❝it's all coming back to me now❞

HER HEART HASN'T SETTLED. Though her body feels warm and she feels right, her heart hasn't stopped pounding since she laid her eyes on him last night. She's sure it's a dream, even if the world is moving on around her.

Damon refused to let her out of his sight, even as they returned to the boarding house and secluded themselves in his room for the evening. For hours they laid in the bed and talked, never letting go of one another as they revisited their lives without each other. And though a few hours wouldn't make up for the lost time, it was enough to reassure each other that no matter how much time passed between them, they were still irrevocably in love with one another.

Even now, they could barely stand a two foot distance from one another as she started a pot of coffee and he sat at the counter, smiling at her milling about in his kitchen.

"Where's the silverware?"

"The drawer to the left of the stove." He points to it, and she gives him a wink as she slides it open and grabs a spoon.

Rosemary turns around to ask him another question, but he cuts her off before she can speak. "Sugar is in that cabinet," He points to one of the silver-knobbed cupboard doors, and she nods gratefully at him while grabbing the container of sugar off a shelf.

She's wrapped in a robe she stole off the back of his door, and has a pair of her own slippers on her feet. Damon's dressed for the day, but they're in no rush, no matter the chaos they'll eventually have to face.

"Damon, if you tell me that you still drink your coffee with no sugar in it after all these years, I might cry again."

He huffs a laugh at her dramatics, and she rolls her eyes at him, but gets a mug down for him anyways. "It's just fine without sugar, you just have a deadly sweet tooth."

"I have an appreciation for the sweeter things in life," She shrugs, popping a fresh red strawberry from the assorted fruit bowl into her mouth with a pointed smirk. "It's an acquired taste."

Damon smirks and leans over the counter as she grabs another strawberry. "Well, I have an appreciation for one sweet thing in life, and it's not strawberries." He winks at her as he bites the fruit from her fingers, and swiftly kisses her chin, making it sticky with strawberry.

She rolls her eyes at him as she wipes her chin off, but there's a smile on her face that indicates she's happy, even with his teasing. "Klaus will want us to be there today. He's supposed to be getting his body back."

Damon stretches, standing from his seat to come around the counter and wrap his arm around Rosemary's waist. "It'll be nice to see his ugly mug again after all these years."

"Trust me, he's still an egotistical ass, you haven't missed much." She smirks and lifts herself onto the counter, letting Damon slot himself between her knees.

"Damon, if you drank all the coffee, I'm switching your shampoo with liquid vervain."

The familiar voice startles the couple, and Damon's eyes widen as his wife eyes Katherine's sleep-heavy figure standing in the kitchen. He waits tensely for Katherine to open her eyes and notice before Rosemary does anything, but the doppelgänger remains happily ignorant as she grabs a mug from the cabinet and reaches for the fresh coffee.

Katherine pours herself a cup of coffee and immediately takes a huge swig off of it, wincing at the way it burns her tongue, then relishing in the immediate relief of the bitter liquid. Her brown eyes peer at the counter beside her, "Damon, why are there two mugs–"

Her grip on her cup falters and the mug shatters as it hits the floor, her jaw is dropped humorously low. "Oh–"

"Good morning, Katherine," Rosemary smiles sweetly, and Damon narrows his eyes when he sees the honesty behind it. He was expecting a stake to the heart at Katherine's mere presence, and a long winded conversation about why she was currently in his house.

"Rosemary, you're–"

"Here? Alive?" She pops a blueberry from the fruit bowl into her mouth. "Take your pick."

Katherine shakes the rest of the sleep from her body and takes a step backwards, a shaky smile on her face. "It's, uh, it's been a while, Rosemary. I really wasn't expecting to see you here so soon."

"I wasn't either," She sighs, giving Damon a brief smile of his own that he reciprocated. "And you can stop trying to figure an escape plan, I'm not going to kill you, Katherine."

"What?"

Rosemary huffs amusedly when her husband, and the doppelgänger echo the question in simultaneous disbelief. "I'm not going to kill you, Katherine. As pissed off as I was, I realize there'd be no point in it now, not when you're expecting it the most."

Katherine tenses further, and Damon watches the interaction closely.

"But," Rosemary interjects, giving her a knowing smirk. "Whenever the day comes, if for any reason before that, you decide to go against any of us again, I will use your entrails as Christmas decorations on the front lawn, got it?"

Katherine swallows nervously. "Loud and clear."

"Wonderful," Rosemary grins, and pushes Damon away from her so she can jump down off the counter. "I'm going to take a shower."

Damon watches her go, his hand twitching with anxiety as she disappears down the hallway out of his sight.

Katherine sighs from behind him. "Aren't you gonna go with her?"

"Yeah, in a minute," Damon sighs, watching as she carefully picks up the shards of the mug she'd dropped. "You want some help?"

"No," She shakes her head, refusing to meet his eye. "No, go enjoy your morning with Rosemary, I got this."

Damon hesitates, but he eventually nods, more than happy to take the disimissal as the obvious deflection it was, so long as it means he can see Rosemary again.

Katherine picks up the mess in silence, and blinks rapidly as her vision goes blurry.

"Katherine, what's wrong?"

She rears back from the puddle of coffee on the floor, shaking her head at Rose's question. "It's nothing, Rose, I promise–"

"Katherine, you're crying."

Katherine stops, dropping the pieces of ceramic to press her fingers to her cheeks that she realizes are suddenly damp. "W–What? Why am I–?"

Rose grabs her hands that she didn't realize had been trembling. Katherine grunts, but doesn't try to take her hands away from her.

"Tell me why you're acting like you've seen a ghost,"

"Because I have, Rose!" She whisper-yells at him, and she narrows her eyes at her words. "I just– I saw Damon with– with Rosemary. His wife. And I just– I feel awful."

A degree of realization flashes over Rose's face and she loosens her grip on Katherine's wrists slightly.

"Katherine, don't you think that if she truly wanted revenge, she'd have let Elijah bring you here in the first place? She is the one who told Klaus to save my life, it's not like she doesn't have sway with their decisions."

"But s–she said! She said she would one day," She rips her hands from Rose's grip and stands up, rushing to the other side of the counter to put distance between them. "I ruined their lives, Rose, and it's not fair that they migh be able to just move on and possibly forgive me for it. Or at least let me live. I don't deserve to live here, and I shouldn't be cheating death again— it's what I deserve at this point."

"Yes, it is."

Katherine's eyes dart to Elijah, who appears in the doorway of the kitchen suddenly. Her heart drops at his words, and she figures that this is the end. Perhaps this is what they've had planned this whole time– get her to feel even an ounce of guilt and remorse over the things she's done and then make her pay for it. Backstab her one last time, just as she's done to them so many times.

"You don't deserve any of the things we've done for you, but that's not why we did them for you. We've not been wasting our time keeping you alive, or keeping you as prisoner here. We took advantage of your selfishness, and saw the truth behind your actions,"

Elijah stepped foward, shaking his head in an almost scolding manner. "The truth being that you are so terrified of dying, and so filled with guilt, that you will kill before you are killed, and do anything to get someone to forgive you."

Katherine feels her face crumple as a tear falls down her cheek, and for the first time in nearly five hundred years, she feels her heart skip a beat, and lets herself feel the pain she's staved off for five centuries.

Rose catches her before she falls, and the doppelgänger clings to her as she sobs, mumbling broken apologies between her hysterics.

She rubs a hand up and down Katherine's back, and looks over her shoulder at Elijah, who's observing the scene with a distantly sympathetic look.

"Katherine," Rose pulls her away for a moment, making the girl meet her eyes. "Look at me, dear."

Katherine swallows around the concrete lump in her throat. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry,"

"Katherine," Rose raises her voice slightly, and it catches the woman's attention quickly. "If you ever want to truly earn forgiveness, and perhaps even survive all of this, then you have to mean it. And you have to prove you mean it."

Katherine nods and Rose releases her as she relaxes, catching her breath on the tiled floor of the kitchen, the morning sun shining through the window onto her skin.

"It won't be easy, but if you ever want to have a genuine friend in all of this, you must try. I can't promise forgiveness from Rosemary or Damon, but I'm sure there's someone you can start with." Rose glances over her shoulder at Elijah, and then back to the vampire. "And if you can prove that you're even willing to try, whether you get forgiven or not, you'll earn some respect in my books."

She doesn't know if it's the warmth of the sun that comforts her, or the warmth of Rose's words that satiates the hole in her empty heart for the first time in a long time. Either way, it feels nice. It feels like the beginning of something new for her.

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡

author's note; the smallest of character development for katherine

edited and published; 11.10.22.

- liz