As they entered the town square, Damon was fiddling with his mouth.

"The fangs are still there," He reminded them, "Either I'm a dead vampire..."

They turned into the main roads, lights on all across town, like it was a regular night in Mystic Falls.

"Or Mystic Falls is no longer magic free."

"If you were dead," MJ couldn't get her voice to go above a certain volume, "Your blood wouldn't've healed me."

Bonnie was supporting her as they walked, gravity not being MJ's friend after performing an act of magic that huge, but the blood was doing something. The blood or the magic. MJ knew that if they were alive – if she'd really sent them back to the realm of the living, the magic in her body wouldn't let her die unless it was instantaneous. She knew from her mum's life that the magic kept you alive to return it.

But not letting her die and healing her up properly were two different things.

"Look," Bonnie pointed to the Mystic Grill.

Damon frowned, "You definitely blew that up about an hour ago."

"Why don't we see any people?" Bonnie scanned, "If we're still on The Other Side, we should at least be able to see the living."

As she turned to take everything in, MJ had to too, and her brain woke up just a little.

She'd failed?

"No," She closed her eyes to feel for anything, "There's...we're..."

"Where the hell are we?" Damon's voice went gruff, "And I don't mean geographically."

"I have no idea," Bonnie admitted, "MJ?"

"I," She didn't have an answer, "I thought I did it."

Her breathing picked up.

"What?"

She tried to process what was going on.

"The Grill," She stared at the cars around them, "These..."

Doing the maths based on dates in her head was stressing her out.

"A cohesive sentence would be appreciated," Damon was tapping his hand.

"I don't know what I did!" Her eyes went wide, "I thought – no...okay, wait."

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

She checked her pocket.

She'd decided not to bring her phone with her to The Other Side, and it hadn't reappeared.

"Damon, do you have your phone on you?"

"What?"

"You're phone?"

"Why would I have my phone?"

"Everything you had on you when you died comes with you," She explained.

He patted his pockets until he hit it, pulling it out.

MJ snatched it, dialling Caroline's number.

It didn't even ring.

There was just a disconnect noise, like the number she was trying to call didn't exist.

"What?" MJ needed it to make sense.

"Come on," Bonnie prompted, "Let's just keep looking."

She didn't have the energy to keep looking.

She wanted to blame her weakened state on the magic, but she also knew it wasn't that simple. MJ didn't want to exist, so still being alive felt like a mammoth task, the only benefit being the lack of whispers and screaming in her ears.

Wherever they were, the spirits she'd angered couldn't reach her.

A few streets over, and it was still just nothingness.

No life of any kind to find, and MJ knew it was her fault. She'd gotten herself sent to hell, Bonnie and Damon had been dragged into it with her rather than being allowed to get home safely, and if she didn't figure it all out, they'd be stuck with her.

They spent the entire night just walking around trying to find people and figure out what was going on. There was nothing but the town they knew so well, houses and cars, and a sun rising to signal a new day.

Bonnie's jacket had been tied around her waist, while Damon had his slung over his shoulder.

"How many more streets are we going to wander?" He groaned.

Bonnie glared at him, "How many times are you going to ask me questions I don't have the answers to?"

He didn't respond, letting them go back to walking in silence.

MJ was still doing maths as they walked. She'd been trying to date check in her head the entire night, but it was like she couldn't really remember numbers for more than a few seconds.

She'd somehow broken her brain.

Damon opened his mouth again, causing Bonnie to growl until she heard what he was saying.

"Don't you wanna clean up a little, Sabrina?"

MJ halted, focused on the streets.

"Sabr – "

The cars.

"Sh," She closed her eyes, "Mental Maths shouldn't be this hard."

"Mental maths?"

"Cars."

Bonnie looked at them too, "There's something weird about them..."

"They were all made twenty years ago," MJ explained why she'd stopped, "At least their styling is from the nineties."

She recognised one of them from a fashion project she'd done on personality aesthetics, now struggling to remember the exact date since she wasn't a car fanatic.

"Yeah," Damon agreed, checking them out himself as the person who'd lived through the decade, "They're all twenty years old or more. And yet they look brand new."

He ran his hand over the hood then looked at the house it was in front of.

"...And that is Elena's not-so-burnt-to-a-crisp house."

MJ opened her eyes and realised he was right.

To get herself to think about dates, she'd basically tuned out everything else, missing the house completely.

There were toys all across the lawn.

MJ drifted away from Bonnie's arm.

She followed after her, "MJ?"

"The paper," MJ felt like an idiot.

They'd passed several newspapers on benches on the way there, and if she'd had her head on straight, she would've picked one up earlier.

She tossed it to Damon to read, "Look at that."

"What – " His head snapped up to look at MJ after he noticed it.

Bonnie read over his shoulder, "Rare solar eclipse expected to be seen across twelve states?"

"The date," Damon rolled his eyes.

"May 10th, 1994. Is that – ?" Bonnie was speechless, "Are we – ?"

Damon dropped the paper to the ground, "And Buffy figured out how to time travel."

"But that's impossible," Bonnie squinted, "Right? That can't be possible."

"I don't know..." MJ admitted.

Damon rubbed his face, "Am I supposed to add Rose Tyler to the nickname collection now or something."

"How on earth would I have found a way to time travel!?" MJ shook her head rapidly, "No, if we'd time travelled, there would be people."

She'd never even thought about time travel as a thing she should try to achieve, so how could she have got her magic that mixed up. Too many movies showed how you could mess everything up, and as much as she ignored rules, she was also terrified to be the person who unintentionally created the dark timeline.

"How could I have screwed up that badly?"

Suddenly, it was like all the light was ripped away, and they looked up to the sky. The blue colour had been replaced by a darker nightlike appearance; the moon was covering the sun.

The eclipse.

"I don't think we should be asking where we are," Damon spoke slowly, "I think we should be asking when."

"If..." MJ went through what an eclipse in the sky could mean, "If that's happening, it means time is moving."

The sun was moving in the sky.

"So not a frozen moment," Her first thought.

As she talked, her feet started to move, walking onto the porch to pace, the comforting sound and feel of wood beneath her feet.

"I thought a frozen moment because frozen seconds in time is something I can do – that makes sense."

"It does?" Bonnie took a seat on the steps, looking at the toys around them.

"Pocket dimensions, yeah."

She nodded, "I totally know what that is,"

MJ smiled, "Don't worry too hard about it, just, think, like...speaking of Doctor Who."

She gestured to Damon.

"You ever seen it?"

"Like one episode."

"The Tardis, the blue box that time travels," She stopped herself from humming the theme song, "Well, it's bigger on the inside. Or – or, Harry Potter, the tents they use."

"Relevance?" Damon motioned for her to keep talking, flopping onto the porch swing and rocking it back and forth.

"It's a huge thing in LA," She summed up, "The supernatural community basically exist in pocket streets of magic markets – I learnt basic versions of that, um, you know when I do the hand-wavy thing, and stuff appears out of nowhere?"

They both nodded.

"That's me using pocket dimensions most of the time."

Or a summoning spell.

"It's how I hid the moonstone. You exist outside of real space."

"Oh," Bonnie smiled a little, "That is kinda cool."

"Again, relevance to our situation?"

"My magic got us here," MJ gave him a look, "If I somehow moved us into a pocket dimension..."

He raised an eyebrow, "In 1994?"

"I don't know!"

He shifted a little at how her voice had squeaked.

"Pocket's in time are weird. The streets in LA are all in real-time, so are my little holding stations, but like, logically you could preserve a moment?"

She stilled, really looking at the door to the house.

Her brain was turning off again.

She didn't want to think. It was too much effort.

She'd really screwed up.

"How did I – ?"

MJ had just wanted to save Bonnie, and she'd failed.

Tyler and Stefan had died because of her brother, and MJ's one goal was making sure everyone else got to live. But she'd ended up trapping Bonnie with her, in an unknown situation, potentially forever.

"I was two in 1994!" She covered her face, "This makes no sense!"

"You'll figure it out," Bonnie assured her, "We'll figure it out."

MJ just shook her head, "I'd never even been to Mystic Falls before I moved there – how could I have created this?"

Her breathing was shaking, hiding a dry sob.

"But if I didn't create this, how the hell are we here!"

"It's fine, MJ."

"I'm so sorry Bonnie."

She didn't know what to say.

"I was just – just trying – "

For her entire life, she'd been playing prodigy, when in reality, she wasn't even a real witch. She was a siphoner. Meant to destroy and kill. And when she'd tried to do the right thing and remove herself from reality, she'd dragged Bonnie down with her.

"I'm sorry."

Damon mock coughed.

"You and Elena died for the fun of it!" MJ glared, "Both stepping in and out drained Liv – that was four unneeded crossovers!"

"Because you totally didn't go looking for another unneeded crossover."

Damon didn't have to have been there to know MJ had probably done her own thing while waiting for them.

"And?" MJ's eyes were big, "Mine would've been one extra return trip, not two in and one out!"

She couldn't quite believe him.

"The pair of you had to be dramatic!"

Her anger was dialling up to Level Mocking.

"It had to somehow be about you and your 'passionate-explosive-death-defying' relationship!"

"We died to find Stefan."

"Which I would've done!"

"Because he would've been so safe in your hands," Damon gestured around sarcastically, "He was my brother, my responsibility – and for all I knew, you would've wasted time trying to find your brother, and they all would've ended up getting ripped to hell."

A tear fell down MJ's face.

"That pretty much confirms it," He pointed at her reaction.

"Ryos wasn't on The Other Side," MJ wiped the tears away quickly, "He was a Floare. His spirit went into their afterlife."

"Then why the hell didn't yours."

"Because I don't deserve peace!"

Silence.

"Because I don't deserve to rest with the other witches!"

The anger fell back to tears.

"I'm an abomination of nature that deserved to get sent into nothingness! I'm meant to be in hell!"

In her head, Damon had every right to lack faith in her.

MJ sat down on the porch with a thump.

Damon lost the attitude, "Is any booze in this empty retro-ville?"

"It feels so weird to be back here," Bonnie picked up a toy, "I practically grew up on this porch."

"Alright," Damon pushed on the swing again, "Can we talk through what we think's going on again?"

"We're in a pocket moment in time," MJ took a long breath in, "I don't know whose, or how, or why, but...I don't know if our present-day is around us. Or real-life 1994 is around us. Or – what, I don't – "

"Before The Other Side collapsed," Bonnie put up her hand to stop her, realising something, "My Grams said that she'd been trying to make a deal with the spirits to help me find peace, but there hadn't been enough power or enough motivation for them to do it."

Power.

"Like there was some risk in her plan they weren't sure I could handle."

Odd thing for the spirits to care about.

"What if that has something to do with it."

"The part where you actually have a theory?" Damon prompted.

"She was alive in 1994, and she was a powerful witch," Bonnie kept talking, "What if she knew how to make one of those pockets, and this is hers? I mean..."

She looked around again.

"This clearly isn't peace."

The blunt truth.

"Otherwise, I wouldn't be stuck here with you."

The comment was targeted at Damon, "Rude."

"She must have – I don't know," Bonnie's turn to say the phrase of the day, "MJ releases a massive amount of power to get us home, but, if it wasn't enough to get us all the way, she guided us into the next best thing?"

It could make sense.

"She sent me somewhere, us somewhere," Bonnie gestured to MJ and her since they hadn't actually been connected during the jump, meaning they'd both been able to move, "And when I held your hand, it took you with me."

"Well, did she happen to whisper a safe word in her last breaths," Damon asked as Bonnie stood up to lean on a column of the porch, "A clue, maybe? The witchy path out of here?"

"No, but if we got here by magic," Bonnie's tone turned careful, "Magic should be able to get us out."

Damon raised his eyebrows, "And that frown that's not upside down is telling me what?"

Bonnie looked around the space.

She spotted a candle in a large glass on the porch table.

"Phesmatos Incendia."

Nothing happened.

"Still can't do magic," Damon's shoulders sagged, "Perfect."

"MJ?" Bonnie had to think she still could.

MJ lifted her hands.

They all jumped as the entire front lawn went up in flames.

After a second of staring at it, Damon cleared his throat, and MJ quickly slammed her hands down, putting it out with an arc of air, every muscle tense and scared.

"I didn't mean to do that."

She'd been aiming for the candle.

Damon's attitude lifted a little, "You can get us out."

MJ nodded.

Bonnie shifted carefully, "If you can't control it – "

"I'll learn to."

Stretching her hand forward and closing her eyes, her fingers floated up and down as she imagined softly playing the piano, humming the notes and focusing on something she could trust herself to do right. 

The wind picked up.

For a moment, it was fine – a light breeze blowing over their faces, giving them a sense of hope.

Then the toys started to move,

And the swing broke, Damon crashing to the floor, blades of grass pulled up from the ground as tree branches snapped off, slamming into picket fences, breaking them too, so they spun into walls of houses like knives stuck in pieces of food.

"MJ," Bonnie tried to stop her, air getting sucked out of her lungs.

She was choking, hair blasted around, wrapping around her neck.

MJ's closed eyes meant she hadn't noticed the storm clouds rolling in, unable to hear the lightning strike ramming into the middle of the road in front of them.

Her veins were glowsticks, and her nose was bleeding again.

"Sabrina!" Damon yanked her up.

MJ jolted awake, and it stilled.

Looking around, it was like a feather was being dragged up her front, someone pinching at the pores in her arms to make her hypersensitive to the power and how ready it was to eat her alive. That feeling wasn't helped by her friends staring at her like they were tempted to run for the hills.

"I'm sorry."

How the hell MJ was supposed to figure anything out if every time she used magic, someone died.

Her magic had killed her brother,

And the Travellers,

And countless other people over the years.

MJ wasn't even sure magic could save anyone anymore.

The trio ended up in the Salvatore House for the night, Damon sleeping in his own bed after thinking he might never get to again after The Travellers curse, Bonnie and MJ making do. Bonnie took to one of the spare rooms, and MJ started in the corner guest room she'd claimed over the two years, only to find herself feeling sick the moment she'd taken to the bed.

The smell.

The emptiness of it.

The fact there was a chair in the corner where Ric had once sat, watching over her.

Taunting her with the fact she was completely alone.

She'd killed her brother.

MJ couldn't sleep in the room. Not when she kept opening draws expecting to see one of her spare t-shirts staring back at her, or a notebook, or vials of blood.

It was a good few hours after midnight when she moved into Stefan's room.

The windows were bigger.

So was the room.

Big and open. Helping her feel a little less trapped.

The room had a lot of stuff in it, meaning Stefan had been living in it in 1994, which made sense with the timeline he'd told her about things, and the photo Elena had found when she'd figured out her boyfriend was a vampire.

MJ had snuggled up in his sheets and actually drifted off.

When she woke up the next day, it was like she'd hadn't slept a wink.

Her body wanted to lie in the darkness forever, eyes stinging with exhaustion. But lying there? She didn't even fall back asleep. She was overheating, aching, trying to understand the numbness in her chest about the entire situation.

She'd killed over a hundred people by wiping out The Travellers for their spell.

She'd done that.

She'd done it thinking she wouldn't be alive to have to care about it, or think about it, or feel all the guilt that was suffocating her. She'd done it thinking she could find Kol, and he'd make it all easier to deal with. Yet, there she was, lying on a mattress that wasn't even hers, needing a hand to get out of bed, alone.

Damon had fed her his blood.

If she wanted to end it all, she needed to wait until it was out of her system.

But,

She also knew she couldn't just kill herself to get it over with.

Bonnie and Damon needed her to get home, and Bonnie didn't have her magic, meaning MJ had to learn control, and get a grip. Get them out of the pocket dimension. Then she could die.

She rolled out of bed, feet hitting the floor, knees unstable as she walked towards the bathroom.

She didn't want to shower.

Showing would make it seem like she was okay, and she wasn't okay, and honestly, the idea of water pressure hitting her face and rolling down her back made her wanna go back to bed. She could picture it in her mind, feeling slimy, thinking through how she'd need to get her arms to move if she wanted to wash her hair.

But Bonnie and Damon needed her to be okay.

When MJ looked in the mirror and almost screamed.

She hadn't actually seen what she'd looked like after the failed sacrifice attempt. Everyone else's reaction to her face had been enough, but now it was too late. She'd somewhat forgotten she'd had a knife driven into her face. The blood had been staining her skin for about two days, and watching it run down the rest of her body made her lightheaded.

The shower was a mistake.

The shower made her skin red and puffy, and it made her want to cry again, but crying was energy, and all her energy was being put into actually washing, trying not to let the feeling of the fresh cuts make her scream. 

Once she'd cleaned up, she'd stepped out and forced herself to look in the mirror again.

Technically, the scars should've healed.

Not only due to the vampire blood, but if the magic was healing her to keep her alive, taking its sweet time, the scars should've gone – but they weren't. The addition sign on her face was at least clean, slightly less itchy, but the skin around the lines was pushed up, the centre still red, ready to start bleeding again at any second.

Her first small test.

MJ took her pinkie and held it at the top of her forehead, watching herself in the mirror.

"Haksa."

A golden light came from the point of contact, which was new, finger dragged down the wound, the red fading.

When MJ reached in between her eyes, her nose was bleeding, and the top 'healed' half was reopening.

She quickly wrapped toilet paper around her hand to add pressure, stopping the blood flow.

She'd used a Floare healing spell, and if her Floare magic had gone nuclear, the injury should've healed up completely.

"Aek Hai," She pressed the tissue down further, "Aek Hai."

As she lifted it up to inspect what should've been healed skin, she threw up in the sink, heat rushing through her throat as out of date Gatorade filled her senses, blue sludge coming out.

Blue sludge.

"Shit," She groaned, not knowing what that meant and forcing herself to stay calm, "Bersih."

A smaller cleaning spell.

No more sick, but MJ's nose started to bleed once again.

"What the hell?"

She rubbed her tired eyes and repeated the word.

Still nothing except a migraine to add to the blood.

Think.

She'd been using Floare spells, but Floare spells seemed to be making her body act out, yet she'd successfully lit fire to a lawn and summoned a storm. The magic was there. She snapped her fingers over and over, trying to think of the right word.

"Exhauriebat."

The messed up vomit disappeared down the sink like it had never been there, making an obnoxious sound to let MJ know she'd drained more than she'd intended to as it started sucking the oxygen from the air too.

"Stop!"

The overhead light exploded, but the spell stopped.

MJ took a breath to try and reset, pressing two fingers under her jaw, ignoring the pain of the scars there and trying to find her pulse.

She couldn't.

She tried her wrist.

She still couldn't find it there either.

MJ's practically fell down the stairs, tripping over her own feet to try and get to the kitchen as quickly as possible.

"DAMON!"

'What A Man' was playing from a radio as he made pancakes.

MJ almost wanted to smile at the sight of him dancing and singing along in a fresh set of clothes, treating a bourbon bottle like a microphone, but she couldn't get her face to cooperate, muscles not ready to move properly yet.

"Sabri – " He turned to her and halted.

She was only in a towel.

"Um..."

"Grow up," MJ held her wrist forward, walking closer, "You can hear my heartbeat right."

"Told you that yesterday."

"Damon," She pressed it into his ear, "Is it there?"

He rolled his eyes but focused, "Yeah."

"Then why can't I find it?"

"Because it's super faint," He batted her hand away, "Go get dressed."

"But why is it feint?" She stared at her hand, "I did sports – I know how to find my pulse, and it's never been feint – slow? Sure, but feint?"

She didn't know why it was bothering her, but it was.

"I don't know," He scanned her, "Why is there more blood on your face."

"My nose bleeds when I use magic."

"That's fun for us," He knew that meant her body was weak.

She was still just standing there.

"Want to get some clothes on?" He reminded her, "Or heal up your face."

"I can't heal it."

He paused, "What do you mean, you can't?"

"I mean," She held the towel tightly with one hand, so it didn't drop as she used the other to try and get the golden glow to heal her.

Nothing.

"So you can start fires," Damon blinked slowly, "But pretty much nothing else?"

They'd never seen an MJ who couldn't just perform when asked to.

"Are we back to basics with you?"

"I don't know," Her voice cracked.

"Do you say anything other than that?"

She didn't bother answering.

She tried something else.

"Phastan Sana," She let the hand hover over her face, "Phastan Sana."

No more migraines or blood, but the scars didn't heal up either.

They closed slightly, like they were injuries from a month earlier rather than a few days, but they didn't heal.

"Okay," MJ took a breath, "I can work with that."

"Work with what?"

"Ancestral spells are working," She gestured to lack of nose blood, "It's the Floare ones that aren't."

That was when Bonnie got back, coming into the kitchen with a teddy bear in her hands and a book MJ recognised at the Bennett Grimoire under her arm.

She smiled at the sight of them standing there, Damon still slightly jamming to the music, clearing his throat awkwardly to straighten up, MJ just in a towel, looking somewhat healthier than the previous day thanks to the wash, despite the blood under her nose.

"I didn't know you cooked," Bonnie commented to Damon, considering MJ had just had a shower.

"I don't," He said for some reason, "If Sabrina here isn't gonna go get dressed, I'll start the pleasantries; How'd you sleep?"

The girls looked at each other.

"Me...not good," He flipped another pancake, "My 1994 mattress was very lumpy."

"Discovery of the morning," MJ spoke to Bonnie, "My body makes me throw up goop, bleed, and see white spots when I use Floare magic. But I can use ancestral magic without hurting myself. Just, not amazingly."

Floare healing was astronomically stronger than Ancestral, especially considering Aonso Floare were healers.

"Then," Bonnie slid the Grimoire to her, "You're gonna need this."

"Whatcha got there?" Damon asked.

"Ms Cuddles," She waggled the bear, surprisingly cheery, "I lost her when I was nine, but I went into my house last night, and here she was."

MJ opened up the Grimoire.

"I also found that at my Grams's house," She explained, "Her old Grimoire."

Damon tapped the radio and took another swig of the bourbon, "Yeah, well, I found this."

He bopped MJ on the head.

"Drank it last year when Ric died," He offered it to her, "It was in that flask we shared."

MJ accepted a swig, letting it burn her throat.

"So we're definitely in a snapshot of another time," Bonnie watched MJ read, "Or...something?"

She just nodded.

Damon opened the radio to switch the CD inside of it.

"Everything that existed in 1994 still exists."

"For better," Damon picked a new CD blindly, then kissed it before putting it in the radio and clicking for it to play, "Or for worse."

The Spin-Doctors came on for three seconds before Bonnie switched them off.

"Listen," Her more upbeat mood crashed, "There was a time when I couldn't practice magic. This Grimoire taught me a lot."

MJ stepped back to looked at her.

"Maybe, I can reteach myself," Bonnie smiled at MJ, "You can help me, and we can work together to get out of here."

MJ tried for a smile back at her.

A weak one, but it was there.

"If you are still a witch," Damon just turned the radio back on, "Which – with our luck and your skill, probably ain't the case."

Bonnie crossed her arms, "Would a little support kill you?"

"I am acutely aware that we are in some otherworldly time dimension," He continued, "However, do you ever think for one second that maybe it's you being negative reacting to my natural self negatively?"

"That sentence was awful," MJ muttered.

"You're ridiculous," Bonnie retorted.

"Nope, I'm consistent," He put two pancakes onto a second plate and pushed them towards Bonnie, "Eat your pancakes. Oh, and – "

He then slid the newspaper they'd grabbed over to her too.

"You can do a crossword puzzle."

"Oh, gee, thanks," She picked it up, "Breakfast with my least favourite person, and a crossword puzzle, from 1994."

She opened it up to look at the page, continuing on with the sarcasm.

"Alright, what's a seven letter word for – "

She was cut off as the sky went the same dark colour as the previous day.

MJ stared at the eclipse through the window, not moving from her spot by the counter.

"You've got to be kidding me," Damon twitched a little, "Bonnie, look at the date on that paper."

"It says, May 10th, 1994," She spoke slowly, "It's the same day as yesterday."

All three of them exchanged a look.

"We're living the same day all over again."

"Wait, wait," MJ eyes flittered, "That means we're not just outside of space, but we're outside of time."

Damon wasn't blinking, "Please tell me you know how to get out of this?"

"I – "

"Don't know," He finished, "Okay, got it. You can stop saying it."

"Sorry," She snapped, "I'm nineteen! I don't know everything!"

"Well, you've spent the last two years acting like you do!"

"Acting being the keyword!"

"You have a Grimoire," He gestured, "Get studying and get us out of here."

"My magic is making me sick!"

"Half of your magic."

"And the other half is a little uncontrollable and could get you guys hurt."

"So what?" He spun around, "We have to wait for you to graduate from magic kindergarten."

Bonnie tried to intervene, "Damon – "

"Oh yes! Yell at me!" MJ growled, "Not like I actually have a purpose while you're just hitching a free ride back to the land of the living that you don't deserve."

"MJ – "

"I was only in the land of the dead because your brother killed mine."

Bonnie slammed her hands on the table, "Guys!"

Damon had driven into her explosion to save his brother because Stefan had died, because of MJ's brother – i.e. because MJ hadn't been willing to let Ryos do his batshit crazy plan, meaning Damon had died because of her.

It was all her fault.

MJ took a step back from him, body slumping as part of her brain completely gave up.

"That proves it," Damon leant against the sink, "We're in hell."

MJ had dragged them to hell with her.

"Our own personal, custom-built hell. And you're both in it with me," He lifted the bottle again, "Bottoms up."

THREE MONTHS LATER

Ric was sitting in a diner, having just finished a phone call with Elena, waiting for Caroline to appear for their breakfast meetings. They'd had them every few days, whenever Caroline had crossed another potential solution off her list and in need of a boost from someone else trying to help her save the day – even if Ric was more guiding than helping.

She arrived and put three books on the table, sitting opposite him.

"You already read all that?" Ric thought they'd take her longer since they were pretty hefty.

His position as an Occult Professor got him access to some very odd libraries.

"Cover to cover," She nodded, "With no mention on how to undo an anti-magic force field."

She poured herself some coffee.

"And if I'm going to single-handedly take back our town, I'm gonna need a little bit more to go on."

"Got it. All right, well," Ric pulled out a newer book, "I brought 'Ancient Witchcraft, Volume Two'."

"I read it."

"How about 'The Art of Hexing' and 'Elements of Magic'?"

After a glower, not sure how those would help her, she caved. "Fine."

Into her bag they went.

"Thank you."

"How are you finding books?" He asked, slightly concerned she'd read one without him giving it to her.

"MJ's witch friend Davina sent me a list at the start of summer."

Ric shifted slightly, having deliberately not asked about MJ's life in New Orleans since he'd come back.

"She's been trying to use her ancestors to do stuff, but hitting a wall," Caroline tried to stay positive, "Which I'm taking to mean she's not dead-dead."

Ric raised an eyebrow.

"If she was dead-dead, Davina would've found her spirit. No spirit, no body, no real death."

"Care – "

"Let me have it."

Seeing her pep somewhat falter, Ric slowly nodded, not pointing out how no spirit also meant gone forever.

"Thank you."

"If you're..." Ric looked at his food, "If you're talking to her friend over there, have you been able to get any more of her books? I feel like your mission would be a lot better with her stuff."

"I know," Caroline sighed, "I'm not exactly talking to her friends. More, we exchanged a few messages, and now it's an 'if anything happens, let me know' relationship."

"And MJ's stuff?"

"Um," Her eyes avoided his, "Apparently, Klaus and Elijah put it on lockdown."

Ric frowned, "What does that mean?"

"It means that her things have been added to the Mikaelson Family vault of possessions or tossed, and Davina was only able to grab a few things before they kicked her out of MJ's apartment."

"They have no right – "

"Ric – "

"They can't just use the fact she was living there to get their hands on her stuff!" He argued, "We were her family – it belongs with us."

Caroline didn't agree or disagree.

She'd gotten two of MJ's books, the Traveller-Floare ones, by writing to Klaus about them in July. Writing to him had made her feel guilty. His kid had died, and she was pestering him for magic textbooks. But she'd had to, considering she couldn't find Floare anywhere.

She added it to her list of motivation to get MJ back.

Klaus had lost his kid, and he clearly cared about MJ. Caroline couldn't do anything about the baby, but she could keep working until she found a way to get MJ and Bonnie back. And part of that task including freeing her town from the anti-magic line.

"If she'd stayed in Mystic Falls instead or answering their beck and call, she would've figured it out sooner, and she'd still be here," Ric said spitefully, "Hanging around that family probably made her think the way her brother treated her was normal."

Caroline changed the topic away from Klaus, "How's Stefan?"

A beat.

Ric didn't like the underlying meaning of the sudden subject change, but he accepted it.

"He's ok."

Caroline's smile was a little off, "How often do you talk to him?"

"I don't know," He knew Caroline was trying to get to a certain point, "Couple times a week."

"Oh," She nodded falsely, "Huh."

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here, Caroline. Is something bothering you?"

"He didn't say goodbye," She cracked, "Damon, MJ, and Bonnie died, and he just left. No phone calls, no e-mails. Just disappeared into thin air. And I haven't heard from him in months."

She'd been phoning him a lot.

"I actually convinced myself he was in some remote mountain region and couldn't accept my calls."

"Or maybe he just doesn't want to bother you with every half-lead that goes nowhere."

"Or maybe I just need to get over it," She spoke the words everyone had half been telling her, "Thanks for the books."

Caroline left him to finish his breakfast in peace, and he tried to keep his smile on his face.

~***~

The eclipse was the only way MJ was keeping track of days. Every time it happened, she drew a line on the wall of Stefan's room as a reminder that she was technically still alive. If she let herself forget, she'd drift away, and the naps she'd take in the afternoon would bleed into the evening until it was too late to get back up. Two hours. She allowed herself to wallow for two hours.

Despite spending the nights in bed, she was still exhausted.

Her body didn't seem to know how to rest, and no matter how many sleeping tricks she tried, she woke up with the same aching eyes and joints each morning. Because she wasn't really sleeping. It would get dark, and her eyes would be open, and that was just how things were now, because she was too tired to sleep.

It had been three months of nothing.

Not nothing.

She'd been going on runs and walks, graffitiing up the town.

Her thirteen-year-old self would be in heaven.

An entire town with no one to stop her from painting it however she wanted. And MJ needed to paint. Keeping active was to try and tire herself out, strengthening herself up again. She needed a good core if she wanted to perform any universe changing magic, but the art?

The art kept her from going insane.

She'd take some supplies, sometimes from shops, sometimes from random houses, and she'd find a wall, or a roof, or a tree, and she'd let her hand take the lead.

The problem MJ was facing was that she'd always run out of steam before she could finish.

Sometimes it was really quick, and she was just empty of inspiration. Other times it was a final stroke she couldn't bring herself to make, staring at a piece of art that probably seemed fine to the other people who might see it but that she knew was unfinished.

She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter that she wasn't completing anything, but that didn't stop her mind from obsessing over trying to work out how to.

It gave her something to do that wasn't in some ancient forgotten language merged with Latin.

That was what she was meant to think about it.

MJ's day was a simple one.

She woke up early, convinced her bed was a torture device between one and midday. She went on a run. She practised magic and read and did some more magic. She painted, she napped for two hours. She did yoga. And she practised more magic. She went to bed at around three every morning; she waking up around six.

She tried to stay out of the house to keep herself from thinking about how it'd been three months.

Bonnie and Damon were having breakfast, Damon flipping pancakes behind the counter while Bonnie stared at the crossword puzzle.

"What's a seven-letter word for 'kill me now?'"

"That joke got old six weeks ago."

"And so did this crossword puzzle," She twisted her pen, "Every day, for three months, I've done this stupid thing, and I still can't figure out 27 across."

Damon put two pancakes on her plate.

"Old tongue twister, Eddie turned top 40?"

"Just ask MJ," He circled the pancakes with whipped cream and pushed it to her, "She finished hers."

"That's cheating."

Damon started to tap his hand, "She finished the cross-word, but she can't finish a damn spell."

"Lay off."

"No."

"She's trying."

"She's ignoring us, hoping we'll go away."

"She literally tore open the afterlife to get us out," Bonnie stuck her pencil at him, "I don't think she's just hoping we'll go away."

"Then why is she acting like we don't exist."

"She's not acting like that."

"She comes in through the upstairs window, so I can't corner her down here. She skips most meals – she hasn't been working on her magic, and are you seriously gonna pretend like she's acknowledged either of us recently?"

"She thinks this is all her fault."

"Because it is!"

"Oh my god, Damon," Bonnie curled her hand into a fist, "She's taking naps every freaking day waiting to disappear. Have some basic compassion!"

Damon clenched his jaw.

"And she's not talking to us because she thinks that if she does, we'll ask her about a way out. And she'll have to tell us she hasn't found one yet."

The point he had just made.

"Which will make her feel even worse – which is why, if you want her to talk, you've gotta lay off."

He stood down a little, "She could at least practise magic."

"For all we know, she is."

"No," Damon looked at his own food, "She's painting things."

"And the painting is helping."

"How?"

"It's helping her with control."

"I repeat, how?"

"I don't know," Bonnie gave up a little, "That's just what she said to me when I asked her about it."

It wasn't that MJ had gone mute. She just wasn't the best conversationalist; topics, volume, or tone-wise.

Talking usually ended with her retreating to her room for a nap.

"We have to trust that she's practising magic."

Though, Bonnie had to admit she wasn't convinced her friend was.

Something she didn't even really blame her for after everything she'd dealt with.

"And even if she isn't, I am, so..." She looked at the plate and stabbed it, wanting to stop the conversation before MJ got home to potentially hear it, "I hate pancakes."

"Don't take it out on the pancakes," Damon protested, "Those pancakes, like myself, are waiting for you to be witchy to get us the hell out of here while Sabrina masters how to be a hermit."

Bonnie pushed away from the table, "You know I've been trying!"

"And failing," He huffed, "Further evidence, we're in hell. Not only am I stuck with you. I'm stuck with the useless version of you."

Bonnie's mouth opened as she went to hell at him, but something stopped her.

She looked around, "Did you hear that?"

"What would I have heard, Bonnie?" Damon spoke sharply, "We're the only two people here that know how to talk. We were the only two people talking for the past two months, and we're the only two people talking now!"

"I swear I heard something!"

"Then maybe MJ's back," He angrily cut at his own pancakes, "The sound of her existential despair is music to my ears compared to your voice."

She started to growl.

"This is literally my hell."

"You know what?" Bonnie shoved up, "You think we're trapped in your hell?"

Three months was a lot, even if they'd somewhat bonded.

"I have to spend every day on repeat with the person I like least on this earth because the friend I do have with me can't look me in the eye out of guilt for something she had no control over!"

No matter how many times Bonnie tried to remind MJ that Ryos's plan wasn't her fault, it was like MJ couldn't hear her, zoned out in her own thoughts.

"We're not in your hell; we're trapped in mine."

She grabbed her teddy bear from the table counter and stormed up to her room in the house.

~***~

At Whitmore, everyone was getting ready before the senior football game, drinking and dancing on the field, celebrating the different team members to get them psyched up to win. Tyler had been part of the 'party' opening, had his cheers, then disappeared to grab a drink and find his friends. Foam fingers were everyone, a balloon arches up for the team to run under, spirits high.

He was enjoying college more than he thought he would have. He was. Enjoying...enjoying...

It wasn't perfect, but it was working well enough to keep him busy.

Despite trying to keep his distance from people, someone stepped back and into him.

"Watch it, dick," He shoved, then the person turned around and was revealed to be Alaric, "Whoa, sorry."

He tried for a smile.

"Still working out the kinks of being human," He took another sip of beer, "My tolerance blows."

"Not to play chaperone here, Tyler," Ric checked around for eavesdroppers, "But are you sure somebody with your anger issues should be drinking this close to a full moon?"

"My issues are under control," He defended, "Coach lets me practice with the football team. I get to kick ass in a controlled environment."

"Till you get plastered and do something stupid and trigger your werewolf curse all over again."

"Alaric, chill," Tyler didn't want to hear it, "It's under control."

"Are you sure?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because the person who kept you on the right track is dead."

Tyler tensed, a vein on his neck clear, Ric completely clocking the reaction.

"You can see why I might be worried."

"Well," Tyler forced a smile, taking another sip, "Thanks for the concern, but I'm all good."

"Good," Ric took the drink from his hand, "But just in case."

Tyler rolled his eyes, "Really?"

"I haven't been buzzed since I came back to life," Ric had wanted to tell someone, being oddly proud of himself, "And saying that aloud while sober really freaks me out."

He clicked that he'd lost Tyler's attention.

"Ahem."

Tyler was still staring at Liv as she talked with a group of other people.

She noticed him watching, laugh stopping as she looked down, then back to her friends.

"As the only sober person here, trust me when I tell you this, Tyler," Ric waved his hand in his face to get Tyler to look at him, "The girl is not into you."

Tyler rolled his eyes again.

"Thanks for the beer."

Ric left him to stare at Liv.

Tyler shook his head to focus up, heading towards the playing field. People were in the stands chanting 'Let's go Whitmore' at the top of their lungs, followed by three claps, and he still hadn't been able to find Elena or Caroline among the faces. Matt didn't leave Mystic Falls anymore; Jeremy didn't really either, and inviting Jeremy to come and watch would be allocating himself as a chaperone to the guy.

Tyler had enough other things to worry about on his own.

~***~

MJ was standing in the middle of the lake between the Lockwood Mansion and what became Klaus's home in Mystic Falls. The Mikaelson House she remembered wasn't there, Klaus had renovated it, but the land was.

Her feet were planted on the lakebed, arms stretched to the side, and she was standing with her eyes closed.

She was completely dry.

All the water from the lake was hovering in balls of different sizes, floating through the air as she focused on taking long and deep breaths. Each breath in had them turning left, the breath out spinning right.

As she let her arms return to her side, she opened her eyes to take it all in.

MJ slowly walked around them, feet catching on pebbles and plant life usually hidden at the bottom of the lake as she returned to the bank. It was a long walk, but each day she was getting better and better at it. Now able to get all the way to the path before she started to feel a tugging in her stomach that meant she needed to put the water back or she'd end up causing a flash flood.

She climbed out and rubbed her thumbs over her palms to lower it gently back into place, wisps of orange smoke dancing around her fingers whenever she did telekinetic based magic.

As the water settled, she sat down and started to work her way through her stretches.

It had been three months, and MJ had basically re-enacted her previous summer; without sightseeing, fun, and resources. All the magic exercises to build up her strength and work out just what was going on with her.

She'd discovered a lot of important things during her three months in hell.

She couldn't taste things anymore, which was an incredibly weird development she didn't understand, and both things came with their ups and downs. Everything she ate tasted like cardboard. If she ate over a certain amount, she ended up throwing it all back up, being incredibly careful to make sure she was eating enough to get strong, but in tiny doses to try and stop the upchuck.

Her ability to smell was also a little all over the place.

She was almost over showering.

At the start, she'd realised that showering just made her crash, so she'd stopped, not able to deal with her stinging face, the heat of the bathroom, or the way her mind would start to wonder. Every wash ended with her lying in her bed for the rest of the day.

That was until she started to smell.

Greasy hair made her miserable, and she was in a house with two other people she didn't want to ruin the day of with her stench. A week and a bit of no showering and washing became appealing again. Refreshing smells as she bought every body-wash she found even slightly appealing, memorising how it made her feel.

Salted caramel seemed to be the winner.

She could coat herself in it and pretend to be normal, smiling at the familiar comfort of its scent, aligning with her old perfume.

Only to step out of the room and hit the smell of 1994.

Every time she hit a wall, or felt overwhelmed, or scared, or alone, she'd shower, Damon having to remind her that there was only so much water she could use when she'd had five in one day.

It wasn't completely her fault.

Within an hour, MJ swore she smelt sweaty again, no matter if she'd done nothing more than sit in a chair. And she was terrified of making Stefan's room smell, or grossing Bonnie out, that she'd need to get the smell to go away, and deodorant wasn't doing enough – so she'd showered.

She'd mentioned it to Bonnie during a shaking episode, and Bonnie had assured her she couldn't smell anything, but MJ could.

There was a smell following her around, and it was sticky and warm, and it needed to be washed off.

Her heartbeat was still unnaturally feint, even after a workout. It would be beating faster, to the point she could just about feel it, and then it would fade away again.

MJ didn't want to think about what that meant.

Then there was her magic.

She'd worked her way through every single Floare spell she was willing to try, and every single one either failed completely or caused her body to start shutting down. The magic was inside her, base power astronomical, but she'd lost the ability to practise the spells the magic was meant to be used for. She'd lost her roots.

To get the power, MJ had killed her last familial connection.

Of course the magic was rejecting her.

Killing family was a massive magic no-no.

Stealing the power was a massive magic no-no.

Dying with the power, permanently taking it away from the four hundred living Aonso Floare across the world wasn't just a no-no; it made her a traitor to her kind.

Having been outside, working through different drills for a good few hours, MJ forced herself to go back to the Salvatore House. Bonnie and Damon had both been exploring, finding all their old things, something MJ couldn't do considering she didn't even know where Mystic Falls was until 2009.

~***~

Tyler was doing pull-ups to try and get the aggression out before he even tried to go back into the crowd. He knew a sensory overload would hit him if he tried to party while seeing red, and that would just lead to another fight with someone who probably didn't deserve it as much as Luke did. Luke had been giving Elena a way to see Damon, and it had made her a blood addict Caroline had caught by the Mystic Falls town line. That had given Tyler an excuse to get in his face, only for Ric to then interrupt.

Liv stormed into the room, "Could you be more of a douche bag cliché?"

"I got a little out of control," He dropped to the floor, "I know."

"A little?" She was fuming, "It's not Luke's fault that your friend's emotionally blackmailing him into fulfilling whatever mental head case crap she's going through."

"Grief," Tyler pushed his head up, "It's called grief."

He dugs his nails into his palms to try and keep himself in his place.

"Your brother got to live that day, remember? The rest of us lost people because of him."

"I'm aware of that, Tyler," Liv's voice shook, "I think about it every day."

She had searched for MJ's spirit for him when he'd asked at the start of summer.

"But a lot of you got your lives back, too, because of me."

"Because of MJ."

"Because of a spell that needed two witches," She stood her ground, "Me. So, at the very least, do me a favour and lay off my brother."

Tyler went to poke the bear but managed to stop himself, having sobered up a little.

"You're right," He unclenched a little, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Our twin powers don't work like that," She mocked, "You actually have to tell Luke to his face."

She went to leave, but he caught her.

They were staring at each other.

"Listen, Liv," He needed to open up to somebody, "Four months ago, I could do anything."

Caroline felt like the only one not moving on because she was the only one willing to be open about how she felt while the rest of them bottled it in. 

"I could make anyone do anything that I wanted. Stronger than most people on this earth – And then it went away. And all that's left inside of me is rage."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want you to understand that I am trying to deal with it," He pleaded, "The most important person in my life got left behind."

Liv looked at his hand on her wrist.

"She kept me grounded...made life easier, and now she's gone."

"And what?" She pulled her hand free, "You want sympathy points because your siphoner girlfriend died?"

MJ's name didn't need to be spoken for them to know who he was referring to.

"She wasn't my girlfriend," Tyler's voice was low, "She was my best friend."

And she'd died for him.

"She was the 'best friend.' To pretty much everyone."

"She was a – "

"Take your witch bull crap away from the temperamental potential werewolf," He didn't need to hear anything negative, "She was my family."

That caused Liv to falter her bravado slightly.

"The last of my family, and without her, I'm drowning, okay."

Now he'd started talking, he was gonna get it all out.

"There's nothing I can do to help her or find out what happened because I'm not a witch. So I'm just here, trying to keep my head above water, and failing."

"And what? You want me to find her?" She felt bad for looking uncomfortable, "We tried that, and I can't."

"I know," Tyler nodded, "That's why I haven't asked you or Luke to do anything again."

Caroline had spent the summer looking, and he'd initially helped, but it had gotten to be too much.

"I know there's nothing to do other than try my best to keep it together for her. Because I know, for a fact, that I'm not gonna be able to handle the full moon without her if I somehow trigger the curse. And that terrifies me."

Shaking hands, a bracelet on his wrist, the prototype moonstone she'd made for him still on it.

"So just cut me some slack," He breathed in and forced them to still, "Every moment of my life from now on, because your brother didn't just let you channel him, I'm alone, and I'm terrified."

"Okay," Liv was staring at her shoes, "Good luck dealing with that."

"Why do you do that?" Tyler called her out, "I'm trying to talk to you, and you just give me that look and walk away?"

"What would you like me to do, Tyler?" She put her hands out and left, not waiting for a response.

~***~

As MJ walked, the world responded to her, which was nice.

She never thought she'd miss ancestral voices in her head, but they at least gave her something to fight against. A sign that life was out there. The emptiness inside her head matched the way she'd felt the first night after she'd lost her mum's spirit. Expect that emptiness had faded away.

MJ hadn't felt magic in months.

She'd been practising it, but she hadn't felt it. Not really. And since she couldn't practise any of her Floare Magic without hurting herself, she'd been going through Sheila Bennet's house for every smaller spell book she'd had to master as much as she could. If MJ could master ancestral magic, maybe something would click into place in her brain, and she'd figure it all out.

She was waiting for something to click.

"And she uses the door," Damon was in the living room, lying on a sofa.

MJ lifted a hand in greeting, going straight to the stairs.

"Okay," He was in front of her, "Time for a wake-up call."

She glanced about, quiet, "A what?"

"Your fellow witch is beating herself up over the fact you've decided to self-isolate," Damon put on a smile, "Time to re-join society."

MJ tried to go up the first step.

He grabbed her wrist, "Whatever the hell you've got going on in your head, stop it."

She didn't answer.

"Tell it to shut up and wake up."

She'd been trying too.

Her brain felt like it hadn't properly functioned since their second day.

"I know you're in there."

She stilled.

"You're still in their MJ," He repeated, "Push back."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've been out on walks too, you know," He let go, "'Painting is control' my ass. You do art to express yourself and work through your feelings, not control them."

She held his stare.

"When we locked Stefan in the basement after Miss Mystic," He pointed towards the library, "You sat in that room, and you sketched."

The firmness in his voice was stressing her out.

"You decorated the house in homemade Chinese New Year things as your way of coping with the fact you didn't know how to help your friend."

The corridor they were standing in had been cleaned and decorated by her through the night back then.

"I remember being super confused, cos you were a little weirdo – but..." He shook his head, "Wow."

A half-smile on his face.

"Everything was homemade, but it looked incredibly – and it helped you," His point, back to firmness, "I remember you - even if you don't anymore."

MJ rubbed the spot he'd grabbed her.

"You spent your life trying to prove you were stable and in control, and it drove you insane," He stressed, "So you used art to give yourself a break. To lose control on the page so you could be steady for Stefan."

He pushed her chin up to make her look at him.

"The sketches? Of the house – and of us – us in clothes from the 1800s! It was you, processing," Damon paid more attention than she realised, "When you smashed that little necklace the first time, you made a lights display of broken glass."

She'd forgotten he'd seen that.

Ric had gone insane, and he'd come back to her apartment despite their previous fallout, and he'd seen her in her element. The non-magical one.

"You made an explosion of glass – I'm not an idiot!"

Her urge was to respond with 'debatable.'

"It wasn't even a metaphor," He called out, "It was literally what happened."

MJ blinked incredibly slowly.

"You made it to help you accept what had happened."

She hadn't even clicked that she'd unintentionally recreated her necklace smashing, just with different colours.

"And right now, you're doing whatever you do when you disappear," Damon had tried to follow her, and failed, "Then you head into town and paint on everything – and it's a mess, MJ."

She tried not to get offended.

"Sure, the stuff's good," He pulled a face, "It's you. Of course, it's good."

MJ glowered until,

"But it's messy and big and mismatched and half-finished."

When Bonnie had brought some of it up with her, she'd found one she'd dubbed as finished, so she'd brought MJ a congratulatory cake to try and lift her mood.

"None of them are done," Damon called out, "It's you."

"Please stop."

"It's got all your bright colours and unnecessary details in odd places," His voice was filled with reluctant fondness, "Which means I know, beneath all the..."

He gestured to her appearance; unbrushed hair, eye bags, and battered clothing she'd pulled out of closets.

"The real you. The you that gets things done is in there. And she's trying to get out."

MJ's skin felt like it was crawling, not liking having someone focus in on her.

"Because whatever the hell you're trying to do to control yourself isn't controlling you; it's killing you."

She was biting into her cheeks.

"Your head's been empty for months because your forcing yourself to be perfect!" He yelled, "You're not finishing anything because you're not letting yourself."

"It's not that simple!"

He smiled at the breakthrough, keeping the volume, "You're holding yourself back."

She didn't know what she was supposed to do.

"Finishing some graffiti won't fix anything," He went to grab at the bag on her shoulder, "Having a routine so you can fake living a life won't fix anything. What will, is practising magic and getting us home."

"I'm trying," MJ shoved past him, throat dry, the moment of emotion and raised volumes over.

She walked to the second floor, forcing him to continue yelling – not angrily, just to be heard since he wasn't giving her the satisfaction of following her.

"You're supposed to be the best MJ!"

It was meant to be encouraging.

"Not because you have all the answers or because you're perfect."

She'd been trying to make her final strokes perfect.

"But because you try everything!"

Best.

"Because you keep fighting. Even if you don't know how to – you figure it out."

But she couldn't.

"So get it together!"

The shallow breathes came through her whole body.

"Because if you're not gonna get it together, you might as well just be dead!"

MJ stilled.

"And you know what? You're too good at what you do, when you let yourself just do it, to be dead."

No shaking hands, forcing herself to focus on the full sentence, not just the part encouraging her worst instinct about herself. Damon wasn't telling her to kill herself. He wasn't telling her to kill herself. Hewasn'ttellinghertokillherself.

"That's who you are - and you can pretend it's not, but I remember."

He was trying to compliment her, but it felt oddly like a threat.

"And I won't let you forget."

MJ slammed Stefan's door shut behind her and screamed.

She'd soundproofed the place pretty early on, so Bonnie didn't hear her throwing up after the first time MJ had tried to eat dinner with them and failed miserably. She'd forced herself to join them for breakfast at least twice a week, to eat Damon's vampire pancakes and watch Bonnie do the crossword, but every other meal, she'd monitored herself.

She hated throwing up. She hated feeling like she'd ended up with an eating disorder – but her body was rejecting food. It wasn't her fault – it was the magic. And she didn't understand why it was happening, so she didn't want Bonnie hearing it and trying to help.

Screaming made the room crumble to pieces around her, only to be fixed a few moments later with the wave of a hand.

Doing the magic wasn't the problem; it was doing the right magic.

The perfect magic.

It was figuring out what the hell MJ had gotten the three of them into during the collapse and how she could get them out of it when she didn't trust her magic around people.

She didn't wanna hurt anybody else, especially not her friends.

...Damon...

Damon thought she needed to let go and 'just do it.'

Be the real her.

The real MJ had killed her brother.

The spirits had been screaming about the real her for years, and she'd been living a beautiful lie, convincing herself they were wrong, but they hadn't been. The real her was a monster. MJ couldn't let that person hurt Bonnie.

The problem was, no matter what MJ did to get her control back, none of it meant anything.

She didn't know what she was doing, and her brain wasn't even trying to figure it out.

It was just on pause.

A wake-up call.

WAKE UP.

"Might as well just be dead," She repeated the words, "...Might as well..."

Her hands shoved out as she screamed again, so sick of feeling like she was a walking disease.

That's what the smell was.

The way she felt like she smelt twenty-four-seven was her body telling her she was sick.

She was useless and awful, and – and – and how the hell was she supposed to help Bonnie when every hour she spent in their frozen version of Mystic Falls made her think of another reason she deserved to be dead.

One hundred and twenty days of magic training, and she couldn't feel any of it.

Her emotions were strong, but there was no magic, and that numbness was going to eat her alive.

MJ was already barely talking, barely eating, soon she'd stop completely, then she'd stop drinking water, or going to the toilet, then she'd stop getting out of bed, and then she'd just stop being. But Bonnie?

Bonnie would still be there.

MJ was pulling at her shirt, panting to try and keep herself breathing.

She needed to get out.

She couldn't look out at the Salvatore back garden any longer, all the lights in the room exploding and resetting, then exploding again, electricity racing across the wooden floors the spark against her shoes.

Out.

She opened the window with a thought, closing her eyes and feeling the cool breeze calm her down.

If she had to see one more tree enclosing her, she would burn the forest down.

Damon wanted her to wake up. To stop trying to be perfect and try everything, but trying everything would end with someone dead. Because it always ended with someone dead. Her life felt like a morgue, bodies pouring in and out, and she really couldn't cope with it anymore. 

MJ wanted to get away from the town that had been the place she'd seen dead body after dead body.

That was why she was painting it.

Painting gave her a break. Painting gave her a way to express the remnants of herself that were still deep inside of her, trying to see the blue skies behind the clouds. Painting the buildings meant she could pretend she wasn't actually in Mystic Falls, with only Bonnie and Damon, slowly losing her mind, will to live a distant memory, passing all the spots she'd seen dead bodies over the years.

Holding herself back.

Mystic Falls was holding her back.

It was making her miserable.

Away

She could breathe again.

Away.

'Painting as a metaphor for control.'

If she wanted to be in control, Damon was right; she didn't need to paint. That had never been her mantra, and she'd even spent time making fun of it as a mantra since creativity should never be thought of as something with strict rules or purpose.

She didn't need to paint Mystic Falls into a new town. She needed to go home.

In 1994, MJ had been two years old, her parents had been alive, and they'd lived in New Orleans, and they'd been happy. In 2011, she'd moved back, and every moment there had made her feel grounded in exactly who she was, her voice as the only one that mattered when it came to defining herself.

If she was going to get anywhere, she needed to go home.

~***~

"Hey, it's Stefan," Stefan's voicemail had become part of Caroline's new routine, "Leave a message."

She rubbed her neck, questioning why she was phoning him and trying not to look at her reflection on the diner table, judging her.

"Hey. It's me," Caroline always started the messages the same, "Just leaving another message about how today was not a good day."

Stefan was staring at his phone while he drunk a beer.

"Everyone drifted apart," She was part of that problem too, and she knew it, "It's like everyone's pretending they can get through this alone."

Elena was sitting in the dorm room with a shirt, Bonnie's shirt, holding it tight and smelling it to try and make herself feel better. She could hug it, and she could smell Bonnie's perfume, and she could let herself cry a little as she moved onto the bed her best friend used to sleep in.

"I think Elena's so scared to accept what happened that she's become a completely different person."

Tyler had switched to doing push-ups once he was alone.

Working out wasn't helping the way it used to.

When Mason had first shown up, he remembered them talking about the fact he'd been on three teams, and it hadn't been helping him control the anger then either. MJ had helped. Running in the forests with her, their dumb stick attacks that were never about actually hurting the other person. Going to the gym with someone who pushed him, but never pushed him too far.

"And if you ask me, Tyler's just hiding at Whitmore, pretending everything's fine. As if he can outrun his werewolf gene or something."

A long sigh.

"His phone background is still him and MJ, but I haven't heard him say her name since our trip to New Orleans. Like...he's accepted it. He can talk about it like he's fine, but if he actually says her name, he's gonna shatter."

Matt was in the Lockwood Mansion, clearing up the mess Jeremy had made.

"And Matt and Jeremy never leave Mystic Falls anymore."

And they couldn't force them to.

"There's an invisible wall standing between them and us, and nobody's doing anything about it," Caroline hated it, "Part of me wonders if they hope we never find a way back in."

Jeremy wasn't in the house.

He was in the woods, a bottle in his hand, walking and drinking, making his way to a spot he'd been visiting a lot. The tree stump shrine they'd made for Bonnie at her first funeral.

He'd been adding things to it, trying to work out if he needed to make one for MJ.

If that would help him.

He knew it wouldn't.

"Then there's me," Caroline was sitting in the diner she'd met Ric at that morning, "Just sitting in a diner on the border of the town, looking for a way to get our home back."

She poured another cup of coffee and fiddled with the handle.

"We just lost three of our closest friends," Caroline missed everyone a lot, "We need each other."

She opened her most recent witch read.

"We need to be together, Stefan, or pretty soon we're just gonna end up as pictures in a yearbook, in a drawer somewhere," She didn't want that, "And so, that is why I am not going to stop calling you until you pick up the phone and I hear your voice. And you tell me that you are going to help me fix it."

She made herself sound more determined than ever.

"Because I am not going to give up on us."

Unknown to Caroline, Stefan was crushing his phone in his hand to get it to stop ringing, while MJ was sneaking into the garage in an alternate version of the Salvatore House, climbing into his car to begin a drive to the place she called home.

Part of her wasn't ready to give up either, as much as most of her wanted to.

May 2012

"Svoboda Kai Epistrof Elefthería Katastrofí."

The Travellers in the town centre finished the last line of the spell, all feeling the rush as MJ's sacrificial wounds reopened. It was too much magic for them to handle, meaning people started to drop, but it was worth it.

Their curse was breaking.

It also didn't matter if they dropped. They weren't dying. The people they'd possessed were, which just meant more houses on the market once The Traveller's completely moved into Mystic Falls.

Damon was still with Markos in The Salvatore House, surrounded by the real Travellers, and as the hosts died, the spirits returned to their bodies, waking up around the vampire, completely outnumbering him. Another reason why Ryos and Markos hadn't been too bothered about Damon trying to make a mess of things.

A vampire was no threat to them.

"And what were you saying about this being your home?" Markos jeered, watching as blood started to collect on Damon's chest, "It seems Ryos has nearly finished his side of the arrangement."

Damon clutched at his chest, feeling the pain of the gunshot that had killed him the first time, "...Sabrina."

"Like I said," Markson smiled, "This spell will continue to unravel spirit magic as it spreads, which means you're not long for his world."

He was looking around at his people.

"As long as magic is flowing through our veins, the spell will not stop."

Markos thought the spell spreading meant Ryos had gotten the necklace off his sister.

"Ryos found a way to save her, but she clearly refused to cooperate."

The original spell would've happened a lot faster.

"So once your little witch had died, all of you will be removed permanently."

Markos gave Damon one last look.

"The sun's about to set," He noted, "Feel free to buy yourself a little time to say goodbyes. I mean, you can try and outrun the spell."

Smugness radiated off him.

"For a little while, anyway."

Damon steadied himself on the table,

"It'll take as long as it takes your friend to die, so pray she's a fighter."

"You need her to die?" He smiled, "Your spells gonna fail."

Markos didn't like the shift in attitude.

"See, you're new around here, Mark-kose," Damon took in the place he'd lived for over a century, "She's Mira Jung."

The name carried a certain amount of power nowadays.

"She survives."

After all the disagreements, the pair may never fully trust each other, Damon knew she would win when it came to life and death.

a/n: More TO characters next chapter
Sorry I've been useless at responding to comments recently <3

Fun fact; that half-flashback of Markos/Damon was actually a cut scene.
I have a doc of deleted scenes, and wanted to include it here since their relationship was key in this chapter.

I don't like Damon, but he and MJ have had good moments. End S1/mid-S2 TVD was their peak.