AN: If I owned TVD I wouldn't be writing on here.
She's seventeen and back at home, staring down at one of her many textbooks.
Her parents are relieved to see her, relieved that she hadn't come to any harm during the time away. They still don't know why she fled, but every time she tries to word how she'll tell them, the words stick in her throat.
Mom, Dad, I had a baby.
No. She can't picture telling them, doesn't want to see the looks on their faces.
She can't fathom telling them they suddenly have a grandchild even as the truth of it all becomes clear. The outcomes are too unpredictable, too uncertain. There might be care and concern and tears, or there might be hate and anger and disowning.
So she doesn't tell them, and chooses to focus on improvement.
Maybe someday she'll meet her baby girl.
0o0o0o0
She's still seventeen when John tells her quietly that the girl was named Elena and she stares at him.
It's not the name she would've chosen – it's unusual but still pretty, feminine. Then again she never really had a choice. For a few days she imagined keeping the baby and tried to consider names, but then she began to wonder what she could offer a baby.
John's brother is a doctor, and it might be a small town, but a married doctor is better than an unwed mother.
She tells herself this. The baby – Elena – is better with her aunt and uncle.
She pushes away all thoughts of the child and returns to her essay, because college admissions aren't all that far away.
0o0o0o0
When she's eighteen she gets into Duke. It's a good university and her parents are thrilled.
They go out to dinner and her parents are buoyant, delighted with her choice of university. It eclipses her disappearing act for them, shows them that she's intelligent and stable and sensible enough to go to a good college. Her parents permit her to have a half-glass of wine and they toast, telling the waitress about her achievement.
They get home that night and she tells them she's going to bed early.
Once she's sure they're asleep she ducks outside and stares up at the stars.
I got into Duke today, she whispers.
There's no-one around to hear her, no-one to praise it right now.
She doesn't let herself imagine the baby's smile.
0o0o0o0
At nineteen she's a freshman and doing what college students do. She studies and parties and goes to class and skips class.
Some days she eats too little or drinks too much and for the first time in a while she feels normal. Even when she's hungover though, she forces herself to drink lots of water and eat breakfast and study. It keeps her grades up and allows her the chance of post-graduate study. She wants to provide a better life for herself.
There are days when she doesn't feel quite normal, so she holes up in a café where the people working know her name and she plays a little game with herself.
When someone new walks in, she guesses some secret about them – just to herself – and never does she assume that another girl has had a baby.
She reserves that one for herself.
0o0o0o0
She's twenty-one and a junior. Today though, her daughter would be five.
She wonders if Elena is starting school today or if Miranda and Grayson are delaying it until September.
She lies in bed and fills in the blanks of what Elena wears and if she's excited for school (most definitely) and if she'll make friends.
Her predictions are of good report cards and lots of friends. It's a good future, better than she could offer, and so she stays in bed and imagines meeting her when she's old enough to understand.
0o0o0o0
At twenty-two she gets her degree and hugs her parents tightly.
One of her classmates is a few feet away, hugging a child Isobel knows to be her little niece – she looks about the same age as Isobel's own daughter and it makes her heart constrict in her chest.
Three months later she's starting in post-graduate study.
0o0o0o0
She's twenty-four and has her Masters.
It's acceptable, but not quite enough. If she ever meets her daughter she doesn't want to be found lacking. She wants to be well-respected, an expert in her field and capable of being a parent figure the girl would respect.
Elena's eighth birthday comes and Isobel buys a cupcake, pure impulse since she doesn't really like sweet things, carves a little eight into the icing and puts a candle on it. There's no-one to observe the ritual, and she decides she'll do it again next year.
0o0o0o0
At twenty-six her thesis is approved, and she becomes Doctor.
Her parents are thrilled, even more so when she takes on a research and lecture position at Duke.
It's odd, but she decides later she feels old enough to have a ten-year-old.
Maybe soon she'll talk to John about if she meet Elena, learn about her. She hovers over the phone for a while, decides that if she does she'll have to tell her parents and decides against it. She doesn't want to be a disappointment to her parents or the little girl, and so maybe it'd be better if she had an established career first.
0o0o0o0
She's twenty-six and a newlywed.
Her daughter now has a stepdad, only he doesn't know his stepchild exists. It's easier to tell him she doesn't want kids, because she doesn't want to give her daughter half-siblings and complicate the family tree more.
It's enough that her parents are actually her aunt and uncle, while her uncle is her father. Besides, she has both cousin and brother in John's little nephew, and Isobel likes the neatness of a two-child family. It's idyllic and she imagines they'll be the best of friends when they're old enough.
0o0o0o0
She's twenty-seven and searching her family tree.
Vampires are real, she tells Alaric, and she wants to learn everything she can about one in real life. He laughs lazily, tells her that the reality is probably very different from her books and she can't just study people like they're lab specimens.
She scowls, turns away and returns to her searching.
0o0o0o0
She's twenty-nine and has published a dozen articles in the paranormal field.
Elena would be thirteen now, and Isobel wonders who she looks more like. She remembers dark eyes, but the memory of the birth is hazy now – a phenomenon which is not entirely uncommon, she knows.
Some days she worries that Elena will turn into one of the reckless types, doing stupid things and burning out her life too fast. John has learned to not report on her, that Isobel doesn't want to hear about Elena's latest achievements. He thinks it's because she doesn't care enough to know and she lets him think that.
She doesn't tell him that she's worried she'll mess up Elena's life by entering it.
(On these days she reminds herself that Elena is with good people with good morals, and she decides that they won't let her go wrong)
A few more hours and she's finished her first book, an endeavour to explain why people believe in the paranormal.
0o0o0o0
At thirty she and Alaric separate.
She worries that this means she's a screwup again and throws herself into trying to find vampires, travels from one country to the next trying to dig into mythology and archaeology and folklore.
0o0o0o0
At thirty-one she meets Damon Salvatore. He's cocky and arrogant and dangerous and he happens to be a vampire.
She rejoices silently at meeting him because it means she's done something right and maybe she's not such a screwup.
He shows her the vampire life: he drinks from a drunk girl and there's something vaguely enticing about the blood on his lip, the sharpness of his fangs. She watches him drink alcohol as if it's water, compelling the bartender to keep the bourbon coming and stop when he says so. It's been fifteen years of being good, for the most part, so she falls into bed with him and asks him to turn her.
He decides that he likes her and complies.
0o0o0o0
She's still thirty-one when she meets Katherine.
The girl looks eighteen, but is five hundred plus, and she smirks knowingly as Isobel tries to wrap her head around it. She happens to be Isobel's ancestor, by the way, and there might be a doppelganger soon.
They become friends, though Isobel doesn't miss the anger in Katherine's eyes when she tells her about adopting out her baby girl. She cries, almost hysterical, for the chance to be a mother and Katherine softens, puts a hand over her own and doesn't hush her.
It occurs to Isobel later that everything she's done, Katherine's probably done it too, and well before she did.
0o0o0o0
She's still thirty-one when she hears through John that Elena and Jeremy are orphaned, and her heart stops. This wasn't supposed to happen, they were supposed to see her into adulthood. This wasn't in the script, and Katherine reminds her that nothing in life goes as it should.
(She should know. She's spent five hundred years running after all)
The kids are living with Jenna now, and Isobel barely knows the woman but she knows that Miranda would trust her to care for and love them.
Elena's seventeen, she reminds herself.
0o0o0o0
Katherine goes to Mystic Falls and meets Elena, reports back that she does in fact have a doppelganger and it is Isobel's own daughter.
She would feel pride but she's learnt what being a doppelganger is, what it entails and sobs when Katherine tells her own backstory.
Elena is unique and yet not, and Isobel hates the life she's unwittingly given her.
0o0o0o0
Her career falls by the wayside.
Katherine thinks she's on her side, but she's just learnt that Elena's involved with the supernatural: her best friend and boyfriend are vampires, and so she swallows her pride and goes to John.
She doesn't want Elena to be a vampire, she wants grandchildren someday and she wants to watch Elena grow old.
It's times like these that she regrets becoming a vampire and yet she knows it can't be undone. There's only one way to stop being a vampire, but that means being truly dead and if she's truly dead then she can't help John protect their baby.
(It's easier to think of Elena as a baby; it's the most outstanding memory of her)
0o0o0o0
Somewhere along the way she learns to turn it off. Compassion fades into using humans for food and money and amusement and it never gets old. The party never stops, doesn't have to unless she so desires, and the world is her oyster. She compels her way through towns and demands people do things according to her whims, and she gets what she wants.
0o0o0o0
She shows up on the Gilberts' doorstep and Elena opens the door. She recognizes the lapis lazuli pendant for what it is; there's no recognition of Isobel herself.
The door slams in her face.
This wasn't at all how it was supposed to go, she reflects later.
What good is it having a string of letters behind your name and articles published if your child doesn't want to know you?
0o0o0o0
She becomes a bit reckless, and forgets to take her vervain.
This version of herself isn't someone she recognizes and she visits her grave one day, lip curled sardonically at the flowers. It might've been easier if her parents had just given up on her, but she remembers love and happiness and so she's grateful that they didn't.
Not for the first time she hates herself for the secrets she keeps, only this time it's a lot bigger because her ex saw her die and yet she's not quite dead.
0o0o0o0
The absence of vervain in her bloodstream makes it easy for Klaus to compel her and the whole time, she feels that she's disappointing Elena.
She's pleased to see that her daughter has a good set of morals and values, and really this is all she wanted for her. It's now that she realizes that she never really had a part in Elena's life; she never bandaged a scraped knee or reprimanded her for sneaking cookies before dinner. That was all Miranda and she's gone, and Isobel has missed her chance by seventeen years.
She's of no use to Klaus now, and she doubts Elena will be impressed by scholarly effort when she's not sure she'll live to see eighteen.
She's of no use to Elena, and John's human – he can do more to protect Elena than she could.
0o0o0o0
It's in front of her gravestone and her daughter. Somewhere in the back of her mind it's got a certain poetry to it, a certain sentimental ring, but she really doesn't care. Some part of her is reminding her that Elena is present, doesn't need to see this, but she doesn't want vampirism anymore and she's not of much use anymore.
Her parents think she's long dead and she's compelled away Alaric's memories of her. Her daughter is proving able to take care of herself, with others who will more capably fight for her, and she doesn't really care to stick to decades more of her career when she knows the reality of the paranormal.
0o0o0o0
Her hands are steady as she rips off the necklace and her last coherent thought is that maybe the pain is punishment.