It couldn't possibly be that easy, could it? Katherine just happened to breeze into town with the book they needed to unravel the mystery? Bonnie and her mom would juju the coffin open, they'd somehow manage to awaken its inhabitant (The Original Witch? The Original Petrova Doppelganger? Santa Claus?) who just happened to be able to kill the unkillable man (and had the guts to do it), and they'd all live happily ever after?
Unlikely. Maybe Elena was just a little suspicious because it was Katherine brandishing the magic book, but it all seemed too easy. Things were never, ever that easy.
"So what's the catch?" she asked. She refused to get her hopes up about any of it until she knew Katherine's angle.
"No catch. I want Klaus dead more than any of you," Katherine protested. Elena thought she had just as good a claim to that title as Katherine did: Katherine had lost her family and spent half a millennium on the run. Elena had died, lost her aunt, her...whatever John was, her boyfriend, and been forced to send her brother into hiding. It was a pretty close toss-up in her book.
"You didn't hate him enough to kill him when you had the chance," Damon said.
"But Damon, if I had, you'd never have found true love," Katherine said. Coming from her, the words sounded like an accusation. "But no problem. Next time someone wants to rip you to shreds, I'll let them. We shouldn't have to wait very long."
"And you just now happened to remember that Emily gave you this book two centuries ago?" Elena asked, ignoring Katherine's barbs. "Where was it during the sacrifice? Or before homecoming? Why wait until now to tell us?"
"Emily gave me a lot of things," Katherine said. "And I'm not exactly fluent in witch. Since your last brilliant plan went up in flames, I've been reassessing the situation, taking a look at some of my old things. And I found that. But hey, if you don't want it, I'm sure I could find someone else interested in it." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, smiling impishly. "You know, Elijah always liked me, and he knows his way around a spell book. I bet he'd be interested in whatever's in here." She made for the door, but Damon held his arm out.
"You've made your point, Katherine. We need you. You're very important and you're the center of attention. So are you going to give us the book or not?" Damon asked, unimpressed by her ploy.
Katherine turned back towards them, but her attention wasn't focused on Damon. She was looking squarely at Elena. The mischievous, smirking woman was gone, replaced by a girl who suddenly looked just as lost and young as Elena felt. "I don't know that you'll find what you need in here," she said softly. "But if you do, promise me you'll finish it once and for all. For my family. They're your family too, after all."
As much as Elena tried to pretend it wasn't true, that it was magic or something that made her look like Katherine, they were blood. And as much as she hated Katherine and her slutty, manipulative, all-around-evil ways, Elena didn't have much blood left.
"No. When we kill Klaus, I'm going to do it for me," Elena said fiercely.
Katherine gave her the book.
"The pacing really isn't helping me concentrate," Damon said. He was sprawled on the bed, the book only inches away from his face as he tried to decipher the crabbed, faded handwriting.
"I don't know why we don't just give the book to Bonnie," Elena said. Katherine had left shortly after handing off the book, warbling something about seeing what Stefan was up to, but not before grabbing Damon's ass on the way out. Damon had seized Katherine's wrist and thrown her off, but the whole thing still made Elena feel sick.
"Because it's two in the morning and I'd rather have a fresh witch on the case than a crabby, sleepy one. We have no reason to think Klaus suspects anything, and a couple of hours isn't going to change the situation. So just sit down and relax. You have to be tired," he said, still focused on the book.
"Don't tell me what to do, Damon," Elena said. She sounded sharp and shrewish and she knew it, but she couldn't stop the words. But she finally got his attention. He set the book aside, fixing her with his gaze.
"All right. Let's do this." He made a "come on" gesture with his hands. "Let's just get it all out. Otherwise it's just going to fester and turn nasty. So go ahead."
She couldn't help it; her lips twitched into a smile without her knowledge or consent. "I guess I'm overreacting a little, huh?"
Damon shrugged. "It's understandable. I got to have my fly-off-the-handle-with-jealousy moment;you get to have yours. Do you want me to get the bourbon?"
"Yes, please," she said.
"We're going to turn you into quite the little wino if we're not careful," Damon said as he crossed the room to rummage in his sock drawer. "Where do you want to start?"
Elena sunk onto the edge of the bed, one hand coming to rest on her bandaged shoulder. She winced—not a great idea. It hurt, a dull throbbing pain. But she didn't regret what she'd done. She'd needed to become her own person, to create aphysical difference between the two of them. When she looked at Katherine, so like her in every way except that jaded, cynical look in her ancestor's eyes, Elena was afraid she was seeing her own future. And she refused to take that path. So long as she could still feel pain, Elena knew she wouldn't become like Katherine.
"You two just have so much history together," Elena sighed. "I mean, she turned you. How come you didn't get that sire bond thing?" Or maybe he had. All those years obsessing about her, plotting, biding his time until the comet lit the sky again—maybe that was the bond.
"There's a world of difference between history and siring, Elena," he said. "It's not like Tyler—if Katherine told me to kill you, I'd tell her to go fuck herself." He triumphantly produced a half-full bottle, taking a long pull before tossing it to her. "Yeah, I loved her. A lot. For a long time. And she systematically took my heart and ground it into teeny tiny pieces while she laughed. I got over the love thing."
Elena toyed with the bottle. "Liar."
He gave her that sad little smile of his. "Yeah. Of course I am. We're never going to be entirely free from them; you know that." He settled down next to her, stealing the bottle for another nip.
"It's not fair," she said, but she knew it was true. They'd both be haunted by the love that might have been, if only things had been ever-so-slightly different—if Stefan had been the one to leave for the war, if Damon hadn't been bitten. No matter how strong their love, the what if's would never entirely fade away.
"Sure isn't," he said, offering her the bottle again. She took it this time, managing not to cough as she gulped the burning liquid, but Damon still laughed at the look on her face. "Maybe we don't have to worry about you turning into Ric just yet. What else?"
"I look like her," Elena said.
"Yeah. You do," Damon said simply.
"I'm related to her," Elena said.
"It gets really gross when you put it like that, Elena. And you're removed by about fifty generations, so don't let her manipulate you about your kinship." He sighed. "What do you want me to say? That I was originally attracted to you because you looked like her? Of course I was; I was still head-over-heels in love with her when we first met. I'd say the bigger accomplishment is that I still love you now in spite of the fact you look like her. Or she looks like you, I've never really known which way that works."
"I think it's that I look like her, because she was here first, but that's not important." Elena rested her head against his shoulder. "What's important is that you slapped her hand away. What's important is that even though you knew I was flipping out and being a total jealous, bitchy teenager, you still wanted to talk me down off the ledge."
"You don't get to have many teenager moments, Elena. You deserve one every once in a while," he said, wrapping his arms gingerly around her, not wanting to jar her shoulder. "Though I'd prefer if they involved more whining and less bloodletting in the future. Trust me, biting would have been a lot more fun."
"It was a good idea and you know it. Unless you really wanted to guess which of us was which," Elena said.
Damon lifted her chin gently. "I'd know. I'll always know." He kissed her then, and Elena remembered how the night had begun. It seemed like a lifetime ago that her biggest concern had been what it would be like to sleep with him. If only all dilemmas were so simple. "You're the much better kisser, Elena," he smirked.
Elena laughed, and he pulled her down onto the bed. "What about the book? Shouldn't we-"
"It can wait. I can't."