Hi all! This was meant to be a one-shot, but it kept growing! Apparently Katherine and Elijah enjoy each other's company. I thought Elijah was taken down too easily in the finale, so here's my spin on a secret scene. I will get back to my other story, but this begged to be written. Let me know what you think in a review!
When Elijah approached her with his proposition, she thought it was a trick. Katherine had spent half a millennia wheeling and dealing to get what she wanted, manipulating others to suit her own needs. She never approached them, offering them a choice, a chance to turn her down. Although, there were times when it was great fun for her to toy with her prey... give them the allusion of power before taking their choice and their life away from them... But no, Katherine had learned that it was best to do things your own way, and use people rather than rely on them. She was still trying to piece together how it came down to this.
After Damon left to take care of his werewolf bite, save Elena, and play the martyred hero, she watched the full moon rise up into the sky, breaking free of the clouds that would dim its light. The ritual was taking place right now, and she was more than ready to be free of Klaus' compulsion. Several times, she tried leaving the apartment, sure that she felt something indicating Klaus' death, but each time she was stopped at the threshold. Her plan to put as much distance as possible between Mystic Falls and herself crashed down around her as the moon set and was obscured by the first rays of dawn washing away the night and the carnage it had undoubtedly seen.
Klaus was still alive.
She wanted to tear the whole damn building apart until there was nothing left but ruins, break apart the walls and doorways and shatter the windows and, for good measure because it would make her feel better, lay waste to Alaric's possessions as well. If there was nothing left, she couldn't be compelled to stay inside. She didn't live by any rules except survival, and she would bloody well make her own loopholes to escape her prison.
The only thing that stopped her from breaking even a glass was imagining Klaus' reaction if he came back before she could get out. He already planned to torture and break her countless times over before finally killing her, but he could make it so much worse if her attempt at prison break put him into a sadistic mood.
Katherine was trying not to think about what his first act of violence towards her would be when she heard footsteps in the hall. She froze, knowing that a vampire could have moved without making a single noise, but something akin to a sixth sense told her those slow, heavy footfalls did not belong to a human.
Expecting the worst, she was therefore surprised to see Elijah's silhouette framed in the entranceway. The sight of him chilled her to the bone and triggered her instinctive urge to flee. The fact that she was trapped in the apartment and at his utter mercy took her breath away, but she made a show of standing tall and pretending that her insides didn't clench in fear when she looked him in the eye.
"Elijah."
"Hello, Katerina." He spoke her name with a small caress, the accent on her Bulgarian name driving home the point that he was from another time, and he still saw her as the woman who betrayed him by running 500 years ago. "I see your fortunes have not improved since I last saw you."
"Yours have. You no longer have a dagger straight through the heart." She made her way through the room slowly, crossing one foot in front of the other in a careful and deliberate way. Despite her dire predicament, she couldn't help but roll her hips, the dance of seduction like a second skin, comforting her.
Elijah ran his hands over the frame of the door, and she saw with annoyance that he kept his eyes on his fingertips' progress over the wood, ignoring both her movements and her comment. Just when she couldn't stand the silence any longer and was on the verge of trying to find out why he came, Elijah surprised her yet again by taking a step into the apartment.
How could he get in? Damon had specifically needed an invitation when he brought her the vervain! Seeing that she wasn't protected by the threshold barrier, Katherine's panic kicked into overdrive, and her fight or flight response came back full force. Without consciously thinking it through, she used all her speed to back into the kitchen. Why, she didn't know. There was nothing to use as a weapon against an Original, and she couldn't leave regardless of what room she was in.
She gasped aloud when she literally ran into Elijah, who had of course seen her move, probably even predicted it. In one fluid motion, he crossed the room, moved into her path, and then pushed her down onto the couch. He'd even shut the door on his way in.
Her spot on the couch put her at a disadvantage, and she vented her feelings by glowering up at him. "Is that how you treat a lady?" Her voice was like ice, from the fear and the anger and helplessness…
"You are not a lady, Katerina, except in the most rudimentary of definitions."
Putting aside the insult, her most pressing of concerns bubbled their way to the surface and out of her mouth. "Why are you here? Where is Klaus, and why isn't he dead?"
"He is still currently in werewolf form. When Niklaus returns to vampire, he will begin plotting my demise, if hasn't done so already. Who can tell how the mind of a werewolf operates," he mused hypothetically.
Katherine still watched him suspiciously. If he's going to kill me, why is he wasting all this time talking, telling me about Klaus? Taking advantage of where the conversation was heading, she said, "You don't sound so worried about that."
"It is a concern, which is why I'm here."
"You plan to ambush him? You can't kill him." Unlike with Damon, there was no reverse psychology here; she was simply stating a fact. But oh, how she wished it were different.
"No. If I kill him now, he is of no use to me. He has information, and I need to hear it on the small chance that it's honest."
She can tell that he's not going to kill her right now, so she rose to stand well within the boundaries of his personal space. Since she's wearing a pair of heels, she doesn't need to look up that far to stare suspiciously into his eyes.
"And why are you telling me this?"
"Because I believe we can come to an agreement based on our mutual desire to be rid of Klaus."
Once again, Katherine wondered why he would stoop to enlist her help when he was far more powerful than she was. Curiosity got the better of her mild deference for a moment as she blurted out, "But why me? Why would you come to me, we both know we don't trust each other. You'd screw me over in a heartbeat, and even if I was to help you, you'd probably just kill me afterwards anyway!"
"Of course you don't trust me. If you have in 1492 instead of running away, none of this would have happened. Klaus would not have hunted for you, and you could have lived a human life."
"If he wants to kill you now, what makes you think he wouldn't have tried it back then?" She knew that despite their quarrelling, they had been close. Much had changed, but Elijah couldn't hide the emotions playing across his face. His brief vulnerability and made her soften her tone confess, "And I didn't want just a human life once I knew…"
He turned away from her, and Katherine wondered if she had pushed him too far. He had been indulgent with her in the past, but questioning him and playing on his buried emotions and their bitter past, especially at such a dangerous time, was reckless even by her standards.
If he hadn't turned away, would she have finished her sentence? She didn't remember feeling this conflicted since that day in the gardens of Klaus' manor, 500 years ago. She was promised to Klaus, but wanted to stay and be near Elijah. She saw his rejection of love as a defense mechanism, and wanted to be the one who broke down those walls.
Pulling herself back to the present, she leaned against the arm of the couch, watching him with narrowed eyes as he examined a bookshelf filled with history artifacts.
Turning over a Native American arrowhead, Elijah brought them back on topic abruptly, using a cold, detached voice to explain to her Klaus' promise to reunite him with his family.
"I believe he was telling the truth about their bodies, but Klaus wouldn't risk giving me the chance to revive them. It would threaten his power. The only way he'll bring me to them is if he thinks I am dead."
"How are you going to manage that?"
"Oh, I don't think I'll need to do anything. He never was very patient, I expect he'll kill me sooner rather than later."
Elijah wasn't the martyr type, so what was going on here? Frustrated at herself for still trying to understand this man, she stalked across the apartment after him. She was the one most likely to be killed by Klaus, and she deserved answers, dammit! She snatched the arrowhead out his hands and slammed it back onto the shelf.
"Um, hello? There's something missing here. You can't do anything if you're dead!" Original or not, she was close to openly mocking him, her tone holding none of the softness from before.
"Correct." Oh, so he was back to shooting her indulgent smiles? "It is the great flaw in my plan, and why I am here offering to help save your life. Once he places me with the others, the dagger used to kill me will have to be removed."
"And that's where I come in." Understanding washed over her, quickly replaced by scorn as she realized she was to be just another tool to him, used for a job. Perhaps he sensed the rapid change in her emotions, for he bowed his head and let loose an irritated sigh.
"It will take both of us, working together, to do something about Klaus. It comes down to you, Katerina: would you rather betray me and run again, or end Klaus and free yourself once and for all?"
She was silent for a few moments, weighing all the consequences of her actions and searching for the benefit to herself. When she came to the part that there was in fact a benefit, namely her life, she realized that Elijah didn't have to choose her. Anyone else could remove the dagger, but he formulated a plan that involved saving her, just as he did with his elixir when she was about to be sacrificed.
And besides, she couldn't betray him again, not when he still looked so haunted by her actions. Katherine knew was it was like to carry a burden like that around for half a millennium.
She nodded her acceptance of the plan, and he smiled, a true smile that showed off his dimples and reached up to his eyes, making them sparkle. Katherine stared into the depths of his brown eyes, and forgot that the last 500 years had happened. They were merely man and woman, and in their own ways, they were showing that they cared for each other.
She placed her hand hesitantly on his upper arm, feeling the fabric of his suit jacket and running her fingers over his muscles as he brought his arms up around her. He in turn stroked her face equally carefully, tracing a line from cheek to temple, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. Such a touch surprised her in its gentleness, making a slight shiver creep up her spine. Katherine tried to mask her involuntary movement by taking a deep breath to steady herself, but that only served to bring them that much closer together.
He continued the touch, from the side of her neck down along her jawbone, coming to rest at last under her chin. What happened next came so naturally that she couldn't tell who had initiated it. All she knew was the she was finally kissing him, and he was kissing her back, not at all chaste, but with a refinement that suited him. Somehow, the fact that he knew her biggest faults and wanted to kiss her anyway just made him taste better. She was seriously contemplating moving things back over to the couch when he gave her one last kiss on the lips, and pulled away.
The way he held his hands on her shoulders told her that the energy between them had changed. She didn't want him to leave, especially knowing for certain that Klaus would be back. "Elijah," she murmured, placing her hands on his and telling him with her eyes to resume where they left off.
"Katherine," he said, finally using her modern name, "there is one last thing to do, for the protection of us both." What could he mean by that? They had sealed their deal, with kisses instead of a handshake, but she felt the closest thing to trust she had known in centuries. Regardless that their purposes were now united, she wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize him, and she knew he wouldn't betray her.
He placed a light kiss on her forehead and stared directly into her eyes. She wanted to say something to mark their moment, both Thank you and I'm sorry seemed appropriate, but she watched his pupils dilate and was caught in his gaze before she could say a word.
"You will tell no one that I was here, or allude to what we discussed. We made a deal to save each other's lives; that's all you will remember. For now."