InsaneJournal

Who: Bonnie Bennett
What: Nighmare, setting bed on fire, general feelings, and realizing that she had some work to do.
When: 9/7 weeeee hours of the morning
Where: Home...aka Aunt Jenna's house where Bonnie stays.
Warnings: Um...fire? And guilt? And angst?

“Bonnie…” The voice was so familiar, even though it felt like she hadn’t heard his voice in…well, it seemed like forever. But there was no mistaking the voice of Jeremy Gilbert, not for Bonnie, anyway. Turning, the witchy teenager saw him standing there in her current home away from home. She didn’t know how he’d gotten here in Lawrence and she didn’t really care either. It was just so good to see him.

“Jeremy!” The smile that pulled at her mouth was bright, the pearly whites shining. It was the happiest that she’d been since she’d been at Hogwarts, granted that wasn’t that long ago. She’d been happy there. Part of her felt bad for being so happy there and enjoying so much of it and the other part of her was just glad for that opportunity. Deep in the recesses of her brain, Bonnie was kind of glad to be in Lawrence and to have gotten the chance to experience something she never would have back in Mystic Falls. It had been downright fun to just be at a magical school like that…and not to focus on all of the negative things….just to live.

She’d been feeling it more since she’d returned to Lawrence than when she was at Hogwarts. Now, it didn’t matter, though. Now, Jeremy was here even if some of the other people she cared about were gone. Now, he could have some of the fun times too. And that made her smile.

The witch moved toward the Gilbert boy, but rather than getting to throw her arms around him like she had planned on….he held them up and pushed her away. That look on his face wasn’t one that Bonnie recognized as something he did often. And it hurt her to see him look at her that way.

“Jeremy, what’s wrong?” Bonnie felt helpless as she stared at the boy that she felt so much for with so much uncertainty on her face. She didn’t know why he was upset with her. She didn’t like it either.

And before he responded, much to her surprise, he morphed into someone else, someone even more familiar than Jeremy….her dad. Bonnie didn’t understand what was happening. She stepped back, tears stinging at her eyes. She hadn’t forgotten that her dad was dead. Jeremy, though, she’d brought him back. Or had been about to finish it when she’d been brought to Lawrence, but the way things had been explained…he’d be fine, whenever she went back she’d go right back to that time. So, she wasn’t leaving him dead and in wait, right?

Apparently her subconscious didn’t feel that way.

“Dad…what are you—“ Bonnie stopped herself mid-sentence as the person…thing…shifted into her mother. She said nothing, but her face…Bonnie watched as it pulled into the distinct look….of a hungry vampire….an angry hungry vampire, at that. Abby stepped forward and Bonnie stepped back, feeling that nasty guilty weight in her stomach.

“What….what are you doing?” Bonnie noticed that her voice…didn’t sound at all like her voice, it seemed so scared and high pitched, but her mother kept coming toward her…until Bonnie felt something solid behind her. Closing her eyes, the teenager felt some real panic, very real, and very deep guilt. Her mother was turned by Damon. Her father was killed by Silas. Jeremy had been in the midst of being brought back. She had so much that had happened in connection to her. So much that stemmed from her decisions and because of her and it was so hard not to feel bad….especially when she thought about how badly she had acted at times.

In some ways it felt like she hadn’t properly grieved or dealt with the things that had happened in her own life. In some ways, she knew that she had to just continue on. But the funny thing about guilt was that it didn’t always make sense.

“Bonnie.” All it took was the one sentence to know that wasn’t her mother, father, or Jeremy. That was her Grams. Bonnie’s eyes sprung open to see the woman that meant so much to her. The look of disappointment on Sheila Bennett’s face sent a sinking feeling into Bonnie’s stomach. She couldn’t even count the ways in which she had disappointed her since she’d died….all because of Bonnie.

“Grams, what’s going on…?” Bonnie didn’t trust her own voice, it was probably worse than before. And she could feel the wetness of tears on her cheeks. When had she started crying?

“You know what’s going on, and you know what you did.” The once calming voice of her grandmother now sounded like her own conscience, taking digs at her, and adding to the weight. She knew everything she had done, even though she always tried to just keep moving forward. “You know expression is dangerous, you know what it’s cost you, and you know you need to talk to someone.”

The words that were coming from her grandmother were true. Bonnie knew that she had felt…the urge to talk to one of the magic users in Lawrence about Expression, about the inconsistent control, about how it sometimes would take control and leave her unable to stop herself. She hadn’t reached that point yet here, though. She knew that she was fooling herself….especially if she thought she had complete control of herself. She had some control. That was the truth. And she needed to work harder…she needed to ask for help…..the only problem was that the last person she had gotten help from had manipulated her, and that didn’t make it easy to trust.

“You know what you need to do.” Bonnie could feel the conflict rolling around in her head. The desire to get some help, to get back under control, and to feel less scared of what she could do was waging a war against the side of her that didn’t want anyone to know that she wasn’t strong and definitely didn’t want to trust anyone so that they couldn’t hurt her or manipulate her.

It wasn’t exactly easy on her.

“It’s not that easy!” Bonnie’s face was straining and she gritted her teeth, fighting the rising frustration…and the uncertainty of what to do. And she could feel the roar inside her, the roar that was quickly causing panic to grow. And for good reason too. Bonnie looked at her grandmother with watery eyes and saw the flame pop up almost in slow motion. “No! No! Grams!”

She threw her hand out, trying to put the fire out, but it didn’t work. The flames quickly began to grow and Bonnie could feel the heat of them on her. Maybe it was that that finally pulled her out of the nightmare?

Either way one moment she was watching her grams burn and the next her eyes were open, her heart was racing, and she realized that it wasn’t grams that was on fire. Jeremy, Abby, her dad, and her grandmother….they were nowhere even near Lawrence. No, the fire was her blankets. “Shit!”

Kicking, the witch got the burning blanket off of her legs and body , backing up against her headboard and trying not to panic. She wasn’t able to stop it in the dream, but it didn’t mean that she couldn’t stop it here and now. She just had to focus and get under control. Swallowing Bonnie threw her arm out, making a sliding motion with her hand. And just as she’d thought the flames died down until they were extinguished. She wasn’t powerless. She wasn’t out of control all of the time. It didn’t feel good, though.

Even Klaus knew that Expression could be bad. Her grams had tried to warn her, her parents had worried, and she had just plunged forward doing whatever she wanted to do. It felt almost like she hadn’t learned anything. But she had. She knew that it was dark. She knew that it was hard for her to not let it control her.

The big question was what the hell was she going to do about that now? What could she do? She didn’t trust Klaus even though he had mentioned Expression once. She didn’t know if she could trust the other magic users, but they hadn’t exactly given her a reason not to trust them either. It all boiled down to the fact that she knew that she needed help. And she knew that she was going to have to do something that she might not want to do, exactly, to fix this issue.

Thinking back, Bonnie wished that she had never trusted Shane. She wished that she had never done this. If she hadn’t there would be so much that had happened differently. She knew that she needed to work on the guilt that she felt too. It wasn’t going to get her anywhere, it definitely wasn’t helping. What Bonnie needed to do was settle into Lawrence. She needed to make more friends than the one she had known. Anger, frustration, and other negative emotions were the ones that caused her Expression to rear it’s ugly head, that caused her to slip just out of her own control.

Bonnie needed control, she needed to find a way to trust more people, and she needed to talk to someone. The big question was who? Who should she reach out to?

Caroline was one of her best friends, and she’d been great since the moment Bonnie had arrived in Lawrence. Bonnie trusted her. Sure, she thought that the blond vampire was crazy for trusting an Original the way that she did, but she could see that Caroline was happy. It was nice to see her friend so happy, actually. But, ultimately, Caroline wasn’t a witch. Bonnie didn’t know if she could explain everything to her. She didn’t know if she’d know what to do.

Elena…there was so much complication surrounding telling Elena. Bonnie just worried about her friend. She could still remember, clear as day, hurting her friend…even if Elena hadn’t been in her right mind at the time. Like Caroline, Elena wasn’t a witch. She was a vampire. She knew a great deal about magic because of the fact that they were best friends. But Bonnie wasn’t sure that Elena would have any suggestions or know what to do.

It didn’t feel like any of the people that she really knew from home would be helpful. Davina was the only other witch from home that was here in Lawrence and Bonnie wasn’t sure that she knew much, if anything, about expression. It might be worth a shot to reach out to her, but Bonnie didn’t know her all that well yet.

The best options that she had, or at least that she felt she had at the moment, were to talk to Davina and some of the other magic users.

Sitting there, against her headboard, Bonnie found herself letting out a heavy sigh before reaching up to rub her eyes, feeling the dampness from her cheeks. Apparently when she had been crying and getting emotional in her dream she had actually been doing so physically too. Using her sleeve, the witch wiped at the trails of wetness going down her cheeks. She had to be strong. She wanted to be strong. That was what Bonnie did best. She was strong for others. Now she had to be strong for them and for herself, while she figured this out.

She could do this. She didn’t have a choice. She had to.

She couldn’t risk burning Aunt Jenna’s house down. She couldn’t risk putting Damon or Elena in danger. She couldn’t risk not being able to control herself if people needed her help here. She couldn’t risk being out of control because she didn’t like the feeling. And that was probably the most important thing. Why else would she have been dreaming about everything that she had?

Guilt, her subconscious knowing what she wanted, and everything else had been piling up in the back of her mind for so long. And she couldn’t avoid it forever. She had to face it head on. If she didn’t she knew that it would continue to be an issue. She knew that it’d keep her guarded. She knew that she might not be able to help or fit in here. And she needed to settle in here. She needed to stop living with half of her left back in Mystic Falls…or Hogwarts, even though the second had been fun.

Bonnie had work to do. And she was ready to do it. It was too bad that because of her nightmare she knew that she wasn’t going to get even a wink more sleep tonight. Logically, she knew that other people were probably sleeping, but after the abrupt wake up that she’d had….well, she was still much too aware and wired to even think of laying back down to fall asleep. It wasn’t ideal because it gave her more time to think, but it was better than setting her bed, or herself, on fire again accidentally.

The goal was not to tempt the fates and potentially burn the house down any time soon. She was pretty sure that she could manage that…hopefully.