“What?” Stefan said when words failed to leave both Damon and my mouths. She was still staring at me.
“I can’t believe it. How is this possible?” she said to herself. I was at loss. What was she TALKING about? Stefan slowly walked towards her and knelt beside her.
“Katherine, we need you to tell us. What are you talking about? How is Elena…you?” he asked gently. She seemed to calm down and she walked over to the bar. She shakily poured herself a large neat vodka and downed it. She slammed the glass down and stared at the fire.
“A few years before I came to Mystic Falls in 1864, Emily and I were travelling in North Carolina. We had a run in with some idiotic young vampires who were impossibly strong. They were three men and they got…obsessed with me. To tell you the truth, I was scared of them. For some reason they were stronger than me - an older vampire. I fought them off but only just managed to survive. One of them was amazing at tracking, and they all followed me. Emily couldn’t kill them, even though her magic was powerful. It seemed as though they had some sort of protection charm keeping them safe. Eventually we thought we’d lost them, and Emily told me that she could help me get away from them by leading them off my scent. I asked her how, and she said it was dangerous.” She looked away from the fire. Damon, Stefan and I were listening intently. Where was this strange story going? How did it link to me? She continued.
“I told her I’d do anything to get them off my back. So she set up a ritual. It involved removing part of my soul and locking it away. That part would be used to lure the vampires away and leave me free to escape. I lay on a cold stone floor whilst Emily prepared the spell. Then she chanted and I felt as though I was dying. Like part of me was being ripped out. Which it was. The part of my soul which Emily used…was my humanity.” She whispered the last word. I suddenly felt a twang of sympathy for Katherine. She had had to lose her humanity to save herself from being attacked and possibly dying.
“You have no…humanity?” Damon choked. She looked at him sadly and nodded slowly. “Which means that you’re not capable of sympathy or kindness or…love?” He glanced away. “You never loved me. Not even in 1864. You couldn’t…” She was suddenly at his side and holding his chin in her hand. She looked him dead in the eyes.
“I tried Damon. I tried so hard to love you. I wanted to, terribly. I knew that my humanity would have loved you more than you can ever know. And my humanity does, I see…” And she looked at me. Damon gasped. Stefan gasped. I gasped. I was Katherine’s humanity.