Cander (Cordy/Xander)

VD/Buffy: Last Battle

Summary: What if Damon and co were friends with Cordelia? They don't know the others. What if Cordy came for a visit before going to Sunnydale to help fight in End of Days? Set in Buffy S7, VD S3, and Angel S5 when she was dying, but she doesn't die.

It was a dark night in Mystic Falls, Virginia as Elena Gilbert walked into the Salvatore boarding house. She wanted to see him; The vampire she loved. But when she came in, she didn't expect Katherine to be there, too. She should've, though. She and Damon had had history together several years ago when the Salvatores had turned. So it should've been expected for her to see the vampiress. Damon Salvatore had a shot glass of Bourbon in hand, as she was speaking to him. They were so close and she was speaking so softly, she didn't know what the vampiress was saying, but it made Damon look very unsettled and unhappy.

Damon looked up at Elena where he stood by his drinking table, Kat in front of him, looking up at him as she was speaking.

"Elena," he greeted.

Katherine stopped talking to Damon and turned to look at her descendant as Elena walked up to them.

"Is this like a secret or something? What are you talking about?" she asked the vampires.

"Klaus wants to kill me, so I'm going to do my best to outsmart him. If he kills me, he kills me," Katherine answered her. "This may be the last time you see me."

Then, before any of them could say anything else, she was out the door, on her way to outsmart him and not die trying to do so.

Elena and Damon looked at each other.

"I hope she'll be okay," Damon said.

"I know. She's family," she replied.

He sat on the couch and she sat beside him. There wasn't really anything to say and they couldn't say anything to make each other feel better about this. Katherine was out risking her life. Well, unlife. And she was family. Family was supposed to stick together, but this family didn't. What Katherine wanted, she got. And they wanted so badly to help. But Katherine was doing this on her own to keep them out of danger. It was Katherine's way of saying that she still cared about them and loved them. Something she would never admit out loud, but would rather show. At least, not in words to Elena. To Damon, maybe.

Meanwhile, Kat was running from Klaus in the woods. Literally. She was running at vampire speed, Klaus always not far behind from her. She kept running, trying to find a way out and hide from him. Get as far away from the enemy as she possibly could go. But she knew that running from Klaus sooner or later, would result in the ending of someone's life. Predictably hers. But she didn't care about that as long as her family was alive and safe. All of it. Damon and Stefan and Elena. Her eternal family and her mortal family. Her and Elena were family only because Isobel had been Elena's biological mother. In turn, Isobel had been Katherine's long lost daughter that her father took from her when she was human. And without even knowing who Isobel truly was, Damon had turned Isobel into a vampire. But then Isobel had been killed by a vampire hunter. Alaric. But she had no vengeance or anger against that. It was in the past and the past had to stay in the past. Or you kept living in it.

Suddenly, she turned a tree and there stood Klaus.

"Hello, Katerina," he greeted with a wicked smile.

"Klaus."

Then he lunged and pinned her to the ground. She grabbed a branch from the ground and went to stab him with it, trying to fight with all she had. He twisted her arm, though and plunged it into her side.