A/N: I'm back! Sort of.. Trying to get my groove back from the unintentional hiatus. I don't know why I have so much difficulty writing in past tense…?
A guttural ear-piercing scream rings out in the background. She remembers how the sound used to send her scrambling in a haste to escape the wretched cries and fruitless pleas. It has taken a lot of training and discipline to resist the desperation effects it once had.
Fingers curl around the curve of the cup handle and grip tightly to bring the drink upwards to her lips. The steam of a freshly brewed espresso tickles her nostrils so very gently, causing her to exhale a sigh.
A pained wince and groan from her back interrupts her thoughts. She takes a sip and relishes in its rich Arabic scalding black liquid, swirling around her tongue and burning her throat.
"This isn't you. Kai - he's gotten inside your head."
She ignores the urgency in his tone and stares into the hungry fires licking at the note cards she had tossed in prior. Words of love and promises littered all over the card. Till death do us apart and all that romantic foolishness.
She turns and looks over the hunched, slumped form with a blank expression. His forehead crinkles and his dark eyes squint, peering through the bloodied matted fringe. She leaves the counter top stool she has perched with a frown.
Her ears catch the slight, subtle of the rough texture of the rope scratching and shifting against the man's bound wrists behind the chair. She walks over to his beckoning, offhanded charming smile.
An old memory of him kissing her bloodstained lips in the middle of the forest burns bright and lights a pang in her chest. The feeling swirls around her gut and settles. She changed him to be a better person. He saved her as she did with him. Over time, she switched the course of his destiny, more times than she'd admit. He taught her to live in the moment and she taught him how to love.
"You have to fight it, Elena. There isn't much time left."
She steps over a dead couple of a werewolf hybrid and witch and carefully makes her way towards him. She spots the newlywed-now-widow in the far corner crawling despite the growing pool of blood spilling out. Her current partner in crime had gutted him like a fish and then discarded him with her.
How rude.
His blood makes her hungry for a meal but there is no one left but him and the unconscious, insufferable blonde vampire bound and tied up in the storage room.
She comes to a halt in front of the dark-haired Salvatore and closes in on the dagger Kai had used on Alaric Saltzman and then left it embedded into the armchair rest to serve a reminder. She yanks it out and Damon breathes shallowly, "That's it. Cut the ropes. You can do this."
The screams have faded now and Damon pales, desperation coloring his eyes. "Bonnie… Shit! He wouldn't."
His struggling becomes more pronounced as the eerie silence stretches over each second. He glares at her and she doesn't bat an eye. If her eyes roll now, he would know in a heartbeat.
Instead, she counts the seconds that ticked by, the mutterings of a dying, bleeding man's last words she pretends not to hear. She toys with the sharp tip of the dagger and considers doing as he asks - begs.
He's still rambling away. "I can't hear her heartbeats. She's not dead. Can't be… I'm going to kill that little weasel."
His head tilts upwards as she points the dagger tip at his bobbing Adam's apple and traces towards the underside of his chin. Frustration, combined with fresh grief and rage, and perhaps the loneliness of all since he will be the last.
She longs to gloat, to taunt and mock at his failures but she keeps her mouth shut. Her coffee is going to be lukewarm and besides, she can only prolong his death for so long.
He rasps her name and she seethes inside. After everything she has done, he chose her in the end. She lets him see a bright, hopeful smile and the way his eyes light up in relief and hope and so full of love, makes her want to forever lock the memory in a vault and sink it into the deepest abyss.
Fingers cradle his cheek one last time, before she finally breaks him with a mere sentence. "Doesn't mean we share the same face means I'm her."
His eyes widen in horror and she doesn't give him time for the words to sink in as the same loving fingers dig deep and yank his cold, once beating heart.
Katherine slinks back to her seat and smirks. Her phone chimes in a text message.
"Hello Darling. I hear you're back in town. Why don't we meet up for a drink and I'll help you tie up some loose ends."
~Fin.