A/N: Hi. Canon Damon Salvatore is a rapist and never should have been a valid love interest. If that sentence upsets you, some of this chapter might not be your cup of tea.

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Elena stared at herself in the mirror, the shadows under her eyes long since covered by makeup and the exhaustion in her bones hidden by the curve of her smile. She knew better than most what time healed and what it didn't. Her grief was far from spent, but life didn't stop, not for anyone.

Turning away from the mirror, she tucked the journal in her bag and headed down the stairs for the requisite stilted morning banter with Jenna and Jeremy. Jenna was frantic and Jeremy was sullen and she refused to let her heavy heart weigh them down. She acted as explicitly normal as possible—fake it till you make it—and filled a travel mug of coffee for herself and Jeremy without comment, earning a reluctant smile.

"Ride?" she asked him after Jenna had left, and didn't argue when he shook his head, ignoring the itch in her hands that wanted to drag him close and hold on until he broke down and cried like he hadn't since they left the hospital. Instead she flicked his ear, hid a grin at his scowl, and went to wait on the porch for Bonnie.

Her friend's smile was still careful around the edges, hidden worry in her eyes that Elena forced herself not to grimace at. Bonnie loved her, of course she was worried. Elena loved her back and she wouldn't begrudge that concern. She returned Bonnie's hug and held herself to the present by sheer force of will as Bonnie told her all about her Grams and their ancestors and her apparent psychic powers.

Elena knew what Bonnie was, knew the magic and potential, far greater than her own, that lurked inside her friend. She was prepared for this conversation, ready to be supportive and excited by turns. She was not prepared for the crow that slammed into the windshield, the spike of fear and unease that lingered.

She was not prepared for the handsome, chiseled face of Stefan Salvatore staring at her from across the hallway.

Her throat closed and her heartbeat tripled in pace and she knew he heard it, knew his senses, so much more than advanced than hers, could detect the effects of shock and panic and secret thrill of delight on her system. Her lips were numb as she agreed with Bonnie's assessment of his hotness and listened to her friend's theories on who he was. What was he doing here? Who did he think she was?

Katerina had never spilled her secrets to him, had told him only what would make him love her, true or not. He knew nothing of doppelgangers and curses, of endless flight from brutal monsters until you became one yourself. Or he hadn't, but then, her memories of him were incomplete, second-hand, filtered through Katerina, and over a century old.

The fear and confusion and sense of strained reality lingered throughout the day, enforced by the weight of his focused attention and broken only by her worries about Jeremy, Bonnie's predictions, and Caroline's forced cheerfulness. She didn't follow through with her weekly visit to her parents' graves after school and instead dug out the journals and sketches hidden beneath the floorboards under her bed, pouring over fragments of dreams and flashes of memories not hers as she scrambled for a sense of control in a world gone spinning off course.

She hadn't thought she'd be lucky enough to go unnoticed forever. To have a life free of the supernatural other than her own magic and Bonnie's inevitable awakening to the powerful witch she was meant to be. Not when she'd been unlucky enough to be born in the same town Katerina had fled to, the land where Tatia had once lived. But she wasn't ready, and she hadn't expected this. One of the brothers Katerina had seduced and fallen for and left behind. And if one was here, where was the other? Did he still live as well?

They seemed decent enough, in the bits and pieces of memories she had to go on, one more kind and one more sharp but both very human and very in love with Katerina. What would that betrayal, the loss of their humanity, and a century and a half of immortality have done to their natures? She couldn't trust that her memories or her face would keep her safe, much less her loved ones.

Elena wasn't just a doppelganger. She was a Gilbert and she knew what her ancestors had done to protect themselves from vampires, knew the secrets that lived in her purely human family tree, had suspicions about her Uncle's oddly nomadic life.

Elena had been ingesting vervain since she was old enough to be trusted alone in the backyard, enabling her to cultivate a hidden little garden. She regularly dosed her brother and her friends and had become the unofficial punch spiker for school dances specifically so she could slip some in with the booze. Cheerleading and daily runs in the woods kept her fit and stronger than she looked. She knew Mystic Falls, knew the land it had been long before the town itself, could see the bones of what it had been during the Civil War beneath the modern structures. Her magic was limited in power, the curse of her bloodline, but she had centuries of knowledge to draw on in how best to use it. And she knew vampires, knew them as well as any human ever could.

She didn't want to hurt anyone. Never wanted to kill anyone, even if it wasn't their first death. But she and Katerina shared more than just a face, and if it meant protecting her family or her friends, she would do what she had to do.

Including going to a party by the falls when it was the last thing on her mind. She used to be good at parties. Used to be the party, her and Caroline and Bonnie. School wasn't like Mean Girls, even in a status-obsessed small town like theirs. Outside of Founder events, no one cared about your last name. But they were cheerleaders and for a certain limited definition that mostly existed in Caroline's head in a teen movie montage sort of way, they could have been said to rule the school.

And then her parents died and the legacy in her blood smacked her in the face with an only kind of dead boy and now she was drinking shitty beer laced with vervain and faking an engaged conversation and a smile so wide her cheeks hurt directed at whoever was next to her whenever Stefan looked her way. He had clearly not gotten the memo about her strong desire to avoid any significant interaction with him and his gaze prickled against her skin.

Later she would curse herself for her inattention, for her selfishness. If she'd been less concerned with avoiding an awkward and potentially dangerous conversation with Katerina's ex, if she'd been more concerned with the danger to everyone else, oblivious innocents with no idea of the danger lurking in their midst, maybe Vickyi wouldn't have been bitten.

When she heard the scream, followed by the unmistakable sound of Jeremy's voice shouting, her heart stopped in her chest, terrified that she was going to lose him. But he was fine, holding up a rapidly-sobering Vicky. Matt's sister was bleeding from a wound in her throat, eyes glassy and hands fluttering wildly as she mumbled, barely audible over the commotion of the party. "What the hell?! What the hell."

"What happened?" Matt demanded before Elena could, eyes darting between his sister and Jeremy as he pulled Vicky away from the other boy.

"I don't know, man, I just found her like this. I know Tyler was giving her grief earlier, but I don't think he'd do this."

Elena stepped closer, wrapping an arm around Jeremy's as Matt turned to his sister just as she checked back into reality. "Mattie? This guy, he, he bit me, Mattie! I think he was on drugs or something? He bit me and then he got really angry and said something about me being dosed and then he ran off."

Jeremy flinched against Elena and she grimly hoped that this horrible night would get him to stop stealing her pain medication. "You should get her to the hospital, Matt. Human mouths have a lot of disgusting germs in them," she told him, completely serious and also hoping that Vicky's accusation of drugs and her own words were enough to keep anyone from digging deeper.

Matt nodded, still scowling at Jeremy, and Tyler who had joined the circle of drunken students watching the drama unfold, and started pulling Vicky toward the parking lot. Elena caught Stefan watching her again and narrowed her eyes. "Go home, Jeremy, I'll meet you there. Caroline's mom will probably want to talk to you, see if you saw anything that might help them ID the guy, and you need to sober up first."

He shrugged her off, but didn't argue, and she took it as a win as she stalked toward Katerina's ex, giving in to the inevitable. "I know you didn't do this," she told him, before he could speak, and ignored the way his eyes widened, leaning closer to ensure only he could hear the deadly intent of her next words. "But if you brought someone with you who did, Damon or anyone else, you need to get them out of my town. Mystic Falls is not welcoming to any vampires who feed without consent."

She didn't wait for his answer, if he had one, just turned and left, hoping to find Bonnie or Caroline to catch a ride from.

The next morning the news showed a very generic sketch, the reporter asking people to be on the lookout for non-local man on drugs who attacked people in the woods. Elena grimaced and didn't protest when Jenna turned it off, muttering something about an asshole ex who had a lot of nerve to warn people about other men instead of himself.

School was a mess. Jeremy didn't seem to be high, for once, but he was avoiding her and so was Caroline, for reasons Elena didn't understand. Stefan kept trying to get her alone, clearly wanting to know what she knew. She finally escaped with the end of day bell and took a moment to center herself in the bathroom, reaching out with her faint thread of magic.

It led her to the Grill, Caroline crying at a table as Bonnie awkwardly tried to comfort her. "How come he didn't go for me? Why do the guys I want never want me?"

"Oh Caroline, boys are dumb," Elena said, dropping next to Caroline in the booth. "So very dumb."

Caroline whirled on her. "It's easy for you to say that! You always say the right thing, I always say the wrong thing. I work so hard and got to know him and flirted and he still picked you."

"Stefan?" Elena asked, shocked and mad at herself for missing this. She'd missed too much lately and it needed to stop now. "Caroline, I'm not interested in him. He just won't leave me alone and I don't know why." She did know why, knew how much he'd loved the last woman to bear her face, but she could hardly explain that. And the rest of her statement stood.

Caroline, brilliant friend that she was, pivoted on a dime from heartbroken envy to protective rage. "Who does he think he is? God's gift to high school? If he doesn't leave you alone, we will ruin him," she said furiously, already pulling out her phone to start the various text chains that would accomplish just that.

Elena laughed, pulling her in for a hug before she could hit send and roping Bonnie in too. "I love you. Can we save ruining for another day and have a sleepover tonight? I'm thinking rum floats and movies about talking pets."

Bonnie snorted and Caroline giggled a little wetly into Elena's shoulder before nodding, priorities realigning again. "Definitely. I just got some new gold face masks. We'll be the fanciest drunk girls in Mystic Falls."

Across the room, unnoticed by them all, Damon Salvatore reevaluated the usefulness of the blonde as a target and moved on to other strategies. Instead of the first of many nights of horrific trauma that would have lingered in the back of her mind for the rest of her life, Caroline went home with her two best friends and invented a drinking game based on how many animal-related puns were used in a given scene.

Elena fell asleep in a tangled pile with both her best friends, happiness sinking into her bones, warding off the grief and the fear that had been swallowing her. This was how it should be. This was how it would be, and no vampire was going to ruin it.

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1. Timelines, what are timelines? TVD's timeline was a MESS. So I am totally fine pretending that either Mean Girls aired before 2009 or my story starts after 2012.
2. I am ignoring the retcon of Damon meeting her first that was shoehorned in to support their love-story. Honestly playing fast and loose with a lot of canon as should be clear by now.
3. 90% sure this will be an Elejah main pairing, but giving myself another chapter to decide. Feel free to argue for your favorite pairings for other characters provided it won't break your heart if I don't pick them.