This was exceedingly annoying, but I'm posting it because if I don't I'll probably never move past it. So if anyone has advice on how to make this less tragic please feel free to PM me.
Katherine Pierce was many things, but she wasn't stupid.
When Damon had first approached her requesting her assistance in the Elena matter she had walked out the moment he mentioned the K word. No way was she going up against the Original Asshole...again. So when he first approached her she walked away, but a month later when a little birdy told her about a certain someone's search for a necklace that she knew the whereabouts of she walked straight back again. Katherine knew an opportunity when she saw it, and if Klaus wanted Elena's necklace she was quite certain that if she got her hands on it first she would be able to use it to her advantage. She was sick of exile in Obscurity - as she called the god forsaken backwater she'd been forced to live in since she pissed off the Big Bad - and if there was even the slimmest chance the necklace held something of value she had to go after it. Perhaps she could even use it to reclaim her rightful place in society, after all Klaus wouldn't go to the trouble of reconciling with the Original bitch and directing his considerable manpower to locating the object if it wasn't valuable.
And when you considered just how much trouble the vile prick was going to it had to be priceless. It had to be something that could hurt him, something that might even be able to destroy him.
Katherine Pierce wasn't stupid, but she was spiteful and there were few people on the planet she hated more than Klaus Mikaelson. She couldn't possibly ignore a chance to take him down.
So that's how she had ended up in a car, in yet another backwater town, with Damon Salvatore and Jeremy Gilbert (strictly speaking the trunk qualified as "in" the car). Damon wasn't the most pleasant of travelling companions and despite her best efforts…well half-hearted efforts…to lighten his abysmal mood he had remained annoyingly disagreeable. Eventually he had refused to go any further.
"We've been driving around aimlessly for hours. Where are we going?" he asked pulling the car over to the side of road.
"Far enough away so that you can't go running back," she snapped back.
"Not to worry. DC and I are on a bit of a break," he responded with a sigh.
Katherine smirked. "You and DC, or you and Elena?"
"Let's just say Elena and I are having a bit of difference of opinion on how I should behave," he replied turning his gaze on upon the empty road.
It almost felt like Christmas to Katherine, first the less than flattering news reports on holier-than-thou Elena sterilizing the poor and now 'Chief of Staff' Damon on a break. "Ooh. Let me guess... Elena wants you to be the hero, and you don't like playing pretend."
Damon spared her a glance. "Something like that," he muttered and then leaned towards her, capturing her lips. She moved her lips against his, enjoying the heated exchange until he pushed her off him and back into her seat.
"What are you doing?" she asked annoyed.
He smirked. "I thought I'd give it a shot. Truth is, you just don't do it for me anymore," and with that he exited the vehicle.
She was suitably pissed, but knowing she had little choice she followed him out. "Why are we stopping?"
"I thought we might want to stretch our legs. Take a break from the sexual tension. I'm tired of driving. It's your turn," he announced.
"Fine," she said with a sigh holding out her hand for the keys which Damon promptly threw away. "Hey! I..."
He cut her off. "We're not going anywhere until you spill your guts."
"Fine," she muttered and took Elena's necklace out of her pocket showing it to him. "Do you recognize this, hmm? A little birdy told me that Klaus wants to get his hands on it."
Damon looked confused. "Why would Klaus want Elena's necklace?"
Making sure that he could see, Katherine hooked her nail into a small indentation at the base of the necklace's medallion and slowly withdrew the hidden USB stick. "It's leverage, Damon. Always stay one step ahead of your enemy," she told him with a wide smile.
"Fantastic Katherine, but what exactly is on it?" he almost sounded bored.
"Everything you need to get someone out of a secret pseudo-government facility," she told him with a raised eyebrow.
"And just who is it we need to break out?" he asked with a straight face, but she could tell he was biting.
"Unfortunately that information wasn't on the USB," she sighed dramatically.
"And just where do need to break this unknown person out of exactly?" he looked expectant.
"Also not on the USB," she replied causing him to release an equally dramatic sigh. There was a lot of that going on.
"So we have everything we need to break some unknown person out of a prison we have no idea of the location of? All that drinking your doing to forget you're a permanent resident of Deadbeat central has killed a too many brain cells," he sneered at her.
"Are you willing to do whatever it takes to stop Klaus? No turning back?" she ignored the slight.
He paused for a moment considering her suddenly serious countenance. "I'm not turning back."
Katherine smiled wide. "Good. Because this isn't going to win you any points at home," and with that she opened the trunk showing him the unconscious Jeremy.
"Jeremy? Really?" he looked equally shocked and intrigued.
She merely rose an eyebrow in response.
"I'm listening."
"What if I told you there was a way to get Klaus out of all of our hair?" she was enjoying herself now, Damon hanging on her every word.
"I'd say you were desperate and lying. Or drunk. Or desperate, lying and drunk."
"Do you remember my friend Pearl?" she was dragging it out, but he was a colossal dick.
"Vividly," he deadpanned.
"Years ago, she told me there was a man that Klaus feared. Then she wouldn't tell me anymore," she was only too aware he would make the connection with the data held on the USB.
Damon looked annoyed. "Well, why not?"
"Because it was her leverage. She knew it was valuable information, and wouldn't share it with me," she said with a mournful sigh.
"Well, this is all great... But she's dead." He was always a great one to state the obvious.
"Which is why I never brought it up. Because she only ever told one other person," she led him on, now thoroughly enjoying herself.
"Who?" Damon couldn't hide his eagerness.
Drum roll please. "Her daughter. Anna."
"Who's completely off the radar," he complained.
"Which brings us right back around to..." Katherine turned back to Jeremy who with perfect timing had awoken.
"To me. Back around to me," little Gilbert stated.
It was wonderful when things went precisely to plan.
"Now Jeremy be a dear and tell us where your ghost love is hiding," Katherine asked in her sweetest voice handing him his phone.
He looked conflicted for all of five seconds before tapping in the address into Google maps.
"It's time to go find the keys," Damon muttered wandering off in the direction he threw them.
"Mm-hmm," Katherine responded with a satisfied smirk plastered on her face.
Forty minutes and about as many text messages from Bonnie later they arrived at the designated co-ordinates. "I think that your witchy girlfriend's worried that you've run away with your ghostly lover," Katherine told a less than impressed looking Jeremy as she waved his phone in front of his face.
"Stop with the teeny bopper drama. Let's go," Damon ordered and for a change Katherine did precisely what he suggested. Before they made it to the door Anna exited the house, her lips a thin line. It was a wonder to Katherine that the girl hadn't run, for she was most assuredly not surprised to find them at her door. She figured that Anna must really love Jeremy - she could use that.
Though the girl was clearly disinclined to help them all it took was a little gratuitous violence leaving Little Gilbert with a sore head and Anna quickly capitulated.
"You're looking for Mikael," she told them her worried eyes never leaving Jeremy's pained ones.
"Mikael. Is that his name?" Katherine felt a thrill of anticipation travel up her spine.
"Who's Mikael?" Damon asked.
"A psychopath that hates Klaus. You don't want to break him out. He will kill all of you," the dark haired girl told them solemnly.
"What do you mean, break him out?" Jeremy asked worriedly. And then had she told them.
Which lead Katherine to a place more backwards that the back of beyond backwater town Klaus had banished her to. It was perhaps the most depressing locale on the planet, dry desolate, barren. The perfect place for a prison really and perhaps it might have been become the sight of an official one had some shady government types not designated it for their own little hidey-hole.
It was surprisingly easy to get in to see him, probably due to the fact that whomever had set the place up had not made an appearance in a good long while. The guards now serving no greater purpose than collecting their monthly paychecks, still they brought him to where she waited outside the walls in chains that looked too heavy to walk in. She didn't know what he had done for Abby Bennett to want him entombed for all time, and rather thought the guards themselves were equally ignorant, but there was something about him that was distinctly unnerving.
With a considering glance which seemed to convince the head guard of her insanity he handed her the keys to the handful of padlocks which kept the chains in place and taking the cliche suitcase of cash he and his fellow guards walked briskly back to the safety of the their walls as though hell bent on having as much concrete and iron between them and Mikael prior to his release. The keys were heavy in her hand, but that didn't stop her from unleashing the one man Klaus feared. It was only once he was free and his hand was tightening around her throat that she took the time to consider what kind of person the Devil would fear.
Tyler had been devastated when his personal battle was plastered all over the newspaper, relegated from the front page by Elena's dodgy staffers but far from unnoticed. There was no point trying to cheer him up not when the mere mention of it sent him into a spiraling depression.
A mere two days following the public airing of his prior prescription drug dependency he had been called into his boss's office. Thirty minutes later he had called her to advise that he was packing up his office having been "given the opportunity to resign" – considering he worked for a brokerage firm and investors were twitchy of late, it wasn't a much of a surprise. Still it was another blow when he was down and left him without the daily distraction from his troubles that work had provided.
Had Caroline lost her job and been deemed "virtually unemployable" in her chosen field, as it seemed the financial industry had decided Tyler was, all her time and effort would have been put into finding a new vocation so she didn't starve. Tyler who had been born into privilege and earned more in interest per quarter than she was paid in a year had no such concerns.
And so he had ample time to wallow in his misery.
And wallow he did.
Tyler didn't leave the house, he day drank, he wallowed, he thought about how bad things were, he night drank, he considered how much worse they might become. After all, if they had all the details of his prescription drug addiction how long could it be before they discovered the cause? He could see the headlines "Senate leader's son guilty of murder?" "Accident or homicide? The death of Sarah Lawson".
Caroline was completely helpless, there was absolutely nothing she could do to help him except to be there as he suffered through it. She went to work, she went to Tyler's, sympathized as he wallowed, slept, went home to change, and then she went to work again. A week went by, the wallowing continued but the media moved on in part due to a controversial proposal sponsored by Elena requiring all female benefit recipients to have contraceptive implants. Elena dominated the news reels stating in a calm manner that the welfare system was a hand up not a hand out and this new program was the logical next step after the welfare reforms she helped pass.
The press core didn't find it surprising, after all it was only to be expected from the most right-wing democrat in office. The public was divided into three camps, those that vilified Elena for suggesting such a thing, those that praised her for having the guts to say what they had been thinking, and the larger majority who were more interested in who was going to win The Voice - even if they didn't actually watch it - and took absolutely no notice.
Tyler was in the third category, not caring about anything outside his own bubble or misery even though Caroline had pointed out that Elena had done it for him. Metaphorically slitting her wrists in order to protect him. Of course being that his unfortunate life choices were public fodder because of the Congresswoman her sacrificing herself on the altar did little to endear her to Tyler.
So he went straight back to wallowing and Caroline went to work. When she returned she thought for a moment she had the wrong house. No drunkard boyfriend sprawled upon the couch, glass of bourbon balanced precariously on the edge.
When she went to work the sky was falling; when she returned…
Tyler greeted her with warm hug and a wide smile. "How was work?" he asked rather than sneered.
"Gooood," she replied all the while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I thought we might go out to dinner tonight," he continued cheerily either not noticing her confused expression or choosing to ignore it.
"Out? As in out in public out?" he was worrying her. It was as though the last two weeks hadn't happened.
"Yeah, we haven't been out in a while," he stated as though he wasn't aware of the reason for it.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she was beginning to suspect he was a pod person.
"I'm great, Caroline. I mean, like, phenomenal. Everything's just... Better," he enthused and then picking her up spun her in his arms and kissed her.
"What happened?" if she sounded dumbfounded it was because she was, she felt like she was still spinning.
"You are looking at the newest Financial Executive of Mikaelson Incorporated," he stated proudly.
"Mikaelson Incorporated? As in Klaus Mikaelson's Mikaelson Incorporated?" It was official the body snatchers were taking over.
"Yes, isn't it awesome? I'll be reporting directly to the Chief Financial Officer," he looked at her as though expecting some kind of affirmation.
"Klaus Mikaelson," she couldn't manage anything else.
"No, he's the President slash CEO, Elijah is the CFO," he informed her, smile still firmly fixed on his face.
"Elijah Mikaelson?" she barely choked the name out - it wasn't that she didn't know the who's who of the Mikaelson corporate ladder she was just having difficulty processing what Tyler was saying.
"And they said my career in finance was over," he said with a laugh ignoring her incredulous look. "Do you know how many people would kill to be in my position now? This is going to be an amazing year," he took her into his arms again.
Caroline hoped it would end better than that pod people movie, because...seriously?