Title: the silence surrounds you (and haunts you)
Fandom: the vampire diaries
Rating: teen
Length: ~1700 words
Author notes: title from stateless’s bloodstream, post-season one, & this is the necklace

Bonnie can’t stay in Mystic Falls. She shouldn’t have come back after Grams, should’ve listened to her gut. She doesn’t want to help or save the Salvatores, is sickened that by her own actions Damon remains. The one who nearly killed her, the one who assaulted Caroline god knows how many times, the one who kills innocents for sport.

She loves Elena, she does. But she can’t keep allowing that love to get twisted, to have her helping vampires. Grams warned her about getting tangled in this business, how egotistical she had been to brush those words off.

Lucy had the right idea. She leaves a letter and her cellphone for her Dad to find, tries not to copy all the words her mother must have written once. She knows he won’t leave- well, that’s not really true. She doesn’t think he will, but she also doesn’t ask. Can’t risk him trying to stop her, can’t stand that kind of emotional fallout.

It’s a selfish choice. Bonnie knows this, stuffing her car with all the necessities- clothes and books and everything witchy her Grams had. She does a final sweep of her Gram’s house, pausing in her bedroom. It doesn’t feel right anymore, none of the house does, with so much of its soul packed in her car. But something draws her to the bureau, flips open the box between a nearly empty bottle of perfume and a candle.

Memory engulfs her at the sight of the jade necklace- her and Elena and Grams, all having a tea party outside under the hot sun. Her and Elena had comically oversized hats and jewelry, and her grandmother had looked so elegant with the prettiest green and gold necklace. Bonnie had insisted on trading the two strings of pearls she wore for it; loved how it felt like an open grassy field and a crisp granny smith apple and dawn’s light filtering through thin foliage.

Her fingers tremble over the nine jade stones, nearly expects it to be like Emily’s necklace. But the only magic this necklace has is in its memories, and Bonnie puts it on. It’s heavier than she remembers, but feels just as beautiful.

Wiping at her eyes, Bonnie leaves.

.

Bonnie drives north and west. She doesn’t have a destination in mind, not yet. Once there are a few states between her and Virginia, when it’s easier to breathe, easier not to turn back, she’ll think about it.

Whenever she tires of driving, she pours over the grimoires that litter the backseat. Her own, mostly for notes, a few ideas sprinkled in the margins. Emily’s, the biggest of the three, is organized to scientific precision. There’s a table of contents- every spell and ritual and potion and curse contained, all listed chronologically. It’s all the knowledge her Grams wanted her to be slow about consuming, and once she couldn’t imagine doing so. But now, she reaches for Gram’s grimoire the most; it is more journal than spellbook. There are only a handful of spells, all for protection, and rituals to aid nature. She reads about her leading a sit-in when she was younger than Bonnie is now, about her first crush- a boy from another coven, and then her first love- Dawn. Years of love, hidden in plain sight, of fighting with her parents when they found out she was dating a human woman. Of Dawn’s death, drained of blood, and her Gram’s skepticism that it was a random vampire attack.

Bonnie feels sick to her stomach, tears dripping down, and she can’t stop reading. It already happened, she reminds herself, over and over, but it doesn’t ease the ache.

There’s a chunk of pages missing, and the handwriting becomes almost stilted with how carefully the next page is written. Grams writes that she knows now her parents had nothing to do with Dawn’s end, that she found and killed the vampire that did it. That she removed the curses and hexes she just created, pledging herself to nature anew.

The rest of her grimoire feels hollow- just magic, no more reflection- and then it is over.

Bonnie drives back east to New York City. She wants a place loud enough to drown out her thoughts.

.

She has a dream about Caroline killing someone, about Tyler screaming beneath a moon, about Matt struggling and all alone. It can’t be real, her guilty mind’s just playing tricks on her. (A dark corner whispers that Elena’s the only human with two vampire bodyguards, that everyone else is at risk.)

Survival is never selfish.

Abby said that once. In the middle of an argument about motherhood and witchcraft, of how she could turn her back on both. Bonnie had hated her fiercely in that moment, that her mother thought her such a burden.

For the first time, Bonnie thinks she might understand her.

.

Bonnie will run out of cash in four days. There aren’t any spells in the Bennett grimoires for creating cash, though there is a promising note in Emily’s about alchemy. Tragically it is a very small note, a question to herself to consider later: If channeling a magical being, could one turn water to silver? It’s towards the end of her grimoire, seems like Emily died before she experimented or hypothesized further. And Bonnie doesn’t have a clue where to start in creating new magic.

The point, is when Bonnie gets to nyc, the first thing she does is look for help wanted signs. She doesn’t want to mess with anyone’s head in getting the job, nor work anywhere small enough that they’ll start asking questions. Caroline always complained that Bonnie could pass for twenty-one, but she isn’t betting on it. (It’s an odd realization that she won’t be completing high school, won’t be going to college. But what’s the point? She’s a witch.)

It only takes her a day to drive upstate, and everything is better. It might be quieter, but nature is lush here, practically hums in her bones. She gets a job as a teller, idly thinking about how to magically replicate cash during the day. Nights are for reading and rereading the grimoires, for trying to create.

She charms the jade necklace’s center stone to keep her hidden from other witches. It may be paranoia, but the magical residue’s warmth comforts her. There’s a chain motel fifteen minutes from work, and her back appreciates sleeping on a real bed again. (Though she maintains the softening spells on her car seats worked excellently.)

It takes a month for her to realize it, and it really should have clicked sooner- that doing magic no longer hurts. Perhaps it’s because she’s using it as nature wishes, or that she feels more in tune with it, or she’s become stronger, whatever it is- it comes easy now.

.

Over a year of trying, and she finally figures out how to turn blood to gold. She turns the gold into jewelry and figurines, a few heavy bars for fun. It’s a lucky thing it isn’t a one-to-one ratio, or she’d bleed herself dry before finishing. Bonnie’s pretty sure it has to be magical blood, but she isn’t willing to test it through using other people. (It does need to be fresh, her stored blood fails and every stolen blood bag is a waste.)

A year, and she hasn’t gone back to Mystic Falls. Hasn’t been found. It’s for the best- on both accounts- but it still hurts. Her fingers reach up to brush against the jade, calm coming back smoothly. She’s done here. She has an infinitely replenishing form of wealth, and there’s no need to stay in one place. To be a sitting duck.

Bonnie sells some of the golden trinkets to the local pawn shop, getting more than she hoped but less than it’s worth, and drives west.

.

In Cleveland Bonnie thinks she sees Elena- which is impossible and shouldn’t fill her with dread. She scraps the whole plan to visit Cuyahoga Valley, and hits the road instead.

There are plenty of national parks.

She doesn’t know if she feels more relieved at possibly avoiding Elena or guilty for such a reaction. They were best friends once. And the past tense doesn’t even hurt like it used to.

.

In Wyoming, Bonnie gets a road map of North America. She still doesn’t know where she wants to go, but she likes the idea of following it somehow. Until she picks a place though, Bonnie continues- driving to a new city nearly every night, selling her gold to pawn shops, and renting exorbitantly expensive hotel rooms.

Restraint is a thing of the past, and Bonnie goes with whatever impulse strikes her. She takes a bath in champagne, spends a whole day ordering the most decadent room service items, has another day full of laying in the sun beside a pool, gets spa treatments that cost more than last year’s rent. She’s lonely, but she’s happy enough and safe. That seems like more than a fair trade.

She celebrates Christmas in Nevada. In a bikini, with a tiny fake tree, she can almost stop thinking about past holidays. Last year had been with enough whiskey to drown a horse, and she can’t smell the stuff now without cringing.

This year, she feels like a real witch. She can do anything, create whatever life she wants. (That nothing comes to mind is because she’s young, not because of anything else.)

Underneath the new moon, the entire sky dark but for some pinpricks of light, Bonnie opens herself up to nature.

What should I do? Where should I go?

There’s no answer, no clap of thunder or booming voice of god or downpour of rain. The longer she waits, the sillier she feels. This wasn’t a spell or ritual, she shouldn’t be surprised her random urge didn’t produce anything.

She turns in, will figure out her life tomorrow.

That night, she dreams of a beautiful woman with dark eyes and blue fire. She wakes up to the atlas hovering in the air above her, open to Canada, before it falls to her lap.

A mysterious quest, Bonnie thinks with a wry smile, she’s ready for one of those.