CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

"Who the hell let that evil bitch into my house?" Damon questions when he sees Isobel following after Jay and Ric.

"Be nice, Damon." His best friend tells him. "At least for now."

Isobel asks to speak to him in the other room, and he narrows his blue eyes at the other two before following after her. Bella, Paul, and Jake have no idea what just happened or who she is, and none of them ask.

Jay sighs as Ric wraps his arm around her and pulls her into his side, and her dark eyes shut as she winds her arms around his torso. "You're gonna be fine." He whispers. "You may only be fifteen, but you are the strongest, most resilient kid that I have ever met. And I am so proud of you." He tells her, then uses his thumb to wipe tears from her cheeks.

"I don't know how to say goodbye to you." Jeremy says as he walks over to her, and she smiles as she shakes her head.

"I'm not gonna say goodbye, 'cause I'm gonna live everyday to make you proud too. Can't say goodbye if that's the goal." She tells him, and he nods before reaching out and pulling her into a hug. "I love you, Jer-Bear." She says, and he chuckles.

"I love you, little sister." He takes a deep breath as he pulls back. "Marie went to see Bonnie, to be with her when she puts the veil back up. She said to remind you of your last goodbye." He tells her, and she lets out a choked-up laugh.

"I remember." She nods.

"Hey, kid?" Lexi gets her attention from where she's standing beside Stefan. "Never lose your spunk. It's fun watching you take on the world."

"Man, I really liked you." The little brunette says. "I'm gonna have to kick Damon's ass for killing you." She says, and Lexi chuckles.

Damon and Isobel walk back into the room then, and Jay looks over at them. She sighs when her eyes land on the raven-haired woman who walks over to her. Isobel reaches up to move the teenager's hair away from her face, but Jay takes a step back.

"I understand why you hate me." She begins.

"I don't hate you, Isobel." Jay shakes her head. "I don't anything you. You got knocked up, you left me with your ex's older brother, and then fourteen years later you screwed with our lives. You threatened to kill me and Jeremy unless Elena gave you the Gilbert device, and then you practically handed Elena over to Klaus. You mean as little to me as any other monster we faced."

"I'm sorry that I wasn't a better mother." Isobel says, and she shrugs.

"I think Elena said it best — Thank you for being such a colossal disappointment. It keeps the image of my real mother perfectly intact." She tells her. "Goodbye, Isobel."

"Spunk." Lexi laughs as the raven-haired woman heads for the door.

"That's our girl." Jeremy walks over and wraps his arm around her shoulders, and Ric smiles as he looks at two of the kids that he considers his own.

Jay looks at Ric and her smile widens when she sees his amusement. The little brunette wraps her arm around her brother's torso, but then he disappears, and her smile falters when she can no longer see Ric. Her arm drops back to her side as Damon walks over to her and then pulls her into his side, then he raises his hand into the air, and her locket hangs from his fingers.

Jay's eyes widen. "I thought I lost that while Kol was—"

"Nope." Damon looks at her. "I knew you'd turn, and that you wouldn't take the cure. So, I gave this a new purpose, seeing as you no longer need a vervain necklace."

"What are you talking about?"

"Open it." He tells her, and she takes the golden oval between her fingers.

"Isobel didn't happen to mention what the J stands for, did she?" The little brunette asks as she looks up at him.

"What do you mean?" His eyebrows furrow as his blue eyes meet her brown ones.

"This locket belonged to my father." She tells him. "The J isn't for Judith."

"No, all she gave me was your father's name."

Jay nods and then looks back at the necklace. She takes a deep breath and opens it so that she can see what's inside, and then her eyes widen. "Oh my God." She smiles as her eyes turn glassy all over again.

"I found the picture on the left in Ric's stuff, and Stefan found the one on the right in yours. We grabbed those pictures before the house burned down." Damon tells her. "You took both of them, didn't you?" He asks, and she nods. "I remember the one of your siblings. Didn't Elena shove Jeremy to the floor right after you took their picture?"

Jay chuckles as she looks up at him. "You and Bonnie grounded Elena for tricking Rose into taking her to Slater's. She was trying to give herself over to Klaus, and we had to lock her in the house while you and Ric dealt with Jules, and I helped Tyler through his first full moon. Jeremy was her babysitter for the day." She says, and he nods.

"See, rugrat? Even when shit hits the fan, we still find our little moments of happiness." He tells her. "And now you have a reminder that just because shit hit the fan and things are tough again, doesn't mean you won't be alright in the end."

"Thank you, Damon." She smiles, and he nods. "When did you even have the time to do this?"

"I took it to have the pictures put in right after you woke up, dropped Silas in Steven's Quarry while it was being done, and then picked it up after Klaus healed me. I compelled the worker at the jewelry place to make it top priority." He says, and she hits him. "Ow! You know, you're gonna have to get over your aversion to compulsion now that you're a vampire."

"No. Mind control is wrong no matter what species I am." She argues, and Stefan chuckles as he looks at the two of them.

"I never thought I'd see the day that my brother adopted himself a kid." The younger Salvatore boy says, and Damon squeezes Jay as she yells and punches his back.

"It's like Three Men and a Little Lady." Jay chuckles, and she knows that she's getting eyerolls on the Other Side for her reference. "Ric, Damon, and... Who's my third padre?" She asks as she looks up at Damon.

"I got a name, rugrat. You just let me know when you wanna find him." The blue-eyed vampire tells her, and she takes a deep breath.

—

Jay's movements feel robotic as she looks through the barely existent selection in the closet of her bedroom in the Salvatore Boarding House. She doesn't know how to read her emotions — part of her feels entirely numb, and the other is on the brink of a full-blown panic attack.

"I don't understand why Bonnie's not answering her phone." The little brunette says as she looks over at Damon. "It's not like her to just disappear."

"Stop worrying." He says as she stuffs her phone into her sweater pocket. "She just put down a two-thousand year old immortal. She's probably just taking a well deserved nap."

Jay stops on a dress that's on a hanger in the middle of her closet, and she pulls it down to look at it. It's simple, black, and stops at about mid-thigh. There's no beading or anything super fancy to the dress, the only design is in the way that it hugs the wearers body.

"Actually, the reason that she's gone AWOL is a bit more complicated than that." Marie's voice makes both vampires spin around in the library. "We really need to talk." She says as she glances between the two of them, a bit of a nervous expression on her face when her hazel-brown eyes settle on her best friend.

Damon looks down at the little brunette that's clinging to his hand as they now make their way through the woods near the old Salvatore crypt. Stefan's leading the way, and Caroline and Matt are right behind them. Paul, Bella, and Jake are with them as well, but the three of them are keeping their distance to be respectful. They all know how hard everyone's taking the news.

"What do you mean Bonnie's dead?" Damon questions as he looks at the little witch. He's worried about how Jay's going to handle this with her newly heightened emotions.

"She did a spell to bring me back to life." Marie explains. "But nature has to find a balance. So, in order for me to stay on this side, Bonnie had to die. Like...trading places. It's not what she meant to do, but she says that she's okay with how it turned out."

Jay hasn't said a word since before Marie told them about Bonnie. She doesn't know what to say at this point. She doesn't want Bonnie to be dead, but she's also glad that Marie's alive. She definitely can't have it both ways. So, silently, she's trying to sort through her feelings.

And it's those same feelings that worry Damon. She's been a vampire less than twenty-four hours, and already she has to tackle fresh grief — and for one of her best friends, her older sister's best friend, her best friend's older sister. No one would've been a good person to have die on her, but Bonnie seems like one of the worst possible options.

And the silence scares Paul. Jay has always been the type to be loud, and occasionally obnoxious. So he doesn't know what to do with the quiet, not that he's ever been even remotely good at comforting people. Oftentimes, he wonders why he was the one who imprinted on her when he doesn't know how to be what she needs. He feels like she deserves better than what he's capable of doing for her, or for anyone. Really, he doesn't even know how to help himself.

Marie's standing in front of them by a tall tree stump, and she has her sister beside her as they look at who remains of their friends — those who are still alive, and still care enough to be there because, despite everything, they haven't shut off their humanity.

The younger Bennett sets a photo of herself and Bonnie in the center of the hollowed spot in the tree stump, and then Caroline steps forward to place a set of red and black pom-poms directly beside it. Matt walks up beside her and lets his lifeguard whistle rest on top of them, and then he wraps his arm around the distraught blonde. The two of them back away from Marie and the stump, and Jay reluctantly lets go of Damon's hand so that she can move forward with the small bowl of feathers in her other hand. Marie smiles as she watches Jay lay out the little, white pillow feathers. Both younger girls think back to when the two witches told their best friends what they were, and Jay starts crying as she remembers how different things were. Damon moves to her side and he lays one the Bennett grimoires with the other mementos, then he gets Jay to step back with him. Last is Stefan, and he leaves a white candle in the stump.

"I wish I knew what to say." Marie mutters as she looks out at each of her teary-eyed friends.

"Say that I'm not going anywhere." Bonnie tells her. "And that even though they can't see me, I'll always be here."

The younger girl takes a deep breath. "She says that she's not going anywhere, that she'll always be with all of us." She tells them, and then continues to repeat to them what Bonnie's saying.

"You can still be happy." The older girl says as she walks up in front of Jay. "And I know you think now that you can't have a normal life, but you can. Sort of. I mean, let's face it, you were imprinted on by a hot..." Bonnie smiles, and Jay chuckles. "...hot-headed shapeshifter. Is your life really any more crazy than it was before? And I know you keep saying that your whole family is either dead or gone, but look around you, Jay. You built a family in La Push, and you still have everyone standing here. Looks like the Salvatores have made you one of them, and if that's the case, how can you ever be alone? So, you are gonna repack your things, you're gonna move back to Washington, and you're gonna live it up.

"And you two..." She looks between Damon and Stefan, who are standing on either side of the little brunette vampire. "You better take damn good care of her, because all of us over here are counting on you... No pressure." She adds, and both boys chuckle.

Bonnie then walks over to Matt and Caroline. "The vampire and the human... I gotta be honest, you two are a bit of a mess." She says, and they both laugh. "But you make it work, and you're good for each other. So, graduate high school, go to college, and build even better lives outside of Mystic Falls. We all know that with Caroline planning everything, it'll be fabulous." She says, and Caroline and Matt both smile as they look at each other.

"Tyler." Marie says, and everyone turns to see him walking over to them.

Jay quickly breaks away from the Salvatore boys and runs over to him. His arms open and then circle around her as soon as she's near enough. He holds her tight for a moment, and then lets go so that he can lay a white rose with everything else that they're leaving there for Bonnie.

Bonnie walks back over to where her sister's still standing, and the two Bennetts look at the others. Caroline turns to Matt, and he wraps his arms around his girlfriend as she cries. Jay buries her face in Tyler's shoulder, and he hugs her as he stares at the items left on the stump in front of Marie. The Salvatore brothers stand side-by-side, glancing at each other for a moment; and Paul, Bella, and Jake remain a few feet away from the others. They want to be there for Jay, but they don't want to intrude since they didn't know Bonnie.

"We'll all be okay." Bonnie says, smiling as she looks at her younger sister. She truly is at peace with the sacrifice that she made to bring Marie back.