Blueeyeddevil06, thank you for being my beta!
Elena woke up lying on the hard ground in the woods. At least that was what she had discovered when she opened her eyes and, shocked, sat up. She realized whatever Bonnie had managed to do, something had come of it. Her hand trembled as she thought of everyone who died and tears brimmed in her eyes. Bonnie told her to change the past and stop Klaus at the expense of her own life. Elena wouldn't let her down—couldn't let her down. She couldn't let any of them down. She had to save everyone. That was true if she was actually in the past.
But first, she had to figure out where she was before she could discern what time she was in. She knew Bonnie intended to send her back in time to Emily. After all, she would need the help of a powerful witch. The only problem with all that was Katherine and her innate hate of Elena. She doubted that meeting under different circumstances would change that. She wouldn't be able to change anything if Katherine caught on to what she was doing. She never hid the fact that she hated her and wanted her dead. She assumed that would still be the case now. For her to change the future first, she had to survive.
She stood and walked only ten steps when she came face to face with a beautiful woman who looked at her startled with wide eyes. "Katherine, what are you wearing?"
"Emily?" Elena asked. The woman nodded, and she quickly pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Emily.
"I'm Elena, and I need your help. Bonnie, your… many times great-granddaughter, sent me to you."
Emily opened up the note, looked at what was drawn on it, and nodded. "If that's true, I'll help you in any way I can." It was the symbol written on the paper more than the words that led her to trust her. That symbol was a closely guarded Bennett secret—it could only come from a Bennett witch.
"I know you're friends with Katherine. The problem is I need your help to work against her, kind of. She'll want me dead…"
Emily scoffed, "Who said we were friends?"
"Katherine," Elena replied suddenly, unsure.
"I'm bound to her by a witch's oath because she saved my life. She wouldn't have helped me otherwise." The disgust of being called a friend to Katherine was written all over her face.
Elena's eyes popped wide, "She's such a bitch. She told Bonnie Bennett she was your friend."
"That woman doesn't have any friends. I can't act against her, but I can help you."
Suddenly, Elena was slammed against a tree and a snarling Katherine was in her face hissing at her. "I'm going to kill you as soon as you tell me why you have my face!"
That didn't go well, Elena thought. She then shoved Katherine off her, startling her. Katherine hadn't taken the time to discover that the woman who looked like her was also a vampire. Elena then used the element of surprise, and her training from Alaric, to snap her neck.
Elena looked at the unconscious Katherine in complete shock. All the times they tried to kill her and she was actually succeeding. How the hell was it going to be this easy?!
She walked over and snapped a branch off the tree Katherine had pinned her to. She then looked at Emily as she walked back, "I'm about to set you free from your oath. Has she visited the Salvatores?"
"No."
She plunged the stake into Katherine's heart and stood up. "Let's go turn some humans into vampires." She smiled over how good it felt to be free of that woman. Then she realized that Katherine was only the first hurdle. It was by no means an easy road from her on.
"What?!" Emily asked in shock.
She knew she would have turned them herself. That part of history would need to stay the same. "I have to turn the Salvatore boys into vampires. She did, after all."
"Why? Why not let them live happy lives now that she's dead?"
Elena smiled at her, "Because Damon Salvatore died for me in my timeline, and I want the man I love back." She then grew serious. "Bonnie then died to send me back. I'll need Damon to help me rescue the man she loves from having to go through years of brutal torture, and eventually dying to protect her. I'm going to rewrite history. I'm going to save them all."
Emily nodded, "Come to the carriage, I'll help you dress so you don't stick out. We were on our way to the Salvatores' mansion."
"Of course Bonnie would do a spell in a panic to change the past and nail it the first time. She's incredible." She then looked Emily in the eyes, "It's said she's as strong as you are."
Emily smiled at her, "You're close with her."
"She's my best friend. It's going to be hard to be without her." She cast her eyes to the ground. "I can't let her faith in me down. Too much is riding on me succeeding."
They got to the carriage, Elena compelled the footman and the driver not to look, and Emily changed her out in the open into appropriate clothing. They then continued on to the Salvatores.
Elena was nervous, so she just decided to ask Emily what she was thinking. "I-I have to ask. How are you taking this?"
"I'm relieved to not be bound to Katherine anymore. Frankly, with the importance of what you want to do, I'm surprised you didn't ask me to bond to you."
"I'm not like that."
"It's weird. You look so much like her, yet you're nothing alike."
Elena frowned and thought of all the trouble it had been to be the doppelgänger. "I don't just look like her. I'm her doppelgänger. I just staked my many-times-over great-grandmother. It's weird to think that after trying to stop her for so long that it was that easy." She then added, "She killed my birth father, John. It's nice to already be changing things."
"Her ancestor?"
"No, that would be my birth mom. She worked with Katherine against me. I was adopted, and she never learned to care for me at all." Elena made a sour face. "She never wanted me."
"Did you ever have parents adopt you?" Emily asked with concern in her voice.
"Yes. They're dead now too. They didn't die of the supernatural though. They went off a bridge in their c- … transportation and drowned."
"That's a lot of people dead."
Elena snorted from the understatement that Emily's words were. "I just started. My life is full of death, even my own. I drowned in that same spot years later, not knowing vampire blood was in my system. A human doctor had given it to me to cure a brain injury without anyone's knowledge."
Emily's heart obviously had gone out to her." "I'd bind myself to you if you asked for it. You're fighting for my family too."
Elena shook her head and said, "I know the loyalty of the Bennetts. I don't need you to bind to me, I trust you."
Emily laughed, "Katherine didn't trust anyone."
"She learned not to trust, beginning with a man that lied to her and her own father when she was just sixteen and still a human. All she watched out for since then was her own survival."
"It sounds like you pity her?"
Elena shrugged. "Yes, but it doesn't mean I forgive her. It's odd to think that very thing led to me being here. She was unwed, pregnant, and abandoned. Her father took her baby before she could ever see her and gave Nadia away."
"Nadia?"
"Her daughter. I'm not the second supernatural being in our family. I met her."
Emily shook her head, "And I thought I knew everything there was about the supernatural."
"I haven't even told you about werewolves, hybrids, Originals, and the power of a doppelganger's blood yet," Elena said, twisting her face into a wry smile.
Emily shook her head, "I think you need to start from the beginning."
"That all starts on June 5th, 1473…"