Bonnie and Caroline were both quiet, the heaviness of Elena's revelation weighing down the room. The doorbell broke the silence and Elena forced a smile. "You two go get the pizza, I need to go to the bathroom." Bonnie could handle any danger that might be at the door and Elena needed a moment to breathe.
They didn't argue and she waved them down the stairs and before opening her bathroom door. Jeremy was standing on the other side, leaning against the counter and staring at her. "So you're a doppelganger."
Elena's stomach dropped, guilt and worry and fear spiking her heart rate. "Jer."
"Were you ever going to tell me? About you and Bonnie, vampires?" he asked her, his voice steady. She didn't see the anger she expected, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Sober, stable Jeremy was a lot better at lying than grieving, self-medicating Jeremy had been.
"Yes," she said, after a moment. "It wouldn't have been safe to keep it from you forever. I just wasn't ready yet."
"I hope you're not lying," he said, his tone still neutral, almost worse than accusation would have been. He turned to go and she reached out, resting her hand on his arm.
"Look in the attic, Jonathan Gilbert's journals. You'll find more there. And tomorrow I'll answer any question you ask."
Jeremy looked at her for a long moment and then nodded, cracking a hint of a smile. "At least now I know why you were obsessed with drawing yourself."
She slapped his arm, finally allowing herself a relieved smile, and then, before he could stop her, wrapped her arms around him for an awkward hug. "I love you, Jeremy."
"Gross," was his predictable response, but he didn't shake off the hug until she let go and she took it as it was meant, that he loved her too.
"Now go away, I have to pee," she told him, and laughed as his face scrunched up and he backed out of the bathroom, his hands up as if she was going to contaminate him. Whatever her parents, biological and adopted, had been thinking, she was glad Jeremy was her brother. And she hoped he felt the same after she told him everything else he didn't know.
After finishing and washing her hands, she returned to her bedroom and found Bonnie and Caroline sprawled on her bed with two open boxes of pizza. Bonnie was pouring herself a new drink—straight rum and coke, no ice cream—and Caroline was flipping back through the pages of Elena's sketchbook, studying each face as she devoured a piece of margherita pizza.
Elena bit back a warning about pizza grease on the nice paper. It didn't matter if they got smudged, they weren't faces she could forget. Instead she flopped down next to them and grabbed a slice of pepperoni and pineapple before blinking appealingly up at Bonnie.
Her friend laughed at her and handed her the glass she'd been filling, leaning over to the side table for another one for herself.
"So, vampires exist and one of them wants to murder you," Bonnie prompted her, once they'd all had at least two pieces of pizza in companionable silence.
Elena laughed at that succinct description. "More than one, I think. And more that would because of who I look like without ever stopping to figure out who I really am." Very few of the enemies Katherine had made would stop to wonder why she was human before killing her or turning her over to Klaus.
Wiping her hands on a napkin, Elena sat up enough to balance her glass on her leg, then leaned over and snagged her sketchbook out of Caroline's hands.
"Klaus and his siblings eventually figured out that they could make others like themselves, obviously, although as the originals they are far harder to kill than your average vampire. But they're not the point of this story," Elena said, turning the page and wishing it was as easy to dismiss the original vampires and their impact on her bloodline.
"There were now two powerful curses linked to the doppelgangers and I believe that made our occurrence more frequent. Miriam," she said, tapping the page. "Never met the originals, but vampires were a part of her life."
"She lived in what is now part of Russia, during a time when many different men warred over who ruled the area. Her family was not involved in the conflict—her father chopped wood and she and her mother cared for a few sheep, spinning and dying and selling the wool, and they didn't have enough money or influence to be drawn into any of the wars."
Elena offered Caroline a crooked smile. "More tragedy, I'm afraid, but not an unhappy ending. One of the men fighting for rulership was a vampire, though few others knew that. A few of his lieutenants were as well, and they made a game of hunting the peasantry for food and sport. Miriam's father was one of their victims. Miriam and her mother were also targets, but they knew some magic and they fought back, killing several of the vampires before the few survivors fled. They, too, fled after, afraid of retribution, travelling south. Miriam found a husband and was the only one of us to die of old age."
"You are not a Greek tragedy, Elena," Caroline said, insistent, and Elena couldn't help her laugh.
"I mean, I have Greek blood, have experienced tragedy, and am the current result of a curse on a Greek woman, so."
Caroline scrunched her nose and then shook her head. "Nope. We're a sexy teen drama and then we're going to be a sexy college drama and then we'll settle into an equally sexy but ideally less dramatic adult slice of life show."
Bonnie grinned and nudged Caroline with her shoulder. "You will never not be a drama, Caroline." The blonde huffed and Bonnie ignored her to reach for Elena's hand. "But she's right. Experiencing tragedy doesn't mean you are a tragedy, and any vampires, or whoever else, that try to bring one here are going to get wrecked."
Leaning forward, Elena tapped her glass against Bonnie's. "Cheers to that." Taking a long drink to fortify herself, her stomach burned with alcohol, excitement, fear, and too many other emotions to name as she flipped the page for almost the last time.
"Katerina Petrova. Doppelganger, daughter, mother, vampire," Elena said, then scrunched her nose. "I'm making her sound like a Meredith Brooks song which is not the worst comparison but," she stopped. Alcohol and Damon Salvatore and the freeing but heavy recounting of her ancestors was getting to her. "Katerina was born in Bulgaria in the 15th century, her father was an asshole and her mother loved her very much. She got pregnant at sixteen and her father took the baby from her after the birth and disowned her, sending her to England."
It was a short, brutal recitation that could never encapsulate the grief and rage and love and betrayal of Katerina's early life. Elena didn't know how the memories worked, why she dreamt of them at all, why some doppelgangers she knew only a few details of and others had seen what felt like half their lives. But she'd dreamt of the moment Katerina's daughter was taken from her more than almost any other moment in any of their lives, and she could only guess that it haunted Katerina still, whether she would admit it or not.
"Men suck," Caroline declared, her and Bonnie wearing matching frowns and Elena nodded in heartfelt agreement. "They do. And they weren't done ruining her life. England was the worst place Katerina could have been sent. The Originals were there, posing as nobles and Katerina was drawn to them, to Elijah, and to Klaus."
Handsome, charming, powerful, rich. Of course she was drawn to them, even aside from the curse that bound them together. Any woman in her situation would have been.
"They knew what she was, of course. Pretended to woo her while Klaus gathered what he needed for the sacrifice to break his curse," she told them, watching their scowls darken.
She didn't know if Elijah had pretended. If the affection and honor he'd shown Katerina, the desire to keep her alive, had been real or if the centuries had worn him into a monster, the way they had so many others. Klaus' intentions she had no doubt of, not with all the other glimpses she'd seen of the centuries of Katerina's flight to stay alive.
Their father and mother had created vampires out of love for their children—the monster they had created out of Klaus they had done out of cruelty and fear and she hoped their souls suffered for eternity for the misery they had caused. Assuming Mikael was ever killed, of course.
"But Katerina was smart, cunning, and she'd already learned not to trust men's promises. She figured out what they were, what they really wanted from her, and she ran. And when some vampires loyal to Klaus caught her, she tricked them into feeding her their blood, then killed herself to become a vampire so she could flee again."
"Okay, so where's the blockbuster movie about this badass, cause she sounds amazing," Caroline declared. Elena grinned, but didn't get to respond before Bonnie spoke up.
"She's still alive, isn't she?" her friend asked, looking at her closely. "You don't talk about her like you did the others."
Elena nodded. "She is. And still a badass. Not the Buffy type though," she said, glancing at Caroline. "After she ran, Klaus slaughtered her family, her entire village."
Caroline gasped and Bonnie looked furious. Elena looked down at the page, determined eyes and a sly smile that could only barely capture the edges of Katerina's personality. "She's done terrible things to survive since then. But she has, survived, despite the very powerful, very old vampire that has never stopped hunting her." Elena had half a dozen sketchbooks, hidden away, that showed some of those terrible things.
"I don't know what she'd do if she saw me. She might turn me over to Klaus, to get him off her back. She's not, she's not kind. The father of her child and her father and Klaus, she burned the kindness out of herself to survive them, to survive what they did." Her voice was quieter now, more to herself than to her friends. "I hope I get to meet her anyways, someone like me, someone I could have been."
Or could become, though she didn't say that out loud. She didn't know if she could force herself to the same lengths, to fight for her life over anyone else's. But if Klaus killed everyone she loved, like he did to Katerina, maybe she too would become someone else. Become to Elena what Katherine was to Katerina.
Grief changed you. Anger changed you. And she'd tasted enough of both to know how easily they could consume.
"We could spend all night talking about Katerina, Katherine as she goes by now. But the key points are this. She came here, once, shortly after Mystic Falls was founded. She turned Stefan and Damon Salvatore into vampires before fleeing again, letting them believe she died. That is why they are here, or, at least why Stefan's here. I think he saw me and thought I was her, and then wanted to figure out why I looked like her. She never told either of them about Klaus or doppelgangers."
Their eyes were wide and Caroline looked vindicated. "That's why Stefan's obsessed with you."
Elena laughed. "Yes. I am sure you would have been far more successful in wooing him if it wasn't for the fact that I look like the woman he loved and thinks is dead."
Caroline blushed. "That's not what I mean. I mean, it's kind of what I meant, but. Is Damon obsessed with you too? Why did he kill Matt and Vicky's mom?"
"I don't know. He didn't seem to know I was here? Or he did, but, like he'd learned since coming to town. I don't know if he came for Stefan. I've been keeping tabs and I don't think Stefan's fed from anyone in town since he arrived. But I don't know anything about what Damon's been doing, besides killing people. Or why he's here."
"Then we just have to find out," Bonnie said, determined. "Before he can kill anyone else."
"Yes! Time to put those archery skills to work," Caroline agreed. "After all of these stories, I desperately want to shoot at least one asshole."
Elena snorted. "I promise, Caroline, we will find you an asshole to shoot." Turning toward Bonnie, she let her smile fade. "And we will stop Damon. We are not letting him turn this town into his personal feeding grounds."
"Good," Bonnie said, with a sharp nod.
Caroline flopped dramatically on the bed, dragging a pillow over her face so that her voice was muffled. "Can we please plan for battle tomorrow. It's like, 2 AM and I want to sleeeeep."
"So you don't want to know that Anne Boleyn was a doppelganger," Elena said calmly, ignoring her own exhaustion.
Bonnie laughed as the pillow went flying, Caroline sitting up with wide eyes and a wild grin. "Elena Gilbert, you tell me everything about my favorite historical figure right this second or I shall never speak to you again."