DISCLAIMER: I own none of the Vampire Diaries characters, but I wouldn't mind if I did.
Freedom. The word echoed between his ears like fire, like an untamable figment of the imagination. It'd been so long since he'd tasted it, that he thought it'd be sweeter. He barely noticed the car sidling up along the curve, it's black paint job causing it to almost melt away into the night that currently engulfed him.
"Stefan," her voice broke his concentration, forcing dimmed green eyes through the passenger side window. Katherine's stare fought to meet his own, enriched and ferocious browns so very unlike Elena's doe-eyed glimpses. "are you coming or not?"
There was a natural impulse to roll his eyes over the way she quirked one of those eloquently plucked brows, or how her nails tapped the edges of the steering wheel with impatience, but he couldn't find it in himself to not understand how desperate she was to get away from here, from Klaus. He'd found it hard to believe that she'd shown up at all, the risk so unlike her. Opening the door he slid inside rather quickly before shutting it behind him, immediately staring out ahead of them.
"You're rather moody for somebody who just got his freedom back," Katherine analyzed while pulling away from the curb, breaking the speed limit before either vampire had time to blink. "What, did you turn your humanity back on already?" Her grin was coy and full, her eyes sliding to their corners to peek at him.
"Very funny," he mused in response, nonchalant, off-handed.
"That would be a no," she sighed as she looked back ahead of her, her right hand sliding down towards her lap, fingers drawing along her thigh while the other kept control of the car.
He watched her a moment, curious to see where that drifting hand of hers was going, before turning to look out the passenger window when he saw that it was her phone she was grappling for. Acute senses could pick up Damon's voice but he didn't care to listen, trying to ignore the sense of numb contentment that burned in his belly over the fact that his brother was still breathing, at least in the most exaggerated sense.
The conversation was short lived, and all Stefan did was stare out the window, as if searching for some sign among the blurring tree-line. What a poetic idea and how hopeful of him, maybe he had begun to turn his humanity back on after all.
"He doesn't know where it all went wrong."
Stefan craned his neck and turned back towards Katherine, "He doesn't need to know," Stefan replied without any sense of effort, swallowing back the bile in his throat that so desperately fought to rise, that metaphorical anguish that ached to push through every wall he'd been forced to build up. The car jerked beneath them and he jolted slightly from the force, the tires squealing as they were brought to a stop
"Are you good from here? I need to put about a million miles between myself and Klaus as soon as possible."
There was a moment of pause between them as Katherine watched him expectantly, waiting for him to either speak or vanish from the confines of her car so that she could speed away.
"How did you know that I would stop Damon?"
"I didn't, I was just hoping that you would want to," Katherine informed him, causing Stefan's browns to furrow as if in confusion.
"You wanted Klaus dead for five hundred years, why would you risk all of that just to save Damon's life?" Though he could have easily predicted the answer, no part of him wanted to openly acknowledge the idea, almost as if the jealousy that had bled it's way through his system when he died was still a part of him now.
"I wasn't just trying to save Damon's life, Stefan, I was trying to save yours, your humanity," there was an almost eloquence to her answer, "Let's just say I like the old you better."
"Come on Katherine, you don't care about anybody but yourself, you never have," he tried to argue, wanting no part of his humanity back at the moment, nothing of his feelings for Elena, his betrayal towards Damon, or his love for Katherine, knowing that if he let it all back in that they would consume him whole.
"You and I both know that that is not true - I loved you, I love Damon too." Katherine, however, didn't seem as keen on biting such emotions back. Her acknowledgement of their love brought a moment of vulnerability to his eyes that he hoped she couldn't see, while memories of them dancing together beneath chandelier lights threatened to dredge themselves up from the back of his mind.
"Humanity is a vampire's greatest weakness," she continued, "no matter how easy it is to turn it off, it just keeps trying to fight it's way back in - sometimes I let it..." her voice drifted off into subtler and almost sweeter notes, as her eyes turned back to him.
Another moment, a pregnant pause in which he tried to collect himself, hopelessly. "I can't let it all back in," he admitted softly, his voice strained with apprehension from the thought. "I don't want to, not after everything I've done."
"Of course you don't want to, but if you don't let yourself feel, you won't be able to do what I need you to do next."
"What's that?"
She leaned in towards him suddenly, and her eyes took on an expression that was almost predatory. "Get mad."
He turned his face towards her more fully, and found that their faces were hovering but inches apart. Part of him sought to question her, to ask just what her aim was - because she always had one, it was all about her, forever and always her but no sound came out, because alongside such a desire was one decidedly more primal.
"You heard me, Stefan, get mad," she said again, leaning closer still, in a way that had him scrambling for a reaction to the fact that her hot breath could be felt along the skin of his chin. "Because otherwise Klaus will win, and Elena, Damon, and every other friend you made in Mystic Falls will be dead."
There it was again, that look of vulnerability, though minor astonishment was soon to follow when Katherine pressed her lips to his.
It was quick, but not exactly chaste. No, chaste was innocence, and pure. Katherine was anything but, her lust melting against his mouth like hellfire that left a fiery ache even after she'd pulled away. It was an insatiable feeling that had him wanting to pull her back in, to let her in past the walls to a point where he could devour her with each broken emotion that was struggling so hard to be free. Only he couldn't, because each moment burned away by Katherine was a moment that he couldn't use to find a way to save all of those who thought he couldn't be saved himself.
So he tore himself from her, pushing open the door to meet the crisp air. He stepped out quickly, both because he knew what he had to do, but also because he knew he had to get away from her before she swallowed him back in again.
"Goodbye Katherine," and just like that she was gone, nothing but tail-lights. Green eyes followed them until they were too far gone, too far for him to catch even if he tried, at which point he then turned towards his latest and perhaps deadliest destination. He had work to do.