Sweat dotted her forehead and trickled down the nape of her neck. Ice clear blues which once forced her heart to sprint faster than a gold medalist winning track star, now provoked the bloody red organ to freeze mid-beat. For she remembered the first time she stared into the windows of his pitched soul and witnessed indifference begat hate. Yet given time hate bloomed into reluctant respect. Which in turn gave birth to an unexpected love. Now assumed betrayal had perverted their love and twisted it into a hatred so uncompromising she had to question if love had ever resided in those frigid depths at all.

Yes, her and those arctic eyes had travelled full circle and the journey had ripped them both into jagged little pieces. Pieces so crooked and broken if put back together again they still would remain forever changed. Altered, always to fall indefinitely short of perfection.

How could one action of compassion cost her the other half of her soul? Since when did the price of loyalty total out to be three years of hard gained trust? Now that she stood face to face with him, bearing the weight of his undiluted rage she knew that any shred of love she'd counted on to pardon them of this moment wouldn't be forthcoming. Only one of them would walk away from their break.

"Why?" He bellowed to her from across a field of mangled bodies.

Why, indeed. How could one word call for so many? Her head swung from side to side. "I didn't know."

She blinked and he stood before her. "Spare me your lies!" His wrath leapt from his stare and singed her from hairline to chin.

"I D-DIDN'T KNOW...not at first, that is." Her gaze held his tighter than a lethal embrace. "And as usual, they didn't involve me until things became fucked beyond their control."

"And like a good Little Witch, you ran to them when they beckoned," The top corner of his lip curled, and the impromptu sneer mocked the hell out of his cut to perfection features. "You betrayed me!" Bonnie shook her head once again, but her continued denial only seemed to piss him off more. "Me! You did this to me!"

"I didn't do this to you," She reached up to cradle his cheeks in her palms, even as his face blurred from her vision, "I did this for him!"

"Why?!" He raged, yanking her hands from his face by the wrists.

"Isn't it obvious?" She grunted through the slits of her teeth in attempts to soldier through the throbbing in her wrists. "You didn't come here for conversation, Klaus!" Her gaze moved over the decapitated corpses, amputated limbs, and a collection of hearts scattered over the blood drenched grass. Her stomach bucked as she forced her eyes back to his. "You and I both know had I not intervened, anyone of these miserable bastards would've been Tyler."

"And it would've been a fate well deserved." Klaus spat from the clench of his teeth. "He turned them against me, all of them! He's the reason they're dead." An explosion of amber flames set fire to a sea of arctic blues, while obsidian channels writhed beneath rage inspired molten pools. "So yes, Little Witch. I do indeed intend to give that miserable bastard a gloriously magnificent conclusion."

The sincerity of his declaration hemorrhaged the remainder of her strength. Unless Tyler ran faster than Katherine Klaus would find him and make slow work of killing him. The burden of such a revelation caused her to stumble backwards until her back collided with a large tree trunk. Klaus' body slammed against hers, pinning her in place.

"I love you, Klaus," she managed to wheeze out.

Other than the amber flames blazing in his glare he remained indifferent to her words. Yet, in the face of his complacency she continued. Because something supernatural in effect whispered of how she'd never again get the chance. So, she continued to plead her case. To speak the contents of her essence.

"With every piece and part of my busted heart I do love you, but I'll never stand by and allow you to hurt my friends. You'll have to kill me first."

An explosion of saliva dripping canines burst from his gums. "Now that's an outcome we both can agree upon, Little Witch."

Faster than an Original Hybrid minute juiced on amphetamines, Klaus' fangs tore into her neck. The sheer agony of his bite snatched the air from her lungs. A metallic tang flooded her mouth. Her vision tunneled. A low chanting swelled in her head. The rhythmic Latin litany grew loud and persistent until she could do nothing other than gurgle along. Even as her lover floated from her sight and all she knew faded to black that transcending mantra still lingered upon her tongue.