Author's Note: In the light of the recent "end of the world panic" I thought I'd write something on the subject.

You could consider "I Loved You First" as a prequel to this or this as a sequel to that or you could read both separately (or just this or neither), the choice is yours.

The Last Day on Earth

Preface

The end of the world didn't come on a beautiful, round date like the turn of the millennium or wasn't foreseen by some mysterious Mayan calendar, neither Bruce Willis nor Ben Affleck made an attempt to destroy the threat nor did Steven Tyler write a song to mark such an occasion. It was more like a bolt out of the blue – no one ever saw it coming. Not before it was too late.

Three days.

That's what all the astronomers, scientists and other specialists said. An asteroid almost the size of the moon was going to collide with the Earth in three days. And once it did the world would end, blown into smithereens, and everyone on the unfortunate ball of rock and dirt would share its fate.

Katherine found it incredibly cruel of the fate to play such a card on her. For heaven's sake, even Samara gave her victims seven days before she bothered with crawling out of that damn well while she would only have three.

In the light of the dreadful news the world transformed in the matter of hours, it seemed. Every city down to the last hillbilly-redneck jerkwater town turned into party-central. People just stopped caring. There was simply no time left for giving a fuck. They either rushed across the country to meet up with their friends and family for the last heartfelt good-byes or drank themselves into oblivion, hoping to find some sort of consolation in the arms of any stranger with that promise in their eyes.

Katherine had been in California when the news hit. Now with only two days still left she sat on a barstool in some random booze-sink in Santa Cruz, raising the umpteenth glass of bourbon to her lips.

It was ironic that she should perish along with the entirety of mankind. No other disaster, feud, conflict nor any kind of difficulty she'd faced through the centuries had managed to bring her down. She should have been proud of that and a part of her was, but truthfully, she wasn't ready to die. Even after five hundred years, she wasn't ready to die. Not yet.

She always imagined that one day the running would stop and she would be free of the constant looking over her shoulder, making sure whether anyone was still there, lurking in the shadows, planning to kill her.

She always sort of thought, dreamed, that one day she'd find peace and maybe even someone who loved her for exactly who she was, no pretending. She was tired of the pretending.

Now as she was faced with her imminent death, she had no time left. The minutes were ticking away, turning into hours and the last moments of her live ran through her fingers like water through cupped palms. There was nothing she could do, she'd never felt so helpless in her life. And she hated feeling helpless.

The most depressing part was that Katherine had no one to run to, no one to say her last farewell to, no one that loved her, and for once in a long, long time, she felt the sting of sadness in her heart. She'd made a lengthy list of enemies during her half-a-millennia-long existence and not too many friends, and now she had to face the music.

Everyone and anyone who knew her either wanted her dead or smiled at her through gritted teeth, too afraid to confront her, loyal only out of obligation or prospect of gaining something out of her acquaintance. Enemies and false friends… that was all she had.

Katherine took another swig of her bourbon, watching the crowd around her. Old hits from the 80's and the 90's were playing loudly and people were dancing: drunk, happy and ignorant of their impending doom. The liquor was free since nobody was working at the bar. The back room had been plundered, all the wares brought out – in two days, no, it was pretty late, so make it one day time it would all be turned to dust anyway.

People were literally falling off their seats out of drunkenness, dancing on every possible surface, smoking everywhere, making out with complete strangers. To Katherine it looked as if they'd all taken some sort of stupid pills.

She swore mentally that if she heard the lyrics "It's just another lemon tree" one more time, she'd smash the stereo system.

A young blonde burst into tears a few barstools away from her, sobbing how she didn't want to die, how this was all so unfair. The idiot, Katherine thought bitterly. As if weeping like a three-year-old would "make it all better". She itched to snap her neck, but why bother when an asteroid would do the job for her?

Some middle-aged biker with a weather-beaten face patted her back compassionately, slurping beer and telling her meaningless words of comfort.

Katherine couldn't help but think about the Salvatore brothers and how they were probably sitting in the boarding house or at the Grill with Elena and all her little friends, telling how much they loved each other. Even the mental image was so cloy that it made her feel sick. Yet she wasn't petty enough to deny that a part of her wanted something like that too.

Maybe not love, she wasn't delusional. Just a small smile and a genuine good-bye, to clink her glass to someone's and say, "That was one hell of a ride."

She had loved the Salvatore's once, she honestly had, despite of what they thought. Just not enough. She'd loved many men in the past five hundred years, but never enough. No matter how perfect they were or how fervently they declared their affections to her, still they couldn't mend that gaping hole in her heart, hush that silent whisper in her head that told her all love was poison.

One harsh betrayal had been enough to teach her a lesson she never forgot.

Truly, if she had learned anything at all in her life, it was that in the end the only person she could trust or count on was herself. And that was a horribly lonely realization, but one that had kept her alive for so long. Now it had preceded its use. There was no reason to fight for a lost cause.

Death was certain. The place and company in which she would look in the eyes of her demise were still in her hands.

And oddly there was only one name that sprang into Katherine's mind, one person who might be worth visiting, who might not loathe her presence completely if she was lucky.

Elijah was a lone soul, much like herself, though at the same time so thoroughly different. He had already forsaken the mundane, irrelevant entity known as love when she was still just a naïve young girl searching for her place in this world. He was all for higher qualities, for honor and glory! and every fiber of his being was full of dignity. She admired that.

But Katherine herself didn't possess such qualities. She wasn't dutiful or principled; she was very much ready to throw each and every belief out the window if it was necessary for getting out of a nasty situation with her head on her shoulders. She had no problem lying, manipulating or cheating to get her way. No rules – she'd meant it. Rules made a game boring and Katherine knew how to have fun.

Five hundred years ago she'd been quite different, though – more innocent, trusting and idealistic or in short: foolish. When on the run, she used to like to think that she may have melted that chunk of ice in Elijah's chest, he called a heart, just the tiniest bit, because then she could hope that it hurt him, even if very little, to hunt her mercilessly these past centuries.

Elijah, Klaus and the pack of bloodhounds, Katherine smirked. It sounded like the name of some alternative garage band. But she must have been good to have been able to avoid them for so long. She drank to that.

No, really she drank to ease the pain and chase away the emptiness that crept into her heart. She drank because she'd found out some things quite recently that made her wonder how everything might have played out differently.

Elijah had meant to save her life.

Gosh, she couldn't tell how many nights she'd spent lying awake, thinking about that, spinning different scenarios in her head of how things could have gone if she hadn't made so many mistakes. That fragment of information had changed so much for her, put the past in a different perspective, but hadn't given her enough courage to seek out Elijah again.

There were just so many convenient excuses to be used – it had all been a long time ago, they had both changed colossally since then… they'd spent the better part of five centuries hating each other… In the end the fact that he might have loved her changed nothing. It had been too long ago.

But it all seemed rather unimportant in the face of the doomsday.

Katherine thought back on the warmness of the moments they had shared in that fatal year of 1492 and decided that she chose to forget everything in between those memories and the present time. Quite simply put – it didn't matter, not anymore. What's the point of holding on to old grudges when the whole damn world is ending?

The thought made her laugh in a way she hadn't laughed for a very long time, like some nameless burden had been lifted from her heart. Sincerely and sweetly, with such pure joy to it that she made a few heads turn, looking at the lonesome girl who appeared so young, chuckling by herself as she downed more bourbon than a sailor.

If there was ever a time to raise that defiant little chin of hers and stop being a coward then it was right now. So she knew that she would find him and see him again, her "oldest friend", because even if he'd end her, all she'd miss was the asteroid.