Chapter Ten – March 1951

"Girls, there is someone I would like to introduce to you," Mrs Mikaelson called and, as always, when her eyes passed Katerina she flinched slightly and cast her eyes down. The headmistress still had no idea of who her son was spending half his weekends with, and though she didn't really know what would happen if she did, Katerina was dreading that moment to no end.

"So tonight you will all assemble in the dancing room at eight sharp. Now take care of your homework."

Katerina leapt to her feet and made her way out of the dining hall.

"Why are you running like that?" Caroline asked, slightly out of breath as she chased after her friend. Then she suddenly rolled her eyes and added with a grin. "No, wait, let me guess. A certain someone has finished his exams?"

"First half," Katerina muttered and cast a look around. "Keep your voice down."

"Seriously? You two are really ridiculous," Caroline replied. "You can't hide this forever, besides, what are you afraid of?"

Katerina laughed and hurried up the narrow servant's staircase. "Well, Mrs Mikaelson for starters."

"What could she possibly do to you?"

"Throw me out, rip my head off?" Katerina replied with a shrug. "No, honestly, it's him I'm worried about. He's come to blows with his mother so often and he keeps saying he doesn't care, but… I don't think he would just shrug it off if he lost her trust."

"Maybe he wouldn't lose it, Kat," Caroline answered softly. "You don't know how she might react, and for God's sake, he's her son. He loves you, he's happy – shouldn't that make her happy, too?"

Katerina felt a pained smile play around her lips at her best friend's words. He loves you.

She knew it was her own insecurity and that it probably meant nothing, but –

He'd never said so.

Nor had she, she knew that too. But she wouldn't, couldn't, not until she could be sure it was safe to say it. Yes, she had trust issues and he knew that. Was it too much to ask to grant her this bit of safety?

"I'm not going to risk it, Care," she replied softly. "At least not for now." She pushed her depressing thoughts from her mind and asked: "Can you help me with maths? I'll never get it done on my own."

"Sure," Caroline muttered, eying her with an odd expression in her cornflower blue eyes.

"What do you think Mrs Mikaelson will have to say to us tonight?"

"No idea," Caroline replied with a shrug. "We'll see."

They set about their homework, four exercises for maths, three pages to read in biology and ten in history, an essay for English.

Though most of the time Caroline's and Katerina's diligence regarding their homework had suffered severely since September, their relationships did have at least one positive effect on their grades for both of them.

Caroline had developed a very strategic, rational way of thinking which was scaring her friends slightly but had worked wonders for her understanding of physics and maths.

Katerina had, though not entirely voluntarily, learned a lot about history since Elijah dropped a reference to some historical event or a famous person in every second sentence. He didn't even notice that he did it and she supposed that he'd never spoken to someone who didn't understand what he meant before. At first, she'd felt insanely stupid when she'd had to ask about it, but with his schoolmasterly disposition, he actually enjoyed explaining things to her (and she couldn't help thinking he was starting to do it on purpose, daring her to ask).

Her essays were getting better with every new book on her bedside table. It had been the books that had finally led Bonnie to find out where her friend disappeared to so often. To Katerina's surprise – and immense relief – she had not told a soul about it. Bonnie had even lied Mrs Mikaelson straight to the face a few weeks back when the headmistress had wanted a word with Katerina about a grade.

.

The old woods were starting to feel like home to her, she'd come to know them like the back of her hand. The days were getting lighter again and Katerina yarned for spring to come.

He sat on the narrow wall of the ruins waiting for her. Not for the first time she asked herself how they had to look like from the outside. Him in his black jacket, the fresh haircut, the tie he hadn't bothered to get rid of and the ridiculously expensive leather shoes he insisted on – and then her in the ever-same worn-out coat and the handmade scarf her mother had given her for Christmas, her battered shoes, her school uniform and her curls mussed up from the breeze. He always looked neat, well-to-do, cultivated and mature while she looked so young and insignificant next to him. They were bound to be quite a strange pair for an outside observer.

He smiled when he spotted her and got to his feet.

"Katerina."

A smile spread on her lips, too and she refrained from saying anything at all, buried her fingers in his dark hair and kissed him. She could feel him grin against her lips before he pulled her closer, messing up her hair even more.

She rose on tiptoe and gripped his collar, sighing softly against his lips.

After a moment, he gently pulled away from her and wrapped a stray curl around his finger, smiling. "I don't think we ought to take it much further out here."

She rolled her eyes at him, smiling back. "Well, I've missed you."

"I noticed, yes," he answered and carefully tucked the curl behind her ear.

"So, how did the exams go?"

"Surprisingly smooth," he muttered and pulled her closer again. "Very exhausting, though, and I'd be much obliged to you if you could take my mind off it."

She grinned. "I think that could be arranged."

.

"You don't happen to know who your mother wants to present to us?"

Elijah sighed. "I do. We've got guests from America. Brothers, they've quite recently inherited their father's theatre on the Broadway. Apparently my mother knew him and now they come to her, looking for dancers."

Katerina laughed, resting her head against his neck and said: "You don't seem too fond of them."

"Well, the older one is quite the handful… his brother is rather pleasant company, though. I suppose they're not actually the problem, it's just that I've got more than enough on my plate without them." He sighed and straightened his shirt collar absent-mindedly, his free hand playing with her hair. "But well, another week and they'll be gone."

"Oh you poor man," she muttered, grinning, and pressed a kiss to his lips.

"Are we getting a bit cheeky, Miss Petrova?"

"That's what got you to like me in the first place," she replied.

"If anything, that was part of the reason," he muttered, shaking his head, but she still didn't believe him for a second.

"My mother wrote me," she said quietly, her joking mood suddenly gone.

"Because you left at Christmas?"

Katerina shook her head. "Kolja is dead," she muttered, avoiding his eyes. "Apparently it was all over the papers. Someone beat him to death around the New Year, but Scotland Yard didn't find anything."

"He lived in your street, right? Durban Road?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"Yes."

"A whole lot of people live there, someone must have seen something. You don't beat someone to death without anyone noticing," he replied, his voice a little tense.

"A neighbour saw a man, average height, dark hair, army clothes. That's all they ever got. My mother said they never had a single suspect, not even a motive."

He was silent for a while, his fingers tangling in her hair, then asked softly: "Are you alright?"

"Yes. No. I… I feel bad," she whispered, leaning against his shoulder. "I feel dreadful. Because I'm… I'm glad he's dead. I'm relieved. I'm an awful person."

"No," he said immediately, pulling her closer. "You're not. He was an awful person. He shouldn't have ended like that, he should have had a trial... But to you, none of this matters, Katerina. Whether dead or behind bars, it is your good right to want him far away from you. Don't feel sorry for him. He doesn't deserve that."

She nodded, not entirely convinced. "I wonder why that man did it," she muttered, staring into the depths of the woods. He didn't speak a word for a long time.

.

"It's time you got back," he muttered after a look at his watch. Said watch was just another proof of the difference between them. Her father had a watch, too – it had cost him about ten pounds and was at least forty years old, he'd bought it from a colleague at work. Elijah's, however, was of a foreign brand, Swiss at a guess. Either way it had been ridiculously expensive and was probably worth a fortune by now.

She sighed and let him pull her to her feet. He still seemed somewhat absent as he took her hand and led her back towards the school. Katerina watched him out of the corner of her eye, taking in his furrowed brow, the tight jaw. His face looked rather pale and something dark sat in his brown eyes.

"Are you alright?"

He immediately put a smile on his face and replied, his tone perfectly even: "Of course."

Katerina sighed. He would never drop that mask, not even for her. "Will you stay until Sunday?"

"I'd feel better if I returned to my books, but I daresay my mother will force me to stay," he muttered, his smile turning a little rueful. "But well, if it means I'll get to spend another afternoon with you, I'll certainly enjoy myself a lot more than I would in London."

She laughed, wondering whether she would ever get used to his kind of humour. Probably not.

"Then I'll try to run away again tomorrow," she answered and added with a slight frown: "I can't believe nobody at school noticed this. I mean, what do they think I'm doing?"

"Their assumptions are probably fairly close to the truth," he replied lightly and smiled. "Though I suppose most of them won't have me in mind as the person you spend all your time with. I'm far too…"

"Smart?" she suggested, brow raised.

He rolled his eyes at her. "Old. I was going for old, Katerina."

"You're not old."

"Maybe not in years, but there are nine years between us."

She shook her head, her free hand deep down her pocket. "If this is your way of telling me I am childish-"

"If you ever let me finish a sentence-"

"You would wallow in self-pity and doubts even more than you do already," she shot back, grinning. "And I thought I was the expert."

"If you let me finish my sentences," he repeated, forcing a stern look on his face, "you would never reach such absurd conclusions in the first place. Now I can't remember what I was about to say, thanks a lot," he growled, but she could hear the laughter he barely managed to hold back.

"Something about me being too young for you-"

"There, you're doing it again, I never said that," he said, still grinning, then his voice turned serious. "Twenty-six is not an old age, but I… feel old. You should have someone whole to take your mind off your worries, not someone who has more problems to burden you with than a person twice my age should have. Not someone as broken as I am."

She stopped, turning to face him, but he avoided her eyes. "You may be troubled, Elijah, but you're not broken. I mean, if you were broken, then what would I be?"

He shook his head mechanically, still not looking at her. When he replied, his voice sounded unusually reluctant. "You know, a lot of people told me it was a miracle, how I came back from war without so much as a scratch. And then they look at my brother and tell me I am so much stronger than him and… that just proves that they're wrong, because I was never the stronger one, I was always weak." His grip around her hand tightened and he stared at their intertwined fingers. "For a long time, I felt alright. But what if I'm not? What if there's something wrong with me and I haven't noticed?"

"Then someone else would have," she replied softly, reaching out to place a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. "Where does this come from?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "I'm afraid somewhere at the back of my head, it's always been there," he muttered. "It's just logical. How could Niklaus come home so broken and I not be affected at all? It must have had an effect on me, and the fact I can't pinpoint it makes it even more terrifying," he added, a slight laugh in his lips.

If she hadn't been watching him so closely, she would have probably not noticed that it sounded a little fake.

"Looks like you got your fair share of paranoia," she said, a false smile on her own lips. "I'd call that an effect, wouldn't you?"

He chuckled, looking at her in an odd way. The next moment he'd gripped her by the shoulders and pressed his lips to hers, almost desperate. His fingers wandered through her hair, over her back, trailing down her neck and over her cheeks. A soft gasp escaped her lips – this was uncharacteristic to say the least, he depended on his self-control and his composure like nothing else and it was almost frightening to watch it slipping through his fingers like that.

"What happened to 'you should get back'?" she muttered breathlessly. "Not that I'm complaining."

A smile twitched around his lips, real this time. He stepped away from her, hands down his pockets. "Quite right. Apologies."

Katerina groaned and gave him a light punch on the shoulder. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"You're apologising."

He smiled and gently brushed her curls back into place. "Sorry."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Well, goodbye, then."

"I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I'll try," she muttered. "We've got extra training, but… I'll get away for half an hour or so."

He nodded, still smiling, and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Goodnight."

With that, he was gone and Katerina hurried back to school, cursing. Dusk was falling already and she had no idea what time it was – what if she'd be late?

.

~ö~ö~ö~

.

Just as she had feared, she was running dangerously late – when she hurried into the entrance hall, Hayley, Anna and Rebekah were just coming down the stairs. Katerina hastily adjusted the skirt of her uniform.

"Katerina, where've you been?" Anna asked, frowning at her.

"Oh, I just needed some air," she replied, still panting slightly. "Got a terrible headache, probably the homework."

"Well better hurry, then, Mrs Mikaelson's waiting," Hayley said. "You should probably take care of your hair, it looks a mess."

Rebekah smirked, but thankfully said nothing. Katerina wondered fleetingly why she hadn't told her friends all about it – maybe Rebekah did indeed care for her brothers as much as she always said.

"Sure," Katerina muttered, hurried up the stairs and pulled her hair into a ponytail as she went.

When she skidded into the dancing hall, she was the last of the girls to enter – not for the first time. This was turning into a dangerous habit.

Mrs Mikaelson pierced her with a highly stern look and she swallowed hard. Her secret was growing increasingly heavy on her shoulders.

"Girls, I would like to introduce to you the sons of my dear old friend Guiseppe Salvatore," she called. It was only then that Katerina noticed the two young men standing by the window. They wore casual, expensive clothes, probably very fashionable – though Katerina didn't know much about fashion.

"These are Damon and Stefan Salvatore. They own a theatre at the Broadway in New York and are here to see whether they would like to offer any of you a contract."

One of the two brothers, a blond, gentle-looking young man, watched them almost shyly while his brother eyed them all openly with his light blue eyes, a faint smirk playing around his lips.

"They will attend your daily training and watch you very closely to see if there is anyone who interests them."

Katerina watched the two young men and thought she could tell which of them was the older, the one that Elijah had complained about: there was a distinctly reckless air about Damon Salvatore, about the way he ran his hand through his dark hair. He had that smirk, that mischief in his bright eyes – he clearly shared a great deal of traits with Kol and Niklaus Mikaelson. The fact that this annoyed Elijah almost made her laugh.

"This is a big chance for your future, girls, so I suggest you try hard." Mrs Mikaelson threw them all a sharp glance and smiled faintly. "You may go now."

.

~ö~ö~ö~

.

"Well, Kat? What would you say to New York?" Bonnie asked while she forced her comb through her curls.

"Oh please, I'll never be chosen anyways," she scoffed and turned a page of her book.

"Don't say that," Caroline argued. "Mrs Mikaelson named you third best after all. I mean, of course they'll want Rebekah, but she'll never go. And why would she, she's good enough to make it to London."

"What about you then, Care?" Katerina shot back and glanced at her friend over her book. "What would you say?"

Caroline tugged at her nightdress and answered slowly: "I don't think I could do it."

"Why not, you always wanted to travel."

"Well, travelling does imply that you're coming back," Caroline replied and sank down on her bed. "And if any of us goes to New York, God knows if she'll ever set foot on British soil again."

Katerina sighed. Caroline was right – if one of the girls left for New York, then she'd leave forever.

Caroline didn't have any reason to want to go; she was good, maybe even good enough to make it to London. And even if she didn't, her mother might have neglected her from time to time, but she was wealthy and would be able to support her daughter if necessary.

Katerina wasn't so lucky.

Suddenly a diffuse fear gripped her – she had never really realised this, but the day she'd finished school, she would practically be standing on the street.

*A/N* Well, what do you think? Where is this going to put Kat and Elijah? I hope you were satisfied with Elijah's reaction, there is more to come about how he feels about the whole Kolja thing in the next chapter. In the meanwhile, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this story so far and I hope I could surprise you a little there with the Salvatores!