Elena should not have been surprised when Esther issued her dinner invitation on a silver platter with a flock of ravens. She really, really shouldn't have. But despite this, when the birds flew out of freaking nowhere she flinched and ducked.

Despite the severity of his mother's return from the dead, Klaus spared a moment to laugh at her.

"Really, love," he said, smirking, though she could tell his heart wasn't really in it. "Scared of a few birds?"

She rolled her eyes and didn't deign to response. For a second, something was forming on her tongue, a comeback about vampires and crows, but then Damon swam into her mind and she swallowed it down like a ball of lead in her throat.

"Between both of your parents, I can see where you get your flair for the dramatic," Elena said instead.

Klaus scowled at her. "I did not inherit anything from Mikael," he growled, striding toward her. "If you'd forgotten, he did not sire me—"

"Really? You're going to lecture me about not being raised by your biological parents?" she asked, taking a step forward. "I wasn't raised by my biological parents either. Jeremy isn't even my brother; he's technically my cousin. All of which you know, since, I don't know, you made my biological mother kill herself in front of me, not to mention that the only reason I survived your sacrifice was that John traded his life for mine." He seemed shell-shocked, so she gave him a tiny shove, just to emphasize her point. "You don't have to think of Mikael as your father, or call him your father, if you don't want to, but don't act like just because someone's not your birth parent doesn't mean they're automatically not your parent."

It occurred to her that she probably needed to work through some stuff, that she shouldn't take Klaus's family drama to heart so much, that maybe she hadn't totally come to terms with her adoptive father the vampire torturer or her birth mother the traitorous murderer, but Klaus's face still seemed blank with shock.

When he finally spoke, it wasn't what she was expecting. "That's how you survived?"

"What?" asked Elena. She took a step back.

"John Gilbert traded his life for yours?" Klaus seemed to be somewhere else, processing the matter. "You really did die?"

Elena frowned. "Well, yeah. Duh. I mean, you broke your curse."

Klaus furrowed his brow. "I thought you used the elixir Elijah had once found for Katerina."

Elena met Elijah's eyes over the table. "I intended to," she admitted. "But then Damon fed me vampire blood, and the elixir became obsolete."

Klaus blinked. "You knew you were going to survive either way?" he asked. "That's why you agreed?"

"No," said Elena, feeling impatient and a little confused, and also a little relieved, that they were having this conversation so many years after he'd killed her. "I hadn't expected to survive, not when I tried to track you down and surrender, not when I made a deal with Elijah, not when I undaggered Elijah for his help. I was prepared to die. I found out about the elixir… just a couple of days before, and I only half expected it to work. Damon fed me his blood the morning of the sacrifice, and I expected to turn into a vampire, or for Bonnie to find a way to undo the vampire blood and I would just flat-out die. I was shocked when I woke up human."

Klaus seemed to be registering this. She could almost see the gears spinning, whirling in his head, like he was running laps around this new information but couldn't quite grasp it.

"How did you not know this years ago?" she asked. "This isn't a recent update."

"I assumed that I already knew," Klaus replied. He still seemed disoriented, but like he was getting his bearings again, little by little.

"As fascinating as the many crimes you've committed against each others' families are, I think we have something more important to discuss," said Hayley. "Such as: what the hell does your mother want?"

"I suppose we'll have to find out from her," said Elijah, shooting a glance over at Klaus. "Brother, I trust you know that we must attend this soirée?"

Klaus rolled his eyes. "Loath as I am to admit it, you're right." He looked at Elena, gaze still a little weary. "We'll have to find some way to keep you safe—"

"No," said Elena, struck with inspiration. "No. We'll have to find Davina today, so I can talk to her tonight when all the other powers are busy."

"With no protection?" Klaus snarled. "Have you forgotten that she has our father along with her?"

"Have you forgotten that the last time I saw your father I was his ally?" she shot back. "Out of everyone in the city, I am the person he is the least likely to kill on sight. With the possible exception of your mother, though for all I know that would be more due to shock."

"I think that's a solid plan," said Hayley, to Elena's surprise. She turned to Klaus. "We have to deal with the Davina situation one way or another, and I for one would much rather Elena talk her around than you end up hurting the poor girl."

Klaus sighed dramatically, but Elena knew it was decided. She looked over at Hayley, stoic as ever, and wondered if Hayley felt as protective of Davina as Elena did; if that was what happened, when someone hurt you when you were far too young to be hurt like that, if Hayley could see herself in scared young girls the way Elena could.

She'd thought badly of Hayley for a long time without really knowing her; she hadn't thought anything of Hayley before she'd betrayed them, and afterwards she'd thought of her rarely, but only ever with spite. She felt regret on the tip of her tongue; Elena had done awful, terrible things too. She was the last person who could judge.

. . .

Elena felt naked as she walked through the woods. Sure, she'd spent plenty of time in the dark forests of Mystic Falls, but she'd forgotten what it was like to do so without being a vampire, or without a vampire at her side. She was starting to feel fear creeping into her veins when she heard, high and clear, the voice of a girl.

A second later, Mikael had her pinned to a tree.

"Mikael," she gasped, more for show than out of shock. "I'd—I'd heard, but I wasn't sure I believed it."

Mikael snarled in her face but, thank god, did not attack. "Which one are you?" he asked.

Elena hadn't expected that. "Mikael, it's—it's me," she said, because that was probably what she would have said last time he'd seen her. "It's Elena. Katherine died months ago."

Mikael did not move. "And why should I believe you?"

"Look, I'm human," she said, reaching behind her body to scrape her thumb against the tree, hard, and then held it up to him. She carefully ignored the fact that Katherine had been human again too. "Besides, if I were Katherine, why would I come to you?"

Mikael sniffed at her blood, then let her go, and Elena tried to keep the sputtering and gasping for breath to a minimum. Behind Mikael, a girl stepped forward. She was startlingly pretty, long brown hair and wide eyes, a few years younger than Elena and tinier than Elena had been at her age. Elena's heart went out to the girl immediately.

"Who is she?" asked the girl.

"You must be Davina," said Elena, her smile coming more naturally than it should have considering her recent near-asphyxiation. She stepped forward, just a tiny bit, not enough to threaten but enough to seem approachable. "Hi. I'm—"

"Klaus's latest doppelganger," cut in Mikael.

Elena scowled at him. "I'm not his. Not ever." She swallowed, and met Mikael's eyes. "If I'm anyone's, I'm Tatia's—or Amara's—or even Katherine's. Klaus doesn't own any part of me."

"Then why are you in this city?" demanded Mikael.

"Oh, I don't know," said Elena. She had never had quite the gift for sarcasm some people did, but she summoned up her inner Katherine, her inner Hayley, her inner Dam—Damon. "It's not like Klaus is at war and my blood is the only way to create hybrids. It's not like he's ever taken my blood by force before. It's not like he can compel people." She didn't have to try very hard to bring all of her anger boiling, bursting to the top, and dripping hot poison onto her tongue. "Clearly, I'm just voluntarily playing house with the guy who murdered my family and sacrificed me."

There was the soft sound of leaves crunching and twigs cracking. It snapped Elena out of her staring contest with Mikael, over to wear Davina was standing, arms crossed, the stance more defensive than she was probably going for. "You were sacrificed?" Davina asked after a moment. Her voice was quiet, wavering, fragile, like the sound of a child learning the flute, making a weak sound that might vanish at any second.

Elena forced herself to push all thoughts of Mikael from her mind, to give her entire attention to the girl. She took a breath.

"You know how Klaus is a hybrid?" she asked. She waited for Davina's nod before continuing. "Back when Klaus activated his werewolf gene—I mean," she shot a look at Mikael, "you obviously know what happened better than I do, but basically the Original Witch, Klaus's mother, put a curse on him to suppress that side of him, making him all vampire. She drew the power for that curse from the death of a girl named Tatia, my distant ancestor from, I don't know, a thousand years back." She took a deep breath. "The only way to break that curse was a ritual, that involved the sacrifice of one of Tatia's doppelgangers."

"So he sacrificed you?" asked Davina. Elena felt just a little stupid. Of course the girl's main interest wasn't the semantics of Elena's ritual; it was that Elena was like her, that Elena might understand her. Elena had known that, had sought her out for that purpose, and here she was pulling a total Elijah on the poor girl.

"He did," she confirmed, and then bitterness rose in her like an old friend, a wave so intense she could not keep it from spilling out even if she had tried to. "He didn't just sacrifice me, though. He possessed the body of someone I cared about, tried to kill my best friend so she couldn't use magic to stop the ritual, taunted me for weeks, came to my school dance, compelled girls to tell me he wanted me to save him a dance, dedicated songs for me in shout-outs. His ritual needed him to kill a vampire and a werewolf, so he kidnapped two of my best friends, and when they escaped—when we rescued them—he turned my aunt into a vampire and killed her. He did all of that even though I'd already agreed to the sacrifice, so that I could save the people I loved. He didn't care." She swallowed, felt a familiar burning in the back of her eyes. "The ritual required him to drain my blood to the point of my death. The only reason I survived was that my birth father traded his life for mine in some dark spell."

Davina's lips were trembling, her eyes wide. "But why…why does he need you now?"

Elena scoffed. "Turns out the Original Witch screwed me over twofold. The only way for Klaus to make hybrids is through using my blood." She offered Davina a wry smile. "We found that out during a fun little episode wherein he, oh, compelled by boyfriend to kill two of my classmates and then feed on me, and meanwhile, forced by werewolf friend into transition into a hybrid and fed him my blood experimentally. If his hunch hadn't been right, we all probably would have died that night."

"Oh my god," said Davina, looking less afraid and more angry. "That's horrible."

"About a month later, we found Mikael, allied with him against Klaus" Elena continued. "He can—and will—attest to everything I'm saying by the way." She turned towards him. "I'm sorry Stefan betrayed you that night," she said. "But you did stab Katherine thinking she was me, so I guess we're even."

Davina stared at her, wide-eyed, for another moment, then seemed to come to a resolution. She stepped forward. "I hate Klaus too," she said. "He's hurt me, killed people I love, held me prisoner." She paused. "I brought Mikael back to kill Klaus," she said in a low voice, as though sharing a secret. "You could join us."

Elena started shaking her head before Davina was finished speaking. "You can't," she said. "When you kill an Original, you kill every vampire in their bloodline. I've helped kill two originals, trust me, I know. My best friend comes from Klaus's bloodline." She took a deep breath. "As much as I hate him, there's nothing I can do. I can't lose anyone else."

She was expecting Davina to look shocked at the revelation, but instead her eyes were glimmering. "I know," she said. "There are people I love in his line, too. That's why I haven't let Mikael kill him yet." She shot Mikael a glare so fierce that Elena felt both proud and taken aback. "I'm working on a spell, to unlink his descendants," she continued. "Once I complete it, I can kill him and no one else will be at risk."

Mikael audibly growled, and Elena shot him a startled look, and then looked back at Davina.

"You can do that?" she asked, her surprise not feigned at all. Davina nodded, now fully smiling, stepping toward Elena again.

"Yeah, I can," she said. "I know that I can. And I can protect you from his brother, too—"

As much as Elena wanted Davina to trust her, she couldn't keep the pretense this far. "Elijah would never try to hurt me," she said. "He's been in love with two other girls who shared my face, at one point I think he was—or thought himself in love with me, too. You don't have to worry about that."

Davina nodded.

"And I can't help with anything," said Elena. "I'm sorry, but I'm completely—well, I'm a supernatural occurrence, but I don't have any abilities. I'd be a useless ally."

Davina's face fell.

"But I'd like to be a friend," said Elena. Davina looked up again. "I heard about what happened to you, what the witches did, what Klaus did, and I heard about Mikael. I thought—I suffered terribly, but I had friends with me. You should have a friend too, if you want."

Davina shot a look over at Mikael, and Elena looked too. Mikael was snarling. Elena rolled her eyes at him.

"Tell you what, Davina," she said, grinning. "I know Klaus and Elijah are going to some dinner party with the witches tonight. Why don't you and I grab dinner while they're distracted?"

Davina smiled, slowly but sweetly. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'd like that."

. . .

"Thanks for coming," Elena said the second Davina sat down across from her.

Davina was clearly nervous, eyes darting all around the room. "I wasn't sure I was going to," she admitted. "Mikael thinks this is a bad idea."

"Mikael thinks everything other than the literal act of staking Klaus in the heart is a bad idea," Elena told her. Davina offered a small smile, and Elena felt heartened. "Don't let him get to you."

"I know I can't trust him," Davina said, defiant, as though she wanted to make sure Elena knew she wasn't that naïve. "He'll try to kill me given half the chance. He's already tried."

"That must be tough," Elena said, grasping at another chance to empathize. "Being alone with him. I've had dangerous alliances, but I've always had friends watching my back."

"I have friends," Davina shot back. "It's just not safe for them to be around me."

Elena nodded, took a drink (lemonade, nothing alcoholic), and said: "I once compelled my brother to move away, for his safety."

"Really?" asked Davina. Elena nodded.

"Klaus—my friend Stefan had gone off the rails, and stolen all of the Mikaelson coffins. Stefan had also been my boyfriend until, well, until Klaus interfered—but Klaus still thought I'd be the most likely person to know where Stefan was, so he sent his hybrids to hold a reign of terror over my friends and family. After he arranged to have my brother run over with a car, and nearly succeeded, I traded him Rebekah's daggered body in exchange for my brother's safety. He agreed, but then when I saw my—my little brother—cut a hybrid's head off with a kitchen knife… I had a friend compel him to leave town. I couldn't let him live like that."

Davina was breathing heavily. "You have so much history with Klaus," she said, and bit her lip. "I don't—Klaus killed by friend Tim, but—how do you even look at him?"

"Well, I hardly could, at first." Elena shrugged. "I spent a lot of time trying to kill him, before finding out the thing with his bloodline. But—I don't know. I guess we never really had peace with Klaus, but we ended up with a few common enemies, and…we never stopped hating Klaus, but hating him became less pressing. And besides, since so many of us were vampires, having some werewolf-bite healing blood around became helpful."

"Klaus just gave you guys his blood?" demanded Davina.

Elena laughed. "Klaus could be bargained with, sometimes," she told her. "And then he fell in love with my best friend. That made him easier to manage."

"Wait," said Davina, "I—what?"

Elena sighed, leaning forward. "The thing you have to understand about me and Klaus," she said, "is that—for an entire year of my life—Klaus lived in my town. Small town life in Virginia, even smaller group of people in the supernatural know—Klaus was at town functions, parties, even threw a ball once—and we weren't at war, not the way New Orleans is. After the sacrifice, most of my relationship with Klaus was deals and bargaining and unstable alliances against other threats. We all—most of us still hate Klaus, but we all know him pretty well. It was like high school—well, it actually was high school, his sister Rebekah was in our class and joined our cheerleading team—but it was… really tense, aggressive, and hate-fuelled, but still kinda domestic." She took a breath. "So yeah, he fell in love with my best friend. They actually slept together last year—which was kind of an issue, seeing as he'd killed her ex's mother a year before, in retaliation for Tyler turning his hybrids against him—Wow." She laughed. "I guess—I guess by now, we just have so much history that—you don't forget, or stop caring, but it just stops weighing on you. There's just too much, you can't even try to work through it, you just have to, I don't know, get over it all."

Davina's eyes were narrow. "Get over it?"

She was clearly offended, and Elena took a deep breath. "This doesn't apply to you," Elena said. "Don't think that. I mean—did Klaus ever show up in costume for your high school's decade dance? Did he come to your graduation? You're in a totally different situation, I'm not—I'm not telling you to think any differently. I guess I'm just trying to explain that, well, you can't see someone as often as I saw Klaus without having to just compartmentalize all that crap so you can function like a semi-normal human."

Davina swallowed. "Is that how you feel?" she asked, sounding vulnerable again. "Normal—even a little bit normal?"

Elena smiled, wryly, knowing it didn't reach her eyes. "Not in years," she said.