My foot was lead as I pumped the gas to the floor. I truly hoped vampires couldn't recover from severe plant-based burns quickly. No need to catch up to little 'ol me currently peaking a hundred miles per hour.

My car quickly skidded to a stop in front of Elena's house. I shot out of the driver's seat as fast as I could banged on the door.

"Elena!" I yelled. "Please open up!"

It was dark by this time, and Damon could've been lurking anywhere.

Elena flung it open with bulging eyes, "Stefan? What are you doing here?"

"Let me in," I practically begged. "Please?"

"Yeah," she stepped aside as I came through the threshold, slamming and locking the door behind us. She was staring at me like I'd finally lost it, "What's wrong?"

"It's D-damon," I said between heaving breaths. "He's-he's a vampire!"

"What?" Based on her tone, she didn't seem all that surprised. After everything she' had endured, though, she probably wasn't.

"Elena," stood up straight and took her fragile body into my arms, "my brother is a vampire! He tried to eat my hand off. I threw vervain in his face and drove here as fast as possible. I didn't know where else to go, and I don't know where he is. For all I know, he could be outside listening right now."

The adrenaline began wearing off as I started to feel the searing pain from the mirror shards. It didn't seem to cut any major veins, so I was grateful.

"You're bleeding everywhere, Stefan," she said. She placed her hand above my cut. Her hand was cold, and she was feeling a bit chilly. "Here, I'll get you a drink while I find the first aid kit. Stay here."

Grabbing the side of her face, I gave her a light, yet lingering, kiss on her closed lips. She smiled at me, but there was something off about her. Maybe it was just my nerves.

I waited in the doorway while Elena went into the kitchen. It was quiet. I didn't hear her looking in cupboards. She was back rather quickly with a white gauze bandage and some red liquid.

"I certainly hope that's not grenadine," I mumbled under my breath, but she heard me.

"No, it's not," she said. "It's flavored water - strawberry."

"Good."

"Here, drink it," she said as she put the glass up to my lips, "while I put the bandage on."

It seemed a little weird for her to say, but I gulped it down nonetheless. It didn't taste like strawberries at all.

"There," she said as the bandage was placed neatly over my injury.

"What are we going to do?" I asked.

"About what?"

"Damon."

She thought for a minute, "If he comes around, we have stakes for protection and rope soaked vervain to restrain him."

"Seems too easy."

"Don't worry, Stefan," she said in an all-too-familiar tone. "It's alright."

"Katherine used to tell me that a lot," I blurted out. I had no idea why I did, but it just came out.

She gave me a slight smile, "Do you still miss her?"

"More than anything," I answered. "Please don't misunderstand that. I love you, but yes, I miss her."

"Do you still love her?" she asked. "It's okay to tell me."

I nodded and looked down.

"You're such a gentleman, my sweet Stefan," Elena said as she pulled my chin up to meet her eyes. I got a sudden flash of déjà vu.

You'd be surprised to know that I can at least show up in your dreams, my sweet Stefan.

"I've got to be dreaming again," My head spun and my breath caught in my throat as I looked down at her neck. My fingers grabbed a chain dangling from her neck and pulled the pendant from behind her shirt. "Stefan & Katherine" graced the front. I turned it around to see the familiar '7/30/08' on the back, "Katherine?"

She nodded and looked up at me through her thick lashes, "Love me, Stefan."

I'm not sure what caused this accidental relapse to overcame me. One second I was standing in the doorway stupefied, and the next I was slamming Katherine up against the wall, violating her lips with my own. Her hands worked at me like they did in my dream, and eventually I had her in her bare essentials. Those were ripped off quickly as I carried her to the couch where I reclaimed her as my own.

During this bittersweet interval, my mind did seem to tug at conscious thoughts of those relating to Katherine being a vampire, Damon being a vampire, this being wrong, and Katherine actually being alive, which was crazy because I clearly saw her dead body in the coffin that day with Elena.

Elena…

Suddenly, the thought that if this was Katherine, then it certainly wasn't Elena.

And if this wasn't Elena, yet we were in her home, then where the hell was she?

Elena, Elena, Elena…

Oh, Elena!

"What did you just call me?" Katherine said as she abruptly stopped to look up at me. I opened my eyes.

"What?" I asked. "I didn't say anything, Katherine."

"The hell you didn't," she said with rage. "You just called me Elena! Get the hell off of me!"

She barely touched my chest with her hand, but it caused me to fly off of her and across the room.

Well, Bonnie was right.

Fuck!

I'd managed to pull on my jeans before Katherine ran at me within a blink of an eye. She, however, was stark naked as she held me against the wall by my throat. I must admit, if I wasn't metaphorically shitting my pants at the moment, it would've been pretty hot.

"I'm not Elena, Stefan Salvatore," she said, and I could almost see fire shooting from her eyes. "Apparently the vervain wasn't bled out of your system enough to keep compulsion for one hour while I had my way with you. Damn Damon for failing at the one measly job I gave him! I should've known not to let a newbie deal with problems like this!"

So Damon was in on it. Interesting…

"How did you get here? Where's Elena? Why are you still here when you're supposed to be dead?" I asked these questions with ragged breaths. She was cutting off my airways.

She threw me across the room. I broke a coffee table on my way down. It hurt.

"You sit there and don't move or I'll rip your throat out," she commanded. I didn't dare move a muscle. No compulsion needed for that one.

"You see, Stefan, I never left," she began. "I've been leading you on since -" she looked on the back of her necklace "- July 30, 2008. Obviously, I'm not dead. The body you saw in the casket was me faking it to throw you two off. Compelled the medical examiner and everything. I knew you'd come snooping around to avenge my untimely death, so I had this all planned. I got bored with our mundane life, so to twist it up a bit, I was to die, you were to look around for a bit, and then you were to give up and go back to New York. I should've known better, though. Error on my part."

"Makes sense," I snorted sarcastically. "You wanna tell me why, though?"

She laughed, "I guess I'll explain from the beginning: Miranda wasn't my mother. Actually, she was my great-great-great-plus granddaughter. I'm very old, Stefan."

"I gathered that much."

Her glare shut me up instantly, "A long time ago, I was on my way to the beach for some sun and relaxation when I stopped off in Virginia. The lapis lazuli ring prevents my burning, but I digress. Mystic Falls is what you would call a "boomtown" for supernatural creatures, so I had to check it out. I was in town for a few days when I ran into the original Salvatore brothers. They were cute, so I toyed with them. When I got tired of one, I just switched to the other. Needless to say, I never made it to the beach.

"Eventually, I would come back to this town occasionally after the Salvatore's died-just to see if any other ones came along. That's when I found Elena. The poor girl didn't know she was my doppelganger and destined for a life of fear. So when her parents divorced when she was eight, I was determined to become involved with my descendants. Once Grayson and Miranda divorced, I compelled her to move to New York and pretend I was her other daughter - Elena's twin sister."

"What do you mean 'toy' with both Salvatore Brothers?" I blurted out. I flinched at the risk of being thrown through a wall.

"Patience, Stefan, I'm getting there," she replied with a devilish grin. "Once I was in New York, I devised a plan to separate Grayson and Miranda forever. It would've made Elena's life miserable, and for some odd reason I took joy in that. I guess it was boredom. Anyway, my plan was about to be set into motion until I went to school and found a young man named Stefan Salvatore."

I rolled my eyes at her theatrics.

She smiled at me, "After that, you took up all of my time. I played the innocent little girl you fell head-over-heels for. And when I found out you had a brother? Oh, the joy it brought me to realize I could repeat my past all over again! It wasn't long until I was a significant part of your life and had all of your family loving me - including Damon.

"I flirted with him behind your back all of the time to make him look bad. I'd compel him to forget my own actions, which caused your tightly-knit brotherly bond to unwind before your very eyes, and there was nothing either of you could do about it.

"Then came the night he 'tried to kiss me'. Also a lie covered by compulsion because we were going hot and heavy before you walked in. That was the night I really saw just how much I had you both wrapped around my fingers. I was drinking it up until Damon decided to go live with Giuseppe. I became somewhat heartbroken to find out that my fun was going to be over and decided to take matters into my own hands.

"The plan was to bring you two together by having Miranda reunite with Grayson so they'd become a family again. Cool how I was able to make all of your lives intertwine, huh? They'd start to reconcile then die in a car accident. I'd be the only survivor. I figured you and Damon would be so worried and shaken up that he'd rush home and the games would continue, but that's not how it happened.

"The driver I compelled to hit Grayson's car mixed up Elena and I's seats, so while he did his job by hitting and killing Elena's parents, he failed at killing her because he targeted me instead. Had I been human, I would've died, but I saw the crash coming and braced myself by putting my hand to the door. Sadly, all it did was punch that little spot of the car out of the frame. The car hit lower and cut me from my chest to my thigh. I must say it hurt, but I healed easily enough. I compelled the funeral home cosmetologist to add it to my body, though. It looked cool.

"Unfortunately, it didn't kill Elena. She swam out of the car before I could grab her and drown her, so I had to lay down there in the car at the bottom of the godforsaken river and play dead for hours until I could get into the morgue and compel the medical examiner to B.S. my death report.

"I tried to dispose of that little chunk of metal in the riverbed before I was retrieved from the water, but apparently it came up. Since I knew this little piece of evidence would be the one thing that really prevented you from stopping the search for "my killer", I had to take matters into my own hands once again. So, I showed up in your dreams to solidify your want for me and made sure you and Damon wound up together down here, which is probably why he got so mad when you came back into the flower store. It wasn't Elena, but rather me, there talking to him and telling him the plan to corrupt you. He was immortal by that time. I changed him after my burial ceremony. He's been so angry with you, and it's only been intensified by these stronger emotions. That's why he's so up and down. One minute he's nice, the next he's close to Satan himself. It's all for you, Stef.

"But when you cut your wrist, the bloodlust became too much. He nearly blew it. Good thing I gave you my blood. Your wound most likely isn't there anymore."

I lifted the gauze to see that she was right. There was no cut whatsoever, "I knew it wasn't flavored water."

"It was, too," she laughed, "just not strawberry."

"That still doesn't explain where Elena is or how you got in here," I said.

"That was easy," she stated. "While you two were at the park and Damon was off screwing some blonde, Jeremy came back and thought I was Elena. He found it a bit odd for me to ask if I could come in my own home, but regardless, he's the one that invited me in. When Elena came back home I threw her down into the basement. She tumbled down a few stairs, but the cement floor broke her fall."

"Is she okay?" I did my best to keep the panic out of my voice.

"Maybe," she rolled her eyes. "I haven't checked on her or anything. Why aren't you applauding my work?"

"Well, Katherine," I began as I stood up. "An easier solution would've been to compel Damon to stay so your games wouldn't end. Instead, you had to bring an innocent girl into this simply because she looks like you-something she couldn't help. You took her world and shattered it when she'd done nothing wrong. I'm not going to applaud you. If you think about it, your plan just blew up in your face. Damon may still love you and want you, but I don't. You're a selfish, evil, conniving bitch! So either way you look at it, you lose!"

She screamed like a three-year-old and stomped her foot on the ground. Her strength intensified her temper tantrum and caused the floor beam below her to splinter off. It ricocheted over to me.

The action put her foot through the floor. With her distracted, I took the only opportunity I saw and shoved the wood in my waistband before running down to the basement. In there was my precious Elena in fetal position, holding her head as blood seeped from her hairline. She shivered, "Before you ask, I'm okay. Just a little beat up."

"I'm gonna kill her," I swore. "Are there any vervain plants in here?"

She nodded and jerked her finger towards the cupboard. I opened it to find a stockpile of the plant in every form one could think of, from liquid vials to powder. I grabbed all I could muster. I had even managed to slip a plant to Elena before a small, cold, delicate, powerful hand wrung me up against a beam by my throat. My ex-lover was cutting off my circulation, but I knew panicking wasn't the answer. Instead, I threw all the vervain in my hand on her face, and she let me drop with a painful scream.

I scrambled over to help her up the stairs. I threw her my keys, "Run. Get to Bonnie's. If you see Damon, shove the stem down his throat."

I was thankful she didn't fight me on the matter. Especially since she barely managed to escape before Katherine came back at me.

She threw me on the ground so hard I was seeing stars, "You ungrateful bastard! I give you the best four years of your life and you repay me by shoving vervain in my face? Newsflash: I drink the stuff. It doesn't hurt me much."

"Much…being the key word," I said as she wrapped her perfectly manicured hands in my hair and yanked. It wasn't so sexy this time around.

I faintly registered a loud crunch to my left. The adrenaline flowing through my body initially masked the realization it was my hand. It hurt a lot, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of screaming.

"You've made a terrible mistake, my sweet Stefan."

Mistake? Stake? I was grateful for past me's quick thinking with the wooden floorboard piece. Conspicuously, I pulled it from my wasitband.

Katherine placed both hands on either side of my neck and smiled at me, "Any last words?"

"Yeah," I said. "Go to hell, Katherine!"

I shoved the stake in her heart just as I heard the snap of my neck.