Do Doppelgangers Dream of Duplicate Sheep?

"Two nights in a row," Rebekah said, lifting her wine glass in a toast. "I'm impressed, Bonnie. I didn't think you liked us this much."

It wasn't like she had anything else to do. Klaus was keeping his distance, most likely determining her trustworthiness, but if he was doing that then Bonnie had no idea how he was getting anything done without any witches to help him. If Elijah was busy looking for Katherine and Rebekah was busy babysitting Hayley, then who was helping Klaus?

It didn't matter. Over dinner they didn't talk about Klaus or Elijah or Marcel or the difficulty Bonnie was having with them all now. For the sake of that evening, none of them existed. Apparently Hayley had become a bit more enthused about the baby with Rebekah now being involved, and they were considering names. Klaus hadn't been consulted.

Rebekah and Hayley were so much more likable when they weren't tainted by Mystic Falls and everything they'd done there. Hayley was almost funny and Rebekah was ridiculous, but not in as annoying a way as Bonnie remembered her being. It was nice to burrow into normalcy, even the illusion of it she found with Rebekah and Hayley, an Original vampire and a werewolf pregnant with Klaus' impossible hybrid baby.

Hayley didn't drink, but she wasn't opposed to sipping on a virgin margarita while Bonnie and Rebekah did. Between tossing her golden strands over her shoulder every few minutes and making eyes at their lovestruck waiter, Rebekah kept hers and Bonnie's wineglasses full.

"What happens when it's born?" Bonnie asked, feeling kind of bad about bringing Klaus back into the conversation.

"We're working on that," Hayley said, resting a hand on her stomach. "It's complicated. Klaus hasn't really said what he wants to do, but I doubt it'll be anything I agree with."

"It's nothing we can't manage," Rebekah said matter-of-factly.

When they got back to the apartment, Hayley went into hers while Rebekah stayed behind. "I'll just be a minute," she told Hayley. "I have something I want to chat with Bonnie about." She waited until the door was shut behind Hayley before speaking while Bonnie looked at her, unsure of what to expect. "I have a favor to ask of you," Rebekah said as Bonnie pulled out her keys. Her earlier drunkenness seemed to have slipped away now that they were back underneath the even lights of the apartment's hallway.

"Of course you do," Bonnie said. First Elijah, now Rebekah. Bonnie wondered if this was one she could actually do.

Rebekah made a face at Bonnie's sarcasm. "Feel free to refuse," she said as if she'd read Bonnie's mind. "It's about Hayley, and I know you're not half as fond of her as you are of me."

Bonnie made a face, and Rebekah grinned. Bonnie only returned it a little. "What about her?" she sighed with a roll of her eyes.

"I'm looking for her family," Rebekah explained. "I haven't told her yet. I don't want her to get too excited in case it doesn't pan out, but I was hoping you'd help me."

"I've got a lot on my plate right now," Bonnie said. Between Klaus and Marcel, Tyler and hybrids and Elijah's attitude, Bonnie didn't feel like adding something to the list. "I can't-"

"I'll do most of the heavy lifting," Rebekah said. "You'll just have to do a spell here or there to point me in the right direction." She smiled hopefully. When Bonnie didn't look particularly enthused, she switched tactics. "I can pay you. I don't know what your situation is with Nik and his funds at the moment, but I have money. I'd be happy to-"

"Keep your money," Bonnie sighed. "One spell. Can you get Hayley's blood?"

Rebekah considered it. "I think so."

Bonnie unlocked her door. "One spell." Rebekah looked absolutely thrilled as Bonnie closed the door in her face.

Tyler returned to her dreams that night though this time he simply appeared without the excuse of an emergency text message. They were tangled up in bed together, and in a foggy corner of Bonnie's mind she wondered if that meant they'd had sex, and she was kind of disappointed that she'd missed out on dream sex. If she wasn't getting any in the real world the least her subconscious could do was make up for it.

But it was all very PG. One of her legs was hooked with one of Tyler's, and her head rested against his chest as his fingers moved through her hair dreamily, pulling at it to wind strands around his fingers. "This is nice," he said.

"Yeah," Bonnie agreed. "It is."

"You sound surprised," Tyler said, his hands falling down to her back.

"I do?"

Tyler hummed his confirmation.

"Sorry," she said, cuddling into his chest. She liked the firmness of it.

She didn't know what to make of this conscious dreaming and this Tyler who existed here. It was nice, that was true, but she didn't know why it was nice aside from the fact that it just was. She could easily get up and tell him to go away. It was her dream after all, and considering how lucid she was - or how lucid she thought she was - he just might leave if she asked. But she hadn't asked yet. He hadn't kissed her again- not yet at least. Instead they stayed where they were, Bonnie nestled in the crook of his arm and Tyler's fingers gentle and journeying over her arms.

"You should be happy," Tyler said. "I want you to be happy."

Bonnie tilted her head back to look at him. "What makes you think I'm not?"

Her dream world didn't seem to have a Klaus or a Marcel. Or even a Rebekah and a Hayley next door. She wasn't even positive there was a world outside this apartment. Was there a Mystic Falls somewhere? Without all of these things, she felt...fine. Lighter. There was nothing to think about but finding a comfortable position next to Tyler, and once that was settled, there was nothing more for her to do.

Tyler smiled and touched her nose with the tip of his finger. He looked so good on her rose colored sheets, leaning against her headboard and smiling at her. "If you tell me you are, I'll believe you," he said.

Bonnie lowered her chin to his chest again and didn't say anything.

"You could be happy with me," he said. "I could make you happy. I know I could."

Bonnie considered the cards and wondered if she and Tyler had any choice in the matter. If they were the Lovers, did they have any choice but to be happy? Was that all they could do? And if it was such a guarantee then why was Bonnie's stomach in such knots about it? When she remembered this was just a dream, when she considered the outside world beyond it where New Orleans was preparing for war, her place next to Tyler didn't feel so comfortable.

Bonnie shifted next to him and found that her slight adjustment didn't do much to make her feel any better. Tyler noticed. "What are you thinking about?" he asked.

"Nothing," she lied. If she asked her dream Tyler about the real world, would he know what she was talking about? Would he have some insight into that? He was uninterested in reality as Bonnie wished she could be.

Bonnie looked up at him and the hopeful smile on his face and fixed her gaze on their legs, where they twined around one another.

Then she was staring at the dark interior of her bedroom. For a moment she was confused. In her dream, it had been dimly lit, but its pitch blackness disoriented her now. Once she realized she was back in the real world and not sharing her bed with Tyler, she also realized what had woken her. Her cell phone was vibrating on the end table.

Bonnie groped for the small, metal rectangle and looked at the screen. Several texts. The first one she opened read:

Come to the house. EMERGENCY. -T

Then

Bonnie was beginning to hate dreaming. There was one that kept recurring, but it was sporadic. There was no pattern to it, and no sense either. She sat in the dark on her own, surrounded by nothing but a cool, dark floor. There was a door in front of her. She could see light slipping through the crack underneath it, but she made no move to go toward it. It didn't look like sunlight, nothing as comforting as that. It looked too hot, too orange and too red, like flame. But she didn't move.

Other times she was on her back, staring up at a low ceiling lined with cracks. She felt hands on her, on her forehead and on her arms, but there was no one there with her. She thought she heard a voice speaking words in a foreign language, but there was no one. The voice sounded like wind, blowing over her in an insignificant flutter.

Bonnie's body seized up, her chest becoming tight. Her body felt cold and hot at once. In her ears, her heart pounded a dangerous tattoo, and she clenched and unclenched her fists. But at some point, she couldn't feel her arms at all anymore. Her legs had taken on the same deadened feeling.

She just stayed there, sprawled on the floor.

When Bonnie woke up, she was shaking and her sheets were damp with sweat. She knew she couldn't stand on her trembling legs, but she was just so glad she could feel them.

Now

It was a chilly night, and Bonnie was glad to avoid it with her teleportation spell, arriving in the Garden District house smack dab in the middle of Tyler's bedroom. She'd expected him to be there, since he'd called her, but he wasn't. It didn't take long for her to realize where he was as she heard his voice coming from downstairs, unusually loud.

"This entire time?!" he exclaimed.

"Use your indoor voice, Tyler," Marcel said. "I'm standing right in front of you."

Bonnie went to the stairs and took them slowly, listening to them.

"You should have told Bonnie from the start," Tyler said, lowering his voice as requested, but it didn't lose its bite.

"It wasn't my secret to tell," Marcel replied.

"You had sex with her!"

"Do you tell all your friends' secrets to the women you sleep with, Tyler?"

Bonnie hit the landing and moved toward the sitting room where she found them, both standing in the middle of the room and glaring at one another. Well, Tyler was glaring. Marcel looked like he wasn't bothered.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Their heads turned in her direction at once.

"Hello, Bonnie," Marcel said with a condescending nod of his head. "Go on, Tyler. You wanted her to be here. I'm done for the night, I think." He stepped past Bonnie smoothly, ignoring Tyler's annoyed questioning of where he was going and why he was leaving now of all times?

The front door slammed shut behind Marcel, and Bonnie fixed her gaze on Tyler. "You woke me up," she told him.

"Yeah, I figured," he said. "Sorry."

"What's the emergency?" He and Marcel seemed perfectly fine, if a little too dramatic for her tastes. Neither of them was seriously injured and Marcel's easy departure implied he wasn't very worked up about anything. Tyler was the one with the problem, and how that problem related to a secret Marcel had kept from her and why their one night stand from forever ago seemed to be important, she was ready to find out.

"Do you remember when I told you there was something in the attic?" Tyler asked, stepping closer to her.

"Yes," she said, recalling the movement she'd glimpsed from the attic window one night. She'd never told Tyler she'd seen that.

"Okay," Tyler said, moving even closer and holding up his hands like that was supposed to keep her contained in some way. "It's her. It's Bonnie 2.0. Except she's not Bonnie 2.0. She's...She's Qetsiyah. Your ancestor Qetsiyah."

Bonnie blinked. "Qetsiyah's in the attic?" It was weird to her name coming from Tyler's lips. Even weirder was his assertion that she was upstairs.

"Yes."

"But Bonnie 2.0 is...also in the attic?"

"No," Tyler said, so exuberantly that Bonnie raised her eyebrows at him. He lowered his eyes apologetically and continued. "Bonnie 2.0 and Qetsiyah are the same. Bonnie 2.0 is Qetsiyah. Qetsiyah is Bonnie 2.0. She's a doppelanger. And so are you. You're her doppelganger."

He kept going, saying things about Qetsiyah and Marcel being in this together, Qetsiyah being his queen - Queen of New Orleans. She wasn't just a witch. She was the witch.

Bonnie stared at him for a while, processing. He must have taken her silence for confusion because he started explaining it again, but Bonnie had already turned and started for the stairs again. Tyler didn't follow her. She yanked open the attic door and took the stairs at a jog. She didn't know what to expect, a mirror image of herself certainly, but she also thought Tyler may have been wrong.

If Bonnie 2.0 and Qetsiyah were the same, why didn't she know it?

The attic appeared empty when she entered it, empty and dusty, but as soon as she saw it, she saw the glamour dissolving. It broke apart and drifted in insignificant specks, wafting away to be replaced by a cozy setup, a tiny little apartment that Bonnie was just slightly envious of. At first glance, she thought it was still empty, but at the vanity in the corner sat a woman. Her fingers were shoved into her hair and pulled it in all directions in some kind of experiment.

"You got Tyler's messages then?" she said.

Bonnie stepped closer to her, going to stand alongside the vanity so she could see herself in the mirror. Next to her and sitting on the bench was Bonnie 2.0 - Qetsiyah. She paused from her hairstyling to meet Bonnie's eyes in the mirror.

She was so...

Bonnie remembered their first meeting in the boiler room and the way Bonnie 2.0 had screamed at her, venom practically rolling off her tongue. She'd mentioned Qetsiyah then, had promised that she would bring Bonnie back to life, but Bonnie had never considered that they could be the same person.

"Why didn't you tell me at the beginning?" Bonnie asked. "In the boiler room?"

Qetsiyah turned on the bench to face Bonnie. Perhaps she'd gotten used to staring at a mirror image of herself because Qetsiyah looking directly at her wasn't as disturbing as she imagined it would be, especially now that she knew Bonnie 2.0 wasn't some specter but a flesh and blood human. A witch just like her. "It wasn't the right time," Qetsiyah said. "You had enough to deal with without knowing who I was and who you were."

"And who am I?" Bonnie asked.

"You're Bonnie Bennett," Qetsiyah said with a sly smile. "My descendent and doppelganger. As far as titles go, you've got some good ones."

"So do you," Bonnie said bitterly. "I heard you're a bit of queen."

"I told Tyler I don't like to call myself that," Qetsiyah said, "but yes, I rule. Alongside Marcel. I control the witches and their magic. He handles the vampires. He's the public face, and I stay out of sight, but we work together."

"This whole time?" Bonnie said. "When you came to me in Mystic Falls, you were, what? On vacation?"

"No," Qetsiyah said. "I realized who you were when Silas was awakened. When I found you in the boiler room, I was there because I'd been looking for you, and I found you dead."

"My help?" Bonnie said.

Qetsiyah gave her hand a dismissive wave. "We'll get to that later. For now, let's make sure there's nothing on your chest. Speak freely."

"You rule with Marcel," Bonnie said, though she was still stuck on the help part. What could Qetsiyah possibly want from her?

"Yes."

It certainly made sense, an annoying amount of sense. "So you took the witches' powers?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"It wasn't hard," Qetsiyah said with a lighthearted shrug. "Not for me. It wouldn't be for you either. This whole city's mine, and I draw power from it when I need it. Under a full moon, with all of New Orleans under my thumb? Simple. It's temporary. I could return it all if I wanted. You can return it all if you want."

"How do you know?" Bonnie asked. "I'm nowhere near your level. I-"

"On the contrary," Qetsiyah said, "you've very near my level. We have the same face, after all."

"Is that supposed to mean something?" Bonnie asked. Elena shared a face with Katherine, and that didn't seem to mean anything. They hated each other, and that was the beginning and end of that particular story. Bonnie wondered if that would be her and Qetsiyah as well. If that was just the way dopplegangers were meant to be: at war.

"It means everything," Qetsiyah said. "We aren't like the others. We're not Petrovas. Thank god," she added. "There have only been two of us. Me. And you. After you, I don't know if there will be another. If there is, she'll be several thousand years in the future. I waited that long for you. No matter how powerful our line is, no one's ever matched me. You don't just have my face, Bonnie. You have my power. But when I did the spell to create a doppelganger, I didn't imagine it would take so long for you to show up."

"Why did you do the spell at all?" Bonnie questioned. "Why did you want a doppelganger?"

"It wasn't intentional, I'll admit," Qetsiyah said. "I was experimenting, looking to create a companion equal to me in magic and mind. A friend...a sister. It was after I'd buried Silas, and I was...lonely. It took me some time to realize what I'd actually done, and even then it took forever for you to turn up." She stood from the bench and turned to Bonnie. "But now you're here."

"How did you get here?" Bonnie asked. Of all the places in the world for Qetsiyah to be, she was here.

Qetsiyah perched on the edge of her bed. "I've been here for awhile," she answered. "I met Marcel shortly after Klaus left the city, and he was just beginning to realize that he wanted to pick up where Klaus left off and do the work that he'd abandoned. But he couldn't do it alone." She lifted her shoulders into a quick shrug. "The other witches were an issue. They weren't going to give in to a vampire so I helped him."

"You helped him imprison witches? That was okay with you?"

"It hasn't been much of an issue for you," Qetsiyah said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "And yes. It was fine with me."

"Why did you help him?" Bonnie questioned. "Did he ask you to?"

"No," Qetsiyah said. "I approached him. I liked Marcl, and I still do. I admired his ambition and his tenacity. We've been together ever since."

"You've been living in this attic for years now?"

Qetisyah laughed. "No. I had a house, but it was destroyed during Katrina so Marcel let me live here. But when Tyler turned up, he needed a safe place to go, so I condensed my life into this attic temporarily. It's not the most spacious, but it's suitable for my needs." She kicked her legs a bit on the edge of the bed.

"Were you here when me and Marcel...?" Bonnie asked, hoping Qetisyah would realize what she was talking about. It felt like it had been a million years ago, but it all came rushing back, bringing with it a healthy dose of mortification.

"I wasn't here when it happened," Qetsiyah said, looking down at her toes and chuckling lightly, "but I heard about it later. That was...awkward, to say the least."

Bonnie decided she didn't need to talk about that anymore. "I have so many questions," she said.

"Can we save some for later?" Qetsiyah said. "I'm tired."

"Just one more," Bonnie said. "What did you need my help with?"

Qetsiyah folded her hands in her lap. "When I was younger, when Silas and I were still together, I thought it would be romantic to link us together. I wasn't the most discerning back then obviously. Something we had in common." She bit down on her bottom lip and stared dazedly at the floor, as if lost in the memory. "It's all very complicated, but what you need to know is that if one of us dies, the other dies as well. When you died in that boiler room, your spell was broken and Silas was reawakened."

"But I-"

"It was quality spellwork," Qetsiyah said. "You couldn't have helped it."

"So Silas is just...where is he?"

"At the moment he's terrorizing your former friends in Mystic Falls," Qetsiyah answered casually.

Bonnie blinked, and she tried to find her voice. It took her a lot longer than it should have. She thought of Elena and Caroline and Jeremy whose voice she'd heard so recently. "Why didn't you stop him?" she demanded. "You did it once before, why didn't you-"

"I've come up with a more permanent solution to our Silas problem," Qetsiyah said. "Before you handled Silas on your own, I'd considered enlisting you to help me before, when I realized Silas was back the first time. Now I'm doing just that. I've recreated the cure, and I plan on drinking it. Once I do, Silas will be made mortal as well. Then I'll kill myself."

Bonnie's eyes widened, and she started shaking her head. This sounded like a terrible plan. "I-"

"Don't be so distressed, Bonnie," Qetsiyah said breathily. "You were the one with the death wish, not me. This is the part where you come in. You have to bring me back."

I'm sorry for the long wait. I got distracted with finals and then I came home and was equally distracted. Happy holidays everybody and thanks for reading.