Abigail was staring down at her journal which was sitting open in front of her amongst stacks of books on the dining room table. Her mind was running circles around itself, stumping her in the middle of a sentence that she knew how to end. So, she looked up at the clock.
There was a knock on the front door. She planned on ignoring it, on letting whoever it was believe that she wasn't home. But when they knocked again, and then again, she didn't have a choice but to answer it.
Damon smiled. "Surprise!"
"You're here," she sighed. "Great."
"Come on, Abigail. Smile! It's a beautiful day." He pushed his way inside. "And you don't have to lie to my face anymore."
Alaric, finally catching up with Damon, huffed out, "I tried to call you."
She followed them into the living room, picking up the clothes strewn across the floor along the way. "Sorry about the mess. I've been unpacking."
"'Unpacking.' Right. Tell me, did you pretend to be drunk with Jeremy all summer or did all of the acting fall onto good ole Saltzman over here?" He looked from Alaric who was sitting on the couch to Abigail who was dumping an armful of clothes into the hamper tucked away in the corner of her bedroom. "I mean, I'm really not that surprised. Let's face it, you two-"
Coming back into the room, she cut him off, "Damon, could you just-"
"Did I leave my phone here?" He sped to the other side of the room, slapping Alaric's leg playfully as he reached between the couch cushions. "There it is!"
"How long are you planning on couch surfing?" Abigail sat down next to Alaric. "You know, you could compel yourself a whole sorority house if you wanted to."
"And miss these 'Three's Company' moments? I'm starting to enjoy the luxury of having the choice between two barely-functional shower-heads after years of being tortured by the four that I have in my actual home." Alaric and Abigail turned their annoyed expressions from him to each other and then back to him. "Relax! It's just until we hunt down Lily's lone-wolf Heretic and swap him out for my girlfriend in a coma."
Alaric leaned back. "Yeah? And, uh, how much longer until that happens, huh?"
"Pretty soon, thanks to Donovan. A phrase no one has uttered ever." They couldn't help but laugh as he looked down at his phone. "He's checking Lily's cell phone records."
Just then, there was another knock on the door. It was quick and light, the opposite of Damon's, and that was how Abigail knew who it was. They were inside before she even stood up to answer it, the look on their face not the one she was expecting.
"Bonnie! Hi!" She sat straight up. "What are you doing here?"
Damon smiled at her. "Hi, Bon Bon!"
The way Bonnie was furrowing her eyebrows changed. "Please tell me I'm not interrupting something."
"Oh, trust me, you're not." Abigail took a deep breath. "What's up?"
"That Phoenix Stone that I touched yesterday..." Bonnie did not sit down, she stayed in her place between the living room and the dining room. "You guys destroyed it like you promised me, correct?"
"Why?" Alaric asked. "What happened?"
"I just had another vision: a flash of horrified people with x-shaped wounds on their skin. When I opened my eyes, ten minutes had gone by."
Alaric squirmed next to Abigail, brushing his shoulder against hers. "The stone's gone. We, you know, watched it dissolve in hydrofluoric acid."
Bonnie tilted her head to the side. "You're positive?"
Abigail scoffed. "Bonnie, the stone's gone."
Damon looked up from his phone. "Who wants to go to Myrtle Beach?"
"I'm busy," Bonnie said.
"Oh, me too!" Abigail moved to stand next to her. "Want to be busy doing something together?"
"Definitely."
Damon picked up something of a smile as he looked to Alaric. "Ric?"
He rolled his eyes. "Pass."
"Well, that's too bad, because Lily made a bunch of phone calls that bounced off a cell tower there, and something tells me she's not making plans for her spring break."
"Why would Lily send one of her Heretics to Myrtle Beach?" Bonnie asked.
"Tell you what: you ask him yourself after he's safe in my car's trunk." He rubbed his hands together. "So, anyone up for an old-fashioned hostage-swap?"
Summer might have been over, but Myrtle Beach was still overflowing with tourists. They were expecting it, and planned on using it to their advantage, but that was about as far as they'd gotten apart from sorting their weapons. And it didn't really help that their hotel room was as small as it was cheap.
"You know," Damon leaned toward Abigail, "the last time I stayed in a hotel with a Gilbert-"
Abigail pushed him away. "Damon, if you so much as-"
He threw his hands up. "I'm just messing around!"
Alaric turned to face them as he loaded a vervain dart gun. "Okay, so what's the plan?"
"You two with your plans..."
Bonnie looked up from the floorplans rolled out on the desk. "Am I missing something?"
At the same time, Abigail and Alaric said, "Nope."
"Fair trade." Damon shrugged. "One Heretic in good condition for the coffin housing Elena."
Alaric side-eyed him. "I meant the plan where we try to capture a powerful Heretic who'd prefer we were dead."
"Easy!" Damon gestured from one of them to the next. "Newbie poses as room service, B-Town stuns him with magic, you shoot him with vervain, I snap his neck."
Bonnie nodded. "But after we get him to siphon away my visions."
Abigail took half a step toward her. "Wait, what?"
"Well, the visions are magic. He can siphon magic. It's worth a shot, right?"
She looked over her shoulder at Alaric. "Right."
"Right," he repeated.
Damon's voice did not break their eye contact, "Unless you two have any other suggestions of how we can rid Bonnie of this mysterious pain she's in."
They shook their heads before taking the steps that led the group to room 227. Abigail stole a room service cart from the hallway, selling her role for at least as long as it would take someone to look through a peephole. Alaric, Bonnie, and Damon were to her right, standing just far enough behind her to stay hidden. So, when she raised her hand to knock on the door, she didn't even look back at them for a second.
"Room service!"
Oscar's eyes were slightly swollen, his dark hair was disheveled, and the smell coming from the room left little to the imagination of what had been interrupted. "Hey, you have the wrong... Damon Salvatore!"
"You know me?" Damon asked.
"Of course, I know you! It's good to see you're well, old friend." Oscar opened his arms for a hug. "Come here, man!"
Damon, despite the look on his face, gave him a hug. "Hey, all right..."
Oscar laughed. "Come in, come in!"
They followed him into the room, the bond between the four never more obvious than when Oscar sat down on the couch; it extended from one of them to the other, holding them in a formation that could be seen as casual or threatening.
"You caught me in the middle of a seventy-two-hour social gathering." Oscar motioned to the dead bodies on the floor. "Uh, friend with the vervain gun? If you could holster that, I sure would feel a lot more comfortable."
Alaric tucked the gun back into the waistband of his pants before taking a step closer to Abigail. "So, uh, how do you know Damon?"
"Oh, he's Lily's son. The hero soldier. We met at a bar near Gettysburg, July of 1863." Oscar looked at Damon expectantly. "Nothing?"
"I go to a lot of bars," Damon said.
Oscar chuckled nervously. "Right, right, right. Uh, well, your mom was going through a rough patch. She could not move on until she knew her boys were okay, so she sent me out to find you."
"My mother abandoned her family and ran for the hills. She doesn't give a flying crap about me."
"I sense hostility, and that's fine, all emotions are valid and welcome here, but it's the truth. She just wanted to know you were happy, Damon. She loved you." The atmosphere hadn't changed all that much, but it was falling into a deeper state of tension, and, finally, Oscar realized it. "Hey, you guys, what can I get you? Cocktail? Joint? Jenny?"
Damon looked away from the body closest to them. "Does my mom know you're here?"
Oscar's eyes widened in alarm for only a moment before he laughed. "Hey, hey, hey! Shhhh!"
They settled into the room, Damon with a drink, Bonnie in an armchair, and Abigail and Alaric on the foot of the bed. Oscar had only made himself more comfortable, taking to the floor in front of the couch where he twiddled with a gold lighter. Although something of a rapport had been built between them, they hadn't gotten anything from it.
The only way Abigail knew how much time had passed was through the subtle glance she made down at her watch, so, hoping to speed the process along, she asked, "Why did Lily send you here?"
"She didn't send me here, exactly. She had a job; I volunteered. And she has the family on a short leash back home, with this whole, 'I took you in as orphans, so I know what's best for you' vibe. No, thank you. You know you can get a drink served to you in a fishbowl here?" Pulling a business card out of his wallet, Oscar sat up. "Oh, and, the other day, I called the number on this card, and just like that, I had a girlfriend!"
He was waiting for one of them to respond, and when it became clear no one else would, Bonnie did, "It's called an escort service."
"But she really got who I am, you know? It was a beautiful human experience!" He rambled on, "And that's what I've discovered here: freedom. The bad trip inside that prison world has ended, my friends, and I am breathing in what my soul was craving: f-r-e-e-dom."
"Well, in the spirit of helping others with their freedom, I have a favor to ask you. You know, as a siphoner."
"Huh?"
"Let me translate for you," Damon jumped in. "My friends were playing with some mystical tool they didn't quite understand, and now Bonnie's chasing her own white rabbit around the farm."
Oscar didn't look at any of them, but his question was targeted at all of them, "So, you want me to, what, siphon her problems away?"
Damon smirked. "Just think of it as one big magical toke!"
"I don't really like to mix mediums, if you know what I mean."
"Siphon the damn visions, we don't tell Lily that we saw you avoiding whatever mission you were sent to do, and we'll call it a day."
"Okay, then. Come on." Oscar stood up. "Ready?"
Bonnie crossed over to him. "Yeah."
It was a long moment, a long moment which brought about a silent conversation between Abigail and Alaric as Oscar took Bonnie's face in his hands. She was asking him a question; he was giving her an answer. Neither of them what they should have been.
"Where's the Phoenix Stone?"
Abigail and Alaric jumped to their feet, casting every set of eyes in their direction.
"How do you know about the Phoenix Stone?" Bonnie asked.
"How do you know about the Phoenix Stone? What are you people up to?" Alaric pulled out his vervain gun and aimed it at Oscar, but Oscar threw his hands out in front of him. "Espirimus paratis."
Alaric's gun went flying across the room, and before anyone could do anything else, Oscar clenched his hands into fists. The action sent Abigail, Alaric, Bonnie, and Damon into a struggle for breath. Then everything went black.
The room around Abigail came back into focus with a groan.
"Yeah, that never gets any better." Damon took a swig from a bottle of bourbon before rolling Bonnie onto her back. "Good news? Your visions are gone. Bad news? So's Oscar."
Abigail crawled to Alaric's side, using one of her hands to take his and the other to caress his cheek. "Ric? Alaric? Are you okay?"
"Oh..." He used his free hand to feel around in his pockets. "He took the stone."
Abigail pulled him to his feet. "We'll get it back."
"Uh, how are either of those things possible when you two destroyed it?" Bonnie asked.
Damon stood between them. "We need to find him right now."
Bonnie's angry stare locked on Damon. "Did you know?
"Aw, come on! I mean, I-" He looked back and forth between them, unable to put two words together until he got out, "Kind of."
"You lied to me."
"I didn't lie to you! Abigail and Alaric lied to you! I just kept my mouth shut. I'm not gonna be stuck in the middle of this. No, no. You sort this out." He started toward the door. "I'm gonna go find our bargaining chip."
Bonnie's glare was back on them, but that was not what held them in their places. "So, the visions, the lost time, the crippling headaches... They don't mean anything? Doesn't it matter to you?"
Abigail sighed, and when she did, it gave away far more than she knew it would. Because it was not a sigh of defeat and it definitely wasn't a sigh of guilt. It was a sigh of exasperation. Of frustration. "Oh, of course they matter!"
"Oh, my God." Her voice came out quietly. "You're his contact from Duke?"
"Look, I'm sorry I lied, but-"
"You're sorry?"
Alaric put his hands on his hips, he shook his head, and his voice boomed, "Bonnie-"
She ignored him, keeping her questions targeted at Abigail, "How did you even find out about it?"
"I wrote a paper about it for Alaric's class last year."
"In that case, what does a rock that makes you see screaming people have to do with reincarnation?"
"I don't know. It was a good topic in theory, sacred geometry and resurrection, but there wasn't enough information out there to actually meet the assignment requirements." The edge was gone from her voice, allowing feelings that she knew were just below the surface to come through. "He let me pick a new topic to save my grade."
Alaric's eyes resigned their hold on Abigail's expression, but the way he turned toward Bonnie put him closer to her than he was before. "We've read every book we could find, twice, cover-to-cover. They talk about resurrection, the phoenix rising from the ashes, but nothing about a stone that brings people back from the dead."
"There are these drawings, Egyptian, Native American, even European, and they are all the same." Abigail took out her phone, the pictures she'd studied for hours, days, weeks even, easy to find. "Four people, one dead with another standing over them with one hand on the body's chest and the other hovering over the body's forehead. The other two people are kneeling on either side of the table..."
When Bonnie looked up from the phone, her anger had been replaced with concern. "Are you sure you understand what you're trying to do? It's not like Jo's spirit is behind a veil that we lift and she magically appears. This is necromancy."
"The hospital can only preserve bodies for a set amount of time, but I-" He cut himself off. "I've been paying off the tech to fake the logs."
"Guys-"
"We know what we're getting ourselves into."
She shook her head. "I don't think you do."
Abigail, looking only at Bonnie, said, "Alaric, wait outside."
The door closed with a thud. "Abigail, this is dangerous. Why are you..."
"Jo died in his arms, Bonnie. His children..." A sob threatened to escape her, and it did, silently. "I just thought if there was a chance that either one of them could find some kind of happiness in life after that, it would be worth it."
The look on her face softened, but her voice remained firm, "Never lie to me again."
It was an empty hallway where Damon was thrown up in the air. He landed on the floor only to be held up by Oscar in a choke hold. The position made him an open target, one he took with a stake to the stomach.
Bonnie turned the corner, sending Oscar to his knees with a pain infliction spell. Alaric walked down the hallway, vervain gun aimed and raised, shooting three darts into Oscar's back. Abigail sped over to him and snapped his neck, completing Damon's part in their original plan.
Damon's groans became clear once Oscar's subsided, bringing them to his side. He used the leverage he found from them to stand up, keeping an arm around each of their shoulders as he recovered. Bonnie was only a few feet away, moving through the damage caused in the altercation to one place in particular.
They watched her carefully, none of them saying a word, as she picked the Phoenix Stone up off of the floor, walked over to them, and dropped it in Alaric's hand. "I'll try."
Damon smiled widely. "Aw, my besties are buds again! Let's make a deal."
The apartment met Abigail and Alaric with darkness. She switched on the lamps, some old, some new, as he settled in the living room. Their conversation followed them up the stairs, the laugh Alaric let out muffling the sound of his keys on the coffee table.
"Vervain IVs." He tossed his jacket to the side. "Great idea."
"Bonnie has always had great ideas." The way she said it was how she meant to, but it changed the tone of the conversation. "Not that, you know, she'll ever share one with me again."
He took a long step toward her. "I am so sorry."
"Don't be sorry." She looked down at her feet, mustering up something less than courage and more than resolve. "This is what happens when you're a liar. And I am a liar."
"I see the worst in people. I always have. But when I met you..." The tilt of his head down and the tilt of hers up were the same, bringing their eyes back to each other's. "I saw the good. I saw everything. So, maybe you're a liar but you don't lie to hurt people."
"You know me better than anyone."
He took a step back, then, almost as if he couldn't stop himself, he said, "You know, you were always terrified that I would do everything I could to push you away, but you did that all by yourself."
"You don't get to do that." She shook her head. "You don't get to act like this is all my fault because for once in my life I can see that it wasn't."
He laughed cynically. "So, we're even, then? Is that what you are saying?"
"No, that is not what I am saying," she said evenly. "I'm saying that we both made choices. Choices that-"
"Well, the choice you made was the wrong one." He jammed his finger into his chest. "It hurt me, Abigail. You hurt me."
"Is that what you want? An apology?"
"It would be nice!"
"I wanted a life with you, too, Alaric. I wanted it so much that I was willing to give it up. And I am sorry. I am so sorry. I know I made the wrong choice. But guess what? There hasn't been a day that has passed where I didn't wonder what would have happened if I made the right one. Where I didn't think of you. Because I..." She stepped toward him, the way her voice faded the same way her breath came and went: slowly. "We have both made choices that got us here. Choices that were right. Choices that were wrong. Choices that pushed us apart. Choices that brought us together. And I still believe in every one of them because I still believe that there is one choice we didn't make. I won't ask you for an apology because I don't need one. I don't deserve one. All I need is to know if you still believe the same thing."
The way he was looking at her was the way only he had, the way she was looking at him was the way only she had. The space between them was closing, hands reaching out from one side of the room to the other until there was none left. Then, all at once, his lips were on hers as if they had never left them.
His hands slid from either side of her face to her hips. He pulled her closer, if that was even possible, as she said his name. And then it was her who kissed him.
The path to the bedroom was clear, one they had memorized, and that was the path which they took.
Two o'clock in the morning. Alaric's arm was wrapped around Abigail, holding her bare body against his, her head was on his chest, holding him there just the same. He'd fallen asleep with a slow kiss and a soft goodnight, and although sleep was catching up to her, it could not take her from the moment. Because these moments, the ones where everything fell right into place, were the moments that strung together to create one.