"So, are you going to tell me why you spent the night in my hospital room?" Liz asked after she and Abigail endured a hospital breakfast. "I paid extra for this to be a single, you know."
"It's been almost two months since Alaric moved into the on-campus apartments that I'm pretty sure have been falling apart since their construction. I told him he didn't have to. That I would move into Elena's dorm or back to Mystic Falls, but he wouldn't hear it." She met her brown eyes, holding them with a different kind of sorrow than she ever had. "And, honestly, if I have to hear Damon ask me if I have learned anything from his mistakes, my mistakes, again, you might actually have to arrest me for murder instead of just questioning me about it."
Her laugh slowly faded into a soft voice, "I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you what your mom would say, but I can't."
A moment passed, easy to track and hard to find a way out of. "Thank you for everything you did for us after our parents died. And for everything before that."
"Your mom loved you so, so much. After all they went through to have you, she just didn't think it would happen. But then it did, and she'd never felt more complete. I mean, you should have seen the look on her face when you were born, it was undeniable: the love. And your dad, well, you know how much he loved you. We used to make jokes when you came and went from his office, that you were his favorite." Smirking, she tilted her head to the side. "And at Council meetings when he told us about the things you were working on together."
"John said he didn't want this for me, that he was trying to protect me. That, that was why he went to such lengths to keep the truth from me." Her voice was broken, cracking as she fought back sobs. "But that's not true, is it?"
"It is true, but it's not the whole truth." Liz took her hand. "He was going to tell you once you were old enough or when you got to Whitmore or if the Council ever needed you, but there was more to it, Abigail."
"It's because he knew, didn't he? He knew that I'd see the town making the same mistakes. That I'd see it differently. That I'd see it the way I do now."
"Yeah, he knew." She squeezed her hand. "He knew, Abigail."
"Do you think he would have changed his mind? Like you did? Do you think he and my mom... Would they-"
"Yes. Yes, I do. They would." Her cold fingers wiped away her tears. "Promise me you'll help Caroline through this. That you'll help her move on with her life after I'm gone."
"There's no such thing as moving on."
"Come on, Abigail, are you going to deny my dying wish?"
"Of course, not." She smiled softly. "I will always be there for Caroline."
"Thank you."
Abigail parked right next to Damon's car outside of the boarding house garage. The doors were open, so she knew Jeremy had heard her pull up; however, he didn't move from his weight bench. Not even as she wrestled balloons out of the backseat of her car.
"Hey, can you give me a hand?"
"Little busy here." With an exhale, he continued his reps. "And I have no interest in attending a birthday party where the guest of honor never shows up."
"As depressing as it is, this is what Bonnie would want us to do," she said. "Or we could celebrate you going to art school. Oh, wait! We can't because I found your application in the garbage. Why didn't you tell me that you were thinking about going to art school?"
He sat up. "I'm not. The only class I'm passing is study hall. They'll never let me in."
"Jer, I've seen your portfolio. You're good. And that art gallery in Richmond, they-"
"Doesn't matter." Shaking his head, he continued, "I'm not leaving without knowing whether Bonnie's okay or not."
The house was not decorated to the extreme, but the balloons Abigail brought seemed to disappear into the ones that were already there. The streamers and banners hung were from years past save one that spelled out Bonnie's name, leading her to the kitchen. She was almost expecting to see her there, but right where she should have been stood Kai.
"What the hell is he doing here?"
"Funniest thing." Kai held up an envelope. "I need your help."
Elena crossed her arms over her chest. "He wants us to give a letter to Jo."
"Why would we help you?"
"I haven't been able to find her using a locator spell, and, you know, good on her because under normal circumstances, I'd be super jazzed to gouge out her belly button." He swiped the frosting off of the top of the cupcake in front of him with his finger. "And, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a sociopath. I know. Shocker. I like being a sociopath. You know, I'm not burdened by things like guilt or love. Then this merge happened with Luke, and I won, which was great because I absorbed his ability to do magic, but now I can't stop thinking about how Luke died, how Liv's life is ruined. And, for some horrible reason, I can't shake how badly I feel about it."
Elena scoffed. "You feel bad?"
"Yes. When I absorbed Luke's magic, I must have gotten some of his qualities or something. Like empathy." The frosting on his cupcake had taken a significant hit, so he dropped it onto the countertop. "I Googled how to process emotional pain, and they said if you write everything down in a letter and burn it, you'll be healed. I started writing, and this water literally started pooling in my eyes. Has that ever happened to you? Like, water was just oozing out of my eyeballs like some alien creature excreting fluids."
Abigail raised her eyebrows. "You mean you cried?"
"Yes! And after that was done, I burned the letter, and the feelings were still there. So, I feel really strongly that Jo needs to know how sorry I am for destroying our family, but let's face it, guys, alright?" He looked to Elena. "I mean, you of all people should be willing to look past the questionable things that I've done to see that there's good somewhere in me. You did it with Damon."
"Okay, I think we're done here." Damon motioned toward the kitchen door. "Come on."
Elena smiled, surprising them all. "Actually, what if there's something he can do for us in exchange?"
The Ascendant had become so familiar to Abigail that seeing someone else hold it seemed wrong. Especially when that someone else was Kai. He was sitting on the couch across from them, silently turning it over in his hands, but the only thing that worried her was what he was going to say when he finally spoke.
"Well, it's not the worst attempt at iron welding I've ever seen. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's sad, but I mean-" He held back a laugh. "I can't bring Bonnie back with this."
"We tried to fix it," Abigail said. "Besides, I thought you were the all-powerful leader of the Gemini coven now."
He held up the Ascendant. "I destroyed this so that it couldn't be used again."
"Well," Damon started, "can we use that hunk of junk to send a message at least? It is her birthday."
"It is? I couldn't tell."
"Yeah. It's really sad. I mean, old Bon Bon..." Damon clicked his tongue. "She's gonna be getting all dressed up for a party no one's even gonna show up to. I mean, I wonder if she even knows that it is her birthday, or do all the days just blend into one vast sea of misery? I wonder."
"One of the crown wheels survived. That's a positive. Plus, I am mega powerful." He looked up from the Ascendant. "What do you want to say?"
"Well, if Bonnie needs magic to get out, we just need to tell her where to find some."
"Jo stored her magic in a hunting knife, Bonnie sent hers over with Miss Cuddles, and I read about a coven of witches in England who stored their magic away in various household items at the height of the fifteenth century for fear of being tried." Abigail took to pacing. "Which means there are probably endless possibilities when it comes to reciprocals of magic. How..."
Damon smirked. "Let me give you a hint: scorned lover."
"Katherine," Elena guessed.
"Older."
"Silas."
"Hotter."
"I don't know. Silas was definitely hot."
Damon groaned.
"Qetsiyah." Abigail came to a halt. "Her blood is on Silas' headstone. It's filled with magic."
"Yep!" He winked at her. "In Bonnieland, that means that an island off Nova Scotia has a big magical battery waiting to be tapped. We just need to remind her of that."
"And what reminded you?" Elena asked.
"I was gonna plan a trip there, change of scenery, you know. There's only so much you can take of Mystic Falls on repeat."
"Oh, thank God," Kai sighed out. "You two together is still totally revolting to me. Finally, a familiar feeling. Luke didn't take me over completely."
Jeremy's voice came out the same way Abigail's did as he asked, "What the hell is he doing here?"
Kai smiled up at him. "Hi."
"People don't just change like that."
Damon looked at him with wide eyes. "People usually don't merge with their siblings either."
"Uh, for the record, I would have been fine with any of Luke's qualities, you know, the hair, the whole gay thing." Kai tilted his head to the side. "You know, maybe not the height, actually."
Jeremy looked between his sisters. "You seriously buy this?"
"I'm not saying that we have to like him," Elena said, "but if there's a way for us to tell Bonnie how she can get out-"
"We should trust a guy that changed personalities practically overnight?"
"Think of it like Elena in reverse." Kai poured himself a drink. "You know, she was human, pure, dating the good Salvatore. Then she became an undead blood vacuum, stopped caring about right and wrong, and started dating the bad one."
Elena shook her head. "That's not how it happened."
"I'm sure I missed a detail or two, but I'm just paraphrasing what Damon told me in the prison world."
"Speaking of," Damon said, "there's a witch over there we'd like to save, so why don't you get your Gemini jumper cables and fix that thing?"
He replaced the drink in his hand with the Ascendant. "I can't send us back physically, but I can probably send a part of us back."
"Probably?"
"You remember that movie 'Ghost?'" They nodded. "Okay, well, Bonnie's gonna be Demi Moore because she's the alive one obviously, and, uh, we'll all be a collective Patrick Swayze, the ghost. By the way, how much does that suck about Patrick Swayze?"
Abigail let out a shaky breath. "Will she know we're there or not, Kai?"
"I don't know. I've never done this before." He smiled. "So, let's all just take a deep breath, close our eyes, and... Phesmatos tribum invocio caveum, miscero mundio. Phesmatos tribum invocio caveum, miscero mundio."
Abigail knew where they were right away. She could see Bonnie sitting at the table and hear the video she was watching, but it became clear rather quickly that she could not see or hear them. She still stepped toward her, she still said her name, and she still tried to touch every object in her path; however, as Damon's voice filled her ears, she turned around.
"What?"
"That bottle of bourbon is the oldest one in the house. We made a pact: if we couldn't take being trapped here alone for one more day, we'd..." His breath ceased. "We'd kill that entire bottle. Then we'd kill ourselves."
Everything around them changed, just slightly, but it changed. "Wait, wait, wait! What happened? Why are we back here?"
"I don't know," Kai said. "Spell must require too much magic. I lost my connection."
"Then reconnect!"
"It's not that easy." He pointed to the blood coming from his nose. "You see this blood? I'm guessing that's not a good sign."
"Bonnie is going to kill herself," Elena uttered.
"Can she do that?" Jeremy asked. "Can she die in the prison world?"
"I couldn't. Of course, it was my own personal solitary confinement. They didn't want me to end my sentence early by killing myself." He laughed, a real laugh. "Oh, I tried every method in the book! I even drove down to D.C. because there was this museum that had an actual guillotine."
"We get it," Jeremy sighed. "For whoever's not lucky enough to be you, dead means dead."
Abigail bit the inside of her cheek, muffling her voice as she said, "We have to stop her."
"We have to give her hope," Elena said. "Send her a message somehow."
"How?" Jeremy asked. "She couldn't even hear us."
"The message is already there in the atlas. I scribbled some notes on Nova Scotia," Damon explained. "We just have to get her to see it."
Elena asked the next question, "How do we open the atlas if we can't touch anything?"
"We need to get Kai to crank up his witchy-woo, don't we, so we can make physical contact."
"All while sending the four of you back over there? Sure. Yeah. Hey, why don't I reanimate your dead parents for a tea party while I'm at it?" He covered his hand with his mouth. "Sorry. Insensitive."
Jeremy took a step forward. "What if you just send me back?"
Abigail shook her head while Elena took to words, "What? No."
"That might work." Kai sat up from his position on the couch. "Focus all of my magic on one person. It might be enough of a boost that you could physically interact if I can hold the spell."
Damon leaned against the nearest wall. "And if you cannot?"
"The magic overwhelms me, and I can't pull Jeremy out. He'll be stuck over there for eternity."
Finally, Abigail's voice found its way back into the room, "Jeremy..."
"Don't. Don't say anything." He faced her. "If I can get through to her, we will save Bonnie's life. If not, at least I'll be with her when she dies."
Kai and Jeremy resumed their earlier positions in front of the fireplace, Elena followed Damon upstairs, and Abigail stayed right where she was. Standing in wait. She found herself there a lot more than she wanted to, and always when there was nothing more she could do. So, she focused on the new banner.
The front door opened and closed. A beam of the red and orange sunset filled the room. Then everything went black.
The living room was disheveled almost beyond recognition when Abigail gasped awake. She could hear a car speeding away, Damon and Elena struggling against a magical barrier upstairs, and the labored breathing of Kai and Jeremy in the kitchen. She chose her path quickly, meeting her brother's side almost as fast.
"Oh, Jeremy! Jeremy, hey. Wake up." The scent of blood from the left was overwhelming, leaving her with no other option but to move to Kai to feed him her blood. "Kai, hey! Damn it!"
Damon and Elena finally made it downstairs, but only the latter asked, "What happened?"
"It must have been Liv," Abigail said quietly, taking one of Jeremy's hands into both of hers. "Jer? Jeremy, wake up!"
His eyes fluttered open. "I'm okay."
"Oh! Jeremy." Elena sat down with them. "Bonnie, is she..."
"I saw her. Sh-she's gonna be okay."
Elena smiled over her shoulder at Damon, following him out of the room only once Abigail told her to.
Jeremy extended a cupcake to Abigail. "I don't think Bonnie would want us to let the cake go to waste."
"You're right." She sat down across from him. "And she definitely wouldn't want us to forget to give some to Miss Cuddles."
"You're right." He pushed another cupcake toward the teddy bear. "You know, I get it. I get what she was going through, why she would want to end it, feeling trapped and alone. Every day is the same: disappointment, misery. You go to sleep and wake up and do it all over again..."
"Jeremy-"
"Don't tell me I have to be strong."
"I won't," she said. "Which is why I am the world's worst sister."
"Don't be stupid."
"I am." She moved her locket from side to side, the picture that long replaced vervain one she could not bring herself to look at. "I'm always trying to do the right thing, but, in the end, I hurt the people I love the most."
"That doesn't make you a bad sister. If anything, it makes you a good one." Silence came and went, waiting for one of them to fill it. "After Mom and Dad died, you were always there. I knew I had someone to go through it with. When you started to get better, that's when I felt the most alone. That wasn't your fault. You were healing. I wasn't."
"There is a big difference between healing and pretending. And, honestly, I was pretending for a long time. I was pretending for longer than I ever realized."
"I don't think that you were pretending. I just think that you were so worried about us that you didn't let yourself talk about it." His expression was as soft as the way his voice was coming out, something that had been lost between them for far too long. "You didn't let yourself believe that you could do what you were doing for us for yourself."
"Go to art school." She reached for his hand. "We'll all help you. Just..."
"What about Elena?" His other hand found hers, squeezing it lightly. "What about you?"
"I'll be fine. I promise. Just get out of here..." Her lips stretched themselves into the kind of smile that fought against itself. "And don't look back."
From the stairwell, Abigail could see someone outside of her door with their hands in their pockets and their head tilted to the side. It was far from the first time they'd been there, but it wouldn't be the last. And that was why she said their name the way she did.
"Alaric?"
"Sorry to just drop by, but I just-" He stepped away from the door, giving her the room he knew she needed to fish through her bag for her keys. "Can I come in?"
"I-" Her keys jangled, two sets on one keychain. "I don't know if that's a good idea."
"Hell, Abigail, how can I let you go? I can't..." He ran his right hand down his face, drawing attention to his heavy and tired eyes. "I can't."
When she closed the door, she stared at it as if she hadn't. He said her name almost as if he knew that was what she was doing, the exact same way she'd said his. And it brought her to her knees.
There would always be one more night. There would always be one more thing to say. There would always be. So, there wasn't a way to let it go. There wasn't.