Impossible

Mystic Falls

February, 2009

Elena woke up to a pounding headache, blinking as she opened her eyes. They widened immediately as she realised that she didn't know where she was. Her back was flat against a dusty couch, the room filled with afternoon light, a sharp pain in her shoulders and her back. She frowned as she tried to remember what had happened the night before. Stefan and Damon had some plan going on with the rest of her friends to try and get rid of Katherine, but her doppelgänger was one step ahead, linking them so that whatever happened to Katherine happened to Elena as well. She remembered being alone in the parking lot of the Lockwood mansion and then darkness.

Katherine had been in her town for weeks, terrorising everyone she loved, including turning Caroline into a vampire and making her aunt stab herself. It was the latter incident that had made her finally break up with Stefan, afraid for the safety of her loved ones. Stefan and Damon then came up with a plan, one they set in motion last night to get rid of her doppelgänger, and now she was here.

She wondered if this was another one of Katherine's plans, to use her as leverage to get what she wanted. Elena had a hard time believing that it was just Stefan she wanted, her doppelgänger didn't strike her as the type to be hung up on an unrequited love. Maybe Katherine had loved him a hundred and forty years ago, maybe she really did still love him, but there was more to her plan. Otherwise, Elena was sure she'd be dead by this point.

She made to get up, but found her hands and feet bound together. And then, she realised she wasn't alone, there was a man in the room with her and she recalled him vaguely, shifting her from one vehicle to another. He moved towards her to untie her, and she winced as he shoved her a little, making pain shoot across her upper body.

"What do you want? Please, I'm hurt." She whimpered as she felt him coming closer to her.

"Shh, I know, just a taste." To her expected horror, his face transformed, veins appeared beneath his eyes and she had a sense of deja vu as he leaned towards her arm, fangs prominent in the light.

"Trevor, control yourself." A feminine voice said, no, commanded and the man moved away from her. At least she was free now, she thought as she looked at the woman.

"Please, what do you want from me?" The woman looked at her curiously, a look of awe on her face, one Elena wasn't used to.

"My God, you look just like her." Katherine. Some vampire had kidnapped her because she looked like Katherine. She ambled on to her feet in front of the woman, her heart beating unsteadily as her legs shook.

"Please, I'm not Katherine, my name is Elena."

"I know who you are - Elena Gilbert, now keep quiet."

"No please, just tell me what you want…" she felt a sting on her face and lost her balance. The last thing she remembered was crashing into something soft as darkness over took her.

When she woke up again, her headache was worse than it had been before, her cheek stinging along with the rest of her body, and she tried to get her bearings. She heard voices coming through, heard an argument between her captors, the words vaguely registering as she got up on unsteady feet. This was her chance, her one chance to get out of this house while the two were busy arguing. She walked out of the room she was in and towards the hallway, all she had to do was get away from here, and then she could figure something out.

She wasn't sure she had a cohesive plan, but -

She closed her eyes as the floorboard she had stepped on creaked, and the two vampires saw her. The woman stalked towards her, but she stayed rooted to her place, not wanting to seem afraid. "There's nothing around here for miles." The vampire said, trying to dissuade her from running.

"Who's Elijah?" Even as she asked, a vague picture started to build behind her eyes - dark hair, formal clothes, and kind eyes. She frowned at the mental image, probably a product of her overactive imagination, but it was unclear. Yet so familiar, just as the name had sounded.

"Your worst nightmare." There was something wrong in that statement too. Some intuition in her telling her that he wasn't, that he might actually be better than her captors, better than Katherine, but she wasn't sure why. She shook herself, now wasn't the time to pay attention to weird and hazy feelings that had no merit in real life, no, she had to find some way to get away.

She chased the vampire down into a room where she was boarding up windows.

"Look, you've got me, I can't go anywhere, so why don't you just tell me what you want?"

"I personally want nothing, I'm just a delivery service."

"Delivery service? To who, Elijah?" The vampire gave her a suspicious look, and Elena walked further into the room, knowing that she was on to something. "Who is he?" Another image came to her mind unbidden, a dark haired man with kind eyes standing on a balcony, staring at her with sympathy as….screams filled the room. "Is he a vampire?"

She wasn't sure where the images were coming from, her hand moving to rub at a spot on her neck, the one that always seemed more sensitive than the rest of skin for some reason.

"He's the vampire. One of the Originals." That name, she was sure it meant something, but she wasn't sure what, the image of another dark haired man to her mind, but his features were obscured. She shut her eyes as a sharp pain pierced her temples and shook her head. She needed to concentrate, to find out as much as she could so she could get out of there. "Trevor and I have been running from them for five hundred years, we just want to stop." For some reason, she felt a wave of sympathy for her captors; part of her knew with certainty that running from the Originals was a tough ordeal, "we're going to use you to negotiate our freedom."

She felt her sympathy die, but her curiosity rise. "But why me?"

"Because you're a Petrova doppelgänger, you're the key to breaking the curse."

"The curse? The Sun and The Moon curse?" She recalled the book where she had read about it, the one that she had taken from her moth- from Isobel's office. "I thought the moonstone was the key to breaking the curse."

"The moonstone is what binds the curse. Sacrifice is what breaks it, the blood of the Petrova doppelgänger is what breaks it." She stood in shock as she heard the words, and she could've sworn she had heard the words in some distant dream once, but she wasn't sure when or what it meant. Still, she knew the information she had on her hands now, the sun and the moon curse, fantastical as it sounded, the moonstone, the doppelgänger, and all so that vampires could walk in the sun.

She wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, but she knew there was no point in doing so. She needed to know more, this wasn't enough to help her.

"Tell me more," she wasn't sure where the statement had come from, audacious almost, but she didn't care.

"Captivity's made her pushy, eh? What do you want to know doppellicious?" She turned to look at the guy, Trevor, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the way he looked at her.

"Who are you running from?"

"The Originals."

"She told me that, what does it mean?" She was slightly more forceful than necessary, but he didn't seem to mind.

"They're from the Old world, and for over half a millennium, they've wanted us dead, because we - I pissed them off."

She frowned at that, wondering what could be bad enough that would warrant being chased for that long. "Why? What did you do?"

"He trusted Katerina Petrova." The woman said and Trevor nodded.

"I helped escape from her fate, and we've been running ever since. It's not a mistake I'll repeat." So she had been right, Katherine did have another motive, it was the reason she wasn't dead yet. Her doppelgänger must've been running for over half a millennium, because she hadn't helped in breaking the curse, hadn't sacrificed herself and she had come to town, likely intending to made the same deal these two were planning to make.

She had been brought back to the same room she had woken up in once Elijah had arrived. She could hear faint conversation, knew that Trevor could hear better than her as she paced around, Bonnie's note in her hand. According to it, Stefan and Damon were coming to save her, but she didn't want them to, she had a feeling Elijah wouldn't hesitate before killing them.

She heard footsteps and she turned around, looking at the man on top of the stairs, wearing a suit, with dark hair and dark eyes. The image had in her head had been almost right, except for the eyes. His eyes weren't kind, they were predatory, and they reminded her of a set of blue eyes that were just as predatory, if not more. She thought for a moment that it was Damon's eyes she saw, but -

Elijah was in front of her, eyes wide, surprise and awe and something akin to hope in his eyes as he grasped her upper arms. He leaned down, going past her face, her lips, until they were at her neck. Her breathing quickened as she felt his fangs at her throat, at the same sensitive spot that bothered her sometimes, and she screamed in pain, in intense agony as he bit into her flesh, taking one long pull of her blood before he pulled back.

Gasping, she clutched the side of her neck as she looked up at him. Her mind had clearly deceived her, he wasn't better than Katherine, he was possibly worse.

"It's impossible," he breathed before he looked down at her, "hello there." She moved back intuitively, fear spreading along her as he moved towards her. "We have a long journey ahead of us, we should get going."

"Please, don't let him take me." She begged Rose, that was her name and the vampire looked away in guilt.

"One last piece of business." Elijah turned to Trevor and she watched, horrified, as he slapped the vampires head clean off his shoulders. Elena gasped as Rose's pained cry filled the room, and he walked towards her.

"Wait, what about the moonstone? And Katherine?"

"What do you about them?" He seemed amused now, a strange familiarity in his actions, along with a wistfulness in his eyes, as if she reminded him of someone he had long forgotten.

"I know you need the moonstone," even as she said it, his eyes were focused on her neck. She thought for one terrifying moment that he was going to drain her dry, but instead he just removed the vervain from around her neck, taking Stefan's necklace.

"What's this doing around your neck?" The way he said sounded like he almost -

"Please, don't take me. I can give you the moonstone and Katherine."

"Are you negotiating with me?" There was that look again, along with a smirk that was laced with amusement.

She nodded, even through her fear, "you made a deal with Rose, you can make one with me, please, you don't have to take me." For a moment, she thought, that maybe he would take her deal, but then they all heard voices upstairs, and he took her, pulling her out of the room.

Everything was a blur after that, Damon and Stefan rescued her, Elijah had a wooden stake buried in his heart, and Rose was nowhere to be found. Stefan gave her his blood to heal her, and she didn't miss the look Damon gave her as she thanked him.

That night, right before she showered, she wrote down all that she had learnt in a new diary, the curse, the moonstone, Katherine running. If she had been running from Elijah, why hadn't she ever stopped to do what Damon had done, and staked him? Katherine even knew witches who would or who would have to, help her. There was something in her that was still whispering that this wasn't over, that whatever had happened today, Elijah wasn't someone to be messed with.

She took a shower, cleaning the blood over her neck, her fingers itching towards that sensitive spot, but she stopped herself before she could really touch it. She changed into her t-shirt and shorts, before she went out to see Damon sitting by her window.

She had a feeling this wasn't going to be good.

"Cute PJ's."

"I'm tired Damon."

"I brought you this." He said, walking towards her, holding up her necklace.

"I thought that was gone," she still didn't understand Elijah's reaction to it, the way he had torn it from her neck. "Thank you," she reached out to take it, only for Damon to pull it away from her, "please give it back." She remembered the last time Damon thought she didn't have any vervain on her, and how he had tried to compel her to kiss him, she couldn't be without it around him.

"I have to say something."

"Why do you have to say it with my necklace?" He was going to compel her, she knew it.

"Because what I'm about to say is probably the most selfish thing I've said in my life."

The look he had given her when they rescued her made sense now. "Damon, don't go there."

"I just have to say it once, you just need to hear it." He closed the distance between them in two long strides, his eyes focused on hers, "I love you Elena. And it's because I love you that I can't be selfish with you and why you can't know this. I don't deserve you, but my brother does." She stood frozen in her spot as he pressed his lips against her temple lightly, "God, I wish you didn't have to forget this," he said when he looked into her eyes again, "but you do." She knew he was compelling her and the next moment, he was gone.

Her hand came up to her necklace, knowing that Damon had compelled her to forget what he had said.

But she didn't.

She could remember every word he said, even though she wasn't sure how.

A/N - So, I've established the two timelines for this story. One part of the story will take place in 1919, whereas the other part will take place in 2009. Since it's a really odd format, I'll put any extra information in the notes, but I'll try and make sure everything is within the story itself.

Both parts, and timelines, will run parallel to each other, although the focus in the beginning will be on the past, so more chapters set in 1919 will be published first. If there are any more questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments