Liaison [Sequel to Captured Hearts]

Infinite: Part One [VIII]

  

  The hospital room was cold, quiet, and smelt so sterile that it had started to give Bonnie a headache. She laid in the bed with the white sheets pulled up to just below her chin, and she stared up at the bare ceiling. It was late night now, almost twelve in the morning, and Bonnie couldn’t seem to catch any sleep. She had laid awake for hours, with thousands of thoughts swirling in her mind.
Visiting hours had finished, like Meredith had said, but Bonnie didn’t see that as a downside. She saw it as more of a plus. She liked the silence anyway.
  “One hundred,” Bonnie whispered under her breath. She hadn’t counted sleep since she was a child, but tonight she was desperate for sleep. When she shifted on the bed, the sheets scratched against her bare legs, and she hated the paper hospital dress that they had made her wear.
  She sucked in another breath, “Ninety nine.”
The wind outside forced the tree branches to scratch against the windows. Bonnie shut her eyes tight, and all she could see was darkness. She wondered how much of her dream had been real. It had felt real. She could still feel Sheila’s hands around her wrists.
  “Ninety eight.” Bonnie didn’t even know how she was supposed to get to the other-side and back. It wasn’t possible, and even for a witch; she wasn’t sure how it could be done. Bonnie couldn’t leave the hospital to search through the grimoire; after all, she had just been diagnosed with cancer.
  “Ninety seven.” She was growing restless, and despite the cool temperature in the room, Bonnie kicked the sheets off her body and let them fall off the edge of the bed. She placed her hands on her stomach, and she heard the paper dress crinkle.
  “Ninety six.”
Bonnie didn’t want to die.
  “Ninety five.”
She could go through with chemotherapy, but her cancer had been around for a while, and there was no evidence of her being able to survive it.
  “Ninety four.”
Bonnie felt sick to her stomach, and she sat up in the bed.
She stopped counting, and she stared out into the dark room. Bonnie had been surrounded by silence before, but this time, it was even worse. No matter how silent she breathed, or how still she sat, there wasn’t a single sound. Not a cough, not the sound of the nurses wheeling carts down the halls. Complete, and utter silence, and Bonnie knew that wasn’t right.
  She slowly let her foot drop to the floor, and her bare toes pressed against the cold, hard tiles. She waited for a few moments, as if testing for a monster to reach out from under the bed and grab her ankle. But there was no monster in the room, and Bonnie slipped out of the bed.
The door to her room was left wide open, and Bonnie’s eyebrows furrowed in a mixture of confusion and curiosity as she slowly peeked around the corner. The hallway lights were lit, and she could hear a phone ringing in the distance.
  She wasn’t the only one in the hospital, after all.
  Bonnie’s thick, brunette hair fell past her shoulders, and she tucked it behind her ears as she walked. Her blue hospital dress crunched and crinkled as she walked, but she was too busy concentrating on her breathing. Goosebumps had formed on her bare legs and arms, and she couldn’t seem to tame the churning feeling in her chest.
  Something wasn’t right.
Bonnie bit the inside of her cheek, and she carefully looked around the corner as she reached the end of the stretching hallway. There were a set of double doors, and she supposed that the receptionist was behind them. Bonnie looked back over her shoulder, but the hallway looked dark, and scary and abandoned, and the urge to continue forwards was just too tempting.
  She crept forwards, and pressed her hands up against the double doors. Bonnie had to squint through the glass to see on the other side of the door, but there wasn’t much to see. The waiting room looked just like it always had; plain and boring. The receptionist was sitting quietly behind a desk at the very back of the room and stared blankly at a computer screen.
Bonnie was willing to bet her life that the woman was watching a movie instead of working.
  Bonnie almost screamed when she felt the something touch her shoulder, but a hand was clasped over her mouth, and even when she thrashed in her offender’s hold, she couldn’t seem to get free.
  “Bonnie!” Kol Mikaelson hissed in her ear. “It’s alright, darling. It’s only me.”
  When Kol finally released her, Bonnie stumbled forwards a few steps back spinning around, and she clenched her hand into a tight fist at her side to stop herself from slapping him.
  “It’s you showing up supposed to be a good thing?” Bonnie tried not to shout, but she couldn’t keep in her anger. “Last time I saw you, you hit me!”
  “In my defence, you were trying to kill me.”
  Bonnie’s mouth dropped open, but she couldn’t find the words to say. It was true. She had started it by trying to kill him, and she suddenly felt a strong rush inside her stomach. She was sure that it was guilt, but she couldn’t be sure. Bonnie had never actually wanted to hurt him.
  “I didn’t –”
  “I’m not interested in your excuse,” Kol interrupted, and he reached forward to take hold of Bonnie’s arm. He started pulling her down the hall and away from the double doors. Bonnie was going to ask him where he was going, but she decided to keep quiet. “I need to get you out of here.”
  “No, wait,” Bonnie argued, and she pulled back on Kol’s arm. He never stopped walking. “I need to stay here. You don’t understand.”
  Kol’s gaze was in front of him, but after a brief moment of hesitation, he looked across and down at Bonnie. His face wasn’t hard, or soft. It showed no emotion; it was just blank.
  “I understand,” Kol said.
  “Then you know that I have to stay here. The doctors can save me.”
  “I can save you, Bonnie,” Kol snapped, and this time he did stop so he could grip onto Bonnie’s shoulders. He pulled her close, and for a second, Bonnie actually thought that he was going to kiss her. His lips were mere inches from hers, but he wasn’t moving any closer. “That thing inside your head can’t be saved by medicine and science.”
  “It’s cancer, Kol. They have a cure.”
  Kol was quiet, and he looked down at her as if he were deciding on what to say. Bonnie felt anxious, and her skin felt like it was damp with cold sweat.
  “They don’t have a cure for this type of cancer.”
  “How could you say that?”
  “Because it’s my fault that this is happening to you,” Kol explained, and when Bonnie didn’t answer him, he hurried to continue on. “Those witches were never strong enough. But I know how to solve this.”
  “Maybe I don’t want to be fixed.”
  “Don’t be hasty.”
  Bonnie yanked out of Kol’s grip, and she suddenly felt outraged. Kol had no idea of what she was thinking, and she was not going to stand here and let him tell her what to do. It just wasn’t built into Bonnie’s system.
  “I mean it, Kol,” Bonnie said seriously. “I’m not human anymore; I don’t even think I’m a witch anymore. I’m some other kind of monster, and I know that you can see it to. Marcel was right; I have no humanity.”
  “Emotions are –”
  “Don’t say that. Don’t tell me that emotions are overrated because they aren’t, and I know that you don’t mean that, Kol. I can’t feel anything, and I know that I’m supposed to hate feeling like that, but I don’t. Do you understand?”
  Kol shook his head angrily and he grabbed onto her wrist again.
  “We’re leaving,” Kol declared and he started to pull her again.
  Bonnie jerked out of his hold.
  “I know that I’m supposed to love you,” Bonnie blurted, and Kol’s face looked troubled for a few moments, until a blank mask once again replaced it. “I know that I do love you, Kol, but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything, and I really want to. It’s not like a vampire with their humanity switch. They can turn it off and not give it a second thought, but I think about it all the time. There is something wrong with me, something wrong deep inside of me, and I can’t stand it anymore.”
  “Bonnie, I am going to get you help.”
  “I don’t want to be helped. After everything, I just want to go. And this time, I don’t want you to bring me back. I don’t want anyone to bring me back. I can’t live like this anymore, Kol. I'm tired, so tired.”
  Bonnie could see the lump in Kol’s throat, and a hint of a sorrowful smile played on his lips before he pressed his lips to Bonnie’s forehead.
  “As you wish, darling,” Kol whispered, and before Bonnie had the moment to protest, she felt a hard tug, and the last thing she heard was the sound of a dry snap filling the empty hallways before everything disappeared. She felt herself sink into oblivion, and for once, everything seemed peaceful.   
  Kol Mikaelson had just snapped her neck, and Bonnie Bennett was dead.