The Vow (Katherine-centric, Stefan/Katherine)
Title: The Vow
Rating: PG
Summary: Canon/Offscreenville, the night Katherine is captured, and later escapes with George Lockwood's aid.
Spoilers: for episode "Memory Lane"
Characters/Pairing: Katherine-centric (and Stefan, references to Katherine/Stefan)
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Dark Ships: Wait Your Turn
AN: So the attempt at writing each character from the show continues, and this time, I tried my hand at Katherine. She is almost as challenging as Caroline, and I'm not sure if I got it, but whatevs. I kept thinking about her and how a person like her would love. Stefan and Katherine are intriguing as a couple; they will never be roses and sunshine, I'm not sure that Katherine (in particular) is capable of loving that way, not after the life she's lived and who she's become because of it. I have no doubt that she feels love and other strong feelings for him, complex, obsession, possession and ownership, desire, need, vulnerability and I think there are few things a person like K would hate more than feeling vulnerable, and so much more. It was really hard so I hope that I captured some sort of 'truth' here, something that makes sense, if not, I'll keep trying. Also, weird thing to try to get how 19th century K would think as opposed to now. Listening to Sara Bareilles Breathe Again as I edit this --- genius choice of music. Pure genius.
I don't think they'll ever really be together on the show in present time w/ Stefan of sound mind unless something drastic happens and he turns to the dark side, becomes possessed, Elena dies/runs off with Damon and tells him he's a sucker and she never loved him, and K has a lobotomy. I don't really want them to get together in a romantic sense. Even so, there's something crazy, intense, compelling, bittersweet, even beautiful about what they had and do have, a bad romance with off the charts chemistry. So right on.
Translation of the Cyrillic used in the story: Katarina Petrova --- Please, please no.
Feedback: is better than Stefan's arms.
The Vow
Rough hands jostled her, gripped her around the legs and shoulders; fingers digging, some straying across her chest, squeezing a breast here, a thigh, as though she were no better than a piece of meat. She felt it acutely and at the same time, did not. It was as if all of these things, these indignities, were happening to someone else - some other Katherine who would be silly enough to get into this predicament. She was stripped down to the most essential parts of herself, exposed bone and matter, no better than the child she hardly remembered being.
Not Katherine Pierce …but Катaрина Петрова.
плеасе, плеасе но.
---
Everything was murky, underwater-like, as she drifted in and out, the vervain pinched at every pore like sharp needles or teeth. The lurching shadows, arms winding windmills; the voices, thick, indeterminate one moment; loud as crashing cymbals the next; and then whispers that flicked at her ears like wraiths.
She wasn’t afraid though.
No, she was angry.
Even in this bleary, half-conscious state, one single emotion with which she was perfectly familiar bled through: rage, hard and thick.
Then the slam of a carriage door blotted out the weak light.
She saw, and felt, and thought no more.
---
It hurt. Gods, how it hurt. All over.
Her mouth was dry, throat scratchy, as though she’d gulped down smoke. She imagined - she could even remember, if she tried, what it felt like to dip a numbed foot in a bowl of steaming-hot water, the flare of pain like stabbing spikes that settled into a dull ache, never letting you forget it was there.
She moaned faintly. Her eyes flickered open. She half-lay against the mud-packed, stone wall where they’d dumped her like a sack of potatoes. Her body askew, a child’s ragdoll; forgotten, abandoned in the filth.
She could hear the others groaning sluggishly at the poison steeped in their bodies. The low-hanging roof wavered drunkenly above her. There was no light but she could make out the protruding ridges, the wooden floor of the church above them. Hours from now, the good people of Mystic Falls would file down the aisle, dressed in their Sunday best, to worship in God’s house, thank Him for delivering them from their demons. They wouldn’t know what lay just beneath their feet. She laughed inwardly, ironically; and trembled as a slice of pain slid down her back, a little less intense than before.
Giuseppe Salvatore.
Doddering, pontificating, old fool.
A doddering old fool who out-maneuvered you - just like a pathetic newborn, a voice taunted deep in recesses of her mind; his voice.
It was insulting. If she had time and if he was important enough, she’d come back to Mystic Falls to kill him for it, for all of this. She grinned madly in the blackness. She’d sink her fangs into that bloated, wrinkly old neck, rip through the pulsing vein, and glut on his blood until she was full of it, until he was nothing but an empty shell. And then she’d turn him. Just to watch him suffer the horror of becoming that which he despised the most. The ultimate revenge for someone like him.
Her fingers twitched.
Of course, after that, she’d just kill him again; a stake through the heart, for the fun of it.
She let the brief, useless fantasy fade - perhaps another time.
---
The last dredges of vervain lingered. She could feel it tingling painfully at long-dead nerve-endings; stiff and heavy in her fingers, a throbbing weight in her muscles. But she was strong enough to get up now. She rolled onto her side with a grunt, breathing heavily, wriggling helplessly like a worm, weak.
She hated this.
Moistening her lips she clambered to her feet, leaning against the wall as though she’d drunk too much wine for dinner. She made her way slowly towards the secret passageway; passed by the bodies of vampires, some of whom she’d once called friends. She imagined looks of simmering resentment, bitterness, blame sent her way in the dark - a few of them were conscious enough to know, to see, she knew that. But she didn’t particularly care.
That was the first rule. He’d taught her that and she’d learned the lesson well.
So she forged ahead, fingers clamping at crumbling walls, cracked stone slabs, towards the end of the tunnel. Dawn was still far off, and she could hardly see a thing. But, and perhaps this was a remnant of the human she’d once been, she imagined that there was a pinprick of light right where the entrance to the tomb should be; deliverance, escape, ---hope? Not that she believed in such a thing but if she only reached it, she’d be safe. For a time.
---
By the time she got to the door, her strength had almost fully-returned, seeping steadily back. The cool night air sharpened her senses. She raised her shoulders and walked out into the night, trampling through the underbrush toward the road where she would meet the waiting Lockwood heir.
---
The moon shone three quarters full; clearly visible on the road. She saw the smudged silhouette of the carriage, heard the quiet bray of horses in the quiet. She stepped towards it but then she paused. She remembered this spot, mere feet from where she’d been captured a second time and -
She turned around and then she saw them. Bodies log-like, strewn carelessly in the middle of the road, most certainly dead, no better than yesterday’s rubbish. Something clenched inside; her gaze drifted from one brother to the other and a feeling, one she wouldn’t name, curdled in the pit of her stomach.
She shook her head softly and swung back towards the carriage, her escape -
“George,” she said, surprised and mildly irritated at how he’d managed to come upon her so quietly.
The ruddy-cheeked boy swept his arm out, a gesture of gallantry that seemed hollow, empty. “Your carriage awaits,” he said.
She straightened herself, her customary haughtiness returning. “Well done, George,” she said, such a good dog.
She made to glide past him but he stopped her with a hand to the arm, “Ah-ah-ah,” he said, “Now for your half of the deal.” She looked at the gloved fingers in disdain and he quickly removed them.
Exhaling deeply, she pulled the moonstone from her bodice without any thought to modesty, the Lockwood whelp was insignificant, and she couldn’t care less. “If anyone learns of my escape, I will find you and I will kill you.” The words dripped cold as steel from her lips.
He had seemingly stopped listening the minute she revealed the treasure he sought. His eyes took on a glazed aspect, cheeks flushed red; a drunkard delirious at the sight of a full tankard of ale. Her mouth curled and she drew her hand back. “Don’t think that I won’t,” she said again.
He nodded quickly, and assured her, “We shall take each other’s secrets to the grave.”
She handed the precious stone to him and he examined it, hypnotized by the mysterious glow emanating from it, the white flame.
“Now we must hurry,” he managed to say, dragging his gaze from his hands. He thrust the moonstone into his pockets and strode towards the waiting vehicle.
She made to follow but halted, an invisible thread tethered to her foot. She swung her eyes to them. Lifting her skirts, she ran towards the corpses in the dirt. Her footsteps slowed as she drew nearer and she almost turned back. But she couldn’t. It was weakness, she knew this, she would think on it later.
One lay on his back, dark hair inky in the night, face chalk-white, the scent of fresh blood coagulating, changing, even then, into something else.
And then him. His face was pale and stiff as candle wax, but beautiful nonetheless, angelic, innocent, lifeless as he was now. She raised her hand to trace the fine, masculine features; brush wisps of hair from his high forehead; follow the shape of his dark eyebrows, the curve of his bloodless mouth.
Soon, she thought. And it was silly; she couldn’t make such promises. She didn’t make promises like that, not to anyone. But this one - this one was different. She’d known that for weeks now, she’d seen it.
And because she knew she was alone, and there was no one to witness her frailty, this ridiculous, human-like frailty, she said the words for a second time, “I love you, Stefan.” She meant it. Love consuming as a black, starless sky.
“We will be together again, I promise.”
She hadn't let herself feel this way for anyone in a long while. She'd almost forgotten how.
She lowered her lips to his unmoving ones; gentle, lingering, the scent of death all around him, inside of him. Her fingers skated across the hard line of his jaw, the shallow well at his throat, the ridge of his collar bone and she felt it again. The soft wave of longing twisted into something heated, possessive, greedy, and violent in its intensity. Almost suffocating.
He was hers.
He would always know it, too. She’d made him hers in a way that no one else could. Blood to blood, he was in her as she was in him, and would be for eternity. There was no denying it.
A whistle pierced the air, the murmur of male voices. She lumbered to her feet, clutched the lapels of her coat closer, and looked one last time at the still body, methodically turning the locks on that feeling, the gaping darkness; on that weakness - for now.
One day, she thought. A vow - the moon, nearly full, its cold façade, was her only witness.
Fin