The first thing you notice is the silence.

Not the peaceful kind—the wrong kind. Like a room where furniture has been moved but the dust still remembers where it stood.

You’re sitting on the edge of your bed, head pounding, a metallic taste in your mouth. There’s vervain on your nightstand. Dried blood on your wrist.

And a space in your mind that hurts when you try to look at it.

“Katherine?” you whisper, not knowing why her name comes so easily.

She appears in the mirror behind you, leaning casually against the doorframe like she’s always been there. Hair perfect. Smile soft. Too soft.

“Morning,” she says. “You fainted. Dramatic, even for you.”

You turn slowly. “I don’t remember last night.”

Her eyes flicker—just once. “You were tired. Emotional. Happens.”

You nod, but something twists in your chest. “We were fighting, weren’t we?”

She crosses the room, fingers brushing your temple in a way that makes your pulse spike. “We always fight.”

“That’s not what I mean,” you say. “I feel like I lost… something.”

Katherine studies you for a long moment. Then she smiles again—relieved.

“You lost a bad memory,” she says gently. “I did you a favor.”

The truth hits in fragments.

A spell circle. Candles. Your voice screaming her name—not in anger, but in betrayal. Katherine crying—actually crying—over a mistake she swore she didn’t mean to make.

You stagger back. “You altered my memories.”

She doesn’t deny it.

“I couldn’t let you hate me,” she says quietly. “Not when I finally mattered to someone.”

“You used me,” you whisper.

“Yes,” she admits. “But I loved you too.”

The word love feels foreign now, hollowed out by what’s missing.

“You took my choice,” you say, shaking. “You erased what you did.”

Katherine steps closer, desperation cracking through her composure. “I erased the part where you left. Where you told me I wasn’t worth forgiving.”

Your heart breaks in two—for the version of you who remembered, and the one standing here now.

“Fix it,” you say. “Give them back.”

She hesitates. That’s how you know it’s bad.

“If I do,” she says softly, “you’ll never look at me the same again.”

You meet her gaze. “Then maybe that’s the consequence you don’t get to escape.”

For a long moment, Katherine Pierce looks afraid.

Finally, she nods.

The memories crash back like a wave—her lies, her panic, her hands shaking as she broke you just enough to keep you.

You scream.

When it’s over, you’re on the floor, gasping. Katherine kneels beside you, eyes glassy.

“I couldn’t be the villain in your story,” she whispers. “I needed to be loved.”