[fic] Four Times Katherine "Helped" Damon, and One Time She Really Helped Him
Title: Four Times Katherine "Helped" Damon, and One Time She Really Helped Him
Author: badboy_fangirl
Pairings: Damon/Katherine; Damon/Elena (vague Stefan/Katherine)
Word Count: ~3400
Rating/Warnings: R (for sex & a bit of violence)
Spoilers: Everything through 3x04 "Disturbing Behavior" and spoilers from the Canadian promo of 3x05 "The Reckoning."
Summary: Um...four times Damon and Katherine have sex and one time they don't.
Author's notes: Because of lit_chick08, because she's awesome. These were some alternative titles that you should all be privy to: 1. That Just Happened (or Why Two Hot Messes in One Small Vehicle Never Ends Well); 2. Love is For Suckers (And Other Bits of Terrible Advice from Katherine Pierce); 3. The Hot Mess Express. They are all applicable.
I.
Katherine knows she seducing him, little bit by little bit.
She also knows he's all torn up about Elena for some inexplicable reason that he will not share, despite her many needling questions.
The twenty mile marker: I want to know why you thought Elena was coming by to apologize. What did you lovebirds quarrel about?
As they leave the commonwealth of Virginia: Come on, Damon, maybe I can help. Tell me, did she try to tame the wild beast, and it just didn't work?
And then she's just mean, for the hell of it five miles into Tennessee: Just can't knock Stefan out of her head, can you?
His eyes swing over to her then and she has one of those breathless moments where their striking impact somehow surprises her. She'd really always had a weakness for the emotion that blazed out of his face; that's why she'd gotten caught up in two Salvatores in 1864; it was why she still hasn't really let either of them go in present time.
They stop for gas, and then he reaches across the seat, grabbing her head and pressing his mouth to hers. It's the same, and different at the same time; his tongue is a gentle marauder, his fingers tight against her skull. Her pants are shimmied off rather quickly and then she's sprawled across his lap in the front seat. It's only been six hours since they left Mystic Falls, but she can feel him trying to fuck away whatever Elena left on him, whatever he thinks she should apologize for. He yanks her shirt up and drags her bra down, burying his nose between her breasts. He manages to leave open-mouthed heat across her skin without actually ever kissing her or rolling a nipple between his teeth. It's vaguely dissatisfying.
He comes first, and with a ragged groan he opens his eyes and jerks his head back to look into her face. Then he wets the end of his thumb with his tongue and reaches between them, rubbing her clit in such a way that she knows he never forgot anything about her.
(It's disconcerting that he makes her feel like a nameless body and treasured at the same time.)
She grits his name out between clenched teeth as she writhes against his hand. Resting her forehead on his shoulder, she feels him shrug when he asks, "Been a while, huh?" She assumes he means that she hasn't gotten any lately, and it's sharp on her tongue to remind him who had the shortest show here.
Orgasm pliant instead, she just murmurs against his neck, inside the collar of his shirt, "For you too?"
A burst of laughter expels from his chest as he pushes her off of him. "Not nearly long enough," he mutters.
She knows he wishes he'd never given in. But she's never really cared what he felt. "Consider it a favor," she snarks, trailing a finger over his limp dick.
His jaw tightens and he knocks her hand away. After he zips up, he starts the car and they drive in silence.
II.
Somewhere between Tennessee and Arkansas, he says, "She's mad at me because I'm not Stefan." He pauses briefly and then finishes, "And we both know I'll never be him."
"We both know?" Katherine asks, gesturing between her body and his. "Or you both know?" She waves her hand to indicate Elena somewhere far behind them.
Damon rolls his eyes, but keeps his gaze firmly on the road. Katherine's not sure why he's decided to open up, but it makes her generous. "She wants you to be a good vampire boy, right?"
"She wants me to not be who I am; she's always wanted that."
"Then why do you want her?" Katherine challenges.
"I don't know," he replies archly. "Why did you want Stefan even though you had to compel him not to be afraid of you?"
Katherine contemplates her shoeless feet that she propped up on the dash in front of her. "I guess I'm suspicious of anything that comes too easily."
Damon snorts. "Oh, how very cryptic. Couldn't trust a sure thing. Didn't think I was serious when I watched you kill people and then kissed their blood off your mouth? I must have been faking it."
"God, Damon, you're such a drama queen. Okay, look, I'll be straight with you, because you're all emo and pitiful."
His arm snaps out and grabs at her throat. Because she's slouched down in the seat with her feet up on the dash, he gets her at just the right angle so that she can't move and his fingers are cutting into her neck painfully. She gasps and tries to drag his arm down. "I don't need your pity. Just shut the fuck up," he spits.
When he finally loosens his hold on her, she stays quiet, not because she can't overpower him but because for the first time, she realizes cruelty isn't bringing her any entertainment.
She actually feels sorry for him. (Not because she understands what it's like to love and not be loved in return.)
She'd been unkind for a reason before; it had served as a distraction as she tried to find the moonstone and get the upper hand once and for all with Klaus. Now, here she is with the one thing Klaus wants most in the world tucked safely in her pocket, and a set of witches at her disposal that she and Damon are traveling towards.
There's no reason to pull the other, and at this point, Katherine is, at the very least, efficient.
When they stop for the night at an out-of-the-way motel on the Arkansas border, she tells Damon he can have the bathroom first if he wants it.
Once he's in the shower, she slinks in and joins him, kneeling before him in the only act of submission she enjoys.
III.
They suffer a set-back in Texas three days later.
(It's not so much a set-back as it is a diversion.)
After stopping at a bar that Katherine frequented some fifty years earlier, she learns that the family she's seeking has moved north to Iowa. Damon's annoyed that they're seven hundred miles away from where they need to be. "Have you got something to rush home too?" she snaps as he continues to bitch about it.
"No, Katherine," he retorts. "I've just had it up to here--" he throws his hand up over his head to show how high up is-- "with you and would like this trip to be over sooner rather than later."
For some reason, it pisses her off that he wants to pretend like he's not having at least sort of a good time and she attacks him. They have a knock down drag out in the bar, virtually destroying every piece of furniture (too many wooden legs are broken off from stools in an attempt to stake each other) and when some people get caught in the crossfire, Damon doesn't even miss a beat, he just grabs the limp body of a man who got hurled into a mirror that shattered all over him, causing head wounds to bleed profusely, and feeds until the guy's dead.
Before she even knows what they're about they've killed all seven people in the place (drunks who shouldn't be in a bar at eleven o'clock in the morning anyway) and they're both sitting around like gluttons on a Feast Day.
She smirks as Damon sighs out in pleasure, tipping his head back against the wall he's leaned up on. "This isn't my normal MO," she says, thinking of Stefan. It's so odd how even bad Stefan still feels like something he's playing at, not something he truly is. This? With Damon? Though a total anomaly, is somehow fitting.
They both want something they aren't likely to get, and so an embrace of how truly awful they could be is a diversion in the middle of an unanswerable question.
Katherine has no doubt that getting a witch to solve the mystery of the pretty little locket will put them at an advantage over Klaus--maybe even to the point of finally having the upper hand and being able to end all the madness.
But then what? Then Stefan can come home, get his shit together, and live happily ever after with the Doppelganger. At least until Elena starts to look too old for him. "Any suggestions on how to cover this up?" she asks, shaking the probability of Stefan and Elena from her mind.
Damon heaves himself up from the floor of the bar, goes out to the trunk of his car, and finds a gas can. They leave the bar in their rearview, flames leaping into the clear, blue sky.
Then he takes her to another, nicer hotel, and fucks her until neither of them can move.
They lose days there, just outside of Dallas, but neither of them cares to discuss that. The normal focus that both of them exude escapes them, and for a week or so Katherine almost forgets this isn't what she wanted. Endless days of blood, booze, sex, and Damon's eyes.
It's somehow better between them when they both have other people they want. Being each other's second choices evens the playing field, and the walls come down.
They're lying in bed, his head on her stomach, her fingers playing with his hair when he says, "You know what I could never switch off? I could shut down all the rest of it, kill indiscriminately, torture my brother every chance I got, especially during his "good" years, but the sense of responsibility never leaves. There were times I just wanted to forget about you--just go on with my life, but then I'd imagine you in the tomb, desiccating, and I couldn't. I had to do whatever I had to do to get you out. Sure, there were selfish motives there, but it was really more about not being able to leave you there, helpless.
"That's what this is. Elena pisses me off. She's never going to love me, so what's the point? I should just walk away, never look back. But, no. I feel fucking obligated. I can't let Klaus find her, I can't let Klaus kill her. I can't let her suffer. So here I am, trying to do it anyway. But you know, we have to finish this. You've been running for five hundred years, Katherine. It's time to end it once and for all."
She doesn't disagree with anything he's said, but at the same time, she wishes, just like he does, that this was enough. That together, they could be satisfied. She wouldn't call it guilt, but some kind of feeling starts to well up within her when she contemplates all his years of pining, of devotion.
(She knows she doesn't deserve him anyway, so really it's as it should be.)
She trails her fingers across his forehead. "Okay. Let's go to Iowa."
IV.
The witches, allies Katherine made during the 60s and the Civil Rights movement, welcome her without question as to how she found them. They weren't hiding from her, and she's legendary in their family because of some of the wrongs she made right for their now deceased grandparents.
Damon just shakes his head in wonderment and says nothing to her. It's all right though because Katherine can see the begrudging respect in his eyes and it's enough to know he understands that sometimes she too is possessed by that obligation factor. (It's just much rarer than his, and always, always, always benefits her somewhere down the line.)
They examine Elena's necklace and trace the magic in it back more than one thousand years. They're able to contact someone who calls herself the Original Witch and Katherine nods. "That's who we needed to hear from," she whispers to Damon.
The solution to kill Klaus is relatively simple. They just need a witch or two to power the channeled energy in the locket. When it is released it will cause the same vulnerability to Klaus that he suffered when the curse was broken on the moonstone.
"Ah," Damon says. "It was a back-up. God, those witches sure knew Klaus's type well, didn't they? Loop hole after loop hole. The guy has no idea how the whole supernatural world has been conspiring against him for centuries."
Katherine smiles. "Lucky for us--this information is priceless, Damon."
He returns her expression of satisfaction and his hand pats hers. The witches invite them to stay in their spare bedroom for the night and host an impromptu dinner party to celebrate Katherine's presence.
When the evening draws to a close, she and Damon go to their room and he embraces her, gently. For the first time since they started out on their little adventure, he touches her with something absent of volatile energy. He takes her lazily, and it's in the final mind-blowing moments that Katherine reads it properly.
He's finally saying goodbye.
V.
When they return to Mystic Falls, Caroline is waiting for them at the Boarding House. She rants and raves about what an ass Damon is to make a meal out of her father and then leave town without a word. Katherine leaves them to fight it out, completely disinterested in whatever the blonde's drama is. She goes to Damon's room to shower, because they've been driving for eighteen hours straight and she feels gross.
By the time she gets out, the house is quiet, and though if she listens hard she can hear some human heartbeat nearby, she knows Damon and Caroline aren't there anymore.
She walks into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, to dig through her suitcase for clean underwear.
"What are you doing here?" Elena demands, and Katherine looks up in surprise. Her mirror image stands in the open doorway of Damon's room, an air of possession in her tone.
Katherine smiles, the predator raising its ugly head within her chest. She wants so much to torture this girl, this simple, human girl, who managed to capture hearts with Katherine's face, but held on to them for no perceivable reason.
She just doesn't get it, how Stefan and Damon could love Elena so deeply, so unconditionally. Because to understand that is to finally truly comprehend how they could never have really loved Katherine. Katherine's good at compartmentalizing, so she just puts Elena into some unlabeled box of conundrum. The Salvatores who had silently waged war on each other because of Katherine Pierce could not be the same boys who worshiped at the altar of Elena Gilbert. It's much easier to consider that their transition to vampire had taken away all the things about them that had made them appealing to her, so she does that, and she tells herself she's only in this to kill Klaus once and for all.
(Stefan Salvatore was not enough to hold her in 1864, and he never will be.)
And now, here she is, the winsome wannabe to Katherine's complete awesomeness, and she wants to know what Katherine's doing naked, in Damon's room. "Showering?" she says with a lilt as though she's asking a question.
Elena glares and folds her arms over her chest. "You need to stay away from Damon," she says.
"Why? Don't you think it's up to Damon whether or not I need to stay away from him? And trust me, he hasn't wanted me far away at all. He's wanted me up close, and personal."
"He's not rational when it comes to you," Elena states, moving into the room a bit.
Katherine laughs, caught by surprise at this accurate reading. "Honey, he's not rational about anything, so don't try to blame this all on me. What? Were you worried he'd run off with me, permanently? You should know better than that. We were gathering important information that will probably preserve your life, and then you can just go back to under-appreciating him and he'll still follow you around like a lovesick puppy. He can't help it; it's a habit he acquired a long time ago for a different, more superior woman, but he's transferred all that to you now, whether you deserve it or not."
She watches while Elena swells up, anger making her face flush red and her hand trembles as she stretches it out towards Katherine. "If anyone didn't deserve his love, it's you."
Hearing that from Elena's mouth pisses Katherine off more than she could have banked on. Across the room in a flash, she pins the girl to the door jamb, her hand tight around Elena's throat. "I wouldn't judge so harshly if I were you, since you're currently repeating history. What?" she asks when Elena's eyes pop in agitation. (She can't speak, not with Katherine's fingers jammed into her vocal chords.) "You think Damon will recover just fine when Stefan comes home and you go back to him? He fought with his brother for 145 years over me; he'll fight at least half that long for you."
Because she's so focused on her own likeness and the temptation to suffocate the life right out of Elena's body is starting to overtake her, she doesn't see or hear Damon until he's upon them, and he sends Katherine sprawling back into his bedroom. Her towel comes loose as she flies through the air, so she just smiles sensually a moment later as she gets to her feet, naked. "I guess she's probably actually here to see you," she says to Damon as Elena clutches at her throat, gasping for air.
Damon doesn't even look at her, though, his attention completely focused on the coughing, gagging girl in front of him. Katherine grabs the towel from the floor, her clothes from the suitcase, and saunters back to the bathroom. She assumes she'll hear some kind of crazy, caring exchange of are you alright? and yes, of course, I am, are you alright? but instead, they start screaming at each other, and from the sounds of things, Elena punctuates many of her accusations with well-placed punches.
That's when Katherine knows. She just put them over the hump, whatever was holding back their silly little love affair died a long but silent death in the thirteen days since she and Damon left Mystic Falls. (Goodbye Stefan, for real, this time.)
"What the hell were you thinking, leaving town with her?!"
"I've already had this fight with Caroline. I get it, you almost died, I wasn't around to save everyone from the reality of my monster of a brother, and that's somehow my fault!"
"It's Katherine, Damon! Who knows what she might have done to you, and none of us knew where you were!"
"What do you care what I do? Last time I talked to you, you were ready to let Bill Forbes poison the water supply!"
"Oh. My. God! You know I care! Why do I have to say it over and over?"
"You don't! As a matter of fact, I'd prefer you shut the hell up about it! Start showing you care instead of blabbing about it!"
"Fine! You can't have an alliance with Katherine; not if you're going to be around me."
"Do not even start with that bullshit again. You're never going to be able to control me."
"So, you're sleeping with her?"
"Excuse me?"
"Are you sleeping with her?!"
"How is that any of your business?"
"So what, you're together now? I'm not the only one who isn't going to put up with her being around all the time!"
"Are you kidding me? What the hell is this, Elena? Are you mad at me because you almost died and I missed it, or because you think I've got a girlfriend?"
"She's not a girlfriend! She's Katherine!"
Now fully dressed, Katherine comes back out of the bathroom and walks across the room. They are still standing in the doorway, and there is enough heat to burn the whole place down, but they're just staring at one another, chests heaving. She slides between them, causing them each to take a step back. "Pardon me," she says with a chuckle. "You should just do it; get it over with," she calls over her shoulder as she goes down the hall.
She skips down the stairs and out the front door. She needs to find Bonnie and get this whole Kill Klaus operation under way.
Call her crazy, but maybe, just once, she wants to see Damon get the girl.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Pairings: Damon/Katherine; Damon/Elena (vague Stefan/Katherine)
Word Count: ~3400
Rating/Warnings: R (for sex & a bit of violence)
Spoilers: Everything through 3x04 "Disturbing Behavior" and spoilers from the Canadian promo of 3x05 "The Reckoning."
Summary: Um...four times Damon and Katherine have sex and one time they don't.
Author's notes: Because of lit_chick08, because she's awesome. These were some alternative titles that you should all be privy to: 1. That Just Happened (or Why Two Hot Messes in One Small Vehicle Never Ends Well); 2. Love is For Suckers (And Other Bits of Terrible Advice from Katherine Pierce); 3. The Hot Mess Express. They are all applicable.
I.
Katherine knows she seducing him, little bit by little bit.
She also knows he's all torn up about Elena for some inexplicable reason that he will not share, despite her many needling questions.
The twenty mile marker: I want to know why you thought Elena was coming by to apologize. What did you lovebirds quarrel about?
As they leave the commonwealth of Virginia: Come on, Damon, maybe I can help. Tell me, did she try to tame the wild beast, and it just didn't work?
And then she's just mean, for the hell of it five miles into Tennessee: Just can't knock Stefan out of her head, can you?
His eyes swing over to her then and she has one of those breathless moments where their striking impact somehow surprises her. She'd really always had a weakness for the emotion that blazed out of his face; that's why she'd gotten caught up in two Salvatores in 1864; it was why she still hasn't really let either of them go in present time.
They stop for gas, and then he reaches across the seat, grabbing her head and pressing his mouth to hers. It's the same, and different at the same time; his tongue is a gentle marauder, his fingers tight against her skull. Her pants are shimmied off rather quickly and then she's sprawled across his lap in the front seat. It's only been six hours since they left Mystic Falls, but she can feel him trying to fuck away whatever Elena left on him, whatever he thinks she should apologize for. He yanks her shirt up and drags her bra down, burying his nose between her breasts. He manages to leave open-mouthed heat across her skin without actually ever kissing her or rolling a nipple between his teeth. It's vaguely dissatisfying.
He comes first, and with a ragged groan he opens his eyes and jerks his head back to look into her face. Then he wets the end of his thumb with his tongue and reaches between them, rubbing her clit in such a way that she knows he never forgot anything about her.
(It's disconcerting that he makes her feel like a nameless body and treasured at the same time.)
She grits his name out between clenched teeth as she writhes against his hand. Resting her forehead on his shoulder, she feels him shrug when he asks, "Been a while, huh?" She assumes he means that she hasn't gotten any lately, and it's sharp on her tongue to remind him who had the shortest show here.
Orgasm pliant instead, she just murmurs against his neck, inside the collar of his shirt, "For you too?"
A burst of laughter expels from his chest as he pushes her off of him. "Not nearly long enough," he mutters.
She knows he wishes he'd never given in. But she's never really cared what he felt. "Consider it a favor," she snarks, trailing a finger over his limp dick.
His jaw tightens and he knocks her hand away. After he zips up, he starts the car and they drive in silence.
II.
Somewhere between Tennessee and Arkansas, he says, "She's mad at me because I'm not Stefan." He pauses briefly and then finishes, "And we both know I'll never be him."
"We both know?" Katherine asks, gesturing between her body and his. "Or you both know?" She waves her hand to indicate Elena somewhere far behind them.
Damon rolls his eyes, but keeps his gaze firmly on the road. Katherine's not sure why he's decided to open up, but it makes her generous. "She wants you to be a good vampire boy, right?"
"She wants me to not be who I am; she's always wanted that."
"Then why do you want her?" Katherine challenges.
"I don't know," he replies archly. "Why did you want Stefan even though you had to compel him not to be afraid of you?"
Katherine contemplates her shoeless feet that she propped up on the dash in front of her. "I guess I'm suspicious of anything that comes too easily."
Damon snorts. "Oh, how very cryptic. Couldn't trust a sure thing. Didn't think I was serious when I watched you kill people and then kissed their blood off your mouth? I must have been faking it."
"God, Damon, you're such a drama queen. Okay, look, I'll be straight with you, because you're all emo and pitiful."
His arm snaps out and grabs at her throat. Because she's slouched down in the seat with her feet up on the dash, he gets her at just the right angle so that she can't move and his fingers are cutting into her neck painfully. She gasps and tries to drag his arm down. "I don't need your pity. Just shut the fuck up," he spits.
When he finally loosens his hold on her, she stays quiet, not because she can't overpower him but because for the first time, she realizes cruelty isn't bringing her any entertainment.
She actually feels sorry for him. (Not because she understands what it's like to love and not be loved in return.)
She'd been unkind for a reason before; it had served as a distraction as she tried to find the moonstone and get the upper hand once and for all with Klaus. Now, here she is with the one thing Klaus wants most in the world tucked safely in her pocket, and a set of witches at her disposal that she and Damon are traveling towards.
There's no reason to pull the other, and at this point, Katherine is, at the very least, efficient.
When they stop for the night at an out-of-the-way motel on the Arkansas border, she tells Damon he can have the bathroom first if he wants it.
Once he's in the shower, she slinks in and joins him, kneeling before him in the only act of submission she enjoys.
III.
They suffer a set-back in Texas three days later.
(It's not so much a set-back as it is a diversion.)
After stopping at a bar that Katherine frequented some fifty years earlier, she learns that the family she's seeking has moved north to Iowa. Damon's annoyed that they're seven hundred miles away from where they need to be. "Have you got something to rush home too?" she snaps as he continues to bitch about it.
"No, Katherine," he retorts. "I've just had it up to here--" he throws his hand up over his head to show how high up is-- "with you and would like this trip to be over sooner rather than later."
For some reason, it pisses her off that he wants to pretend like he's not having at least sort of a good time and she attacks him. They have a knock down drag out in the bar, virtually destroying every piece of furniture (too many wooden legs are broken off from stools in an attempt to stake each other) and when some people get caught in the crossfire, Damon doesn't even miss a beat, he just grabs the limp body of a man who got hurled into a mirror that shattered all over him, causing head wounds to bleed profusely, and feeds until the guy's dead.
Before she even knows what they're about they've killed all seven people in the place (drunks who shouldn't be in a bar at eleven o'clock in the morning anyway) and they're both sitting around like gluttons on a Feast Day.
She smirks as Damon sighs out in pleasure, tipping his head back against the wall he's leaned up on. "This isn't my normal MO," she says, thinking of Stefan. It's so odd how even bad Stefan still feels like something he's playing at, not something he truly is. This? With Damon? Though a total anomaly, is somehow fitting.
They both want something they aren't likely to get, and so an embrace of how truly awful they could be is a diversion in the middle of an unanswerable question.
Katherine has no doubt that getting a witch to solve the mystery of the pretty little locket will put them at an advantage over Klaus--maybe even to the point of finally having the upper hand and being able to end all the madness.
But then what? Then Stefan can come home, get his shit together, and live happily ever after with the Doppelganger. At least until Elena starts to look too old for him. "Any suggestions on how to cover this up?" she asks, shaking the probability of Stefan and Elena from her mind.
Damon heaves himself up from the floor of the bar, goes out to the trunk of his car, and finds a gas can. They leave the bar in their rearview, flames leaping into the clear, blue sky.
Then he takes her to another, nicer hotel, and fucks her until neither of them can move.
They lose days there, just outside of Dallas, but neither of them cares to discuss that. The normal focus that both of them exude escapes them, and for a week or so Katherine almost forgets this isn't what she wanted. Endless days of blood, booze, sex, and Damon's eyes.
It's somehow better between them when they both have other people they want. Being each other's second choices evens the playing field, and the walls come down.
They're lying in bed, his head on her stomach, her fingers playing with his hair when he says, "You know what I could never switch off? I could shut down all the rest of it, kill indiscriminately, torture my brother every chance I got, especially during his "good" years, but the sense of responsibility never leaves. There were times I just wanted to forget about you--just go on with my life, but then I'd imagine you in the tomb, desiccating, and I couldn't. I had to do whatever I had to do to get you out. Sure, there were selfish motives there, but it was really more about not being able to leave you there, helpless.
"That's what this is. Elena pisses me off. She's never going to love me, so what's the point? I should just walk away, never look back. But, no. I feel fucking obligated. I can't let Klaus find her, I can't let Klaus kill her. I can't let her suffer. So here I am, trying to do it anyway. But you know, we have to finish this. You've been running for five hundred years, Katherine. It's time to end it once and for all."
She doesn't disagree with anything he's said, but at the same time, she wishes, just like he does, that this was enough. That together, they could be satisfied. She wouldn't call it guilt, but some kind of feeling starts to well up within her when she contemplates all his years of pining, of devotion.
(She knows she doesn't deserve him anyway, so really it's as it should be.)
She trails her fingers across his forehead. "Okay. Let's go to Iowa."
IV.
The witches, allies Katherine made during the 60s and the Civil Rights movement, welcome her without question as to how she found them. They weren't hiding from her, and she's legendary in their family because of some of the wrongs she made right for their now deceased grandparents.
Damon just shakes his head in wonderment and says nothing to her. It's all right though because Katherine can see the begrudging respect in his eyes and it's enough to know he understands that sometimes she too is possessed by that obligation factor. (It's just much rarer than his, and always, always, always benefits her somewhere down the line.)
They examine Elena's necklace and trace the magic in it back more than one thousand years. They're able to contact someone who calls herself the Original Witch and Katherine nods. "That's who we needed to hear from," she whispers to Damon.
The solution to kill Klaus is relatively simple. They just need a witch or two to power the channeled energy in the locket. When it is released it will cause the same vulnerability to Klaus that he suffered when the curse was broken on the moonstone.
"Ah," Damon says. "It was a back-up. God, those witches sure knew Klaus's type well, didn't they? Loop hole after loop hole. The guy has no idea how the whole supernatural world has been conspiring against him for centuries."
Katherine smiles. "Lucky for us--this information is priceless, Damon."
He returns her expression of satisfaction and his hand pats hers. The witches invite them to stay in their spare bedroom for the night and host an impromptu dinner party to celebrate Katherine's presence.
When the evening draws to a close, she and Damon go to their room and he embraces her, gently. For the first time since they started out on their little adventure, he touches her with something absent of volatile energy. He takes her lazily, and it's in the final mind-blowing moments that Katherine reads it properly.
He's finally saying goodbye.
V.
When they return to Mystic Falls, Caroline is waiting for them at the Boarding House. She rants and raves about what an ass Damon is to make a meal out of her father and then leave town without a word. Katherine leaves them to fight it out, completely disinterested in whatever the blonde's drama is. She goes to Damon's room to shower, because they've been driving for eighteen hours straight and she feels gross.
By the time she gets out, the house is quiet, and though if she listens hard she can hear some human heartbeat nearby, she knows Damon and Caroline aren't there anymore.
She walks into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, to dig through her suitcase for clean underwear.
"What are you doing here?" Elena demands, and Katherine looks up in surprise. Her mirror image stands in the open doorway of Damon's room, an air of possession in her tone.
Katherine smiles, the predator raising its ugly head within her chest. She wants so much to torture this girl, this simple, human girl, who managed to capture hearts with Katherine's face, but held on to them for no perceivable reason.
She just doesn't get it, how Stefan and Damon could love Elena so deeply, so unconditionally. Because to understand that is to finally truly comprehend how they could never have really loved Katherine. Katherine's good at compartmentalizing, so she just puts Elena into some unlabeled box of conundrum. The Salvatores who had silently waged war on each other because of Katherine Pierce could not be the same boys who worshiped at the altar of Elena Gilbert. It's much easier to consider that their transition to vampire had taken away all the things about them that had made them appealing to her, so she does that, and she tells herself she's only in this to kill Klaus once and for all.
(Stefan Salvatore was not enough to hold her in 1864, and he never will be.)
And now, here she is, the winsome wannabe to Katherine's complete awesomeness, and she wants to know what Katherine's doing naked, in Damon's room. "Showering?" she says with a lilt as though she's asking a question.
Elena glares and folds her arms over her chest. "You need to stay away from Damon," she says.
"Why? Don't you think it's up to Damon whether or not I need to stay away from him? And trust me, he hasn't wanted me far away at all. He's wanted me up close, and personal."
"He's not rational when it comes to you," Elena states, moving into the room a bit.
Katherine laughs, caught by surprise at this accurate reading. "Honey, he's not rational about anything, so don't try to blame this all on me. What? Were you worried he'd run off with me, permanently? You should know better than that. We were gathering important information that will probably preserve your life, and then you can just go back to under-appreciating him and he'll still follow you around like a lovesick puppy. He can't help it; it's a habit he acquired a long time ago for a different, more superior woman, but he's transferred all that to you now, whether you deserve it or not."
She watches while Elena swells up, anger making her face flush red and her hand trembles as she stretches it out towards Katherine. "If anyone didn't deserve his love, it's you."
Hearing that from Elena's mouth pisses Katherine off more than she could have banked on. Across the room in a flash, she pins the girl to the door jamb, her hand tight around Elena's throat. "I wouldn't judge so harshly if I were you, since you're currently repeating history. What?" she asks when Elena's eyes pop in agitation. (She can't speak, not with Katherine's fingers jammed into her vocal chords.) "You think Damon will recover just fine when Stefan comes home and you go back to him? He fought with his brother for 145 years over me; he'll fight at least half that long for you."
Because she's so focused on her own likeness and the temptation to suffocate the life right out of Elena's body is starting to overtake her, she doesn't see or hear Damon until he's upon them, and he sends Katherine sprawling back into his bedroom. Her towel comes loose as she flies through the air, so she just smiles sensually a moment later as she gets to her feet, naked. "I guess she's probably actually here to see you," she says to Damon as Elena clutches at her throat, gasping for air.
Damon doesn't even look at her, though, his attention completely focused on the coughing, gagging girl in front of him. Katherine grabs the towel from the floor, her clothes from the suitcase, and saunters back to the bathroom. She assumes she'll hear some kind of crazy, caring exchange of are you alright? and yes, of course, I am, are you alright? but instead, they start screaming at each other, and from the sounds of things, Elena punctuates many of her accusations with well-placed punches.
That's when Katherine knows. She just put them over the hump, whatever was holding back their silly little love affair died a long but silent death in the thirteen days since she and Damon left Mystic Falls. (Goodbye Stefan, for real, this time.)
"What the hell were you thinking, leaving town with her?!"
"I've already had this fight with Caroline. I get it, you almost died, I wasn't around to save everyone from the reality of my monster of a brother, and that's somehow my fault!"
"It's Katherine, Damon! Who knows what she might have done to you, and none of us knew where you were!"
"What do you care what I do? Last time I talked to you, you were ready to let Bill Forbes poison the water supply!"
"Oh. My. God! You know I care! Why do I have to say it over and over?"
"You don't! As a matter of fact, I'd prefer you shut the hell up about it! Start showing you care instead of blabbing about it!"
"Fine! You can't have an alliance with Katherine; not if you're going to be around me."
"Do not even start with that bullshit again. You're never going to be able to control me."
"So, you're sleeping with her?"
"Excuse me?"
"Are you sleeping with her?!"
"How is that any of your business?"
"So what, you're together now? I'm not the only one who isn't going to put up with her being around all the time!"
"Are you kidding me? What the hell is this, Elena? Are you mad at me because you almost died and I missed it, or because you think I've got a girlfriend?"
"She's not a girlfriend! She's Katherine!"
Now fully dressed, Katherine comes back out of the bathroom and walks across the room. They are still standing in the doorway, and there is enough heat to burn the whole place down, but they're just staring at one another, chests heaving. She slides between them, causing them each to take a step back. "Pardon me," she says with a chuckle. "You should just do it; get it over with," she calls over her shoulder as she goes down the hall.
She skips down the stairs and out the front door. She needs to find Bonnie and get this whole Kill Klaus operation under way.
Call her crazy, but maybe, just once, she wants to see Damon get the girl.