ꗃ 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐈 𝐀𝐌 ˖ ࣪. ࿐♡˚.
𝚅𝙾𝙻 𝙸 ━━━ 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙷𝙴𝙰𝚁𝚃𝙻𝙴𝚂𝚂 𝙷𝚈𝙱𝚁𝙸𝙳
❛ 𝖡𝖫𝖠𝖢𝖪 𝖧𝖮𝖫𝖤 𝖲𝖴𝖭 ❜

𝟎𝟐. ❛ 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍'𝗌 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎'𝗋𝖾 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈. 𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝒊'𝒅 𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝗆𝗒 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓. ❜

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

Damon cuts Kai off, who is still taped to the chair in front of the fireplace, the sun coming up through the windows, "Oh my God, just answer the damn question. How are we getting out of this Twilight Zone?"

"I got a question for you first. Why do you think we're stuck on a repeating loop of May 10, 1994? Doomed to relieve a solar eclipse forever and ever, and ever?" Kai asked Damon as Anastasia rolls her eyes at her husband from her place sat on the chair.

"How the hell should I know?" Damon asked, taking a sip of his bourbon.

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

"Mal, please, I'm tired of hearing your voice." Anastasia throws her head back with a groan.

Bonnie walks back into the living room, "I found everything you asked for; can-opener, shower drain, grinding wheel, jam, pocketknife, 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 onto it as Damon stands to his feet.

"Now what?"

"Can't show you with my hands taped." Kai tells her, throwing his head over to look at Anastasia, "Natty, please, take the tape off my hands."

With a roll of her eyes, the hybrid stands up and pushes past her father as she grabs the pocketknife in her hand.

"Anastasia....," Damon looks at his daughter, sending her a warning look that's just ignored as she cuts the tape from Kai's hands.

Kai smiles up at his wife, "Thank you."

"Okay. Fine. How is this pile of crap going to get us out of here?" Damon looks between the boy and his daughter.

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

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

"Let us put this this way, Damon." Anastasia spits his name as she crosses her arms over her chest, ignoring the way Damon finches at her tone of voice, "Bonnie's magic is one part of the equation."

"My ass-yet undisclosed knowledge is the other. Which means you would be hitching a ride home for free." Kai tells them, "I just want to know if you deserve to come along."

Damon stops over to Kai, snatching the pocketknife for Anastasia and lifting Kai up from the chair, knife pressed against his neck, "Or I could just torture you until you say something useful."

"If you torture me, I'll get mad, and then I won't want to help you." Kai looks over at Bonnie, "What kind of person needs to have that explained to them?"

Bonnie reaches over and takes the knife out of Damon's hand as he roughly lets Kai go, "Play nice."

"Stop trying to impress the new guy."

"Why don't you just tell him your story?" Bonnie asked.

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

"Oh, worse than leaving your three-year old daughter to be raised by her vampire uncle?" Anastasia raised an eyebrow at her dad.

Kai smirked, "Yeah, I've heard the story."

Damon looks between the two of them with his eyebrows pinched together, "How the hell do the two of you know each other anyway?"

"We haven't properly met, I'm Kai." Kai laughs before holding his hand out to the vampire still standing in front of him, "Your son-in-law."

"You're married?!" Damon spins around to face his daughter.

"Since 1994."

࿐♡

     𝐊ai picks up the can-opener sitting on the table as Anastasia sits next to him, Bonnie and Damon standing in front of the fireplace while Damon pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, eyes shut.

"I need to be entertained while I work." He lays on the couch with his head on Anastasia's lap, screwing open another jar of jam with the can-opener, "Hell story, please."

Damon turns his head to look at Bonnie, "Remind me not to kill him."

"Maybe telling him your story will take your mind off of it." Bonnie tells him.

"Whose side are you on?"

"The side where we get to go home to the people we love?"

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

Anastasia scoffed, "Yeah, right."

࿐♡

     ❛𝐏erfect. Our savior's insane and narcoleptic.❜ Damon stands behind the couch where both his daughter and Kai had their eyes closed, Kai snoring as he snuggled closer to the girl.

"No, no, no, we're awake." Kai doesn't bother to lift his head, "Let me guess...you killed the pregnant woman."

"Shut up, Kai." Damon walks over to Bonnie, "You weren't listening."

"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." Kai sits up on the couch, "Plus, pregnant lady Gail, who had a big bull's eye on her chest. Got it."

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 asked right before Damon's expression changes as he kneels in front of the table to face the siphoner, sitting his glass down, "Oh, here we go."

"The only reason that you're alive right now is because I thought you could get ups 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!"

"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—," He picks the Ascendant up from the table, it being 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?"

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

Damon looks at Bonnie as he and Kai stand up, "Think you can find out ticking out of here, Bon-Bon?"

"Hell, yeah."

࿐♡

❛𝐏hasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem.❜ Bonnie looks down at the drop of blood on the map which hasn't moved from where Kai let it drop onto the folded-up paper, "It doesn't feel right. Maybe I need a bigger map?"

Damon comes inside and drops the newspaper on the table, "Maybe you're just out of practice and you suck at magic now."

"Ignore him, Bonnie. Pretend he's a white-noise machine." Kai tells the Bennett witch, moving behind Anastasia to wrap his arms around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. "That's how I used to tune out my siblings. I grew up with a ton of little sisters and brothers. You know, all of them constantly yammering. But it taught me how to focus."

"Easy there, big brother!" Damon glares at the arms that were wrapped around his daughter. "And get your hands off my daughter."

Kai smirked, feeling some of Anastasia's magic flowing through him before he removed his arms but didn't move from pressed up against her, "I can touch her all that I want, she is my wife after all."

࿐♡

     𝐀nastasia stands in her bedroom. It was the one room in the boarding house that she had refused to step foot in whenever she and Kai decided to stay there, until Bonnie and Damon showed up and they were left to find another place — the Lockwood Mansion.

The room was completely different in 1994 than it had been in 2009 when she and Stefan came back to Mystic Falls. Instead of the dark purple color, the walls were a sage green with posters hanging on the walls of all the bands that she listened to.

And above the bed, where the large painting of her and Kol in a sunflower field was, was replaced with two black and white pictures of Paris.

"I came back to Mystic Falls in '94 to visit you, too." Damon's voice sounds from behind her as he leans against the doorway, "But Stefan told me that you weren't with him."

"Last Uncle Stefan had seen me was in Chicago. I left after Mikael found Rebekah and Klaus." Anastasia's voice is flat and hard as she spoke to him, not even bothering to turn around to look at him, "1994, I was in Portland, living my life as a married woman to a man that got a thrill from sucking my magic from me."

Damon stays quiet as Anastasia moves further into the bedroom, stopping in the very spot she had died.

"I died in this room. Right here, I took my last breath all alone, because everyone was worried about killing Kol." Anastasia says before turning to look at her father, "How does it feel?"

"How does what feel?" Damon asked her, confusion in his voice.

"To know that you're in love with the girl who killed your daughter." Anastasia's face stays catatonic as she speaks, "Doesn't surprise me though. I mean, you and Uncle Stefan did everything in order to protect Elena. Just like you did everything to save Katherine from that tomb back in 1864. Who cares about what happens to anybody else that was around, even your own child."

Damon doesn't say a word as he looks at his daughter, "I wanted to pro—,"

"Oh, don't feed me that bullshit." Anastasia rolls her eyes, "From the moment you stepped foot into Mystic Falls, it wasn't to build a relationship with me or to protect me. You wanted what Uncle Stefan had. And you did anything that you could to make that happen. Face it, you and everyone else in Mystic Falls was the cause of my death, and when I get out of here—,"

"You flipped your switch." Damon cuts her off.

"Of course I did! Why feel anything when the people who are supposed to protect you, are the ones who were the cause of your end?" Anastasia tilts her head, "And as I was saying, when I get out of here, everyone who knew about Elena and Jeremy's plan to kill Kol will wish that hadn't of. I think I'll start with Jeremy; he is the one that drove a steak through his heart. And I think I'll end it with Elena so that she can watch the death of everyone she's ever loved before I rip her heart from her chest, something I should've done a really long time ago."

"You were in love with Jeremy, you wouldn't kill him." Damon scoffed at his daughter, "And you surely wouldn't kill your uncle."

"That's where you're wrong." Anastasia harshly knocks her shoulder into his as she moves towards the door, "Because I'd kill my own father."

࿐♡

     ❛𝐏hasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem. Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Versa, Sequitas Sanguinem.❜ Bonnie is still working on the spell when Anastasia walks back down the stairs, followed by her father as the hybrid makes her way over to Kai, leaning into his side.

"Are you okay?" He mumbled against her hair, looking over her face for any form of danger as he eyes Damon who followed after her.

"I'm fine. Just want to get the hell out of here." Anastasia replied, eyes never leaving the map that had Kai's blood spilled on it, watching as the red liquid traveled across the length of the map.

"The spell's moving towards Virginia." Kai speaks up, "That can't be right."

"Mm-mm, the spells working." Bonnie says as she keeps her eyes on the map as well, "It's showing me Mystic Falls. It feels so...close." She turns towards Anastasia, putting her hand to the pocket of the opened leather jacket she was wearing, the lit candle flames intensify around them, "It's right here."

Anastasia smirks as Bonnie touches the pocket, the candle flames blowing out on their own. The hybrid reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls the real Ascendant which is made of silver and gold-colored metal.

"Very good." Kai takes it from his wife's hands, his own smirk on his lips.

"That's the Ascendant?" Bonnie asked the two of them.

"The one and only." Anastasia smirked as her hands slid into the back pockets of her dark blue jeans.

"Thanks for the mind games, jackass." Damon glared at the boy standing so close to his daughter.

"It was just another little test. To make sure Bonnie's magic was precise enough for the spell." Kai tells them, "I do believe you're ready. Pack your bags — we're going home."

࿐♡

     𝐄veryone is in the backyard of the Boarding house where Kai is using the Ascendant by looking at the sky with it through the small hole in the middle of the device.

"You're wandering around like a crazy man, why?" Damon asked him.

"Looking for the exact right spot. We need to find where the power of the eclipse is focused." Kai tells them.

"You know, the two of you could have just shown us the Ascendant to begin with." Bonnie tells them.

"I just wanted to see your hand on Natty's chest." Kai smirked, laughing as Anastasia shoves him away from her, "I'm kidding, Nat."

"There's something not right about him." Bonnie mumbles to Damon, forgetting that Anastasia can hear her talk.

"You're just not used to guys hitting on you." Damon tells her.

"She sure is good at trying to steal someone's boyfriend." Anastasia sends a smirk over her shoulder.

"You know, I can't wait to get out of here and talk to somebody else." Bonnie says.

"Likewise."

"Can we just have a few lasting seconds of peace while this idiot used that thing to get the stars to align?" Damon asked the witch next to him.

Bonnie reached down to pick up one of the paper airplanes that Damon made from newspaper earlier and unfolds it as she reads the article on the page.

"Hey, what's with the nature walk?" Damon asked as he followed behind his daughter and Kai with Bonnie next to him.

"Oregon?" Bonnie whispers, catching Damon's attention.

"What?"

"I read this paper like a thousand times, and there's something in it about Oregon." Bonnie tells the vampire.

"What about it?"

"You know, Kai said he had all these brothers and sisters." Bonnie says.

"Mmhmm."

"Family massacred in Portland." Bonnie reads the article out loud, "The only one missing was the oldest boy, twenty-two year old named Malachai."

"Who names a kid Malachai?" Kai asked as he and Anastasia turned to the pair, "It's like they expected me to be evil."

"All these kids were murdered!"

"Hello! Not everyone died. I had a soft spot for one of my sisters, cause otherwise, I would've cut her lungs out, and just her spleen." Kai said.

"What?"

"You can survive without your spleen." Kai says, almost like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Something tells me you're not speaking hypothetically." Damon said.

"Look, well, these two, Natty over there, she hung them off a stairwell railing." Kai points to two of the boys in the photo as Bonnie gasps and looks up at the hybrid who just smirked and send her a wink as Damon looks at his daughter in disbelief. "Then I put a hunting knife in her abdomen, and him, drowned in the pool. But he kept fighting me. I was like, "We saved you for last, you ungrateful little....," Anyway, that was that."

"You just killed your whole family?" Bonnie asked him.

"Coven, to be precise." Kai says, "Oh, you know, a family of witches."

"Of course I did. I hated every single one of those little assholes." Anastasia rolled her eyes at the Bennett witch, "You seemed surprised by the fact that I'm almost a 170 year old vampire with the powers of a witch, killing is kind of in my nature, Bon-Bon."

"FYI, Anastasia has no humanity." Damon sends a sarcastic smile in Bonnie's direction.

"You're making us jump through hoops, and you're a witch?" Damon asked the male with an annoying look on his face, "With a hybrid on your side?"

"Sort of, yeah. No powers, obviously. That's why I take a little bit from Anastasia when she lets me." Kai tells them, "Oh, and of course, Gemini Coven did not take it too well when they heard what I did in Portland. It's why they banished me here."

"How come you didn't get stuck here?" Damon asked his daughter.

Anastasia scoffed, "I'm not stupid, Damon. I hightailed it out of there as soon as I could. Turned my humanity back on and pushed it to the back of my mind."

"Then how did you get here now?" Bonnie asked, "Jeremy killed Kol, you should be dead right along with him."

"Oh, Emily put me here. Stupid Bennett bitch." Anastasia rolled her eyes, "Something about having to face my consequences, or some bullshit like that. Just did me a favor in bringing me back."

"This place is a prison." Bonnie tells Damon before looking at Kai and Anastasia, "They created it for the two of you."

"Yup. This isn't your hell, Damon." Kai turns to look at them as the sky begins to grow dark, "It's ours."

࿐♡

     ❛𝐖e're not letting Kai out of here, okay?❜ Bonnie says as everyone walks back into the Boarding house, "He just said he's a serial killer."

"I don't care!" Damon exclaimed, "I wanna get out of here!"

"How can you not care?! Maybe because of the horrible things you have done? Maybe cause killing a bunch of kids is not a big deal to someone who's murdered a pregnant woman?" Bonnie says as a look of hurt flashes on his face, "Am I wrong?"

"Ouch. Poor nephew-uncle Zach."

"Stefan compelled Zach to forget about the girlfriend and the baby. But, he couldn't cover up all those murders. Founder's Council was restarted, and Stefan took off.f We both did. And when I saw Uncle Zach again, I couldn't look at him without remembering that I ruined everything. So, it was a nice relief when I got to kill him. Okay, can we go back now?"

"Oh, come on, Bonnie. You wanna go home to your friends, I wanna go back and give the rest of the Gemini Coven an excruciating death. Win-win." Kai tells the Bennett witch.

"I wanna go home and get revenge on every person who played a part in Kol's death." Anastasia smirks as Bonnie looks at her in shock.

"He tried to kill Jeremy! What were we supposed to do?"

"Please, all he would've done was chop his arm off. He'd be fine without it." Anastasia rolled her eyes, "But I'm sure after my death, you just jumped at the chance to be the one to comfort Jeremy. Am I right, or am I right?"

Bonnie looks down at her feet in guilt, knowing that what Anastasia said was true. Jeremy and she had started a relationship before she was stuck on the other side with Damon, but the hunter was never happy, and there were times that Bonnie would catch Jeremy looking at the saved photos of he and Anastasia together.

It didn't matter that Anastasia was in love with Kol, Jeremy was always going to be in love with Anastasia.

"Look, Bonnie, I know this guy's not a model citizen, okay, but I gotta get back. Not just for Elena, but for my brother." Damon tells the witch.

Bonnie looks at him with a guilty look, "I'm sorry, Damon."

"Sorry doesn't work for me." Kai says, going to grab Bonnie but Damon grabs him instead.

"We may be having a bit of a disagreement, but don't ever lay a hand on her." Damon threatens her.

"Kind of a non-issue now. We've missed the day's eclipse." Kai smirked as the sky got bright once more, "Rain check for tomorrow?"

"No." Bonnie states as she walks out the door.

࿐♡

     ❛𝐖hat the hell are we going to do?❜ Kai paces across the floor in Anastasia's bedroom that she had spelled so that no one outside the locked bedroom could hear what was going on, "We need to get the hell out of here!"

"Well, that's not happening now that Bonnie knows that we murdered your entire family." Anastasia rolled her eyes as she laid on her bed.

"I have a plan."

"Mal, none of your plans ever work out right. That's why we're in this situation right now."

"No, I have a plan. Look, I'm not as stupid as they think I am. I know that they are probably downstairs planning a way to get out and leave us, me here, okay? So, we get one step ahead of them. I'll take a little bit of her magic, threaten them and get them to let us help with going home."

"Okay....where are you going with this?"

"If we can get Damon out of the picture and Bonnie still here in the prison world...," Kai smirked as Anastasia sits up, catching on.

"Then she'll have no choice in helping us get out." Anastasia laughed, "Which means we'll both be out of here. Malachai! I could kiss you right now!"

"Or you can kiss me."

"I'll kiss you after we get the hell out of here."

࿐♡

     𝐃amon walks into the kitchen where Bonnie is eating, "Shame-eating?"

"Thinking about that pregnant lady. She had a thing for pancakes." Bonnie tells him.

"That's what you remembered?"

"You remember it, don't you? You make pancakes every day."

"Cause I'm bored."

"No, cause you're punishing yourself. You call this place your hell, and it means you feel remorse. That makes you different from Kai." Bonnie says before playfully gasping, "Maybe there is hope for you."

"Look, we can still get out of here, Bonnie." Damon walks over to her, flask in hand, "We can steal that "Descendant" contraption, find out what Kai knows, and we'll ditch him, because he doesn't have any powers anyway."

"Actually, it's not that simple." Kai says as he and Anastasia appear in the doorway.

"You gotta stop doing that." Damon rolls his eyes, "It's creepy."

"Here's the thing; I have a killer effect on magic. I can generate it myself. But I can consume it from others temporarily." Kai tells them as he moves over to Bonnie's side as she gets up from her seat at the table.

"His family called him an abomination." Anastasia sends them an amused smile.

"That hurt my feelings." Kai reaches for Bonnie's arm, causing her to scream out in pain as Anastasia sends her father an aneurysm, causing him to drop to his knees in paint as the stove catches fire.

"Okay, we get it!" Damon grunts out.

Kai stops the spell he was using, and Anastasia stops, "You can see why my coven and I didn't get along."

"I smell an ultimatum."

"If I consume all of Bonnie's magic, I'm just gonna end up killing her. But if we work together, we can all go home as friends. Or I can devour her magic, kill you both and get Natty and I the hell out of here." Kai tells them as he sits down and grabs the forks and knife Bonnie was eating from, "What's it going to be?"