CHAPTER 10 – THE REAPING
-Stefan-
She's giggling… my mind is going through everything that happened last night – what I did to her, what I let her do to me – when I believed that the woman I spent hours touching and kissing and making love to was my wife… and Katherine's giggling her victorious giggle.
"Mmm, Good morning." Katherine arches her back, stretching and smiling up at me, the sheets covering her body slipping down her unclothed skin as she moves. "I wasn't planning on staying the night," She adds, reaching to me and running her fingertips down my stomach. Her voice is playfully sweet, sickening, when she says. "But you wore me out! Now I remember why I couldn't leave you alone back in 1864."
I hear my teeth grinding. I hear the blood rushing through my veins. My ears pop from the pressure of my clenched jaw. I'm trying so hard to hold it in – this rage – but when my entire arm begins to tingle and the squeeze of my fist is shooting pain up my wrist, I know I can't stop it.
The wrapping of my fingers around her neck shocks her - caught off guard by my quick reaction. Katherine's sultry brown eyes are instantly wider and rounder and filled with fear, grasping at my forearm as I push her body into the mattress and squeeze her slender throat.
She's choking and scratching my skin, but I like it – I love it. Seeing her eyes filled with tears and so pressured from my grip that they're bulging from her face… I can't explain to you how amazing it feels.
As a matter of fact, I'm enjoying seeing her in pain so much that I move to my knees and add a second hand – squeezing so hard that my arms are flexed to the point that they're trembling. The satisfaction that flows through me increases tenfold when she tries to reach up to my face, but my arms are fully extended and longer than hers, so her hands just grasp at air as I feel a smile playing on my lips.
It's got to be a muscle memory, the strange desire to rip through her throat with my teeth – to taste her blood filling my mouth – but the want is so strong that my mouth is watering as I breathe through my clenched teeth and begin to sweat a bit from the force I'm using on her neck. Beginning to flail now, kicking her legs and twisting her body, Katherine's mouth is gaping wide and searching for oxygen. I watch her tongue convulsing in her open mouth for a moment, wish I could rip it from her body, but move my eyes back to hers before I decide giving it a try.
She manages to knee me in the stomach a few times, her thighs pushing against mine as she kicks, the heels of her feet making hard contact with my calves – but I don't feel it - I only hear that unique flesh against flesh sound and commit to strangling her. If I were paying more attention, I would have noticed one of her hands leaving my forearm… the crashing of the wooden picture frame stabbing into the skin just below my eye knocks me out of my reverie I'd found when killing Katherine and I grunt through my teeth when I fall to my forearms and wipe at the blood coming from my face.
Coughing, Katherine pushes me to my side and hits my ribs a few times with her small, insignificant fists before I grab her by her wrists and pin her back down on the bed.
"Stefan! Stop it!" She yells at me, struggling to move but she's just a girl and I'm a guy twice her size and much stronger – her attempts are futile. "You're hurting me!"
My face is so close to hers that I feel the air moving in and out of her mouth – she's breathing hard, large, short inhales that tell me I was seconds away from ending her before she hit me with the frame. My gums hurt –I can't explain to you why… but it's the same familiar ache I remember from my years as a vampire that is pulsating above my teeth when I say, "I'm hurting you? I'm going to fucking murder you, Katherine."
I don't know if it's the calmness of my voice or the vicious glare in my eyes, but the increase in her attempt to get away tells me that she knows I'm not bluffing – I'm not just angry, I'm finished with her. Let's be honest, I've wanted to kill Katherine ever since the memories of her compelling me to accept her back in 1864 found their way back into my mind – after I'd become a vampire from her blood and her deceiving and her malicious plans.
"And Elena!?" Her voice is so telling – high pitched and carrying that wavering sound that one gets when they're near tears - she's struggling to find a way out of this corner she's put herself in. Using my wife is a good tactic, but the instant I realized it was Katherine laying next to me I knew I'd lost Elena, so it's not going to work as it normally would. Her chest is heaving as she finally stops with the squirming, hoping she found a way to talk her way out, breathlessly asking, "How are you going to explain a dead body in her bed?"
"I'm not." I chuckle, sliding her wrists up above her head in order to hold them with one hand. "You think she's going to give a damn about you or what I do after she finds out about last night?"
"Stefan." Katherine turns to watch me grip her wrists, her eyes big and scared while I smile down at her. "Stefan, no one has to know. I wasn't going to tell anyone!"
My right hand begins to tingle again, ready to finish the job it had started – crushing her windpipe, ending her miserable, destructive life. My chest tightens, a sense of pleasure that only a monster like me can feel rolls through me when I see the bruises forming on her neck where my fingers had been.
"What about Allie?" I look back at Katherine's eyes – at first I'm just angry that she's spoken my daughter's name, but then I understand what she's trying… a new angle.
I sit back on my calves, releasing her…
XXXX
How could I have not known? Why didn't I notice that feeling was gone? Missing!
Katherine is getting dressed, showering in our shower… and I'm in the kitchen, doing my best to make sense of these last few hours. Looking down at my hands, I consider blaming my lack of observation on the dried sheetrock still on my fingers and hands, now scratched and even bleeding in some places from Katherine's fight. Maybe it kept me from being able to feel that electricity that pulsates from Elena's skin when I touch her… I go through a handful of possibilities as I try to find an explanation, but I know better, it wasn't the sheetrock… I can't blame the fact that I was exhausted and drunk, desensitized by the gin and the anger. I just, I don't know, I just wasn't expecting this to even be a possibility. The timing was right… Damon and Katherine left hours earlier and Elena should've been home sometime in the night.
I can't shake the feeling that she's done something to Elena. My mind is filled with a million different scenarios, each worse the one before it, and I'm struggling to keep it together when Katherine saunters into the dining room wearing another set of Elena's clothes – other than the lack of our gravity, the only difference between her and my wife are the still damp curls hanging heavy down her back.
"I swear, Stefan," Straightening the white, sequenced tank top over the short black, cuffed shorts that belong to my wife but are on my mistress'body… I feel sick, truly like I may vomit as that word weaves its way through my mind. "Elena has the worst taste in clothes." In the kitchen now, she moves slowly around me leaning against the counter and drags her hand over my flexed back as she moves to the sink. "But I have to give her credit in her taste in men."
I turn to her, but just cannot bring myself to look at her face when I ask, "Where's Elena?" My voice is raw, my entire body hurts – a dull ache all the way through me.
Pausing, Katherine looks puzzled for a moment, then as if she's remembered an important piece of information, she raises her eyebrows and says in a cheerful tone, "Oh, that's right, I bet you're worried, huh? She's fine? Should be home by seven."
I wish I can tell you I feel relief - and I am relieved! God, you have no idea… but honestly, I'm so enamored with shame it's only the ache that I feel.
As if she belongs in my house, in my kitchen, she takes a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water from my sink and doesn't seem bothered in slightest when I ask, "Why are you doing this, Katherine?"
She takes a long sip of the water and I can sense her looking at me as I stare at an imaginary spot on the floor – I imagine she's probably smiling when she coos, "I told you, I always get what I want."
Of course. She always gets what she wants – always has, for over three hundred years. She got me and she got my brother and she destroyed our lives and probably countless others before us and a hundred after us and still, Katherine manages to always, without fail, come out on top. "And what about Damon?"
Ignoring my question, she sits the glass down and steps in front of me, ever so gently tracing my jawline with her fingers – I don't mean to, as I want to appear as if I'm not repulsed by all of this, like I'm not at my wits end – but I visibly cringe when she touches me.
"Oh come on now, Stefan." She frowns at me, looking up at me through her lashes – my eyes still down. "We both know that was amazing… you and I, we're perfectly matched for nights like that. We always have been. So don't act like you didn't enjoy it." I shake my head, swallow hard – stomach bile burning my throat. Seeming to get frustrated with me, Katherine steps back and puts her hands on her hips. "You know what, you should be thanking me."
At that, I look up at her. "Are you kidding me? You've ruined my life – again!"
"You wouldn't even have this life it weren't for me! You would have never have even met Elena and you wouldn't have your pretty little house on your perfect beach." She's really getting aggravated now, her head bobbing from side to side as she half-way yells at me. "You'd never of met E-ley-nah. So you wouldn't have Allie and Grayson."
I stand straight, putting my weight on my feet and fisting my hands at my sides. "You want me to thank you for turning me into a monster? You want me to thank you?" A laugh escapes my mouth and I don't know if it's a sarcastic chuckle or if I'm actually about to lose my mind. "You come into my house and pretend to be my wife – you trick me into having sex with you, you've destroyed my marriage and I am supposed to thank you!"
Even with the bruises from my hands around her neck still fresh on her skin, Katherine is feeling indestructible now that she's found my weakness – my children – and she steps up to meet my stance, pressing her body against mine and running her lips up my neck with her hands low on my torso.
I feel her forming the words as she speaks in a slow, sensual whisper, "I won't tell anyone." Kissing my jawline, "It's our little secret."
That ache is starting to dull – quickly being replaced by a hot, tar-like darkness that I've managed to keep repressed for the last few years… but this woman, she has a way of provoking me, bringing out the darkest parts of myself that I try so hard to contain.
Shoving Katherine back a bit, I turn away from her in order to try and shove my rage back into my gut as it's beginning to weave into my muscles, attempting to take me over. My chest is heaving as I breathe in through my nose and grip the edge of the counter top.
Opening the refrigerator, Katherine moves a couple of things around as she looks for something to eat and begins to ramble, or brag maybe – I get the feeling that she's quite proud of herself for pulling this off. "I hope Allie didn't get into too much trouble about your phone. I mean, I knew you would blame her once I heard Elena giving her a bit of a work down about running off with your phone all the time, so as a little apology for the sure to come punishment, I gave her a pack of gum I'd bought on the way back to town." I have my head down and my eyes closed, literally seeing red, remembering how upset Allie was when I got onto her about it. I thought she was trying to avoid getting in trouble when she promised she didn't do it – I even put her in time out for lying. "Then Elena and her poor me, I'm so fat issues." Katherine laughs as she drops a bagel into the toaster. "Really. The girl doesn't have an extra pound on her body! But it was so easy to press her about it. Can you believe she basically told me that the silk dress was your favorite?" Going through the pantry now, she's still talking and I'm just getting more and more tense by her invasion. "Though I have to give it to her, she stopped just short – but you know, I'm no idiot."
No, Katherine may be the most clever, back-stabbing, con-artist I have ever known. Since the day I met her, her mind has always been five-steps ahead of mine. Her thoughts must fly through the coils in her mind at a pace ten times quicker than anyone else.
"I'm thinking I'm going to have maybe an hour or so, but then Elena sends me a text message to give to you about staying in Bangkok for the night and I remember that she had no idea that Damon and I found a flight out!" She giggles and my knuckles crack from the pressure just about the time the toaster finishes. "So I start an argument with Damon and storm out like I'm known to do, change my clothes and make it over here just before the storm knocked out the electricity. I was going to leave and let you figure it out on your own… If I could've just resisted you and left after once, or twice even." Again, she giggles, "But what can I say. You've always been my best counterpart. So I indulge and nearly pass out afterwards and my damn Scorpio tattoo gives me away… Does that happen often?" I'm confused, I guess – did she say Scorpio? I don't know, but I don't realize she's asked me a question as I'm putting together all the information she's just given me. "Stefan?"
"What?" I ask, my jaw locked.
"I asked if the electricity goes out a lot here?"
In a matter of hours, Elena is going to pack up and take my children and leave me and Katherine is asking me about the condition of the electric grid in Thailand – I know it must seem insignificant to you, but it's the last I can take. Literally, I'm half a day away from losing everything and her indifferent attitude has just pushed me too far.
Now facing her, she's turned away, spreading peanut butter on the bagel when I say, "You need to go."
I see her shoulders slump a bit, dramatically releasing a sigh, "Stefan… look, I know your mad and I know you think I'm going to brag to Elena about it," Sitting the butter knife down, she turns to face me and bites into the bagel – chewing a moment then speaking with her mouth full. "I'm not." She chews and I stare at her and she looks back and me and I consider what she saying.
Katherine is probably lying, that's usually the safest thing to assume about anything she says, but it doesn't matter –I love Elena too much to deceive her. "I'm going to tell her."
Giving a huff before sipping the water again, she leans back against the counter across from me, crossing her legs at the ankle as if she has no plans on leaving. "You're morality is going to suffocate you, Stefan."
"You're suffocating me, Katherine. You. This. What you did." I shake my hands at her, consider putting my fingers back where those bruises are forming into a dull green. "You are killing me."
"I'm not telling Damon, you do what you want." Dropping the half-eaten bagel on the counter, she swipes her open hands together, dusting off the crumbs from her fingers or maybe telling me she's done with this. "But if Elena runs her little mouth and it gets back to him, I swear to God she'll regret it." I only kind of hear the easy threat as I'm playing through my mind how Elena is going to react… how it's almost certain she's going to go back to Virginia… to Damon, as Katherine moves past me. She's nearly by the isle I'm standing next when her slow, too confident voice flows into my ears, "I may not be a vampire but it doesn't take fangs to rip the breaks out of someone's car." And I lose it.
Before I can stop, before I can even consider NOT doing it, I feel her wet hair in the fist of my left hand and the cold steel of the carving knife in my right, slipping it from the wooden block as a throw her backwards. The sound of her body hitting the tile floor sets me on fire and I'm not sure, but I think I'm grinning as she tries to scurry away from me – one thing I'm certain of, Katherine is no longer smiling.
"Stefan. Stefan stop!" She's hurt, something is wrong with her leg as she's having trouble pulling herself off of the floor, her small arms having to handle the majority of her weight as she leans against the counter for support. I let her stand – if I'm going to kill her, I'm going to enjoy it and I like a little fight. "Stefan…" She's hurt pretty badly, not able to put any weight on her left leg as she scoots down the counter, those once-confident eyes searching for an escape. "Think of Allie!" I chuckle at the thought that the only way out is past me – and that is not going to happen. "You don't want to be this kind of a man, Stefan." She's trying so hard to play it cool, but her Elena-like lips are trembling and her Elena-like eyes are wide and round and she can't stop glancing at the knife in my hand.
I stay silent – I've never liked to talk when I'm feeling like this – alert to the quickened breathing and trembling nerves of my victim, somewhat anxious to get started, but pleased by the way it feels to be so close to attacking, all of those emotions wrapped in a thick, overwhelming rage. I'm going to lose Allie and Grayson and Elena. I'm going to lose this life I've made as Katherine has stolen away the man I'd become, the man I was proud to be… what's one more washing of blood on my hands now?
I wonder if she thinks she's got me muddled in my thoughts – I'm not, I'm more aware of how badly I want to feel this blade slip into her skin, through her organs. I want to touch her blood seeping out of her disgusting body. She's reading me wrong, my silence and the long stare into her eyes, and when Katherine tries her escape, bolting towards me to try and get by, I grab face hard and turn us both – her back against the wall and my body against hers.
I inhale.
My heartbeat slows.
My shoulder rolls back.
My bicep flexes and I shove the knife forward just as Katherine cries, "I'M OVULATING!" but I can't stop it, there's too much force and my arm is moving too quickly even as I register what she's telling me – in a split second I've gone from wanting nothing more than to watch her bleed out on the floor to being terrified by how badly I'm about to hurt her.
The pain flows into her face first – the scrunching of her eyes and the pulling back of her lips, a deep grimace as I feel her skin giving to the blade, splitting open.
She's breathing hard and trembling and tears are streaking her makeup down her cheeks and I am hysterical, too scared to look down at the wound. I was going for her stomach – I didn't one this one wound to kill her. I wanted to prolong it a bit – but I did what I could to miss her all together, flinching my wrist and pulling my elbow. It was a long shot, I knew, and there's no mistaking the unique feeling of blade into body… I just don't know how bad it is.
"Oh my God." Katherine swallows, I feel it against my palm as my left hand is still holding her against the wall. Her voice is strained and she's crying and out of breath, gasping and speaking in a choppy tone, "Oh God! Stefan… you missed me. You missed."
It can't be. I wish that were the case, but I know I got her.
Finally, I move back cautiously as I'm scared to move the knife even the slightest, and I immediately spot blood on Elena's white shirt.
Just a small, dime-sized bit of blood on my wife's cloud-white top.
Releasing my grip on both the knife and Katherine's jaw, I'm pulling up the fabric as the metal clanks loudly against the tile, my eyes searching for a stab wound as Katherine nearly collapses to the floor.
Just below her ribs, on the very furthest part of her stomach, is a slight, straight cut that's bleeding no more than a scratch.
Pulled out of my dark, rage-induced haze and back to this new reality where I've had sex with an ovulating Katherine, I'm truly lost – backing up, fisting my hands in my hair, looking at Katherine sliding down the wall as she holds her small cut in her hand and cries like I've never seen her cry before.
"You were going to do it." She sobs – this woman that I hate. The very woman that may be carrying my child. "You were going to kill me, Stefan."
Yes. I was. Without a doubt. I cannot deny it. I was going to finally give Katherine what she deserves.
What do I say? She's crying so hard and I'm delirious. All I can think of is Elena – the way she's going to look at me when I tell her what I've done. I close my eyes to try and get myself together, but etched in the back of my eyelids is Elena's face and my gut tightens with fear and guilt to the point that I bend at the waste and nearly throw up.
"I just wanted a baby, Stefan. I just want a family. I want to give Damon a child." Katherine is still crying and talking at a rattling pace and I dry heave at the word 'baby'. "I want us to have a family." She's crying so hard that when she inhales it's broken into shivering pieces. "So I've been sleeping with Jeremy for past few months because the baby would look like me atleast…" I'm on all fours now – sweating. "Then we got here and I saw Allie and she looks so much like you're mother –" I don't know if it's the mentioning of my perfect daughter that I'm hours away from losing or my mother who would be so incredibly ashamed of the man I've turned out to be that brings tears to my squeezed-shut eyes. "And I thought, Stefan. I can sleep with Stefan and I can have a baby that looks like a Salvatore and Damon will never know. He'll never know it's not his. He'd be so happy, Stefan. I love him and he deserves to be happy… I can give Damon a Salvatore baby and we can finally be okay."
-Elena-
Grayson is asleep in his carseat, so after putting him in his room to finish up his afternoon nap, I come back into the repaired and once again perfect living room and wonder where in the world Allie and Stefan are. His truck was in the garage and there is something in the oven, so I'm sure they haven't gone too far when I hear Allie's laugh from the deck.
"That's silly, Daddy!" She giggles as I walk quietly to the door and spot him laid back on one of the loungers, his hands behind his head with Allie sitting cross-legged on his stomach holding a book in her hands.
"It's true, I swear it." Stefan says, turning to look at me just about the time that frequency swirls around me in the same way a warm breeze slips around your skin. I always forget how wonderful this feeling is until I've spent some time away from it, away from him, from our gravity.
I smile when his eyes find mine, Allie releasing a squealed "Mommy!" as she climbs off of him and starts towards me in a run, but my smile seems to bother him – and instead of returning a smile to me, Stefan turns his head away and rubs both of his hands on his face, laying his head back against the chair. Still angry with me I guess…
Allie leads me into the kitchen and tells me all about her day fixing the house with Stefan, "We bought a saw and wood and shindels to put on the roof." I'm listening to my daughters sweet little voice and pouring a cup of coffee and wondering about Stefan, correcting her without thinking about it.
"Shingles."
But she doesn't miss a beat, "Daddy says we're going to move back to Virginia and live next to Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Jeremy and Sir Damon and that I'll get to go to school where Aunt Bonnie works and that Sir Damon will take me out to lunch." Her voice falls when she asks, "Do you think Aunt Katherine will come too?"
I laugh despite the fact that I kind of like Katherine – I get her, ya know… she's just trying to be a regular girl after having her life taken from her hundreds of years ago. In a way, I totally understand that.
-Stefan-
I spent as much of the evening outside or busy or playing with Grayson and Allie or doing anything other than being alone with Elena. I just. I can't.
I know what Katherine wants me to do, but I will not lie to Elena. I even left that satin dress on the floor of our bedroom and the bed unmade because I can't stand the thought of it looking like I'm trying to cover something up.
She's asked me a few times if I'm feeling well – I either nod or shrug or give a one word answer. I can't talk to her… until I can tell her what I've done I can't. I feel like my confession is stuck in my throat and seconds away from spilling out of my mouth and every time I have to speak I'm terrified it's going to force its way out.
Before she got home I put up the For Sale signs I bought at the hardware store yesterday. There's no need for us to talk about it any further, I know what she wants and she's right, Allie and Grayson need to be near their extended family – this place has been another dimension to me. A place that I could ignore the darkness inside of me and the painful memories that lay waiting for us in Mystic Falls, but even before Katherine destroyed this place I was ready to give it up for Elena.
I've just finished telling Allie goodnight – tonight will be my last night with them, I'm sure of it, so I spent as much time with her and Grayson as I could, imprinting their every expression, every sound into my mind - when I hear music softly playing from the master bedroom and I get sick with the thought that Elena may be laying on the bed, with those sheets…
I come into the room in a half run and release a heavy sigh when I hear the shower start. The covers haven't moved, but her dress is laying on the foot of the bed and my eyes burn with the threat of tears as I come to the realization that I'm going to lose her. In a few moments, she's going to come into this bedroom that we've shared for more than two years and I'm going to tell her the only thing I know she can't forgive me for and I'm going to lose Elena.
***MORE TO COME***
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