Chapter Ten

Oh what a tangled Web

"Looks like I got here just in time lover boy" snarled Katherine. "What the hell do you think you are doing Damon? Because it better not be what I think it is."

She turned to glare at her doppelganger who was only just getting to her feet.

"And you just stay right where you are you little bitch. I've let you fuck with Damon's heart long enough, you don't get another chance. No matter what you think you feel."

Damon started to rise from the bed, and without even looking Katherine shoved him back down.

"Stay" she ordered.

"Both of you stay right where you are. I've got some stuff to say and you are going to fucking hear it, or I swear I'll snap both your necks and tie you up."

Damon shot Elena a look of warning. Praying she would follow his lead, he leaned back on Elena's bed and smirked.

"Now now kitty Kat, you can retract the claws. There's no need to be jealous, I was just helping Elena out with her little eating disorder. So what's up... did you get bored without little old me around to keep you amused?"

Cocking a brow he ran his eyes down her form suggestively.

Katherine rolled her eyes.

"Cut the crap Damon. I know you know that Elijah compelled me. And it doesn't take a genius to know that you've already spoken to him; and that you know why he did it. What you don't know, is why I decided to do it in the first place."

"Yes we do" cut in Elena, her tone scathing.

"Elijah told us everything and he's gone looking for you so he can fix it." Her eyes darted to meet Damon's as she registered the expression on Katherine's face.

Okay this was bad, thought Damon, as Katherine shrugged and studied her nails. Why was she calm? Katherine Pierce didn't do calm, she plotted and planned and manipulated, but she was never calm, unless...

"Shit!" he cursed. "You knew I'd find out and you knew that Elijah would tell me the rest, didn't you Katherine? You set this whole thing up. I just can't figure out what your angle is" Damon mused, his expression fierce.

"Why go to all the trouble of having Elijah compel you if he was only going to reverse it when I found out?" He crossed his arms and studied her expectantly.

"Well... that's just it Damon. I don't want Elijah to reverse It." she offered calmly.

Sitting back, Katherine relaxed on the window seat, as she watched Damon and Elena's reaction to her words.

"Yeah, Okay. I still don't get it." Elena muttered.

Damon shot Elena a quick glance.

"Good to know I'm not the only one." He admitted offhandedly, his attention turning back to Katherine.

"Care to explain?" he asked her warily.

"I thought you'd never ask" Katherine drawled, her tone sarcastic as she leaned forward.

"Everything Elijah told you is the truth. As is everything else you learned from our little connection with the blood bond."She added.

"But what Elijah didn't know and the blood bond obviously didn't reveal was that I had a witch spell me to make sure I remembered why I asked him to do all of it." Taking note of the confused frown on Damon's face she sighed with exasperation.

"Okay kiddies, try to stay with me here. Coz this is where it gets really complicated so you might want to suspend your disbelief until I've finished." She stared hard at Elena before continuing.

"Yes, I asked Elijah to compel me to forget what I felt for Stefan... but I made sure I'd remember the real reason I asked for the compulsion. The story I gave Elijah was one that I knew would satisfy him; and it was true to a certain point. What neither you nor Elijah knew was that this was not the first time I've had my own memory tampered with."

She stood and walked towards Damon.

"Back when I first met you and Stefan, I took a little trip to New Orleans and sought help from a friend or yours Damon. Or rather, a friend to be. Didn't you ever wonder why Gloria was so tolerant of you when she obviously despised your brother?" She gestured airily.

"She was quite fond of you you know. Of course, a lot of that fondness had to do with the little favour I asked of her. Dear Gloria, she was always such a romantic deep down."

"Yeah whatever Kat. do you think you could get to the point sometime this century. I've got places I'd rather be" drawled Damon his tone bored, even though he had a sinking feeling where this was heading.

"So impatient" scolded Katherine, as she stroked the tip of her fingers along his jaw.

A frown knitted her brow when Damon drew back from her touch.

"Fine!" she huffed pulling back slightly.

"I'd known Stefan a short while and was quite enjoying the game of will she won't we with him. I thought at first that perhaps I would marry the boy and stay in Mystic Falls for a time. He was so innocent, so sweet... and so very gullible. And I was very sick of running. Marriage would have given me access to the town and a certain respectability. Stefan would never have been any the wiser to my true nature; and I would have some respite from Elijah because he would hear from his many spies that I was no more faithful to Stefan than I was to my last paramour."

Her lips quirked at Damon's snort and Elena's disgusted expression.

"Yes well, it seemed like the perfect arrangement at the time. Pearl and I had such plans for the town and as I said, I was desperate to just settle somewhere, even if only for a year or two. Unfortunately, Stefan failed to mention that he was not an only child." Her eyes locked with Damon's.

"I don't think I can ever remember feeling as stunned as I was when I looked up that day and there you were; just standing under the arch in the garden. You were so ragged in your uniform and you looked weary enough for two men, but you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and I knew I wanted you from that moment on."

Damon stilled at the look in her eyes. His discomfort with her words waring with his uncertainty of the expression on her face.

"Katherine?"

"Mortal and Immortal I have never known a feeling like it Damon; I was dizzy with shock and barely in control. Then you kissed my hand and I knew my heart was yours" she admitted.

Katherine turned away, her eyes meeting Elena's stricken ones.

"I don't think I have ever been as alive as I was in those first weeks after meeting him... or so scared." She laughed; her voice hollow with remembered despair.

"I was terrified. I wanted to run as far away as I could, but I knew it was far too late for that. So instead I sought out Gloria and asked her for a spell."

Katherine turned back to face him, her expression apologetic.

"I asked her to take away my feelings for you...I begged her. I didn't want to love anybody again and what I already felt for you was beyond anything I had ever experienced... so I begged her to take it away."

Elena felt her heart clench in her chest. The pain in Katherine's eyes scraping her own heart raw in a way her words couldn't.

"Of course, I told myself that it would be the best thing for the both of us... that if Elijah found out I'd lose you anyway... but the truth was that I was afraid to love you. I was terrified that you would hate me when you learned what I was and I didn't want to take the risk." She shuddered as she remembered her near panicked flight to New Orleans.

"Gloria agreed to do it of course, but when she tried to cast the spell it fizzled. Apparently real love cannot be banished so easily" admitted Katherine, her expression pained.

"It's one of the few times I've seen Gloria shocked. She didn't understand how the wicked Katerina Petrova had lost her heart to a mortal man, yet alone one that she'd barely kissed."

Scowling at the memory, Katherine shook her head and pushed her hair back from her face.

"Her eventual solution... the only way I could live with my feelings, was not what I had gone there for. But it was the only way" she explained determinedly.

"Genuine love could not be dispelled, but Gloria found a way to lessen what I felt. Her solution was a spell that echoed what I felt for one brother by ensuring that I'd feel it for the other. Of course she had to get creative so it would hold as long as it did, so she crafted it so my human half was drawn to Stefan and my vampire self to Damon. Then without my knowledge she added just enough power so that my feelings for Stefan would feel like they were more... compulsive, for want of a better word. She never did like me very much, so I suppose it amused her to see me chasing the wrong brother"

Katherine slid down to kneel at Damon's feet.

Taking his hands in hers she looked up at him her expression entreating him to believe her words.

"Naturally when Gloria died, the spell started to unravel and I began to question so many things about my life and my feelings. Both for you and for Stefan. But Gloria's spell was strong and so was my arrogance... and my anger at you.' She admitted her expression pained.

"I told myself I was imagining things, that of course I'd loved you both once upon a time. I tried to convince myself that it was just the old feelings resurfacing...confusing me about who I loved more... That it had been Stefan that I'd always planned to be with; that my lingering feelings for you were lust and nothing more."

She shook her head.

"I still wasn't sure what I was feeling all this time later... not until I returned to this damn town after the council got itself blown up. The moment I laid eyes on you three together the spell collapsed completely and it didn't take long for me to make a few very necessary decisions."

She turned to look at Elena, her eyes glittering with some unnamed emotion.

"You had it all... everything I had ever wanted. I'd gotten that much right."

Katherine chuckled mirthlessly.

"Except of course... thanks to the damn spell I've spent the last God knows how long convinced it was Stefan I'd choose if it came down to it. And the kicker is that it was all my own fault for being such a monumental coward." Her eyes turned hard as she continued to stare at Elena.

"But you... You didn't have a spell keeping you from him. He offered everything to you and asked for nothing... and you threw it back in his face. He would have died for you... he did kill for you. And all he got in return was your contempt and a half hearted friendship."

She stood and placed her hand on Damon's shoulder, her gaze still fixed on her doppelgangers face.

"I had Elijah compel me so I could put everything right... so I could make things the way they should have been. I'd forgotten about the bond, I've never wanted to share blood like that so I didn't even think about it until it was too late. And now you think just because Elijah compelled me, that that gives you the right to come in and try to take what is mine."

Katherine snarled, her grip tightening on Damon's shoulder.

"I loved him first and I loved him instantly. I might have gone about things the wrong way and been a coward, but I never denied loving him... at least not when magic wasn't involved. You treated him like dirt just last night and yet here you are asking him to share blood with you because you're still as much of a fucking coward as you ever were. You don't deserve Damon's love and I'll be damned if I stand by and watch you play games with him again."

Ignoring Elena's shocked expression; Katherine turned her attention back to Damon.

"Damon, I want you to come with me tonight... right now. I'm begging you to come with me... to make a life with me. My heart chose you over one hundred and forty five years ago and I should have trusted it then. You should have been my choice back then, but I can't change my mistake, I can only tell you that here and now you are my first and only choice."

Her hand swept up from his shoulder to cup his jaw, tears glittering in her dark eyes as her voice softened.

"Don't you see Damon? When I had Elijah compel me it was the lingering effects of Gloria's spell that I wanted gone. Logically I knew any feeling I had for him were because of splitting what I'd felt for you, but even with the spell gone they'd been in place for far too long to just disappear and I didn't have time to wait, not with the way things were going for you. The compulsion is a moot point anyway because the feelings I had for Stefan were generated by Gloria's spell so they weren't ever real."

Katherine bit her lip and let her hand drop.

"And I know I've hurt you... probably more than you should forgive. But I meant what I said earlier. I love you Damon and I want to see what we could have had together if I hadn't been such a coward. Please give me the chance to find out?"

Damon met her eyes and felt his head throb with pain. His heart wasn't in much better shape.

What the fuck was he supposed to do now?

Kat really did love him... he'd always been the one she wanted. But at the same time, she'd done some pretty desperate shit trying to deny her feelings.

Looking at her and the hope and fear in her eyes, he didn't know what to think. On one hand this was what he'd always wanted. Someone that loved him and only him. Someone that would put him before all others.

She wanted them to go away together and to see if they could build a life; and he was having a very hard time coming up with a reason to say no.

If he could forgive the choices she'd made and except that she really did love him, then didn't he owe it to both of them to try. After all, there was nothing holding him here in Mystic Falls.

Or was there?

He glanced across at Elena and the expression on her face made his stomach plummet.

Elena looked devastated and was obviously doing her best to hold back tears.

So yeah... he was the first to admit he could be a little slow sometimes, but he did eventually manage to get clued in if he was given enough hints.

Katherine's little tirade had well and truly tipped him off... well that and Elena's look of guilt when Katherine had brought up the whole blood bond thing.

And what if Elena did have feelings for him?

Well crap! What the hell was he going to do now?

Could he take a chance?

Did he even want to?

Right then.

Time to get some straight answers, from the other Petrova.

Getting up from the bed, he was about to ask Katherine if he could have a moment alone with Elena and already cringing at her expected response; when an unexpected visitor arrived through Elena's window.

Damon was quick to note that Stefan did not look at all happy.

Rolling his eyes at what was sure to be a drama packed next few minutes Damon sighed and sat back down.