Eternal Contemplations (13/?)
Chapter Thirteen
As her fangs sink into porcelain skin and the metallic taste of blood hits her tongue, a smile broadens across Katherine’s face. The smug delight is short lived. It takes a split second for her eyes to widen as the blood to completely fill her mouth and burn like acid.
She abruptly pushes herself off the girl and collapses in a heap onto the floor. Her hands grip her throat as if she could physically stop the burning with them. She coughs and coughs, trying to rid herself of the noxious blood, but the burning sensation remains. It seems to have a paralyzing effect as it burns its way down her throat. Her fangs have retracted of their own accord and all the muscles in her body seem to be painfully contracting simultaneously as the human’s blood enters her system despite her attempts to expel it.
Blair stands stunned, her hand reaching for her bleeding neck, her eyes trained on the female vampire convulsing on the grassy floor, desperately gasping for air.
“What happened?! Are you ok?” Damon cries rushing to the scene, albeit late.
The wound is shallow and so Blair nods numbly in reply, one hand pressing on her wound. He moves her hand away to look at the bite mark clearly. It’s shallow and Blair seemed more stunned than anything. Sure that Blair would be fine, Damon crouches by the writhing Katherine and attempts to calm her down. Katherine continues to retch and cough Blair’s blood into the grass. Damon reaches into his jacket to take out a pouch of blood kindly pilfered from the nearby hospital to offer her, but Katherine weakly slaps it away.
“You poisoned me!” she accuses.
“I didn’t. I don’t know what happened. You weren’t supposed to drink from her, this human is my friend.”
“Not your complimentary free meal,” Blair cheekily remarks.
Damon gives her a look as if to say “You’re not helping” and Blair gives him back a glare that reads “She tried to eat me. I will be as bitchy as I want.”
Katherine empties her stomach’s contents via bloody vomit in the grass and wipes her mouth with the back of the hand. Blair is severely grossed out and doesn’t put any effort from letting the disgust show on her face. The vampire looks even worse than before, which Blair didn’t think was possible.
“Here, drink this instead,” Damon proffers Katherine the bag of blood once again. “It is fine, I swear.”
Katherine is suspicious, but she takes the pouch from his extended hand. The taste of Blair’s blood still manages to cling to the back of her throat, making her feel sick, but Katherine understands survival well. She sniffs the blood offered to her as if she could smell the poison. Her fangs refuse to extend and so she has trouble puncturing the bag. Damon has to do it for her and after a cautious sip she begins to hungrily devour the contents. Blair cringes at the indecent spectacle.
“Geez, not a very pretty sight is she?”
“She’s been starved,” Damon answers.
Katherine tosses the empty bag to the floor and doesn’t bother to wipe the blood dripping from her mouth. The pilfered blood had helped, and she looks a bit better, or as good as any undead being could be anyhow.
“There’s something wrong with this human,” Katherine hisses, giving Blair the evil eye.
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” Blair counters.
“She’s an Immune,” Emily injects, appearing from behind them.
No one had noticed her until then and so she had been a silent observer of the entire episode. The effect of Blair’s blood on the vampiric species and the implications doesn’t escape her.
“Immunes,” Katherine sneers, “are a myth.”
“Yeah… kind of like vampires and witches, right?” Blair taunts back.
“Blair,” Damon chides, handing Katherine another bag of blood swiped from the local Red Cross.
“What? She’s the one trying to deny my existence. Kind of closed minded, don’t you think? Not to mention ironic.”
In between glaring at the Immune and devouring the hospital’s supply of blood, Katherine eyes the olive skinned witch up and down.
“Emily, is that you? You look different.”
“Of course she does. It’s been nearly 200 years,” Blair snidely answers.
The female vampire glowers at her and snarls, before turning her attention back on Damon.
“Damon… I’m still hungry,” Katherine whines after finishing her third bag of blood. Blair scrunches up her nose at the vamp’s baby voice and rolls her eyes.
Katherine’s appearance starts to rapidly recover as the human blood hits her system. The skeleton-like figure was slowly fleshing out and looking more and more like Elena and less like a corpse by the second. It was quite unnerving.
“Emily, go fetch me something clean to change into while Damon gets me some more blood,” she demands.
Emily narrows her eyes and stays put beside Blair.
“Emily,” Katherine repeats, her own eyes quickly narrowing as her thin hand reaches for the pendant around her neck.
She gives the pendant a little twist and Emily/Bonnie’s face contorts with pain as her body jerks forward. Blair is quickly by her side.
“Hey! Watch what you’re doing with that little pendant of yours!” Blair confronts Katherine.
The vampire ignores her and keeps her eyes trained on the witch kneeling on the floor.
“Emily,” Katherine calls with a falsely sweet voice. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Y-yes...” Emily replies through gritted teeth.
“Yes, what?” Katherine demands.
Emily exchanges an angry glare at Damon as if to remind him about her earlier threats of turning the newly rescued vampire into ash if she had the chance. Those threats seem very close to reality right now.
“Katherine,” Damon tries.
Katherine brushes him away and gives the pendant another good twist. Emily lurches forward from the pain once again.
“Yes. Mistress,” Emily bites out.
The female vampire smiles a self-satisfied smile and Blair immediately decides that Katherine Pierce is a total bitch.
xxx
They agree to stow Katherine in the Salvatore’s attic for the time being. The basement would have been more suitable, but since Stefan had remodeled it the previous year Damon doesn’t want to put her in such a prison-like environment, especially since she just escaped from one. Bonnie and Emily agreed to cast a spell on the room so that Stefan wouldn’t notice the newest house guest at the Salvatore house. The young Salvatore doesn’t have much reason to go up there anyways, so they hope keeping a low profile would be enough until they find a better housing situation.
Katherine is suspicious of everything, but she’s determined to conquer all of the technologies of the modern world. She makes Emily run about fetching her things while Damon gave her a brief history lesson on what had happened in the past hundred and fifty years.
For all of Katherine’s bravado, she doesn’t stay conscious for very long and falls asleep after her sixth bag of blood. Emily rolls her eyes and declares “Finally!” in an exasperated tone.
Katherine would never willingly hand over her amulet, even if Emily did save her, so they don’t feel any need to tell her about the witch’s part of the deal. That leaves the only option for obtaining the amulet was to steal it. Blair’s the only one able to even touch the amulet due to the specifications of the spell and so she’s left the task of securing the necklace from the slumbering monster.
“She’s not going to be happy with you when all this is over,” Blair points out to Damon.
“She won’t be happy, but she’ll be here,” Damon replies, watching Katherine sleep. “That’s what matters.”
She can’t quite read his expression and it makes her uneasy. Why does the way he watch the sleeping Katherine bother her so much? She thought she already set her feelings straight. Damon Salvatore and Blair Waldorf are friends. No more, no less. She shouldn’t be having inappropriate feelings towards him, let alone pinpricks of jealousy. It was ridiculous!
She’s setting herself up for more heartbreak at the rate she’s going and she quite tired of getting her heart broken. Blair Waldorf’s heart will stay perfectly intact for the time being, thank you very much. She’s not going to go about giving it away willy-nilly anytime soon. Especially not to somebody who clearly has a lot of emotional baggage with his long-lost homicidal, blood sucking girlfriend.
Still… for a while he was hers, even if it’s only in the friendship capacity.
She is shaken from her troubling thoughts when Katherine snores in her sleep. A laugh escapes Blair’s lips before she could help it. Damon frowns at her, but his amusement reads clear in his eyes.
“Are you sure it’s worth it?” Blair jibes. “She’s such a… bitch,” Blair finishes dramatically.
“Bitchy girls seem to be my type. Present company included,” he replies, smiling at her flirtatiously.
She finds herself blushing at his comment and is immediately horrified. When did she become the idiotic fawning schoolgirl? She covers up her slipup by rambling on how hot air rises which explains the hot temperature in attics. Her flimsy excuses earn her a quirked eyebrow and an amused grin, but he doesn’t comment.
“Anyway, personally I think you could’ve done better,” she concludes gesturing at the dozing Katherine.
“I believe that’s what I said about Nate.”
There’s a flicker of pain that flashes across her face despite her efforts to remain nonchalant. He immediately regrets his thoughtless words. It’s still too early for the wounds to completely scab over.
“Anyways, Katherine’s snoring doesn’t even compare to yours. I could hear it all the way from the den last night.”
She knows this is a lie because last night after their sodidnotactuallyhappen kiss, she had not slept a wink, but she realizes he’s just trying to lighten the mood. It’s a backhanded apology for letting his tongue slip and so she doesn’t correct him.
She makes a comment about how he’s a jerk and that he and Katherine deserved each other. Even as the insult escapes her mouth, she wishes it weren’t so. She doesn’t want to see him with Katherine, because she wants him to be with her. Romantically or not, she selfishly wants Damon by her side. She realizes this too late of course, but she feels it all the same.
He says something back that she doesn’t quite hear due to all her internal turmoil so she answers back in a glare because he’s Damon and it was probably a safe bet that he said something snarky and condescending. They glower at each other like that for a while before getting back to business. Emily is waiting downstairs after all and she wouldn’t like to be kept waiting for Damon and Blair to finish their banter (which never really ends once they start).
There’s a moment when Katherine stirs in her sleep and Blair is afraid to even breathe lest she makes a noise. Damn vampires and their super hearing! This must be how Odysseus felt tiptoeing around a sleeping homicidal Cyclops. She glares back at Damon for making her do this in the first place and he merely nods his head to encourage her to continue. The saying “easier said than done” comes to mind and Blair regrets having agreed to play the thief.
The second time Katherine shifts, Blair had recoiled in shock and in the process stubbed her toe on an uneven floorboard. She muffles her pain by pressing her hand against her mouth. This time she whips around to face Damon, narrows her eyes and mouths “I hate you” to him. He looks almost amused at her antics and blows her an air kiss before waving her on. The cocky bastard.
Once Blair’s back was turn to him, Damon’s smiling façade is replaced with seriousness. Blair doesn’t realize that despite his cavalier attitude, the idea of putting her in such a precarious situation makes him uneasy. He swallows nervously as her hands creep closer and closer to Katherine’s neck. He clenches his jaw as her fingers circle around the clasp of the necklace and if he were a normal human being he would have had a heart attack at the rate his heart was beating as he watched her lift the chain off of Katherine. She somehow manages to free the pendant from around the vampire’s neck and he finally allows himself to unclench the fist at his side.
Blair breathes a silent sigh of relief and gives Damon an accomplished smile. She indicates with her hands that she’s going to bring the necklace to Emily downstairs and he nods in agreement. Before she mounts the stairs she looks back to see Damon walk over to the slumbering Katherine and hover over her with a longing look on his face. She never felt so lonely and clenches the necklace in her fist as she makes her descent. She doesn’t know that once her back is turned, he’s giving her that same look.
xxx
Emily is nervous as she draws her witchy circles in chalk on the wooden floorboards. Her hands are shaking and the symbols are messy, but legible. Or they would be legible if Blair could read them.
“Just place it over here,” Emily instructs her, gesturing to the center of the pentagram inside the circle.
She does as she is told whilst the witch hovers about.
“Don’t be so nervous. You’re about to become a free woman,” she jokes lightly.
Truth be told, Blair is equally nervous and she doesn’t really want to do this. She had become uncharacteristically attached to the Bennett witches and was sorry to see them go. Once this is all over, there would be no more reason for them to meet anymore. It’s not like they were friends or anything, even if she’d like them to be. Though if anyone ever asks her she would deny deny deny. Blair has a reputation to maintain after all. But she misses the female companionship now that she and Serena were on the outs. A sudden rush of dejection washes over her. Emily’s constant nervous pacing doesn’t help matters.
“For god’s sake, calm down!” she exclaims in a hushed whisper. Whether the advice was for herself or the witch, the fact is unclear.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will. This is what you’ve been working for. It’ll all turn out fine. I promise.”
“You promise?” Emily repeats stopping mid-step and shooting Blair an amused smile. It was a very un-Blair-like thing to comfort someone.
“Yes. And Waldorfs don’t make promises lightly,” Blair answers flippantly. She hides her feelings behind her usual brand of haughtiness and arrogance.
Emily gives her genuine smile and then exhales loudly before regaining her composure.
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
She raises her hand as if to begin, but then stops.
“Before… before I go. There’s something important I have to tell you. It’s about Immunes.”
Blair rolls her eyes even though she’s secretly glad for any sort of postponement.
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Your blood. Do you remember what happened when Katherine tried to drink it?”
“Yeah, she couldn’t. It made her sick.”
Emily shakes her head slowly. “No. It didn’t just make her sick. Don’t you remember? She hadn’t been able to extend her fangs to even drink from that bag of blood. Damon had to do it for her. I think that when she took your blood, she lost her powers.”
“W-what does this mean? I can… neutralize her?”
“Yes. And if that’s true, then that ability might come in handy one day. I just thought you should know.”
Blair is lost for a moment in the implications of her new found gift. On the bright side, it makes her in a way invulnerable to supernatural threats. She won’t be the damsel in distress. She has her own method of defense this way. On the other side…It was also a bit frightening. Maybe there was a reason why Immunes are practically extinct. With such abilities they become a threat to the supernatural community. It makes her a target.
“Hey, Blair?”
She’s startled back into reality. “Y-yeah?”
“There was something else I wanted to say to you.
“Something more important that the fact that I can defuse a rampaging approximately four hundred year old* vampire with my blood?” she replies sardonically.
“Yes,” Emily replies in an equally sarcastic manner.
“What is it?”
She’s curious as to what could possibly trump Emily earlier revelation.
“Thank you. For everything.”
Before she could come up with a response to the surprising thank you, Emily raises her hands up and smashes the amulet with a rock. Sparks fly everywhere and the unlit candles around them violently bursts into flames. A random thought about witches and their need to put on a fireworks show every time they cast a spell runs through Blair’s head before everything is blocked out by a bright white light. She puts her hand up to shield her eyes, but it’s as if the light could penetrate her eyelids. In a room upstairs dark eyes flash open just as Blair closes hers from the blinding light.
Blair is left momentarily sightless, but as her vision begins to clear she can make out a single female figure kneeling besides the shards of what remained of Katherine’s amulet, her eyes closed and her head hung down.
“Emily? Emily! Are you alright?”
As in answer to her question, the witch collapses on the floor. Blair gives her eyes one last rub with the back of her hand and rushes to the witch’s side, cradling the other girl’s head into her lap. After several moments, the witch stirs and it is Bonnie who looks up at her.
“Is… Emily gone?” Bonnie asks, rubbing her temple and sitting up.
Her eyes were no longer haunted by the ghost of her ancestor and Blair is left blinking in shock at how quickly and easily Emily had disappeared from her life.
“Yeah… she is.”
“Forever?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Bonnie is looking at her strangely and she doesn’t know why. Blair flinches when the teen witch reaches for cheek. The witch’s hand comes away wet and she realizes she was crying without knowing it.
“How embarrassing! I don’t even know why I’m crying. You’re free now. The curse is gone,” Blair smiles as she erases the evidence of her emotional lapse.
“It’s okay to be sad, Blair. You don’t have to hide it. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss her too.”
Before Blair can reply with a lie about how she doesn’t care that Emily is gone and she only in it for her own selfish reasons, the door behind them flies open. Blair whips around to find an enraged vampire towering over her.
“You little bitch! You stole my amulet!” Katherine snarls.
Katherine lunges at Blair, but is pulled back by Damon, her elongated nails narrowly missing Blair’s throat.
“Let me go! I’m going to rip her throat out! Emily was mine!”
“Back off!” Bonnie warns, pushing Blair behind her, her left hand igniting with witch’s fire. “The Bennett witches aren’t slaves to anyone. I’ll burn you where you stand if you come any closer, vampire.”
“I’ll get you for this you stupid human!” Katherine growls while struggling against Damon’s hold.
“Welcome to the 21st century. Slavery has been abolished. Get with the program!” Blair retorts.
“Don’t taunt her!” Damon scolds Blair. Katherine tries to break free from his hold, but he hangs on tight. “You’re not going to hurt her! It was part of the deal to free you!”
Katherine whips around at him, turning her rage on him. “What?!”
“Did you really think the witch helped me open the tomb out of the goodness of her heart?”
“But she was mine,” Katherine hisses.
“There’s a price for everything, Katherine. Would you rather still be stuck in that tomb, rotting away?”
Katherine bits her tongue and continues to glare at Damon. She stamps her feet against the wooden floorboards, cracking and splintering them with her strength and pushes past him to exit the room. Damon watches her leave with a forlorn gaze. Once Katherine rounds the corner he turns his attention back to Blair and Bonnie. His eyes are pleading, though pleading for what Blair is not sure.
“Go after her,” Blair sighs. “She might kill somebody if you don’t.”
He clenches his jaw, enough to draw blood, before he takes off after Katherine. Despite her encouragement, Blair can’t help but feel disappointed to see him go.
xxx
Katherine busies herself throwing and smashing things. She had expected things to pick up where they left off once she was freed from that dreadful dirt prison that was the tomb, but everything had changed. There were boxes that showed moving pictures, things that would beep and buzz, voices that came out of little metal rectangles. Time had stopped for Katherine in that tomb. In her conceit and vanity, she never realized that the world would have moved on without her. Damon wasn’t even the same, he never would have bargained with the help if it had two hundred years ago. There’s such a thing as class distinction! The stupid slave wouldn’t have dared rebel back then. And now there’s some Immune bitch nipping at Damon’s heels, stealing away his attention from her. Stefan wasn’t even there.
That was the most jarring thing about all the time that had past. Katherine had always believed that it would have been the young Salvatore brother who would have freed her from the tomb. If anything he was the one most responsible for getting her thrown in there in the first place. The least he could do was break her out of it. She had spent the last 100+ years thinking that it would have been Stefan. It should’ve been Stefan. But then again, if it had been Stefan, perhaps her thoughts would have been that it should’ve been Damon. Katherine is a girl who usually wants what she doesn’t have. But since it was Damon who freed her, her mind is childishly fixated on the fact that she lost the younger Salvatore.
As her thoughts strayed to Stefan Salvatore she spots him approaching the Salvatore mansion from across the front lawn, with a girl in tow no less. Upon closer inspection she realizes the remarkable resemblance between herself and the brunette Stefan was kissing. Her fragile strength decides to fail on her at this moment and she feels her knees buckling. She catches herself before she hits the floor. She’s still too weak from her stint in the tomb. One night’s rest and half a dozen bags of blood was not enough to restore her to her former glory. Her weakness serves to fuel her frustration and she slams the floor with her fists, but end up hurting herself.
Damon chooses this moment to announce his presence and she whirls on him.
“Look, I know a lot of things have changed,” Damon begins.
Katherine laughs mockingly in reply from her position on the floor. “Oh yes, a lot of things have changed and they’re about to change even more now that I’m back.”
Damon interprets her reply as a threat and it makes him ill at ease. Katherine pushes herself back up to standing position and moves over to the window. Looking back down she spots the two lovers caught in an embrace outside the mansion and a malicious smile spreads on her lips. Damon notices where her eyes are trained and the implication dawns on him.
“Katherine,” he warns.
“What?!” She replies angrily.
“It’s been nearly two hundred years, Katherine. He wasn’t going to wait for you forever.”
It hurts that she was still looking after Stefan even though he’s done everything for her.
“But you did,” Katherine answers smoothly. She sidles up close to him and places a cold kiss on his lips. “You did, Damon. And rest assured… you’ll be rewarded for your dedication.”
She brushes back his hair and strokes his cheek with a slender finger.
“After I get back at Stefan.”
“Why aren’t I enough?” he asks. He can’t stand it anymore. He’s sick of sharing. He wants someone who’ll only look at him. “I’m here. I’ve always been here. Let me be enough!”
Why was it that he wasn’t enough? Why is it that even now, when he has sacrificed so much for her, gave her everything he could possibly give, he was still not enough? He had naively believed that once he freed her she would finally choose him. It was the ultimate romantic gesture after all. He waited for her, searched for her, and loved her for a hundred and fifty years. He thought that’s what she would’ve been satisfied with that much. He’s quickly finding himself oh so wrong. Katherine is never truly satisfied. She lives in a world where the grass is always greener on the other side and so her greed is endless.
“Your brother was the reason why I got thrown into that hellhole. I’m not going to let him live out his little fairytale happy ending with my doppelganger,” she replies angrily. Just as quickly she changes her frown into a syrupy sweet smile. “We’ll have our time, Damon. But first, I have to deal with Stefan.”
It’s totally sappy and un-Damon-like, but he doesn’t want any more revenge or diabolical master plans now that he’s finally accomplished his task. It was time to let things go. There’s no more point to torturing Stefan. He doesn’t want to waste any more time on making Stefan miserable when he had Katherine by his side once more.
“I don’t want revenge. Let’s leave this place! Forget Stefan, forget Mystic Falls. We’ll find a little corner of the earth, somewhere quiet and secluded, where we can just be together. You could be happy!”
Katherine laughs, moving away from him and perching herself on the windowsill to watch Stefan wave goodbye to Elena. Her eyes follow Elena as she makes her way back to Caroline’s car. Once her double disappears from sight, she turns her attention back on Damon.
“I forgot how funny you were, Damon. Where’s the fun in that? I’ve spent the last few centuries in ‘someplace quiet and secluded,’” she mocks him. “Now… I want to go paint the city red.”
xxx
Despite what Katherine had threatened, she spent the next couple of days relatively quiet and even cooperative. She just hides up in the attic, drinks the blood he gets for her and assimilating herself with the modern world. In hindsight, that should’ve been the first warning.
Bonnie had asked to meet Damon and Blair at the Grill and so they had obliged her. Katherine had promised not leave the mansion and since she had long since lost her ring, it wasn’t like she could walk about during the daytime anyways (Coppertone hasn’t come up with a sunscreen with high enough UV protection to allow vampires to walk in the daytime yet). Given his past experiences, Damon should’ve realized then that she had made the promise too easily.
“What did you call us here for, witch? Our partnership is over. You can hate my guts again,” Damon says cheekily as he slides into the booth across from Bonnie.
“It’s not over until you figure out what to do with Katherine. So until then I will have to just restrain myself from setting you on fire,” Bonnie replies.
This was something Blair herself was also thinking about. What was Damon planning on doing now that he has Katherine back? It feels like the relationship between her and Damon were quickly coming to a close. She was just a third wheel now that the long lost girlfriend was back.
“You just let me handle Katherine, alright?” Damon answers curtly.
“She enslaved my family for ages. Who knows what else she has up her sleeve. I’m not just going to let her do whatever the hell she wants.”
Their conversation is cut short when Elena walks into the bar with Caroline and spots them. The pair makes their way over, an uneasy smile on Elena’s face.
“What are you guys all doing here?” she asks.
The trio exchange glances.
“It’s strange to see you willingly be in the same room as Damon, let alone speak with him,” Elena questions Bonnie.
“I was talking to Bonnie,” Blair answers smoothly when Bonnie became tongue-tied. “Damon just happened to be with me at the time. Didn’t you know? Bonnie and I have become fast friends after that Halloween party.”
Bonnie nods enthusiastically and Damon just smiles back at her infuriatingly.
“I see…”
Elena doesn’t quite believe them.
“What are you doing here?” Blair shoots back turning the tables on Elena. Better to be the interrogator than the interrogated.
“Oh. I’m working on a project with Caroline for English.”
“On what?” Blair fakes curiosity.
“Shakespeare…” Elena replies cautiously.
“And we better get started. I’m supposed to meet Matt at six so hopefully we’d finish by then,” Caroline adds.
“Yeah, you guys go. We’ll catch up later okay?” Bonnie says with an urging smile.
Blair and Damon, too, both shoot Elena convincing smiles to urge the brunette away.
“A-Alright…”
Elena gives the three one last perplexed look before retreating with Caroline to a distant corner to work on their project. Once Elena was out of earshot the trio all let their muscles relax.
“Now, where were we?” Bonnie starts.
“You were going about whining about Katherine and how she enslaved your family and whatnot and I was going to tell you to stick it,” Damon replies derisively.
As the witch opens her mouth to come back with an equally biting riposte Damon’s phone rings. The witch glares at Damon as he reaches to answer it.
“It’s Stefan. I should take it. He might have had an accident and killed a gym teacher or something.”**
Bonnie is not amused and turns to Blair in exasperation. Blair is used to Damon’s antics and has learned that if you just humor him things actually get done faster so she shrugs her shoulders in reply.
Damon flicks open his phone, mocking smile playing on his lips. “Hello, brother. What can I not do for you?”
“Hey, you’re at the Grill right? I left my wallet there last night. Do you think you can get it back for me?”
“What am I? Your fetching boy?” Damon snarks.
“It’s just a little favor, Damon,” Stefan sighs from the other end of the line.
“If I start doing you favors, then everyone is going to start asking me for favors. It’s a slippery slope!”
“Damon, please. You’re over there anyways. Elena gave it to me and I don’t want her to know I lost it.”
“Dude, she’s got you so whipped.”
He hears some background noise and an undecipherable voice in the background coming from Stefan’s line.
“Hey, I gotta go, Elena just showed up. Remember to get my wallet, okay?”
Before Damon could come up with a witty retort, Stefan had hung up.
Damn Stefan and his idiotic notions of sibling love and kitty cats and rainbows. Damon had a reputation to uphold and here Stefan was running about treating him as if he really turned over a new leaf and was an all-around good citizen. The indignity of it all is soon overshadowed by the strangeness of Stefan’s parting words. Did Stefan just say Elena had shown up? At the Salvatore house? That couldn’t be possible.
“What was that about?” Blair asks.
“Stefan wants me to get his wallet for him from the bar… he hung up because Elena came over.”
“Elena?” Bonnie repeats, her eyebrows knitting together in puzzlement. “But Elena’s over there…”
All three members of the table turn towards the back corner of the bar and there she was. Elena Gilbert was sitting with Caroline Forbes talking animatedly about Macbeth and Henry VIII.
“But, if Elena is here… then who’s with Stefan?” Blair asks the question that they all are thinking.
Over at the Salvatore mansion, Stefan smiles at his girlfriend who had unexpectedly came to visit him.
xxx
“I thought you were working on a project with Caroline today. We weren’t supposed to meet till later tonight.”
“Caroline cancelled,” Katherine lies easily. “Your door was open so I let myself in.” She wraps her arms around his waist and he presses a soft kiss on her forehead. “I missed you and I couldn’t wait.”
“I missed you, too. Even though we saw each other only a few hours ago at school,” he teases.
“A few hours… to me it seemed like a hundred and fifty years,” Katherine says truthfully.
“One hundred and fifty years. Such a specific length of time,” Stefan jokes.
“Well… give or a take a couple of hours,” Katherine replies flirtatiously.
Stefan smiles indulgently at his girlfriend. “Sorry about the dark living room, Damon must have forgotten to open up the blinds. I’ll go pull them back.”
“No,” Katherine says a little too fast. “I like the darkness.”
“Really? You’re always telling me how creepy the house gets in the dark.”
“Well… I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s the perfect lighting… Especially when I want to do this…” she finishes her sentence by kissing him full on the lips.
“You’re acting weird today,” Stefan declares, smiling into the kiss.
“Am I?” Katherine traces his jaw with a finger and places a soft kiss right under his left ear. “Do you not like it?”
Stefan laughs. “I’m not complaining.”
Katherine moves her arms around his neck and leans in close so that their noses were touching.
“Do you… love me?” she asks in soft voice.
It’s a loaded question.
“I love you,” Stefan says easily as he resumes their kiss.
Katherine pulls away and looks at the young Salvatore straight in the eye. “Who do you love? Say it,” she demands.
Stefan laughs again and smiles as he leans in to whisper in her ear. “Elena Gilbert.”
Stefan notices a strange look his girlfriend’s eyes, but is soon distracted when she crashes her lips into his and pining his arms behind him. She kisses him roughly, all tongue and teeth. It’s not the way she usually kisses him. He has a passing thought that her mouth rather oddly cold against his despite their heated exchange, but is once again sidetracked when she pushes him down against the sofa. She smirks at the surprised look in his face.
“What has gotten in to you?” he chuckles.
“I feel good today… and I want you to feel good with me,” she says teasingly. She plays with the buttons on his shirt, her hands moving seductively up and down his chest and then pausing at the bottommost button. “Should I stop?”
“Don’t stop.” Stefan reaches for her face to draw her back into a kiss.
His shirt is made quick work of and tossed carelessly aside. As Stefan moves to place his hands around her waist, Katherine grabs them and pins them back against the couch.
“Nuh uh,” she says with a mischievous smile. “I have a surprise for you. Close your eyes.”
Stefan smiles back at her, still attempting to move his arms, but she holds them back forcefully. When did Elena get so strong?
“I said close you eyes,” she commands.
He’s puzzled, but obliges. Once Stefan’s eyes have fluttered shut, Katherine’s previous smiling face quickly turns into a scowl.
“Don’t open them until I tell you to,” she whispers into his ear.
She trails her mouth across his cheek and finds his lips and once again engages in kissing him. At one point she bites down his bottom lip hard. It’s enough to draw blood. Stefan winces and tries to move his hands once again, but he can’t move them at all. Elena couldn’t possibly be so strong. Something was wrong here. His eyes flash open to the sight of who he had thought was his girlfriend licking his blood from her fangs, her eyes darkened by veins.
“Oh my god, Katherine,” he breathes, his eyes wide.
“Hello, Stefan. Surprise,” Katherine taunts.
xxx
The moment they figured out what happened all three members of the Tomb Initiative had gotten to their feet and speeding towards the Salvatore mansion.
Damon breaks the heavy oak door open to reveal a bloody mouthed Katherine sitting on top of a half naked Stefan pined to the couch.
“Get off of him!”
Katherine hisses in response and raises her hand in a feral gesture, ready to plunge it through the young Stefan’s chest and rip out his heart. In a split second, Damon is by her side, his hand gripping her arm, holding her back.
“Let him go!”
“He’s the reason I was put into the tomb!” she snarls.
“He’s my brother!”
“So what?!” she throws back viciously.
With one hand gripping Stefan’s neck to keep him pined down on the cough Katherine shoves Damon away with her other. He’s surprised by the amount of strength she’s regained from just the past few days. He goes crashing into a desk, breaking it in half in the process. Katherine turns her attention back to the younger Salvatore. Before she can go through with murdering Stefan, Bonnie knocks her off him with a stunning spell. It doesn’t last long. Katherine has been recovering for a total of four days already and given her age and power, she bounces back quickly. Unlike humans, vampires get stronger with time. Stefan had managed to scramble to his feet only to have Katherine plunge her hand through his stomach, missing his lungs by millimeters. She smiling as she watches blood drips down his mouth. She rips out her hand and licks it clean as Stefan falls to the floor.
“No!” Damon cries out and tackles Katherine out of the way.
They engage in a struggle as Bonnie rushes over to Stefan’s side to inspect the wound. Given Stefan’s dietary habits, the wound is slow to heal.
“He’s bleeding a lot! We need to stop the bleeding!” Bonnie declares, her hand pressed against Stefan’s gaping wound.
“Get away from him! I want him to bleed!” Katherine cries from the other side of the room, dropping her hold of Damon so that he slides down the wall with a thud. She’s his senior and maker so he’s no match for her.
Blair looks to her left and spots the wooden dining chairs. Glancing back to her right she watches Damon try and hold back Katherine while Bonnie tended to Stefan. Without another thought, Blair marches over to the chairs, grabs one of them and proceeds to smash it against the floor, breaking off the legs in the process. She chooses a particularly sturdy pointy piece and smiles.
Bonnie aims another stunning spell towards the she-vampire, but Katherine dodges and launches herself towards the witch in her efforts to get to Stefan. After some struggle, Bonnie manages to push Katherine off of herself and into the opposite wall, but breaks her wrist in the process. Katherine whips around to finish what she started, but stops short when a sudden paralyzing pain shoots through her abdomen.
“Don’t. Move,” Blair orders.
Katherine looks down to see end of dining chair leg poking through her midriff.
* Just incase anyone was curious, according to Vampire Diaries Wikia, Katherine was born in 1614 which would make her 396 years old.
** Referring to how Damon killed the football coach in 1.02: Friday Night Bites and Bonnie was having visions of the numbers that suppose to have predicted it.
A/N: I was planning on updating earlier, but I accidentally deleted part of this chapter last night so I had to rewrite parts of it. So there might be some mistakes that I have overlooked. SORRY! Still, I’m quite satisfied with the pacing of this chapter. =) Lots of things happened and it sets it up very well for some more action in the next chapter which I hope to get out probably on Saturday or Sunday night *fingers crossed*. On another note… WOW! 100+ reviews! This never happened to me before and I just want to say thanks to all the people who have reviewed or commented on this fic! I wouldn’t be able to write it without all of your wonderful encouragement! =D Thanks soooo much! <3 <3 <3 I hope you continue to support me and my writing!
As her fangs sink into porcelain skin and the metallic taste of blood hits her tongue, a smile broadens across Katherine’s face. The smug delight is short lived. It takes a split second for her eyes to widen as the blood to completely fill her mouth and burn like acid.
She abruptly pushes herself off the girl and collapses in a heap onto the floor. Her hands grip her throat as if she could physically stop the burning with them. She coughs and coughs, trying to rid herself of the noxious blood, but the burning sensation remains. It seems to have a paralyzing effect as it burns its way down her throat. Her fangs have retracted of their own accord and all the muscles in her body seem to be painfully contracting simultaneously as the human’s blood enters her system despite her attempts to expel it.
Blair stands stunned, her hand reaching for her bleeding neck, her eyes trained on the female vampire convulsing on the grassy floor, desperately gasping for air.
“What happened?! Are you ok?” Damon cries rushing to the scene, albeit late.
The wound is shallow and so Blair nods numbly in reply, one hand pressing on her wound. He moves her hand away to look at the bite mark clearly. It’s shallow and Blair seemed more stunned than anything. Sure that Blair would be fine, Damon crouches by the writhing Katherine and attempts to calm her down. Katherine continues to retch and cough Blair’s blood into the grass. Damon reaches into his jacket to take out a pouch of blood kindly pilfered from the nearby hospital to offer her, but Katherine weakly slaps it away.
“You poisoned me!” she accuses.
“I didn’t. I don’t know what happened. You weren’t supposed to drink from her, this human is my friend.”
“Not your complimentary free meal,” Blair cheekily remarks.
Damon gives her a look as if to say “You’re not helping” and Blair gives him back a glare that reads “She tried to eat me. I will be as bitchy as I want.”
Katherine empties her stomach’s contents via bloody vomit in the grass and wipes her mouth with the back of the hand. Blair is severely grossed out and doesn’t put any effort from letting the disgust show on her face. The vampire looks even worse than before, which Blair didn’t think was possible.
“Here, drink this instead,” Damon proffers Katherine the bag of blood once again. “It is fine, I swear.”
Katherine is suspicious, but she takes the pouch from his extended hand. The taste of Blair’s blood still manages to cling to the back of her throat, making her feel sick, but Katherine understands survival well. She sniffs the blood offered to her as if she could smell the poison. Her fangs refuse to extend and so she has trouble puncturing the bag. Damon has to do it for her and after a cautious sip she begins to hungrily devour the contents. Blair cringes at the indecent spectacle.
“Geez, not a very pretty sight is she?”
“She’s been starved,” Damon answers.
Katherine tosses the empty bag to the floor and doesn’t bother to wipe the blood dripping from her mouth. The pilfered blood had helped, and she looks a bit better, or as good as any undead being could be anyhow.
“There’s something wrong with this human,” Katherine hisses, giving Blair the evil eye.
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” Blair counters.
“She’s an Immune,” Emily injects, appearing from behind them.
No one had noticed her until then and so she had been a silent observer of the entire episode. The effect of Blair’s blood on the vampiric species and the implications doesn’t escape her.
“Immunes,” Katherine sneers, “are a myth.”
“Yeah… kind of like vampires and witches, right?” Blair taunts back.
“Blair,” Damon chides, handing Katherine another bag of blood swiped from the local Red Cross.
“What? She’s the one trying to deny my existence. Kind of closed minded, don’t you think? Not to mention ironic.”
In between glaring at the Immune and devouring the hospital’s supply of blood, Katherine eyes the olive skinned witch up and down.
“Emily, is that you? You look different.”
“Of course she does. It’s been nearly 200 years,” Blair snidely answers.
The female vampire glowers at her and snarls, before turning her attention back on Damon.
“Damon… I’m still hungry,” Katherine whines after finishing her third bag of blood. Blair scrunches up her nose at the vamp’s baby voice and rolls her eyes.
Katherine’s appearance starts to rapidly recover as the human blood hits her system. The skeleton-like figure was slowly fleshing out and looking more and more like Elena and less like a corpse by the second. It was quite unnerving.
“Emily, go fetch me something clean to change into while Damon gets me some more blood,” she demands.
Emily narrows her eyes and stays put beside Blair.
“Emily,” Katherine repeats, her own eyes quickly narrowing as her thin hand reaches for the pendant around her neck.
She gives the pendant a little twist and Emily/Bonnie’s face contorts with pain as her body jerks forward. Blair is quickly by her side.
“Hey! Watch what you’re doing with that little pendant of yours!” Blair confronts Katherine.
The vampire ignores her and keeps her eyes trained on the witch kneeling on the floor.
“Emily,” Katherine calls with a falsely sweet voice. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Y-yes...” Emily replies through gritted teeth.
“Yes, what?” Katherine demands.
Emily exchanges an angry glare at Damon as if to remind him about her earlier threats of turning the newly rescued vampire into ash if she had the chance. Those threats seem very close to reality right now.
“Katherine,” Damon tries.
Katherine brushes him away and gives the pendant another good twist. Emily lurches forward from the pain once again.
“Yes. Mistress,” Emily bites out.
The female vampire smiles a self-satisfied smile and Blair immediately decides that Katherine Pierce is a total bitch.
xxx
They agree to stow Katherine in the Salvatore’s attic for the time being. The basement would have been more suitable, but since Stefan had remodeled it the previous year Damon doesn’t want to put her in such a prison-like environment, especially since she just escaped from one. Bonnie and Emily agreed to cast a spell on the room so that Stefan wouldn’t notice the newest house guest at the Salvatore house. The young Salvatore doesn’t have much reason to go up there anyways, so they hope keeping a low profile would be enough until they find a better housing situation.
Katherine is suspicious of everything, but she’s determined to conquer all of the technologies of the modern world. She makes Emily run about fetching her things while Damon gave her a brief history lesson on what had happened in the past hundred and fifty years.
For all of Katherine’s bravado, she doesn’t stay conscious for very long and falls asleep after her sixth bag of blood. Emily rolls her eyes and declares “Finally!” in an exasperated tone.
Katherine would never willingly hand over her amulet, even if Emily did save her, so they don’t feel any need to tell her about the witch’s part of the deal. That leaves the only option for obtaining the amulet was to steal it. Blair’s the only one able to even touch the amulet due to the specifications of the spell and so she’s left the task of securing the necklace from the slumbering monster.
“She’s not going to be happy with you when all this is over,” Blair points out to Damon.
“She won’t be happy, but she’ll be here,” Damon replies, watching Katherine sleep. “That’s what matters.”
She can’t quite read his expression and it makes her uneasy. Why does the way he watch the sleeping Katherine bother her so much? She thought she already set her feelings straight. Damon Salvatore and Blair Waldorf are friends. No more, no less. She shouldn’t be having inappropriate feelings towards him, let alone pinpricks of jealousy. It was ridiculous!
She’s setting herself up for more heartbreak at the rate she’s going and she quite tired of getting her heart broken. Blair Waldorf’s heart will stay perfectly intact for the time being, thank you very much. She’s not going to go about giving it away willy-nilly anytime soon. Especially not to somebody who clearly has a lot of emotional baggage with his long-lost homicidal, blood sucking girlfriend.
Still… for a while he was hers, even if it’s only in the friendship capacity.
She is shaken from her troubling thoughts when Katherine snores in her sleep. A laugh escapes Blair’s lips before she could help it. Damon frowns at her, but his amusement reads clear in his eyes.
“Are you sure it’s worth it?” Blair jibes. “She’s such a… bitch,” Blair finishes dramatically.
“Bitchy girls seem to be my type. Present company included,” he replies, smiling at her flirtatiously.
She finds herself blushing at his comment and is immediately horrified. When did she become the idiotic fawning schoolgirl? She covers up her slipup by rambling on how hot air rises which explains the hot temperature in attics. Her flimsy excuses earn her a quirked eyebrow and an amused grin, but he doesn’t comment.
“Anyway, personally I think you could’ve done better,” she concludes gesturing at the dozing Katherine.
“I believe that’s what I said about Nate.”
There’s a flicker of pain that flashes across her face despite her efforts to remain nonchalant. He immediately regrets his thoughtless words. It’s still too early for the wounds to completely scab over.
“Anyways, Katherine’s snoring doesn’t even compare to yours. I could hear it all the way from the den last night.”
She knows this is a lie because last night after their sodidnotactuallyhappen kiss, she had not slept a wink, but she realizes he’s just trying to lighten the mood. It’s a backhanded apology for letting his tongue slip and so she doesn’t correct him.
She makes a comment about how he’s a jerk and that he and Katherine deserved each other. Even as the insult escapes her mouth, she wishes it weren’t so. She doesn’t want to see him with Katherine, because she wants him to be with her. Romantically or not, she selfishly wants Damon by her side. She realizes this too late of course, but she feels it all the same.
He says something back that she doesn’t quite hear due to all her internal turmoil so she answers back in a glare because he’s Damon and it was probably a safe bet that he said something snarky and condescending. They glower at each other like that for a while before getting back to business. Emily is waiting downstairs after all and she wouldn’t like to be kept waiting for Damon and Blair to finish their banter (which never really ends once they start).
There’s a moment when Katherine stirs in her sleep and Blair is afraid to even breathe lest she makes a noise. Damn vampires and their super hearing! This must be how Odysseus felt tiptoeing around a sleeping homicidal Cyclops. She glares back at Damon for making her do this in the first place and he merely nods his head to encourage her to continue. The saying “easier said than done” comes to mind and Blair regrets having agreed to play the thief.
The second time Katherine shifts, Blair had recoiled in shock and in the process stubbed her toe on an uneven floorboard. She muffles her pain by pressing her hand against her mouth. This time she whips around to face Damon, narrows her eyes and mouths “I hate you” to him. He looks almost amused at her antics and blows her an air kiss before waving her on. The cocky bastard.
Once Blair’s back was turn to him, Damon’s smiling façade is replaced with seriousness. Blair doesn’t realize that despite his cavalier attitude, the idea of putting her in such a precarious situation makes him uneasy. He swallows nervously as her hands creep closer and closer to Katherine’s neck. He clenches his jaw as her fingers circle around the clasp of the necklace and if he were a normal human being he would have had a heart attack at the rate his heart was beating as he watched her lift the chain off of Katherine. She somehow manages to free the pendant from around the vampire’s neck and he finally allows himself to unclench the fist at his side.
Blair breathes a silent sigh of relief and gives Damon an accomplished smile. She indicates with her hands that she’s going to bring the necklace to Emily downstairs and he nods in agreement. Before she mounts the stairs she looks back to see Damon walk over to the slumbering Katherine and hover over her with a longing look on his face. She never felt so lonely and clenches the necklace in her fist as she makes her descent. She doesn’t know that once her back is turned, he’s giving her that same look.
xxx
Emily is nervous as she draws her witchy circles in chalk on the wooden floorboards. Her hands are shaking and the symbols are messy, but legible. Or they would be legible if Blair could read them.
“Just place it over here,” Emily instructs her, gesturing to the center of the pentagram inside the circle.
She does as she is told whilst the witch hovers about.
“Don’t be so nervous. You’re about to become a free woman,” she jokes lightly.
Truth be told, Blair is equally nervous and she doesn’t really want to do this. She had become uncharacteristically attached to the Bennett witches and was sorry to see them go. Once this is all over, there would be no more reason for them to meet anymore. It’s not like they were friends or anything, even if she’d like them to be. Though if anyone ever asks her she would deny deny deny. Blair has a reputation to maintain after all. But she misses the female companionship now that she and Serena were on the outs. A sudden rush of dejection washes over her. Emily’s constant nervous pacing doesn’t help matters.
“For god’s sake, calm down!” she exclaims in a hushed whisper. Whether the advice was for herself or the witch, the fact is unclear.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will. This is what you’ve been working for. It’ll all turn out fine. I promise.”
“You promise?” Emily repeats stopping mid-step and shooting Blair an amused smile. It was a very un-Blair-like thing to comfort someone.
“Yes. And Waldorfs don’t make promises lightly,” Blair answers flippantly. She hides her feelings behind her usual brand of haughtiness and arrogance.
Emily gives her genuine smile and then exhales loudly before regaining her composure.
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
She raises her hand as if to begin, but then stops.
“Before… before I go. There’s something important I have to tell you. It’s about Immunes.”
Blair rolls her eyes even though she’s secretly glad for any sort of postponement.
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Your blood. Do you remember what happened when Katherine tried to drink it?”
“Yeah, she couldn’t. It made her sick.”
Emily shakes her head slowly. “No. It didn’t just make her sick. Don’t you remember? She hadn’t been able to extend her fangs to even drink from that bag of blood. Damon had to do it for her. I think that when she took your blood, she lost her powers.”
“W-what does this mean? I can… neutralize her?”
“Yes. And if that’s true, then that ability might come in handy one day. I just thought you should know.”
Blair is lost for a moment in the implications of her new found gift. On the bright side, it makes her in a way invulnerable to supernatural threats. She won’t be the damsel in distress. She has her own method of defense this way. On the other side…It was also a bit frightening. Maybe there was a reason why Immunes are practically extinct. With such abilities they become a threat to the supernatural community. It makes her a target.
“Hey, Blair?”
She’s startled back into reality. “Y-yeah?”
“There was something else I wanted to say to you.
“Something more important that the fact that I can defuse a rampaging approximately four hundred year old* vampire with my blood?” she replies sardonically.
“Yes,” Emily replies in an equally sarcastic manner.
“What is it?”
She’s curious as to what could possibly trump Emily earlier revelation.
“Thank you. For everything.”
Before she could come up with a response to the surprising thank you, Emily raises her hands up and smashes the amulet with a rock. Sparks fly everywhere and the unlit candles around them violently bursts into flames. A random thought about witches and their need to put on a fireworks show every time they cast a spell runs through Blair’s head before everything is blocked out by a bright white light. She puts her hand up to shield her eyes, but it’s as if the light could penetrate her eyelids. In a room upstairs dark eyes flash open just as Blair closes hers from the blinding light.
Blair is left momentarily sightless, but as her vision begins to clear she can make out a single female figure kneeling besides the shards of what remained of Katherine’s amulet, her eyes closed and her head hung down.
“Emily? Emily! Are you alright?”
As in answer to her question, the witch collapses on the floor. Blair gives her eyes one last rub with the back of her hand and rushes to the witch’s side, cradling the other girl’s head into her lap. After several moments, the witch stirs and it is Bonnie who looks up at her.
“Is… Emily gone?” Bonnie asks, rubbing her temple and sitting up.
Her eyes were no longer haunted by the ghost of her ancestor and Blair is left blinking in shock at how quickly and easily Emily had disappeared from her life.
“Yeah… she is.”
“Forever?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Bonnie is looking at her strangely and she doesn’t know why. Blair flinches when the teen witch reaches for cheek. The witch’s hand comes away wet and she realizes she was crying without knowing it.
“How embarrassing! I don’t even know why I’m crying. You’re free now. The curse is gone,” Blair smiles as she erases the evidence of her emotional lapse.
“It’s okay to be sad, Blair. You don’t have to hide it. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss her too.”
Before Blair can reply with a lie about how she doesn’t care that Emily is gone and she only in it for her own selfish reasons, the door behind them flies open. Blair whips around to find an enraged vampire towering over her.
“You little bitch! You stole my amulet!” Katherine snarls.
Katherine lunges at Blair, but is pulled back by Damon, her elongated nails narrowly missing Blair’s throat.
“Let me go! I’m going to rip her throat out! Emily was mine!”
“Back off!” Bonnie warns, pushing Blair behind her, her left hand igniting with witch’s fire. “The Bennett witches aren’t slaves to anyone. I’ll burn you where you stand if you come any closer, vampire.”
“I’ll get you for this you stupid human!” Katherine growls while struggling against Damon’s hold.
“Welcome to the 21st century. Slavery has been abolished. Get with the program!” Blair retorts.
“Don’t taunt her!” Damon scolds Blair. Katherine tries to break free from his hold, but he hangs on tight. “You’re not going to hurt her! It was part of the deal to free you!”
Katherine whips around at him, turning her rage on him. “What?!”
“Did you really think the witch helped me open the tomb out of the goodness of her heart?”
“But she was mine,” Katherine hisses.
“There’s a price for everything, Katherine. Would you rather still be stuck in that tomb, rotting away?”
Katherine bits her tongue and continues to glare at Damon. She stamps her feet against the wooden floorboards, cracking and splintering them with her strength and pushes past him to exit the room. Damon watches her leave with a forlorn gaze. Once Katherine rounds the corner he turns his attention back to Blair and Bonnie. His eyes are pleading, though pleading for what Blair is not sure.
“Go after her,” Blair sighs. “She might kill somebody if you don’t.”
He clenches his jaw, enough to draw blood, before he takes off after Katherine. Despite her encouragement, Blair can’t help but feel disappointed to see him go.
xxx
Katherine busies herself throwing and smashing things. She had expected things to pick up where they left off once she was freed from that dreadful dirt prison that was the tomb, but everything had changed. There were boxes that showed moving pictures, things that would beep and buzz, voices that came out of little metal rectangles. Time had stopped for Katherine in that tomb. In her conceit and vanity, she never realized that the world would have moved on without her. Damon wasn’t even the same, he never would have bargained with the help if it had two hundred years ago. There’s such a thing as class distinction! The stupid slave wouldn’t have dared rebel back then. And now there’s some Immune bitch nipping at Damon’s heels, stealing away his attention from her. Stefan wasn’t even there.
That was the most jarring thing about all the time that had past. Katherine had always believed that it would have been the young Salvatore brother who would have freed her from the tomb. If anything he was the one most responsible for getting her thrown in there in the first place. The least he could do was break her out of it. She had spent the last 100+ years thinking that it would have been Stefan. It should’ve been Stefan. But then again, if it had been Stefan, perhaps her thoughts would have been that it should’ve been Damon. Katherine is a girl who usually wants what she doesn’t have. But since it was Damon who freed her, her mind is childishly fixated on the fact that she lost the younger Salvatore.
As her thoughts strayed to Stefan Salvatore she spots him approaching the Salvatore mansion from across the front lawn, with a girl in tow no less. Upon closer inspection she realizes the remarkable resemblance between herself and the brunette Stefan was kissing. Her fragile strength decides to fail on her at this moment and she feels her knees buckling. She catches herself before she hits the floor. She’s still too weak from her stint in the tomb. One night’s rest and half a dozen bags of blood was not enough to restore her to her former glory. Her weakness serves to fuel her frustration and she slams the floor with her fists, but end up hurting herself.
Damon chooses this moment to announce his presence and she whirls on him.
“Look, I know a lot of things have changed,” Damon begins.
Katherine laughs mockingly in reply from her position on the floor. “Oh yes, a lot of things have changed and they’re about to change even more now that I’m back.”
Damon interprets her reply as a threat and it makes him ill at ease. Katherine pushes herself back up to standing position and moves over to the window. Looking back down she spots the two lovers caught in an embrace outside the mansion and a malicious smile spreads on her lips. Damon notices where her eyes are trained and the implication dawns on him.
“Katherine,” he warns.
“What?!” She replies angrily.
“It’s been nearly two hundred years, Katherine. He wasn’t going to wait for you forever.”
It hurts that she was still looking after Stefan even though he’s done everything for her.
“But you did,” Katherine answers smoothly. She sidles up close to him and places a cold kiss on his lips. “You did, Damon. And rest assured… you’ll be rewarded for your dedication.”
She brushes back his hair and strokes his cheek with a slender finger.
“After I get back at Stefan.”
“Why aren’t I enough?” he asks. He can’t stand it anymore. He’s sick of sharing. He wants someone who’ll only look at him. “I’m here. I’ve always been here. Let me be enough!”
Why was it that he wasn’t enough? Why is it that even now, when he has sacrificed so much for her, gave her everything he could possibly give, he was still not enough? He had naively believed that once he freed her she would finally choose him. It was the ultimate romantic gesture after all. He waited for her, searched for her, and loved her for a hundred and fifty years. He thought that’s what she would’ve been satisfied with that much. He’s quickly finding himself oh so wrong. Katherine is never truly satisfied. She lives in a world where the grass is always greener on the other side and so her greed is endless.
“Your brother was the reason why I got thrown into that hellhole. I’m not going to let him live out his little fairytale happy ending with my doppelganger,” she replies angrily. Just as quickly she changes her frown into a syrupy sweet smile. “We’ll have our time, Damon. But first, I have to deal with Stefan.”
It’s totally sappy and un-Damon-like, but he doesn’t want any more revenge or diabolical master plans now that he’s finally accomplished his task. It was time to let things go. There’s no more point to torturing Stefan. He doesn’t want to waste any more time on making Stefan miserable when he had Katherine by his side once more.
“I don’t want revenge. Let’s leave this place! Forget Stefan, forget Mystic Falls. We’ll find a little corner of the earth, somewhere quiet and secluded, where we can just be together. You could be happy!”
Katherine laughs, moving away from him and perching herself on the windowsill to watch Stefan wave goodbye to Elena. Her eyes follow Elena as she makes her way back to Caroline’s car. Once her double disappears from sight, she turns her attention back on Damon.
“I forgot how funny you were, Damon. Where’s the fun in that? I’ve spent the last few centuries in ‘someplace quiet and secluded,’” she mocks him. “Now… I want to go paint the city red.”
xxx
Despite what Katherine had threatened, she spent the next couple of days relatively quiet and even cooperative. She just hides up in the attic, drinks the blood he gets for her and assimilating herself with the modern world. In hindsight, that should’ve been the first warning.
Bonnie had asked to meet Damon and Blair at the Grill and so they had obliged her. Katherine had promised not leave the mansion and since she had long since lost her ring, it wasn’t like she could walk about during the daytime anyways (Coppertone hasn’t come up with a sunscreen with high enough UV protection to allow vampires to walk in the daytime yet). Given his past experiences, Damon should’ve realized then that she had made the promise too easily.
“What did you call us here for, witch? Our partnership is over. You can hate my guts again,” Damon says cheekily as he slides into the booth across from Bonnie.
“It’s not over until you figure out what to do with Katherine. So until then I will have to just restrain myself from setting you on fire,” Bonnie replies.
This was something Blair herself was also thinking about. What was Damon planning on doing now that he has Katherine back? It feels like the relationship between her and Damon were quickly coming to a close. She was just a third wheel now that the long lost girlfriend was back.
“You just let me handle Katherine, alright?” Damon answers curtly.
“She enslaved my family for ages. Who knows what else she has up her sleeve. I’m not just going to let her do whatever the hell she wants.”
Their conversation is cut short when Elena walks into the bar with Caroline and spots them. The pair makes their way over, an uneasy smile on Elena’s face.
“What are you guys all doing here?” she asks.
The trio exchange glances.
“It’s strange to see you willingly be in the same room as Damon, let alone speak with him,” Elena questions Bonnie.
“I was talking to Bonnie,” Blair answers smoothly when Bonnie became tongue-tied. “Damon just happened to be with me at the time. Didn’t you know? Bonnie and I have become fast friends after that Halloween party.”
Bonnie nods enthusiastically and Damon just smiles back at her infuriatingly.
“I see…”
Elena doesn’t quite believe them.
“What are you doing here?” Blair shoots back turning the tables on Elena. Better to be the interrogator than the interrogated.
“Oh. I’m working on a project with Caroline for English.”
“On what?” Blair fakes curiosity.
“Shakespeare…” Elena replies cautiously.
“And we better get started. I’m supposed to meet Matt at six so hopefully we’d finish by then,” Caroline adds.
“Yeah, you guys go. We’ll catch up later okay?” Bonnie says with an urging smile.
Blair and Damon, too, both shoot Elena convincing smiles to urge the brunette away.
“A-Alright…”
Elena gives the three one last perplexed look before retreating with Caroline to a distant corner to work on their project. Once Elena was out of earshot the trio all let their muscles relax.
“Now, where were we?” Bonnie starts.
“You were going about whining about Katherine and how she enslaved your family and whatnot and I was going to tell you to stick it,” Damon replies derisively.
As the witch opens her mouth to come back with an equally biting riposte Damon’s phone rings. The witch glares at Damon as he reaches to answer it.
“It’s Stefan. I should take it. He might have had an accident and killed a gym teacher or something.”**
Bonnie is not amused and turns to Blair in exasperation. Blair is used to Damon’s antics and has learned that if you just humor him things actually get done faster so she shrugs her shoulders in reply.
Damon flicks open his phone, mocking smile playing on his lips. “Hello, brother. What can I not do for you?”
“Hey, you’re at the Grill right? I left my wallet there last night. Do you think you can get it back for me?”
“What am I? Your fetching boy?” Damon snarks.
“It’s just a little favor, Damon,” Stefan sighs from the other end of the line.
“If I start doing you favors, then everyone is going to start asking me for favors. It’s a slippery slope!”
“Damon, please. You’re over there anyways. Elena gave it to me and I don’t want her to know I lost it.”
“Dude, she’s got you so whipped.”
He hears some background noise and an undecipherable voice in the background coming from Stefan’s line.
“Hey, I gotta go, Elena just showed up. Remember to get my wallet, okay?”
Before Damon could come up with a witty retort, Stefan had hung up.
Damn Stefan and his idiotic notions of sibling love and kitty cats and rainbows. Damon had a reputation to uphold and here Stefan was running about treating him as if he really turned over a new leaf and was an all-around good citizen. The indignity of it all is soon overshadowed by the strangeness of Stefan’s parting words. Did Stefan just say Elena had shown up? At the Salvatore house? That couldn’t be possible.
“What was that about?” Blair asks.
“Stefan wants me to get his wallet for him from the bar… he hung up because Elena came over.”
“Elena?” Bonnie repeats, her eyebrows knitting together in puzzlement. “But Elena’s over there…”
All three members of the table turn towards the back corner of the bar and there she was. Elena Gilbert was sitting with Caroline Forbes talking animatedly about Macbeth and Henry VIII.
“But, if Elena is here… then who’s with Stefan?” Blair asks the question that they all are thinking.
Over at the Salvatore mansion, Stefan smiles at his girlfriend who had unexpectedly came to visit him.
xxx
“I thought you were working on a project with Caroline today. We weren’t supposed to meet till later tonight.”
“Caroline cancelled,” Katherine lies easily. “Your door was open so I let myself in.” She wraps her arms around his waist and he presses a soft kiss on her forehead. “I missed you and I couldn’t wait.”
“I missed you, too. Even though we saw each other only a few hours ago at school,” he teases.
“A few hours… to me it seemed like a hundred and fifty years,” Katherine says truthfully.
“One hundred and fifty years. Such a specific length of time,” Stefan jokes.
“Well… give or a take a couple of hours,” Katherine replies flirtatiously.
Stefan smiles indulgently at his girlfriend. “Sorry about the dark living room, Damon must have forgotten to open up the blinds. I’ll go pull them back.”
“No,” Katherine says a little too fast. “I like the darkness.”
“Really? You’re always telling me how creepy the house gets in the dark.”
“Well… I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s the perfect lighting… Especially when I want to do this…” she finishes her sentence by kissing him full on the lips.
“You’re acting weird today,” Stefan declares, smiling into the kiss.
“Am I?” Katherine traces his jaw with a finger and places a soft kiss right under his left ear. “Do you not like it?”
Stefan laughs. “I’m not complaining.”
Katherine moves her arms around his neck and leans in close so that their noses were touching.
“Do you… love me?” she asks in soft voice.
It’s a loaded question.
“I love you,” Stefan says easily as he resumes their kiss.
Katherine pulls away and looks at the young Salvatore straight in the eye. “Who do you love? Say it,” she demands.
Stefan laughs again and smiles as he leans in to whisper in her ear. “Elena Gilbert.”
Stefan notices a strange look his girlfriend’s eyes, but is soon distracted when she crashes her lips into his and pining his arms behind him. She kisses him roughly, all tongue and teeth. It’s not the way she usually kisses him. He has a passing thought that her mouth rather oddly cold against his despite their heated exchange, but is once again sidetracked when she pushes him down against the sofa. She smirks at the surprised look in his face.
“What has gotten in to you?” he chuckles.
“I feel good today… and I want you to feel good with me,” she says teasingly. She plays with the buttons on his shirt, her hands moving seductively up and down his chest and then pausing at the bottommost button. “Should I stop?”
“Don’t stop.” Stefan reaches for her face to draw her back into a kiss.
His shirt is made quick work of and tossed carelessly aside. As Stefan moves to place his hands around her waist, Katherine grabs them and pins them back against the couch.
“Nuh uh,” she says with a mischievous smile. “I have a surprise for you. Close your eyes.”
Stefan smiles back at her, still attempting to move his arms, but she holds them back forcefully. When did Elena get so strong?
“I said close you eyes,” she commands.
He’s puzzled, but obliges. Once Stefan’s eyes have fluttered shut, Katherine’s previous smiling face quickly turns into a scowl.
“Don’t open them until I tell you to,” she whispers into his ear.
She trails her mouth across his cheek and finds his lips and once again engages in kissing him. At one point she bites down his bottom lip hard. It’s enough to draw blood. Stefan winces and tries to move his hands once again, but he can’t move them at all. Elena couldn’t possibly be so strong. Something was wrong here. His eyes flash open to the sight of who he had thought was his girlfriend licking his blood from her fangs, her eyes darkened by veins.
“Oh my god, Katherine,” he breathes, his eyes wide.
“Hello, Stefan. Surprise,” Katherine taunts.
xxx
The moment they figured out what happened all three members of the Tomb Initiative had gotten to their feet and speeding towards the Salvatore mansion.
Damon breaks the heavy oak door open to reveal a bloody mouthed Katherine sitting on top of a half naked Stefan pined to the couch.
“Get off of him!”
Katherine hisses in response and raises her hand in a feral gesture, ready to plunge it through the young Stefan’s chest and rip out his heart. In a split second, Damon is by her side, his hand gripping her arm, holding her back.
“Let him go!”
“He’s the reason I was put into the tomb!” she snarls.
“He’s my brother!”
“So what?!” she throws back viciously.
With one hand gripping Stefan’s neck to keep him pined down on the cough Katherine shoves Damon away with her other. He’s surprised by the amount of strength she’s regained from just the past few days. He goes crashing into a desk, breaking it in half in the process. Katherine turns her attention back to the younger Salvatore. Before she can go through with murdering Stefan, Bonnie knocks her off him with a stunning spell. It doesn’t last long. Katherine has been recovering for a total of four days already and given her age and power, she bounces back quickly. Unlike humans, vampires get stronger with time. Stefan had managed to scramble to his feet only to have Katherine plunge her hand through his stomach, missing his lungs by millimeters. She smiling as she watches blood drips down his mouth. She rips out her hand and licks it clean as Stefan falls to the floor.
“No!” Damon cries out and tackles Katherine out of the way.
They engage in a struggle as Bonnie rushes over to Stefan’s side to inspect the wound. Given Stefan’s dietary habits, the wound is slow to heal.
“He’s bleeding a lot! We need to stop the bleeding!” Bonnie declares, her hand pressed against Stefan’s gaping wound.
“Get away from him! I want him to bleed!” Katherine cries from the other side of the room, dropping her hold of Damon so that he slides down the wall with a thud. She’s his senior and maker so he’s no match for her.
Blair looks to her left and spots the wooden dining chairs. Glancing back to her right she watches Damon try and hold back Katherine while Bonnie tended to Stefan. Without another thought, Blair marches over to the chairs, grabs one of them and proceeds to smash it against the floor, breaking off the legs in the process. She chooses a particularly sturdy pointy piece and smiles.
Bonnie aims another stunning spell towards the she-vampire, but Katherine dodges and launches herself towards the witch in her efforts to get to Stefan. After some struggle, Bonnie manages to push Katherine off of herself and into the opposite wall, but breaks her wrist in the process. Katherine whips around to finish what she started, but stops short when a sudden paralyzing pain shoots through her abdomen.
“Don’t. Move,” Blair orders.
Katherine looks down to see end of dining chair leg poking through her midriff.
* Just incase anyone was curious, according to Vampire Diaries Wikia, Katherine was born in 1614 which would make her 396 years old.
** Referring to how Damon killed the football coach in 1.02: Friday Night Bites and Bonnie was having visions of the numbers that suppose to have predicted it.
A/N: I was planning on updating earlier, but I accidentally deleted part of this chapter last night so I had to rewrite parts of it. So there might be some mistakes that I have overlooked. SORRY! Still, I’m quite satisfied with the pacing of this chapter. =) Lots of things happened and it sets it up very well for some more action in the next chapter which I hope to get out probably on Saturday or Sunday night *fingers crossed*. On another note… WOW! 100+ reviews! This never happened to me before and I just want to say thanks to all the people who have reviewed or commented on this fic! I wouldn’t be able to write it without all of your wonderful encouragement! =D Thanks soooo much! <3 <3 <3 I hope you continue to support me and my writing!