Fourteenth.

As I stood under the stream of hot water in the shower I tried to visualize all of my troubles liquefying and going down the drain with the water. I stood there for much longer than I needed to, and by the time I turned off the water and reached out for my robe more than 30 minutes had gone by, but I didn't care. It had taken almost that long to convince myself that I was not going crazy and there had to be some explanation for the way I had reacted when I saw that girl in the restroom. I was really looking forward to another deep sleep to calm my nerves and purge my mind.

I grabbed a towel off of the warming rack , rubbing against my scalp to dry my hair. I brushed my teeth and then walked back in the bedroom only to be met by a half-naked Damon sitting on the edge of the bed. Lucky for him he had pants on or I might have picked him up and thrown him over the railing in the hallway. Not wanting to call any extra attention to him I momentarily looked up at him and then continued about getting myself ready for bed. "How long have you been sitting there?" I asked him.

He flashed a devilish smile at me. "Not long," he responded, playing coy. I threw a towel at him as I walked back into the bathroom and changed, hoping that he would give me a break and just let me go to bed, but I knew that was a long shot at best.

I hadn't even cleared the bathroom doorway before he started grilling me about what had happened tonight. "Bonnie told me that you and she had literally bumped into one another and that you looked at her strangely as you helped her gather her things. What I want to know is why?" For a moment I considered pretending I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew he would never believe me, and I was far too tired to come up with a good story. I put away my clothes and sat on the opposite side of the bed while Damon stretched out leaning his head on his hand and his elbow on a pillow. I smelled his deodorant or cologne, possibly a combination of the two, and though I tried my hardest, I couldn't keep myself from looking at his exposed upper body. His skin was so smooth, muscles bulging out in all the right places. I tore my eyes away but I knew that he knew what I was thinking, a smile crept across his face.

Averting my eyes I told him about Lydia. "She was Emily Bennett's mother and Bonnie's ancestor. Bonnie resembled her so much that it took me a minute before I realized it wasn't Lydia. Bonnie's eye color is different, and Lydia never wore her hair loose, but aside from that they were almost identical."

"Does Bonnie know what you are now? She's usually able to figure these things out with a quick touch."

"No, she doesn't know, another perk to being a Unique I guess. Witches can't read us as easily." I replied.

"Okay, so Bonnie doesn't know, but something else must have happened then. When you came out of the restroom your face was completely white, your eyes wild and you were shaking. Then you bolted out the door. What happened while you were in there?"

"I really don't know what happened," I told him. "I was drying my hands when a young girl walked in and when I looked up at her reflection in the mirror my entire body turned to ice."

"Do you know who she was?"

"I've never seen her before. She was very pretty, she had long dark hair and dark eyes, and she had a very slender build."

I had been looking down at my hands as I told him this, and when I looked up he was staring at me with a strange look on his face. I looked back at him confused, what did he know? "Did you happen to notice what she was wearing?" he asked me.

"Well I wasn't really that concerned about her clothes while I froze in place." I tried to think back on the quick interaction. "I think she was wearing a maroon Henley top and jeans."

He started to laugh and sat up on the bed. "That was Elena Gilbert, the Elena you claim to have come here to help." That didn't explain the strange reaction that I had though. "I'm not sure why that happened, but Elena is Katherine's doppelganger," he told me.

"But I've never seen Katherine," I reminded him, "so why would I have reacted that way?"

Damon jumped up, "I'll be right back," he said as he left the room. I took advantage of his momentary absence to slide under the sheets, they felt cool against my warm skin, soft and cool. When he returned I had turned off the harsh overhead lights and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. He crossed the room, jumped and landed back on the bed on his side. He handed me a small stack of photographs, "look at these and tell me what you feel." I looked down at a few photos of Stefan and the girl I now knew was Elena, but I felt nothing, shuffling through I found one of Damon and Elena dressed up and dancing outdoors that was labeled the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant, and the next was a full frontal shot of Damon lying on a fur blanket which I immediately threw at him. Finally the last picture was of Stefan and Elena at a masquerade ball, Elena had removed her mask, and as I looked down at her I felt the icy cold feeling overtaking me, I couldn't catch my breath, my heart pounded and the color drained from my face. As I started to tremble I felt Damon pull the picture from my hand and turn it upside down on the bottom of the pile.

He put his arms around me as I continued to shake uncontrollably, ran his fingers through my hair and whispered reassurances in my ear. After a few minutes I stopped shaking and was able to calm my breathing. I pulled away. "Are you alright?" I didn't answer, I wanted to know why that happened again, I'd never felt anything like that before today.

"Why am I only reacting that way to the last photo?" I asked him.

When he told me the reason it seemed so obvious. "All of the pictures were of Elena with one exception. The last picture taken at the masque was Katherine." I had to think about this for a minute; that meant that no matter how I tried to deny it somewhere deep down I must have been scared of Katherine.

I could accept that, she had been a virtual non-presence in my life, popping up only to tear my family and friends away from me but somehow maintaining her anonymity. It didn't, however, explain what had happened at The Grille. Damon tried to rationalize this for me. "The only explanation I can come up with is that doppelgangers are like mirror images, clones, of oneself, so something about viewing Elena in the mirror must have set something off in you, unconsciously recognizing the image as that of Katherine." My mind was spinning again, none of it really made any logical sense, but who was I to judge, a five-hundred year old vampire laying on a bed with a one-hundred fifty year old vampire discussing doppelgangers and witches, it all seemed so surreal, almost ridiculous.

Exhaustion was overtaking me, I put my hand up to my forehead for a moment to bring myself back. Damon remained in his spot on the bed and smiled, "I'll be happy to stay here with you to help you relax and sleep, he said. "I have a very calming effect on women."

I almost laughed, but instead, I looked into his eyes, smiled and moved my face closer to him, and at the last moment said "no thanks," and then I pulled hard on the blankets flipping him off of the bed and onto the floor. I rolled over and asked him to hit the light on his way out. I don't think I was able to keep myself awake long enough to hear the door close before I fell into a deep sleep.