I was majorly depressed when Katherine and was dragged off into the darkness. That was harsh. They could've shown her walking into the sunset or something with Nadia and her family. Anyway, I was intrigued with the idea of what happened to her next. This is what I came up with.

Warning: there is no happy ending.

- imaginationismymuse x


She was in limbo.

Floating.

That was the extent of her knowledge and it was far worse than anything she could ever have imagined, worse than torture, worse than watching her daughter die, worse than watching her last chance at love walk away.

It was enough to break even the toughest and hardest of souls.

And she was a tough, hard soul.

Caught somewhere between the Other Side and the living, she could see both, touch both but they couldn't see her, couldn't feel her touch. She was invisible, truly invisible. For all intents and purposes, she had never existed. There was nothing left of her, not even a spirit, not even a body. All those years of surviving, of manipulating, of killing reduced to nothing.

Nothing.

That had been the first time she had cracked. The first time in over five-hundred years she had shed a tear. Just on tear. One diamond trailing down the contours of her face like a lover's caress.

It would not be her last.

The second time was when she'd seen her daughter but her daughter had not seen her. She had screamed and shouted and stomped her feet. She had begged and pleaded and prayed. It was all in vain. Her daughter had floated away without ever knowing her mother was there and she was left with nothing but unanswered prays and the place where her daughter had occupied.

Another tear fell.

The last time had been when she'd seen the man she loved, the one who left her proclaiming honour and duty, carry on, oblivious to the fact that she had vanished off the face of the earth. She had watched him fall in love, had watched him move on without giving her a second thought, had watched him choose his new love over his siblings, and she had wondered whether he had ever really loved her. Whether anyone had ever really loved her.

The last tear fell.

It had been accompanied with an enraged cry, one that echoed in the nothingness. "I died," she had screamed. "Is that not enough? Why am I being forced to endure this?"

"But I thought this was what you wanted," a voice had answered. "I was under the impression that you wished to be free. Now you are."

"No," she had cried out, searching desperately for the voice. Couldn't the voice see? This wasn't freedom. This wasn't what she wanted. She was trapped. She was alone. All alone. There was no one.

"And there never will be," the voice had said and that was the last thing it ever spoke to her.

There were no tears this time. Tears were delicate things. Tears were shed when there was hope. There was no hope now. There was a torrent, a flood. Her body crumpled to the ground and she held herself with the knowledge that no one ever would again. She rocked back and forth, back and forth to keep herself from falling her apart.

The survivor, they had called her with contempt and admiration in their eyes.

Back and forth, back and forth, like a ship in a storm torn sea.

The beauty, they had murmured to her with lustful eyes and gliding lips.

Back and forth, back and forth, like a creaking seesaw in a playground.

The nothing, was what the voices in her head called her now.

She was nothing.

A shell of someone who had once run in a field with flowers in her hair and sunshine in her laughter. One who had believed in love and loved with abandon. One who had become cold. One who had manipulated and stolen and murdered. One who had feared and been feared. One who had, in the quiet moments on her own, naively wished for freedom.

Now she had it and she wished she could give it back because it turned out that freedom was nothing. Nothing but tears and torrents. Nothing but the falling shards of her heart. Nothing.

And she so rocked and rocked. Back and forth, back and forth in the torrent. Back and forth, back and forth in the nothing. Back and forth, back and forth into eternity.


And so ends the epic story of Katherine Pierce.