Phoenix Rising
Ch. 35

The next morning she woke up to find Klaus still sound asleep on his side, his lips parted just a little as soft snores filled the air. Seeing him so relaxed brought a smile to her lips as she turned onto her back, reached over to the nightstand and grabbed her cell phone to see that it was only five thirty in the morning. It was odd for her to wake up this early, but considering she woke up happy, she couldn't be mad about it. Dance committee clean up didn't start until eight. So she set an alarm for six thirty, put it back on the night stand then rolled over and tucked herself into Klaus's chest. He wrapped his arm around her waist waking a little, but his arm soon relaxed as he drifted back off.

As her mind started to wander, her hand found the infinity sign hanging around her neck. As she touched it her mind went back to the night Elijah left. "I will always love you. That is why I'm letting you go." His words echoed through her head.

Klaus woke up a few minutes later and saw her staring off into space as her manicured fingers played with the necklace. He hated that she was thinking about Elijah while lying in bed with him, but he had to keep reminding himself that regardless of last night. Katie wasn't his to have, but she would find her way to him in time, he was sure of it. "I know you said you no longer believe in love." Klaus's voice pulled her out of her thoughts that she had been so lost in that she hadn't realized he had woken up. "But you still love him, don't you?"

"Love mean's nothing without commitment." She sat up and slipped from the bed. "He let me go…and if I'm ever going to be able to let myself be happy," she pulled the drawer of her vanity open and took the teal jewelry box out, popped it open then set it on the vanity, "I have to do the same." She reached behind her neck, undid the clasp then put it in the box and shut the lid. He watched her put the box in the drawer and close it before she turned back to him. "And while I'm perfectly content with whatever you want to call what we are," she walked back over to the bed and crawled across it, straddling his sheet covered hips, "I want you to know that I don't want to tie you down. I know you have a thing for Caroline even though she's with Tyler. If you decide she is who you want to pursue then I'll step aside, no hard feelings."

"You asked me at the ball who I would choose if I had too." Before he could say anything else she covered his mouth with her hand.

"Don't." She moved her hand and he gave her a slow blink. "That was just my own insecurities manifesting in a competitive way. I don't need nor do I want to know who you'd choose. Although if I were you I'd choose Caroline she's a pretty amazing person and not nearly as screwed up as I am."

He realized then that her heart was still wrapped with hard stone. She wanted him…she was letting him chip away at her, but he was no where near the soft spot that he wanted so badly to be let into. She still feared the hurt that love could bring and if he was being honest, he was pretty damn scared of love too. So he too was perfectly content with what they had going on right now. "If you say so." he hooked his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her down to his lips then sat up on his knees and set his hands on her outer thighs as she situated herself in his lap. He kissed his way to her neck and bit it with a playful growl. She laughed and he pulled back to look at her smiling face, loving that a small spark was back in her eyes and he had put it there.

"I like it when you growl like that." She admitted as she bit her lip still smiling.

"Yeah?" he asked and she nodded. "Well I like it…" he growled and bit her shoulder and she laughed again, "when you laugh like that." He told her with a smile of his own. "What else do you like?"

"Fishing for compliments are we?" she asked with a quirk of her brow. He just shrugged. "I like your laugh too. Not your condescending, alpha male with something to prove, laugh, but the one I get from you." She answered. "For some reason I find your hands incredibly sexy. I like the fact that you're clearly a fan of my chest and you have no problem showing it." Just to drive her point home he slid his hand around from where he had been holding onto her back, up her stomach to grab her breast and twist her nipple between his thumb and pointer finger pulling a sigh and a small whimper of pleasure from her. "And I like it when you do that."

"I like the noises and face you make when I do that." He told her as he looked at the lust his action brought to her eyes. It had been a long time since he'd enjoyed being with a woman as much as he enjoyed being with and playing with Katie. He leaned back, placing his fists on the bed behind him to prop himself up as his eyes drank her in. She balanced herself on his lap as she brushed her finger tips over his chest and down over his hips her fingers following the v of his muscles that led further down. She usually made it a point not to look at a guy's package when hanging out naked in bed with him, but her gaze slipped and her cheeks reddened, which was exactly why she usually tried not to look. "I like that you can be extremely seductive yet you still blush like that."

"I like the way you say seductive." She threw out as she looked back up at his face enjoying their back and forth complementary banter. "and succeed."

"I like the way you moan my name when you're close." He told her with a smirk.

"I like how you know when I close without me saying so." She told him.

"I like that you haven't stopped touching me since we came into this room." he answered without thinking, loving that he didn't have to over think anything right now.

"Well I like touching you." she told him with a smile as she slipped her fingertips down his chest.

"And I like kissing you." he told her as he looked down at her hands on him then back up at her eyes.

"Then kiss me, Big Bad Wolf." She told him with a seductive whisper.

"You…" he put all his weight on one first, reached up and gently cupped her chin in his hand and looked at her with lustful eyes, "are the only one allowed to call me that."

"You don't like it?" she asked considering that every time she had called him that in the past he seemed to. Then she remembered that Mikael had called him that and her face turned to one of realization. "Shit."

"It's fine." He assured her in his pep-up voice, but she didn't pick her eyes up from where they had fallen to look at his stomach. "You called me that before he did and you say like a compliment, instead of an insult." She looked up at him through her lashes. "Say it again."

"Big…Bad…Wo-" he cut her off with a kiss and fell back taking her down with him as she laughed into him.

They were still playing around, lost in each other and tangled in the sheets when her alarm started ringing letting her know she needed to start getting ready to leave. With a sigh she untangled herself from the sheet and him and rolled over putting her back to him and grabbed her phone shutting off the alarm. "I selfishly do not want to leave this bed."

"Then don't." he told her as he pulled her back into him and started kissing her shoulders and back.

"I have to. I'm part of the dance committee and the gym and cafeteria are a mess." She told him as she rolled over to face him. "I'm not going to let Caroline, Tyler, Matt and Rebekah do it all themselves." She slipped from the bed and walked over to the dresser where she grabbed a set of under things, put them on the dresser then went to her wardrobe and opened it up. She grabbed a yellow racer back tank top and a black leather jacket then pulled the drawer out and grabbed a pair of distressed dark wash jeans. "I'm gonna go shower. If I show up reeking of sex Caroline will most likely pry until she finds out who I slept with, judge me nine ways to Sunday then tell Tyler who will tell Matt who will tell Elena and so on and so on." She told him as she grabbed the satin robe and shrugged it on.

"Do you not want people to know you're sleeping with me?" he asked with an enthused smirk.

"I don't care if they find out I'm just not going to be the first one to start up the rumor mill." She told him as she grabbed her clean clothes.

He sat up. "Am I invited to join you for your shower?" he asked.

She was going to tell him no, that she could use the time to clear her head, but then he stood from the bed, the sheet that had been covering him since she got out of bed slipping from his hips and a blush colored her cheeks making him smile. After a second she jerked her eyes up to his and swallowed with a gulp. "Uh huh." Klaus laughed at her reaction and scooped her up with a growl making her yelp then burst out laughing as she wrapped her arms around him.

After their shower they went to their rooms to get dressed. She was in the kitchen putting a blood bag in a coffee tumbler when Klaus found her, even wearing jeans and a maroon Henley she found him attractive. "What would you say if I asked you to leave town with me?" he asked as he grabbed a bag of blood out of the icebox.

"I would say give me until Monday when I can talk to the counselor about home school and then I'm all yours." she said then put the lid on the tumbler and took a drink.

"Do you want your things at your house packed up or just what you have here?" he asked making her realize it wasn't just a hypothetical question.

"Oh, you're being serious." He took a drink of blood then smiled a closed lipped smile and lifted his brows. "What I have here will be more than enough." She looked at the clock on her phone.

"Then Tyler's not going to make it to homecoming clean up." He told her and she gave him a questioning look. "He will helping pack our things." He watched her look down at her phone to see that she still had about twenty minutes before she had to leave the house. "I've go to say, I'm surprised you've agreed to come with me."

"Why? I hate this town." She asked as she pulled herself up to sit in the corner of the cabinets. "I'm tired of this place and everyone in it." she rethought what she said. "Well, except Rebekah and Caroline, but that's what phone's and video chat are for."

He walked over to stand between her knees and took a drink from his glass then set it on the bar next to her. "Where do you want to go?" he placed his hands on her sides.

She moved her arms to rest on his neck, still holding her coffee tumbler in her hand. "Any where in the u.s." she told him then took a drink from the tumbler. "I don't want to go out of the country until after graduation, which I want to come back here for. All this life I've anticipated walking across that stage in an ugly maroon gown and tossing my hat alongside the people I grew up with." He smiled at her, loving that she didn't just say, you choose or I don't care then proceed to shoot down every idea he had like a stereotypical woman. "So where are we going?" she asked taking a drink.

"I don't know, let me think about it." he answered already thinking about what he wanted to show her first.

"Okay." She looked at the clock on the wall. "I have to go." He stepped back and let her hop down off the bar then enjoyed watching her walk away.

Katie found Rebekah in the cafeteria picking up trash that was left on the tables. "How was your night?" Rebekah asked as Katie grabbed a small blue recycling bin and started picking up trash. When Katie didn't answer Rebekah looked up at her and smirked.

"Isn't that a bit of a weird question for you to ask when it was your brother I spent the night with?" Katie asked with a cock of her head.

"That doesn't touch the tip of the weird iceberg." Rebekah told her. "When you spend as much time around your siblings as I have you learn to deal with hearing an seeing things you would prefer not to." Katie just shook her head and smiled. "If I'm being honest I knew the two of you were making out before I interrupted." Katie gave her a confused frown. "I know how easy it is for him to charm a woman into his bed and I know you still miss Elijah. I was giving you the opportunity to say no if it wasn't something you really wanted."

"Huh." Katie huffed. Rebekah really wasn't as much of a bitch as she came off to be. "Thanks." Rebekah gave her a look that told her to answer her question. "Fine, my night was freaking amazing and for the first time in almost a month I don't feel like it took every ounce of will power I had just to get out of bed in the morning." She told her letting a smile slip. She wanted to tell her that she and Klaus were planning on leaving together, but she figured it would be best if she let Klaus tell her.

"Getting laid does tend to put some pep in your step." Rebekah told her as she picked up trash off the table.

"Who got laid?" Caroline asked as she walked into the room and looked at the two girls. "Please tell me you didn't sleep with Damon again." Caroline asked Rebekah who shook her head no and pointed at Katie who wasn't looking at them and instead focused on picking up trash. But she looked up when Caroline threw a plastic champagne glass at her. "You slept with Damon?" Caroline asked in disbelief.

"What? No!" Katie told her as she picked up the champagne glass. "No one slept with Damon. Again."

"Then who did you sleep with?" Caroline asked.

"Klaus." Rebekah answered innocently.

"Rebekah!" Katie yelled and threw the glass at her.

"You and Klaus?" Caroline asked with wide eyes.

"I'm gonna to go get started on the gym." Katie walked away not feeling like dealing with either of the girls. While Caroline and Rebekah worked on the cafeteria Katie started taking the lights down in the gym. She was almost done when someone whooshed up behind her and broke her neck.

When she woke up and took a breath through her mouth she instantly started coughing from the vervain she breathed in. The cloth in her mouth that was tied around her head had been soaked in it. Not only did it burn her cheek and ears, but it weakened her little by little as she involuntarily breathed it in. She still took vervain every morning, but her tolerance wasn't high enough to keep it from affecting her at all. For right now it just protected her from compulsion. She tried to lift her hands only to realize that they were pinned to the desk with pencils, stabbed through her palms.

Her eyes landed on Alaric, leaning against his desk and she realized by the glare he was giving her that he had managed to turn during the night. Esther had succeeded in creating her ultimate weapon. She looked over to see Caroline, gagged with pencils in her hands, in the desk to her right.

"Listen closely. I'm at the school." Alaric told whoever he was on the phone with. "I have Caroline and Katie and if you want to keep them alive, I need you to get into your car and come down here right away." Alaric looked up at the two vampires in staked to desks. "If you tell anyone, I will kill them." He hung up the phone and smirked an evil smirk at them then sat down at his desk, propped his feet up on it and started twirling a stake, that looked almost like it was coated in a spider web of silver, in his hand.

While Caroline cried and whimpered from the painful pencils in her hands and the vervain that she inhaled with every breath, Katie sat quietly. The only indication that she was in any pain were the tears that slipped down her cheeks. After a long silence Elena appeared in the doorway of the class room. "Let them go, Alaric."

Alaric waved his hand at them. "Free them yourself."

Elena walked over to Caroline, kneeled down and started to pull the pencil out of Caroline's hand, but Alaric hit it, pushing it back in making Caroline scream out. "You said you would let her go!" Elena yelled as she stood and turned to Alaric.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Elena? Stop trusting vampires." Alaric yelled back. "Sit." He pointed at the desk next to Caroline and Elena sat down. Katie kept her eyes locked on the black board as Alaric walked around her, took the gag out of her mouth and dipped it in a beaker of vervain. Knowing it would be pointless to fight she opened her mouth and bit the strip of fabric, making him think he tied it super tight around her head when really she had a little slack. The sound of the vervain singeing her skin filled the air and a small grunt bubbled up out of her throat as she squeezed her eyes shut, tears slipping down her cheeks as her hands gripped the edge of the desk. She knew it wasn't Alaric hurting her, it was the darkness that his ring and Esther had brought out of him, but she hated him at the moment.

Alaric did the same to Caroline, who started begging him to stop the second the fabric was removed from her mouth. "Alaric stop." Elena told him as she stood up, but Alaric shoved her into the desk and tied the fabric back around Caroline's mouth making her cry out. "Why are you doing this?" Elena asked him. Katie started chewing on the gag in her mouth, grinding her teeth back and forth over it, trying as quietly could, to break it. As she chewed on it, squeezing the fabric between her teeth, vervain filled her mouth and if she spat it our Alaric would know she was up to something. So she forced herself to swallow it and keep grinding her teeth despite her throat burning from the vervain.

"To make it easier on you when you put them out of their misery." Alaric answered Elena as he picked up the silver coated stake.

"What? No." Elena told him.

"Isn't this what you wanted Elena? For me to teach you how to kill a vampire?" he asked then motioned the stake to Katie. "Well, here's a vampire, Elena. One that I know you hate, so it should really be no problem." He told her then held the stake out to her. "Kill her."

"I don't hate her." Elena told him. "This isn't what I want."

Katie didn't look at any of them. "Of course it is. All those hours you spent training, getting stronger. You could be a hunter Elena, but you've never actually staked a vampire through the heart."

"No." Elena told him and he started pacing. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you need me." Alaric told her. "Because you're an eighteen year old girl without parents or guidance or any sense of right and wrong anymore." He told her still pacing.

"Look at you. How is this right?" Elena asked with a motion at Caroline and Katie.

"They are murders." He stopped and pointed at Caroline. "She told me she killed someone and liked it." he took a step back and pointed the stake at Katie. "And we all know that Katie enjoyed killing her grandfather. Not once has she shown the least bit of guilt for taking a human life. How is that right?" he asked then walked over to stand across from Elena. "See, Elena, your parents led the council. It was their life's mission to keep this town safe. They weren't dead six months before you undid it all."

Katie kept sawing her teeth over the cloth, her tongue, inner cheek and throat raw and bleeding. "You don't know anything about them." Elena told him as Katie still chewed on the cloth.

Alaric walked around Katie, leaned down putting his lips by her ear. "I can hear you chewing on your gag and I promise if you try anything I will have no problem ripping your heart out." Not realizing just how long she had been chewing on the gag he grabbed it and jerked back on it in an attempt to hurt her. Instead it snapped it at the weak point she had created. It surprised him enough that she had time to jerk her hands up off the pencils, break them off the desk and stab him in each side of his neck, embedding them into his neck so deep the erasers were even with his skin. Elena grabbed the beaker of vervain and broke it across his face. While he was down, screaming while clutching his burning face, Katie pulled the pencils out of Caroline's hands and Elena took the gag off of her. "Get help." Elena told them. Katie wrapped her arm around Caroline's waist and whooshed them out of the room.

They paused and looked back to see if Elena made it out, but they didn't see her. A hand went around their mouths and someone pulled them around the corner. Caroline tried to scream, but Katie's tongue, throat and the inside of her mouth was still too sore to attempt to scream. Whoever it was shushed them. "It's okay, it's okay. It's me. Your both safe." Klaus whispered then dropped his hand and they turned to look at him. "We'll save Elena." He told Caroline. "You go straight home. You stay in side, you understand?"

She nodded at him. "Thank you." Caroline told him quietly.

He gave her a nod. "Go. Now." Caroline whooshed off leaving Katie with Klaus. He grabbed her hand and whooshed her outside a few feet away from the school. "What did he do to you?" he asked setting his hand on the side of her neck.

"Noth-" she turned away from him and coughed up blood then spit it out onto the concrete feeling her throat start to heal. "Nothing I couldn't handle." She rasped as she turned back to look at him.

"That's not what I asked." He pointed out as his eyes took in the red healing marks on her face that went from the corers of her mouth to her ears.

"He staked my hands to the desk with pencils and gagged me with a cloth soaked in vervain." She answered feeling weak from the vervain in her system. "He did the same to Caroline."

"They why do you seem worse off than Caroline?" he asked.

"I swallowed a lot of vervain in the process of chewing through the gag. She just breathed it in and got some on her face." she admitted.

Klaus sighed. "I wanted you to help us, but you're in no condition to take on Alaric and I can't give you my blood in case it interferes with the effectiveness of Bonnie's blood that we all drank." She could see him contemplating what to do. "If I ask you to go to Caroline's where it's safe and stay there till I say otherwise, will you?"

"Yeah." She nodded then grabbed his chin in her hand like he did to her so often. "Watch your back in there."

He gave her a quick kiss. "Go."

They were sitting in Caroline's living room both watching but not really paying attention to Say Yes To The Dress when Caroline's phone started ringing and she answered it with lightening speed. "We didn't take down Alaric, but I did use the spell on Klaus." Bonnie told her and Katie felt her heart sink to the pit of her stomach. "I stopped his heart. He's desiccated just like Mikael was. Damon and Stefan are taking him somewhere to hide him from Alaric."

"Okay." Caroline said looking at Katie with wide, sorry eyes.

"Okay?" Bonnie asked with a happy laugh. "I just took down Klaus. You could sound a little happier." Caroline couldn't be happy when Katie had been hurt yet again.

"I'm happy, Bonnie, it's just been a long day." Caroline told her as she watched Katie take a deep breath and stand from the couch and disappear into Caroline's room.

After hanging up with Bonnie, Caroline went to Katie and found her staring out of the window with her arms crossed, a flat face and a distant look in her eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Do you know how many times I have thought about running away from this town?" Katie asked not really answering the question.

"Probably a lot. Especially here recently." Caroline answered as she walked over to her bed and sat down.

"We were going to leave town together. He was going to get me out of this town that has done nothing but strangle the life out of me. He made me happy." Katie explained, needing to talk to someone and Caroline was all she had right now. "Every time I find happiness something happens and I lose it." Katie still looked out the window instead of at Caroline.

"I know your sad, but-" Caroline started.

"That's the thing, Care…" Katie cut her off with a shake of her head. "I'm not sad…I'm tired. So tired, that I can't even feel sad about Klaus. I don't fell anything really, I'm just…numb. Like getting a tattoo. It hurts at first, but eventually after so many stabs, you can't even feel it."

"And that's completely understandable given everything you have been though." Caroline told her with tears in her eyes. "I wish I could have done a better job of being there for you, but it wasn't just Elena keeping me and Bonnie from you. I mean, yeah she was in the wrong, she started it, but you've always pushed us away when things get hard." Katie started picking at her cuticles still looking out the window. "When your parent's died…or left, or whatever, you didn't talk to any of us for like a year."

"I think I blacked that out of my memory." Katie told her honestly as she looked at Caroline.

"Well I didn't. You…all off us need to stop pushing each other away and stick together like friends are supposed to." Caroline was at her peak when she was giving people lectures. "If you are not ready to forgive Elena and Bonnie any time soon I will completely understand, but please do me a favor and forgive me and stop pushing me away. We learned to ride bikes together, we turned together and we were tortured together today and I will not stop being your friend even when you tell me to. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Caroline, I understand you and I forgive you." Katie told her as the smallest of smiles pulled at the corner of her mouth, but it looked half assed. "Just…do me a favor and don't tell any one about me and Klaus?"

"Promise." Caroline told her and held out her pinky. Katie shook her head and hooked her pinky through Caroline's then dropped her hand. "So was he good?" Caroline asked with a devious smile and a flick of her brow making Katie laugh a little.

"Very." Katie answered.

"Do you love him?" Caroline asked being intrusive Caroline.

"Honestly?" Katie asked then shrugged up her shoulders. "I don't have a freaking clue what love is anymore."

Before Caroline could ask another question her phone started ringing.

It was Jeremy calling to let her know that Elena had passed out and he brought her to the hospital. But now he needed help getting her out of the hospital before Alaric or an original came after her. So Katie and Caroline got into Caroline's car and headed to the hospital where they met up with Matt and Tyler and they got Elena out of the hospital.

"Couch." Caroline barked at Elena as they all walked into Elena's house.

"I'm fine. I just want something to eat first." Elena assured the smothering Caroline who gave Katie a look.

"How is it that you can boss people around with a single look?" Katie asked Caroline as she headed towards the kitchen.

"Cause I've got skills." Caroline told her making Katie shake her head. "You, couch." Katie heard Caroline bark at Elena again before Katie disappeared into the kitchen.

She had just finished putting together a sandwich when Caroline came into the kitchen. "Tyler and I have to go, our moms need to talk to us, they said it's urgent. Are you and Matt okay to keep an eye on Elena until Stefan gets here?"

"Yeah, of course, go." Katie told her so she headed out.

"She's asleep." Matt announced as he passed Caroline on his way into the kitchen.

"Then I will stick this in the icebox for later." Katie sighed and put the sandwich in the fridge.

"For what it's worth I think what Elijah did to you sucks." Matt told her honestly.

"How do you even know about that?" she asked with a shake of her head.

"Girls talk." He told her with an amused smirk.

Katie sighed and shook her head. "I'm going to go find something to keep myself busy, laundry or anything. Holler if an original or a history teacher turned vampire shows up." She told him and he nodded as she started to leave the kitchen, but stopped and turned back "And Matt…"

"Yeah?" he asked looking up at her from the bar.

"Thanks." He just gave her a nod.

She was painting what used to be Jenna and Alaric's room out of the need to do something when she heard Stefan come in. Not wanting to see him she kept painting.

After finishing a wall she decided to go down stairs and check on things and she was halfway down the stairs when an all too familiar feeling in the pit of her stomach made her stop and the door bell rang. Elena happened to be walking by and grabbed the door knob. "Elena don't-" but before she could finish the sentence Elena pulled the door open revealing Elijah on the other side "open that." she finished with a sigh. He looked at Elena before his eyes found Katie still standing on the stairs. "I swear…I'm stuck in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events." she grumbled breaking eye contact with him. "I need booze." She headed to the kitchen where Stefan was chopping something and Matt was setting out plates on the dining table. "Elijah alert." She told them as she grabbed a bottle of tequila, a shot glass and a salt shaker. While Stefan and Matt went to the door Katie set down at the table, poured a shot then licked her hand between her thumb and forefinger and shook some salt onto the wet spot.

Elijah came in and sat down at the table and Elena sat down a few seats away from him. Katie didn't look at him as she licked the salt off her hand then threw back the shot. Needing to get away from Elijah she grabbed the salt shaker and bottle and started to leave the room. "You should probably stay here." Stefan told her and she stopped. "We might need your help."

"I can listen from another room and shout if I have something to add." She told him then went into the living room and sat down on the couch with her back facing the dining room.

Elena called Damon and put him on speaker phone. "All we need is to take that stake away from him." Elijah started talking. "Once he's been disarmed and the weapon's in my possession my family will scatter to the ends of the earth. And Alaric…will follow us."

"And you'll just…run?" Stefan asked and Katie heard someone pull a chair out and sit down.

"We've done it before." Elijah answered.

"And it's what he's best at." Katie chipped in without meaning to.

She heard a chair move and footsteps head her way as Elijah kept talking. "Klaus and Rebekah spent the better part of a thousand years evading my father." Stefan took the bottle of Tequila out of her hand and replaced it with a bottle of water. Katie gave him a sneer, but uncapped the water knowing she was being immature and now wasn't the time. "What's another half century while Elena's able to live out the rest of her natural life?"

Katie downed the bottle of water then went into the kitchen and grabbed another one out of the fridge. "We finally stopped him, Elijah. After everything he's done to us I can't just let you bring him back." Elena told Elijah who glanced at Katie as she pulled herself up to sit in the corner of the kitchen cabinets.

"I give you my word, Elena." He sat up straighter in the chair. "I will not revive Klaus within yours, nor even within your children's lifetimes." Elena just stared at him and he fidgeted with the place setting in front of him. "Perhaps it'll finally teach him some manners." He didn't miss when Katie's nostrils flared and she bit her lips closed to keep herself quiet.

"Why should she trust you?" Matt asked as he walked over to the end of the table and put his hands on the back of the chair. "All you've done is screw her over."

"And for that, I am deeply ashamed." Elijah told him then looked at Katie who dropped her eyes to the floor and started picking at her cuticles. "But know this. Elena could have been dead the instant I walked through that door tonight. So, Elena, I leave it to you to make the decision whether to trust me or not."

"Not!" Damon said over the phone. "Hello! Did that concussion give you brain damage? His lunatic siblings will kill you the first chance they get."

"Rebekah and Kol will honor the terms." Elijah told him then looked at Elena. "If you return Klaus' body to us Elena will come to no harm." Elena and Stefan looked at each other. "Do we have a deal?"

"No!" Damon yelled. "No, no, no, no. Did I mention, no!" Katie couldn't help smirking at him.

Stefan sighed and shook his head. "Elena, it's up to you."

"Oh, come on!" Damon yelled.

"Why do you want Klaus' body?" Elena asked ignoring Damon.

"He's my brother." Elijah answered with a shrug. "We remain together."

Elena looked down in thought then over at Katie. "Don't look at me." Katie told her with her hands held up. "We all know my judgment sucks when it comes to him."

Elena sighed then looked at Elijah. "We have a deal."

After that they started working out a plan. Jeremy would tell Alaric a false location and lure Alaric out into the woods where Elijah, Katie, Stefan, Jeremy and Caroline would disarm him then run.

Most of them whooshed to the location, but Jeremy and Stefan drove. Katie was leaning against a tree, waiting for Alaric to show up when Elijah walked over and leaned against the tree next to her. "Where is your necklace?" he asked the first thing that popped into his head and she didn't answer him. "So you're just going to ignore me?" Stefan, Caroline and Jeremy moved away from them, giving them space.

She thought about telling him she destroyed it in a food processor or threw it into Wickery Falls, but she just didn't have it in her to fight with him. "Go away." He walked around her and looked into her eyes. The sadness in his dark browns managed to strike a tightly wound cord and when he tried to cup her cheek in his hand it snapped. She knocked it away with lightening speed and back handed him across the face. He kept his head turned as she walked around him and over to Caroline.

"You okay?" Caroline mouthed at her and Katie shook her head no and shrugged.

They were still waiting for Alaric to show up when Stefan got a call from Damon. "Bad news brother." Katie heard Damon say, eavesdropping on them. "Alaric staked Klaus. He's dead." Katie's heart fell to the pit of her stomach and a lump formed in her throat.

"I feel okay." Stefan told him. "Do you feel anything?"

"No." Damon answered.

"It took Sage about an hour before she got sick." Stefan pointed out.

"Yeah, or Klaus was lying about being the sire of our bloodline." Damon countered.

"Well, if he wasn't lying…an hour's not enough time to get you all the way back to Mystic Falls."

Katie stopped listening, knowing that Klaus wouldn't lie to her, and stumbled back into the tree behind her. Elijah had been keeping an eye on and her saw her shock. He and Caroline whooshed over. "What happened?" he asked.

Stefan didn't answer right away. "Stefan?" Caroline asked worried.

"Klaus is dead." He told them with watery eyes.

"Tyler." Caroline sighed and whooshed away.

Elijah looked at Katie. She tried to walk away, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her into him.

While he hugged her and a few tears slipped down his cheeks, she just stood there not hugging him back or crying for the life she was about to lose. She literally felt nothing not even his arms around her or the wind that blew her hair.

Stefan and Jeremy left to be home when Matt brought Elena back home from his and Jeremy's stupid secret get-Elena-away-from-vampires mission while Elijah waited for Rebekah and Katie stared off into space, leaning against a tree again. Elijah's phone chimed and he looked down at it then back at Katie with a confused look. "Tyler Lockwood is dead, yet you are still alive." She lifted her eye up to look at him. "I don't understand how you are not dead." Katie just shrugged.

After a while they heard the whoosh of wind and Elijah turned from the silent Katie to see a teary eyed Rebekah. "He's gone, Elijah. There was nothing I could do to stop it." Elijah walked over to her and hugged her.

"Tyler Lockwood is dead, but the rest survived. You said that Niklaus turned their bloodline." Elijah told her.

"I thought he did." Rebekah told him.

"It wasn't me. It wasn't Kol." Elijah stated.

"It wasn't me, Elijah. It was Niklaus, I'm sure of it." Rebekah insisted.

"Then how are they still alive?" Elijah asked.

Rebekah looked over Elijah's shoulder at Katie who didn't seem to be on the same planet as them. "Why is she so quiet?"

Elijah turned and looked at her with narrowed eyes. "I think she is in shock." Katie who hadn't been listening to them, closed her eyes and pushed it all back, every heart ache, every bit of anger, everything that weighed on her, until something in her mind clicked and everything floated away. "No." Elijah sighed feeling what just happened through the shift in her energy that always flowed through their link that he was thankful didn't just break.

"No?" Rebekah asked, confused. "No what?"

Elijah just watched as Katie opened her eyes, her pupils dilated then shrunk to the size of a needle point then normalized as she breathed out a sigh of relief. "She just flipped the switch."