Since her birth in the autumn of 1475, Katerina Petrova—or Katherine Pierce, which ever your preference—has lived many lives. She alters history as she goes, as it pleases her, as it eases her pain and guilt; but she never forgets.
-x-
The summer she is six and ten, she lies with a married man.
It was her first time, and it was more painful than pleasurable, but afterward, she tells herself she did it because she loves him, and as her belly rounds with child, she convinces herself that it's true. She longs to tell him about their child, but before her condition becomes obvious, she is confined to the house, and she never gets the chance.
She asks her young sister to deliver a message to him, but when Raina comes back from the market with their mother, she says he was with his wife
Katerina starts at this, and she is thankful her sister is too young to comprehend the anger in her eyes. "Was he…did he seem happy?"
Raina looks at the ground. "He was buying her a pretty dress for a party to celebrate—" she cuts off suddenly her green eyes wide with fright.
"Celebrate what?" Katerina presses, fearing the worst.
"Nevena is with child."
The frustration and anger she feels at both Petar and herself overwhelms Katerina, and panic floods her when she realizes the stress has pushed her into early labor.
"Get Mama, Raina," Katerina says as she lies on the bed, protectively holding her protruding stomach. "The baby's coming."
Many hours later, Katerina is crying into a blanket. Her daughter is gone—she'll never see her—and her father had demanded she leave Bulgaria at once.
By the time she passes Petar's house on her way out of town alone, she manages to convince herself the baby will be better off and that she never loved him anyway.
And when Katerina finally makes her way to England, she has a whole different past. Her mother, she decides, was a very sick. Katerina tells everyone she meets that she left because her mother's illness was fatal and she couldn't risk endangering the Petrova bloodline, for she claims to be an only child. She never speaks of her father.
Her baby daughter, while always on her mind, is never mentioned, and Katerina plays the part of an innocent well.
-x-
She meets Trevor by chance, and the look of wonder in his eyes makes her blush.
He buys her a dress and takes her to a party where she is introduced first to Elijah, then to Klaus, and instantly, she feels her whole world change.
The part of her that is yearning for stability and family is instantly drawn to Elijah, because he looks at her as if she is a goddess and treats her as if she is a queen. He allows her to be wild and carefree, and sometimes she thinks she loves him for that.
Klaus, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite. He is always angry and usually takes it out on her. Sometimes she is absolutely terrified of him, but he often talks of power, and with that, her choice is made.
Katerina tells herself she stays close to Elijah only because he is her safety net. Klaus will not do anything too drastic toward her when they are alone if he knows she will be seeing her brother too soon for the bruises to go away. But there is a part of her that is desperate for his love and attention, desperate for him to look at her the way she thinks a man looks at his wife.
-x-
When she finds out what they are, her first instinct is to run, and she just about does so when Elijah appears in her chambers. He promises they mean her no harm and asks her to stay. She agrees, but she has never been more terrified in her life.
Katerina cries in her pillow that night and she pretends not to have seen the way his eyes cannot hold hers while he speaks.
After that night, things change, and Katerina convinces herself it's for the best.
She pulls away from Elijah because she cannot stand to see the pain in his eyes or hear any more of his lies. Her heart clenches at the mysterious fate he knows to be hers but won't share, and she pretends to not to miss his company during the long summer days.
At nights, she sleeps with Klaus, who has taken to feeding from her after he uses her body each night. She holds back tears each time and forces herself not to vomit afterward.
At night, while he sleeps on the other side of the bed, she wonders how much blood a person can lose before their soul follows suit.
-x-
The day Trevor tells her the truth about her fate she makes the plan to run. She does not hesitate, and is making her way out of England when she realizes Elijah is chasing her. She is heartsick at the idea that the only man she believes could have ever loved her is chasing her down so she can be sacrificed.
It fuels her anger and she runs faster than ever when Trevor points her in the direction of a safe house.
When she wakes up as a vampire, she tells herself she has absolutely no regrets.
For the first hundred and fifty years of her undead life, Katerina sticks to that mantra of 'no regrets' and flaunts her new-found freedom and relishes in the knowledge that she is one step ahead of the monster who tried to kill her and his lying accomplice of a brother.
Soon after that, she realizes the drawbacks of immortality on the run for her life.
-x-
By the time she makes her way to Mystic Falls, Katerina Petrova has long since been Katherine Pierce.
She hides in the shadows of the town and studies the inhabitants for well over a month before making her presence known. She becomes Miss Katherine Pierce overnight; a flirtatious young girl with a penchant for brothers.
Unofficially, she met Damon first, watching him bathe in the falls for all of nature to witness. She falls in love with him in that moment because for a brief second, she actually remembers what it's like to be an innocent young girl lusting after a boy.
She never tells him this because she never truly gets the chance because he never needs to be compelled to forget anything or be unafraid of her.
When Katherine tells Damon what she is, he looks at her with this wide-eyed innocence and asks a lot of questions.
"It'll be easier to show you," she whispers against his lips one night, and when Katherine drinks from him for the first time, he tells her he loves her. She loves that about him. His eagerness is refreshing in this deadly game of truth or dare she has started between them.
-x-
She officially meets Stefan Salvatore first, and she sees something in him that she likes.
He plays up the noble innocent so very well, but she can see the rebellious boy hidden somewhere deep within, and she vows to bring that out.
He is surprisingly willing when he is under the impression that she is no more than an orphaned human who has taken a liking to him. She hardly has to try.
She plants the seeds of rebellion in his mind, and when she finally gets him into bed, she reveals her true nature and watches the horror dance across his face.
It was a gamble, one she unfortunately lost, and it was disappointing in the morning when she had to compel him to understand.
In the end, it's Stefan's weakness for playing the good brother that gets her captured, and she thanks whatever higher power she doesn't quite believe in that she was smart enough to come up with a plan before his choices brought about her capture.
She tells him she'll see him again, and she truly means it; but for now, she needs to escape the hold of these two brothers. She tells herself it's because she has long since overstayed her welcome in this pathetic little town, but the truth is far worse for her.
Combined, they have the power to destroy all that she's worked for, and she refuses to let that happen.
-x-
There are many others along the way, both human and vampire, but she always has to stay five steps ahead of Elijah and one hundred ahead of Klaus, so she never stays in one place for long.
That's what she tells herself, anyway. The truth is no one holds her interest like Elijah and Klaus or Stefan and Damon.
That is why she keeps an eye on the Salvatores once she learns they both turned. For three years, she follows Damon on his never ending search for a way to get her out of the tomb she was never placed in, and she keeps every single news clipping of any murders her dear Stefan commits.
-x-
When she runs into Isobel and Isobel tells her about her daughter and how Elena Gilbert looks exactly like her, Katherine decides the time for running has come to an end.
She looks up the Lockwood family tree and finds Mason in Florida and ingrains herself in his life.
Of all the men to come in and out of her life, Mason is by far the most strange.
He falls for her too easily and is thankful when she tells him she's a vampire.
She cares about him just slightly, and helps him during the full moons, leaving just before the transformation starts and coming back well after she knows it's over.
She tells him she loves him and tells him there's a way to break the curse placed on him.
He believes in her with no hesitation and is on board when she says they just need to collect some stone. He asks what kind and she describes the moonstone she had stolen from Klaus hundreds of years before, the very one she knows has been passed down in the Lockwood family since she gave it to George in 1864.
He makes love to her so sweetly that night that when she bites him, she pretends not to realize how painful it was for him.
-x-
Everything goes straight to hell when she arrives in Mystic Falls.
No one plays by her rules, and after two months of failed plans and schemes, she ends up locked inside the very tomb she had managed to bribe herself out of in 1864.
She knew the Salvatore brothers would bring her nothing but trouble.
-x-
Elijah comes back to town, and it scares her.
She's been running for five hundred years, evading him at every turn, and all of a sudden he's looking directly into her eyes and telling her she cannot leave until Klaus comes for her.
She wants to cry, not only for what she is to become, but what they both have already become.
Katherine Pierce pretends to be cold and unfeeling, but she still remembers a story about a girl named Katerina, still remembers how this girl once believed a man named Elijah would be the one to give her a happy ending.
How wrong she was.
-x-
As soon as Klaus has his body back, he wastes no time reminding Katherine of just what Katerina used to be to him.
Katherine hates him more than ever, but she has no choice.
She hated being submissive back when she was with him the first time, and she abhors it now, but even after she is given the vervain, she has to play the role of his little voodoo doll.
She wants to make it out of this place alive, she wants to make it through the sacrifice, and she will do whatever he asks to make that happen…and Katherine Pierce pretends it doesn't bother her that doing so kills what little self-respect she still has within her.