MONSTER, stefan salvatore [2]

Do You Remember the First Time?

CHAPTER 37: DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME?

The Salvatore Boarding House

In her three lives, all of them being around 20 years long, Natalie Saltzman knew one thing for sure. She knew pain. Pain had followed her through her deaths, her lives, constantly reminding her that no matter how much of herself she loses, there's still something human in her. It had taken a long time, but she had learnt to appreciate it, the hurt, the pain. She had been through the process of not feeling before, and once it ended, she couldn't even recognize the person staring back at her in the mirror. 

Emotional or physical, pain led to exhaustion. Waking up was painful, and so, she was exhausted. Her neck was aching and the bare minimum of energy left in her body could barely keep her awake. 

As she let out a small groan, wondering where she had been and what had happened to leave her in such an exhausted form she could hear a deep chuckle from in front of her. "Well, would you look at that? Our very own sleeping beauty has awoken."

"Natalie? Can you hear me?" a worried, feminine voice asked. The voice sounded familiar, but she felt unable to use her energy, or rather lack of, to remember who it was. She suddenly turned hostile, most likely speaking to the guy. "What have you done to her?"

"Me? I haven't done anything," the guy responded, although laughing a bit in a way that would suggest the opposite. "Well, unless you're talking about the fact that I took a little bit of your blood, which now happens to be full of vervain, and gave it to her. Like mine, so if she comes to her senses and gets some ideas, it won't work out in her favor."

Things were slowly coming together, the memories, the voices. The feminine one had to Bonnie's, because, other than herself, she was the only girl in the prison world. "Is she going to be okay?"

"Eventually," he responded to her as if he didn't care. "But, come on, it's gotta be pretty funny for you to see this. I know it is for me. The big, bad vampire, the strongest creature of them all, just sitting there without being able to do anything."

"Hey, Nattie-bear! What do you think?" he asked teasingly, as if he wasn't expecting an answer. He walked up behind her and moved her jaw to look as if she was talking before speaking with a way too high pitch to be anyone. "I think you're the greatest, Kai! Much smarter and cooler than everybody else."

"Go to hell," she responded as loudly as she could, which ended up only coming out as a weak whisper. If he wasn't standing so close to her, he probably wouldn't have heard her at all. 

"You're a strong one, aren't you?" he chuckled as she finally opened her eyes, blinking a few times to get everything to look less blurry. "Anywho, I have no idea how you managed to shatter the ascendant into a billion pieces, Bonnie, but we need to put it together before the eclipse at 12:28. You want to help? I know you're a puzzle person."

Natalie could finally see the state Bonnie was in, and although it was better than hers, it wasn't a good one. Her shirt was blood-soaked as sweat went down her forehead. "I don't want to help. You're a psychopath. This place is your prison. I'm not letting you out. Besides, you'll just kill me the minute we get out."

"You've been through a trauma. Your memory's probably a little fuzzy right now, so you might be thinking that your magic will protect you, but all I have to do is hold your hand, and your magic suddenly becomes mine," Kai grabbed Bonnie's hand harshly, taking her magic for his own as she groaned in pain. "What was that? Huh? What? You're gonna do the spell and finally get us home?"

As stealthily as she was able to, Bonnie fumbled around with her hands, getting her hands on a pen. She hoped she had enough strength, even with her injury, to do what she had wanted to do. Luckily, she was able to. She stabbed the pen into Kai's neck, even if she knew it wouldn't kill him permanently, she hoped he would be out for a while as she grabbed the broken pieces of the Ascendant and threw them into her bag that she slung over her shoulder.