"Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity." - Henry Van Dyke
Katherine had never thought of having children. Not until she got pregnant at sixteen and everything changed.
She first came to England when she was ten years old after he father had gotten a job there. And she hated it. She had loved Bulgaria so much and leaving it meant leaving her home. So she did everything to show her hate to her parents. She whould throw tantrums, refuse and fight her parents with every new thing that came her way. New clothes, new house, new school, new language.
But then she met him. Him with the short brown hair and the kind brown eyes that looked at her with such an adoration even at the age of eleven. Elijah.
They met in the schoolyard where she was siting along and he just came up to her, offering her his apple.
He was so sweet and smart despite his wrecked home life. He was always looking after his siblings, even his older brother, and was always taking care of others. Her included. And he stuck by her all those years.
When she turned fifteen and started high school he asked her out, something she had waited a long time for him to do.
"You want to know a secret?" She whispered the night of her fifteenth birthday.
She and Elijah were siting next to each other on the porchswing of her parent's house.
"What?" He asked looking directly into her eyes.
"You're the sweetest guy I've ever met." She said and he smiled that dimpled smile at her.
She smiled back and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Do you think our parents truly love each other?" She asked after a long moment of silence.
He kept silent for a while, choosing his words carefuly before he answered.
"I don't believe in love Katerina." He said, using her childhood name.
She lifted her head from his shoulder and looking up at him as he turned his face to her.
"That is too sad for me to accept. Life is too cruel. If we cease to believe in love, why would we want to live?" She questioned.
"Maybe I believe in you." He said after another moment.
But then she got pregnant. At the age of sixteen that white stick got a blue plus sign on it and she had no idea what she was going to do. Her parents kicked her out and Elijah tried his best to support her but with his own broken and struggeling family it was hard. But one thing that wasn't hard was her desicious. She had no doubt that she was going to have her child and keep it. That was never a question to that. It was her baby, no one would ever be able to take that away from her.
Or at least that what's she thought.
When she went into labor and it hurt more than she could imagine she didn't think much of it. Everyone said childbirth was painful and she was just a girl, just a child herself, what did she know. But then wher her daughter, her little girl, was born things weren't all right. She didn't scream. She didn't open her tiny blue eyes. She didn't breathe.
She was dead. Stillborn.
The doctor told her that she had done nothing wrong, that sometimes, they didn't know why, this just happened. Sometimes the baby just didn't make it.
She had always hated hospital but this time, despite all the comotion and the drama and the blood and death it wasn't all that scary. What scared her was Elijah. He was so quiet. He didn't say anything. Not one word. He didn't speak until much later. And a part of her was glad that he hadn't. Glad that he had just been silent and held her as she cried, held her as she got to hold their daughter, for the first and the last time. It was until days later, until her tears had dried up but her eyes were stilll red, that he finally spoke. He finally said those words she didn't realised she needed to hear.
"I love you Katerina. Everything is going to be okay."
Then she cried for another hour as he held her and kissed her foreheaad, ran his fingers through her hair and whispered soothing words in her ear.
After that things happened kind of fast. Elijah's family crumbled and he took his siblings and her and moved to America after his parents died in a car accident long with his youngest brother Henrick.
He was only seventeen years old but he and twenty year old Finn packed them all up and imigrated to New York where they bought a house and for the first time in her life Katherine had a real family.
In a small house they grew up as they balanced school and work living off the money Mikael and Esther left them. They all went to every game eight year old Kol played in baseball as he grew up, and every game of football fourteen year old Rebekah cheered for when she started high school. And as she herself grew up and graduated from high school, there were moments where she actually felt like a mother to Elijah's siblings. Times when she had to go down to the school and handle the princepal after sixteen year old Kol was caught giving Jeremy Gilbert a blowjob, or times when she comforted Rebekah after another broken heart.
Or other times when she felt more like a friend or a sister, like when she argued with Nik over everything, or when Finn gave her their mother's pendant she could wear in the future, hopefully for a wedding.
They were a real family, always there for each other. Katherine had never felt like this, like she actually belonged somewhere. It was a feeling she cherished and hoped she would never loose.
It was the night before Christmas Eve the year she had turned twentyfour and Katherine just returned from running to the store for more cookie dough for tomorrow. She came in from the rising storm of snow to the warmth of laughter the fure burning in the fireplace and to the smell of christmas and burnt cookies that they had failed with earlier that evening.
Elijah, Nik, Finn and Finn's fiencée Sage still sat around the dinner table where they'd finished the meal hours before. Kol and his boyfriend Jeremy had moved into the livingroom where they were yelling and laughing at the videogame they were playing. Elijah rose from his seat to help her with the grocerie bags as she took of her coat.
It was moment like these that Katherine forgot the loss and struggle she had gone through in her life. It was moments like these that she was truly and blissfully happy.
After she graduated from college the future was wide open, both for her and Elijah. Elijah, always the abitious and caring person that he was, started medical school planning to be a surgeon. But Katherine's dream, her career, somehow her loss and newfound role sneaking it's way in as she chose to study for a Master in Social Work, becoming a social worker for Children's Services. Which was hard. And not in the study department but in the social circle of college. People judged her of how she looked. She never seemed like the type to care for children, to want to work with them and take care of them. So people judged her and ignored her, thinking she was chosing this program for all the wrong reasons. But she never righted them. She kept up her cold facade, acted like she girl they thought she was.
In her home, with her family, was were she could truly be herself. The lost girl that lost her child, her parents and found a new family in a shattared one.
When she was twenty five, newly turned and celebrated with a dinner at her favorite resturant with the entire family and Nik's new girlfriend Caroline, she was hurt. Badly. She was working and the father of the two children she was removing from their home attacked her and beat her bloody until he'd had enough and taken his children and ran. it took a few hours until her coworkers noticed and sent police to check it out.
At that point she had already lost alot of blood and was in critical condition. And apparently blood wasn't the only thing she's lost. While she was in surgery for the second time due to internal bleeding Elijah was informed that she had been pregnant and that she had had a miscarriage due to the trauma. And Elijah had to tell her when she woke that she had once again lost a child.
He had to hold bruised hand from defensive wounds as he sat by her bedside and watched her bruised and battered face as he told her what had happened. She was silent the moments after he said the words, she was silent for a long time until the tears slipped from her eyes.
"Maybe it's not meant to be." She whispered and broke the silent, almost starteling Elijah out of it. "Maybe I'm not meant to be a mother."
"No, don't say that." Elijah started. "You're going to be a mother. And I'm going to be a father. And you're going to be a wonderful mother. You already are."
She managed a small smile but it didn't quite reach her eyes.
Elijah moved closer to her, putting his arm around her, doing his best not to hurt her. He pressed his lips to her forehead and let her rest her head on his.
"You know what?" He asked looking down at her, taking in her broken frame, her broken wrist resting on her stomach. "As soon as you get out of here, we're going to start over. Start fresh. We are going to buy a new house, you can choose everything, decorate it however you want. And we can ask Rebekah to come and stay with us while you recover. What do you say?"
Finally the small smile reached her eyes as she looked up at him.
"As soon as you get out, I'll be right here." He said, intervewining his fingers with hers of her unwounded hand.
And they did. They found a beautiful house, moving out of that house they had first bought when they came to America. They were the last to go, along with Kol, as Finn, Nik and Rebekah had moved out years earlier. But Kol, who was still in high school, moved with them.
And Elijah had suggested Rebekah came to stay with them, to take care of Katherine who was on bedrest while Elijah was at work and Kol was in school. Caroline also came over time to time, cooking food since Rebekah could not cook if her life depended on it. Finn and Sage, who had moved to DC the year before, came down to visit and stayed for a few days. Even Jeremy came by and gave her a drawn picture of her and Elijah he had made himself to try her cheer her up.
She had such a big family and she had always loved that, always loved the happiness these people brought to her. But now, after another loss, she felt like there was something missing with them. The connection through a bloodbond. Like her and her mother when she was a child in Bulgaria, they had been so close. And now she missed that connection. Sure she had missed her mother over the years, but now it was more the feeling of someone you were blood related to that she missed. This made her draw back, pull back into her shell, become as cold as people saw her as. And they noticed right away, her "siblings". They tried their best to pull her back, tried to cheer her up with movies and trips and gifts, but nothing seemed to work. They had all been through hardtimes and all had their times when they'd fallen into the dark but never quite like this. Never this far into the dark.
They didn't know what to do and Elijah was struggeling with it too while also dealing with his own grief.
It wasn't until Katherine meet Pearl that things changed. Pearl was a single mother to a girl, Anna, that was in the same class as Kol and Jeremy as well as a friend of the two. She had had a husband and three other children as well but they were all lost in a housefire she was severaly hurt in. Surpricngly they didn't met through Kol, they met through work. Pearl was her first case when she got back to work. A simple case, and easy start back, with a woman who had a disability and a teenage daughter. But through Katherine's veiw Pearl helped her more than she helped Pearl.
It began easy Katherine would come by her house twice a week to help her figure out what to do with benefits and support for money and food as they didn't have that much money to manage with. Katherine helped her with cupons and finding cheap stores. And as they spent time together Katherine found a friend she could rely on. A friend that knew what it felt like to loose a family you loved and not a family that was already broken like Elijah's parents had been.
And Pearl who pushed through her disability and returned to work as a cellist inspired Katherine to return to something she had given up a long time ago, something she had left in back in Bulgaria. Ballet.
She had been dancing when she was young but gave it up when they moved to England. But now it seemed like a good distraction to take up, so she started taking beginner classes a few times a week. Pushing through the pain of the remains of her wounds and strenghtening up her body with the new exercise. And through this she found the light she needed to get herself out of the darkness and back to herself. Back to Elijah.
It was one night, a few days into the new year, that he knelt down on one knee before her and asked her to marry him. Something she felt like she had been waiting for forever for him to do. And when they announced it to the family she didn't know who was more excited, Rebekah for finally having her as a sister or Caroline for having a wedding to plan.
And the boys, well, let's just say that they the following months up until the wedding they decided to stay as far away from the planning as they could. Kol even took refuge and moved in with Jeremy trying to avoid oll the craziness of the girls and the planning. Nik even took a long business trip to Argentina for a couple of weeks when the wedding was drawing nearer.
The wedding was set for June and Katherine, Rebekah and Caroline had everything planned to the smallest detail. Catering, location, decorations, dresses and music. They had never seen Caroline this caught up in something and as a Event Coordinator that was saying something.
Seventeenth of June was the day that they became husband and wife. It was the day Katherine took on that white gown and pinned up her curls and put on a veil. It was the day she would finally be a part of this family.
Finn entered her dressing room just as she was putting on the pendant he had given her. He helped her pull the veil over her face before he took her hand on his arm and lead her out of the room.
He led her down the aisle, towards the alter and towards Elijah. She gave her bouquet of Gardenias to Rebekah before she placed her hands in Elijah's, something that brought such a sense of security to her. His smile, the adoration in his eyes that was still there after all these years, just the presense of him made her heart beat faster and her chest tighten. He promised her forever, he promised her an eternity of love, trust and believing. He vowed to always be there for her, always protect and cherise her. Always and Forever, the family promise.
It brought tears to her, standing there and hearing him give away his life, his heart to her. She smiled through the tears and tightened her grip on his hands as she started on her own vows.
"You're all I have. Elijah- You're all I've ever had. I was so angry before you... even at the age of ten." She giggled at that and he chuckled at her words. "I was so agnry but you- you saw me. You see me and you know me and you love me. My whole life, I felt like there was this missing piece of me, like there was a piece of my soul missing, and you... you're my missing piece. You're my love, my best friend, my family, my missing piece. I love you. Always and Forever."
His smile brightened at her as she let the tears slip down her cheeks. She hated crying infront of people but for this day, this special evening she would make an exception.
They exhanged the rings and said I do and then kissed. They kissed like the world was ending, like this was their last breath and they could loose each other any moment. He held her close to her, moving his hand up to cup her cheek as their lips moved against each other.
The people's cheers and the clapping of hands brought them our of their reverie and they laughed with their family.
It was a beautiful evening. They ate great food, drank much of the champagne and danced alot. Katherine danced with everyone of her new brother-in-laws, and even danced a couple of dances with Jeremy and Rebekah's new boyfriend Matt, but at the end of every song she would fall back into the arms of her new husband.
Around 3 pm they wound down and Elijah and Katherine went back to their hotelroom where they enjoyed their first night as husband and wife in a very intimate position. They skipped most of the lunch with the guests the day after but came for a moment to be polite but then returned back for another couple of hours in their hotel room before they left for the airport and headed to Crete for their honeymoon.
There they spent much time in the hotelroom as well but every evening they would go to a resturant and spend a couple of hours there, eating great food and drink red wine. And on one of the hotest days they went down to the beach to cool down in the water and sip drinks in the shadow before returning to heat up again in their hotelroom. On their last day in Crete they forced themselves out of the hotelroom and wandered the streets, shopped in the stores, buying souvenirs for his siblings, and ate cooling gelado.
And then, before they returned to New York, Elijah took her for a day in Bulgaria, to her hometown. There they just wandered the streets, hand in hand, as Katherine watched silently all the places she had been when she was a child. The church where she was babtised, the school she'd went to, and the dance studio she had taken lessons at, the playground her mother used to take her on a sunny day.
They ate dinner where he lightened her mood and they both spend the rest of the day laughing and talking before they flew home.
When they got home two shocking surprices welcomes them home, one good and one half good and bad, along with their family in a dinner at their house. The first surprice was that Kol had gotten into Princeton University, one of the top schools in the country, to study Religion, which shocked everyone since he hadn't told anyone, excepy Jeremy, where and what he was applying to now that he had finished high school. And the second surprice was that Nik had managed to get Caroline pregnant and they were now barely speaking due to Nik's stubborness and fear of fatherhood. After congradulating Kol for and hour and expressing their shock over his choice of program Rebekah, Katherine and Kol and sometimes Elijah spent the night yelling at Nik to get over his issues and step up as a father.
That night when Elijah and Katherine changed to go to sleep in their own bed in awhile Elijah could see the changed expression on her face. She tried to hide it the best she could but he had learned a long time ago to see through her facades.
As she stood infront of her mirror and took of her jewlery he came up behind her and wrapped one of his arms around his waist while the other pulled her hair away from her neck where he placed a kiss.
"We'll have our baby someday. But before we can, we have to make sure Niklaus doesn't do anything drastic with his own." He promised as he watched their reflection.
She chuckled and turned around in his arms as he placed both arms around her.
"The day Nik will get over his fear of being a father and his issues with relationship is the day that there'll be peace between North and South Korea. But he won't let Caroline down. He's to much like his brother in that department. Never leaving family behind." She turned around in his arms and stroked his cheek with her soft fingers. "It's one of your more appealing cualities you two share."
He smiled under her touch and grabbed her hand and kissed her palm.
The next few weeks were interesting to say at least. Kol was packing and moving into his own apartment he was going to share with Jeremy and Nik was either hiding in his apartment or at work, refusing to take any of the Rebekah or Katherine's call as they had called him every two hours pestering him about talking to Caroline and stepping up. And with both Elijah and Katherine returning to work there wasn't much time for romantic dates or family dinners. Katherine handled her cases meanwhile yelling at Nik at every chance she got, helping Caroline with maternity books and helping Kol decorate his apartment. And Elijah was busy with his shifts at the hospital, trying his best not to work night and meanwhile him too trying to get Nik to get to his senses, even call in Finn to help and help Kol get his drivers licence he had been too lazy to get before.
It was in late November when things seem to cool down and things seem to be brightening up. Nik finally managed to sort things out with himself and with Caroline and they were now living together, awaiting the arrival of their son. Everyone seemed so happy. Finn had gotten a position as a literature professor at a university in DC and he and Sage were still very happy and in love. Kol and Jeremy were doing good in school and staying out of trouble for once, and were enjoying living together. Nik and Caroline were paintint the nursery and thinking of baby names. And Elijah and Katherine, well Katherine discovered something that was going to change everything. She was late.
So one day she knew Elijah was working late she and Pearl went to a different hospital than the one he worked at and spoke with a doctor. They ran tests and comfirmed it. She was pregnant. But Katherine could not let herself be happy about those news until the rest of the tests came back, the tests the doctors wanted to do to see that there was no complications, and that her previous pregnancies hadn't cuased damage to her womb. Pearl stayed with her, holding her hand as they sat waiting in the examining room. She did this all in secret from her family cause if this just turned out to be another fall out she didn't want to put them through that loss again, just like she couldn't let herself be happy about it.
So that night, when Elijah came home to that almost empty house he found Katherine siting in the livingroom, infront of the fire roaring in the fireplace, looking down at a picture in her hand.
"Katerina?" He asked and she looking up at him, tears fresh in her eyes and for a moment he thought something horrible had happened, but then she smiled.
The smile lit up her entire face, her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed.
"What's wrong? What's happened?" He asked and sat down next to her, turning his entire body towards her.
"Nothing's wrong." She said and pressed the picture to her chest. "That's what's so wonderful."
"Kat-" He begun confused but she just couldn't bear his serious look.
"I'm pregnant." She interrupted.
He starred at her, in pure shock and surprise, for a long moment before he gathered himself and spoke.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I went to the doctors and they confimed it and said that both I and the baby are healthy so far." She said, stumbling over the words and showed him the picture she held.
It was a small sonogram picture, a snapshot of their baby. He held it gentle between his fingers, starring at the small dot that was their child.
Then he looked up at her and more roughly than normally he grabbed her neck and crashed their lips together. She let him pull her to him, making her straddle him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pushing him down on his back on the couch.
They waiting a long time, long past the three month mark, until they told their family. It wasn't until after Caroline had given birth to baby Henry, named after their youngest brother Henrick who Nik had always been the closest too, and after christmas and the new year that they gathered their family and their loved ones for dinner and told them all, when they were far long into the fourth month and she had already begun to show. As expected Rebekah was more than thrilled to be an aunt for the second time, Kol made inapropiet jokes that Jeremy slapped him on the back of the head for but was extremely happy for the two just as Nik was.
And Katherine, she looked more happy than Elijah had ever seen.
But that couldn't be true, because she became even more happier the further into the pregnancy they got and the more times she got to hear that the baby was completely healthy. And the news that they were having a girl joyed them both even more. And not much to Elijah's surprise, but alot ot the people around them, Katherine quit her job. A job she had now been working for six years. She quit, wanting to stay home with the baby, and she wanted to do something that didn't involved hurt, pain or horrible situations. So she planned to join Caroline, start their own event planning business, Caroline handeling all the practical propotions while she handled the business prospect of it all, making her able to work from home.
Katherine laid of their bed after a long day with the baby shower which Rebekah had thrown for her. She rubbed soothing circles on her belly, trying to calm the baby's kicks.
Elijah came it, unbottoning the sleeves on his shirt, rolling them up over his elbow.
"It feels like she's running a marathon." Katherine stated looking up at her husband with an exhausted look.
He chuckled and sat down at the edge of the bed next to her, placing a gentle hand on her stomach. He took up the task to draw the soothing circles on belly.
"We should really start thinking about middlenames and godparents. Pearl reminded me this afternoon. It had slipped my mind completely." She remarked.
"Well, what do you think?"
"I don't know. Middle names have always been so boring. Always after a grandmother or great aunt you never knew. And I don't want to name our daugher after my mother. What about yours?"
"No." Elijah answered quickly, in a tone that said that that was both finale and that he didn't want to continue in on the subject.
"That's what I thought. So then I thought about someone close to us, but we can't name her Rebekah for middlename. Bekah would be too pleased about that and I can't handle that."
Elijah laughed at this and stopped with his hand and instead moved to lie down next to her.
"Then I thought maybe we could name her after one of the patron saints." Katherine said slowly, a question lingering in the sentence.
Elijah kept silent for a moment, contemplating the suggestion before he placed his hand on her belly again, but this time just letting it rest there.
"Catherine." He finally said and she frowned.
"Yes?"
"Catherine, as in the patron said of miscarriages." He said gently and looked up into her eyes. She smiled at him, knowing how he meant that suggestion. Their baby would be the soul of her lost siblings, their miracle.
So on the third of June, only weeks before their wedding anniversery, Katherine went into early labor. Something she paniced right away about but when they arrived at the hospital the doctors assured her that everything was allright, that the baby was fine and was just a bit eager to come out.
Through the stress and the excitment it seemed that Kol was the calmest of the crowd that came to see them. He just sat on a chair next to her bed, talking casually to the others meanwhile handing her icecubs once in a while and holding her hand through a contraction while Elijah held the other. She was sure he would have screamed at the tight grip she held on his hand but he kept calm, actually more calm than Elijah, which was more than unusual.
Elijah was a bit anxious through the entire evening. He couldn't stand still, he's usual calmness and grace a bit disdurbed. He was figeting if he sat still, and paced when he stood. One time during a really painful contraction she even screamed at Nik to get Elijah out of there because he was annoying the hell out of her. They disepeared for over twenty minutes, Nik trying to calm down Elijah with the help of an actually good cup of coffee.
But after a good nine hours of labor Grace Catherine Mikaelson was born. She was small but very healthy. She screamed and she opened her blue eyes looking up at her parents.
Katherine's eyes were filled with tears and slid down her cheeks, while Elijah sat next to her on the bed, starring trafixed on their daughter with the same adoration he had for her mother. With a pure name, a saint watching over her, parents that loved her, her crazy uncle Kol as God parent and an entire family that adored her she was truly blessed.
From the time that Katherine got pregnant to that she became a mother it took eleven years. Eleven years to be what she desired, dreamed and wished with her entire body and soul. She became the mother her own never was. A mother that would never turn her back on her own child. A mother, a woman, who loved.
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This came to me one night, don't know from where, and I did not plan on it being this long either. But I'm happy with it. Question is, are you? Reveiw!
Some of the quotes and passages are inspired by the movies Awake and Junebug, and the tv show Private Practise.