... REDO

13

Bonnie was glad that Damon was driving back a little more reasonably than the drive there. Her life wasn't flashing before her eyes anymore. She just hoped he was calm enough now to talk. "Do you want to tell me what happened back there? With Caroline's dad?"

"Not much to tell," Damon shrugged. "He kidnaps and tortures his own daughter, but I let myself be talked into compelling him instead. /After/ making sure he was clear of vervain, but he somehow still shrugged it off. He could have left, but instead decided to pick a fight. Threatened to expose me. Told me I wouldn't dare kill him for it."

"So you were going to prove him wrong," Bonnie nodded, hearing a lot more than he was saying. Long years of dealing with Damon filled in those blanks for her. "What now?"

"I suppose that depends on him. I'll give him one more chance to leave town in peace. Was going to give him that anyway once I taught him a lesson. If he doesn't take it, then all bets are off."

"That's perfectly fair. Three strikes you're out," Bonnie agreed.

"Even though he's your best friend's father," Damon said skeptically, turning to look for any signs of disgust from her.

"He's also a threat. To us all. You do what you have to do, Damon and I'll have your back," Bonnie promised. She would also try to talk to Caroline about all this and smooth things over with her.

Damon frowned at her and turned his eyes back towards the road as he tried to make her make sense. She'd fought for him. Stood between him and a threat, if Caroline could be counted as a threat at all, but the fact that she was her friend made up that difference. She'd demanded that they hear his side of the story against her friends. Then she'd watched him kill two people. Now she was backing him again against her friends and was okay with him killing her friend's father too. Sure, she'd said before that she was okay with him killing people who didn't need to be killed, but saying it and actually accepting it in the moment were very different things. Bill Forbes, if he came back again, would /need/ to be killed, but those gangsters didn't and she was seemingly okay with that too. Unless she was just waiting for him to be less on edge to go after him for it. Or maybe get him to let his guard down and she'd come back with backup. That was a definite possibility. It wouldn't be the first time. That had to be it. "Your house?" he asked when they got back to town.

"Yeah. Please," she said. She would give Caroline the night to cool down before talking to her. "And I think I'm going to skip my training in the morning."

"That's fine," Damon said tightly. Just more proof that she didn't really accept him. She was keeping her distance now. Probably just went along to see for herself how far he would go and now that she knew he really was a monster she wanted to get away.

"Goodnight, Damon," she told him, reaching over to squeeze his hand before she got out. He could use the night to cool down too. She'd go by there tomorrow evening to see if he wanted to go feed with her again and then they could really start getting him past this.

It was late by that point so she just went straight to bed. When she got up the next morning, she headed straight to Caroline's, thankfully getting there after the sheriff had left for work so Caroline was alone. Caroline answered the door and had obviously been crying. "My dad is gone. He left town. So if you're here to help Damon hurt him..."

"No, Care. I'm just here to talk," Bonnie said gently.

Caroline let her in, but then just stood there with her arms crossed. "You took Damon's side last night. I called you for help and you took his side when he was trying to kill my father."

"And you're understandably upset about what Damon did. He's your dad. I get it. But try to see it from his point of view too," Bonnie tried.

"His point of view," Caroline scoffed.

"You know how protective Damon is for all of us, despite the fact that he won't show it."

"Protective?" Caroline asked skeptically.

"Did he or did he not go after you and save you from that ritual? And got bitten by Tyler and almost died in the process?" Bonnie pointed out and Caroline frowned in remembrance. "And then your own father takes you prisoner and tortures you. He wasn't going to let that go."

"I'm the one who was tortured. It should be my say and I don't want him dead for that. Not for me," Caroline huffed.

"Which is why he let your mother talk him into a compulsion instead."

"But what? He was on vervain?" Caroline said confusedly.

"No. Damon said that he checked and your father was completely free of vervain. But he was somehow still immune to compulsion. Now he could have pretended the compulsion worked and just let it go, but he didn't."

"What did he do?" Caroline asked with a frown.

"Came after Damon and threatened to out him. Get him killed. That was strike two. Damon wasn't going to kill him last night. He was going to teach him a lesson and give him one more chance to drop it and walk away. For /your/ sake."

"So he won't be going after him?" Caroline asked with narrowed eyes.

"Not as long as he doesn't make himself a threat again," Bonnie told her. "But I would like to point out why it got to that point in the first place."

"What do you mean?" Caroline asked with furrowed brow.

"Your father saw Damon being called down every time he tried to make a point, being treated like a tamed lapdog who would listen to his 'owners' and he didn't see a threat. Which was why Damon had to disabuse him of that notion before Damon ended up dead. Or me or even you."

"He's still my father," Caroline said.

"Which is exactly why Damon would never have put the decision on you. How would you have felt if you'd begged for his life and then the rest of us died for it? But how could you be asked /not/ to beg for your own father's life?"

"So he made the choice for me?" she asked disgustedly.

"Yeah. Exactly. So that you wouldn't have to face that kind of decision. Yeah, losing your father would have hurt if it had gone that far, but you wouldn't have had the guilt on top of it. The guilt of either causing the death of your friends or your father. That's why Damon makes the tough choices when it comes down to it. And it /did/ come down to it. Like it or not, your father was a threat to us all. One that couldn't be compelled. What else should he have done?"

Caroline frowned and sat down on the couch, prompting Bonnie to sit too and Bonnie let her think it over. "He really wasn't going to kill him?"

"No. He was proving that he wasn't as tame as your father thought and that it would be in his best interests to drop it and leave and he was going to give him that chance," Bonnie told her.

"Then okay. I get it. I don't like it, but I don't think there was anything he could have done that I /would/ have liked." Having the deaths of her friends on her conscience wasn't something she would have wanted to live with either. As long as Damon wasn't /actually/ going to kill him, she could live with it. And the fact that he'd tried compulsion first and that it wasn't an option. Probably that mind over matter crap her dad was spouting on about. Her father had been the one to escalate things and if she was being objective, Damon had every right to defend himself. She just couldn't be objective when it came to her father, and she knew that.

"So we're okay?" Bonnie asked. "I wasn't technically taking Damon's side. I just wanted to /hear/ his side and for all of us to talk it out without violence."

"Yeah. We're okay," Caroline said, leaning over for a hug that Bonnie returned gratefully.