Disclaimer: I don't own tvd or it's characters, they belong to Julie Plec and L.J. Smith.
I hope you guys enjoy this chapter :-).
Chapter 4:
Stefan wanders down the street, a haggard and drawn expression on his face, eyes fixated straight ahead. He staggers around like a drunk man, with his hollow eyes and lank hair, someone could easily mistake him for one.
A bar named Jo's Bar slowly looms into view, with a broken R sign. The car park is empty and the owner is the only one there cleaning up. Stefan keeps stumbling straight inside, still staring straight in front of him. The owner, Jo, looks up, shocked at his dishevelled appearance.
"Hey, man. Last call was four hours ago." She says to him. Stefan doesn't respond, instead staring emptily at her neck. "If you want some coffee, I could put some on, or..." she adds, assuming his silence is due to drunkenness.
Stefan's eyes begin to go red, veins crawling under his skin; the uncontrollable hunger surges. He vamp-speeds over to her, biting into her neck and drinking greedily.
"Ash! Aaah!" she shrieks, pushing frantically at him.
Stefan stops feeding, and pulls back, his mouth smeared with blood.
"Run. RUN!" he yells hysterically, throwing himself against the bar. Jo runs out the door, clutching her bleeding neck. Unable to control himself, he lurches after her, still weak, as dawn touches the sky. The rising sun begins to scorch his skin, and he looks at his hand, horror in his eyes as he realises he doesn't have his daylight ring.
He yells and screams in pain as he blisters and burns. "Aaargh, aah!"
Katherine jerked awake, taking in huge gulps of air. Sweat matted her clothes and stuck to her, and she had a pounding headache. The nightmare. The dream, about Stefan. Did that really happen? Had he really burnt in the sun? Or had that just been a result of her worries for him after learning what he had endured all summer? She rolled out of bed, heading towards the bathroom for some water, when she heard Elena and Damon talking. Why would they be up at this time?
"Fine." Damon was saying with great reluctance. "Tell me. I'm sure whatever's in my imagination is ten times worse than what's going on in your subconscious."
"It was just so vivid. I saw Stefan walking out of this bar. It had a red awning and this broken neon sign, and he was screaming in pain." Elena said, sounding upset. Interesting. Elena had seen something very similar to what Katherine herself had.
"Well, should I go check in the attic, see if there's a crystal ball? Maybe you can conjure up an address." Damon sneered. Ugh, he was unbelievable, this was his brother he was talking about.
"Route twenty-nine. Jo's bar." Katherine said, approaching the bedroom door.
"I think I had the exact same dream."
Damon stared at her, then Elena, before groaning and sinking back into his pillow.
Yep, unbelievable certainly was the correct term for Damon Salvatore.
-X-
Katherine sighed irritably as she packed an assortment of medicines, food, and clothes in her bag. When an impromptu road trip had been announced to track down the bar Stefan was at by Damon, she was initially excited, before she remembered that she was human, and was prone to terrible migraines and stomach aches when travelling, as she had discovered with Jeremy and Matt, her mood dissipated. Now she was packing with much less of a zest, and more with dread
"I had a feeling that there was something wrong all summer, and I ignored it. But I was right, Stefan was in a safe, and probably killed whoever it was that found him..." Elena's voice drifted into the hallway. Still annoying, still complaining. If she had called Stefan, then maybe they would have found him sooner, but her pride apparently was even worse than Katherine's. "I know it sounds crazy, that I'm following some psychic dream, but it's the only lead that we have."
"It doesn't sound crazy—it is crazy. But I'm open-minded." Damon replied sardonically as Katherine came into the room.
"Shotgun." She announced. They both glared at her.
"What? I get carsick in the back seat. Another charming, human side effect you stuck me with." She threw her bag down with their suitcases.
"Please tell me that she's not coming." Elena gritted her teeth, and Katherine smiled.
"Trust me, I have no interest in Katherine's well-being, but for some reason Silas wants her real bad, and if Silas wants her, I want her more." Damon hissed, looking about as happy about it as Elena looked and Katherine felt.
"Can't we just stash her in the cellar? Or maybe a deep, dark well with a pair of water wings?" Elena asked, looking at Damon innocently. Bitch.
"Do you really think that I wanna take a road trip with you? America's most boring, self-righteous vampire?" Katherine shot back snarkily. "Just remember, Damon wouldn't have to play bodyguard if you hadn't shoved that cure down my throat."
"You were trying to kill me!" her doppelgänger retorted hotly.
Katherine ignored her, settling down on the couch. "I will admit, though, I take great pleasure knowing that you wasted your one shot at human life on me." She grinned, noticing Elena's glare of fury.
"All right, play nice, or I'm gonna revisit the deep dark well idea." Damon said, shooting Katherine a threatening look, which was shrugged away.
"I wanna find Stefan just as much as you do, and not just because I don't wanna be a pawn that you can trade off for his life." Katherine said. It was true; she was concerned about him, more so than those two had certainly been as of late.
"I care about him—I always have. And since we've been having the same dream... makes me think you care about him just as much." She added slyly, watching Elena squirm.
"Okay, train's leaving the station. Choo-choo!" Damon interrupted, obviously as bothered by her statement as Elena.
-X-
"You ever play the 'What if' game?" Silas asked Nadia over the phone. Over the last few hours, he had been concocting a plan to get Nadia away from Katherine, whilst helping him, which included a GPS device, because there was no way she would sell out the mother she had been searching for for the last five centuries that easily. At least not until she had the answers she was looking for from her.
"When you're calcified for two thousand years, you learn to entertain yourself with these little brain teasers."
"Look, Silas, this phone is prepaid, and I don't have a lot of minutes."
"Oh, no, no, no, it's really easy. I'll go first." Silas offered. "You know how much I hate Travelers, so to prove your allegiance to me, you killed your Traveller friend, Gregor. But what if it was all an act? What if he's still alive?" He had to know if he was working with a traveller. They did nothing but betray each other and other people, innocent or not, always popping up, invading other people's lives, which literally was the case.
"You saw him bleed out. You buried his body yourself." Nadia said, obviously annoyed.
"But what if Matt's tacky ring brought him back to life?" Silas smirked craftily.
Nadia sighed impatiently. "If this is a game, it's boring."
"If we're gonna work together, I need to know that you're on my side. So, find out if Matt Donovan's still alive, and kill him."
"Fine." Nadia said. "Say Matt is still alive. What if he could help us to find Katherine Pierce? She's still your priority, is she not?"
"Yes, she is." He replied, careful to keep his voice neutral whenever speaking about the girl, who for some reason had piqued his interests in more ways than one. "So, get the information that you need, rip that ring off Matt's little finger, and make sure he doesn't cheat death again."
"I'll take care of it."
-X-
"You sure you know what you're looking for? Last bar had a red awning and a neon sign." Damon said for the sixth time. They'd been driving around the same route for an hour, and still, nothing.
"I'll know when I see it."
Katherine popped her head out from between the two front seats. "Me too!"
"Didn't ask you." Damon snapped. Katherine shot him a dark look.
"I'm just trying to make conversation. Anything to drown out the sound of eggshells breaking." She commented cynically. "So, Elena, I couldn't help but overhear, you've been dreaming about Stefan all summer? That must be really stressful on a new relationship, especially when you're having those kinds of dreams lying in bed next to his brother." Katherine mused innocently, with a crafty smirk.
"They weren't dreams. It was just a bad feeling, like something wasn't right with him." Elena insisted.
"Oh, no, yeah, sure. I totally get it. There's still a connection between you two." Katherine said with a deliberate sarcastic edge. "Maybe deep down you know that he was your one true love and breaking up with him was a big mistake."
"Ignore her." Damon said. "As soon as the vervain's out of her system, we'll compel her and we'll put her on mute."
"Or maybe Stefan's been trying to reach out to you all summer, but you've been too distracted with Damon to help him so he reached out to the person that he trusts—me." Katherine continued, looking at the both of them expectantly, but they were both silent.
"Nah. You're probably right. Elena and I had the exact same dream on the exact same night. Why would that mean something?" Katherine asked sarcastically.
The troubled look on Damon's face told her that she was right.
-X-
Katherine was sore all over. At first she panicked, thinking that Silas had finally got her, but when she looked up and saw the sign reading 'Jo's Bar' in red, she knew that they had found the place in her and Elena's dream, and she must have fallen asleep in the car, and Damon and Elena had left her there.
She got out, stretching and massaging her aching neck, before heading into the bar, cross that she hadn't been woken up, and didn't realise there was a woman aiming a gun right at Damon and Elena until it was too late, and the woman saw her, turning the weapon towards her instead. Katherine immediately held her hands up in surrender, freezing in place.
"Which one of you is Katherine Pierce?" The woman asked.
Katherine panicked and pointed at Elena. "She is!"
"Katherine's the compulsive liar..." the woman said, looking at her, before aiming the gun at Elena. "but I need her alive."
Elena sprang into action, immediately vamp-running at the woman, throwing her violently against a table and holding her there.
"Katherine, run!" she yelled.
Katherine didn't even hesitate, and bolted out the door, down the road and into the woods as fast as her legs would carry her, hating her mundane body with its incapability to move quickly. She stumbled through overgrown plants, pushing away branches until she came across a fallen tree blocking her path. Somewhere along the way, she had snagged her leg on a bush and pulled a muscle, slowing her further. She stopped, taking in huge gulps of air into her burning lungs, crouching behind it, looking around anxiously for a way out. Suddenly, someone grabbed her shoulder and she spun around, standing up to find Elena, and sighed in relief.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm really glad it's you." Katherine said. Her leg twinged again, and she balanced on her other foot awkwardly. "My leg is cramping and I'm freezing. Do you mind if I, uh—can I borrow your sweater?"
Elena ignored her and turned around. "Let's go before she doubles back."
"Why didn't you kill me?" Katherine asked. It was something that had been on her mind for months, but she hadn't had an opportunity to ask since arriving back in Mystic Falls, due to Damon's obsession with stalking Elena.
"If Silas wants you that means you're leverage."
"No, I mean, after you shoved the cure down my throat. I was trying to kill you. Why didn't you finish me off?"
Elena turned back around. "You think that because we share the same dreams and both care about Stefan that we're alike, but we're not. I value my humanity, which is why I let you live—to give you a chance to find whatever shred of humanity's buried underneath five hundred years of bad behaviour."
Katherine barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes in annoyance. There was no way Elena cared enough about her to give her the chance to redeem herself. "Or maybe you thought that being human was punishment worse than death for me."
Elena's mouth twitched, like she was trying not to smile. "Nah. That was just a happy accident."
"Well... thank you. I'm glad to know that you care." She said reluctantly, but couldn't resist throwing in one last dig. "even if you are a condescending bitch."
Suddenly, the women appeared and before she could blink, broke Elena's neck.
"Do I have to knock you out, too?" she snapped.
"Not necessary." Katherine said, and the woman grabbed her by the arms and man-handled her roughly away.
-X-
Silas heard them before he saw them. Arguing furiously, with the both of them seemingly about to rip each others heads off.
"Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I like to know the identity of my kidnappers. Who are you and what do you want?" Katherine was demanding as Nadia dragged her out of the woods.
Nadia turned around to face her. "Ask me again, and I'll sew your mouth shut!" Nadia snapped back as Silas got out of the car, leaning against it and watching their bickering with deep amusement, especially since their family resemblance was so obviously noticeable when they were together.
Nadia turned back around to drag her to the car, when she saw Silas, and stopped in place, Katherine hovering behind her, eyes wide with fear and realisation as she looked at him.
"Silas. Of course it's you." Katherine spat, glaring at him, covering her fear with contempt.
"What are you doing here?" Nadia asked, holding her behind her.
Silas picked up a small device from under the car.
"GPS tracker." He tossed it in the air and caught it deftly. "It's even better than a locator spell." He added, standing up to approach them, somewhat impressed with himself.
Then he smiled. "Thank you for working so quickly, Nadia."
"I'm not ready to hand her over yet." Nadia said firmly.
"Oh, that's right. Your fascinating unfinished business I don't care about." Silas smiled. He probed a psychic tendril around her mind.
Nadia flinched and stepped closer to him. "Get out of my head."
"What are you two talking about?" Katherine asked, staring at them.
Silas ignored her and began compelling Nadia, pushing mentally into her thoughts. "Let go of her arm."
He could see Nadia grit her teeth, before she very slowly and stiffly complied.
"Now I want you to pull out your gun... and aim it at your heart."
Nadia lifted the gun from her waist and pointed it at her chest with jerky movements.
He spoke his next command with careful precision. "Now, pull, the trigger."
The loud boom from the explosion of the gun skyrocketed through his ears. Katherine had reeled back sideways, hands over her ears, away from Nadia, who had collapsed to the ground, a gaping bloody wound in her chest that was already starting to heal.
The ringing in his ears quickly subsided, quicker than hers, and he moved, grabbing her roughly around the waist and shoving her into the car, ripping her away from her freedom.
Thank you for reading.