❝temporary truce❞ 

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN KATHERINE'S STAYING WITH YOU NOW?"

Caroline's incredulous tone is practically screeched through the phone, and Damon pulls his phone away from his ear with a wince. "You just said what I mean. It's all part of Klaus's plan apparently, and I really can't bother him right now, he's got some precious cargo of mine."

"Okay, well, what am I supposed to do about this girl's night thing?" Caroline lowers her voice to a whisper, hearing the girls talking just down the hall in Elena's kitchen. "Jenna's here now, and they're all so mopey."

Damon grimaces at the thought of dealing with a group of emotional teens. "I don't know, cause a distraction."

"What?" Caroline yells, but immediately lowers her voice again as she remembers her current situation. "How am I supposed to cause a distraction when there's five of us? That'd be too obvious."

"I don't know, Caroline, figure it out. I don't trust Katherine enough to leave her in my house alone, and my lovely friends are out for the night. I need you to check on Ric and make sure my compulsion worked and he's not blabbing his mouth to anyone, so do what you have to."

Caroline is silent for a moment, and breaks it with a heaving sigh. "There's live music at the Grill tonight. I can probably convince them to go. I'm sure Ric is there, too."

"Sounds wonderful– oh, and if you run into Stefan, try not to make yourself seem suspicious. He's catching on, and I can't exactly compel his silence."

The blonde vampire scoffs. "Anything else? Maybe I could run to Egypt and back for you if it's on the agenda tonight."

Damon smirks at her sarcasm, and looks at Katherine out of the corner of his eye warily. "Not tonight, Barbie, but maybe tomorrow if we can pencil it in."

"Goodbye, Damon."

Damon hangs up the call and carelessly tosses his phone on the kitchen counter, immediately coming face to face with the smirking doppelgänger stuck in his house. He rolls his eyes and claps his hands down on her shoulders, forcibly moving her out of his path.

"So, I guess I made the right decision to turn Caroline into a vampire. Once again, Katherine's right before anyone else recognizes her genius."

Damon rolls his eyes upwards, glancing to the ceiling and silently cursing whatever karma this torture was for. "Sure, Katherine, whatever you want to tell yourself,"

"Admit it, Damon, almost all of my quote unquote, "wrongdoings", end up being for the better. You're all just so caught up in emotions, and what other people will do if you kill their best friend. It's exhausting." She groans dramatically, and Damon resists the urge to flick her forehead, just to bother her.

"Is that what you think?" Damon scoffs, leaning his elbows on the counter to look at Katherine, who mirrors his position on the other side of the island. "Do you even remember the last few centuries, Katherine? You had a thing for brothers, oddly enough, and you killed my wife thinking that you could have a chance with me." 

Katherine rolls her eyes, but the glint in Damon's eyes is an atonement to his sarcastic, but truthful words. "When are you going to get over that? What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry?" Katherine shrugs, her hands slapping her jean-clad thighs as she looks to the vampire, exhaustion in her dark brown eyes. "I'm sorry, Damon. It was immature of me to do, and I was acting out of jealousy."

Damon's silent for a moment, and his eyes have long since left Katherine. It makes her fidget uncomfortably, a moment of vulnerability for the doppelgänger that she doesn't quite know how to feel about.

She didn't think she'd mean her apology, really. For the longest time she wasn't sorry about it, in fact, she tried hard not to think about Rosemary after she fled Mystic Falls and left the Salvatore brothers with the impression she was in the tomb beneath the church.

When she first came back to Mystic Falls last year, she'd seen the damage she'd done firsthand.

She'd returned to see if she still had the power she once had over Stefan, and perhaps finally get Damon to come around. But when she realized that Stefan was disgustingly in love with her wretched doppelgänger, and Damon's obvious hatred for his brother and Elena, she realized what she'd done to the raven haired vampire.

Sure, she might've actually had feelings for him in 1864, but it had all become a game to her. She'd been dead so long she'd long since lost her touch with humanity, and when she recognized that, she recognized the fact that she'd taken Damon's only chance at humanity from him before he was even a vampire.

She remembers Rosemary down to the last detail, still. It's somewhat of a curse, she supposes. When you want to take down a few people, you learn to remember the faces just in case they come back to haunt you. She'd never admit it out loud, but Rosemary has haunted her some days.

When she thought about her brief visit to Mystic Falls in 1864, she remembers seeing Rosemary and Stefan share inside jokes only they got, and when her parents died, Stefan stood next to her while they were buried because Damon was off in the war. And when Damon came back with a ring and a smile, she felt alarmingly alone. No matter how much she loved Stefan, she realized she wouldn't ever have what Damon and Rosemary had. She couldn't have it.

She'd never be able to have another child, or have a husband, or be able to stay with her family like they would've.

During their wedding, Katherine had been so irrationally angry at the love being displayed that she could barely contain it. As terrible as it sounds, she barely stopped herself from killing Rosemary then and there.

It'd been long enough that she tried to forget about Rosemary and focus on her usual mayhem and her mischievous ways. But as soon as she saw Damon again, nearly two hundred years later, she realized that she ruined his immortal life. No matter if Stefan had acted irrationally amidst his own turmoil as a freshly turned vampire, but if Rosemary was still alive, she and Damon would've at least had one another to live forever with.

She never thought her feelings for Damon had been real, and she doesn't really have romantic feelings for him anymore, some of the things she says she just says to rile him up because it's fun. But Damon is the first person since she was turned to have the ability to make her feel guilty, and he doesn't even realize it.

It makes her uncomfortable. Katherine isn't a vulnerable person. She always has some sort of card to play, some sort of angle. She's never walking into a situation blind. But for the first time in forever, she feels like she has no idea what's going to come next.

And it terrifies her. Damon terrifies her.

Damon clears his throat, and it startles her out of her snowballing thought process. She looks at him, alarmed and fearful of his response to her apology. He'd most likely think she was lying.

The younger vampire looks unaffected, all things considered. She expected rage, perhaps a blow up and a few words along the lines of your apology means nothing because my wife is still dead. But instead she gets a smirk.

"Katherine."

She looks up from his quirking lips and meets his gaze. Swallowing, she clenches her jaw and lifts her chin, the bravado as false as it could be. "I mean it, Damon, alright? I'm sorry."

"I know."

"What?"

Damon huffs a short laugh at her immediate deflation, and the disappearance of her false confidence. "I know, Katherine. And if it'll make you stop talking about your feelings, I accept your apology."

Katherine raises a disbelieving eyebrow at him. "I don't want you to accept my apology if you don't actually want to. I mean, I killed your wife."

"I'm well aware," His smirk widens, his light eyes flashing bitterly. "I spent almost two centuries alone and miserable with occasional visits from uptight Originals. But recently I've been told some things that have provided some much needed clarity,"

Damon steps around the counter, approaching Katherine as she eyes him warily. "You see, I know a secret of yours,"

The words automatically make Katherine's eyes widen. She has many secrets, and all of them are pretty much detrimental to her life, which is why they stay secret. Anyone who finds out usually ends up dead, but she can't kill Damon.

"I know about Rosemary," Damon smiles, as if his words aren't giving her undead heart palpitations right now. "It took a little bit of time, but I put two and two together eventually. Once Elijah told me that Rosemary was still alive, and that the only reason she'd not been able to come home was because of you, I realized that you've known all along that she didn't die, she was turned."

Gone is Damon's smirk, and in its place is a glare that makes Katherine take a step away from him. "Damon, I–"

"I meant it, Katherine. I forgive you for killing her, because she didn't die. She's been living with the most dangerous, if not the most violent family for the past two hundred years, and they just so happen to be very good friends of mine. And you've known all along, which is why you've been running all this time. We both know you're smart enough to outsmart Klaus again, it didn't take much the first time, after all. But if Rosemary found you first, you'd be dead before Klaus even knew about it."

Damon takes a step towards her, closing the gap she'd put between them. Before she can stop him, his hand shoots out and wraps around her throat, and he lifts her off the ground with a deathly tight grip shutting her airways. Her feet scramble for the ground, but all she can do is look into Damon's rage-filled eyes.

"My wife is coming home, Katherine. And you'll do nothing to jeopardize that again, or I'll kill you before anyone else gets the chance to. Got it?"

Katherine chokes out an agreement, and Damon releases his grip on her throat and drops her back down to the ground. She reaches for her healing skin, taking in gulps of air as she regains her equilibrium.

"Consider this a temporary truce, for now."

"Is that how you start on good terms with everyone in your life?" She stands up straight and glares at Damon, who's smirking again.

"No, just bitchy vampires with backstabbing tendencies. And I never said we were on good terms. Just at a stalemate, for the time being." He turns quickly, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

Katherine silently watches him go. She grabs at her healed throat nervously, and lets out a shaky sigh as she realizes the depth of Damon's loyalty to the Originals, and his willingness to kill Elena, and perhaps even Stefan.

He was right, she tells herself. He's been just as dangerous as the Originals the entire time. She'd just been too stupid to realize it.

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author's note; i swear i'm not trying to push off their reunion,, it will happen soon  

edited and published; 6.12.22.

- liz