A Little Less Conversation

Chapter Three:

Dancing

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from The Vampire Diaries or The Originals. If I did, well, there would be an epic shift where Elena had much better character development and storylines, Katherine would come back from the dead, Elijah would actually remember her on TO and then Katherine would go down to New Orleans and take over everything like the Magnificent Bastard that she is. Anyway, just a little one-shot that I got inspired to write from watching Elijah and Gia training and fighting with all that sexual tension on TO. Elijah is still my favorite Original. And he really does have a type, doesn't he? Dark-haired girls, usually with dark eyes and olive-colored skin.

At least we got the fact that Elijah has only ever been in love with Tatia and Katerina/Katherine as canon.

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"You up for a bit of sparring?" Elijah surprises her one morning, about a week after the Diner and the night that follows. They have moved on to a safe house that Katherine had set up in Kansas. It's a remote spit of land in the middle of nowhere; just them and the wind and the long, waving grasses.

There's a twinkle in Elijah's eye, a gleam of mischief that makes him suddenly look like a little boy and not like the 1,000 year old sophisticated vampire king that he is. Or like the solemn, dutiful little boy that she knows he was in actuality.

Katherine raises an eyebrow back at him. It wouldn't do to let him know that he looks adorable with that puppy-dog look on his face. "Excuse me?" she asks. She's dressed to kill. Or go out. Either one really. Her new boots look perfect with her dark jacket, her shirt is low enough to show off her assets without looking trashy, and her hair has been curled into perfect ringlets. She waves at herself. "I have no intention of ruining all this perfection, thank you very much."

At his slightly disappointed look she adds, "Besides, there's no way you could take me." And she knows that there's challenge and defiance in her eyes and that she's smirking, because Elijah's absolutely delighted expression – that's somehow still surprised – tells her so.

She drops her bag on the counter and heads outside, the wind tangling her hair in an instant, but she doesn't really mind even though she heaves a long-suffering sigh at him.

She turns around about a hundred feet from the house to face her sparring partner, and her breath catches a bit. Elijah had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He'd also unbutton the top of his shirt, revealing some of the tattoos that crisscrossed his body. Katherine loved his tattoos. She loved how all of them meant something deeply personal to him, and she was determined to ask him about every single one of them. She especially loved the fact that underneath all of Elijah's fashionable, stoic and gentlemanly exterior, he was wild and untamed on the inside.

It was the opposite for her. Underneath all of Katherine's wild and untamed exterior, her snark and her sass and her defiance, her utter disregard for anyone but herself, there was a wellspring of control. Katherine had always been able to keep a strong rein on her vampire…..challenges. She had killed someone through bloodlust once, during her very first year, and after that she had taught herself to handle it.

A bit like how Stefan's and Elena's little blonde friend, Caroline, was so good at managing her urges. Even when she was starving, Katherine would not take a life unless she wanted to. She wasn't controlled by the almost overwhelming urges that came her way.

Katherine suspected that all of Elijah's suits and manners and Code were an attempt to help him do the same.

She wondered if her wildness and her control were the things that drew him to her. And not just the fact that she wore a dead woman's face. She hoped so at least, but she had no intention of ever asking him.

Katherine Pierce didn't admit to insecurities.

"Enough daydreaming," Elijah chided her. "Constant vigilance!" And he threw a punch at her which she dodged effortlessly. "Are you sure you want to fight in those heels?"

"I'm a vampire," Katherine reminded him. "I can fight in anything!" She ducked under a right hook from Elijah, and then used his momentum to grab his forward-moving arm, press downwards on the shoulder muscle to bend his entire body forward, pulled him backwards while he was still reeling, moved back under his arm to his front, while twisting her own body so that her elbow – the hardest part of the human body – slammed into his face. She grabbed his shirt, brought his head down to her knee and bashed them together, and then – as he stumbled backwards – jumped up and kicked him in the face.

Elijah didn't make a sound, but he fell back a couple of steps and tried to clear the ringing from his head and the blood from his nose. "Where did you learn that?" he asked, sounding both miffed and grudgingly impressed.

Katherine was smug – although she kept a vary eye on her lover/former enemy. "It's been five hundred years, Elijah. I've learned a lot of things"

Elijah was healed already and now they circled one another. The wind blew through Katherine's hair and she watched Elijah get distracted by it. "Don't let emotion cloud your judgment, Elijah!" she cried, darting in and punching him right in the solar plexus. She darted out again, unwilling to let him get a hold on her.

Elijah coughed a bit, and stood back up. "Whereas you never let emotion cloud any of your actions, Katerina," he said. "Fighting is like dancing. There's a melody to it, and you have to feel each individual beat and step." He blurred towards her and attempted to get her in a choke hold, but she anticipated this, spun around to his back, kicked the back of his knee and then rammed her elbow into the back of his head, watching with satisfaction as he stumbled forwards.

"No," she disagreed, "fighting is like a chase, like a game. The person who lasts the longest wins, and so you have to catch me, because I do not tire."

Elijah spun around at these words, his eyes widening as he recognized them as an echo of ones that young Katerina Petrova had said to him five hundred years ago as he ran after her in the gardens of the Mikaelson Manor in England. "But then the game will be over," he whispered.

For the first time Katherine smiled at him without a hint of mockery on her lips of in her eyes. It was a beautiful smile, somehow tender, and Elijah's breath caught. She's still Katerina, he thought, and for the first time he really believed it. He felt a rush of something he had not felt in many, many centuries flow through him. Her smile was similar to Tatia's, but somehow so very different. Katerina's smile had been innocent and hopeful and brave, and somehow wise. Katherine's smile was all of those things, but there was an understanding in her gaze – of him – that had never been there before. There was also a darkness, but it was a clear darkness, like a night in the deepest parts of winter, clear and cold and fresh and new. "How do you know the game will be over?" Katherine challenged him now. "Perhaps we will merely begin a new one."

And then Elijah blurred towards her with Original speed so fast that she didn't react in time. He threw her to the ground, but cradled her head, so that she ended up on the warm, Kansas earth, with the grasses blowing around her and Elijah's lean frame lying on top of her.

Katherine did smirk now. "Well, I guess you caught me," she said, not sounding sorry about this in the slightest. "Your dance was better than mine." Her grin widened. "What do you want for your prize?"

And then she kissed him.

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Endnote: What did you think? I actually really loved the Tatia's episode. She was strong and brave – so very different from Elena – but she wasn't at all as clever and cunning as Katerina. And I love how she chose Elijah, and that he was the one to kill her; as dark as that sounds. I only ever ship Elijah with the Petrovas, but I will always think that his soul mate is Katerina. She is the only one who challenges him, and completes him.