Kelly Donovan was dead. She'd wandered back into town to check on her abandoned children and someone had broken into Vicky's hospital room and killed her mother while she was passed out next to her daughter in the bed. The police seemed to think it was a mistake, someone trying to kill Vicky, cover up whatever she saw.
Elena was pretty sure they were right.
Somewhere, in the back of Elena's mind, Katerina was laughing at her. Vampires could do whatever the fuck they wanted and always would, until someone strong and lucky enough came along and killed them. No one knew that better than the Petrova doppelgangers, from both sides of the equation.
If she was going to keep her loved ones alive, she needed help.
"I think, I think I dreamed it," Bonnie told her in a harsh whisper while Caroline was in the shower. "The hospital and these eyes, real blue, and a crow. But that doesn't make any sense, right?"
Elena wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. "We should talk to your Grams."
"What? Why?" Bonnie asked her, forehead wrinkled in a deep frown at Elena's apparent nonsequitur.
"She's the one who told you about your family, your abilities, right? Maybe she can help you focus them, understand what you're seeing." Elena bit her lip, guilt at her manipulation roiling in her stomach. She reached out and took Bonnie's hands. "Something's happening Bonnie, something scary. And I don't want anyone else to die."
Bonnie stared at her, shocked and more than a little scared herself, and then nodded. "Okay, let's go talk to Grams."
"Field trip?" Caroline asked, coming out of the bathroom in a robe, toweling her hair. "I was promised Elena's famous pancakes and I definitely need fortification if we're going to learn that Bonnie has superpowers and I don't."
"Pancakes it is," Elena agreed. This conversation wasn't likely to be fun for anyone and breakfast food could make most things more bearable.
Elena turned on her favorite playlist, an eclectic range of music that reminded her of lives long gone and lives she hoped to live, and let the music and her friends' chatter wash over her as she cooked. She had a variety of recipes that had earned her famous pancakes reputation, but her favorite had cinnamon and pecans in the mix and a special syrup made with apples and cinnamon flavored whiskey.
Not enough alcohol to have an effect on them, at least not the way she made it that morning, but a little bite to their breakfast would give her the fortitude to get through an honest conversation with Sheila Bennett.
That, or the three cups of very strong coffee she made from Elizabeth Forbes' excellent french press.
She grimaced down at the bowl she was making syrup in. She needed to tell them the truth. Not everything, but, they deserved to know about her own magic. She was pretty sure Sheila already knew, had caught the older woman watching her sharply, and it wouldn't be practical to keep it secret when they learned the truth about Bonnie. But they were going to be upset and angry that she hadn't told them before and she couldn't blame them. And Caroline, Caroline didn't understand how amazing she was, how much she shined without any help whatsoever, and being the only one of them to not have magic was only going to make her feel less special.
Sometimes Elena thought she should have left town as soon as she was old enough to travel unnoticed, taken her destiny and all the danger that went with it away from her loved ones. Most of the time she believed that to be a cowardly choice, that it wouldn't protect them, just leave them more ignorant and unprepared for any supernatural incursion into their lives. She was hardly the only reason a vampire might come to Mystic Falls, given its history.
It had been a largely theoretical argument with herself until now. Until vampires were back, until ex's mother's were murdered in the night, until the ghost of a past both hers and not hers was staring at her in history class with hope and heartbreak in his eyes.
She could leave, now. Break so many other hearts. Tear her fragile family further into pieces. She could stay and hide the truth from them, try her best to protect them while preserving what normality remained in their lives. She could tell them and risk them getting involved, risk them wanting her to leave, if they knew what she really was. Less a person than an ingredient. Mystical nutmeg.
Adding another splash of whiskey to the mix, she sighed, mind ringing with the voices of dead women insisting on their personhood and hers.
Elena was only responsible for her own choices. She couldn't control anyone else's, for good or ill. And she was glad of that. She had no idea what she'd do if she had Katerina's compulsion. Would she make Jeremy stop taking pills? Make Matt give up on her? Make fucking Mr. Tanner stop being an abusive asshole to his students? All of those sounded reasonable, good even, healthier and safer for everyone involved. And absolutely monstrous. Arrogant, selfish, and a stepping stone toward manipulating everyone in her life to suit her tastes.
Tempting. Easy to rationalize. Yes, she was very glad that she didn't have Katerina's power.
The spoon clinking against the glass of the bowl snapped her back to the present and she made herself smile as she heard Caroline's voice echoing down the hall, debating appropriately witchy sartorial choices with Bonnie.
"No feathers!" she called out, smile shifting into a more genuine grin. "And pancakes are ready!"
She reached into the oven and pulled out the pan of still warm pancakes, sliding the last one on top of the stack before setting it on a trivet on the table. She added a ladle to the bowl of syrup, and filled a glass with orange juice for herself. Any more coffee and she'd end up showing her magic instead of telling them about it.
They made short work of breakfast, all of the pancakes disappearing into their stressed out, growing teenage bodies. Bonnie drove them to her Grams' house as Elena rehearsed various speeches in her head, explanations that wouldn't hurt them, truths that were safe to tell. She hadn't even settled on an opening line when they arrived.
She followed Bonnie into the house, Caroline on her heels and her stomach tied in knots. This wasn't about her. This was about Bonnie and her discovery of her heritage and Elena needed to chill the fuck out about her own issues.
Sheila welcomed them with a warm, if concerned, smile, and Bonnie waved away offers of breakfast as she tugged her Grams toward the sitting room and down onto the couch next to her. "Grams I need, I need you to tell me what you meant about our ancestors and my powers. Because I think I dreamed what happened to Matt and Vicky's mom and I'm kind of freaking out about it." Bonnie took a breath, shooting Elena a flickering glance. "And I think some kind of monster did it."
Sheila Bennett looked as serious as Elena had ever seen her. The mischievous twinkle in her eyes that so resembled Bonnie when they were drunk and making dares was gone and her lips were pressed tightly together in a forbidding line. Elena could feel the magic in her, strong and wary, enough to make hers shift restlessly beneath her skin.
"Bonnie, I don't think your friends should be here for this," Sheila said firmly, looking at Elena and Caroline sitting opposite them, her gaze lingering on Elena with some sort of silent warning.
"They're my best friends, Grams. Whatever you tell me I'm going to tell them anyways, so they might as well hear it from the horse's mouth."
Elena bit back a laugh and Caroline snorted. Sheila arched an eyebrow at her granddaughter. "Are you calling me a horse, dear?"
Bonnie grinned at her. "Start talking and I'll go back to Grams."
Sheila huffed, but quirked her lips into a reluctant smile. "Very well. You are a witch, Bonnie. A real one, with magic powers. I am a witch. Our family have always been witches."
Bonnie looked torn between shock and disbelief, Caroline even more so. Sheila snapped her fingers and a flame lit in the air above them, bright and hypnotizing before abruptly flaring out.
"Holy shit," Caroline whispered as Bonnie gaped.
"Were, were our ancestors burned in the witch trials?" Bonnie asked, voice trembling a little as she stared at the empty air where the flame had been. Sheila shook her head, taking Bonnie's hands in hers.
"No, the girls that were persecuted in Salem were entirely innocent. You need more than ignorance to trap a real witch. Our family fled Salem in 1692 and resettled here, in Mystic Falls. We've lived in secrecy ever since." She turned a gimlet eye on Elena and Caroline. "It's important that we still do."
Caroline gulped, Elena nodded with absolute sincerity, and Bonnie scoffed. "Come on, Grams, everybody talks about you being a witch."
"And yet you didn't believe it, did you?" Sheila asked her, sharply amused. "It's absurd, can't be true. I'm just a kooky lady that teaches occult at the university. No one really believes."
Bonnie nodded slowly and Sheila sighed. "No one who isn't already a part of the supernatural. Like vampires. A vampire killed Kelly Donovan, I'm sure of it."
"What?!" "Vampires are real?" Bonnie and Caroline exploded at once and Elena winced. A wince that deepened when Sheila turned her sharp gaze toward her.
"Yes, they're real. And they can be fought. But Elena can tell you more about that, can't you Elena?"
Two pairs of shocked eyes turned toward her, confusion and the beginning of betrayal in their depths, and Elena took a deep, fortifying breath. "Your family isn't the only one with secrets, Bonnie. The Gilberts have been vampire hunters for centuries."
Her best friends looked flabbergasted, more shocked than they had been by the sight of Sheila Bennet conjuring fire out of thin air. Caroline broke first, laughing a little. "You're kidding, right? This is some kind of practical joke?"
"No. It's not a joke. And it's not my only secret." She looked at Bonnie. "I'm no you, not nearly as powerful as a Bennett witch, but, I have a little magic of my own. I think it came from my mom's side, because the Gilberts never had magic."
Sheila frowned and Elena wondered if she knew more about Miranda's family. She assumed her mother was Katerina's descendant, because nothing in the Gilbert journals had ever mentioned magic. But it could have been someone who married into the Gilbert line farther back in the family tree. Even with all her memories, all the questions her sisters had asked over the millenia, she didn't really understand what triggered another doppleganger to appear. And she'd never had anyone to ask, until now.
"What kind of magic?" Bonnie asked, just as Caroline burst out with "Show us something cool!" and Elena laughed. Her questions could wait. Reassuring her friends and helping Bonnie learn more about her family was what mattered today.
"Okay, something cool coming up."
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What are some of your favorite moments of Season 1? I'm clearly going off the rails of canon and I'm still working out what to keep, change, and toss.