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[ katherine's gaze softens. where she had expected him to rip her palm from his cheek, he merely holds it. it's strange, to see the boy he used to be, the one he no doubt is with elena; she's grown harder than before, constructed walls so impossibly tall, to ensure that boys like him don't ever cause the fall of girls like her. ]

[ she's so used to fighting him, tooth and nail, strength to strength, but it's here that she's not quite sure who folds first: is it her, or him? ]

[ she tilts her head to the side, her eyebrow arching slightly. ] Why, Stefan? Why ask a question you won't like the answer to?

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[ personally, katherine is quite bored of this conversation. it cycles in and out, like fashion. while a fan, she isn't one of this why? why not? they dance to. stefan continues to step on her feet and she tries to lead; they push and bump and stumble over one another, often with disastrous results. ]

[ but she knows they'll never quite break out of the cycle — he trusts her not and she trusts him too little. but katherine is tired of fighting a stone wall, one that had once appeared warm, but is now freezing to her touch. ]

[ — and she wants to get rid of her virtual cow. ]

[ her lip curls up: ] Only one of us is miserable.

[ and it certainly isn't her. katherine is as content as one can be when a fugitive. she lives her life the way she wishes to, albeit, she would change a few things around, shift the way the universe deals out her cards, but, nonetheless, katherine pierce does as she has always wanted. she has never been miserable in her immortal life. annoyed, desperate, hurt, loved, and scared, but never miserable. ]

Ask me what you really want, Stefan. And you'll get your inconvenient truth.

[ There is a slight moment where he lingers on the verge of refusal, of calling it quits as he always invariably does. Like a caged animal, he is eager to escape the spotlight of confrontation and slink back in the corners, safely out of reach. It wouldn't be hard now -- she isn't so intently using her strength against him. He could take advantage of her annoyance as he always does to regain the upper hand, distract her just long enough to push free and make his great escape.

But it slips out before he can quite stop it. The question never meant for her ears. The question he's never acknowledged needing an answer to until just now. Spoken in a tiny voice, a boy's voice. Vulnerable and not entirely certain of itself. ]

Why didn't you come back for me?

[ katherine pauses, looking down at stefan, eyes roaming over his face, stunned. ]

[ then, katherine moves off of him within a blink of an eye, as if repelled, flinching at the idea of — she didn't leave him behind. she came back for him. she didn't return to the place where he lay, bleeding and dying, for her own selfish gain; she came for him, out of selflessness and love, to give him one last gift before she had to recommence her run. ]

[ she almost curls in on herself at the wall of her house. her back presses tightly up against it, stiff, almost as if he were trying to corner her using vervain. she cannot be near him; for all her bravado and strength, this is one thing that katherine pierce cannot successfully run away from. the truth. because it wasn't katherine pierce, the layered and impenetrable wall, that had returned for stefan that night; it'd been the girl, katerina, locked inside that prison, who had temporarily escaped and ran back to him. ]

[ she looks at him as if she's never quite seen him before — and perhaps she hasn't. is this where all of his hatred lies for her? at the notion that she used him, as if a toy, and discarded him the moment she had to make her escape? he died for love, she hadn't been lying when she had said that, but she had returned for him with a promise. ]

I came back for you, Stefan. [ there's a pause that lasts for a century. ] I came back.

[ The weight of her unexpectedly vanishes from off of his chest but he continues to lay there as though pinned down to the floorboards by some invisible force. He doesn't have to turn his head and look to know that she is still in the room with him; he can hear the stolen blood as it struggles to pump through her narrowing veins, smell the heady scent of her all-too-familiar perfume concentrated just a few feet away from him. ]

I spent so long blaming myself for your death. Damon's hatred of me never even came close to touching what I felt deep down inside for myself. And yet all this time, all these years that you were secretly alive, you never even once thought that we deserved to know about it.

And have Klaus come after you for me? I did it to protect you, Stefan.

[ yes, and no. if stefan had known she was alive, then her cover story of being dead for almost five hundred years would've been null and void. she knew that somehow, in some way, klaus would've caught wind of her lie. it wasn't that she hadn't trusted stefan, it was that she hadn't trusted those around him or herself. she had faked her death in order to give herself a fighting chance — and, in some ways, stefan, too. ]

[ she hadn't wanted stefan to be used as a bargaining chip against her. it had been better that he had thought her to be dead, for him to move on with his life, for her to keep a watchful eye on him. distance had made one heart grow fonder while another bitter; but it was the distance that had kept them both alive. he doesn't see that. she doubts, with all that self-hatred clouding his sight, he ever will. ]

I would have done anything for you back then. Gone anywhere. Been anyone.

[ Whatever she would have asked for at that time, he would have given it gladly and without hesitation. An eternal life on the run was hardly ideal. But it would have been enough for him then, just to be with her.

Far better than waking up each day and trying to live with the guilt of having gotten her killed. ]

[ doesn't that just warm the cockles of her heart? but katherine hears the past tense. would have. been. gone. he's gone to her now; lost. ]

You wouldn't have been happy with a life like that. [ stefan salvatore had been a boy of simple things. the picket fence was an ideal she thinks would've stuck with him for a very long time. he had been naive and innocent, and that is what had drawn her to him, before she had uncovered what was underneath. and even then, knowing who he was, what had shaped him to be the boy he was then, katherine still knows that the life she lead after leaving him was one that he would have come to resent her for. ]

[ just like he did now. both required different moves, but both choices lead to the same destination. ] You weren't made for running.

[ her battles were not his. they were not pearl's. they were not anyone's. they were merely pawns on a chessboard, not major players. katherine had never wanted stefan to become a major player. ]

Maybe not. [ He isn't Damon -- he doesn't thrive off of chaos. This he can't deny. ]

I guess we'll never really know.

[ She assumes he's any happier now. There have been moments -- not insubstantial, even -- over the last odd century where he has managed to overcome the crippling guilt of his existence. But the shame for who he is, what he's become? That's never gone away, only been suppressed periodically. ]

But how was this any better? I hated you.

[ Speaking of past tense and all.

More and more he's beginning to realize the staggering extent to which he's been displacing all of his negative feelings about himself onto her. ]

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