soulmark | e.mikaelson (revised)

i love you since diapers

KATHERINE ALWAYS LIKED THE MYTH OF ICARUS, son of Daedalus, the architect of the Labyrinth of Crete. When King Minos trapped them both in the very warren his father created, thus marked the journey of wax, ambition, and flight. When he fell, with his wax wings melting from the heat of the sun, Icarus died with a smile on his face. When Katerina died, burned from the warmth of her own life, her trust, Katherine smiled at the birth of her freedom.

"What's so important with that stupid rock, anyway?" Alyssandra muttered angrily, "How can something so tiny cause this much trouble?"

Her doppelgänger is so much like her, Katerina. She's got her fun, her hair, and her naivete. It crushed her, Katherine, to find out that's probably why he liked her so much. Katherine could lie and say what she was about to do was nothing personal, but it simply wasn't. Alyssandra was everything she was and wasn't.

So she smiles, "Aren't you one to talk, little bird?"

"Aren't you one to talk?" Aly throws back, a playful smirk on her lips. She believes in her, for some reason. Aly thinks there's a part of her that's still worth something. While she's right, Katherine just knows they don't mean it the same way.

Her double looked back and around them, eyeing everyone at the Masquerade with distrust before she lured Katherine to a secluded corner of the room. "If you could just let me see it for one day," she said quietly. "Maybe I could find a way to replicate the moonstone and its effects, that way you could gain favor from both vampires and werewolves. No one would dare to mess with you if you're the reason for their salvation. I promise, Katherine, it'll only be for a day and you could have it back."

Katherine knows she's lying- or maybe she wasn't. She's a lot like her soulmate that way, finding her way around pretty words and praises. They both mean well, though he only ever tries to be good. They're both stupidly naive to think this could end well for everyone involved, though he never really tries hard enough for it to happen. For those reasons alone, Katherine feels justified with handing Alyssandra over to Elijah on a silver platter.

She'll watch as Aly inevitably pretends to be Elena during the sacrifice- because there's no way she'll let her sister die and there's no way Elijah wouldn't kill his brother. It's the best payback she could do, the sweetest one after he broke her heart and killed her. For making her believe for the past 500 years that when Elijah looked at her, in those moments when she loved him, it wasn't just an echo of somebody else he loved he saw, that there wasn't someone else etched in her face and soul.

She took pity over her doppelgänger's ignorance, anyway. "You can't," she said. "The moonstone is what binds the curse, the sacrifice is what breaks it."

Alyssandra stiffened. "Sacrifice?"

"Does your little scooby-doo gang know you're talking to me?" Katherine changed the subject. "I'm surprised Damon hasn't locked you up in a tower."

"He doesn't have to know everything I do," Aly answered automatically, way too quickly. Interesting. "What do you mean sacrifice? I can help you, Katherine. Things don't have to be this way."

"The sacrifice requires a witch, a werewolf, a vampire, and the doppelgänger. Or in this case, a doppelgänger." Katherine forced her grimace into a nasty smile, "Oh, Aly. The world's been this way since before you were a thought in the world."

Later on, when Elena comes home from the abandoned plantation, bleeding, wide-eyed and too shocked to speak. Katherine's smile becomes real.