked down to see that her wound had closed.

He glared at her. "What did you do that for?"

She stared at him up at him, her eyes almost lost in those stormy grey ones, her heart pounding in her chest. Then she turned to the others.

"See?"

The three vampires looked at each other, each in turn noticing the red veins that were only just now receding from their faces.

All three were her dearest friends, the Salvatores were over a century old, Caroline was the most self-controlled person she knew.

But at the scent of witch blood, the bloodlust had taken hold – fleetingly but taken hold all the same – over them.

Bonnie turned back to Kai, whose face had not once changed. No veins. No fangs. Who at the sight of her wound had rushed to heal her, not feed from her.

There was no way, she thought grimly, that a vampire version of Kai would have been able to resist her blood.

He still had her hand. She tried to take it back but his grip on her just tightened. She frowned at him and he smirked.

"So now that we know you're telling the truth," and it was Damon who spoke, his voice drawling and begrudging, "how the Hell are you going to help me get my girlfriend back?"

Kai raised an eyebrow. "It depends: what do I get in return?"

"You get to choose which version of you that I tear his heart out of."

"Damon," Bonnie snapped.

"I could just burn you where you stand," Kai said almost conversationally. He looked down at Bonnie. Once again, their gazes caught and held. "But rather than resort to violence, I'll have this conversation with someone who actually has something that I want." His grip tightened and then he tugged her to him, near enough that his coat brushed against her arm.

His smirk widened into something dark and dangerous and her heart jumped. "What do you say, Bonnie? Care to make a deal with a reformed devil?"

(much later in this story)

The tip came the day after Kai left for Portland. Bonnie should have followed him - she wanted to follow him. And it was that reason - how desperately she needed to be near him always - that she had stayed behind in Mystic Falls.

Bonnie warned against going but Damon threw his weight and overruled her. Of course, she was right. Of course, it was a trap. The heretics were expecting them. The four of them - Stefan, Damon, Caroline and herself were easily separated. Bonnie found herself facing off alone against two heretics and in seconds, it was over.

They were draining her of magic, both at the same time and all Bonnie could think beyond the pain was that she was going to die here, because of Damon's stupidity and because she had been too much of a coward to go after what she wanted and gone with Kai.

Then she heard a shout, blood-curling and furious, and the sound of bones cracking. Then they were letting her go to fall into darkness.

When she woke up, she was in an unfamiliar room, her magic was still gone and Kai was there.

Not her Kai.

Him.

"Hello, Bonster," he said, his smile as wide as his fangs were sharp, as he pulled her frozen body to himself.

She pushed him away, reflexively, and turned to run, only to trip over the edge of the bed and fall on her knees. She swung around and held up her hand.

Her magic was still gone.

"Get out!"

He laughed and stepped forward, his black coat swinging around his knees.

She scrambled back.

He laughed, and she felt fear coil at the bottom of her stomach. This was the Kai she recognised. The darkness in his eyes, the menace in his smile. She kept moving until her back was against the wall and there was no where else to go.

Then did he swoop down, coming to crouch over her. "Is this how you thank the man that saved your life?"

His face was barely inches from her; she could count each vein. She was grateful for that. She didn't think she could bear it if this Kai looked like him.

He cocked his head as he watched her. His eyes on her were relentless, as if he was trying to stare into her brain. "I know it's not how you thank him… the goody-two-shoes version of me. Saw you two together. Looked awfully chummy." His words were mild enough, but there was a snarl in his voice.

"Get out of my face," she whispered.

"You hate me," and his voice shook over the words. "So how are you so sure you can trust him? We are two sides of the same coin, after all." His eyes suddenly burned. "How are you so sure of what you feel for me?"

Blood rushed to her face and she tried to look away. He tipped her back with a finger on her chin, his touch gentle yet unrelenting, light and yet warm enough to burn. She tried to yank her head away and he only held faster, came closer, so there was barely a breath separating the two.

"Kai…" It was supposed to have come out as a warning but instead, it came out as a plea. Also, it was incongruous but what else could she have called him?

"What, Bonnie?" he whispered and he came nearer still.

She could smell his breath. She would have thought, if she ever thought of this, that with his diet, it would smell of blood and decay. But it just smelt of smoke, and something else coiled at the bottom of her stomach.

His finger travelled from her chin to her cheek, stroking gently. His face was strained and she could practically feel the tension in his muscles, as he struggled to hold himself in check.

"Kiss or kill. That's the question you and I have always asked each other," he murmured and now his lips were practically touching hers.

Bonnie swallowed.

"And now you have your answer. One of me to kiss and one of me to kill. But I'll be damned if I make it easy for you to choose which of us is whom."

The End