Please Don't Find Me

Song Inspiration: Find You by Ruelle

Bonnie stares into the eyes of her best friend, glossy brown and tear-stained cheeks, Elena drops the other girl's unwavering gaze under the weight of her own guilt.

Her and Stefan haven't spoken since she confessed her growing feelings for Damon. No one's heard from him in weeks. He's like a ghost, only talked about in passing from the few leads Damon had rounded up. The eldest Salvatore tried to track him down with a half-hearted effort but figured his little brother was just out licking his wounds. He figured Stefan would show his face when he could get over the transition of Elena's heart from himself to his older brother. Not even Caroline could reach him, her incessant calls becoming an everyday thing and his silence doing little to deter her. To Bonnie's surprise, she'd actually been the last one to see him. She hadn't mentioned the impromptu visit to anyone else in the group. She's not really sure why she never told anyone. Maybe it was her instinctive loyalty or sense of honor. But if she was being honest with herself, she was a little touched that he'd chosen her to be the last person he saw before he left Mystic Falls for good.

He'd shown up at her door the day before he disappeared in dark black boots and a trench coat, his forest green eyes deplorably sad with a somber smile and a cool-pressed kiss to her cheek.

She'd asked him why he'd came by to see her out of all people and the corner of his mouth twitched like he'd been harboring a secret, his dimpled cheek upturning only slightly, "I think I'm going to miss you the most, Bonnie."

Before she had time to ponder what that meant or ask him herself, he was gone. All he left behind was the remnants of his woodsy, petrichor scent lingering in the space he once filled.

She felt the shape of his lips on her skin the rest of the night.

Klaus is more jovial than usual, a manic smirk danced across his lips in a way that twisted his handsome face into something sinister, inhuman.

"Well Elena," He taunts, "Who will it be, your witchy best friend or the Salvatore?" He looks over at Damon who has blood spilling from his mouth, ashen skin pale and paper thin. "Who will you save?"

When the brunette doesn't say anything Klaus casts his wolfish eyes her way in a mocking manner, "Oh, the moral doppelganger. You're the compassionate one, am I correct? And here I thought I was being generous. This should be an easy choice. The man who killed your brother, tried to murder your friends, and has harassed and manipulated you since the moment he laid eyes on you or your best friend." He looks at Bonnie for a brief moment with the first real flash of emotion he's shown during his whole psychotic spectacle, pity. "My my, little witch. I apologize for my lack in judgement. I promise your sacrifice will not be forgotten."

Elena hiccups, shifting her gaze between the two before her eyes land on Damon. Letting out a shaky breath, her eyes run over Bonnie, her bottom lip quivers. She whispers half between a cry and a plea, "I can't lose him, Bonnie… I'm so sorry."

She continues to cry and the jade-eyed girl rolls her eyes at her theatrics. If these were her final moments, the last thing she was going to do was coddle Elena while she threw herself a pity party. Her emerald eyes cut into slits, honing in on the girl she'd known since birth, "If only your parents could see you now." She says nonchalantly, "Their perfect, subdued daughter. The marteyer. Deciding that my life isn't worth a moment of thought. It was so easy for you to choose him over me, Elena. I wouldn't be surprised if Grayson and Miranda were rolling around in their graves right now. Hell, maybe Jenna decided to join the death party." Bonnie smirks darkly at the way Elena's doe eyes widen in hurt, her reaction only fueling her further. She decides to rub salt in the wound upon seeing the brunette on the brink of a panic attack, "Oh, I forgot. You're the reason their dead, too." Bonnie cocks her head to the side eerily calm, "How does that feel, knowing that you're the catalyst for every bad thing that's ever happened to all the people that you claim to love?"

Klaus watches on with fascination.

Elena's body is wracked with sobs but she could care less. She isn't crying for her. She's sure Damon will comfort her later when he fucks the sadness out of her. And that's all it would really take anyway for Elena to forget, for Damon to convince her that she didn't have a choice. That it's okay to forgive herself for signing her best friend over to her death. And for what, lousy sex with a predator?

Bonnie will never forget waking up to Caroline crying in her bed at one of their sleepovers not long after the Salvatore's had came into town. It had been just the two of them and Care had divulged some of the explicit nightmares that flashed behind her eyes whenever she tried to sleep. Bonnie held her while she cried and Damon woke up in a ditch the next morning. It was the closest she'd ever came to killing someone.

A single tear rolls down the witch's cheek when she realizes that this is it, she's really dying this time. She never got to say goodbye to her dad or Abby, Caroline and Matt, not even Stefan, not really. At the thought, anger pulses through her veins, white hot and electric. She dies and Damon Salvatore gets to live. The universe has a fickle way of making it's choices. Who knew Elena's own fickle heart would be her undoing. But in reality, what else has her former best friend ever represented other than death, suffering, and pain?

Her mother left her because of Elena. The Salvatores infested this town because of Elena. Her Grams is dead because of Elena. Why must she cease to exist in the name of Elena, why does she get to play God?

"It's time, little witch."

Bonnie is manhandled by one of Klaus' hybrids, positioned in the middle of a symbolic field of candles, salt, and sage. Elena doesn't even have the decency to look at her, melting into Damon's arms for comfort after one of the other hybrids dropped him at her feet.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way, Bonnie." Klaus' british lilt brushes against her ear.

She keeps her composure, refusing to break in front of him. She stiffly nods her head and grabs his wrist yanking him forward, figuring she has nothing else to lose. She leans in and he lets her pull him in, "Promise me you won't hurt Caroline."

His face seems to soften slightly at the mention of her blonde friend's name. His stoic expression lost some of it's malice, his eyes almost a bit more human, "She's not Elena, no doubt she will hate me forever after this is all said and done." He leans in further so that only she can hear, "But I'd never hurt Caroline, you have my word."

With a solemn tightening of her lips, she gives him a look to precede. There was nothing she could really do at this point. Her magic was binded by the witch helping Klaus and no one was coming to save her. Damon looked pointedly at her with what appeared to be a semblance of respect. She flipped him the bird.

One of Klaus' personal witches began chanting in an ancient language that not even she seems to recognize from any of her grimoires. With the timing damn near perfect, the moon aligned with her spot in the field and illuminated her gilded, mocha skin. As the chanting persisted, her head began to throb with the intensity of an aneurysm and the duration of a lifetime. Her eyes began to bleed, more blood followed as it leaked from every orifice of her body: her pores, ears, and mouth. She choked violently, her body tortured by phantom touches under the moon's celestial power. She screams, her teeth blood-tinged and her throat raw like razor blades. In that moment when she knows death is here for her, she sees a blurry shadow of a man near the treeline and the next second he's toppled over her, shielding her from the moon's harmful luminescence underneath the protective shade some neighboring trees provided.

Dark green eyes bore into her own as she stares back with the lucidness of a dream and a wayward hit to her crooked heart.

"Stefan?"