Chapter 5 ━━ Reason For The Ticket

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It's morning. Kai is still taped to a chair in front of the fireplace. 

Lorna is sitting on a chair amused by his non stop rambling. Let's say that he talks a lot and that makes her like him more.

Wait! When did she start to like him?

"And, of course, I broke into the Oval Office and took a picture of myself at the window, looking at JFK. But then, I was, like, 'Wait- How am I going to get these photos developed?'-"

"Oh my god, just answer the damn question. How are we going to get out of this Twilight Zone?" Damon, who's sitting across from him on a dark couch interrupts.

"I got a question for you, first. Why do you think we're stuck on a repeating loop of May 10, 1994?" Kai questions him where Damon raises his eyebrows as if to say he doesn't know.

"Doomed to relive a solar eclipse forever and ever, and ever." Kai adds.

"How the hell should I know?" Damon takes a sip of his bourbon.

"Well, I heard you tell Bonnie this place was your own personal hell. I'm kinda curious why." Kai asks.

Bonnie walks into the room. "I found everything you asked for: can-opener, shower drain, grinding wheel, jam, pocket knife, volume 'O' of the encyclopedia, a nail and a black marker."

She walks over to the table in front of the couch where Damon sits and dumps the bag full of materials onto it. Damon rises to his feet.

"Now what?" Bonnie asks.

"Can't show you with my hands taped." Kai says.

Bonnie reaches over, grabs the pocket knife and walks over to Kai.

Damon says warningly. "Bonnie..."

"Thank you." Kai says to Bonnie who cuts off the tape binding his wrists.

"Okay. Fine. How is this pile of crap going to get us out of here?" Damon questions.

Kai rubs his sore wrists. "I'll explain... as soon as you tell me what you did on May 10, 1994."

Damon yells in frustration. "What difference does it make!?"

"Let me put it this way-Bonnie's magic is one part of the equation. My as-yet undisclosed knowledge is the other. Which means you would be hitching a ride home for free. I just want to know if you deserve to come along." 

"What about her?" Damon asks, pointing at the blonde. "If I don't deserve to come along, she doesn't either."

"I like her smile." Kai says, making Lorna blush. 

"You like her smile? What the hell of a reason is that?" 

"That's a fair reason. Give me a fair reason for you-" Kai teases. 

Damon stomps over to Kai, snatches the pocket knife from Bonnie and lifts Kai up to put the knife against his neck. "Or I could just torture you until you say something useful."

Kai speaks slowly with a confused face. "If you torture me, I'll get mad, and then I won't want to help you. 

He looks towards the blonde. "...What kind of person needs to have that explained to them?"

Lorna reaches over and takes the knife out of Damon's hand and Damon roughly let's Kai go. Kai laughs.

"Play nice." Lorna glares at Damon.

"Stop trying to impress the new guy." Damon rolls his eyes at her.

"Why don't you just tell him your story?" Lorna asks him.

"Maybe because I don't want to talk about the worst thing I ever did, Lori." Damon sighs.

Kai, who had opened the jam, smiles. "Ooooh, now I'm listening." He scoops out some jam from the jar with his hand and eats it.

It is official that Kai Parker is a child trapped in a twenty-two-year body.

FLASHBACK-MYSTIC FALLS, 1994

Damon has just rung the doorbell and has his back to the Salvatore house. The doors open and he turns to see Stefan inside. Damon holds up the same newspaper Bonnie has been reading for the last four months.

"Ready for some bad news?" Damon asks. 

The newspaper's front page has an article about Kurt Cobain's suicide. Stefan leans against the door as Damon chuckles and moves forward to get in the house, only to be stopped by an invisible barrier in the threshold.

"Barely seen you in fifty years, Stefan. You could invite a brother in." 

"Give me one good reason why." Stefan raises an eyebrow.

"Check your answering machine, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf." Damon replies with a goofy grin.

"Oh, I heard your message. I also heard you sent Lexi some flowers, seventeen years after you left her to burn to death on a rooftop." Stefan says with a slight glare.

"Well-Stefan: It's a little late, but I see you're trying to make amends. I just want to know why." Damon says. "Uh, well, I can tell you this, Stefan-I'm tired of tearing up New York City. And, maybe it's the partying, or maybe it's my conscious-"

"Well, I believe that would require one." Stefan cuts him off.

Damon ignores him and continues. "-and then, I had this moment of clarity, and I said. 'Wouldn't it be great if I just woke up in my own bed and could have a fresh start?"

Zach Salvatore appears behind Stefan. "You must be Damon."

Damon salutes him.

"Damon, this is, uh, Zach Salvatore." Stefan introduces Zach to Damon. "He owns the house now, he knows the family history, and I told him if you got out of line, I'd take care of you myself."

"Why are you always expecting the worst out of me, Stefan?" Damon asks his brother.

"Oh, I don't. Otherwise, I wouldn't allow this." Stefan shrugs.

Damon looks around confusedly. Stefan nods to Zach.

"Come on in, Damon." Zach invites Damon.

"Huh." Damon takes steps into the house, smiling." Thanks." He brushes past Stefan after tapping his shoulder.

"You ready to start over?" Stefan asks his brother.

"Hell yeah." Damon nods.

Kai picks up the can-opener from the table littered with his things.

Bonnie, Damon and Lorna are standing in front of the fireplace, where Damon is pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, his eyes shut.

"I need to be entertained while I work." Kai is lying on his back on the couch, screwing open another jam jar with the can-opener.

"Hell story, please..." He starts to sing.

Damon turns his head to Lorna, not his body. "Remind me not to kill your new crush." 

"Maybe telling him your story will take your mind off of it." Lorna shrugs, ignoring the crush part.

"Whose side are you on?" Damon asks her.

"The side where we get to go home to the people we love?" She answers him.

After a prolonged moment, Damon sighs. "Fine."

He turns to Kai. "On May 9, 1994, I was living here. I'd come home to walk the straight and narrow."

Damon's blue Camaro is outside. Damon and Stefan are shining it with rags. Damon is wearing a white tank top, looking bored. Stefan is drinking from a flask when Damon walks over to him.

"Can I have a sip of that? I'm starving."

"Sure." Stefan hands him the flask, and Damon takes it.

"Whew." He unscrews the cap and takes a swig.

"Mmmm.." Stefan responses.

Damon pulls the flask from his mouth quickly, his face pale. He looks down at it in disgust, his mouth still closed.

"It's good, right?" Stefan asks.

Damon makes a face and shakes his head. "Hmm-mm." He's holding the blood in his mouth even though it's disgusting, his lips contorted.

"Oh, yeah. I can't remember if that squirrel was roadkill or one I caught in the rat trap." Stefan says.

Damon shakes his head, scrunching the side of his eyes, revolted.

Stefan continues. "Better hope it was roadkill, though, because the rat trap was full of rat droppings."

Damon is still disgusted, white as a sheet.

Stefan rubs his fingers and thumb together. "Swish your tongue around. Does it feel like hair, or is it more of a grainy pellet?"

Damon finally manages to swallow it. "Ugh-" He looks relieved to be done with it and Stefan laughs and takes a swig of it. 

Zach arrives home with a paper brown bag full of food. He waves as he passes them to enter the house.

"How's it going, Zach? What's up with all the grocery trips?" Damon asks.

"Oh, uh, one of the boarders is craving blueberry pancakes." Zach continues his way to the house and walks up onto the front step. 

Damon regards his uncle while he plays with a greasy rag from cleaning his car. "You know, maybe I should run the Salvatore boarding house."

Zach walks up to the woman standing in the doorway, her belly bloated. She says, 'Hi' to Zach. "Take over for Zach, get in good with Gail..."

"She's on vervain. So is Zach, which means hands-off." Stefan warns Damon, who buzzes his lips at Stefan petulantly.

Kai is snoring on the couch.

Damon says from the bar. "Perfect. Our saviour's insane and narcoleptic."

"No, no, no, I'm awake." Kai speaks, properly sitting up and grinning.

Damon with a glass of bourbon in hand walks over to Bonnie and stands beside her.

"Let me guess... You killed the pregnant woman." Kai taps at his chin pretending to be thinking.

"Shut up, Kai. You weren't listening." Damon glares at him.

"I was listening, in my sleep. You were hanging out with your distant-nephew Zach, who you called Uncle Zach because that's not confusing. Plus, pregnant lady Gail, who had a big bull's-eye on her chest. Got it." Kai shrugs.

Bonnie turns to Damon. "Tell me you didn't kill a pregnant woman."

"Oh, that's totally what happened. Why else would today be his personal hell?" Kai butts into the conversation.

"How could you be that low, Damon?- I mean-a pregnant woman?" Lorna asks in disbelief at his actions.

Damon's expression shifts to anger as he kneels in front of the table to face Kai, sitting his glass down.

"Oh, here we go." Kai says.

"The only reason that you're alive right now is because I thought you could get us out of here and you could help us. But you don't HAVE any answers! You're just a man-child-" Damon picks up an empty jam can and tosses it angrily. "- with jam on your fingers!"

"Damon!" Lorna yells at him, still not believing that he killed a pregnant woman.

Kai smiles for some reason. "Okay. To get home, we'll harness the power of the eclipse using a mystical relic. It's called an Ascendant, and it looks like this, Damon." Kai picks up a model of the Ascendant, which is round, black and red. "The last time we had it was in the Pacific Northwest-Oregon." He opens the encyclopedia to a map and sets it on the table.

"We?" Lorna asks confusedly.

"It belonged to my family. So-" Kai picks up the pocket knife and slits the tip of his finger. "-here's a little blood to get you started. Now, all we need is a locator spell to pinpoint its whereabouts."

Kai and Damon both rise to their feet where the latter looks at Bonnie. 

"Think you can find our ticket out of here, Bon-Bon?" He says her nickname comfortably as if it's her true name.

"Hell. Yeah." Bonnie says, looking unfazed.

Damon looks at Lorna with a smile. But she glares at him, making him frown.