Author's note: Well, hello everyone! Fancying seeing y'all here, after months and months and months! :D
This is my way for apologizing for that enormous delay between updates. (Long enough for me to start and finish two whole other stories – yikes! At least one of them's a one-shot.)
The walk into Qetsiyah's cabin could kindly be measured in sloth travel time, given how apprehensive she made the party feel. Nevertheless, in they went, eager to save Stefan.
A strong scent of incense permeated their senses as soon as they neared the doorway – rosemary and orchids among the most dominant odors in the rich bouquet. Bonnie's curiosity was piqued immediately at the strange combination – the only real connection between the two, their association with willpower and memory.
Katherine took the lead. As a poltergeist, she figured the need for caution was long past. If she had to deal with problems like potentially slipping through the Earth if she 'misbehaved,' as Bonnie smugly put it, she might as well take advantage of some of the perks.
With her anxiety making her overcompensate by behaving particularly flashy and obnoxious, she made a big show of phasing through the door, flashing the resident very-unhinged-witch some no-longer-fang, as if to say, 'you can't hurt me, and I'm not afraid of you.'
Tessa just stared her down coolly, though Bonnie noticed that she was visibly determined to keep a lid on her bubbling emotions that appeared to nearly overwhelm her when making eye contact with either doppelgänger. She frowned, before stifling a gasp that rode the wave of her epiphany. Professor Shane spoke of a Qetsiyah during the lecture she, Elena, and Damon audited. She couldn't be her, could she? That would make her more than two millennia old.
Jeremy squeezed her shoulder in silent query, to which Bonnie hesitantly nodded in response. Her breath came out in shaky wisps as she entered the cabin. If they were truly in the house of a witch that ancient and powerful, then they'd have to be alert.
Damon followed, all attempts to keep Elena safely tucked behind him failing miserably, when she vamp-sped past all his maneuvers, lacing her fingers through his with an adorably proud smile on her face. Between this and her misguided attempts at being Whitmore's resident superhero, someone picked a great time to finally embrace being a vampire. He bit back a scoff. Instead of being visibly annoyed by this, he decided to rely on a beloved pastime, and needle the opposition. "This feels like the beginning of every B-horror movie I've ever seen. A group of very attractive – some more than others ," he said, gesturing to himself emphatically, "supernaturals walk into creepy house in the woods, inhabited by a very clearly unhinged –"
Elena cleared her throat while stifling a laugh, desperately trying to infuse some diplomacy into her boyfriend's present behavior, lest the aforementioned unhinged witch kill them all.
"Oh, all right, baby," Damon soothed as he wrapped an arm around her, deliberately misunderstanding her. "You know I was talking about you, too, when I said that. Sexiest girl here."
Katherine scoffed with an exaggerated preen, twirling a glamour curl around the tip of her perfectly-manicured index finger, pristinely filed into a stiletto shape. Kitty-Kat had claws, indeed. At least Silas and the witches had the good grace to kill her when she was looking her best. "She wishes."
Just as the rest of the party wandered in, a series of hurried footsteps approached them.
"What's going on here!?" cried a decidedly familiar voice to all involved, that rendered the hitherto cacophonous room as silent as as still water.
They all stared at him with varying expressions. Katherine's normally haughty face immediately molded into unadulterated joy; Caroline's, longing; Elena's, relief; Bonnie's, acceptance; Jeremy's, satisfaction; and Damon's fluttered through various micro-expressions too quick to quick to isolate, but chief among them were guilt, love, fear.
Stefan was standing directly in front of them, looking positively bewildered, his green eyes flickering between curiosity and alarm. Despite, as appearances seemed to indicate, being kidnapped and held hostage by an insane witch, his Hero Hair didn't have a strand out of place. Between him and Katherine, the supernatural world was not lacking in customers for high-end product.
"You didn't mention anything about guests, Tessa," Stefan said, sounding entirely too light and unbothered for the situation – or really any situation. It's almost as though the morose demeanor that followed him like a five o'clock shadow completely disappeared, replaced by a decidedly carefree young man, currently showing nothing but idle curiosity. "Are you two identical twins?" he asked, his eyes darting between Katherine and Elena.
"I'm the hotter one," Katherine purred, evoking collective eye-rolls from some of the room's other occupants.
Stefan just studied the unusual group with a lax smile, frowning in concentration a little when his gaze hovered over Bonnie and Jeremy, but otherwise the very image of lighthearted ease.
"You want to explain why my normally mopey little brother is suddenly acting like he got life lessons from Bill S. Preston, Esquire?" Damon growled at Tessa, unnerved by the unexpected discovery.
"I have a brother!?" Stefan beamed.
"I saved him – which is more than I can say for your sorry lot!" Tessa snapped defensively. "They left you there, all alone," she cooed, trailing her hand up Stefan's chest, "to suffer for months. I saved you, and took away any bad memories you have of so-called 'friends' who were happy to leave you to drown in a safe all Summer long."
Stefan grew visibly uncomfortable with her advances, taking a shaky step backward. "What do you mean 'drowning all Summer?'" he asked, horrified. "How could I drown all Summer? Wouldn't I be dead? Oh no! Did you reanimate me? Am I a zombie? Do I have to eat brains?" His demeanor grew visibly alarmed as he continued to pepper Tessa with questions that she nonchalantly shrugged off.
"You'd starve with this group. Your only viable option isn't corporeal at the moment," Katherine deadpanned, pointing to her head. "Lucky for you, what you need to survive is a lot more readily available!"
"Give him back his memories – now!" Damon growled, advancing upon the witch, who just watched him with mocking fascination.
"Stefan, are you okay?" Elena asked, stepping forward and looking particularly guilty. "We're sorry we didn't rescue you in time. We – Katherine and I – felt something off, but …" she trailed off miserably.
Tessa's eyes lit up at the exchange, looking especially excited when she noticed the conflicting emotions in Damon's, which he failed to hide just long enough for her to surmise the reason behind them. She faced him directly. "Now this is an interesting development. Familiar to you, I'm sure."
Damon tellingly looked away for a brief instant, before meeting her gaze with a challenging glare.
Caroline, who'd been uncharacteristically quiet during the whole exchange, finally stepped forward. "Enough! I've had it up to here with all this posturing and double-speak. We want Stefan back! Now, what do you want?"
"Why! I want your help destroying a great evil!" Tessa replied, the picture of innocence. "An evil you unleashed, mind you."
"Silas," Katherine groaned. "Even now, he continues to be a pain in my ass."
"I agree with Caroline," Bonnie seethed, growing increasingly disturbed by the second. "No more games."
Tessa's eyes sharply met Bonnie's, scrutinizing her this way and that, as though she were a particularly fascinating specimen. "They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but I have to admit I expected someone with a little more – oomph ."
Bonnie's heart dropped. So, her suspicions were correct, after all. In lieu of a verbal response, she merely thrust her chin upward defiantly, unwilling to give her progenitor any more ammunition with which to attack them.
"Welcome to the 'disappointing ancestors' club," Elena said sympathetically, placing a hand on Bonnie's shoulder.
"More like 'disappointing descendants,'" Katherine mumbled under her breath, sending a withering glare in Elena's direction.
"Look at these two," Tessa slyly mused, watching the doppelgangers. "At each other's throats, now that they've been reunited with Stefan here. You know why, don't you?" she asked Damon, a hint of intrigue in her voice.
"Something tells me you're dying to illuminate me," he replied, with a wry edge to his voice. "I just hope the dying is literal."
Tessa chuckled, inspecting her nails for several long, suspenseful seconds before speaking again. "You and I are the same, Damon. Yes, I know all your names. I've been watching you for a long time now. I've kept my eyes on all doppelgängers and their associates over the centuries."
"So, you're a creepy stalker, too?" Damon sassed. "Thanks, but I don't have so many restraining orders out against me that I'd be able to use them as wallpaper – nice décor, by the way. Very 'obsessed psycho ex chic.' So, we really don't have all that much in common, after all."
"Don't we?" Tessa asked with an air of theatrical naïveté. "Do you mean to tell me that you didn't spend nearly a century and a half plotting to save a woman from a tomb she wasn't even trapped in?"
Damon's jaw clenched in response.
"Yearning to save someone from a fate worse than death – however undeserving – and creepily surveilling them are two completely different things," Elena snapped.
Tessa shrugged carelessly. "You're splitting hairs. I'd like to make a deal, but I want to speak with Damon – alone. We have a lot more in common than any of you would like to admit."
"No." The increasingly corrosive energy nearby choked Bonnie, prompting her to respond almost involuntarily, driven entirely by instinct. "You either speak to all of us, or none of us. Those are our terms."
"Fine. Have it your way," Tessa pouted. "By now, you must have realized that Katherine and Elena aren't the only kinds of doppelgängers in existence. Stefan is also a doppelgänger – a descendant of Silas."
"Ooh, does that mean that I get to join the 'disappointing ancestors' club, too?" Damon responded with utmost sarcastic glee.
Pointedly ignoring Damon, Tessa continued. "When Silas and that," her lip curled involuntarily, her entire countenance shaking with barely-controlled rage, "hussy drank the –" she interrupted herself, trying to get a firmer hold on her emotions, and instead opted for a different route. After a pronounced, deep breath, she resumed her tale. "Century after century, I watched versions of Stefan and Elena find each other, like magnets, always the same story —conquering all, falling in love. You didn't think your brother was Silas' first shadow? Destiny has been trying to get the doppelgängers together forever."
"And me!" Katherine exclaimed, raising her hand.
Damon rolled his eyes, outwardly underwhelmed, but the troubled look that flashed in his eyes was unmistakable. "Look here, Miss Crazy, why don't we just dial down the destiny talk a notch, okay?"
Bonnie tilted her head to the side, scrutinizing her ancestor. "I heard this story. You were betrayed by your handmaiden, who took the immortality elixir with your lover. Silas?"
"That's right," Tessa said. "And as a result, Nature coped by creating doppelgängers – shadows of the original – hundreds of whom I've watched from the other side, coming together, ad nauseam. Drawn with their Silas-doppelgänger pairs for centuries. They're soulmates," she added wistfully, though her curling lips conveyed just a hint of subterfuge.
Katherine frowned. "Wait – that doesn't sound right. Stefan was the first – what did you call them? Silas-doppelgänger? –"
"Yes," Tessa interrupted tersely.
"He's the first 'Silas-doppelgänger' I met," Katherine continued, with a generous roll of her eyes at Tessa's apparent attitude, making liberal use of air quotes. "Believe me," she said sultrily, sashaying over to Stefan. "I would have remembered that face. I've got four-hundred years on him, and not once did I meet another one. If doppelgängers are soulmates, drawn together by the Universe, or destiny, as you say, why haven't I met any others, in the half-century I've been alive?"
"And Stefan never met his," Elena pointed out. "It's obviously not Katherine, just based on our birth years, and it's obviously not me, for the same reason."
"Do you really believe that love is so fickle that it can't defy something as silly as time? All three of you are vampires. Maybe that was part of the Universe's plan, too," Tessa shot back, growing visibly annoyed.
"Or there's a lot more to this story that she's not telling us," Caroline piped up, throwing caution to the wind as she felt her journalistic instincts tingle. "Everything about her story sounds fishy."
"Katherine and I both dated Stefan, and we both had the dreams – identical dreams – telling us where he is. So, are you saying that all doppelgängers are soulmates to each other, like in a giant soulmate orgy?" Elena asked dubiously.
Katherine shrugged, looking particularly smug. "I could get behind that."
Bonnie suddenly felt the room erupt in tension as the magic emanating from Qetsiyah curdled, her desperation making her increasingly aggressive, clearly averse to being cornered. She knew she had to deescalate before matters flew out of control. "Let's say we believe you," she lied, raising her hands in a supplicating gesture. "And that the Universe wants Elena, Katherine, Stefan, whomever together in some massive doppelgänger free-love fest –"
"That's not what I said!" Tessa interrupted, looking at Damon desperately. "The Universe created soulmate pairs out of the doppelgängers, and the only way to stop that is to kill Silas. Do you want to lose her? I know what it's like to be you, Damon. We're the obstacle between two fates. Help me put an end to this."
"Wow, okay. Settle down there, Mother of Dragons. We'll stop Silas, break the wheel together, and then we'll 'liberate' all the Seven Kingdoms," Damon replied in a flipping mockery of appeasement.
"Mock all you want," Tessa replied. "But Stefan's not getting his memories back until you cooperate."
"Be that as it may, he's coming with us," Katherine sneered. "I don't know about all of you, but I've had enough of Maleficent's mom here."
"I create the nicknames. Nicknaming is my thing," Damon ground out, glaring at Katherine.
"I'm older," Katherine answered with a lackadaisical air.
"By all means," Qetsiyah replied magnanimously, as the door to the cabin opened to let him out. "Just consider yourselves lucky that it's gotten dark. Silas stole his daylight ring."
"Come on, Stefan!" Caroline cried, taking his hand to lead him out of the cabin. He turned around to wave a confused goodbye at the witch who had hitherto kept him captive, and went back to inspecting his arm, his expression becoming increasingly paranoid.
Once they were back in the forest and out of earshot, Bonnie finally allowed herself to take a life-giving breath, sinking with relief. "Okay, so we can all agree that she was crazy, right? And a liar?"
"She wants what we want," Jeremy replied pragmatically. "That means we can use her as much as she wants to use us."
"So what's the play, then? We pretend to take her insane ramblings seriously?" Katherine scoffed.
"Why Little Gilbert! Look who's getting devious!" Damon sassed. "I'm practically weeping with pride. Someone's all grown up!"
I originally planned to cover a lot more in this chapter, but since this scene got a bit long, I decided to cut it off here, instead. With that said - that means that the next one's mostly written! :D (And this allows for faster updates, too!)
Qetsiyah is literally shown to be a liar and manipulator in the series, particularly in scenes where she deliberately lies to Elena to draw her into the cabin, and where she obviously tries to manipulate Damon. So, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to take her 'the Universe is trying to draw the doppelgängers together' claim at face value. In fact, I'd go so far as to question the validity of her seeing 'hundreds of doppelgängers' end up together. Wouldn't have Katherine run into at least one more, then, in all the time she was alive? (While she may have been at least partly successful in convincing Damon in canon, here, her attempts fall apart because everyone is present, so they can refute the validity of the claims in real time.)
I think what Markos says (given that he's the one who actually cast the spell) about the doppelgängers being compelled to "seek each other out" with the "promise of true love" sounds a lot more like what we see actually happen in canon. Once the doppelgängers actually meet, then there's a very strong desire to spend time together - to 'seek them out.' We see that with Katherine, Stefan, and Elena. So, not the Universe, but Markos casting a love spell to use the doppelgängers as ingredients. More on that next chapter as Bonnie makes her suspicions known.
Please accept sincerest apologies for taking so long to get back to the story. My subconscious wanted very much to focus on Eros and Philia, and a new story called Random Walk - which is now complete! I'm planning to split my creative energy as much as possible between this, EaP, and Timey Wimey until RW's sequel becomes clearer in my head.
With that said, I've completed another story! For anyone who's interested, Random Walk takes place/starts in S7 (sort of – it jumps around). The premise is that Kai's spell on Elena could have potentially disastrous consequences on her mental health, so Valerie casts another spell on her to turn her into a Specter – a mystical creature that can detach from time to visit her Twin Flame during moments when he needs her most. Each chapter begins with a visit to a different time period when Damon desperately wants to see her, so they start out on the angsty side, but there's also the overarching mystery of what the Specter is exactly, and how to wake Elena up from the spell. The story (and all its chapters) are named after principles in math and physics, so there's a sci-fi element, as well. There's a sequel forthcoming (probably in June). If that sounds like your cup of tea, please check it out! :D
This will most likely be the next story I finish, since of the three WIPs out, it would arguably be the shortest. Just a reminder that I'm a lot more active on AO3 if you're looking for faster updates. If you're okay with waiting, then I absolutely plan to get to FFN eventually, too. :)
Much love, all. :D