Katherine stepped forward, smudged khol under eyes from where she had been crying just minutes before.
"I had not counted on you being so difficult…" her father's mouth twisted in displeasure and she felt the twinge she always did when she disappointed him. He did not deserve to have such an effect on her. "You always did your duty so well."
"I understand what my duty is, and I shall do it," she said coldly, fingers twisting into a fist where they were hidden in the silks of her dress. She meant it too, and he must know that she did, from the way he inclined his head to show her that her presence was no longer needed.
"My wedding, and they do not mean to have me there for the preparations." Her ringed fingers rested in Raja's fur, stroking it absentmindedly as she took a seat in the water gardens that were now bathed in moonlight.
The soft rush of the waterfalls surrounding her and the crickets chirping in the trees outside calmed her almost instantly, and Katherine wished for a moment her anger was not so fleeting. Women could do so much with anger- she would know, she had seen her mother use her anger to fight her way out of a sickly body and run off with the love of her life.
She would have to get rid of Raja too if she was to move to Rome, Katherine realised with a sinking feeling. Having a tiger in the midst of her families' spacious compound in the mountains was all well and good, but she doubted her new family would be so accepting as to allow a tiger into their house.
Her betrothal had been set up with Klaus Mikaelson, and apparently the Mikaelson name carried some weight in Rome, even though she had heard whispers that he was a bastard and he wasn't even a first son besides. True, her father did not come from royalty, but they had enough money to secure her at least a first son to marry.
"I have heard you are unhappy with the betrothal, my lady," Klaus melted from the shadows around the gardens soundlessly, and Katherine narrowed her eyes, wondering why Raja hadn't notified her of his presence.
She rose quietly, the purple silk of her gown shimmering in the moonlight as she did so. "If I have acted in any way to give you that impression, I am sorry. That was not my intention."
Klaus smiled at her, and the thought for a moment that he was handsome flitted into her brain- although he did not have the strong, darker features she had always favoured in her men.
"If you accept my proposal, I promise you, I shall do my utmost to keep you from being unhappy. I have quite a lot of funds at my disposal, and we shall have a grand marriage if you accept me."
Katherine nodded and smiled as was expected of her; after all, he had just given her quite a touching little speech that most husbands would not do for their wives. She extended her hand for him to kiss, and pretended fatigue in order to retire to her rooms in peace.
The first thought that crosses Elijah's mind when Katherine is introduced to him by Klaus, as his 'fiancée' is that she is not just stunning- she is otherworldly. Tatia had been pretty, in a calm way, for he had never seen Tatia outside of the rough blue wool she always wore, and she was always unfailingly nice and sweet in such a peaceful manner it was hard to feel high emotion in her presence.
But Katherine is so much more. She holds herself with the easy grace of a queen, dressed in nothing but red silks that leave her pale shoulders bare in a way that he knows will be the envy of most of the women in Rome when she is introduced as Klaus' wife. Her hair is fixed in a loosely curled updo which is set off by rubies he recognises as belonging to Rebekah, before she ran off with Kol somewhere.
"Lord Mikaelson," She inclines her head towards him and bobs into a curtsey low enough to be described as impertinent.
"Call me Elijah," He says, brushing his lips over her hand and smiling at her with a clenched jaw.
History must not be allowed to repeat itself, Klaus had whispered to him before her arrival. We must play our parts perfectly.
He did not like it, he would admit that. He did not enjoy keeping up this façade that Katherine was to marry his brother and live with perfect harmony with him for the rest of her life. A quick compulsion would have done the job, but Klaus had always enjoyed playing with his prey before he killed them.
"Allow me to show you around the house," she slips the length of her bare arm through his and tosses a smile over her shoulder to Klaus.
"Call me Katherine," is all she says after they are out of earshot of the others. "After all, we are to be brother and sister."
"Very well, Katherine. Would you like to be shown your chambers first, or the house?"
"The house, I suppose. I would know my future home sooner rather than later."
She smiles up at him and Elijah thinks with a pang of jealousy that Tatia was always better suited to him than Klaus, heightwise. Katherine is even more so- she holds herself with a towering grace that makes Klaus shrink in comparison to her.
"Is this only Klaus' home, or do all of you live here?"
"All of us live here. Me and Klaus are the only ones who actually reside here permanently, but our siblings drop in quite often."
"I've never had siblings, although I did have Raja, and he was good enough."
He knows that she had a pet tiger that was sold to the circus the minute she left her home, and he thinks with a wry smile that the pet suits her.
"Come," Elijah smiles at her and tucks a stray curl behind her ear, bright eyes shining like jewels. His brother will dim her light. "I shall show you to your chambers."
The dagger is beautiful- silver twisted and burned into the sigil of her family's house, inlaid with tiny emeralds. Katherine fingers it, careful not to catch her fingers on the sharp edges. Her mother gave it to her, and told her to use it on herself if anything happened to her.
Not: come back to me if they mistreat you darling, we'll keep you safe. No, Katherine has been told to kill herself if her husband mistreats her.
She will not give them the satisfaction of even laying a single finger on her. It takes one deep breath for her to make up her mind.
She pockets the dagger.
It's not yet night- the sky is painted a beautiful pink-purple which is darkening by the second. Katherine waits for thirty counted beats before she strides confidently from her room and into the thick foliage of the gardens.
Hands brush against the berried trees, occasionally plucking the odd fruit and squeezing it in her fingers. She can see the wall, looming and massive ahead of her, rough cobbles moulded together. The woods come alive as she makes her way to the outer gate, the one she knows is manned by only one servant.
"Katherine?" Her heart jumps to her throat; her hand jumps for her dagger.
"Elijah?" She peers into the gloom and sighs, returning the dagger to the large pocket of her dress. She cannot possibly kill her brother in law.
"Where are you going this time of night?"
"Only to pick up a few things from my dressmakers'. It's quite safe, I assure you. I've done it a lot of times."
Lies, she knows, but reaches the gate with him beside her. Now all he needs to do is leave her alone and she can go.
"Allow me to escort you," His hand moves to her upper arm and she exhales finally, for the first time since this whole marriage ordeal began, as they pass through the first gate.
Now all she has to do is get rid of Elijah, but when she turns to face him, mouth set in a grim line, she fears that it will be a harder task than anticipated.
She's nervous having him around her- which is so blatantly obvious, in the way she peers into every alleyway as if she is searching for a quick escape. He doesn't have to stretch his ears to hear her pulse, frantic as if she is a bird in a cage.
"Listen…" Katherine says when they reach the dressmaker's, laying one hand on his arm and turning him towards her. "I think you should leave now."
"Nonsense. I will escort you inside."
"I don't want to go inside."
He feigns surprise- it has been painfully obvious to him from the start that the story of visiting her dressmakers was nothing but a lie, and he did not have to be a vampire to recognise it. "Why ever not?" He asks lowly, following her as she steps deftly into the dark of the alleyway.
"Elijah," She looks up at him, skin gleaming in the night as she reaches out to clasp his large hand between two of hers. "I do not want to get married to your brother."
"The betrothal is already fixed."
"Yes," She breathes, hand disappearing into the folds of her dress as she steps away from him. "But I cannot go through with it. Please, leave me here and I shall be fine."
He looks around at the filthy streets of Rome and back to Katherine, clad in another jewel toned silk, shoulders bared proudly to the world, and knows she will not survive a minute in Rome. It is only that they have a great need of her blood, he tells himself, which prompts him to place an arm around her small shoulders and steer her out of the alleyway.
"Please," she pleads, squirming under his grip as they renter the main streets of Rome, undercover of the darkness which has now fully set.
"Shh," he whispers into her ear, and she stills immediately, twisting to look at him with wide, mistrustful eyes. "I'll help you run," He spills out impulsively, curling his fingers through hers.
"Why would you want to do that?"
"I care about you," He says, and Katherine arches an eyebrow that tells him she does not trust him at all. "I couldn't leave a lady alone in Rome, and if the betrothal is so distasteful to you, I would not make you go through with it."
Elijah watches Katherine's face clear slightly, as she accepts that it is nothing but duty that makes him wish to protect her, and he wants to tell her as she slides her hand into him and allows him to lead her away to a carriage, that it goes so much deeper than that. Theirs is a story that dates to a half-stranger who wore her face that he could not save, the girl who turned their family into monsters.
Instead he settles across from her in the carriage and watches her watch him, trying to fight sleep to ensure that he will not drag her back to Klaus.
"Sleep," he tells her, but she shakes her head, jutting her chin out and forcing her eyes to widen.
"I'm not tired."
Katherine waits until they are in the very outskirts of Rome before her eyelids finally droop shut, every line of tension dropping from her body. She leaves Elijah to make perhaps the hardest decision of his life; on whether or not to take her back to Klaus, or allow this innocent eighteen year old to run. He has many sins that need absolving when it comes to the Petrova line.
She lets him take her onto a ship, which he promises will transport her to England, and in turn, complete safety. They sleep in adjoining cabins at night, tossing and turning with the rolling of the foam specked waves, and she watches him through the cracks in the wood.
Elijah never sleeps.
Katherine watches him read countless novels, write countless letters, and even sit in complete silence with nothing to occupy his mind, yet he never sleeps. Try as she might- she is always the one who drops off first, and by the time she has awoken, he is already up and out on the deck of the ship.
She is determined, at least by the end of this little voyage, to have seen him sleeping at least once, or at the very least, find what ails him so and see if she can do anything about it. Elijah is unfailingly kind, and unfailingly polite, and Katherine knows that if it were he that she was betrothed to, she would have not objected to the marriage.
The storm that catches them a few days away from England strikes when she is sleeping, and Katherine finds herself flung into the wall by her bed as the waves begin to batter their ship. The goblet of wine Elijah keeps on his desk is thrown across the room and through the cracks in her wall, and Katherine looks at the red substance with sleep glossed eyes and it strikes her that it is blood.
Her heart skips a beat in her chest, and Katherine feels rather than sees Elijah move towards her, his eye suddenly pressed against the crack in the walls.
"Katherine?", He says, and she pulls back with a gasp for air.
There is blood on his lips, she thinks, and forces herself to smile at him. "I-I was just woken by the storm," she stammers, mind racing frantically as she tries to work out why-why?- would a man have blood on his lips. The sound of softly spoken horror stories told to her by her mother when she was younger curls across her memory, and she draws the sheets around her in an effort to disguise her shudder.
"You seem distressed. Allow me to come over."
Katherine scrambles for the window of her cabin, trying not to think about creatures that drank human blood-the blood of little girls is the best blood- her mother used to say, and laugh as she tickled the underside of Katherine's cheek. It's too small, she thinks, looking at the few panels of glass and pressing her back to the hard wood.
"Stay away from me," She calls, reaching for the dagger that she always keeps on her person.
"Calm down," Elijah's hands come for her arms, and she wants to relax into them as she has done so many times before, but she can't.
"Stay away from me," She repeats, and then feels the dagger slide into the soft flesh of Elijah's stomach.
"Oh god," Katherine says, pulling the dagger out and allowing it to drop to the floor. I've killed him, she thinks- my only hope and I've killed him, he's gone-
Before her eyes, the gaping wound closes through the thin fabric of his toga, and the dreams of monsters are back. "No," She presses back into the wood again, and when Elijah looks at her with his face impassive as ever, she wants to vomit.
"Calm down," His arms come to rest either side of her face, but she cannot stop looking at the stain of dark blood on his toga.
"How can I be calm?!" She screams, and pushes against his chest- a chest that was bleeding just moments ago- trying to stop the spread of tears down her face.
Elijah looks at her, caged in his arms as skittish as a deer, and feels a pang he has not felt for centuries. She did not deserve this, and he had tried so very hard to keep it from her, but it was better she found the truth out from him, than from Klaus so much later on, when he drained her dry of blood.
"Do you trust me?" He asks, and he knows it is a futile question, but he cannot think of what to say. If only he were good with words, then he would be able to convince her that he only ever wanted to protect her, because of the girl he could not protect, and because now, he has seen the light in Katherine, the sparkle and the gleam in her eyes, and does not want anyone to snatch it from her.
"I did..." She trails off, biting her bottom lip with her tongue.
"Let me explain," He pleads, clutching one of her hands and steering her to her bunk.
He tells her as best he can, of Tatia and Klaus and the spells that his mother weaved around them, to make them souless creatures, destined to forever roam the Earth with no solace.
"He wants you for your blood," he tells her softly when he finishes. Katherine shudders and looks down at their interlocked fingers.
"Help me," She says, "To run."
"Of course."
"I am the last. I will be the last. I want you to promise you will turn me when I ask. No others should suffer the same fate as me."
"No," he agrees, and reaches to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, as he did so long ago when they first met, when he was certain she would just be another on a long list of sins.
She smiles up at him, and he watches her gaze drop to his lips. She knows what she is doing, he reminds himself, she cannot possibly feel anything for me after everything I have just told her-
She kisses him.
He kisses her back even though he knows he probably shouldn't. Elijah is a fool who always repeats his mistakes, but he has a feeling she will be the last repeat of this particular act. Her lips are soft and gentle against his and he leans into the kiss, pressing her down onto the rough mattress of her bed. Katherine looks up at him and cups his face.
"Did you only like me because of her?"
"No," He breathes, and he watches distrust flicker on her face until he wipes the expression away with a kiss of his own. "No, I believe I love you for yourself."
a/n: thank you for reading! this is not how I wanted this one to turn out, but it's been sitting in my drafts for weeks and I just had to publish it, let me know what you think!
also thank you so so much for the reviews so far, they really help me work on my writing and improve it, which I really enjoy doing