𝐓𝐨 𝐒𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞

- - -
❝I'm a man of three fears
Integrity, faith and Crocodile tears
Trust me, darling, trust me, darling❞

Bad Liar
~ Imagine Dragons
- - -

Night was growing old as they went back to the Mystic Grill, like a bunch of jackals following their lion into a den for more meat. Suddenly, there was a cloud of darkness looming over Damon. A seriousness that he hadn't shown before, a threat of carrying through with all the misery he had promised his brother.

Stefan and Kat settled back down into the booth, opposite to Damon. He had dropped a bomb on them, taking their silence as stupefaction to drink his bourbon more smugly. Kat couldn't speak, possibilities racing through her mind like a scared mare in a jungle.

Bring her back?

There were only three options that could add sense to what he had said.

A. Damon had lost his mind

B. Damon found Kat and Caroline's old carboard truck and thought it was the time machine

C...

Kat didn't even want to think of option C. It was too preposterous, and it set her mind on fire.

The elder Salvatore purposely let the booth marinate in tense silence, much to Kat's frustration.

"Alright, I'll bite." she finally gritted out, "How are you going to bring your lover back?"

There it was. The smugness Damon had been sealing till then broke free as a smirk. His face was bare without it, but Kat couldn't help but want to slap it right off. She didn't have to play the good cop, not when Damon would use it against her. She had the power to make Damon scream like he was in a Victorian torture chamber, but Stefan's hand had been a warning resting on her wrist from the moment Damon had revealed a semblance of an agenda.

Damon gave in, leaning beyond his glass of bourbon to meet his gaze with theirs . "Before Katherine and the others were killed in the church, you remember what it was like in this town?"

"Bet my hat the answer doesn't start with happy and end with and feminist."

"Something like that. Townspeople were killing vampires one by one. When they came for Katherine, I went straight to Emily. I begged her, I'll do anything. Name your price. Just protect her." There was a new solemn glint in Damon's pale eyes, "...She did"

Stefan was in no state to speak, too struck with the myriad of possibilities.

Kat asked, "Protect her how?"

"She did some kind of spell with that ugly crystal. And while the church was burning, and we thought Katherine was burning in it, she wasn't..."

"But... But I saw her go inside," Stefan mumbled in shock.

"She did." Damon continued, "There's a tomb underneath the church. The spell sealed Katherine in that tomb, protecting her..."

The trio dove back into silence. Kat hated it. It was full of doubt, horrors dawning and old spined theories getting cracked in minds.

"You gotta spell it out for Smoldy. Because if it means what I think it means—"

"Is Katherine alive?" Stefan's grip on Kat's wrist was a death chokehold, cutting off her circulation. Though she was surprised her hand hadn't broken under the pressure, she didn't protest; Kat was sure her grip would have definitely done some serious damage if she was in Stefan's place.

"If that's what you wanna call it. She's been trapped in a mystical holding cell for all this time..." Damon's voice morphed into an icicle as he glared with no pretenses, "But you're an expert on starving a vampire, so how do you think she's doing, Stefan?"

"I think it's nothing a basket of curly fries and a beer wouldn't fix," Kat shivered.

"You better hope so, because the comet was more than a free night from school."

"What do you mean?" Stefan frowned.

"Did you know that witches can use celestial events to draw energy into their magic?" he shrugged, Kat realized that the question was rhetorical.

"I knew!"

"Oh please, no you didn't." Damon refuted with a roll of his eyes.

"I grew up in Sheila Bennett's library. You have no idea what I know."

Stopping an impending stare off between the two, Stefan gave a gentle pull to bring Kat back into her seat. She gave up with a glare.

"Anyway. In order to give the crystal its power, Emily used the comet that was passing overhead. And, in order for that crystal to work again..." Damon trailed off, leaving the rest for imagination as if Stefan's brain was working anymore.

Kat's palm found her face. She sighed, "You know you want to say it, just say it already."

"The comet had to return..."

"Why would Emily...? Why would she do this for you?" Stefan asked.

Kat frowned, "I know right, he's such a dick,"

"Emily helped me because she knew they were going to come for her too. In return for the spell, she made me promise that her lineage would survive."

Kat knew there was something other than Damon's nonexistent humanity stopping him from hurting Bonnie.

"The promise is the only thing keeping me from ripping that little Bonnie girl's throat out to get my crystal back. Oh well, a deal's a deal..." Damon pocketed the rest of his drink before offering the bottle to Stefan, "So, do you want another drink?"

Stefan probably would have cashed in on that offer, if only it wasn't for the shrill rings that vibrated in his pocket.

"It's Elena" he muttered, "Elena, what's wrong?"

Involuntarily, Damon and Kat could eavesdrop on the conversation. Supernatural hearing. Gotta love it.

"Emily is possessing her! Bonnie, Emily is possessing Bonnie!" Elena's voice was barely heard over the sound of shuffling, "She said something!"

"What did she say, Elena?" Kat butt in.

"She said 'I won't let him have it. It must be destroyed'. Those were her exact words. And then she just left!"

"Where do you think she went?"

"I don't know..." Elena paused for a moment, then bursting into realisation, "Fell's church! By the old cemetery that's where she took Bonnie in her dreams. We have to help her, Stefan! What do we do?!"

Kat gave a tight excusing smile to Stefan and snatched the phone out of his grip. "Listen Elena, just stay at home. We're gonna go find her and get her back safely."

When Stefan looked across the booth, the seat was empty, an abandoned bottle of bourbon greeting them with a liquorly.

"He did NOT." Kat growled. Stefan pulled her out faster than human, struggling to maintain their normality until they were out of the public eye.

"Oh no he did NOT."

Fell's Church

The woods were the scariest place that Kat could dream about when she was little. She hadn't realized it yet, but whenever she stepped foot into the vicinity, she had nightmares of hands crawling towards her. The clearings shelved one of her worst memories: the Falls party that caused the car crash, finding a bitten Vicki the very next year, Logan Fell almost gunning her down.

Kat was overcome with an overwhelming sense of stubbornness. She couldn't Bonnie be written as another one of the blood stories of the woods. She was going to be fine.

Kat stumbled out of her car, not caring if her dark blue Converse shoes slushed through the mud. Elena passed her by even more hurriedly.

"What did I tell you Elena?!"

They pull and push each other, finally stepping into the clearing right near the burned church where Damon was now hanging onto a tree branch... By his torso. The impaled brother did not look okay, Kat remembered that he hadn't touched a drop of human blood the whole day.

Stefan helped him down while Kat turned her gaze to her possessed friend in the dark. The Bonnie she knew had a softness in her eyes, humour and innocence that this Bonnie did not show. She was standing tall and cunning in the middle of an elaborate spell circle she had made on the ground. Flaming torches dotted the boundary, flickering shadows against the canopies. It was a morbid painting of brown against orange, their own story of desperation and secrets.

"Emily...." Stefan began.

"Stefan."

Bonnie's face looked completely bereft of feeling, her voice a monotone that made Kat's skull crawl. "These people don't deserve this. They should never have to know such evil—"

"What evil?"

Damon grunted and his steps dripped blood from his healing stomach as he neared the elaborate white pentagram on the ground. "Emily. I swear to God, I'll make you regret this—"

"You said them," Kat blurted. Emily's eyes flitted to hers. Kat felt a part of her heart shrink at the prediction that lingered in the cold air. "You said them, not her..."

Stefan shouted, "Them? What part of the story did you leave out, Damon?"

"What does it matter?"

Damon could only see Emily now. He didn't care about his promise, didn't even care about the consequences of hurting a young innocent girl like Bonnie.

"Emily..." Kat slowly stepped around the line of white salt. Her grip on Elena's wrist pinned her behind her back. "Tell me what you did Emily."

Responsibility was a heavy thing. It had the power to weigh one down for a lifetime. And Emily looked like she had borne it more than one lifetime.

"To save one, I had to save them all." the ghost's head lowered in defeat, "I saved everyone in the church."

No.

"With one, comes all"

A tomb full of desiccating bloodthirsty heirs of the night were literally six feet under Kat.

"I don't care about them." Damon spit, "I just want Katherine."

"This isn't about love at all, is it?" Kat didn't know when she let go of her sister and when she spanned the other side of the clearing to slam Damon back against a tree. "This is about your revenge. You bastard! You lied to me! Was it all for love or revenge? Answer me!"

He struggled against her chokehold, blood on his hands painting all over her neck and cheeks as he pawed to get away "The two aren't– m-mutually exclusive,"

Love often ended in tragedy. Shed blood, ripped hearts and broken bodies.

But love for Damon had always started with revenge. Shed blood, ripped hearts and broken bodies.

"So what do you want to do Damon huh? You want to unleash dozens of starved vampires onto the town and sit on a bloody throne?"

"Why not? They killed 27 people, and they called it a war battle. They deserve whatever they get! This town deserves this."

Stefan shouted, "They are innocent people Damon! They weren't there when we were killed! They did not cause Katherine's downfall. They don't deserve to di—"

"There is nothing innocent about these people. Don't think for a second it won't happen again. They already know too much," Damon gazed at the witch who held all his hopes in her hand, one amber crystal that had the power of a comet. "-and they'll burn your little grandwitch right next to us when they find out. Trust me."

The arguments were given a rest. The forest plunged into tense silence that settled like an agitated blanket of woe. Emily's eyes were narrowed, the similarity between her and Bonnie strikingly similar in their thoughtful anger. She was ready to do something, her hands gripping her crystal like her life depended on it.

Her peace might have been.

"Don't do this..." Damon begged. desperation shining clear in his eyes. He looked eerily emotional– human even.

Emily shook her head like an automaton, "I'm sorry. I can't free them. I won't. Incendia"

The crystal flew up into the sky with her command, melting right before their eyes. Kat could feel a strange pain in her chest. It rooted her to the ground and twisted her insides in a feeling she had only dreamed about.

"No!" Damon's scream was gut-wrenching. Wet anger stood on the brink of his eyes, glowing like the sun-kissed pond that rippled with helplessness.

The crystal necklace levitated farther than anyone could reach as Emily chanted violently. Kat whimpered in her tracks. Why did it burn! The soul-tearing sensation grew with every second of Emily's words. No one could enter the salt lined pentagram that put up an invisibleshield between them and Bonnie's body.

Stefan was flanking Damon, Elena flanking Kat and they all stood helplessly to watch upon.

The crystal burst into a million little shards with a final latin incantation. Kat slumped with relief. There was a bitter ash-like taste at the back of her throat that she bit back.

"Stay strong, Your Highness."

Emily bowed her head towards Kat before Bonnie's eyes grew white, her body immediately going limp against the wet mud at the center of the pentagram. The spirit of the old witch had left Bonnie's body, leaving her confused and terrified of the scene around her. It looked like a rip-off of an occult movie and she was smack dab in the middle of it all.

Once the flames around her dimmed, Damon snarled, rushing towards Bonnie with vengeance tearing out of his throat. Kat and Stefan ran just as he sank his fangs into Bonnie.

She screamed, clawing at him in pain just as he had when Kat choked him.

Kat ripped Damon off her friend. Her eyes burned with anger, the fire in her gut transferring to her hold as she plastered Damon to the tree. "Stay here! She did nothing to you! It's not Emily anymore. Damon!"

Stefan and Elena tried healing Bonnie with his blood while Kat tried her best to hold off the elder Salvatore.

"Damon! She's gone. Emily's gone! Stop it. Stop it!" she shouted. Her entire body was stuck to his. Kat realized that she was using her entire strength to put him in place.

His fight became weaker with every chance. Damon at last let go in defeat. The air was filled with Elena's cries of relief when Bonnie finally woke up. Kat heard Stefan's heart slow down while Bonnie's picked up.

Bonnie was alright, Kat convinced herself. Bonnie was safe and alive. She wasn't going to be written off another tragic story of the woods.

Kat would have gone and pulled her friend into a hug that was long overdue, but there was another presence that commandeered her attention. The grip that Damon was fighting off all this while had softened into a desperate plea of company. He clutched onto her arms like she was a life raft in the middle of a tornado-ridden ocean.

"It isn't fair," his whisper was an angry, helpless tremble against her neck. Wetness dripped from his eyes. Kat thought it marked the first drop of change. Grief would purify Damon and that would happen right in Kat's embrace.

"Damon..." she sighed.

"I-I just, I just can't lose her now. I can't! You hear me?" his grip was rough, his question aggressively patriotic. Katherine Pierce was his love, his life and his will to live. She was his devotion and now he was left worshipping someone he couldn't ever attain. "I will not have lost her after all I did. I'm going to fight! And I'm going to rip out the hearts of anyone who stops me! I-I will not have.... No, I can't!"

"Shh..."

Damon collapsed against her. He was hard to handle - a bundle of unresolved emotions with heightened sense as a bane that he often disguised as a boon.

Heartache was never meant for a heart this strong in its fragility.

Just like Damon's resolve for revenge had cracked under his desperate admissions, Kat felt something stir in her too.

Her resolve was cracking.

Resolve to hate him.

Damon didn't say anything after he let go of Kat. Neither did she. Watching him disappear into the shadows once again, she wistfully made her way back to her car. The passenger car door was left wide open, where Bonnie sat in the seat with Elena's jacket wrapped tightly over her shoulders. She wasn't shivering, thankfully. But her lips were ajar in shock. She was cowering from looking at Stefan.

"Bonnie?"

The Bennett's gaze on Kat was just as frightened as it was with Stefan and Damon.

"What happened to me?!" was the first thing Bonnie said to her. "I was at your house one moment and then the next...– Oh my God Kat! What happened to you?"

She remembered that Damon had gotten blood all over her neck and cheeks. Rubbing some off her face, Kat resisted her gag at the coppery stickiness. "It's nothing. How are you?! Are you healing?"

Like running your tongue over a dent in your gums, Bonnie's fingers run over the healing puncture wounds on the side of her neck. Her eyes widened, the craziness of the situation sinking in.

"He fed me his blood! After his brother bit me! What the heck is going on!"

Stefan tried to step forward, an explanation and apology surely on the tip of his tongue when both the Gilbert sisters stopped him.

"Bonnie, trust me." Elena sighed, "Stefan won't ever hurt you. He's a good person, okay? He helped you. He's my friend, and... I'll tell you everything. Just let's get you cleaned up, okay?"

"Is Kat one of them too? Does she have powers?"

Awkward silence is exchanged. They didn't even know what Kat was, to tell Bonnie. For all they knew, Kat Gilbert was Frankenstein's monster. Bonnie pinched her temples, starting her staggering journey towards Elena's car.

"Um... Can I be the one to tell her about me?" Kat asked.

Though Elena trusted her sister with her life, she had not come to terms with her powers yet. Elena was not going to let Kat go with them. Slowly, Elena gave a sheepish apology.

"Too many cooks Kat,"

Of course.

"Well... I'll tell her later then." she bargained, "It should come from me. You stay with her for the night, maybe she'll be better tomorrow."

Bonnie and Elena hugged, walking from Kat's car to Elena's arm in arm after a quick goodbye to Stefan. Soon, they were gone, the rumble of Elena's car leaving silence in its wake.

Kat, left behind from the duo, stole a look at Stefan. His secret too would have to be trusted with Bonnie now. She was too close to this mess to go into the fight blind. The night hadn't gone easy on him, and Kat was concerned about what was going on in his mind.

They looked at the remnants of Emily's pentagram, some of the torches still flickering dimly. She walked around the lines, tiptoeing around the facts that were burnt into her mind.

"Emily thinks I'm royalty?" she blew out the first torch.

Stefan followed her, hands in his pockets and gaze trained to the ground. "I don't know..."

"You think she's still here somewhere?"

"I don't know..."

"I think I can feel the magic in the air, you know? When she was burning that crystal, I think I felt it."

"I don't know..."

"You think Barbie dolls set false standards of beauty?"

"I don't kno—"

He paused, his eyes finally finding hers over the smoke of the last torch. Despite the smudged blood on her chin and mud on her shirt, Kat sported a cracked face. Titled and posing like a misfit cartoon character, her lips were puckered to the side and her eyeballs rotated towards her nose.

Stefan gave out a loud peal of laughter.

He fell to the ground with Kat, his face never leaving his palms as he let out all bottled up hysteria from right beside her, a loud synchronised cacophony of cackles.

They poured out their admissions, each one followed by more laughter and an occasional throw of salt from the ground.

"Emily destroyed the crystal!"

Laughter.

"Bonnie was possessed in the woods!"

"Damon hung from a tree!"

Some more grass plucked out, rolling around with their stomachs clutched.

"I am literally walking all over your ex!"

"HAHAHAA!"

She fell against him, missing his shoulder and directly hitting her head to his lap. She found it so cosmically funny. All this while she thought her sister was the only competition in town that mattered to get Stefan. And then Stefan's vindictive dead vampire ex was so conveniently right in town, though quite very much alive and quite literally out for blood, more so than Elena if she ever knew about Kat's feelings.

They didn't realize how many minutes passed until they laughed their lungs out. But eventually, the mirth did fade and they were left with tears in their eyes, a heaviness in their guts and some inexplicable tenseness in the air.

Kat pulled herself up from his lap, her hands pawing for her cap on the ground.

"So..."

Stefan rocked back and forth on the ground. His knees were pulled up to his chest, legs crossed at the ankles as he played with the flame of a lighter in his hand.

"What a night."

"Yeah!" Kat chuckled.

What else were you supposed to say to a boy still hurting over his ex as he keeps his brother's secrets from the entire world?

"Okay, I don't know how to ask because I know you're not in the most zen of places. But I need to know some things. I suck at picking up silent cues so I need you to spell some things out for me okay Stefan? You can tell me if you don't want to answer my questions because I'm not going to force you. I'll be totally okay with it. Of course I would be 'cause you know you're my best friend and I mean I-I wouldn't—"

"Vivi," his hand was soft and reassuring on her shoulder. "What things?"

"If you ever had a chance to open the tomb we're sitting on right now... Would you?"

She screwed her eyes shut the moment she finished her first question. It was too invasive, wasn't it not? Bad, bad. Stupid! Who the hell would ask that question right now?!

Like with everything he did, Stefan surprised Kat by answering. He licked his lips, "I don't know Viv. I... I just don't know? She sinned my life, she lured me into living a life with no end. But if she got stuck there because she loved Damon and me, isn't it cruel to want her to stay right there?" Stefan took a deep calming breath. "Now there's no way of opening the tomb, so we'll never know."

"Yeah... We'll never know."

"What was the other question?"

"You're going to laugh,"

"No I won't." he insisted.

She felt silly for having to ask. Humans were supposed to know how to communicate at the back of their hand, but there she was, still unable to figure out if Stefan really wanted her near him when his past kept surfacing.

"Do you need space from me?"

He frowned, scoffing, "What?"

Stupid stupid stupid.

"When did I say that?"

"Y-You don't. That's the reason I'm asking now!"

"Well I don't want any space okay? I'm not pushing you away."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder promptly. It was a feeling she missed, like a plant holding onto dry soil with the desperate memory of water through its roots. Stefan's assurance calmed the ripples in her tumultuous mind. She leaned into his arm.

"If you ever get tired of me throwing unnecessary sarcasm around, just tell me okay?"

He straightens her falling hat with a quiet hum. "I don't think I'd ever get tired of that... But I promise I'll tell you if that day comes."

"When," she corrected.

"If."

"When."

"If."

"Fine, if."

Maybe there was one good memory she had in these woods.

irene's corner

If Stiles Stilinski and Lexie Grey
had a baby, it's Kat Gilbert.

I said what I said.
Comment here if you agree.

If you disagree, comment here and
tell me whose baby she seems to be.