Authors Note: Same as usual thanks for reading, following and reviewing. Katherine's always been a favourite character of mine and I'm so glad I can write this whole Fanfiction about her – I'm more of a Katherine girl than an Elena girl. (; Hope you enjoy this chapter. I'm so sorry this has taken so long but I have literally rewritten this chapter two hundred times to try and get something that I'm happy with. A little bit of an emotional chapter? I don't know what you guys will think or if I'm 100% pleased but I had to post something. :S New chapter hopefully soon, missed you guys.

Disclaimer: If I owned the Vampire Diaries I would be most definitely not be sat writing this. All I can say is DON'T STEAL MY PLOT. Be creative.

Chapter 5: A Loop Hole

What was that stench? Smelt like rotten garbage… And what on earth was that liquid seeping through her jeans? But most importantly, where was she?

The familiar throbbing in the brunettes head returned and her thoughts started to wonder if she was ever going to get through a day without blacking out and waking up in some strange location. Wherever she was lying, it felt soggy and rough. Why did this all have to happen to her? She couldn't have been that bad as a vampire… Could she? Maybe she had killed a 'few' people, told a 'few' lies, tricked a 'few' men and stolen a 'few' things but did she really deserve to be treated like dirt? Worse than dirt actually, dirt didn't get beaten up every time they came across an old friend. Her throat was burning for some reason and it felt oddly familiar to the sensation of thirst for blood, of course it wasn't though – she was still human sadly. Her body felt weak like it had done since she had first open her eyes in the school hallway but today she just felt grotty along with everything else.

How long did she lie there? She didn't know, but Katherine didn't even attempt to open her eyes until she heard the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground beside her and a female voice saying,

"Wakey, wakey Miss Pierce."

She wasn't concentrating enough on the actual voice to be able to match it to a face and slowly let her eyelashes flicker open only to be blinded by the light of the sun. Just a tad too bright.

"Come on, I don't have all day."

This time, Katherine had been paying more attention to the voice of whoever was trying to talk to her and she identified it as the witch in second place on her hated witches list, Sophie. Her eyes snapped open as soon as she realised and she pushed herself up as quickly as her feeble arms would let her. The browned haired witch was sat with her grimoire placed in front of her and now that Katherine had opened her eyes she finally realized that the pair were in a graveyard. Now the questions she had thought of earlier started to make sense, that the smell was in fact death and the horrible wet liquid seeping in her jeans was rain water from the soggy grass she had been flopped down on.

"What's going on?" Katherine asked, shaking her head slightly. She was well and truly confused. Sophie sighed, not even glancing up at her from where she was sat reading the large and old book in front of her.

"I found something about the cure." She stated simply, flicking over a page in the book as she scanned for the right piece of text. Now Katherine was interested,

"You found something?" She said, immediately moving over towards her even though it ached her body to do so.

Sophie rolled her eyes, "Yes, I already told you that."

Clearly the witch wasn't in a good mood either, something that Katherine had in common with her.

"Why are we in a grave yard?" Katherine asked, ignoring her snarky comment. Still, Sophie didn't even look up to answer her and simply said:

"This is the only place Marcel doesn't have his little spies, can't have him knowing that I'm even looking at a spell."

A spell.

There was hope. There was actually hope that Katherine wouldn't have to stay this way forever and she decided that even if it was a loose thread she was going to hold onto it. There was a chance and she was going to make sure it didn't pass by.

"What's the spell?" She asked hastily, sitting down next to her on the grass. Normally she would have hated ruining her designer jeans in the dirt but considering the circumstances she thought it was a very small matter on the scale of things. Sophie continued to search until she stopped at a page and pointed to a passage that didn't make even the slightest bit of sense to her,

"There's a loop whole to every spell there is and the loop whole to this ones pretty simple." She explained, finally looking up at her, "You need the blood of Silas and a Bennet witch."

Katherine stared at the witch. There went her beacon of hope.

"No, that's not simple at all." She snapped, "Silas is dead and the Bennet witch wouldn't help me even if I got down on all fours and begged."

Of course, neither did Katherine or almost everyone else know that Silas was the one who was indeed alive and Bonnie the one who was dead.

Sophie closed the book and looked to her, "Not my problem, I found the solution. That's all you asked for."

As the witch started to get to her feet, Katherine scrambled back to hers.

"You don't understand, there's got to be another way." She said, her tone clearly desperate. Sophie closed her grimoire and tucked it under her arm,

"There's a solution to every spell out there but only one." She said, "I'm sorry but it's your problem, there's no way I can help you." She started walking off and Katherine quickly followed.

She started to ramble and Elijah wasn't there to kiss her and shut her up, "But-But… I can't stay this way and there's no way I can fix this, I can't be turned and no one will help me, I need your help and I need Elijah's help but he doesn't want me and no one does. I may as well just go and die, it'll save having to suffer years and years of humanity, no one-"

The witch giving her a good shove backwards finally shut off her rambling and Katherine fell, knocking the wind out of her. She was actually thankful; she had saved her from embarrassing herself anymore than she already had.

"Katherine, calm down." The girl almost screamed. "It's not my fault this happened to you and it's your problem, looks like you owe a trip back to Mystic Falls."

Katherine was still catching her breath but looked up at her, giving a small nod. Mystic Falls seemed like the place to start even though she had previously wanted to get as far away as possible.

"And as for Elijah, stop being a psychotic bitch and he might come around."

Maybe she was acting a little crazy. Though, if she had had the breath she would of made a snide comment back.

Sophie had left shortly after but Katherine hadn't followed, instead she sat and thought about what to do next. She couldn't leave the New Orleans on Klaus' watch, though on the other hand Klaus probably didn't have a clue where she was – how he trusted her, she didn't really know. But even if she did manage to sneak away there was no way she wanted to go back to Mystic Falls alone, they'd all want revenge on her for something. Even though these were all major issues, she only had her mind on one thing – Elijah. Maybe she should have forgotten about him but she couldn't. Katherine new she could get most guys to fall for her but Elijah really wasn't going to fall for any of her tricks, he wanted the real deal and that was the problem. Who was the real Katherine? Who was Katerina Petrova because she certainly didn't know? Her thoughts were starting to hurt her head and she finally stood up, dusted off her jeans and started walking. She was going back to Mystic Falls and that was final – Elijah or no Elijah.

There was no way she could go back to Klaus's mansion and she was glad that she had parked her car not to far away from the bar the pair had first met in. If she wanted to get away from here she would need to be subtle, Klaus wanted her flirting tricks and her blood – he wasn't going to let her get away lightly or easily. As she was walking, she looked down and realised what a mess she was – Blood all over her clothing, stained jeans, rips in her jacket, knots in her hair. Though, somehow underneath all of the grossness she was still stunning and beautiful as always. As she came to her car, she realised that the streets were oddly quiet considering the town's usual busyness. She found her car keys in her dishevelled jacket pocket and unlocked the sports car, pulling on the door to climb in but only to be stopped by an arm pushing it shut. She knew by the quality of the suit covering the muscular arm that it was Elijah almost right away.

"Excuse me, you're blocking my way." Katherine said, trying to yank on the door again anyway.

"Where do you think you're going, Katerina?" He asked. Although she hated her real name, it did sound unusually… seductive in the way that he sad it… But maybe that was just because it was coming from him.

"I'm leaving, since when do you care?" She answered stubbornly. He was still blocking her way and Katherine resorted to walking round to the other side of the car and trying to climb in. Of course, he got round to that side before she had even realised he had moved.

"Niklaus won't be happy, I thought you planned on staying here."

Katherine stopped, folding her arms across her chest, still refusing to meet his eye. "Well, you thought wrong."

"Where do you plan on going?"

It was hardly fair he could walk away from her so many times and as soon as she tried to walk away he refused to let her go – maybe he did care.

"Mystic Falls but I don't really think it's any of your business since you haven't seemed to take any interest in me since I arrived here-"

Elijah tilted her chin up, just the feeling of his skin touching hers made her feel tingly inside. Her eyes still refused to meet his as he replied to her,

"Katerina, you know I care. I just don't care for your games and it seems you are only here to play more games."

Katherine took a deep breath; he wasn't making this easy for her. He was deliberately tying to make her feel emotion, to get her to cry some more. Not today.

"I'm not here to play games Elijah, I came here for you. For you to help me and since you're not going to, I'm leaving. You can come if you want but I think I already know your answer. So, I guess this is goodbye Elijah."

Her eyes finally met his as she reached up on tiptoes to kiss him, savouring the feeling since she didn't think she would be experiencing it for a while. Once her lips parted from his, she walked around to the others side of the car and he didn't try and stop her, just as she had suspected. She almost wanted him to stop her. For him to pull her close to him and let them spend a long time just entwined with each other. Elijah clearly didn't want the same or if he did he wasn't showing it. Elijah stood by the side of her car and Katherine had to force herself not to look his way to stop her from letting tears pass as she pulled away and started driving. Klaus and Mystic Falls were in for a surprise.

Katherine didn't enjoy being alone anymore, even though she was used to it by now. She felt empty without someone to make play with or even just to talk to. It was as though, when she was alone all of her emotions came out at once and she couldn't control them. She wasn't even 10 miles away before the first few tears escaped her eyes, she didn't want them to come but better be alone when they did. Everything in her body ached but she felt mentally distraught. Why couldn't humans have a switch too? Wouldn't it be so much easier to be able to switch it all off and go on as a strong society that weren't going to cry or feel sad. Her eyes were welling up so much so that she couldn't really see the road all that clearly but she kept on driving. She couldn't stop; Klaus would be on her like a hawk as soon as he found out she was gone. She was just hoping that Elijah cared for her enough that he wouldn't tell him where she was heading.

Katherine had been driving for hours and it had since turned from a mid-morning sunlight to evening time, she needed to rest somewhere soon. The radio was on quietly but Katherine had only put it on to make the journey seem less depressing. It hadn't really worked though. The light for a sign that marked out the location of a hotel came into view. Katherine frankly didn't care what it was like there; she was even finding it hard to keep her eyes open for much longer. The place was pretty vacant by the looks of things and she parked her car in the far corner, climbed out and made her way to the front doors. There was a quiet buss of music coming out of a radio that was placed on the front desk and behind the desk sat a woman in her late 40s or possibly 50s. The woman looked up as Katherine appeared, her eyes widening at the girls dishevelled looks.

"Sweetie, can I help you?"

Katherine had her arms wrapped across her torso, as though to give herself a much needed hug. Her eyes were welling with tears again – stupid human emotions kicked in at the wrong time. She merely nodded her head as she looked back to the sympathetic woman,

"I need a room please." She said, her voice trembling as the words came out. The woman was now standing, looking at Katherine's wounds and the blood staining her skin, hair and clothing.

"Honey, are you alright?" The woman asked, coming around from the desk and across to Katherine.

No one had asked her that question; even after all she had been through.

Katherine shook her head, "No, I'm not alright." And so the tears fell down her cheeks. She definitely wasn't alright.