Snagging Creations

Well, well, well....

snagging — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 13:14:11 GMT

It's been more than a year that I last posted anything here. Is anybody still here? :)

And there are words.

snagging — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:15:01 GMT

I found this really interesting writing prompt online the other day and it wouldn't let me go: "Your tree falls on a neighbor's house, starting a neighborhood feud."
I changed it a bit and made it my own. This is the first time I tried writing out of a child's perspective, so there's probably some slips here and there... It's now a birthday present for my friend Matt, which I posted on my blog. Here's an excerpt:

Seven years of peace and quiet, is what Mommy says. And then, she says, he just went crazy. Daddy is standing next to her and nods. They are talking to a police officer while I get to sit on the back of his car. There are many cars in our street today, most of them are firefighters. I asked if I could sit in the firefighter car, but they wouldn’t let me. Daddy said they were busy putting out the fire of Mr. Crinkles’ house. Some weird incidents, says the police officer and my parents both nod. A weird couple of weeks, they say. So weird. But they don’t tell him how weird, so when one of the other officers comes over to offer me some candy and asks what happened, I tell her. Because I might only be seven years old and I might not remember all of the ‘peace and quiet’ my Mom is talking about, but I remember the weird couple of weeks.

So, it all started out with a car. If you can even call it that. I would call it a ‘piece of crap’, but Daddy wouldn’t like me saying that word, even though he’d secretly agree with me. I mean, come on, it was old and dirty and it wouldn’t even start. I’m pretty sure other people would say it was a ‘piece of crap’, too. Anyway, said car belonged to our neighbor, Mr. Crinkles. And even though it wasn’t working anymore, he kept it in his driveway. Daddy once told me it was for ‘sentimental reasons’, whatever that means. Around the same time of that car being in our neighbor’s driveway, we had a tree in our front yard. We kept it there because it brought us shade during the hot summer days, not for ‘sentimental reasons’. I just want to make sure that’s clear. Our tree had a reason to be there. That car didn’t.

Want more? Download the PDF on Golden Roses.

Real life artsy stuff

snagging — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:00:57 GMT

As you can probably tell, I've been quite preoccupied with real life for the past few months. That also includes my artsy stuff; instead of blends, wallpapers or icons, I've been more focused on creating "actual" things. Especially jewelry. Here's some I made yesterday during my lazy day:

Go to Golden Roses to see more jewelry, photographs or read my very rambly blog, if you like ;)

snagging — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 07:35:28 GMT

Golden Roses is back now! The wallpapers aren't online, yet, and I'm not sure I should put them back either... Does anybody even use them? ;) Let me know!

http://golden-roses.net

Help! :)

snagging — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:21:57 GMT

This has never happened before *lol* But I now have two new layouts for the revamp of Golden Roses and I can't decide which one to use...

Help?

Which layout to use?

green, yellow, red

purple, blue, magenta

I don't know why the poll isn't working or why LJ is being the way it is, but yeah... just comment, I guess ;)

FYI.

snagging — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:02:52 GMT

Yes, I'm aware that Golden Roses is currently down and none of my wallpapers can be accessed. My host is currently switching servers and the new server won't support my sftp access. So I'll rebuild Golden Roses from almost scratch using WordPress. It'll be a lot of work, but also give me a chance to weed out some of my stuff. Excited to be putting out new stuff soon!

Yes, I said, soon! I'm almost done with my MA thesis (I need to integrate a chapter about translation theories and rewrite introduction and conclusion, then send it to my lovely proofreaders (read: Mom, Dad, Sis, friend), make some changes, have it printed and bound) so I'll be able to do all the things I've forbidden myself from doing after I'm done. I'll be allowed to make graphics, write, make jewelry, read books... Yay!

I don't know what I'm doing.

snagging — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:15:54 GMT

Holy cow, it's been a year since I last posted a fic. I had a bunch of TVD fics started but couldn't finish them and then was so disappointed with the show; and then my MA thesis started and I generally forbid myself to write anything but that.
Tonight was the first time I actually sat down and actually wrote something that's been on my mind for a while. New show, new characters, hope you enjoy.

Title: It's better this way
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Derek Hale, original female character
Summary: "The first time he sees her again, it's like running into a brick wall." Based on the idea that the Hale family wasn't the only family living in the house and that Derek and Laura grew up with another girl. When they left Mystic Falls behind, they left her, too.
Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing. I'm just playing around.

The first time he sees her again, it feels like running into a brick wall. All the air suddenly seems to have disappeared from his lungs, leaving his mind flailing helplessly and his wolf howling.
She looks good. Older, of course, but healthy. She’s wearing a knee-length skirt and a blouse typing away on her cell phone as she crosses the street.
She doesn’t see him. He doesn’t want her to.
He follows her through town a little, watching her pick up groceries and have random talks with people he thinks he should remember but doesn’t. She smiles at them, laughs even, and all of a sudden the pain that’s been constricting his chest becomes unbearable and he leaves.

The second time he sees her, they are at the vet’s. There is a rival pack in town, going on a rampage and the Argents have offered a truce in exchange for some insight and manpower. Everybody seems to be there, not just the vet and Chris Argent, but his daughter Allison, as well as Scott, Stiles, Jackson and Lydia. His pack.
He actually smells her before she enters the room, stopping dead in her tracks when she sees him. The smile she’d been sporting while casually joking around with her friend —Ben, he notes— vanishes from her face and is replaced by a scowl. She doesn’t say a word, though, only stands by the vet and listens to everyone else. She doesn’t look at him again, not even when he has the word and the truce between all parties is formally laid out and agreed upon.
She’s the first to leave.
He doesn’t plan to, but he follows her scent. It’s been so long, too long, since he’s had the chance to smell it, and he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed it.
As he rounds a corner, there she is. Leaning against a wall, selecting a song on her iPod.
„Gonna keep ignoring you,“ she singsongs without looking at him. She pushes off the wall and starts walking again. „Please go away.“

He starts keeping tabs on her then. It’s not a conscious decision, not really, but somehow, he finds himself in all the places she goes to, if only just to smell that scent again and let his wolf bask in it. He’s careful to avoid her enough that she doesn’t see him, because she told him to leave. She’s angry, he can tell, but she has every reason to be. He did, after all, get her family killed.

He gets to his house one night about a week later to find her sitting on his porch. As he gets out of his car, she looks up and right at him with as much menace as he’s ever seen her display. In his memories, she’s wild and bubbly, full of energy and always running around. He notices how she sighs before she speaks.
„I’m here to prep you for tomorrow,“ she says evenly, trying not to show how upset she is. Obviously, she’s not there by choice.
He only nods, doesn’t want to anger her further and opens the door to the house for her. She scoffs.
„Not going in there, Hale. Get your stuff out here.“
He watches her touch the clothes he brings out, watches as she rubs herbs over them, watches her lips move.
Out of all the things that she could have surprised him with, the fact that she’s a witch is the one he can’t seem to wrap his head around.
She puts a gem in the pockets of his pants before putting his clothes on the top porch step and turning to leave.
„That’s all?“ It’s a stupid question, but maybe it’ll make her stay longer.
„That’s all,“ she echoes.
They look at each other for a moment and it takes all of his will power not to jump at her.
He watches as she turns around to walk away again. It makes his wolf howl.
„You know,“ she suddenly says and turns around, „I always imagined you’d come back. I knew you would, because really, there was no way you would just leave me behind, right? I thought you just needed some space, some time to sort through everything that happened, but you’d come and get me eventually. It’s so funny, because I…“ she gestures wildly at the house, „I didn’t even leave the damn thing for two months after the fire. Because what if you came back but you couldn’t find me?“ He can see the tears in her eyes now, follows the trail of one running down her cheeks. „But eventually, after two, three, four, five years, I realized that I was wrong.“
He wants to tell her that he’s here now, but as he opens his mouth, she continues:
„And now you’re here. You’re back. And I don’t know whether to be ecstatic or horrified, because you didn’t come back for me. You didn’t come here because you suddenly remembered the girl you grew up with. You came for revenge. And once that’s done, you’ll leave again. So,“ she takes a deep breath and wipes at her face, „do me a favor: Leave me alone. Stop hovering, stop following me, stop watching me, for God’s sake. Yes, I know about that. Seriously, Derek, I grew up with werewolves, you’d think I picked up a thing or two. Stop wiggling back into my life only to walk out of it again.“
She doesn’t run away, like he expected. She stares him down, challenging his authority as the alpha —technically her alpha— and then, very slowly turns and walks down the driveway.

From then on, he feels like he’s surrounded by her. Like when he has to move his stuff to a different room of the house because the roof is leaking and he realizes his mattress is now in her old room. Or when he slips into Stiles’ room to ask about that research and he can smell that she’s been there.
All the memories he’d carefully tucked away into the deepest corners of his mind are reappearing, too. Them pranking Laura when they were younger. The way her mother freaked out when she had dyed streaks of her hair bright pink. Her laugh at one of the jokes Peter liked to tell at the dinner table. Most of all, he remembers the way she had always looked at him like he was her personal hero.
And then he also remembers her screams when she saw the fire, remembers holding her back from running in. He remembers her tears and then, after the fire had subsided, the look on her face as she realized that they were all dead.
„How could this happen? Who does something like that?“ she had asked him.
Me, he’d wanted to say, it was me.

He hadn’t planned on walking away. But every time that he looked at her, he realized how broken she was and all he could think about was how it was his fault.
The first steps were the hardest, but by the time he had driven a hundred miles away from Beavon Hills, he had convinced himself that it was for the better. She was free now, she could become whoever she wanted to be. She could go explore the real world, without having to fear territory fights or werewolf politics. She could be with whomever she wanted to be; not just pick someone from the small circle of people that either knew about werewolves or were werewolves themselves. She didn’t have to stay with him.
It was better this way, he told himself.

He tells it to himself again now, standing on the porch and staring at the driveway as if the image of her walking away the other day was branded on it. Because he thinks that, if he doesn’t keep telling himself, he’ll forget.

snagging — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:59:01 GMT

Oh gosh, it's been forever since I've last been here. Uni has been crazy and I guess I'm just too much involved in tumblr. I use this journal to post my art, but since I haven't really made anything, I can't post anything :(

Leave me prompts if you read this?

Wow, time is flying.

snagging — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:17:53 GMT

I started my new semester this month and it's crazy how much time it takes. It's probably because I also work and started on my MA thesis and things have just been fundamentally insane for me. I barely made any arts (well, actually, I made none), I haven't been writing or doing anything fun :(

This just in, so you know I'm still alive.

A bunch of TLG graphics...

snagging — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:19:42 GMT

I've been making a bunch of graphics mainly for tumblr (because I've lost my spark and I'm trying out different colorings and textures and compositions and stuff...), but I figured I'd post them here as well.

7 The Lying Game

I love my ship.

snagging — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 10:34:42 GMT

Entry for Challenge #36 over at landofart

1 x Jeremy/Bonnie WallPaper

Do the shuffle.

snagging — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 12:47:58 GMT

I'm a member over at landofart and we were given the task to make a movie poster with three celebs and a song. So here's mine:

Song: Everly - Quicksand
Synopsis: Annie (Taylor Swift) and Louise (Chelsea Hobbs) have been best friends since kindergarten, sharing everything even Annie's dream to pursue a music career. When Louise dies in a car crash, Annie abandons all plans for the future and instead settles for a waitressing job at a small diner. Five years later, when Betty (Whitney Houston) hears Annie hum a song while cleaning up and keeps nagging her about music, Annie must face the grief she's ignored until now. In light of a singing competition that promises a record deal to its first price winner, Betty has her work cut out for her trying to convince Annie to never give up.

The season of TVD has ended...

snagging — Fri, 27 May 2011 17:42:21 GMT

... and I feel like it has changed a lot for me.

When the first season started roughly two years ago, I was in awe.
You can look back at the posts I made, I literally spent hours making icons, wallpapers and other art for it. Hell, I even helped moderate a forum for this show, that's how much I loved it.
I thought it was brilliant in its storytelling, and even if I was often annoyed with Elena, the plots always picked me up and dragged me with them, leaving me sad when an episode ended and absolutely mortified at the thought of a six week hiatus, let alone the ENTIRE SUMMER!
This time around last year, I was rewatching episodes, discussing the show with others, analysing the episodes down to a T.

This year, I couldn't care less.
I skipped a few episodes this season, even, I never watched Masquerade or Klaus or even the finale episode in full. I've become a selective viewer. Now, I am not impressed by the storylines anymore, I'm not dragged along by the plots. I feel like that show that used to be my favorite is gone now and it was replaced by some chauvinistic Twilight crap.

And don't get me wrong, there was a time when I enjoyed Twilight, too. I read the first three books in a matter of days and I never thought there was anything wrong with them until I had enough time to think about them. To analyze them. To dissect and fully understand the message that these books were sending to their readers. Quite naively I thought that there was nothing wrong with Edward and Bella's relationship when I read the first books, I just always liked Jacob better. I always thought that Jacob would have been the healthier choice, he would be the one that I'd pick. And then, it seems, I rethought all that happened and realized just how utterly unhealthy EB's relationship is, how pitiful of a character Bella really was (does she have hobbies, friends, talents? Anything, really, that makes her a "person"?) and what kind of a warped message that was sending out to girls. I saw and heard what happened among the fandom, witnessed some of the most ridiculous battles myself and it became clear, just how much of an impact these books had on the minds of their readership. Mostly the younger ones.

Something very similar has happened to TVD now.
At first, I didn't see much wrong with Damon either. Sure, I hated him, but I loved to hate him (he WAS the villain, after all!). To me, it was always clear that Damon and Elena would not get together in that universe without something happening like in the books (where Elena becomes some kind of different entity and cleanses Damon from his sins and all that jazz that didn't make any sense to me, really), or at least either one of them losing their entire memories and them practically meeting "anew". I would have hated it had they done it that way (because what a cliche would that have been!), but it definitely would not have turned me off the show and question the sanity of the writers (as well as Nina and Ian, but after seeing them in Paris together, their thoughts on the DE relationship makes sense to me) and fear for the mindset of the audience.

Twilight teaches young girls that it is completely okay to never make any effort for your friends, so just kind of "be" there, but not really. It's okay to find a guy who climbs into your window at night to watch you sleep, it's romantic that he wants to keep you safe so he de-installs the engine of your car to prevent you from visiting your best friend or to even organize a babysitter for you who has no qualms of physically restraining you from doing that. It's fine, yes even admirable, to receive that kind of possessive, manhandling love (admittedly, Jacob forcing a kiss on Bella in book 2 or so wasn't much better...). Because he loves you and that is all that matters, it is all that will make you happy and his love for you is what excuses those actions.

TVD seems to go even a step further: it's okay if the guy has abused, threatened, killed, raped, mindwiped, manhandled not only hundreds of people you never met, but also your friends/family and even you YOURSELF. Because he loves you and that makes it all okay. And he got bitten by a werewolf and was about to die, and he apologizes and that's all that it takes. He doesn't have to make amends with the people he actually hurt, he doesn't even have to actually change, he just has to sweat a bit, and say that he "needs" forgiveness, so it is handed to him. He doesn't need to work for it at all.

Neither Damon nor Edward are mentally deficient. I'm not cracking a joke or taking a jab at them here, they do not have some kind of psychological inability. They understand what death means, they understand what hurting someone means, they understand the meaning of yes and no. They simply choose to ignore it to further their own agenda. Things like Edward almost taking too much blood from Bella at the end of the first book or Damon attacking Elena in the season two finale are forgivable, because neither one was in their right mind at the moment. Edward was in a blood rush and Damon was literally going crazy, so I wouldn't think it to be fair to hold a grudge. But the rest of the time, they are both completely fine (mentally speaking).

Loving someone does not give you the right to stalk them, to force them to do something they don't want, to make decisions for them that they are very much able to make themselves, to disrespect them and their opinion or to go and kill someone when they reject you. In fact, loving someone does not give you any rights to anything, quite the opposite. And neither story seems to be able to pronounce that. Worse even, they have in fact created relationships where both partners are somewhat equal and respect each other and each other's friends/family (remember why Elena put up with Damon in the first place?), but they choose to go with the more "romantic" bad boy / good girl relationship, completely missing the point that even the bad boy has to redeem himself at some point and actually change. Not just cry beautifully into a camera.

To say I am disappointed in the show is probably saying either too little or too much.
I am disappointed because there are so many great potential storylines they could emphasize but they choose to shove a few tortured-Damon shots into every episode. I am sad that they have such a great ensemble cast and they don't use it. I am extremely disappointed by the lack of consequences for Damon and his actions. And while I applaud Nina Dobrev for her performance, I am simply fed up with seeing her face for 30 minutes per episode. I am angry with Elena because of how spotty her moral coat is, how she chooses to ignore or forget certain things. I am furious with the lack of background information on Bonnie (even Matt got more: his mom, sister, house, living situation, problems, goals in life, feelings...) and character development for not only her but Alaric, Jeremy, Matt and Jenna as well. I am excited by the new characters they bring in and at the same time I am bummed because I know it will take away even more screentime from them and usually those new characters die serving some greater purpose. And by greater purpose, I mean either saving Elena, pushing Elena into Damon's direction or showing the audience just how "tortured" Damon is. And while I don't want to suggest that they are doing it on purpose: do the writers realize how most of the witches have been black and all except Bonnie have died horrible deaths to save the Salvatores? Did the writers/directors realize how rape-like the sacrifice looked on screen and do they understand that they have Damon basically going around roofie-raping women since season one?

So I guess, I am drawing the line. I am drawing the line for myself and my sanity. I cannot watch a scene like the one with Damon forcing his blood into Elena's mouth knowing that he will be forgiven in no time and stay calm. I cannot sit through 42 minutes of violence-glorifying chauvinism waiting for scenes of Caroline or Bonnie only to catch a 2-minute-glimpse of either. And I most certainly cannot deal with this fandom and its excuses for Damon anymore without having to take some time away.
I will continue to watch for scenes. I will continue to watch for Jeremy's new plot, for Bonnie and for Caroline, maybe even for Tyler. But I will fast forward through all scenes Damon/Elena/Stefan or any combination thereof. Maybe Stefan by himself, with Klaus, will be interesting, because at least with his violence I know there will be consequences for him. But you can never really know with this show.

It's not destiny, it's a choice (Bonnie, Elijah), PG-13

snagging — Fri, 27 May 2011 08:12:30 GMT

Well, well... it's not the best I've ever written, but at least I'm writing, right? ;)

Title: It's not destiny, it's a choice
Fandom: Vampire Diaries
Characters: Bonnie, Elijah, mentions of others
Words: 2000+
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, just my castles.

He should have known that his resolve would crumble under her influence. He should have realized that he would lose his walls once again, in the way that only Katerina had managed to take them away 500 years prior.

Although Bonnie has almost nothing in common with the woman that Katerina is now, they used to be very much alike. There is something in Bonnie’s eyes that reminds him of Katerina –Katherine– so much that he sometimes catches himself holding his breath around her out of fear that the scent he’ll smell will remind him of the wrong woman.

He understands she can tell that something isn’t right with his demeanor. He convinces himself that she will refrain from asking, knowing that the answer might not be one she can handle. He wonders though, how long they will be able to go on like this with nobody else noticing.

“My lineage,” she says curtly, leaning against the door frame. He had called her over, told her he could teach her to protect herself against the backlash of the witches’ power that she would have to use in the ritual tomorrow. And now he was sitting on his couch, trying hard to stay polite and not give into the urge of throwing the young witch against the nearest wall. He smiles beside himself at the way he thinks of her as ‘young’, when her soul seems so ageless. He knows that she can sense his is, too, but if he wants her to trust him, he will have to play his cards just right.

“Your lineage is of no importance to the protection. Come sit.” He motions to the armchair across from him. They have never been alone together in a room, let alone a house.

“Is that you luring me in so you can kill me when I least expect it?” She’s weary, obviously misreading the tension between them. He can’t help the excitement creeping up his spine.

“I have a deal with Elena and I am a man of my word. I will not harm you. Also, I would be stupid to do so when I still need you to perform that spell.” Other things that he still needs her to do cross his mind, but he ignores them. “Please, come and have a seat now.”

She walks over cautiously, watching him the entire time, leaning over the back of the chair. She really must be misreading the signs if she is that scared of him. She doesn’t understand that he won’t let anything harm her now. Or ever.

He begins to tell her about nature and its servants, about how power can be rearranged and that too much of it in one place can cause an imbalance that will even itself out too suddenly for a human body to take; that this imbalance could literally tear her apart.

“Why do you do this?” She interrupts him and he wonders if she even listened to what he had just said. He moves his head to one side, urging her to elaborate. “You could just let me die.”

“The risk of you failing to finish the spell before your body is ripped to shreds is too high.”

“You could use another witch. One with more experience.”

“I trust you will be able to fulfill the task.”

“Listen.” Her voice is steady, her tone serious. Still, she looks like she is about to cry. “I am prepared to not leave the battle field of my own accord. I realize that my chances of surviving are next to nothing.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because you are putting ideas into Elena’s head, you are giving her false hope.”

“You’re afraid you will die despite the protection I am offering?”

“What do you want in return?” He blinks at her. What? “What is it that you will get out of this, keeping me alive is more of a nuisance than anything else, so what is it that you want in return?”

“You have spent too much time around Damon Salvatore.”

“I have spent too much time living everyday life. Nothing comes free, especially not something offered by a vampire.”

“You,” he says suddenly. He gets up from the couch and closes the distance between them in a second.

“Me what?” Her breath is barely a whisper.

“That’s what I get out of this. That is what I want in return.” He touches her hand, the only exposed skin he can reach without scaring her. She is a witch, if she knows what she’s doing she’ll be able to tell. He thinks of the images that have been haunting him, her laughing face, her exposed body beneath his, his teeth against her skin. She can see them, he knows from the way blood is rushing to her cheeks. But she doesn’t pull away.

He thinks of other things, a possible outcome of their current meeting: him pressing her against a wall, her head thrown back as his lips make their way down her neck to her breasts and further down. Ripping clothes, claiming her mouth with his as he pushes into her, making her forget all about that boy she is seeing. She doesn’t know it yet, but he is not enough for her, never will be. He can see the depth of her soul and he can tell.

“Then I suppose,” she says pulling her hand away and taking a step back, “that I will have to die, then.” She regains her composure, holds her head higher than before. He might be saving her friend’s life, but he is still a vampire and aside from the images he wanted her to see, she also saw a lot of other things in his soul. “You can’t have me.”

He smiles sadly, he already knew that would be her answer. “Balance,” he says, “it’s in the balance. Make sure that the witches’ power won’t stay in one place for too long. Distribute the power around you, in trees, the earth, other people even. The wider the field, the less likely it will be to backfire on you.” She opens her mouth to reply that he still won’t get her, but he interrupts: “You will find your way out, won’t you?”

He kisses the back of her hand ever so politely and then, he’s gone in a blink.

–––––––––––––––––––

The day after their meeting, Bonnie feels like there are ants crawling all over her skin. She’s shaky and can’t concentrate on the books before her. Jeremy throws her suspicious looks every now and then, squeezes her hand in comfort. He seems to chalk her behavior up to nervousness and fear of the ritual.

Little does he know, it has nothing to do with that. She’s been practicing distributing her powers, channeling power into objects around her and it works better and better every time she tries. She is the middleman now, pulling the power from the burial ground and sending it elsewhere, then dragging it back and channeling it towards a certain area. And if too much magic in one place can tear her apart, it could work with Klaus, too, couldn’t it?

Elijah has gotten to her, she hates to admit. She’s dreamt about him last night, about what he let her see yesterday and those images suddenly got mixed up with images out of her own mind. But that wasn’t the worst part. She’d fantasized about guys she couldn’t have before, even guys that dangerous, like Ben. But she’d woken up next to Jeremy who had put an arm around her in his sleep and she hadn’t felt the least bit guilty.

“Bonnie?” Uncle John walks into the room, carrying even more boxes of grimoires. “Someone here to see you.”

Elijah is standing by one of the trees in the backyard. She refuses to admit that the ants on her skin seem to get worse when she sees him.

“The sacrifice isn’t until tonight.”

“I know.”

“Jeremy and John are inside.” As if that changes anything.

“I came to see how well you are prepared, if you have any questions.”

“You’re nervous,” she says and almost laughs. Here he is, watching her every move, looking as content as ever and asking her if she has any questions. Questions, of all things. He doesn’t nod, doesn’t shake his head either. He just continues smiling as he always does. “No,” she finally says, “I have no questions.”

He watches her intently, waiting for her to burst out laughing or crying or… something. The tension between them is heavy, and it’s not just because of the impending doom.

“You won’t get what you want.” She doesn’t mean to say it, especially not spat out like that.

“I’ve been alive for several hundred years.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“When it’s time, you will understand.”

She shakes her head at his comment; it’s ridiculous.

“I’m not immortal, like you. I’m a witch. You can’t just wait this one out. You can’t sit back until everyone is dead and it’s only you and me so I’ll have to pick you by default.” She doesn’t know why she sounds so resentful of this idea. There once was a time when she’d have found someone waiting for her for such a long time romantic. But now that she knows what price she would have to pay, what kind of person would do such a thing… now, she just finds it creepy.

“I see things that you are still invisible to you. I understand things that make no sense to you now. I won’t have to wait that long. You will not choose me because there is nobody left, you will choose me because you want to. You will leave all this behind for things that I can offer you, things you aren’t even aware of, yet.” He grabs her hand in the familiar gesture, as if he is about to kiss the back of it. It’s a gesture so polite, so innocent, and yet so possessive at the same time. When his skin meets hers, she knows that he is sure of what he says.

–––––––––––––––––––

It’s only a week later that she stands at his door.

He opens it with a smile, a genuine, happy smile. He doesn’t gloat, doesn’t tell her he told her so. He looks at her and she knows that he can tell she’d been crying.

“Did you know?” She needs to know. “Did you know he wouldn’t make it? Did you know Jeremy would do something stupid and die? Did. You. Know?” Her voice is barely above a whisper, she can barely contain her anger.

“I sensed it.” She slaps him across the face. He doesn’t stop her. “I hoped I was wrong.”

“You could have warned me,” she spits out. The tears are threatening to overwhelm her again, but she swallows them.

“You of all people should know the rules for life and death.”

“You of all people should know they can be broken every once in a while.”

“Are you here only to physically assault me? I did not murder him, after all.” He looks oddly disgruntled, as if he were disappointed by how this conversation had gone up till now.

“No,” she says after a while. She takes a deep breath, she knows she will regret this for a long time. But she loves him and she is willing to do anything to get him back. “I want you to help me get Jeremy back.”

“You expect me to know how to do that?”

“I do. You knew this was coming. You knew last week that today I would be standing here, coming to you for help instead of the others.” She sees the confirmation in his eyes, sees the sadness in them. It’s ironic, she thinks, how they were both right in a way.

She doesn’t choose him by default, she could go to the others as well. She has the power of a hundred witches, she could ask any of them. And yet, she chooses him. Because he told her she would.

What a waste of an episode.

snagging — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 20:05:15 GMT

I already had low expectations about the episode from everyone's comments, the scenes I'd seen and the quotes I'd read. But I was still surprised by just how bad this episode was. I don't know if the writers were on crack for this one or what.

Everyone being in love with Katherine/Elena/someotherdoppelganger is just proof of how much they all adore Nina. They think that Nina (and Ian) is the key to keep people watching or something, but really? There's only so many times that you can pull the 'oh there's a doppelganger and this pair of brothers was in love with her and they fought over her and it destroyed them' trick before people just aren't surprised or even phased by it anymore. There are some other, very beautiful main female cast members or maybe even the possibility of explaining it differently (a power struggle, perhaps? Daddy issues?), you do not always have to make everything about a woman that is played by Nina Dobrev.

Also, if Ian Somerhalder were to decide to pursue other roles after the season 2 finale and thus they'd send Damon on a soul searching mission to Farfarawayland, I would cry tears of joy. I never thought this day would come, because there have been occasions when I thought I'd one day be able to like Damon again. But after the way he behaved in this episode, I am done with him. Sure, one could blame Stefan "provoking" Damon or Elena/Katherine not requiting Damon's love for his bad behaviour, but at the end of the day: his actions are his responsibility. And his constant whining is getting on my nerves, his temper tantrums – during which, mind you, someone (usually a compelled female) ends up getting hurt/dying. I don't know if the writers actually think it's fun to watch a guy abuse woman after woman as long as there's a nice wideshot of his pained expression coming after it, or if they think that Ian's looks will make up for it. People say how far Damon has come that he'd admit his love for Elena, that he would compel Andie to leave instead of killing her (thank you, show, for giving her character such a graceful exit: on her hands and knees while wearing underwear), that he's so honorable for not going after Elena and trying to save her even though she doesn't reciprocate his feelings. He hasn't gone anywhere. The only difference between now and then is that now, the object of his obsession (now-Elena, then-Katherine) is right in front of his face and he's acting like he has a right to her. Even when he compelled her to forget that he confessed his love to her, it was never about HER, it was about HIM. He said that he didn't deserve her, that he had to say it at least once. And by that, he gave himself the option to come back later one when he deems himself deserving of her and demand her, like he did in 2x01. He doesn't treat Elena like he loves her as a person, he doesn't give her the option to have her own free will (well, he does, but only because he'd have to physically fight Stefan otherwise), he doesn't even ask her if she wants him (she, on her own accord, has repeatedly told him that this isn't the case). He acts as if Elena is a thing/pet/prize that the winner of the good-behaviour-contest gets. It doesn't seem to matter to him that she has chosen Stefan, it doesn't seem to matter that she has even chosen Elijah over him in the ritual plan, as long as he can tell himself that he's the one who will keep her alive. Because that's all that matters to HIM. It's not at all what matters to her, which is keeping Bonnie alive in the process as well (which Damon not only lets happen, he even encourages it!). He treats her like she's a hysterical little girl or "out of her mind" whenever she does something emotional that he doesn't expect. Choosing to take the knife out of Elijah may not turn out to be the best thing, but it's HER decision. And instead of pouting and crossing his arms and stomping his foot and saying "You can all go to hell", he should have stuck it out with her. Because that's what you do when you love someone, you accept their decisions even if they're not the ones that you would pick. But that's a concept that Damon cannot grasp, after all, he's only ever had his compelled, wind-up-toy girls to play with and whenever they object him, he just makes them obey. Like Andie. Or Caroline. Or Jessica. The list probably goes on, but I don't care right now.
But apparently, the writers are right in their assumption: people online seem to eat it up. Whether that's the Twilight mindfuckery that teaches young girls that it's romantic if your boyfriend takes the engine out of your car so cannot leave and have to obey his wishes not to visit your best friend, or whether that is because Ian Somerhalder is supposedly oh-so-fucking-awesome-hot, I don't know. I seem to be affected by neither, and I just sincerely hope that those girls that swoon over Damon's beautiful tears every time he dwells on the fact how he can't be with Elena realize that in real life, a guy like that is the kind that you run the fuck away from.

Stefan isn't any better, neither is Alaric or even Elena. They have all been enabling Damon, forgiving him time and time again, letting the whole Andie scenario quietly slip by. Sure, Stefan made a few comments in this episode, but it's not like he actually DID anything to help this poor woman! The abuse is happening before everyone's eyes, practically, and they just don't say anything. Maybe that's out of fear of what he'll do when they take his "toy" away, or maybe that's just the show telling us how wonderful a relationship like that is. You can treat women like crap as long as you cry beautifully into the camera afterward.

This show was supposed to be about a TOWN. A town full of people, witches werewolves, humans, younameit, and all they ever seem to focus on is Ian and Nina and the characters they play. Everyone else just gets sidelined, waiting for decent storylines to come up for them. Like Matt Davis, who's been waiting for a decent storyline since... well, 1x21, I'd say. Or like Katerina Graham, who only seems to be called to set whenever the special effects guys want to play with fire a little bit and it fits into the storyline (translation: the Salvatore brothers need a witch). Or even Steven R. McQueen, whose only storyline in this season was getting together with Bonnie so that they can kill two birds with a stone. We need witchy voodoo done? Jeremy can tag along and carry Bonnie's grimoire!
The writers have said time and time again that they don't know how to incorporate all those great actors they have. I have an idea: Skip a few of Damon's "Everyone hates me" scenes (I can count at least three in the past few episodes!) and a few of Katherine/Elena's "Everybody loves me" scenes and you'll have about 15 minutes more each episode. And you can fill this episode with stuff that should be told, like Bonnie's back story or something about witches in general. Or maybe show some school things. Or maybe some more of Liz and Matt and Jenna and... yeah, get where I'm going with this?

I'm not even sure why I still watch this show. Actually, I know exactly why: Bonnie and Caroline and all that surrounds those two. I was thisclose to not even watch this episode because they weren't in it. NOBODY was. Except Damon and his tears, Stefan and his quietly-standing-by, Elijah and his awesomeness (although he's a guest star, I expect him to die soon) and Elena and her curious/astonished/everybodylovesme faces. What a waste of an episode.

The things that we found out that were interesting: the sun/moon curse are fake, Bonnie doesn't have to die, Klaus is half/half. I summed this up in 30 seconds. The show needs 42 minutes for this.

A little magic (TVD - PG13)

snagging — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:47:30 GMT

Alright, so I'm back at school and somehow classes have gotten even crazier this year. Don't expect as many updates from me is all I'm saying. I've got another two or three pieces started (one that apparently will be really long...), but this one I squeezed out before bed:

Title: A little magic
Characters: Jeremy, Bonnie
Words: 914
Summary: It's one for bambiscott who gave me the prompt for a JB future fic (with possible children). Not much is going on, actually, except watch for pink footsie pajamas.
Disclaimer: If they were mine, Bonnie would be main character and Jeremy a vampire hunter... but they're not, so they're not mine :P

“Don’t look at me like that.” Bonnie walks over to where Jeremy is sitting on the —their— bed, her bathrobe flowing freely around her legs. “It’s not like I’m preparing to die.”

“I can never be sure with you,” he says and rolls his eyes.

She should have known that they would be having this conversation. If not at the moment that Elena had called then at least at some point during the two weeks since with Jeremy getting more and more quiet. He hadn’t been like that for a very long time, not since they’d defeated Klaus in a fight that cost them more than their fair share of deaths.

“I’m much stronger now, you know that,” she tries. He looks up at her like he’s heard it all before. He actually has. “It’s not like that this time. She’s asked me to do a locating spell, I won’t even have to channel any of the ancient powers.”

She starts packing things in the bag by the foot of the bed. A couple of shirts, some jeans, socks, underwear — everything she needs for a week. Elena had called two weeks ago, saying that she needed Bonnie’s help locating someone but that she had to do some more research. She’d called again tonight, asking that Bonnie drive over the next day. Moving out of Mystic Falls had not been Bonnie’s idea, but Jeremy had begged her —literally, he’d even used the word ‘beg’— and there had already been so many things she hadn’t done for him. She knows why he asked, knows that he had hoped that being away from Mystic Falls would mean she’d be safer.

“Just remember it’s not just you anymore. It’s not just us.”

Her chest tightens a little and there’s a witty comeback about being a single father heightening his chances with girls that dies on her tongue when she looks at him. The last time she’s seen him like that was right before they went to battle against Klaus. His fear of losing her is written all over his face, just like all of his emotions usually are.

As if on cue, the bedroom door opens and Sheila comes in. She’s still rather small for being three years old and the pink footsie pajamas that Caroline got her for her birthday is a little bit big on her. Teddy bear in one hand, she wipes at her eyes.

“Is it pancake time, yet, Daddy?”

“Not quite,” Jeremy says, “you haven’t even slept yet!” He picks her up and she giggles, saying something about how she thought he wouldn’t notice. “She gets that from you,” he mouths at Bonnie, walking out to tuck Sheila back into her bed.

When they moved out of Mystic Falls five years ago (shortly after Jeremy had finished high school), she would have sworn she’d never have children. There was no way that she would put someone else through what she’d been through. But apparently, witch genes had their own way of making sure they survived. When she found out she was pregnant despite all the precautions they’d taken, she was more shocked about it than Jeremy was. ‘You have to admit,’he’d said laughing, ‘it’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us.’ Not the weirdest, but in hindsight probably the most wonderful.

Jeremy comes back in after saying goodnight to Sheila ‘one last time’. They both know that their girl will probably be back out of her bed within five minutes saying she is thirsty, needs to go pee or that she’s slept and it’s pancake time now.

“That’s what I mean,” Jeremy says and tucks her closer by the strings on her bathrobe. “Be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

Suddenly, there’s a knot in Bonnie’s stomach, making her want to say crazy things. Like that he can’t be angry with her if she does die. Or that he please doesn’t become like her father if she doesn’t come home, that Sheila will need him when she grows up, because there’s no Grams to explain anything to her. She swallows those thoughts, because they would just worry him even more — he does believe in premonitions, after all.

He presses a kiss against her lips. “Don’t worry, I’ll know what to do. Just make sure I won’t have to.” It’s like he can read her mind sometimes, she thinks.

The sound of small feet tippling across the wooden floor interrupts them.

“There’s a monster in my room,” Sheila says, teddy bear in hand. Well, there’s a new one. Bonnie’s alarmed but Jeremy just smiles.

“Have you invited anybody into the house lately,” he asks his daughter.

“No,” Sheila says.

“Have you left your window open?”

“No.”

“Did you turn out all the lights in your room?”

“No.” And suddenly Sheila’s grinning and laughing. “I got you,” she yells and runs back to crawl into her bed.

“She definitely got me this time,” Bonnie sighs. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this.”

“I’ve had years of practice,” he says grinning, locks the bedroom door and start walking Bonnie backwards towards their bed.

“What are you doing?” Her voice comes out in mock surprise.

“You’ll be gone for a week!”

For some reason, she thinks as he starts to push the bathrobe off her shoulders, he always knows when it’s the last time for Sheila to come out of bed before she falls asleep. Maybe he’s a little magic, too.

In another life.

snagging — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 12:56:34 GMT

Just a little idea I had.

Title: In another life
Fandom: TVD
Characters: Ben, Bonnie
Rating: PG13
Words: 904
Summary: In another life, he would have married her.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, as usual.

He watches her from afar long before he even shows up on her radar. Anna had told him to, had ordered him to spin a web around Bonnie Bennett that she wouldn’t be able to avoid.

It’s not the first time he watches her, not the first time that he feels like a creep knowing she doesn’t see him. In his other life, he did it, too.

That’s how he refers to it now. His other life. The life before. Before he met Anna, before he died, before he turned. He doesn’t remember what made him go for it, but he is at least a little grateful. He feels much better now than he did before and yet he realizes that his other life, the life before, it’s over now.

He watches Damon walk up to Bonnie and sees an opening that he never expected.

“Is there a problem?”

He eyes Damon up and down, almost daring him to make a scene. But he doesn’t, instead he turns and leaves. She beams up at him, obviously remember him from high school. In another life, he’d have found this adorable. Now, he finds it a little sad that it’s so easy to lure her in. He smiles back and begins weaving the web.

He used to be one of those high school morons that believe that they will become football stars. And usually, when they’re old and whiny and still stuck in their hometown, having held a loser job like working the bar or doing auto repairs for most of their lives, they’ll tell their children some sob story about an injury that prevented them from becoming what they could have been. He used to believe he’d be the one who made it. But he is smarter than that now. He knows he never had the skills, never had the discipline. And if it hadn’t been for Anna, he’d still be working the bar feeling sorry for himself and the life that just wouldn’t work out. That’s probably why he let her do what she did, she offered him a way out. He knows now that maybe he’d rather she had just killed him.

She told him that witches can sense vampires when they touch them. She ordered him to avoid touching Bonnie at all costs, because apparently the witch does not like vampires. Having witnessed her scene with Damon earlier, he can’t really blame her. Knowing what he’s about to do to her…

He waits for her to make the next move, watches as she gets ready for the dance. He thinks she looks beautiful.

When Bonnie enters the Grill, he knows that this will be his lucky night. He has noticed her watching him, too, and a part of him is sad that this is happening now and not in that other life. He would treat her so much better in that other life.

She walks up to him and asks him out and he weaves the web a little tighter. They make arrangements for a date and he agrees to karaoke, even though he hates it. But she seems excited by the idea and so he says yes. He likes the way her eyes light up when he does, and the way she looks back when she walks away. He hates to admit that this gesture makes something in his chest tighten. But he shakes it off, because he’s learned that vampires don’t feel things like that anymore.

When he comes back to the motel and tells Anna about the date, she seems surprised. He doesn’t like that she continually underestimates him, but when he tells her that she smiles and it makes all his anger melt away. She tells him she’s proud that he managed to make such a huge progress in such a short amount of time and he doesn’t tell her that it’s only because in his other life, he wanted to ask Bonnie out.

They kiss and she offers him blood from a bottle, which serves as a perfect distraction. He also knows that Anna being happy with him means he might get lucky tonight for real. There’s a little blood left on his lips when he finishes the bottle and when she licks it off he knows he was right. But when he takes off her clothes he imagines someone else.

In his other life, he would have never been this cruel. He wouldn’t have bitten someone, wouldn’t have drunk blood from a bottle. He would have asked Bonnie Bennett out on a real date, he’d have brought her home afterward and placed a chaste kiss on her cheek on her front porch. He would have asked her out again and again and eventually, they would have become the kind of couple that stays together. And when he would tell his grandchildren about that injury that prevented him from going pro, she would stand in the doorway and smile, knowing he was fooling himself. He wouldn’t be thinking of ripping her throat open and sucking her dry. He wouldn’t be imagining her screams of terror. He wouldn’t be thinking of her while having sex with someone else. He wouldn’t be thinking of ways to fool her, so he could kidnap her and use her as bait.

In another life, she wouldn’t have run screaming when they kissed for the first time. At least that’s what he imagines.

And if you die, I'll kill you.

snagging — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:29:03 GMT

I'm at my other computer right now, so I can't keep working on the prompts I've started so far. But here's a little something different.

Title: And if you die, I'll kill you.
Fandom: TVD
Characters: Jeremy, Bonnie, Damon
Words: 2,224
Summary: Jeremy, Bonnie and Damon go to the location where they think the witches' burial ground is.
Spoilers: The images and promos that came out for 2x17. Everything else is my speculation.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, just my castles.

Jeremy is not sure if he’s supposed to be excited or mortified by this constellation. His stomach seems to be reeling at the possibilities, but his head knows that going on a trip with Damon simply cannot end well. Having Bonnie with him calms him down, but on the other hand it’s no secret that Bonnie hates Damon even more than Jeremy does. He’s starting to think that it’s something that is rooted in their DNA, that witches and vampires simply cannot get along unless one or both of them are trying to be a little less of what they are. But Bonnie and Damon are practically textbook examples of their respective group of supernatural beings. Damon, the guy who relishes in bringing others down and using them for his own entertainment or plans, is in many ways the exact opposite of Bonnie, the girl who would rather find another way even if it’s nearly impossible than hurt someone. Then again, in many ways they’re exactly the same. Which is why they’re now standing a few yards away looking ahead at a grand Victorian building.

None of them says anything. For one, Damon has once again made some joke about killing Jeremy that Bonnie responded to by making blood come out of Damon’s nose which then in turn almost killed them all, because Damon was the one behind the wheel.

It’s like working with children, Jeremy thinks.

And secondly, none of them really know what to say.

“I take it we’re here,” he says, meaning to finally break the most uncomfortable of silences he’s ever been in.

“No,” Damon snarks, “the witch and I are here. You’re going back to the car to wait for us.”

Of course, leave it to Damon to continuously treating Jeremy like a five-year-old. Like they would even be here if it weren’t for Jeremy’s impeccable research skills. He tells Damon so, and before Damon can tell him that this is where his involvement would end, Bonnie interrupts.

“Why don’t you go ahead and make sure the coast is clear.” She doesn’t look at anyone in particular, her eyes still focused on the building, but they all know that she meant Damon.

“Are you finally admitting that my skills are of use in this endeavor?”

“Sure,” Bonnie says nonchalantly, turning to look him in the eyes. “If there are any traps, I’d rather you die than the two of us.” She shows him her sweetest smile. Damon, though pissed, makes his way toward the building.

“Thank you,” he says after he deems Damon out of earshot. Bonnie turns to him and smiles. He knows what she’s thinking: she doesn’t really want him to be there either, because it could be dangerous. But she also knows that he would come even if they both told him no and locked him in his room. Jeremy has not only learned how to climb out of his bedroom window when he was knee deep in his druggie phase, but recently has perfected his lock-picking techniques. One can never be too prepared. “So,” he says to change the subject, “is this really the burial ground?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” she says smiling and then closes her eyes. The breeze picks up considerably and the leaves around them start to rustle. He’s never going to get used to that, the sudden change in the air whenever Bonnie does something big. It fascinates him how she can apparently tap into whatever power surrounds them at any given time and bend it to her liking.

He notices the wrinkle on her forehead that he has come to recognize as a sign that this is more difficult than she anticipated. It takes all of his self control not to shake her out of her trance and tell her to stop. This part he doesn’t find fascinating. This he finds scary.

Bonnie suddenly opens her eyes and the leaves that he now notices have been floating around them fall to the ground.

“Yes,” she says, “this is it. A couple of witches definitely died here.” There’s a whistle across the yard from the house and Jeremy turns to see Damon waving at them. He can’t see it, but he’s sure that the vampire is grinning smugly at the fact that he didn’t die in a trap like Bonnie suggested he might. Funny, how merely surviving is something that Damon can use to piss Bonnie off.

“It’s all clear,” he says when Jeremy and Bonnie slowly walk towards him. “No invisible wires, no poisoned arrows, nothing. Just an abandoned house.”

“Interesting,” Bonnie says sounding skeptical. “What about the last owners, did your research say anything about them?”

“No.” Jeremy shakes his head. “The home has been in the same family for at least a century. The last known owner was Timothy Maldrige. He moved away about fifteen years ago and never came back. Never sold the property either.”

“Interesting.”

Jeremy looks at Damon who seems just as curious about Bonnie’s apparent secrecy as him. Instead of asking, though, he walks up to the front door and pulls it open. “Oh look,” he says innocently, “it’s open.”

Both, Jeremy and Bonnie ignore the splintered wood as they enter the house behind him.

“So, what now?” Jeremy thinks it’s a legitimate question, but neither Bonnie nor Damon seem willing to answer. Instead, they both march off in different directions as if they had some unspoken agreement. Jeremy, unsure of where to go, follows Bonnie for now. He knows it makes him seem like a lovesick puppy and he’s sure that Damon is going to be using it as ammunition in a discussion later on, but especially with Damon around, Jeremy doesn’t necessarily trust Bonnie to do the sensible thing.

That doesn’t mean that Jeremy doesn’t trust her, because he does. Out of all the people he has met so far, Bonnie has been the one person who has always had the happiness of others in mind. She’s always known who she was and where she stood and she’s been strong enough to stand up for herself even in the face of Damon. But Damon gets to her, Jeremy knows that. Damon gets to everyone. And for some reason, it’s Damon’s influence that Jeremy fears the most. He fears that Bonnie will go too far just because she feels the need to prove herself in front of Damon, just because she feels like she can’t admit that she’s not strong enough for something in front of Damon. Now that he thinks about it, she wouldn’t admit that in front of anyone, not even Jeremy.

So, yes, Jeremy will go and follow Bonnie because while she might not admit that she can't handle something, at least Jeremy will be able to convince her not to try it in the first place. Or so he tells himself.

"Why are you heading to the first floor? I thought we were looking for a burial ground. For some reason, I doubt they were buried in the master bedroom with a view."

"The powers don’t necessarily go into the grounds, they go anywhere. They also move around in time to balance themselves out. When witches die a violent death and their powers leave them an imbalance is created. And just like every imbalance it will try to even itself out again.”

“So, when you access the powers, you’ll be undoing the imbalance?”

“That’s the plan at least.”

He can tell that she’s unsure of it, too, and it does nothing to calm his fears. He doesn’t understand where this fear comes from, this desperate wish for her not to die. He used to take that as a given. People not dying.

They walk through the first floor in silence, her taking the lead and him following suit. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to look for anyway. She suddenly stops in a small bedroom that’s facing south. Jeremy looks outside to realize the view must have been breathtaking back when the estate was still being taken care of. You could see a small lake complete with a pavilion on one side hidden in the woods that stretched out behind it. Jeremy thinks that all grand estates seem to be laid out like that, the Lockwood mansion had a similar lake.

He turns around to see Bonnie getting her spell book from his backpack. She notices him watching and puts a finger to her lips. Of course, she doesn’t want Damon to know.

Silently, she stands in the center of the room and opens the book. Jeremy can feel the air changing again, as if he were touching an electric balloon. The hair on his neck rises. As always, all Jeremy can do is stand in a corner and watch.

He notices that something is wrong as soon as it happens. Her forehead is in wrinkles, and suddenly, there’s blood coming out of her nose and even her eyes. He yells her name, takes a step towards her to grab her, but is thrown back and pinned to the floor.

He wants to scream, but his voice is nowhere to be found. With horror he watches the grimroire falling out of her hands on the floor, her head snaps back and she screams in what he can only assume is pain. Clearly, her body was not ready to balance out this burial ground, he thinks. Lights are flickering now, which is odd because there couldn’t have been any electricity running through the house. He’s struggling against whatever is holding him down, desperately trying to get to her. There are streaks of blood running from Bonnie’s eyes like tears and her arms are waving at her sides of their own accord. She looks like a puppet in the wind. It’s that sign that makes him suddenly strong enough to get up. He manages to at least get to her and use his weight to push her to the floor. That seems to break whatever spell there was. With a grunt Jeremy lands on top of Bonnie, her fall cushioned by his hand behind her head.

Suddenly, his senses are flooded, there are hands pulling him away from Bonnie. Damon is yelling something, calling out Bonnie’s name in a manner that makes Jeremy wonder if maybe there is a seed of emotion in Damon’s heart.

“Bonnie, Bonnie wake up.” Damon is wiping the blood from Bonnie’s face then turns to Jeremy. “Are you alright?”

Is he alright? He’s not the one with blood coming from his eyes.

“Actually, you are,” Damon says and when Jeremy wipes his face his fingers come away red. Odd.

Bonnie stirs.

“Bonnie?” She groans at Damon’s voice and weakly swats at his hands. Her voice comes out in a huff when she tries to speak.

“He’s fine,” Damon answers, “he’s right here.” He props Bonnie up into a sitting position and aside from a little coughing and the blood on her face, she seems fine. They’re all breathing heavy, slowly coming back out of the state of fear. Then suddenly:

“What the hell?” Jeremy is not sure he’s ever seen Damon this mad, and he’s seen him mad often enough. “Are you two completely out of your minds? What were you doing?”

“Trying to access power,” Bonnie chokes out. Damon hands her a handkerchief matter-of-factly and without a word, she takes it. If it weren’t such a serious situation, Jeremy would laugh. Then again, if they weren’t in this situation, they wouldn’t behave like that.

“It looked more like you were trying to get yourselves killed.”

Bonnie only scoffs and crawls over to Jeremy. “Are you alright?” she takes his face in her hands and through the haze he sees the worry in her eyes, so he nods.

“Magic ring, remember?” He’d rather just lie down and sleep, but to prove his point, he gets up.

“So, what now?”

“Now, we go home,” Bonnie says. “I’m tired.”

Jeremy looks at Damon, waits for him to make some kind of snarky comment about how they didn’t come all this way for nothing. But Damon takes the handkerchief from Bonnie without a word and marches out of the room like he owns the place.

Jeremy turns to pick up the grimroire. He doesn’t know what to say. Or well, he does know what to say, just not where to start. He feels her arms around his waist when he packs the spell book away.

“You don’t need to say it,” she says and rests her head against his back. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” he says and puts a hand over hers, “you need to stop being reckless.”

“Says the guy who walked into the tomb with Katherine.”

It’s the same old argument. You need to stop being so reckless - no, you need to stop first. In the end, neither will stop and both will continue to be scared out of their minds in moments like this. Normally, he’d argue with her now, reason with her, maybe even pull his last card and tell her he simply couldn’t deal with losing her. But he’s too damn tired now and with every step his head is spinning.

“Let’s go home,” he hears her say.

“Yeah, let’s go home.”

Eyecon

snagging — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:20:22 GMT

While I thoroughly enjoy all the photos and videos that are now cruising through the internet thanks to some wonderful fans attending the Eyecon event last weekend, I'll also have to say how grateful I am that I decided against spending an exorbitant amount of money on going.

I've been thinking of going to a convention for years now, mostly looking into the ones in the UK, because it's closer. And in all these years, people have never been as upset afterward as they have with Eyecon. Not only did they seem disorganized and unprofessional, apparently they also stole money from sponsors: Vee explains her experience on vampire-diaries.net.

From all the comments I have read I can only come to the conclusion that Eyecon is literally stealing your money. They advertise grand things on their website (Masquerade ball, Miss Mystic Falls pageant, etc.) which then don't even happen or only happen in a way that is disappointing and ridiculous to all attending. They don't even hire trained staff or volunteers they know, apparently they don't even work with the volunteers that they work with. They just put them in some place and tell them to hold the fort for three days.

Since I wasn't there, I cannot personally decide how horrible it was. So I won't say much more, except this: I won't ever go to an Eyecon event, unless Vee or Ruthie or the majority of future attending fans can convince me otherwise. I advise everyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, I have heard on more than one occasion that someone spent more than $1000 on their experience with Eyecon and what they received wasn't even worth $15.

You Found Me (TVD - PG13)

snagging — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:38:24 GMT

And another one... I swear, I am working on the prompts I received ;) But this one just got done earlier.

Title: You Found Me
Fandom: TVD
Characters: Bonnie, Jeremy
Words: 2,306
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Set after Bonnie loses her powers, Jeremy seems to be the one that gets through to her.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, just playing in it.

She’d been wanting this.

Ever since Mr. Tanner had died she’d wanted to turn back time and return to her old life. A life full of silly things like make-up, prime time comedy shows, dates and actually having to get matches in order to light candles. A normal life. Wasn’t this what she was given now?

It had been two days since Jonas had taken her powers, and part of her feels as if she should be grateful. And yet, here she sits on her bed and wishes for nothing more than to have them back. She laughs a little at the irony of that thought.

Downstairs, someone is knocking on her front door. She lifts the covers and crawls under them. She is not in the mood for visitors. Her phone is buzzing on her bedside table, so she reaches out and chucks it into her laundry basket. ‘Just go away,’ she thinks, ‘just go away.’

“Bonnie!” More knocking. She pulls the covers tighter around her. It is Jeremy. Of course. He’s been knocking on her front door yesterday, too. “Bonnie, I know you’re in there.” Silently, she wishes for him to go away. The knocking stops.

Slowly, Bonnie peaks out from under the sheets. Complete silence. The sun is still shining brightly through her half-closed blinds as if everything is normal. Slowly, she crawls out of bed. What is she supposed to do now? Normally, she’d be practicing some kind of spell during her alone time, but without powers, that’s not going to happen. Sighing, she sends out a probing thought towards the papers on her desk trying to make them float, but nothing happens. Her powers are still gone.

Curiosity gets the better of her and she gets up to pick her phone out of the laundry basket. Elena has been calling multiple times. She probably needs her witch friend for something if she is calling this often. Only, said witch friend isn’t a witch anymore. She’s just a useless… person. Great.

Bonnie feels strangely disconnected now. Normally, she can sense all surrounding things easily. She hears it as if it were a buzzing sound, can feel it humming through her. But not anymore. Now, she feels strangely isolated as if immersed in water all around, everything is quiet. There is no humming, no energy. Just her. With a deep sigh, Bonnie crawls back into her bed and pulls the covers over her.

Downstairs, a door opens. Crap, Bonnie realizes that her Dad is coming home from his trip today. She sits up straight in her bed, pinches her cheeks and puts on her happiest fake smile. He had enough to worry about with the bills and his work and leaving her alone all the time, he doesn’t need to worry about her pain, too. She jumps down the stairs quickly —thinking it’ll make her seem excited for his return— and walks to the kitchen.

“Can we order pizza—” she stops dead in her tracks. That is not her Dad standing in the kitchen.

“Sure,” Jeremy says, “pizza sounds good.” He has this sly smile on his face that he always sports when he thinks he has accomplished something.

“How did you get in here?”

“There’s a key under the third rock next to the tulips in your back yard. Elena told me.”

“Of course she did.”

“Well,” he says slowly, looking at her intently, “it sure beats pounding on your front door for days only to have you ignore me.”

They stare at each other for a while, both not knowing what to say next. Finally, Bonnie just turns around and walks away. Without missing a beat, Jeremy follows. Up the stairs, into her bedroom.

“What do you think you’re you doing?” She is dumbfounded, irritated, angry at the fact that Jeremy feels so comfortable following her in there. It feels weird having him there, in her room, looking like he is ready for anything she’s going to throw at him.

“The plan is to talk to you until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I have no desire to talk,” Bonnie said, putting on a brave face.

“Then I’ll stay here until you do.” He takes off his shoes and sits down on her bed, head resting against the wall. She stares at him again, thinking of leaving the room just to spite him but he is looking at her with so much of that emotions she isn’t going to name that she can’t do anything but lie down on the bed next to him.

“I feel empty,” she blurts out after a while of silence. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Jeremy reaches out a hand to touch hers. He strokes it slowly at first, then intertwines his fingers with hers. Part of her is relieved at the gesture, relieved that he’s still willing to touch her, still likes her even though she’s broken.

“You’re the butterfly,” Jeremy says calmly, as if that answer actually makes sense to anyone but him.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I know who you are. And you’re no different today than you were last week. You’re still the same person.”

Oh sure, this is coming from the guy who loves her doing witchy stuff. He’s practically addicted to it, she thinks angrily, but immediately chastises herself for assuming such a thing of him.

“And who is that exactly?”

“You’re Bonnie, the girl that sleeps on the right side of the bed. You’re the one who joined cheerleading just because Elena didn’t want to suffer alone. You’re the one who falls asleep during a movie but afterward you claim that you didn’t miss a second. You’re the one that loves the pizza crusts so much that you’ll eat it off of everyone else’s plate even after you’ve declared you’re full. You’re the girl that I’ll meet in the middle of the night getting a glass of water when you’re having a sleepover with my sister. You’re you.”

Bonnie is looking anywhere but at him. It scares her that those are the things he remembers about her, things he shouldn’t even know in the first place. And, as if he can read her thoughts, he laughs.

“Seriously, we’ve practically grown up together. You don’t think that I know a little bit about you?”

Sure, she thinks, only those aren’t ‘little’ things.

She doesn’t know little things like that about him. Well, except for the fact that he gets up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and that’s why they sometimes end up meeting in the bathroom. She’s never thought much of it. She also knows that he likes to draw and that — before he went all punk kid on everyone — he wanted to go to art school. She kind of wonders if he still wants that. Him drawing reminds her of how Elena once accidentally dropped his tray of art supplies on the kitchen floor, essentially breaking a bunch of his charcoal to pieces. And how — even though he was insanely upset — he immediately told Elena that it was okay because he couldn’t see his sister cry. He probably still can’t. She also remembers how big his smile was when Elena brought home new charcoal for him. She knows that he has a smile especially reserved for occasions when normal people would say ‘I told you so’; he never has to say it out loud. She knows that he likes extra cheese on his pizza and always secretly ordered it when Caroline wasn’t listening (“All those calories!”). But, yeah, that’s all she really knows.

He lets go of her hand then and puts his arm around her to pull her closer.

“You’re still Bonnie, with or without powers, it doesn’t matter.” She tries not to get too distracted by the fact that he’s so close she can feel his breath against her face.

“It does matter,” she says stubbornly, “it matters to everyone. They rely on me, they count on me. They need me to have powers. Elena’s called fifty times which means that she or Damon or Stefan are probably already knee deep in some trouble and need my help. And how am I supposed to help them now?”

“They’re not in trouble,” Jeremy says seriously. “You haven’t left this house in days, you haven’t answered anyone’s calls and you haven’t opened the door. She called fifty times because she’s worried about you.” Oh. Well, that is another option… “And actually, I think Elena’s relieved you don’t have your powers anymore.”

“Relieved? How can she be relieved by that?” Bonnie is staring into Jeremy’s face and she thinks she sees something like hurt. Or maybe she’s just imagining it.

“The sacrifice asks for a witch. You not being one anymore means that you’re safe.”

“I’m far from safe. I have nothing to protect myself with.” She can’t believe that this is a logic people actually believe in. She’s human now, simply human, she couldn’t defend herself against a human guy who attacked her, let alone a vampire.

“Still…” he says, before he stops and looks away.

“Are you happy I lost my powers?” Is he really? Doesn’t he see how broken she is now? Doesn’t he see how empty she feels? How can he be happy about that?

“I’m not happy,” he says, and when she tries to look away he grabs her chin to make her look at him. “I am not happy. Do I look happy to you? You look like you’ve been crying, you feel horrible and you just said you don’t know who you are without these powers. That doesn’t make me happy, it makes me sad. It makes me want to go to Oz and ask for your powers back. It makes me sit outside of your house for two days straight just because I don’t want you to be alone. And if losing your powers means that this is how you will feel for the rest of your life then no, I’m not happy about it. But you know what else losing your powers means? It means that I won’t be counting the number of spells you do each day. It means there’s less of a chance that you will drop dead one day while doing some ridiculous spell. It means that now I won’t have to be terrified every time that someone mentions you doing a spell, because while you wouldn’t say no then, you can’t say yes now. That doesn’t make me happy either, but in some way, I am relieved. I am relieved that the probability of magic pushing back so hard that it’ll kill you has considerably lessened.”

He looks so sincere, so hurt that she can’t help the tears that are threatening to escape her eyes. She’s trying to be stubborn, thinking that magic wouldn’t kill her, that she had everything under control, that she just needed some more practice and that, really, he was one to talk, considering he was throwing himself head first into dangerous situations and how was she supposed to feel about that.

“It’s a part of me,” she whispers against the tears that are threatening to close down her throat. “Magic is a part of me, Jeremy.”

“I know,” he whispers back, “I know.” He pushes something into her hand then, his ring.

And she gets it. She understands what he’s doing, what he is offering to her, understands why he feels so torn about it all. So, instead of keeping it, she puts it back on his finger and kisses him.

She kisses him as if that’s the only way she can tell him how she feels and it quickly goes from a chaste kiss to something much more passionate. She can feel his mouth hot on hers and slowly but surely she forgets about being upset. Instead, her mind focuses on his hand at her hip and his body pressed to hers. It’s still not close enough, so she wraps her arms around his waist and pulls him closer.

His hand somehow manages to slip under her shirt and Bonnie feels like he sets her skin on fire. This is why she didn’t want for anything else to happen before they talked to Elena, she thinks, the way that he makes her feel with a single touch. As if he can read her mind, he pulls back slowly, leaving a soft kiss on her lips.

“We were going to order pizza, remember?”

“I’m not hungry.” She wasn’t hungry before, but she’s definitely not hungry now. Or, well… maybe she is, just not for pizza. He seems to see it in her eyes because he smiles the way he always does when things start to get a little more than friendly between them. He knows they shouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it. It’s just one more thing that makes Jeremy so irresistible, how she knows that while he respects her wishes he would do so much more if she allowed it.

And she doesn’t really know why, but this is the moment when her head allows it.

He’s about to say something else, but she catches the words on his lips as she pulls him down again. She deepens the kiss methodically and after a while of resisting he finally gives in and kisses her back.

She’s never been kissed like that in her entire life. She’s had boyfriends before, she’s even gone pretty far with them, but the kisses never felt this natural, this wonderful. There was always a hint of awkwardness in everything, even though she genuinely liked them. Maybe, Jeremy is different because he risked his life to save her. Or maybe, Jeremy is different, because he knows the little things.

I'm on fire. (TVD - PG13)

snagging — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 13:44:09 GMT

I've just realized, I have no idea how to rate my fics. I mean, I know when to rate them "M" (what gets me blushing when I write it will get an M), but what's the difference between PG and PG-13? No idea... well, here is a new one anyway.

Title: I'm on fire.
Fandom: TVD
Characters: Bonnie (+ Stefan, Jeremy...)
Rating: PG-13 or something
Words: 4,850
Summary: Stefan is worried that Bonnie might be overexerting herself and takes her to get help.
This picture was the inspiration for this fic, and then it just kind of evolved... it got wings and flew away *lol*

Bonnie knows something has changed between them. It’s so obvious to her it’s almost physical, touchable. It’s not in the way that he talks to her, treats her or looks at her. It’s nothing he actually does to her. She doesn’t know if that’s the reason why it’s all so frustrating for her.

Stefan is not the confrontational type — not with her, at least. She knows that when she’ll ask him, he will just deny anything is different and then subtly change the subject. He’s good at this, he’s had 150 years of practice. So she just swallows her frustration and pretends she doesn’t notice how all of a sudden he’s not so big on spells anymore. How he now backs up Jeremy in that department. If it didn’t involve her, she’d actually think it to be funny, the way that those two are always trying to top one another, coming up with alternatives.

Right now, they’re all standing in a group, trying to figure out how to take down Klaus without retrieving the dagger from Elijah’s chest. She catches Stefan’s eye as he leans against the bookshelf, seemingly watching her. His eyes are boring into her, pleading and yelling at the same time.

She’s just offered to try and spell another dagger.

She knows why it changed. She knows the exact moment that Stefan’s position towards using her witchy powers in their cons has changed.

Jeremy was caught in the tomb and she was desperately trying to take down the spell that locked Katherine in, but it wasn’t working. She was channeling everything she could, but she just couldn’t do it. She could hear Jeremy yelling at Stefan, telling him to stop her — was he insane? If Stefan stopped her, then Katherine would make true of her promise and that couldn’t… She kept chanting, even when she couldn’t see the ground before her anymore, kept pushing until it pushed back so hard that everything went black. The last thing she remembers were Stefan’s arms around her, trying to hold her up. And the next thing she knew was that Jeremy was out of the tomb and Stefan was in there with Katherine and then the first thing she thought of was ‘Thank God’ and she grabbed for Jeremy, making sure he was real and there and warm and alive… and there are no words that describe what she felt when she realized that he was going to be okay.

Back then, she didn’t know, didn’t realize that this was the moment that Stefan’s position changed. She knows that now. She knows that he thinks she’s weak.

“I can do it,” she hears herself saying while still holding Stefan’s gaze. Damon snorts and asks whether she’s sure that spelling a dagger is the same as making a daylight ring. She turns an icy glare to him. “It’s not the same. Especially since with this spell, I won’t be trying to protect, I’ll be trying to destroy.” He makes another comment about her overestimating herself and she feels a smile coming on that’s every bit as menacing as she feels. “That’s coming from quite the high horse there, don’t you think? If you weren’t overestimating yourself constantly, throwing daggers at vampires that are at least halfway your allies, we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we?” Surprisingly, that shuts him up.

It’s decided then, because Damon backs her up and not even Stefan and Jeremy have a different plan. She knows that Jeremy will argue with her later, ask her not to, but in the end, he will actually help her with whatever she needs. She thinks it’s good that at least one of them learned their lesson that day in the tomb.

She hopes that Stefan will do the same, but the look on his face when she leaves the boarding house tells her that she has not yet heard the end of it.

—————

Bonnie hasn’t even gotten out of her car, yet, when she sees him sitting on her front porch. He doesn’t look directly at her, as if he didn’t actually mean to see her and is just sitting there by chance.

“Five minutes,” she says as she walks up to her front door. “You have five minutes to give me a good reason not to do it.”

“Because you might die.” He doesn’t get up, doesn’t stand in her way, doesn’t even look at her.

“Do we have any other option?” She walks past him and gets out her keys. She’s not really in the mood for one of those discussions. She’s had a couple of them with him before and they always end with him staring at her sourly and her acting as if she doesn’t care. He might not be the confrontational type, but that doesn’t mean he can’t act as if that always has been a problem. Also, after those endings they’re both pissed at each other which carries over into every single one of their conversations nowadays and she’s surprised that nobody’s picked up on it yet. He doesn’t answer her question and she’s about to just let him sit there and close the door behind her before his five minutes are even up.

“I’ve been scared before,” he says quietly just as she’s about to open the door. “I’ve been scared and I’ve scared the hell out of others. I’ve lost people I’ve cared about to accidents, stupidity and old age. I’ve been scared, terrified even, and I’ve lost people. And still, I see you every day and it reminds me of just how much more terrifying it was to see you pass out. We’ve been asking you to do all these spells for us and we don’t even think about what they do to you. I didn’t realize this before, but I realize it now. And I’m not okay with asking you to put your life on the line all the time for some stupid, half-assed plan that sprung from the berserk mind of my brother.”

“I’m not that weak anymore, Stefan. I can take care of myself.”

“There’s a difference between being brave and being reckless. Isn’t that what you keep telling Jeremy? He’s just as big of an idiot as you are, no wonder you two found each other.” Her breath hitches in her throat. Nobody even knows about her and Jeremy, about the few kisses he steals from her in empty hallways. Stefan laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not saying anything.” Then he turns around and pats the wood at his side. “Sit down. This is going to be a bit longer than five minutes.”

She reluctantly goes and squats down beside him, leaving room for a third person between them.

“This isn’t me being reckless. It’s necessary,” she says, not looking at him.

“Just like taking down the tomb spell was necessary? We should have listened to Jeremy’s idea that day.”

“His idea almost got him killed.”

“Only because he didn’t have any backup. If Alaric had supported him or he used more of the ashes, he would have been fine.”

“He almost died!” There’s that panic again, the panic at seeing Jeremy half delirious from blood loss in the hands of Katherine.

“And so did you!”

There they are again. It is an impasse and part of her knows that she isn’t being fair, but the other part of her is frustrated that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand that this is who she is. She is a witch and what good is a witch when she can’t do spells? What use does she have to them if he won’t let her do what she does best? She’s about to get up and go inside, when he speaks again.

“We will never agree on this. Just like you and Jeremy will never agree on it. He might have recently taken to ducking his head and giving in, but that doesn’t mean that when it’ll come down to it, he won’t tie you to a chair and jump head first into a fight to keep you safe.”

“Jeremy and I are not the same.” Why does he bring that up? “He’s just human.”

“He has a ring that will bring him back to life. You don’t.” She’s silent. As much as she hates to admit it, he has a point. “And you can channel other people’s energy, which he can’t. You both think you’re invincible, just because you have some kind of tool that makes you better than most humans. But that doesn’t mean that I am willing to send you two in the first line of the fight.”

“I’m just spelling a dagger.”

“Maybe this time, you are just spelling a dagger. And maybe you’re strong enough this time. But what if you’re not? Or what if, next time, you won’t just have to spell a dagger, you’ll have to lift a tomb spell all by yourself? Or if, after spelling the dagger, you’ll have to do a locating spell, and after that a messaging spell and after that, you’ll have to do a summoning spell?” He just lets the statement hang in the air between them. She’s too proud to admit that he may have the tiniest point. She gets up to walk out of the conversation that she’s just realized she can’t win by any other way than stomping her foot on the ground like a child. “Don’t walk away now,” he says, probably more harshly than he intended. “We’ve been at this point for weeks now and we will continue to be at this point if we don’t finally find a compromise.” Huh, so much for Stefan not being the confrontational type.

“And what kind of compromise would that be? We just find all kinds of different ways so I don’t have to do any spells? That’s not helping, Stefan! I need to practice to get stronger.”

“And I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m just saying you shouldn’t be doing this alone anymore.” Slowly, she sits back down. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a sheet of paper. “I want to help. I have made a promise not to give out this address and especially not to you. But,” he says as he gets up and starts walking towards her car, “if I drive you there, I technically won’t be giving anything out, right?”

—————

The drive isn’t long, maybe an hour. He doesn’t make any attempts to confuse Bonnie by driving circles or making her cover her eyes. He just drives —her car!— quietly, letting her sulk in the passenger seat. She’s still upset that he may have won that argument. They arrive at a small house in the middle of the woods that’s well hidden. So hidden, in fact, that Bonnie wonders how often Stefan has been there to know exactly when to turn off the main road.

“Are you not coming?” She’s surprised that he doesn’t move from his seat of the car and instead looks like he’s going to be getting comfortable.

“No,” he answers, “I’ll be in big enough trouble as it is, I don’t need to be intruding anywhere.”

She doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say, but accepts that as his answer. She’s long given up trying to make him be clearer about what’s going on in his head.

The house doesn’t look like much, it doesn’t even look as if someone lives there. The roof is overgrown by moss and ivy. The three steps up the front porch seem almost rotten, but they’re dry enough to creak when she steps on them. The plants next to the door look like they could be healthier. She takes a deep breath and then knocks on the front door.

Nothing.

She turns around to look at Stefan in the car and ask whether he’s absolutely sure that this is where they were supposed to go, but the car is nowhere in sight. The muddy road they came up is suddenly overgrown by bushes.

Shocked, she turns around, mentally readying herself for whatever she has to face now. The plants don’t look so dead anymore, in fact the lavender is in full bloom. Before she can dwell on the fact that the previously chipped paint on the house is now shining in a perfect shade of light brown, the door opens.

“I should have known he wouldn’t keep it to himself,” Lucy says.

—————

Bonnie standing uncomfortably in what she assumes to be the living room. Every so often, she casts a glance outside, but she can still see nothing but bushes surrounding the house.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Lucy is looking at her expectantly, half-smiling, but Bonnie declines. Somehow, she remembers reading that when you’re in the fairy world, you’re not supposed to eat or drink anything, otherwise you’ll be stuck there forever. It’s ridiculous, she’s not in the fairy world, of course, but one can never be too careful.

“It’s a two-way illusion,” Lucy says sitting down on the couch as if she had just read her thoughts. “I don’t like intruders. People that find their way here will only see a run-down shack. Kids that think it’s fun to break into a run-down shack won’t know which way to leave. So they’re stuck here until I come home to erase their memories and get them back on the main road.”

“I didn’t break in,” Bonnie says stupidly.

“No, but you’re my cousin. The spell will work around descendants of my bloodline to let them know I’m here. Once you step down from the porch, you’ll be able to see the driveway again.”

“How does Stefan know about this place?”

“He has a special understanding with us Bennett witches, in case you hadn’t guessed. I had asked him to keep it a secret.”

“Yeah, he said as much.” Bonnie isn’t sure whether she should sit down or keep standing. The room itself is small and filled with candles. There are old books on shelfs standing right next to jars of weird things. This room looks exactly like she’s always imagined a witch’s room to look like. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she then admits. Of course she has questions. She has tons of them. But so far, every witch she’s met has either screwed her over or run away or, well, died. She’s not willing to let herself get so close again. Especially not to someone who used to work with Katherine, cousin of hers or not.

“Stefan is worried that you’re overexerting yourself.”

“He told you that?”

“No, but he’s worrying about it so much that I can sense it coming from the outside.”

Bonnie lifts a questioning eyebrow at that statement. For one, she can’t sense anything other than the warmth of the candle flames or the comfort of being surrounded by nature. And secondly, that’s just utter crap. Lucy laughs, probably at her thoughts, Bonnie realizes.

“I had a lifetime of practice,” she starts to say and Bonnie feels like she already knows what’s coming. “Don’t roll your eyes at me—” whoops, had she actually done that? “I had a lifetime of practice and so did Sheila and so do most other witches. I had my mother who taught me everything I know.”

“Yeah well,” Bonnie interrupts, “I’m terribly sorry that I cannot afford that luxury.” This woman had nerves! Wasn’t she the one that left her standing after the masquerade ball?

“All I’m saying is that it’s not a shame that you don’t have that much knowledge yet.”

“I’ve been getting by just fine on my own, thanks.” She doesn’t know why she’s suddenly so upset or why she feels the loneliness crushing her. She doesn’t like it.

“Passing out while trying to lift the locking spell of the tomb by yourself is not my definition of ‘fine’.”

Bonnie is still standing, turning her back to Lucy now. She’s angry with everyone, angry and sad and alone and all she wants is scream. But she can’t, can’t let her guard down like that, not around someone who’s as powerful as Lucy. Instead, she concentrates on squishing the flames of the nearest candle out and the re-lighting it. It takes away some of the edge.

“You have to learn how to control your emotions,” Lucy says calmly, still sitting on the couch. “If you weren’t concentrating so hard on keeping your emotions under wrap, you’d find it much easier to access your powers.”

“Grams said that emotions fuel power,” Bonnie says absentmindedly, “and the more emotions I’ve had, the stronger I was.”

“You’re stronger because Sheila gave you her powers, not because of that deafening tumult in your heart.”

“Why—” Bonnie’s not sure what she’s supposed to say now. Grams hadn’t done that, had she? She couldn’t have. That would mean…

“…that she knew she was going to die, yes.” Bonnie does not like how Lucy is in her head. “It was her last gift to you. She gave you her powers because she knew that she wouldn’t have the time to teach you. I believe she was hoping that you would figure it out on your own.”

“And I have! I have figured it out on my own. I have a grimoire and I have plenty of time to practice.”

“That’s the point, you don’t have plenty of time anymore. From what I’ve heard, Klaus is drawing smaller and smaller circles. You don’t have enough time to figure out how to spell a new dagger without risking a brain freeze.”

“And that’s why I’m here, then?”

“That’s Stefan’s idea, at least. If you’re not interested, I’m not going to keep you prisoner.”

“Fine,” Bonnie decided, right on the spot, “what do I have to do.”

—————

Bonnie feels like they’ve been sitting there for hours. She’s been trying to do what Lucy’s been telling her, but her annoyance makes it really hard to take her seriously. Those feelings weren’t going anywhere, much less were they going to be resolved.

“Alright,” Lucy says then, glancing at a clock, “this isn’t working. Let’s try a different approach.” She grabs Bonnie’s hand and leads her out into the back yard. It looks stunning, with an herb garden the size of a football field. Well, not quite that big, but big enough to make Bonnie envious. “Here,” Lucy says, handing Bonnie an axe.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“There’s a pile of wood over there, feel free to chop it up as you please.”

“Excuse me?” Bonnie’s staring at Lucy open-mouthed. She can hardly carry the axe, much less chop anything up with it.

“You heard me just fine.” And with that, Lucy goes back inside.

This is ridiculous. Is that supposed to be some grand plan or a punishment? ‘Hey, you totally suck at this, so go and chop some wood so I can get on with my life and pretend like I did you a favor.’ Bonnie lifts the axe tentatively and lets it fall down on the chunk of wood before her. It doesn’t even leave a scratch. And why would it, Bonnie wonders. It’s not like she’s a vampire with super strength or a lumberjack. She’s just Bonnie. She lifts the axe again and smacks it against the chunk a bit harder. It still doesn’t show at all. This is seriously ridiculous. She thinks about just leaving the axe here and going back to the car. What a waste of time.

One last time, she lifts the axe up high and slams it down. When she pulls it out, she sees that it left a small cut. Story of her life. She gives it her all and the results are minimal. She tries to save Stefan who then tries to save Damon and that gets her grandmother killed in the process. She had just wanted to help them, but not at that price. Had she known the price, she would have walked away. No, she wouldn’t have. The anger flares up again. She wouldn’t have walked away because Elena would have asked her to help them, and because she can’t see Elena cry, she would have done exactly what she did. Even if she had known she might be sacrificing her grandmother. She smashes the axe into the wood before her. The new dent is not even close to the dent she made before, but it’s deeper.

She remembers how Elena had kept calling every day, wanting to talk about her Grams as if that had been the same thing as Elena’s parents dying. The audacity! The axe smacks into the chunk again. It had not been the same thing, Elena’s parents had died in an accident, whereas Grams died for Stefan and Damon. For Damon —there’s a fourth dent in the wood now— the guy who abused Caroline, who attacked her. Damon, who doesn’t even care about anyone or anything that he ruins or kills, Damon who doesn’t even deserve to be given more and more chances every time he asks for them. Damon, who had been in the damn tomb because he was going to free another one of those murderous, psychopathic vampires! Grams died while saving him! And Elena… Elena was trying to bond over the fact that she died, she was pretending it was all okay!

The axe slams so hard into the wood that Bonnie has difficulties getting it out again.

It’s not okay, she thinks. It wasn’t okay back then and it’s not okay now. It’s not okay that she has to sacrifice so much, that she had to lose her grandmother and everyone pretends that it’s okay now. That it was just an accident that couldn’t have been avoided. But it could have been avoided.

If only. She had left. Stupid. Damon. In the. Stupid. Tomb.
She punctuates each thought by slamming the axe into the wood.

And Elena acts like she understands, like she too has suffered this, but she hasn’t! She hasn’t had to sacrifice someone she loves for anything. She acts like sacrificing herself, giving herself to Klaus, is some grand gesture, but it’s not! Because she would leave them all behind and they would all have to live with the knowledge that they sacrificed Elena for their own safety. But even then, how safe does Elena think the world is going to be?

The last blow of the axe parts the piece of wood in front of her right down the middle. The weight of the tool drags her down on the ground and she notices that she’s crying. Helpless, she leans against a nearby tree trunk and lets the tears flow.

It’s not fair, it’s just not fair. The mayor’s death, Caroline turning, Tyler becoming a werewolf, Jeremy dying, Mason dying… she could have prevented all this if she had just left Damon in the tomb. And she could have kept Grams, too.

“You can’t change it now,” Lucy’s voice is right next to her. Bonnie is still crying, shaking uncontrollably and a pair of arms drags her into an embrace that she doesn’t want but craves so much. “You can’t change it now. It’s in the past.” And then, the woman is shushing her, rocking her back and forth like a child and Bonnie hates that she feels so much comfort in that.

—————

Bonnie is surprised how quiet her mind is when Lucy leads her back into the house. She’s also surprised by how easily she can now sense Stefan sitting outside in the car, the truck driver eating a disgusting sandwich his wife made him for lunch just five miles out and how the walls of the house are buzzing with power. She reaches out with her mind to the lavender pot on the front porch and sucks the life out of at least half the bush without any problems. She puts the energy back a second later and the plant feels more vibrant than before. Bonnie used to think how amazing it was to sense the energy of a candle flame. She understands now that this hadn’t even begun to show her what witches are capable of.

She turns to Lucy to see her smiling.

It’s time to go home, she thinks.

Stefan knows that something changed when Bonnie gets in the car. She knows this, because unlike before, his feelings are no longer a mystery to her. She can sense that he’s on edge, worried about her and unsure of whether to be happy with the changes that have occurred. But he doesn’t say anything, instead just starts the car.

“Thank you, that helped,” she says because she knows he wants to ask. It scares her a bit how it seems she’s on a high.

—————

“How long were we gone?” The thought comes to her suddenly when they get closer to the boarding house and it seems to be buzzing with worry.

“A couple of days.”

“A couple of days?” She doesn’t intend for it to come out as a shriek, but she can’t help it. Where had the time gone?

“Yeah, Lucy said you might need some time.”

“There’s a meeting at the boarding house,” Bonnie senses, “they’re not very happy.”

“They’re just upset I didn’t disclose every single detail of our whereabouts.”

“And by that you mean you just told them we were fine and hung up?”

“Yes.”

Bonnie snickers. There is an underlying sense of glee in Stefan’s emotions, as if he were enjoying having them all go rampage for a little while.

She can feel an almost overwhelming sense of worry and pride and she knows it’s coming from Jeremy. He does not seem happy at all that she just left without telling him, but he’s proud that she went and did something for herself for a change.

The second they pull into the driveway, Caroline opens the front door. She’s jumping up and down, clapping her hands as if she were welcoming a prodigal son or her hometown hero. Leave it to Caroline to be the first to find all of this funny.

“Damon is pissed, you guys,” she laughs as Bonnie and Stefan are getting out of the car. She almost crushes Bonnie with her hug. “I’m just glad you really are okay.” There’s a sense of love and friendship and true comfort in Caroline’s hug that makes Bonnie realize how unfair she’s been to her recently.

“I’m really glad you’re alive,” she whispers in her ear. “I’m sorry.” Even though she’s rambling, Caroline understands and squeezes her a little tighter.

“Maybe next time, you could give us a little warning before you go off on a trip.” Damon is standing in the doorway, arms crossed and obviously upset. Bonnie doesn’t care. Elena is running into Stefan’s arms like she hasn’t seen him in years —seriously, just how long had they been gone?— and Alaric’s face shows signs of relief.

It’s getting dark and so instead of staying, Bonnie gets back in her car to drive home.

“Can I have a ride?” Jeremy is standing next to her suddenly and she wonders where he came from and why she didn’t notice. “Elena’s staying here tonight and she’ll need the car, so…”

“Sure.”

He waits until they are out of earshot —a vampire’s earshot— before he says: “I hope it was freaking worth it. You scared me half to death.” He’s keeping his voice light, as if he’s joking, but she knows that he’s serious. For some reason, losing her is the worst thing he can imagine. She doesn’t even know how to wrap her mind around what happened, nor how she’s supposed to answer what she’s just sensed, so she tries a different approach.

“What are you doing?” He asks when she pulls over to the side of the road.

She says nothing, just leaves the car and waits for him to do the same. When he reaches her, she takes both of his hands in hers.

“I’ve never done this before, so bear with me.” Then, she thinks about all the things she wants him to know. She wants him to know what happened, wants him to know how much she cares and more than anything she wants him to know how scared she is that he’s the next person she’ll end up having to sacrifice. She wants him to know that this would kill her.

She doesn’t know if it worked until there’s a small smile spreading on his face. It’s so genuinely happy —and a little smug— that she can’t help but stand on her tip toes to kiss him.

She’s still confused. She’s still scared. And she sure as hell is still angry. But she understands now more than ever that some things she would just have to accept, or they would drive her crazy. And if accepting those things would turn her into someone who would actually be able to protect the ones she loves, the she thinks it’s a very small price to pay.

I'm not too happy with it, because it seems so all-over-the-place, but I kind of like how it turned out.

The lines are blurred (TVD - PG)

snagging — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:13:10 GMT

And another one. Because apparently, I can't stop my typing fingers. I've received two prompts from Bambi, and I'll definitely do one of them. So you can probably expect more of these to pop up.

Title: The lines are blurred.
Fandom: Vampire Diaries
Characters: Bonnie, Jeremy
Rating: PG
Words: 1,125
Summary: Jeremy and Bonnie have a short talk during Masquerade about how they helped kill someone.
Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the program I wrote this with.

It’s not like this is the first time that he’s seen Bonnie wear something formal. But still, she seems so different today, so much more ethereal. When he looks at her sitting next to him, she seems a little bit like he always imagined the little mermaid to be: proud and confident, yet curious as if she’d never seen this world before. In most ways, she’s the Bonnie he’s always known and then in some, she’s an entirely different person.

He checks his phone when it vibrates, telling her: “The hen is in the nest, Damon says.”

Bonnie lets out a strangled huff that could be a laugh. The look on her face says it isn’t one though. She’s been looking like that all day, every time that his name comes up.

“He’s not that bad,” Jeremy tries and Bonnie finally turns to look at him, directly at him — it’s a look of disbelief.

“Do you really think that?” A loaded question if ever there was one.

“No,” he says calmly, “but it gets better when you keep telling yourself that.” The truth is, Jeremy doesn’t know if Damon is good or bad or anything else that has yet to be named. There are things that Damon has done that Jeremy is grateful for. Mainly, those things have something to do with Elena. And then there are things that Damon has done… but Jeremy refuses to think about them. Because he knows that Damon will stick around, and it won’t matter if Jeremy wants him to or not. Unless Elena and Stefan both finally call Damon on his crap and tell him to get the hell away, Damon’s not going anywhere. In a way, he doubts that even then, Damon would go anywhere. He’s just having too much fun.

Bonnie isn’t looking at him anymore but rather at the crowd. He’s not sure if she’s looking for someone —Katherine— or if she just wants to avoid looking at anyone in particular. Her fingertips are twisting the tablecloth.

“Tyler told me his uncle has gone back surfing.” It’s such an innocent sentence, any bystander would believe she was just trying to make conversation. Awkward conversation, sure, but conversation. Jeremy knows it for the jab that it is.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he just looks at her, watches the way she blinks behind her mask to keep the tears from escaping. It’s one of those weird moment between two people that know exactly what the other one is talking about whilst pretending furiously not to understand. Jeremy’s had a few of those before — mostly with Vicki. Funnily enough, those conversations had been about Tyler in some way, too.

The memories of a screaming Mason threaten to come back into his mind and he has to focus really hard on the shape of Bonnie’s face, eyes, lips —anything other than Mason, really— to make them disappear. ‘Tell Tyler,’ he’d said. And Jeremy hadn’t said anything. He suddenly feels like shit, as if this were the first time he realizes that he’s broken his promise to a dead man. The truth is, it’s all he really thinks about.

“I should have known,” Bonnie says then, her voice punctuating the silence in odd intervals, always pulling Jeremy from wherever his thoughts are at. “It’s Damon, I should have known. And instead, I chose to delude myself, thinking that for the sake of Elena he wouldn’t. I actually chose to believe that there is a line that he won’t ever cross.” Jeremy knows the feeling.

She looks pointedly at him then: “I should have learnt a while ago that there’s no such line.” Her hand brushes against his in a thoughtless motion and her eyes are so glassy he wants to just grab her and hold onto her. He holds her gaze for a second, thinking that if he can face all the guilt, the anger, the grief and the accusation in her eyes, it’ll get better. It doesn’t.

“I didn’t stop it, either,” he says stupidly as if that could make anything better.

“You’re just a kid,” she says astonished and the way she says it makes it sting a little. A lot, actually. God, people really need to stop calling him that.

“I found the wolf’s bain. I found it, and I gave it to him. I chose to believe that there’s a line he won’t cross, too.” He laughs a little. “And I’m the one who should know that there isn’t such a line. I’m the one…” he lets that sentence hang in the air unfinished. He doesn’t say that he’s living proof of the non-existence of that line. He also doesn’t say that he stayed much longer than she did, that he maybe could have done something.

They sit together in silence for a while and he thinks they’re insanely suspicious sitting at a table looking like death was hanging over their heads.

“He did threaten to hurt Elena,” Bonnie suddenly offers, her hand brushing against his again. This time, he thinks it’s not an accident. “Caroline told me.”

“Is that supposed to cheer me up?”

“I don’t know. But it gets better when you keep telling yourself that.” There’s truth in that. After all, isn’t that why they’re all here? To protect Elena, to make sure she survived? It’s definitely why he’s wearing that stupid mask right now, even though it itches and makes him look like he actually cares to be at this event. He watches Sarah, Tyler and Matt stride through the crowd. Tyler, cocky as always, seems to be leading the group. He always knows where to go, always knows what to do, doesn’t he? It reminds Jeremy, that he needs to tell him something. But really, how do you start that conversation? ‘Oh, by the way, your uncle’s kind of dead and you’re going to be a werewolf and I’m supposed to make sure that doesn’t happen and it’s going to be a piece of cake. We’re buddies, right?’ Yeah, not really. Caroline pushes through the crowd after them, casting a quick glance at him and Bonnie. She nods, almost imperceptibly. That means it’s time.

“Come on,” Jeremy says, grabbing the bag that’s been sitting next to him on the floor. He throws her his most charming smile, even though he doesn’t know why. To throw off someone who might be watching. “What do you say we go somewhere private?” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and part of him is scared that she won’t get it and tell him to shove it. She doesn’t though, instead she chokes out a laugh.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she says back in a whisper and starts walking towards the mansion.

It's magic. (TVD - PG13)

snagging — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:46:52 GMT

Here's one more for the road. I've been in a writing mood lately. If you have prompts for me, send me a message ;)

Title: It's magic.
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters: Bonnie, Jeremy
Rating: PG13
Words: 2,020
Summary: There was a prompt for this, but it turned out so different, I'm not gonna post it. Basically an alternate scene to 2x14's fireplace.
Disclaimer: I don't own the forms, just playing with the sand.

She thinks the candles are sweet and a little overwhelming. She should have known that Jeremy would go all out, he always had a tendency to do that. She remembers how he was with Vicki, how he had given her his heart no matter how crappy she treated him. And that, she suspects, is exactly what he’s doing with her now. She shouldn’t have kissed him, she concludes. She’s going to be the death of him. Literally.

They’ve concluded this to be a ‘hang’ thing, not a date, so she shouldn’t feel awkward now, should she? Only, they’re both on their knees in front of the fireplace facing each other and she has her hand on his heart — it’s not like she didn’t know his whole idea of channeling him was just a con to get her closer to him, but how could she refuse him when he was looking at her with those big eyes full of excitement and… the other thing she always chooses not to see. But that thing gets much harder to ignore when all the excitement vanishes from his eyes and that thing is all that’s left; when he looks at her like she’s the sun, the moon and all the stars wrapped up in one. She can feel his heartbeat speeding up a little and she has to make a distinct effort to keep her hand in place and not to move it.

Channeling, she reminds herself, closing her eyes because it’s the only way to draw them from his face. She was going to channel him. Not him, she tries to justify the situation, the water in his body. She should have just told him no, should have grabbed for the chips and asked him to put on a movie. She should have told him she was done with witchcraft for the day. Oh yes, she’s in so much trouble now.

“Bonnie?” His voice comes out in a husky whisper that sends a little shiver down her spine. She thinks she wants to hear that whisper a lot more often from now on.

“I’ve never done this before,” she whispers back, “give me some time.” She thinks it’s ironic how true that sentence is in more aspects than one and how he doesn’t know about all the other things she’s never done before. Like, say, sat in front of a fireplace with someone feeling like that shirt would be better off going up in flames.

She searches for something to hold onto, something that her mind can connect to. With the elements, it is easy. She can feel them around her, sense them in their truest, most natural form. Fire is the easiest to channel because warmth was the easiest sensation to feel. But even channeling the other elements had become a piece of cake lately. Air always has a story to tell her, whispering to her in the form of rustling leaves or singing grass. Earth sends a feeling of belonging through her body the way she’d only ever felt with her Grams. The hardest is water, because she can only sense the things inside it rather than the water itself. Once, she’d nearly passed out trying to channel the distilled water her Dad had bought.

But what is Jeremy’s truest, most natural form? How is she supposed to connect her mind to him, channel whatever was there to channel? She remembers having done this once before when Stefan had run into the fire to save Damon. She had touched Elena and channeled her, taken her emotions as fuel for her spell. But Elena’s emotions were always very clear and very open for Bonnie to sense. And besides, panic is one of the strongest emotions Bonnie knows. Anger is quite strong as well, but it’s often controlled. Panic never is controlled, it always just is — in its truest, most natural form.

She’s trying so hard to concentrate, but he is getting in her way. His heartbeat is steady, but fast enough to have her worry he’ll have a heart attack. Her palm is sweaty against his shirt and she is afraid she will leave a wet mark on it. Somehow she knows that his hands are sweaty, too, though. Most of all, she can feel his breath, softly on her face. It’s distracting her, knowing that he’s close enough that she can feel his breath. That’s close enough for her to kiss him, isn’t it? It’s close enough that she just has to move her head a little bit. Elena is at the lake house and Jenna is going to be at the library for at least another two hours. God, she thinks, trouble is a six-letter-word starting with J.

Suddenly, her hand is no longer connected to his chest, the heartbeat is gone. She opens her eyes, wondering what happened and realizes that it wasn’t her that broke the contact. Jeremy is leaning back a little, looking at her wide-eyed —even more so than before, if that is even possible— and his breathing is a bit unsteady.

She doesn’t understand why he’s looking at her like that, but the second she opens her mouth to ask, he lunges forward and presses his mouth to hers. It feels even better than the first time he kissed her, even more passionate. She thinks she should put a stop to it, break the kiss and ask what’s going on, but he kisses her in a way that she can feel down to her toes. So instead of using her hands to push him away, they’re clasping desperately at his shirt, trying to bring him closer.

His arms are around her waist now, pulling her into him and she thinks that yes, this is exactly what she’s supposed to be doing. Trouble be damned. He pulls her legs up, too, and moves them both around so that she ends up straddling him against the couch. The fact that this is not a ‘hang’ thing anymore crosses her mind as a distant thought. It vanishes rather quickly when his lips are moving down to her collarbone. Funny, how that works. Oh, she remembers, she was going to ask him something.

“Jer,” she says, her voice coming in a sort of gasp that she didn’t intend to let out, “Jeremy.”

He mumbles against her neck, something she interprets as a yes, with a question mark at the end.

“I thought we were going to practice spells.” It’s the most stupid things she’s ever said, at least that’s what it feels like.

He stops kissing her neck to look at her and she has to force herself not to be mad about that. He takes a few deep breaths and pushes her back just a little and she doesn’t like that either.

“I think,” he says in that husky voice —her new favorite voice, she decides— “if that’s what you think practicing spells is, we shouldn’t be doing this now.”

She frowns at him, thinking that it didn’t even work. Maybe she shouldn’t be making out with him, maybe she should try again. She moves to sit next to him, while he still seems to have problems regaining composure.

“Maybe we should try again,” she suggests after a while of watching the flames tangle —always one for dances, those flames— and trying to calm her own heartbeat.

“Try again?” He looks at her incredulously. He gets up suddenly, walking into the kitchen. When he comes back, he has a glass of water in each of his hands. He sits down on the far end of the couch and she starts to realize that maybe she did something wrong.

Did she actually channel him and almost killed him the way she almost killed Luka? Did he interrupt her just because she was about to suck the life out of him entirely? Maybe he kissed her to distract her, not because he couldn’t help himself.

He still doesn’t say anything, instead takes sips from his water and stares at the flames.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. She knows she’s staring at him and it probably makes him uncomfortable, but she can’t help it. She wants him to look at her. He lets out a huff that could be a cough or a laugh.

“I don’t understand you, Bonnie,” he says, much calmer now than five minutes ago. “First, you freak out about a few candles and tell me you have to check with Elena first. Then you do…” he waves his hand around in a gesture she doesn’t understand, “that. Then you interrupt it, saying you want to practice spells, and when I finally get myself together again, you suggest we do that again?”

If question marks were little creatures, the living room would be full of them just about now.

“I was talking about the channeling, not the kissing. I thought we could do it again, because it didn’t work.” She looks away from him, slightly ashamed. Where is that hole in the ground when you need it?

“Because it didn’t work? You call…” there was that hand gesture again, “that… not working?”

“I couldn’t get a single good read on you. My concentration was all over the place, there were too many thoughts…” she trails off when he starts grinning. Slowly, he crawls down to sit beside her again.

“Yeah, like that we have two hours of an empty house all to ourselves.” He brushes his fingers over her exposed arm.

“How do you…?” She trails off when realization dawns on her. Or rather, when it plants a kiss on her shoulder. “You heard me thinking that?”

“I didn’t hear you, as much as I felt you.” They look at each other in silence. Then: “Also, that particular thought wasn’t yours.”

That thought wasn’t hers? But… he had a point. How could she have known when Jenna had planned to come home? Jeremy hadn’t said anything…

Wow, the channeling actually had worked. But why hadn’t she been able to tell?

“We have to try that again. I didn’t even know I was channeling anything, how could I not notice? Please, let’s try that again.”

Jeremy flashes her one of his smiles, the ones that come up when he doesn’t really know what to say and is trying to change the subject. When he looks at her again, she can see seriousness in his eyes. Seriousness, and that… other thing.

“Bonnie, if you want to keep your clothes on tonight — or at least if your head is telling you to keep your clothes on, then we shouldn’t try this again. If you want to talk to Elena before something else happens, then we definitely shouldn’t try this again. Because it will not lead to chips and movies, I can tell you that much.”

Maybe he’s right, but still. She didn’t even notice she was channeling. With Elena, she felt her panic, as real as her own. She could tell she was channeling something, an emotion, from someone else. But she sure couldn’t tell she was channeling anything off of Jeremy. She doesn’t realize she’s rambling out loud until he’s chuckling.

“I’m gonna take a wild guess here, but maybe there just wasn’t a difference between what you were feeling and what you were channeling… I mean, you were thinking about making out with me, weren’t you?”

That she was. And still is. And it’s a thought she needs to ban from her mind now. He’s right, she hadn’t even talked to Elena yet. She shouldn’t be kissing him. Or doing anything else other than a ‘hang’ thing.

But there is a current in the air, almost electric. It stays with them as he gets up to turn the living room lights on —less romantic, he really was trying to kill the mood— and starts talking about movies they could watch.

It’s still there when Jenna comes home and invites Bonnie to stay for dinner. It only subsides after she leaves the house and drives home — which takes her about half an hour longer than it should.

As always, comments would be sweet :) They make me feel fuzzy inside :P

There's more than one definition (TVD - PG)

snagging — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:18:23 GMT

Title: There's more than one definition
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters: Elena, Caroline, Bonnie/Jeremy
Word Count: 1,304
Summary: Elena's a little miffed she didn't notice the relationship between her brother and her best friend sooner.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, nor can I look into the future. It's pure fiction and I just borrowed a couple of forms from Kevin and Julie's sandbox.

Maybe, anger isn’t the right word. It’s definitely not the right word, Elena decides, but what is it then?

When Bonnie first came to her with the question on whether it would be okay to date Jeremy, her younger brother, she was too confused to be anything but… well, confused. But now that confusion had worn off, and she actually had a minute to think about it all, she’s angry. Or well, she’s just a little mad.

How could she not have known? How could she not realize what was going on between her best friend and her brother? She seems both of them pretty much every day, and while she hasn’t really been talking to Bonnie about personal things lately, one would think that she would have noticed. Her phone rings and it’s Caroline.

“What’s wrong?” She doesn’t usually answer phone calls like that, but it’s Caroline calling and for all she knew, Caroline could be in trouble. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“Wow, you’re in a foul mood,” Caroline quips, “what could possibly have happened in the last ten minutes from when you woke up to now that made you this angry? It’s a Sunday, the sun is shining and I hear Stefan is coming over shortly.”

Well, that’s true. Technically, today nothing had gone wrong. Yet.

“It’s nothing, Care,” Elena tries but the other girl doesn’t take no for an answer. After a while of nagging, Elena gives in. “Apparently, I’m like the worst friend in the world. Bonnie asked me yesterday whether it was okay to go out with Jeremy and it came completely out of left field.”

“She did? That’s so sweet of her!” Huh. Caroline didn’t seem surprised, Elena noticed. “I didn’t think she’d have the self control, I mean the way those two have been acting, I’m surprised they could keep their hands off of each other for this long.” Oh. Interesting.

“The way they have been acting?” She’s trying to sound nonchalant, but obviously Caroline notices the tone of her voice.

“Yes,” she says slowly, “they’ve been all weird and screaming sexual tension—”

“Too much information,” Elena interrupts, maybe a little harsh.

“Anyway,” Caroline continues, “I was thinking of asking if maybe you and Stefan would want to come over. Matt has calmed down enough to give me half an hour to explain myself and I figure it might be better if there’s someone there who doesn’t start to ramble when they’re nervous.”

“How are things with Matt?” Elena asks stupidly, as if Caroline’s statement hasn’t said enough.

“Not that great, I think,” Caroline sighs. “He thinks that I have something to do with Vicki’s death.”

“We could all come over,” Elena suggests, “I could bring Jeremy. He could tell something about Vicki.” Only, he probably couldn’t, considering she herself had had his memories of that night erased. Luckily, Caroline disagrees.

“I think, two more people is already enough. Seriously, I don’t want him to know right away that we’re all in on the big secret and he’s the only one who doesn’t know. He’s mad enough as it is.”

“Okay,” Elena agrees hastily, before she can make any other stupid comment, “I’ll let Stefan know. We’ll be at your house at two.”

“Awesome, thank you.”

After Elena hangs up, she can hear the front door, then Jeremy is running down the stairs and there’s some chatter. Alright then, Bonnie is here. Probably not to see Elena, considering she knows just as well as Caroline that Elena’s Sunday ritual means sleeping in until ten thirty. She’s straining her ears hoping she’ll catch what they’re saying on their way to his room, but they don’t come up the stairs. Just as well, Elena thinks, the last thing she wants to hear is weird noises from Jeremy’s room when she knows it’s Bonnie in there.

A few minutes later, they’re stepping out into the backyard. Still grumpy, Elena moves to close her bedroom window — maybe she really doesn’t want to know what they’re talking about. But when she’s standing at her window, she can’t help but catch a glimpse.

They’re sitting on the lawn, far away enough for their words not to carry to the house, but close enough for Jenna to keep an eye. They’re facing each other, and they both seem deeply immersed in a discussion. Bonnie’s talking animatedly and Jeremy starts playing with the grass around him — just like he always starts playing with something when he has to listen to a long speech. He’s looking at her the entire time, and —Elena can hardly believe what she’s seeing— he’s got some kind of smile on his face. Jeremy, smiling? She hadn’t seen that in a while.

Bonnie gets a book from her bag and turns it to show him something, causing him to scoot closer and put his legs on either side of hers. Elena should feel weird seeing that, it seems so intimate and yet, they don’t seem aware of it at all. Bonnie’s pointing to different places in the book, turning pages hastily and Jeremy starts drumming his fingers against her thigh. Bonnie stops talking suddenly, either because she’s done, or because she just noticed the position Jeremy —that sly fox— had maneuvered them in. Elena has to suppress a laugh. It’s Jeremy’s turn to talk and from what it looks like, it has nothing to do with what Bonnie’s been saying. She starts looking down, giggling and Jeremy flashes one of those smiles that Elena swears she hasn’t seen in years. In fact, now that she looks at it, she’s never seen it.

This smile is not just a happy smile, it seems full of suggestions and promises and from the blush on Bonnie’s face —which, admittedly, Elena can’t see, but is definitely there— it’s obvious that suggestions and promises are exactly what Jeremy is talking about. He puts the book to the side, hooks his hands underneath Bonnie’s thighs and pulls her closer until her legs are on either side of his hips. She starts arguing, and Elena feels a bit weird that she’s still watching this, but there’s a laugh playing on Bonnie’s lips that she could swear she’d never seen before either. And suddenly, they’re kissing. Just like that, on their lawn in their backyard, Jeremy’s hands on her hips and Bonnie’s playing with his shirt.

Elena’s phone rings then and she jumps up to answer, as if she had just been caught with not just one but both of her hands in a cookie jar.

“Hello?”

“That sounds reasonably better now,” Caroline giggles, “are your angry thoughts gone?”

Not exactly, Elena thinks, but says: “Guess so, what’s up?”

“Apparently, Matt is into making the rules now. He wants to come over at twelve. Can you guys make it?” Oh, she’d completely forgotten to tell Stefan.

“Sure,” she assures Caroline, hanging up quickly to get dressed.

Caroline’s right, Elena’s anger —well, not anger— had kind of evaporated. Still, she is a little miffed. Seeing them in the backyard, they were so wrapped up in each other, so obvious, how could she not have noticed? How could she have missed the little touches that seemed to come so natural to them? She decides to swallow those thoughts, they don’t really matter now. As long as they’re happy…

On her way to the bathroom, she can’t help but take another look outside. Bonnie and Jeremy are talking again, hands intertwined. They’re not giggling or laughing and nothing really would give away that they’re happy. But it’s been so long that she’s seen either of them look so calm and relaxed that she thinks happiness may have several definitions.

They don’t even seem to notice the daisy at their feet coming to full bloom right before Elena’s eyes.

Comments would be greatly appreciated :)

We're all mad (PG-13 - TVD)

snagging — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:45:30 GMT

Someone had this idea about Stefan and Caroline and I couldn't help but write a story about it. I don't really know what happened *lol*, but I kind of like the outcome.

Title: We're all mad
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters: Caroline (POV), Stefan, mentions of Damon, Elena, Jeremy, Bonnie, Matt, Tyler
Idea: "I think Stefan and Caroline are the kind of couple that will be together 200 years from now, when everyone else is dead." I don't remember where I saw this, but that's what's going on :)
Warning: PG-13 (mentions of sexual activities)
Words: 3,365

She doesn’t really understand how they got here.

They’ve been friends forever —at least for well over a human lifespan— and it’s been so long, Caroline hadn’t expected anything more. But now, here they are, lying in the king sized bed of their suburban home, and Stefan’s arm rests on her stomach as he peacefully breathes against her neck. He’s fast asleep.

She remembers how they met, remembers how young she was then and how insanely infatuated she was with him the second she laid eyes on him. But he didn’t choose her, instead he fell in love with her best friend. She remembers how heartbroken she was, how she thought that being rejected by Stefan Salvatore was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. She understands now that she should have counted herself lucky, that she should have walked away right then and there. But back then, she didn’t know the things she knows now.

She remembers how their friendship began, remembers being suffocated to death by Katherine. Katherine, the girl that looked exactly like her best friend and how that made her feel even worse. She doesn’t remember much from the days right after she turned, she doesn’t want to. But Stefan’s face, his eyes, his smile, his “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you” — she remembers that as if it were yesterday.

She remembers Matt, her first love, and a tear makes its way down her face. A part of her would always love him, she thinks, as pictures of his smile, his eyes and his “I love you”s are running through her head. She doesn’t like to remember Matt like that, because it always ends with the image of him screaming at her to get away from him right after he found out what she was. She understands that it wasn’t his fault, understands that he was just confused. She knows that he loved her, because right after that image, there’s a new image popping up in her mind. The image of Matt on his back, blood seeping from his stomach and staining his shirt. He told he loved her then, smiled at her, even. And then he died and there was nothing Caroline could do. She’d wanted to give him her blood, wanted to heal him, but he had pressed his lips together so firmly that she couldn’t get him to swallow any. Maybe, she thinks now, he was just done with everything. There’s only so much a human mind can take and Matt had been through so much loss, he just couldn’t take any more.

Another tears falls down on the pillows.

Images of Matt are almost always followed by images of Tyler. Even though it all happened a long time ago, Caroline can’t help the twinge of guilt in her stomach when she remembers how he kissed her on her front porch. He made her feel alive, secure, made her feel like she had a friend again. And she still feels that way about him, even after everything that happened between them. Even after he let his werewolf pack kidnap and torture her, even after he left town like he had nothing holding him there and even after he came back and ended up killing the one she loved. He didn’t do it on purpose, he was a werewolf when it happened and actually, he had been trying to kill her. But, she thinks, it all happened a long time ago and it’s not like her to hold grudges.

She turns slightly, gazing at the framed photograph on her nightstand —how very old-fashioned of her, she thinks— the photo that shows her and Elena and Bonnie in their cheerleading uniforms. There’s a reason that this is the only picture she hasn’t burnt. She likes to look at herself and her friends before everything got messed up. She likes to look at their smiles and remember a time when their biggest worries were boys and make-up. She likes to look at the photo, because sometimes she’s afraid she will forget what they looked like.

In the photo, Bonnie has her arms around Caroline’s waist, laughing at the camera. It was a long time before she saw Bonnie smile like that again and, oddly enough, it was Jeremy who managed to get that out of her. Jeremy, Elena’s little brother. Or —after a while— just Jeremy. Jeremy and Bonnie. The most surprising of all constellations, Caroline thinks. But they were also the luckiest ones: Bonnie and Jeremy actually grew old together. There’s another tear as Caroline remembers the smiles they would give each other, even when they were 80 years old and they were all pretending that Caroline was their granddaughter. They used to laugh about how ridiculous that scenario was, when really they all grew up together. But by that time, they were the only ones left from their group of friends and nobody would know.

And now, Caroline thinks with a sigh, the only one left is her. Her and Stefan, who completely cut himself off from everyone after the ritual went downhill and Katherine killed Elena just because she felt like it was the right day for it. She remembers how calm Stefan was about it all at first, how he smiled at Katherine when she came to be with him, how he told her that now they could be together and how, all of a sudden, he ripped her head off and burnt her body in the backyard of the boarding house. No amount of pleading from her or Damon could persuade Stefan to stay.

She thinks of Damon, and how they tried —and epically failed— to create normal lives for themselves after that. They should have known that, even though Caroline isn’t one to hold grudges, living a normal life with the man tried to kill her —twice, actually— and felt no remorse over it whatsoever was improbable in and of itself. But with the background of the tragedy they had just survived, with all the losses and the grief they had suffered, it was simply a lost cause. And still, she had wanted to keep trying, while he had smiled sadly and told her that he just couldn’t pretend anymore. She remembers the packed bags at the doors of the boarding house and the way his lips lingered against her forehead. She remembers that she cried for days after that, feeling entirely alone in the world. Alone, except for Jeremy and Bonnie, who were still trying to make sense of it all at the time.

Caroline had wanted to keep living in the boarding house only to realize that time really did fly and people were beginning to get curious about her. She refused to leave for another five years until it really was impossible to make people believe that she had just really good genes and that’s why she was looking so young. It was that day when the lawyer arrived and let her know she was the sole heir of the Salvatore boarding house that she decided to put it up for sale. The fact that they’d left it to her told her everything she needed to know: they weren’t coming back.

She had traveled the world after that. Back when she was young, she had always wanted to see different countries and different places, but she was living in Mystic Falls with her single mother… it wasn’t going to happen. She went to see Europe, first. Italy was beautiful and captivating, France was so full of history and Poland had the most stunning countryside she’d ever seen. She went to Africa and New Zealand next.

It was in China that she saw Stefan again. He, of course, didn’t look a day older than when she had last seen him, even though that had been years ago. But, she supposes, neither did she. She smiles when she remembers how hard she smacked him across the face, how she yelled at him for leaving her behind when he had promised he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She also remembers how he wrapped his arms around her —quite similar to how he was holding her now, actually— and started crying. They didn’t talk about what happened after that, didn’t talk about the boarding house or Elena or Damon or Mystic Falls. She doesn’t even remember how they agreed to look up Jeremy and Bonnie after that.

She remembers seeing Tyler at the corner of a street once. At least she thinks it was Tyler. He didn’t talk to her and when she tried to step closer he walked away. But he had looked at her with so many things showing on his face, all the things she had wanted to hear him say — still wants to hear him say, even though it’s impossible. It couldn’t have been anyone else.

It still boggles her mind how the four of them —Stefan, Bonnie, Jeremy and her— managed to live such normal lives for 50 years. Even though Stefan took breaks every now and then, disappearing for a year or two to do Godknowswhat, they were together and as far as she could tell, they were happy. She still visits their graves every time she has the chance, just because she likes to think it gets her closer to being with them.

The day they laid them to rest —eerily enough, they had both passed away on the same day— was the first time she saw Damon again. She didn’t smack him, she didn’t yell at him, she just stared as if she couldn’t believe he’d show up for such an unimportant event. He had reached out and taken her hand to steady her when she had to walk up to give a little speech about her ‘grandparents’. He didn’t make any jokes, didn’t try to sarcasm his way out of the moment, he just looked at their peaceful, old faces and put a white rose into each of their coffins — just like he had done with Elena. She didn’t ask him why he showed up or when he would leave and all he did was kiss her on the forehead and slip her his cell phone number. “I just can’t,” he had whispered.

And since then, it’s been the two of them: Stefan and Caroline. They are the only survivors, Caroline muses, the only ones left. Even the people that she hadn’t kept tabs on would have to be dead by now, too much time had already passed. But she is happy with the way things are, she’s happy with having Stefan as her friend. Sometime in the past eighty years, Stefan had learned how to smile again. Sometime in the past thirty years, they had started to pretend to be newlyweds in every town they were in, just because that lie was much easier to tell than saying they were 17-year-old orphans. And sometime in the past five years, Caroline had noticed the change in Stefan’s demeanor. And she should have put a stop to it right then and there, she thinks, or they wouldn’t be where they are at now.

She wipes the tears from her face quickly and turns to look at Stefan only to see him staring at her intently.

“You’ll get wrinkles from thinking so much,” he teases her and she laughs not because of his joke but because she still thinks it’s hilarious that she won’t ever get wrinkles. A dream come true for the girl she remembers being.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she replies instead and he huffs.

“You didn’t wake me, I wasn’t asleep.”

Even though it’s dark in the room, their vampire eyes can see perfectly well. She knows he can see the wet streaks on her face and if he really hasn’t been asleep, he also saw her crying just seconds ago.

“I’m still not over it.” Somehow, she knows he understands what she’s talking about.

“That’s what I love about you.” It’s a statement that shocks her not because it comes as a surprise, but because it doesn’t. It’s been there all along, she’s just been ignoring it. “You remember. You remember everything and everyone. When I look at you, you make me remember, too.”

“I don’t like remembering,” she sighs, deciding to not comment on what he said before that. “I don’t like the grief that comes with it, I don’t like not having all that anymore.”

“I know,” he says and puts a hand to her cheek, “but it’s times like these when you only remember the bad things. And it’s times like this morning at breakfast that you remember the good things. Like, that Jeremy, even when he was well over his teenage years, loved the Fruit Loops cereal for breakfast. And that whenever people came over, he claimed it was yours.” Caroline laughs at the memory of that, at the hilarity of a 50-year-old blaming his ‘daughter’ for their extensive Fruit Loops supplies. “Or last week, when we went to get garden supplies, and you told me how much your mother loved to plant tulips in your backyard. Or,” he scrunches up his face in sadness, “how Damon tried to make dinner for you one night after I had left and you two ended up burning half the house down with your fighting over how long it had to stay in the oven.”

“Oh my God, that was insane!” Caroline can’t help but giggle.

“I wish I could have seen that,” Stefan says. “I wish I could have been there, and I wish that I wasn’t missing for twenty years from your memories.”

“You’re making up for that now,” she says softly then.

She still doesn’t know how they got there. She doesn’t understand how they went from him rejecting her to being friends, and to becoming so much more than that. She tells him so, stuttering her way through the last part, because she’s still too afraid to voice it out loud.

“It’s life,” he tells her as if he has the answers to all of the questions she could possibly ask, “it’s our life. It’s the life we have made for ourselves, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

She thinks how sad she should feel that she isn’t his true love, that he lost his true love and she couldn’t stop it. She doesn’t realize she said it out loud until he kisses her shoulder.

“Maybe,” he whispers, “there’s one true love for every life time. And Elena was mine for as long as she could have lived. But, no matter what, she would have passed away years ago.” There’s another twinge of sorrow when this reminds her of Bonnie and Jeremy. She still can’t believe they’re dead when she’s still alive. “She would have passed away,” Stefan continues, “because I wouldn’t have wanted her to turn. I wouldn’t have wanted her to become like us. And maybe,” he gets even quieter now and if it weren’t for her vampire ears, she wouldn’t be able to heard him, “maybe, a new lifetime has begun. And maybe you’re the one I will love for how long you could possibly live.”

She thinks it’s sweet of him to say that, but also really cheesy and not her definition of ‘true love’ at all. Then again, he has a point. She still thinks that Matt is her true love. She thinks that if he hadn’t died that day —died while saving her— they would have had their happily ever after. But it’s been more than a hundred years now and somewhere in her heart she knows that it’s time to move on. It has been time for that for a while now.

“You do realize,” she says after a while of silence, “that I could possibly live for a very long time.”

“Yes,” he laughs against her skin, “I realize that.” He kisses her neck then, easily twisting her body to face his as his lips make their way to her mouth. “You do realize,” he says then teasingly between kisses, “that we’ve already been together for quite a while.” She notices that his hands are beginning to wander down her body, along her thighs and back up again as he kisses her slowly and deliberately. “Do you really think that after all this time, we’re just going to fall apart one day?”

She’s distracted by his hands and his nakedness and they he pulls her into his body as if he wanted to merge them into one person. She still can’t believe that all this attention is now hers, even though they’ve been doing this for a few months now. It’s not like she doesn’t know she’s attractive and she knows he is intense by nature, but all this intensity directed at her makes her feel shy all of a sudden.

“Do you?” He breaks the kiss. She’s confused. “Do you think we’re going to fall apart?”

Out of nowhere, she starts crying, and she thinks it’s awkward because they’re in this position, in a bed, about to do things she had wanted to do to him the first day she saw him, and now she’s crying.

“They’re all gone,” she sobs, and Stefan just pulls her closer, his touch no longer teasing, but comforting. “They’re all gone, and I’m still here, and you’re still here, but how long? How long can this last? How long can this last, when everybody else is already gone?”

“Damon isn’t gone,” he says softly. No, Damon isn’t gone, she thinks. Damon lives three hours away in a grand Victorian building, just like she had always imagined he would. They had tried to live together, the three of them, but Damon bowed out after a while saying he couldn’t take their lovey-dovey crap anymore. Back then, Caroline had suspected it had more to do with the fact that Damon was just the most broken of them all and he hadn’t been trying to fix himself the way Stefan and she had. They see Damon quite frequently now, but living together is just too much like the old days, she thinks. It reminds her of the dinner invitation pinned to their fridge. The three of them were so old-fashioned, they still sent out invitations by mail. They actually still sent out paper mail. How odd. She laughs slightly, because with one sentence, Stefan has managed to get her mind off of things. “I don’t know how long this will last,” he says softly then, “but we have a pretty good chance of it lasting a lifetime. Hell, we have a pretty good chance of it lasting two lifetimes. If there is anything that I have learned in my life, it’s that it’s impossible to make fool-proof plans. This will last as long as it lasts.” This makes her think of all the so-called fool-proof plans they had made and how little of that actually went the way they wanted it to. “And I think my track record for the past fifty years has shown that I am not about to up and leave anytime soon. So you’re safe from that, too.”

Her sobs subside then, as if magically washed away. He wipes the tears from her cheeks and kisses her gently. With every passing second it becomes clearer to her that he has just told her that he loves her and she still hasn’t said anything about that. She thinks if she does, she’ll start crying again.

“I know,” he says softly, interrupting her thoughts. “I know. For as long as I can possibly live and all that, right?” He winks at her, teasing his own statement from earlier.

She just nods through the tears that are running down her face again, kissing everything else he was going to say away.

She doesn’t know how they got here. She doesn’t know which choices in her life led to what outcome, but right now, being wrapped in Stefan’s arms, she doesn’t think it really matters anymore.

I'd love comments, of course :)