Change

5 years. It had been 5 years since Elijah had kissed Katherine on her forehead and told her goodbye. 5 years since he had last seen here face. 5 years he had spent trying to forget the betrayed look on her face as he left.

5 years of silence about everything other than Marcel and his siblings. It took him 5 years to snap and start looking for her again. For some reason he could only find out where she lived which probably meant that nothing big had happened while he was gone. Life had been boring without his Katerina. Sure he had had a brief fling with Hayley, but it didn't last. Not that he expected it to. His heart had decided that Katerina was the only one that Elijah would ever get close to outside of his family. Elijah was fine with that.

Now here he was, standing on the porch of Katherine's cosy house. It was small, plain and... humanly. The kind of place Elijah thought Katherine would never go for. Oh well. People change over the years.

He knocked on the door. When it opened, Elijah was frozen. There stood Katherine, as beautiful as ever. A small smile graced his lips. The same could not be said, however, for Katherine. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, something small and fast ran into her. 'Mommy, who's that?' a little boy, about the age of four with Katherine's big brown eyes and messy blonde hair asked.

Mommy. Elijah's world came crashing down around him. But...how?

'Maybe you should come in' Katherine opened the door wider 'Mark shouldn't be home for a few hours' Katherine stared at the floor guiltily. 'Mark's my husband' she whispered, so quietly that Elijah almost didn't hear it. Then he wished he hadn't. Husband.

How much had he missed? 'Christian, go to your room' the little boy- who was still clinging to his mother's leg- pouted but went anyways.

'Let me start at the beginning, after you left' They both winced at the painful memory.

'I tried to convince the Bennet witch to give me Silas's tombstone, but that backfired. Some time after that, due to prior happenings, I fought the Gilbert girl. She forced the cure down my throat. I woke up a few hours later, then I realised. I was human again. After 500 years of being a vampire, I was a human again. I was terrified. I convinced Damon to help ,me and got him to leave me here in New York. I met Mark, we fell in love, dated for a while and, well, you can see the rest.'

'What about...' Elijah began to ask. 'I told him everything. Even about us. And he didn't care. He told me that the past was the past, that I did what I had to do. That if I hadn't, we never would have met and done the things we did. That's when I realised I had fallen in love with him.

Elijah tried to wrap his mind around everything. 'What about.. us?' At that question, Katherine seemed to get angry. 'Us? US? There is no us. There was never any chance for us after you left. You know, when I first came to New York, before I got close to Mark, I tried to find ou thow you were doing in New Orleans. I cared. And you know what I found out? That you were happily dating that werewolf-'

'Hayley' Elijah interrupted impulsively. Katherine shot him a glare.

'Hayley. What was I supposed to do? Go to New Orleans and confess my undying love for you? What would be the point, seeing that you already moved on? Why did you look for me anyways? I thought you were happy with your new family' Katherine was on the verge of crying.

'It was you Katerina, always you. My mind was with Hayley but my heart was with you. I came because I thought that we could patch things up. Those months we spent together, looking for the cure, were the best months I had ever had in centuries. I wanted to have all this-' he gestured to the room '-with you. It's true with Niklaus I had a family but it wasn't really mine. I saw Niklaus go home everynight to his son. What did I go home to? A house that held memories of you.' Katherine wiped away her tears. Once upon a time, Elijah would have dne that for her but not anymore.

'Well what do you expect me to do Elijah? I can't just leave with you. I have friends who care about me, a husband that accepts and loves me and a son who looks up to me. It's too late. Besides, we were never meant to be.' By this point, even Elijah was tearing up.

Both of them stood in silence for a few seconds before Elijah moved towards the door. Katherine stayed where she was.

'Goodbye Elijah'

'Goodbye dearest Katerina'

As Elijah walked away from the house that held everything he had ever dreamed of having, he thought about how time changed people.