Notes: Hello there, friends! This scene got ridiculously out of hand, but all the same, is anyone surprised? I am who I am and the only thing I adore in all of TVD more than analyzing Damon & Katherine is analyzing Elena & Katherine, so here we are ... ;)

I know I've been teasing this for a while so I do hope it lived up to those expectations, and while I was a little nervous writing it for that reason, I had so much fun writing it regardless that I hope you have almost as much fun reading it. 3

(There was meant to be another scene here where the Mystic Falls kids all have a send - off remembrance of Ric at the high school, but seeing as this scene got way more intense and involved than I expected as well as the fact that there is one more scene that needs to occur in addition before we get to Christmas, it's going to be in the next one along with aforementioned scene and our Christmas Extravaganza chapter of craziness will be Ch. 11.)

Thank you so much for your continued support of this story and I hope you're all staying safe and healthy, physically and otherwise. Please do review/comment, especially for this one, as I'm very curious to know how you guys read and perceived this dynamic.

Elena Gilbert's first experience with a fun house mirror was the Charlottesville Fairgrounds, Aunt Jenna's college friend Kathy lingering some steps behind, an odd, jarring expression of affectionate pride and resigned acceptance in her eyes. To a seven year old hopped up on cotton candy and sheer, blissful naivety there was nothing even remotely unnerving about some woman she'd met two hours ago watching her like she was either the second coming of the Messiah or else the eventual downfall of all civilization. Looking into a twisted, fun house mirror for the first time, she barely even spared a dime of attention to the young woman whose head tilted the exact same way as hers, whose laugh rose and fell on the exact same tenor as hers, whose lips curved up in amusement the exact same way.

It was all so absurdly irrelevant.

The second time Elena Gilbert found herself staring into a fun house mirror, it was in her boyfriend's parlor room, her legs too numb to even allow for movement, her erratic heart in her throat, the woman in the mirror calling herself Katherine with that very same head tilt and mischievous understanding that was so infuriating and so achingly familiar, right down to the ice in her bones.

It was anything but irrelevant.

It didn't make any sense then.

It makes sense now, Elena thinks as she stares, dumbfounded, at a version of the woman in the mirror that she's never seen before - serious, somber and resigned - so eerily and horrifyingly mirrored by that weird young woman who bought her three different snow cones at the Charlottesville Fairgrounds eleven years ago.

Every ounce of alcohol leaves her body like an IV drip - slow, threatening and strangely foreboding . She's reminded not at all pleasantly of Klaus' victorious, knife - sharp smirk, sadistic and telling, as he drained sustenance from her body like juice from a Thanksgiving Turkey. Somehow, that memory is less painful than the tenuous silence of this moment.

"Well, I've always quite hated unnecessary silence," Katherine says, dismissive in that signature manner that's so encompassing and final that you could've gone momentarily deaf to the comment itself and you'd still find yourself agreeing.

Something ugly twists in Elena's stomach, the taste of acid and defeat, so starkly reminiscent of staring at her reflection - Katherine's reflection - in an obnoxiously ritzy hotel bathroom.

The thought that she'd been trying to swallow down for weeks - (who the fuck is she kidding, years ) - of 'Am I actually a real person?' rises back up with a vengeance once again.

Good Lord, she needs a therapist.

The words leave her, unbidden, before she can begin to analyze the best way to get a real answer. (She's somehow more impulsive as a vampire, because who knew that'd be possible.)

"Is it true your mother's name is Elena or were you just screwing with me?"

It was definitely an ill - advised move in terms of the chess game she knows they've been playing since before they even met - (since Katherine stole her jacket, her front porch and her right to how she did or didn't feel for her best friend) - but, at the very least, the abrupt question causes the vacant, hollow expression on Katherine's face to slip.

"Now, Elena, I know you certainly didn't find that information in my family's genealogy book, so let's get on the same level here," Katherine actually shifted ever so slightly, her eyes cloaked in some offputting vulnerability that she couldn't quite mask quickly enough - "How would you have come to that idea?"

"Well, if you're really wanting to 'get on the same level'," Elena scoffed with more than a hint of mocking in the expression - "Then let's not pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."

Katherine's lips curled in an entirely humorless curve, watching and scrutinizing Elena's emotions to find the best advantage to spin the narrative, to enact the control.

Control . Elena licked her lips at the thought, a whisper of a memory trying and failing to reel in her attention, flashes of a scrawny, scared blonde watching her meltdown with all the understanding and lucidity of a half - conscious zombie. She damn near salivated at the heady challenge heavy in the air, feeling a raw and primal and delicious excitement in every shred of base instinct she had.

"I'm surprised you confronted me about this," Katherine admitted, such an abrupt and uncharacteristic honesty weaponized into her first method of attack - Elena saw the strategy, to disarm and to appeal, it was a good move, testing the waters and sending her pawns to scope out the landscape. But Katherine was playing chess, as she almost perpetually was, and Elena was playing poker - and while setting pieces several steps ahead was all well and good, reading the present was an advantage all its own.

"You expected me to drop it?" Elena asks skeptically, disbelieving and searching for the aim, for the follow - up blow before it landed. "You don't know me very well, do you?"

Katherine shook her head, rueful and somewhat surprised, but in a way that was more honest, more grounded, less calculation and more naturally organic.

While there's an odd urge in Elena that wants this to be a genuine olive branch, she knows it's just the second play - lulling her into false security, convincing her that she's conceding to playing on the younger girl's home field when she is doing anything but.

"No," Katherine assents, nodding almost imperceptibly to the laptop lying forgotten in her lap, "It's quite clear to me that I don't."

Elena wastes no more time, determined now to flip the script right over, tear it in two, to demand the question lying between them - to search and find and take the control lying so intoxicating before her.

Her throat is dry, hoarse, thick with fear in asking a question she really doesn't want an answer to - "You found me, stalked us to a carnival, when I was vulnerable, a child , ripe for sacrificing and you didn't do it - you took time to compel your way into faking 'friends' with Jenna, took me on rollercoasters and fed me snowcones and told me silly stories of your mother - it doesn't make sense to me, how long have you known about me? From the start? Is that the only time you've compelled me and my family? Why didn't you take me away right then and there?"

Katherine stilled, taking in each word with rapt attention, taking time to formulate a response, as if taste - testing the words before she said them - "It would be downright irresponsible not to gather inside information about an opponent before you go to war with them."

"It was more than that," Elena dismissed the statement, a sense of absolute certainty propelling her forward, not willing to budge an inch, come hell or high water.

"Don't go looking for redeeming qualities in me, Elena - " Katherine responded, annoyed but insistent, almost a rehearsed sort of resignation that made clear this wasn't the first time she'd spoken this sentiment. "It won't end well for anyone."

"I didn't exactly go looking for them, you handed them to me - accosted me with them, really." Her sharp laugh is bitter, the absurdity of this statement somehow the strangest thing she's tried to digest in weeks. "Trust me, the last person I ever wanted to find a decent quality in is you."

"Touching," Katherine snarked, giving the irrelevant comments barely a passing recognition - "It was primarily a fact - finding mission, getting a read on your family, understanding the dynamic, potential obstacles. But it's not as if I wasn't curious, anyone would be - " Her gaze settled on Elena, the unyielding contact unnervingly weighted - "An exact physical double, for all intents and purposes a living, breathing reincarnation - that's the stuff of legends."

"Why didn't you take me away right then? It would've been the smarter move, wouldn't it?"

Katherine actually, for one lone moment, looked offended - "You were a child . I knew where you were, kept tabs on it all, Klaus didn't even know you existed let alone where you were. If there'd been a whiff of anything otherwise, I'd have snatched you from your bed without a second thought. But I'm not a monster, Elena - I wouldn't sacrifice a child, even an annoying one."

Elena nodded, irritated that even some part of her believed truth in that, but she knows a manipulation tactic when she sees one, even one incredibly well - masked, and this one is brilliant: 'Use an actual truth to foster trust going forward, make it something that endears you, that can be seen as genuine.' Katherine could very well write a best - seller on manipulation tactics, Elena is sure.

"Is it true?"

Katherine doesn't ask the context of the question, she just sighs in annoyance - "Yes."

"How?" Elena is utterly floored by this for more than one reason, the most painful of which - the one that leaves dry salt and pure, liquid fear in the back of her throat - is that her parents, her real parents, didn't name her, that she'd been stripped of yet another thing a simple, normal human life would be entitled to. "How could I possibly have your mother's name? And why on earth would you tell me about it?"

"An oversight, I suppose," Katherine admits, unconcerned with that truth, or else unwilling to show anything to the contrary - "I didn't think you'd live - or die, as the case may be - to remember it."

"Isobel named you," Katherine continued when Elena was still too stunned to respond, her annoyance back full force, lips set in a grim line of disgust - "She thought if you donned my mother's name it might give me pause in hurting you."

A shiver crept down her spine and she made every attempt to dispel the thought in her mind, the implication that not only was her existence as a doppelganger a cosmic manipulation, her very name was a manipulation.

"You knew Isobel when she was a teenager?"

"I knew Isobel from the day she was born, just as I did with you -" Katherine countered, the nonchalant nature of the admittance almost comical given its weight - "I was more a mother to her than her actual one could ever claim - she, rather unfortunately, learned a great deal from me and was able to track me down after her transition as the memories of the compulsion solidified."

"You -" Elena broke off, shocked into incoherence by the depth of these revelations - "God, Katherine, have you ever done anything since becoming a vampire that wasn't a means to manipulate your environment?"

Katherine's eyes lit up at the comment, her satisfaction and excitement buzzing with glee at Elena walking straight into the check - mate, led willingly and blindly like fucking cattle.

"Interesting question, Elena -" she said, every nerve in her body singing with superiority and victory. "Have you ?"

"I -" she hesitated, memories of a previous life - of a previous person - thick and awful in the back of her mind. "I'm not a manipulative person."

"You're not?" Katherine asked, condescension in her every movement - "Then I must've misread the game we're playing here; you are manipulating me, no? I mean, you're losing presently, but all the same -"

Elena wanted to sputter a response, wanted to maintain a semblance of dignity, but she couldn't find the words, mostly because Katherine's were true.

Luckily, her doppelganger couldn't resist a good victory speech.

"There's a very specific quality that you and I share, I've come to realize - the need for control, for certainty of our place and the power to shape all that's around us." She leans back, taking a moment to survey her again, but this time it's with a light - hearted curiosity that is mostly innocent - as innocent as Katherine is capable of, at least.

"You've been a very confusing person to me these past few years, I'll admit - I absolutely hated it, detested you for being everything that made no sense, it drove me mad sometimes." Katherine leaned forward, her voice almost lowering to a whisper as if her words were a deeply guarded secret - "But I've come to realize a few things about you, Elena, because you've well and truly tipped your hand on some important insights, and it's led me to some understanding. Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that you're entirely unaware that the way you interact with people is Emotional Manipulation 101?"

Elena didn't immediately respond, still hoping this conversation would just dissolve into thin air, but as it became apparent her question wasn't rhetorical, she sighed, knowing the truth was the best way out of the corner she'd backed herself into -

"I don't do it on purpose," she asserted, and this, at least, was true.

"I know you don't," Katherine said, matter - of - fact, without accusation or understanding, just a monotone fact. "It's instinctual, that's the point. I find it absolutely fascinating that you've cultivated this 'pure, damsel in distress, innocent in a land of demons' persona to such a detailed perfection that you've managed to wrap Elijah into it -" she scoffs, in complete bewilderment, "It pains me to admit, but it's actually moderately impressive . Not my style, granted, a little too boring for my tastes, but you've well and proved that it works."

"That's not -" Elena's first instinct is to reject the very notion completely, but she pulls back, knows her indignation will not yield what she needs, presses just a little, manipulates just a little - "Why would you even think that?"

"Because you said it yourself - the girl you were before your parents died, you killed her because she killed them, the truth of it is that you're a lot more transparent than you'd like to believe, Elena -" Katherine pauses, considers her words and then smiles, sharp and knowing - "At least to me."

Elena's words come harsh and unwanted, something she's been storing for years that, given the heightened emotion and volatile state that comes with her turning has been itching, relentless, under her skin for weeks - "I thought I deserved to die when my parents did - I caused it, inadvertently or not, and there's a part of me that still believes I did deserve it - but I couldn't do that, not to the rest of my family, but all the same I couldn't live with myself. So I didn't. I forced myself to be somebody else - I wanted to die with my parents, so I did the only thing I could to make that happen. I manipulated myself , I guess -" the laugh that bubbles in her throat is so bitter and mean that she almost chokes on it - "The irony is ridiculous."

She cuts Katherine's response off harshly, however, when another thought hits her - "I don't deny that my cultivation of that identity was a coping mechanism, some twisted way of repenting, but it wasn't a manipulation. Not of anyone but me, anyway."

Katherine's smile was almost sad , sympathetic and startling - "Innocent good girls won't go and cause more death, mhm?"

It's all Elena can do not to get lost in the memory of a girl sitting at a funeral, torn to pieces by her own actions, contemplating suicide as she stares vacantly at nothing, and her changed decision as she focused her blurry vision on her crying, distraught brother stripped of his hope and belief in life, knowing she'd have to find another option.

She looks to Katherine, unsure how to proceed - "How - how have you even come up with this?"

Her doppelganger's eyes hold something that's very real, a raw kind of hurt that transcends the game for just a moment - "Because if my mother's death had occurred differently as a human, if it wasn't at the hands of a vampire but at the hands of my own doing, if I hadn't turned for survival, I would've done the same thing."

Ice water shoots through her veins - it's terrifying to think there may be even the smallest piece of validity to a question she's forced herself to never ask - to the possibility that the doppelganger connection could extend farther beyond physical. Her mind hovers over this for a moment before she asks, hesitant and weary, "What do you know about the origins of the doppelganger? We know she was used as a component in vampire creation, but we don't know why ."

Katherine does nothing but continue to watch her, silent and stoic, reading Elena as she continues to stumble over realizations as though she's annotating a textbook. The silence answers the question in and of itself.

"You do know why."

"Well, this has been an illuminating conversation, Elena; I think it's time for you to sleep -" Katherine places the laptop away, moving casually from her position as though to not startle Elena - she knows with unnerving clarity now how it feels to be a wild animal in a zoo, because people need to fucking stop expecting her to jump out and claw at them. She has better control over herself than that - And yet …

"What the hell do you mean by that ?" She asks, that enraged, enticing little voice that she despises as much as she welcomes slithering through her mind, sentiments of ' She can't treat you like that, she isn't better than you…' pounding in her ears and erasing every shred of logic within reach. "Don't put me off like that, you're not the only doppelganger this affects," she hisses as she stalks towards her to trap her from leaving, conscious thought leaving her entirely. ' Instinct', the little voice pushes.

"You're not ready to hear it, Elena," Katherine says, and as soon as she hears the derisive growl leave Elena's lips, she amends - " I wasn't ready to hear it, I went on a killing bender for weeks because I couldn't handle it - you. are. not. ready ," she stresses, and the statement is so absolute, so forceful and so agitated that Elena should've relented immediately - whatever could terrify Katherine like that wasn't something to poke at - this was the time to retreat. This was the time to fold her cards and wait for the next hand.

"I'm not ready ?!" Elena scoffs, indignation souring every word she speaks, "Who the hell are you to say anything of what I'm capable of dealing with? Fuck you and your twisted up mind games," is all she can spit out before her body makes a mockery of any and all self - control she could've had, grasping at Katherine's throat to push her straight against the dresser, chips of wood fallen from the impact.

"Tell me!" She grits out, as much a plea to soothe her desperation as it is a threat.

Katherine immediately pulls her by the shirt collar and throws her straight across the room, crashing into the glass of the guest room shower and shoving her hard, unrelenting against the brick behind them - "I'll give you a pass for that because you're essentially a fucking control addict at the moment and aren't exactly making choices - " she growls out, visibly restraining her anger - "But autonomy or not, you insolent little brat, I will make good on that death wish of yours to join your parents if you ever deign to touch me like that again, are we clear?"

Elena doesn't respond, still entirely lost to the moment, still grasping to reverse their positions, and Katherine takes her neck and slams her again, hard enough to concuss a human. "Listen to me!" She shouts at her, forcing a little of that fog to break, forces her attention by sheer will alone, "Every nerve in your body is trying to jump out of your skin, telling you that you need to control what's happening to you, need to assert authority over it to get any relief - you need to turn it around, you need to play its game right back. Under all that moral, righteous martyring bullshit is a part of you that wants nothing more than selfish, unrestrained control and you need to find it , not suppress it, not be scared of it - you need to control it, own it ."

Katherine lets go of the grasp on her neck and pushes her to the floor as she splutters for air, instinctive muscle memory for a body that doesn't breathe. She looks up at Katherine, apologetic but stunned, soaking in every word in shame and disbelief - "Because it will fucking drown you if you let it."

Elena scrambles to get up, but Katherine pins her down with the boot of her heel for one last very poignant warning - "Now get the fuck out of my sight before I come to my senses and decide killing you is a fair easier route than counseling you."

Strange but serious question: If I were to write out the whole story for the Katherine & Elena at the carnival circa 1999 as a somewhat separate one - shot, would anyone actually want that? Because I'm thinking about it. :)

Thank you all for reading, please leave comments or constructive criticism if you enjoyed. 3