All I Need (Vampire Diaries/Captain America Fanfic)

40. I Know Who You Really Are

Katherine was half-asleep, breathing softly and contently, when I stabbed her in the stomach with a piece of wood.

"Ahh!" she screamed. I dragged her by the hair across the floor and to the chair in the middle of the room. Using the ropes that I ripped off of her an hour earlier, I tied her to the chair. "What are you doing?" she asked.

I rooted around the cupboards, finding a stash of weapons and vervain in liquid form. Perfect. I dipped a stake in the vervain and used it to stab Katherine in the leg, taking pleasure in her scream.

"I was gonna kill you," I informed her. "But leaving you here to rot for the rest of your life seems like a much better option."

"If that was your plan," she grimaced, baring her teeth. "Why did you sleep with me?"

I bent over her, whispering in her ear. "Because you were easy."

I giggled to myself as I left the room, hearing her struggle and shout. Katherine Pierce deserved everything that came to her – death would be too kind.

...

Back in the lobby, Klaus was still waiting.

"Did you take care of Katerina?" he asked.

"Kind of," I admitted. "I didn't kill her, but I'm sure she's suffering."

He nodded, before glancing at me with a wry smile. "You do realize that you've been walking around with your dress unzipped?"

"What?" I asked, twisting around to see my faux-pas as he laughed. "Don't laugh! Help me!"

Still laughing, he stood up. Moving my hair out of the way, he slowly pulled up the zip on the dress, his fingers lingering at the nape of my neck for a few seconds longer than necessary.

"So... did you and Katherine just...?"

I turned and looked up at him. "It helped," I smiled. "I have no feelings for her, and she no longer has a hold over me."

"Would you have done that if you had your humanity on?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Probably not. Who cares?"

Klaus folded his arms, nodding to a couple of chairs in the corner of the hotel lobby. "Come with me."

I followed him. We sat opposite each other and he took a deep breath.

"Look, love. We've been having fun lately." I could tell that he felt uncomfortable, as I braced myself for whatever he was about to say. "But turning your humanity off was never supposed to be permanent."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you seriously gonna pretend that turning it off wasn't your idea?"

"I was trying to protect you, and it worked," he reminded me. "But we can't live like this forever. We can't ignore the fact that your demon is still out there."

"Don't say that word to me," I said, keeping my voice low. The best thing about having no humanity was that I was able to forget why I turned it off in the first place.

"Serena Salvatore, I've been alive for over 1,000 years and you're easily the strongest person I've ever known. Whoever, whatever this demon is, it can't defeat you."

"Is this because I slept with Katherine?" I asked, not giving him a chance to answer. "I totally get it. You made me turn off my humanity so that you could take down Marcel. And now that I've done something that you don't like, you want to get rid of me, right?"

"No," he said quickly.

"You know what Klaus," I started. "You might think I'm strong, but you're weak. For an immortal, you're the weakest person I've ever met. You've been around for 1,000 years, but somehow I'm the only person that can stand being around you."