A/N:This is my first try on that couple, so have mercy please ;)
Also, this is 'in progress' to give me the opportunity to add drabbles/oneshots whenever they come to my mind.
You're a hard soul to save-Over the love, Florence+The Machine
She's fire and he's ice and he's melting away rapidly. He's been freezing whenever she was not there and he's been freezing for centuries now.
She's fire, she's color and life, she's careless, reckless. She's what he shouldn't want, worse, she's what he never wanted to want, still he loved her, before he felt her, before he knew how searing she was. He's been freezing so long now and he's getting tired of it, so he tries, and oh, how he tries. But she's burning, so, so hot and she burns him, almost. He's not going to let her burn him, though.
He calls her Katerina, because it's a shadow, a remainder of what she used to be, of a girl with light in her eyes and wind in her hair. A girl, shining so bright, she'd blind him, him and anyone who'd stand too close. He calls her Katerina, and always, always Katerina because it gives her dignity, gives her back a bit of that girl, who didn't have to run. He calls her Katerina because it makes her eyes flicker with a shadow of the light that used to live there. She's not Katerina, though, not anymore.
She's Katherine Pierce, a woman who'd become bitter of years full of fear and hiding, a woman who'd become nothing but prey, prey to his brother, prey to her very own ghosts, prey to herself somewhere along the way.
He doesn't call her Katherine, never does, because he refuses to use that mask she prefers to put on, refuses to grant her that victory. He doesn't want to proof her right, because she really is not. She is not Katherine Pierce, not completely at least and why should he call her something she is not?
And he's not going to start calling her Katherine, as long as there's still light, as long as she's still fire.
He should be careful to stay away, he knows, because she's more far away from Katerina than ever and Katherine appalls him in so many ways. Katherine is cynic, she's bitter, she kills without a second thought and moving a lash. There's still light and she's still fire, so he's drawn in hopelessly, mercilessly, like the spray hits the shore, like winter supersedes summer each and every year. She's still his in some way, his Achilles' heel, his bittersweet temptation.
He's in New Orleans, now, because he bid her goodbye, hurt in his pride, hurt because he was wrong, because she didn't change back fast enough. Because she couldn't change back fast enough. It's Rebekah, who tells him, in that usual taunting, slightly haughty way she has acquired during the last centuries. She means to annoy him, to tickle any kind of reaction out of him, anything that would satisfy her need for attention, but he's grown too old to give her that kind of victory.
It gives her a whole new quality, being human again. It makes her vulnerable, touchable, and it's selfish because he doesn't want her to be vulnerable, but Katerina, was vulnerable, so in a way he does want her to be. He doesn't go looking for her, doesn't go to follow the immediate, primal impulse of protecting her, he has. He has things to do, has business to care for, and she has too now. He knows that she won't stay human for too long, simply because she prefers to have the right set skills to be and stay alive and with her constantly on his brother's radar, humanity is no virtue.
It took centuries for him to rediscover her and maybe it'll be another centuries until they cross paths again, but when she decides she wants to find him, he won't make it difficult for her. He'll know when it's her and none of his or her demons knocking the door, simply because he always knew. Simply because they're bound like ebb and flow, like fire and ice.
She's fire and he's melting oh so slowly.