After Kai crashes Jo’s wedding and turns himself into a vampire-witch heretic, he and Bonnie are due for a final stand. Their agendas, however, clash in unexpected ways. / AU season 6 finale AU season 7, given how long it grows as it unravels. The story came alive and took over, galloping beyond our control. Enjoy the ride! – (written by @KaiJest and @NaturesParamour)
Happy Bonkai Anniversary! One of my favorite things about this wonderful fandom, is how many great writers we have that can fix all the shitty choices the writers made in S6 (and the show as a whole, lol). But there are a lot of excellent, quality fics that seem to go unnoticed or don’t get the amount of appreciation they deserve, which then discourages these writers from perhaps writing more stories or finishing their WIPs. And fandoms + fics are like Tinkerbell + applause: Fandoms need fics to live. And this might be a little selfish of me, but bonkai fics are like crack to me and I don’t want this supply to ever end, because I need these fics in my life.
With that said, here are some of my favorite one shots and WIPs that deserve more appreciation! Of course there are way more stories out there that are also wonderful and that tend to go unnoticed. This is just the tip of the iceberg. 🙂
rated M, AU, awesome because they’re from different planets and they’re different species and enemies and Kai is Bonnie’s hot hot prisoner and there’s a lot of mutual thirst!
Rated T, fluffy and cute and really funny but still very much in character. Bonkai with a side of Baroline! One of my all-time favorites, but it’s so slept on and it shouldn’t be because it’s amazing.
The first chapter was posted yesterday and it’s so good! I beta’ed this for the writer in question and I can’t say too much about it because spoilers, but it’s fantastic. Post-6×22, rated M. Does so much justice to Bonnie herself, both Bonnie and Kai are very in character, awesome Baroline friendship, dark and twisted, heretic Kai, AND with a really intriguing plot.
4 chapters in, Bonnie escaped from the prison world much earlier than in canon, pre-merge Kai, awesome chemistry between bonkai and it’s a very fun read!
This deserves way more love! Rated M, 3 chapters in, it’s really well written and the story as a whole is very interesting. Witch hunters, bonkai teaming up, fun stuff and a lot of potential for a truly epic story.
Sequel to The Invitation Barrier , which is mandatory for anyone who enters this fandom, tbh. Post-6×22, Bonnie and Kai in a new prison world and it’s so, so good. Both are completely in character, it’s hilarious and heartbreaking and so wonderfully written, like actual word porn.
This fic is so slept on! It’s 2 chapters in but it’s already showing so much potential. Rated M, post-6×22, takes the events from season 7 but way better and this writer has a really original way of including Kai. So well written and truly fantastic!
If you read a story that you liked, review it. Leave kudos on Ao3. Even a one word review saying nothing more than “great” helps. Even anonymously if you don’t want to make an account or don’t want the commitment of having to review every single chapter. Maybe drop a review saying that you are *going* to read it when it’s finished. Heck, drop a positive, general review for a story you’re not even reading tbh.
I know I’ve been on my Kai Parker deserved better rant already, but this is more focused just on Bonnie x Kai, and how people seem to forget that Bonnie killed Kai first. As I bring it up, I already know many people won’t like hearing this, but she’s not perfect, and imo that was her worst move. Yes, he was not at the point of his development arc so he probably would’ve interfered with his family on his own terms, but when Bonnie realized he was no use, she impaled and killed him, thinking he’d be dead forever, which was drastic at the time considering they were happy to all go home as friends and move on, but NO. If they had left peacefully it would’ve essentially avoided the whole biggest conflict of the season, and Kai wouldn’t have gone after Bonnie again. I know people all like to blame him for everything, but he hadn’t tried any of that shit until after she tried to literally murder him. Yeah, he’d spiked Damon’s bourbon and not so nicely proved his power, but he could’ve had them dead at any second and he chose not to do that. That’s why, when Kai went to hurt her later, I sort of thought ‘well fair enough considering to him it was that or get killed by her again.’ Also with nobody calling out that she locked post merge Kai up alone again when she knows he’d rather die, not to teach him a lesson and come back or anything, to make him suffer forever when not a single person could forgive Kai, who at this point meant no harm and was an actual stray pup, even though everyone forgave damon, klaus, and enzo for the far worse things they did. I’m not saying what he did to her was okay, because it wasn’t, but he is the one who tried bringing her back from the pw and helped save her with his magic which got her out, which nobody conveniently mentioned to her, she didn’t even give him a chance before she made up her mind about him, and you’re telling me not one person gave a shit when she left him bleeding out and alone?! I know Kai made the joke about Elena forgiving Damon but not him, but as usual, HE WASN’T WRONG, and she was ‘so selfless and kind,’ yet she only forgave everyone except Kai, who didn’t even need her love to not be a killing machine unlike Damon, mhmm? Honestly, by the end of that season I was just like, you know what bitch, fuck this, ya’ll should’ve seen that wedding massacre coming you lot of selfish assholes, good for Kai for teaching you a lesson, even though Kai’s empathy and emotion vanishing with no explanation was another plot hole. But all of this, everything that came after, was started by Bonnie, and that’s a fact. I say this as someone who feels like Bonkai was such wasted potential and poor + illogical writing that was done to prevent any chance of them happening, even though it could’ve been a damn good relationship if merge Kai got even one chance to show his growth before Plague threw him out. Kai in the finale says, “so I guess this is kind of all your fault,” and you know what, if you trace that back to everyone neglecting him, her stabbing him and really thinking that hot piece of ass wouldn’t get revenge, and then way at the start of their story when she chose to kill him, it kind of is.
Actually, the writing is far more to blame here than Bonnie. Don’t get me wrong, the way she was written (in season 6 especially) is to not only hurt Kai, but also namely herself in almost every possible way and this is merely due to TVD’s longstanding racist and sexist portrayal of Bonnie Bennett.
This becomes increasingly clear as the season progressed and there were many areas in the plot where her actions and Kai’s made very little sense, if any, and were just done so then either Bonnie is hurt/isolated or Kai is killed off/isolated or both. People don’t seem to realize how much bias a writer can skew into the narrative and how that can affect the audience views on the show even if it contradicts something obvious in canon (this is notoriously true in the TVD fandom where canon is so often ignored even by the own writers).
Your frustration is misplaced – Kai was mostly killed off because Plec and Co. wouldn’t want another character overshadowing the Salvatores and both his and Bonnie’s characters were further regressed because Bonnie is always confined to be the magical negro who only saves her friends and who THEY deem are also worthy – we should be mad about the illogical writing that tried to justify Bonnie’s almost irrational hate for Kai than be mad at her when even her character was fucked up again for NO reason. They did this on purpose to hinder both of their characters and their trajectory together, because of course, these two couldn’t develop together, along with Kai’s coven, family, and whatever more stories that can be told with having more witches, nah, that’s too boring. /sarcasm
Kai actually started things by siphoning Bonnie (who the fuck cares about what he did to Damon LOL) and while his abusive coven and family contributed to how sociopathic he got, it’s too much to act like he couldn’t help himself to kill just because of his situation. TBH, everything after 1907 was so OOC, even after being left to a cold, dreary past filled with heretics who later fed/attacked him, it still seemed random as hell. Even if he ‘snapped’, Kai was acting like his old pre-merge self not like a deranged/distraught post-merge him who I imagine to be suffering from his still relatively new emotions and his old self surfacing, not whatever the fuck we actually saw. Like…his actions make no sense – coming after Delena, killing himself to be a vampire, killing his sister, if he did snap, they didn’t really show it.
Does anyone act like Bonnie is perfect? Hell, the show takes any chance it gets to shit on her constantly. It’s almost like she has no real autonomy unless when she has to save herself and the rest of the assholes. Think about it – every time she killed or stabbed or tried to trap Kai, it was only done to hurt her. FFS, in the beginning when she finally got her magic back (thanks to Kai LOL), she’s the strongest of the three in the prison world. But apparently she’s weak with Kai? Kai is formidable, but he was still a magicless siphon, there’s no reason to think he could really kill her even if he didn’t have a crush on her. Or when Bonnie rather stay in the prison world with him instead of both leaving (and Damon of all people is let out) – this is not a good character portrayal because Bonnie isn’t normally a short-sighted or irrational person….just only when it hurts her. Anyone who’s at least half paying attention can see Kai would only help Bonnie’s storylines and that’s why they were both taken out (Kai killed while Bonnie kicked down again).
when you wake up in the morning and your first thought is ‘what would’ve been kai’s fate/life if damon hadn’t done what he did in 6.22 ? would he have found a way to redeem himself with bonnie ? would’ve bonkai happened or maybe he would’ve fallen for one of the heretics ? would he have become an ally to the gang at some point ?’
i still think liv and jo should’ve been turned into vampires. i am still upset with damon for so many reasons, one of which being how selfish he was – his best friend was there crying out for help and damon couldn’t spare a few vamp seconds to help jo ? really ? season 7 would’ve been so epic if kai was there … if liv had stayed but … no 😢😦
I think more about if Kai had been in character in 6×22 Damon never would have been in a position to kill Kai because as mad as I am that they killed off Kai I will never be mad at Damon for choosing Bonnie. I’ll be mad at Damon for a looooot of things but never for choosing Bonnie without a second thought.
But back to Kai in 6×22. Like I said he’s not in character and not just because the writers threw the whole empathy plot out because he’s even out of character for his sociopathic self. I mean seriously, you’re telling me the guy who dreamed about nothing but becoming the Gemini coven leader and destroying them for 18 years would just give that up. He got the destroying his coven part but giving up Gemini leader to become a heretic? That’s quite a downgrade and he knows it. That’s not something sociopathic Kai would do. Kai always wins and what he did at the wedding, no one wins, not even him.
Then there’s who his revenge plot targets. Everyone but Bonnie. Sure she’s becomes a victim of the things he does, but her role in his revenge plot is mostly as an afterthought, collateral damage. He even says “I guess this is all your fault”. I guess? He makes it very clear who he’s disappointed with when he’s left in the 1903 PW. He stares at Bonnie, calls out for her, she is the one he feels betrayed by, so when he plots his revenge logically she would be his main target. Not Damon, not Jo and her twins, and definitely not his coven who should have been miles away from his mind because his issue wasn’t them not giving him a chance it was Bonnie not giving him one. I would get it if he did all that a little bit if he did all that to put all their deaths on Bonnie’s conscience, but he makes it very clear that it’s not with I guess because as shown she’s an afterthought in his plans, the pawn, a piece he moves around for the bigger picture which isn’t her, it’s Damon of all people? Reminds me how in 8×13, when they wasted Kai by pairing him with Damon, and Damon tried to get Kai to help him with Elena so that he could be redeemed with him. Why would Kai care about anything having to do with Damon? He’s never cared about him before. Kai’s interest lied soley with Bonnie and his family. Damon was always the true afterthought when it came to Kai just someone he had to endure when he got in the way. So targeting Damon for revenge makes little to no sense (it even made no sense in 6×11 but I let it slide for the information we learn about him and of course him mentioning Bonnie when there’s no reason to but that he wanted to).
The biggest issue is the throwing out of the empathy plot. When we first see him, the real him, after they leave him in the PW with all the bite marks my first thought was, well my poor baby what have they done to you, but my second thought was that he would come back psychologically scarred and pissed at Bonnie and we get neither. With empathy he has the emotional capacity to truly be affected by what the heretics did to him to the point that he should have had some real PTSD, and been deranged during the finale but we don’t get that. Murdering Jo, her twins, and his entire family was extreme but not deranged by his standards. In fact he kills them for the exact same reasons he killed his siblings 18 years before, to make a point. Did I expect him to come back changed? Yes. Did I expect him to come back with his character completely regressed? No, a new layer should have been added, everything that built his character shouldn’t have been just taken away. And that’s the real issue, Plec & Dries didn’t know the character, they spent most if the season on other characters and left him to other writers to the point that when he came back in the finale the wrote him essentially like Enzo—the character that does whatever the script says and not what’s consistent with his character. In one fall swoop the ruined an entire season’s worth of development and all because they didn’t care about his character they just wanted him out of the way so Damon could take his place back in the spotlight that Kai had taken away.
To sum up because I’ve rambled too much, 6×22 was a mess for Kai’s character all around and I’m more made at that and the writers for doing that than I am at the fact that Damon killed Kai because the real Kai would have never been in such a position had Plec known how to do her job and the character.
Not going to tag anyone bc I am super sleepy atm. Sorry I got so distracted and posted late (again)! I had a surprise visitor. Hopefully this is smutty/creepy enough to make up for that until Friday.
POC of TVD 