9

Katerina was worried. She was afraid of Klaus, anyone sane was afraid of Klaus.

But she could bank on his anger to to make him...well not exactly sloppy, but impulsive. She knew him when he was impulsive, knew him when he was satisfied and happy with how his plans were coming along.

But he was never as sure of himself as he was now.

And that was a problem because it should not be possible for him to be this sure, not when only a few weeks ago he had been on the outs with Elijah, the only one he had ever truly trusted in his own twisted way.

Something had changed. And Katerina had no idea what it was.

Klaus had been away more often than not. There was little she could glean from eavesdropping or anything really when he didn't even spend any time in this ridiculous tiny apartment. He had compelled the hunter and her to coexist and then left, only coming back occasionally to make sure neither of them were dead yet.

It was unnerving. Katerina had 'crossed' him, after all. He had killed her entire family, the same family that had cast her out, in retaliation and now when he should have been plotting, should have been torturing her he didn't.

He must have found another plaything. Perhaps her doppelgänger kept him entertained but Katerina doubted it.

Elena Gilbert was mundane. She wouldn't keep his attention for so long, let alone all the way until now, two days before the full moon.

His witches came to pick her up. A few binding spells and with her daylight amulet taken from her she was limited in what she could do. He wasn't even trying to torture her but this waiting, this state of not knowing anything, it was a torture in itself.

They took her to another house, a larger one, practically a mansion. It wasn't Klaus' own but it did fit in with his style, his pretence of being old money. It was one of the things she had learnt later when the new centuries had given her the right words for it. She had learnt something about his origins, how old he was, how his father was supposedly a wealthy landowner but in an era where that didn't quite mean much. Luxury means different things in the era of Vikings than in the civilised world she was born to.

He was closer to 'white trash' than he realised. Or perhaps that was what she liked to tell herself to make herself feel better. That Katerina Petrova was always going to be better than him in lineage than he liked.

He wouldn't care. Klaus cared about power not lineage.

He was there with Elijah on the upper floor, talking to his brother softly. They both glanced down the stairs at her before looking away just as quickly as if she didn't matter. A shaky breath, one that she didn't need to take as a vampire, left her mouth.

Katerina was going to die. She knew that now.

Another face joined them at the balustrade and Katerina gasped at the sight of it. It looked like her but not like her at the same time. Narrower overall, eyes looking bigger because they were set in a more hollowed out face, eyebrows plucked straighter. But still enough in terms of resemblance for her to recognise her as a doppelgänger. But not Elena.

"I never thought I'd say this," She said, her voice soft and floaty in a way Katerina and Elena's weren't. Katerina heard some vocal training in it, in the precision of it, in her enunciation. "But my great great great something grandmother dresses a bit slutty for my tastes."

"Katerina is more of the if you've got it, then flaunt it types." Klaus said to the doppelgänger with a genuine smile. Not a smirk, a smile. Katerina hadn't thought him capable of that.

"That's more clingy and tight than some of my leotards. If I was going to survive past day after tomorrow I would ask her where she got them because that would be useful in rehearsals," She frowned, "No, wait, bit too low cut actually. Would spill out of it in the middle of stretching itself."

They walked down the stairs, the doppelgänger gliding down them as if her feet didn't move. Most definitely not Elena.

"I didn't realise I had more than one human descendant." Katerina said, keeping her eyes on the girl. The other two unnerved her and she needed to keep her wits about, now especially so.

The doppelgänger tilted her head to the side and looked at her. Katerina stifled a shudder at the feeling of being flayed open by a pair of eyes. "Wow, this must be killing you! So many surprises, so many things that you don't know."

Klaus slung his arm around the doppelgänger and led her away from Katerina, "Don't worry, there'll be other things killing her soon enough."

Elijah sighed and pressed a ten dollar note into the doppelgänger's hand and glared at his brother. The rift between the two had clearly been mended. "You could try to be a little bit less predictable."

"Are you two betting on me?" Klaus said with mock outrage. Katerina knew this was mock outrage because no one was dead or tortured or forced to walk into the sun.

"All the time, you should see the ones we have for the actual ritual, if I had a college fund it would be full to the brim by the time of the full moon." The doppelgänger said happily and the three seemed to forget that Katerina was in the room to begin with.

"We're off to see how the setup of the ritual's going, Elijah keep an eye on Katerina would you." With that Klaus was out the door, the doppelgänger with him.

And Katerina turned to the brother she thought she could reason with.

"Who is she?" She asked and Elijah simply raised a brow.

"Isobel didn't tell you she had twins?"

Twins?!

"Her name is Eileen. She's rather lovely. Not quite the innocence you pretended but all the better for it. A real person with ambitions, hopes, emotions and the logic and rationale to back them up." Elijah stepped closer and for a brief moment Katerina remembered that he had once been her friend, her only confidant, the brother of the man courting her. Rather lovely himself. "I do believe she might be the one person Klaus will mourn."

And the world as Katerina knew it lay shattered at her feet.

It was the night of the full moon and there they were at the Salvatore Boarding house, all of them. Bonnie, Jenna, Jeremy, Alaric, John, Damon and Stefan. All of them, sitting and waiting.

There was nothing for them to do but wait. They couldn't even step out of the house right now, Elena couldn't be there with Eileen for her final moments. With Tyler out there in the woods and possibly the other werewolves who had come to get him, it wasn't safe.

"Bonnie, can I talk to you?" John asked but the tension was too much. Everyone turned to look at him and it was Elena who broke the silence.

"What's going on?"

John twisted his face, "I found a spell in Jonathan's journal. We might be able to resuscitate Eileen after her death. Klaus gets what he wants and Eileen still lives. Win-win."

Bonnie let out a breathless laugh. "There's no such thing as win-win in magic. It's about balance, if one person wins, the other loses." She took the journal held in John's hand and flipped through it, snorting when she read the spell. "There's the balance, the price that has to be paid."

"Bonnie?" Elena asked and her friend turned to her with a tight mouth.

"It binds the life force of the parent to the child. Eileen will live but...John won't."

John didn't even wince at the barrage of noise that came his way when Bonnie said that. He only turned to Elena and sighed.

"You know, I held you when you were born. Your parents were there too but I was the first one of us all to hold you. You were a tiny little thing, I always wondered how such a tiny thing came out of someone who was so giant by then. Miranda said it was rude to say that to a woman so I never mentioned it to Isobel. Now, I know better. I didn't even know Eileen existed until Isobel came back. Years of her life I've missed out on, didn't even look for her."

"John you didn't know-"

"No, I didn't. But I know now. Asked around a bit. She was kicked around a lot of foster homes, you know. Only got adopted when she was eight or so. Kids in the system, they don't have the easiest life. I wasn't there, whatever excuse I have, it doesn't change that fact. She's going to die to save this town that she doesn't know, doesn't even like. And I can do something about it." John turned to Bonnie, "She made her choice, help me make mine."

It was very scenic, this 'Stephen's Quarry'. Beyond pretty honestly. A good place to die.

Two rings of fire surrounded the other two. Katerina was in one and a werewolf in the other. Klaus had said that when the werewolf found out that this was a ritual to break the Sun and the Moon curse she'd come with them of her own volition. The werewolf was still under the impression that the curse applied to all werewolves everywhere. The ring of fire was to stop her from escaping while undergoing the pain of transformation. The same ring was around Katerina as well. The vampire had protested of course, tried to escape but with the blood loss accompanying the stabbing herself that Klaus had made her do and without the daylight amulet to let her try during the day and with witches to bind her, she was weakened a lot.

Eileen was quite impressed actually. It had taken a lot to subdue this ancestor of hers.

(Despite Greta's insistence, Eileen wasn't in any such ring of fire herself. Klaus' trust in her earned her more than a few dirty looks from the the witch who very clearly had a crush on him. Eileen approved. Not for any other reason only because at least Greta was of age and absolutely willing to be super involved in the supernatural life and shared the lack of morality with Klaus. Those kind of things formed the foundation of healthy relationships and Eileen got the feeling that Klaus was lacking in those.)

Eileen had prepared for the ritual properly. While the rest took care of the lines and candles and altars, Eileen wore a dark shirt that the blood stains wouldn't show up on and most importantly, brought a folding chair. She situated herself a bit away from the others, Klaus made good company to the movies and a great conversational partner but his fondness for gore and blood made her queasy. She looked away as Klaus squeezed the heart and then whistled as he staked Katerina. The squelching sounds made her a bit sick but again, she had prepared for this by eating a very light dinner and taking a pill that she usually took for motion sickness.

"Is it my turn now?" She asked and Klaus held out a hand. Eileen took it but tutted. "Your port de bras is terrible, no grace whatsoever. Sweep your hand up through your centre and present it as if holding your heart out to someone."

"Fussing even as you die, tch tch," Klaus almost sighed, "Well, this is it."

"So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen,adieu!"

"The Sound of Music, really?" Klaus looked her in the eye and compelled her, "You won't feel any pain as you die."

"Aww, my murderer's a sweetheart."

"The pleasure, the privilege is mine."

"No, no, no, there will no quoting The Smiths, especially since you're not actually dying by my side, you're killing me."

Klaus grinned. "Don't be silly, I haven't even started killing you yet."

"You win again," Elijah interjected, rolling his eyes. "Honestly Klaus, so predictable."

Klaus glared at his brother before turning back to her, "It was a pleasure meeting you Ms Henri."

"You too, Niklaus."

And as the fangs pierced her neck the compulsion held true and she didn't feel anything at all, only a growing weakness before her eyes fluttered shut and she felt his arms catch her before she fell.

Then, nothing.

Eileen was a planner. She prepared for things, thought them out beforehand. Even when things went awry, she still thought them through. Logic was her greatest tool.

But as many others had noted, logic had no place in the world that involved the supernatural.

So she had prepared for death. A final end.

Waking up after was not something she was prepared for. And yet, there she was in the Salvatore Boarding house, shivering and gasping as she came awake.

And she knew even in that frightened state of mind that this shouldn't have happened, this was not logical.

"Wha-"

Her twin, hovering over her had tear tracks running down her cheeks but she answered.

"John tied his life force to yours, you're alive."

And Eileen felt a churning sensation in her stomach as the sheer wrongness of it filled her.

"What have you done?!"

Because Eileen wasn't an idiot. She knew well that when Klaus found out he would go after her. He would consider it a betrayal of the highest order and hunt her down the way he had Katerina and her brethren.

He would come after Marlene.

Eileen rose to fight, to get out of there and find Klaus, tell him what had happened before he found out some other way and took it out on her family but she was stopped by Stefan.

For once, Eileen hadn't prepared for something and Elena had. Stefan looked her in the eye and she felt another compulsion take hold.

"You will forget everything that happened from the moment you met Elena in New York."

Eileen blinked and clutched her throbbing head. She looked up to find some pale blond boy looking at her in concern and next to him…

Next to him was a girl she had seen in the pictures of the Facebook profile that had messaged her, saying that she was her twin and wanted to meet her. Elena was the name if she remembered correctly and she was staring at her with worry, tear streaks down her face.

"Eileen, you're awake!" She said and pulled her into a hug that had Eileen squirming in uneasiness.

"What are you do-what's going on?"

Elena sobbed, "We were out hiking and this rock fell on you and John-" Elena trailed off in tears again.

"Who are you people?" Eileen asked and the blond boy inhaled sharply.

"The doctors said you might not remember, um, it's the 26th of June 2010, you're in Mystic Falls, Virginia."

"What?!" There was more than a month of her life missing? She was in another state b-but she should never leave while Marlene was…The thought that came to her mind was too horrible to be entertained but Eileen had to ask.

"But Marlene is-"

"Marlene is fine, she woke up around a couple of days after we arrived in New York," Blond boy said but Eileen wasn't listening. Marlene was awake?!

"Where's my phone?" She asked desperately after a search of her pockets turned up nothing and another man, a brunette handed her the device. Eileen ignored them all, pressing speed dial 1, shivering with nerves as the ring went on.

"Hello my baby sister, what's new in Mysssstic Falls?" Came Marlene's excited voice, the one she hadn't heard in months and Eileen burst into tears.

It was okay, everything was okay. Marlene was awake.

Everything was okay.

9