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The plan was simple. They would be accompanying Eileen to the hospital during visiting hours, Damon would feed the sister his blood, her sister would make her miraculous recovery and then Eileen would make her excuses, come with them to Mystic Falls and be a part of the sacrifice. Being that she was a willing lamb going to the slaughter, they would try to get 'Klaus' to pick people outside of their little friend circle for the other sacrifices and thus save themselves some heartache.
The Gilbert girl made her noises again but she was ignored, again. All that high morality had no place in her new world so why she clung to it so desperately Klaus didn't understand.
"Oh, you're up," Eileen said as he walked into the living room, bent over a bowl of cereal. It was early in the morning, the sun hadn't risen yet and he could not fathom why she was up as well. He wanted to simply get out of the house, go for a walk where he couldn't be heard and tell Maddox and Greta of the change in plans.
"Habit I'm afraid," he lied smoothly, "May I ask why you're up?"
Her mouth quirked in the faintest mockery of smiles. "Work, I have a shift at the deli till nine and rehearsals after that."
"Rehearsals?"
"My ballet workshop is putting up a performance at the end of this week and I have the lead role."
"You're still going to do it?" He had thought that they would leave as quickly as possible. The full moon would be rising soon and he didn't want to wait too long to break his curse.
"My life may be ending in some backwater hick town but I'll be damned if my professional life doesn't end on a high." Klaus laughed. Mostly he wanted to hear her say that again around the Salvatore boys and the Gilbert girl, that the town their families had founded was making this city girl twist and turn with its insignificance. "Besides, I'll need to get some time to get my affairs in order. It wouldn't be convincing if I just took off and left while my sister was still in remission and anything that goes against my character will get her investigating and I don't what that. I don't want her involved in this drama. Hey, do you think that I'll be particularly mutilated during the sacrifice?"
Even Klaus was taken aback by that question and it must have shown because she rolled her eyes at him. He answered, if only to lessen the feeling of being patronised by a child. How did 'Ric' stand going through it every day? "I'm guessing that Klaus will just feed off your blood until you die."
Her mouth twisted "Unsanitary. What do you think, fiery car crash? Would that get rid of the evidence nicely?"
"Maybe toss you off a building and say you fell," Klaus suggested and once again she rolled her eyes.
"Mr Saltzman please, I'm a ballerina, I don't just lose my balance and fall. You tell Marlene that and she'll know that I either jumped or was pushed." She took a final spoonful of cereal, lost in thought as she chewed on it, "Never mind I'll think of something."
She left but not before leaving a note on the fridge. Klaus left his own note before going off out to rework his plans, all the while thinking of the girl who was thinking of the best way to hide her upcoming supernatural death to keep her sister from getting involved with their kind.
What a remarkable young woman.
"Gavin, you're here too," Eileen couldn't help but say when she saw her sister's best friend there in the hallway outside Marlene's hospital room, where a doctor had stopped her to talk about Marlene. Her twin, Damon and Mr Saltzman had come with her for 'visiting hours' and were inside the room with Stefan sitting their jaunt out because the smell of human blood tempted him far too much. For the briefest of moments Eileen had wanted to ask what that was about but then she came to her senses and realised that she didn't really want to know.
Damon was the 'doctor' vampire and he was the one she wanted there. He was a lot more likely to know what to do and if they ran into any too curious nurses or doctors she wanted him to engage them in conversation, ask about Marlene's condition from one medical professional to another because compulsions in a hospital where CCTV cameras were there didn't seem like a good idea. Elena had tried to convince her that they had done it before back in Mystic Falls but Eileen had reminded her that the sheriff of that town was in the know about the supernatural and was likely to take any discrepancies as what they really were and contact the Council rather than launching an investigation like they would do here,and that had shut down the conversation.
Sometimes she wondered about the kind of life her twin was living. It didn't seem to have any basis in reality, even the basic conversation of what she'd like to study in college had turned up a distorted answer with more references to Stefan than she cared for. She remembered the scene when she had come back from practice to find Elena going through the book in which they jotted down monthly expenses with fascination. Eileen's talk of budgeting had gone over the girl's head, apparently being a Gilbert came with a lot of family money.
There had been a bit of bitterness that had stemmed from that one moment. Elena had never thought about what she would major in, what career she wanted. She hadn't thought beyond falling in love, apparently.
And Eileen thought of the folder full of different college brochures in her desk drawer, the bookmarked pages for scholarships on her laptop, the application essays she'd been outlining and writing up for the last year, the auditions she had marked on her calendar,the future she'd been planning for that was going to end in a few weeks and yes, she felt bitter.
But the rewards far outweighed the cost. Marlene was going to wake up.
As soon as they got Gavin away so Damon could do his thing.
Under her breath, so softly that no one but Damon would hear, Eileen muttered, "Get Elena to pretend to talk to Marlene about how she's going to take care of me."
So, when Gavin and she entered the room it was to Elena holding Marlene's unresponsive hand and saying, "-and I promise Eileen isn't ever going to feel alone because I'll be there for her."
Which was her cue. "She's not dead yet and I'd appreciate if you didn't act like it." Eileen said coldly, knowing the response it would get from Gavin and Elena. Elena's eyes turned very shiny and confused while Gavin tucked his arm around Eileen's waist and all but lifted her out of the room.
She could not have planned it better if she'd handed them scripts .
"Come on, Squirt, we need to talk." Gavin said and led her to the nearest vending machine, getting the Vitamin water he knew she adored. "Now have a drink and calm down."
"I'm plenty calm," She said but took a good gulp from the bottle anyway. "But she shouldn't have said that."
"Hey, if anything will wake your sister up it'll be some tarty girl who looks like you telling her that she'll take care of you. Maybe this will be the kick in the pants she needs to wake up and be a little less lazy." He said with a laugh but it was frayed at the ends. "So that's the twin, huh?"
She had told Gavin about Elena asking to meet her. Without Marlene there to act as her sounding board she hadn't known what to do and ended up going to Gavin for advice.
"Yep. Apparently she was raised by a pretty well off couple and only found out she was adopted some time ago. She found our birth mother who told her that I existed and ended up here."
"How are you taking it? Does the birth mother want to meet you or something?"
"Turns out that the birth mother died recently, just before telling her about me by the way. And the birth father is apparently the brother of her adoptive father."
Gavin's eyebrows rose to great heights. "You're telling me that she just found out that her uncle is her father."
"Did I mention that the birth mother faked her death to run away from her husband who is dating Elena's aunt and is also her history teacher and a close enough friend to act as her chaperone on this trip?"
"I could swear my mother made me watch a telenovela just like this."
Before she could respond, a crash cart went past them, nurses and doctors accompanying it and they followed it to Marlene's room. Elena came flying to her with tears in her eyes, "It's your sister, she woke up!"
And the dam she had been building up inside of her burst but it took Gavin throwing his arms around her and shushing and placating her in turns to realise that she was crying hysterically.
But it didn't matter, none of it mattered, Marlene was awake!
Damon had to look away from the sight in front of him, feeling like a voyeur. Elena's twin was buried in the arms of some guy she called Gavin, sobbing away. With his better than human hearing he heard her wheezing sob and saw the fluttering of the small back accompanying it. The relief in that soft voice was hard to hear.
While they had been alone in that loft of hers Stefan and Elena had tried to come up with ways to convince the twin not to give up so easily. It was ridiculous and a conversation that he and Alaric didn't join in to at all. They didn't understand, they had no clue. They hadn't recognised the look in her eyes when she talked about her sister and it was going to be their downfall.
Damon knew what it was. Had seen it in the mirror every time he had thought of Katherine for the last hundred and fifty or so years.
Devotion. Utter absolute devotion. And not even the blind kind that Damon indulged in, no, she went into it knowing well what's he was facing, knowing well what was expected. And her love unlike Damon's had been returned.
He knew that with absolute certainty, from the way her sister opened her eyes, looked around in pain and yet the first word she said was "Eileen." It was obvious from the way she had seen Elena and cringed away from her, frowning.
"Who are you and why do you look like my sister?!" She asked, knowing that it wasn't Eileen even when disoriented from waking up from a fucking coma, and that was the moment her heartbeat sped up, that was what brought the doctors and nurses rushing in with the crash cart.
Next to him, Elena bit her lip watching her twin being comforted by the man, "She'd really going to do this. She's really going to-to kill herself." She choked out, her voice filled with pity and Damon wanted to shake her and make her understand.
Eileen shouldn't be pitied, she should be envied. As the song said, 'The greatest you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return'
And Eileen and her sister were living their lives honouring that one phrase. No, there was nothing to be pitied there.
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