Final.

She dropped the heart next to the body on the floor and went about cleaning her hand. I couldn't peel my eyes away from Maude's body on the floor. Lexi was begging me to get out of there but I was frozen in place. She gave up trying to convince me and pushed me from behind sending me flying into the table. Katherine whipped around at the commotion and looked at me for a moment as she worked it out in her head. "I see we have company," she said as she rushed over at me, grabbing my arms and holding them behind my back. "Still seeing ghosts are we?" she said right into my ear. "So, what does that little bitch think about the mess you've gotten yourself into this time?"

There had been very few people in my life that I would have given anything for, I would have died for had I the chance. Katherine had already berated my parents and now she was going after Lexi. I wasn't going to allow her to talk that way about the people I loved. In one smooth motion I twisted out of her grasp and ran for the opposite side of the room. "Is she here now?" Katherine continued to taunt me. "It must be killing her that she can't help you." My eyes flickered over to Lexi who stood by the sink a few feet away from me.

"Don't listen to her Norrah, she's just antagonizing you."

"She is here isn't she? Well tell the wench to come out and play." Katherine said raising her voice to be sure that Lexi heard her.

"Okay, ignore what I said," Lexi told me. "Just kill the bitch."

I reached out for the closest chair, lifted it and shattered it over the table leaving me with a rather sharp chunk of one of its legs. "Go ahead," Katherine challenged me, "kill me, but remember that I'll drag you down with me. Is that really how you want to spend eternity, chained to me in hell? It's going to be hard to find your precious Maddie down there, don't you think."

I was stunned, despite everything Katherine had done to me she had never brought my daughter into it. My vision went white with rage as I charged at her, catching her arm and twisting it behind her back. I grabbed her other arm and held them together with one hand as I raised the stake over her heart with the other. "You heinous uncaring bitch." I said into her ear as she struggled against me. I lifted the stake an inch or so higher, determined to pierce through her heart in one quick motion.

"Uncaring? Everything that I have done for you I've done because I cared," she said to me. Her words were surprising and obviously a ploy to avoid being staked. "How could you think that I don't care?" I loosened my grip for a split second, just long enough for her to twist out of my hands. I had her cornered though, she was up against the wall trying to pop her dislocated shoulder back into place.

"You've never cared about me," I yelled at her. "You stole my life! You killed my parents, compelled my husband and robbed me of the opportunity to be a mother to my child." Tears of pent up rage were spilling down my cheeks. I had waited more than five hundred years for this very moment and I wasn't going to let it slip away from me. She had both of her hands out in front of her, clearly aware that I wasn't playing games and that I had every intention to kill her.

"You really believe that, don't you?" she asked. "I didn't risk my life to turn you just to ruin yours. I did it to save you."

"To save me from what? A peaceful life in the English countryside with my family? How was that a threat to you? Why couldn't you have just gone away and left me alone?" I started to lower the stake as rage started transitioning to despair, my tears falling two and three at a time now. "I had a beautiful life, and little by little you chipped away at it until the final blow when you killed and turned me."

"You have no idea how much danger you were in. You were living in vampire country. You were being targeted left and right. I did what I could to kill them off, but there were too many. I turned you so that they wouldn't kill you and your whole family. If something had happened to your daughter then our family line really would have ended." She glared at me while she said it.

"So I am supposed to believe that you killed my parents and compelled a man to love because you were concerned for my well-being?"

"I killed your parents because they were consorting with the vampires. They didn't know what their friends and neighbors were. I couldn't let them allow those people to find you. As for your dolt of a husband I needed someone who knew about the vampires and was strong enough, and possibly stupid enough, to defend you if they tried to attack After you were married I went about trying to figure out how I could turn you. I didn't trust anyone else to do it. Do you think I would have gone to all of that trouble for someone I didn't care about?"

My head was reeling and I had no idea if she was telling the truth or just trying to spare her life. "Then why the charade," I probed her, "why have you gone out of your way to make me suffer?"

"I don't know if you are aware of this but there are very few ways of restraining you," she told me. "I wanted to get you away from the Salvatore's, away from Mystic Falls. They aren't going to be able to save you if the Originals find you there."

"And you don't want them to find me because you don't know whether or not they would be able to kill me. That was the only scenario that you couldn't replicate when you were testing your theory. So once again you were only thinking about yourself."

I raised the stake again preparing to strike. She was lying, trying to save herself. "I knew that you were going to be a girl, I even had a name picked out for you." She told me.

"What?" I asked her. "Why would you do that?"

She looked at me puzzled, "I don't know how you could even ask that. I was devastated when they took you from me. I knew that I couldn't keep you but I never imagined that I wouldn't even be able to see you, to hold you for a few minutes. I didn't get to see you until you were almost three years old when I tracked down your father."

I dropped the stake as I considered what she said. "Anelia," she said to me, "that was the name, Anelia Elisaveta Petrova."

"So you never asked my father to name me after you?" I asked.

"I never even talked to him after that one night," she told me. "If my father ever found out who was responsible for that I don't know what he would have done to him, or what would have become of you."

I backed up slowly to let her out of the corner. I looked around the room and realized that Lexi was nowhere to be seen. I was speechless, Katherine had just answered all of the questions that had plagued me my whole life. I thought that I was prepared to hear what she had to say but I had never imagined that she had done it out of concern for me. That was the last thing I would have expected her to say. Where was Lexi? My mind was racing, thoughts all tangling together.

"Uh-oh," Katherine said behind me bringing me back to the present, "sounds like we've got company." I listened as a car engine idled and the doors of a car opened. Katherine grabbed me from behind.

"Oww, what are you doing?" I asked her, surprised by her roughness.

"Just play along," she instructed, "we'll need them to think that I just killed the witch and they got her just in time to save you." She pushed me into the hallway and her face turned. She tilted my head to the side as two sets of footsteps thundered up the porch steps and the door flung open. She started speaking before they had crossed the threshold, loudly to be sure that they heard her. "Goodbye my girl, we will meet again in another lifetime." She raised her head as if to strike.

"Damon," I reached out my free hand and yelled out as she plunged her fangs into my neck. I wasn't prepared for her to actually do it so my reaction was genuine, the pain on my face was real." She withdrew her fangs as Stefan entered and Damon ran to us, pushing me forward to slow him down as she escaped out the back. Damon caught me before I hit the floor, he stood me up and held me close, cradling my head in his hand. Stefan ran up beside us.

"I'm going after her," Stefan said as he started towards the back door.

"No," I twisted out of Damon's grasp and ran to the door, blocking Stefan's path. "Please," I said to them, "just let her go. I want this to be over, I just want to go home." They exchanged glances with one another. "Please." I begged them. I took a step toward them and then started to collapse again. Damon broke my fall again and Stefan helped him to walk me to the door. "Wait," I said to them, "my phone." I broke free from their grasp and stepped into the parlor, my phone was still on the couch. I picked it up as the screen lit up. A text message, but I had no reception. I touched the screen and it flashed on the screen.

"Text Message from Alexia – You needed to do that on your own. Don't worry, I'm still here, I promise that I haven't left you. I'll be waiting in Mystic Falls." Damon stuck his head in the room as I turned the phone off.

"You coming?" he asked me.

"Yeah, let's go." I grabbed the cloth that was balled up next to the door, held it to my face and ran to the car. As we pulled away from the house I looked back watching it disappear behind me. I took a deep breath and blew it out. I was safe again…for now.