The three girls found no sign of Stefan or Damon as they searched the boarding house. That was until they heard a groan coming from Damon's bedroom. Elena led the way inside. He was on the bed sweating and probably burning up. As she got closer, she noticed the bite on his arm. "He got bit."
"What a shame," Caroline said sarcastically.
As Elena looked at Damon, she felt the same thing she did when she thought of Stefan, disgust and a deep seeded hatred. She knew then that despite the fact that she had no memory of it yet, Damon had compelled her. He'd compelled her to be his friend, possibly more.
Elena went over and shook him. "Wake up, Damon."
Damon's eyes popped open and he looked at her. "Katherine?"
Elena scoffed. "Try again.
"Elena. I didn't think it would be you that showed up," Damon said. He figured if someone showed up for revenge, it would be Klaus, and maybe Elijah.
"Tell me something, Damon. Please tell me it was me," Elena said as she looked down at the bite on his arm. She frankly relished the idea that she had been the one to put him in this position. It was kind of a hard thing for her to feel. She'd never wished someone's death before. Yes, she'd planned with Elijah to kill Klaus, but that was a matter of survival and protecting her loved ones, and after the flashes she'd had, she was beginning to regret it.
Damon chuckled. "Sorry. It was Tyler Lockwood."
"Too bad. I should send Tyler a gift basket though," Elena said.
"I guess you remember it all now," Damon said.
Elena couldn't believe his complete lack of remorse. No, actually, she could. This was the same man who took advantage of her and Caroline, who broke her brother's neck because she rejected him. "No, not yet. It turns out that when a couple of sadistic psychopaths screw with your mind over and over again for sport, it takes a while for you to sort through it all. Speaking of psychopaths, where's Stefan?"
"Gone. My brother's great, isn't he? He decided to leave me here to die alone. I guess, I can't really blame him. It was either that or wait to be hunted down and slaughtered for what he did to Daddy's little girl," Damon said.
"It's true then?" Elena asked.
"What's true? Elena, what's going on?" Caroline asked.
"I've had memories of someone I called my father. I wasn't sure if they were real or not. It's hard to tell what's real with everything swirling around in my head. It seemed impossible," Elena said.
Damon laughed almost insanely. "Tell them the best part."
Elena glared at Damon for a minute before turning to her friends. "It's Klaus. He's the one I keep remembering as my father."
"What? No, that's not possible. Vampires can't have children, Elena," Bonnie said in disbelief.
"It shouldn't be possible. Then again, my view of what's possible and what's not has just been significantly altered. It fits me having the werewolf gene and Lucy saying that I'm older than I should be," Elena said. She still hadn't been sure until now because her mind was so messed up, but she had started to suspect that her flashes of Klaus were real.
Elena didn't even know how to process the fact that the man who had tried to kill her just days ago was also her father. Hell, she didn't know how to process any of this. She literally didn't know who she was anymore. No, scratch that. She'd never known who she was. Everything she was appeared to be a compulsion. That was an overwhelming fact that she didn't know how to deal with. But she did have to deal with it. She couldn't put her head in the sand and pretend all of this hadn't happened. She had to get answers. Then she would have to deal with those answers.
"But why would Klaus try to kill you if you were his daughter?" Caroline asked.
"Because he didn't know," Elena said before looking back at Damon. Klaus couldn't have known. The man who had picked her up into his arms and spoke to her so lovingly could not possibly have regarded her with the same coldness and indifference he had the night of the sacrifice, not if he knew the truth. "Isn't that right, Damon? What did you do to me?"
"Don't look at me. I didn't do anything. This was Stefan and Katherine," Damon said.
Elena didn't buy that. Maybe Damon didn't have a hand in all of it, but he was involved enough to compel her. He was involved enough to know that Klaus was her father. However, the question of his involvement could keep for the moment. "Fine. What did they do to me?"
"Why should I tell you anything? I have no incentive to help you. What are you going to do? Sic your daddy on me? I'm going to be dead by the end of the night anyway," Damon said.
"You're right," Elena said after a second. "There's nothing I can really do to you. You won't lose or gain anything by telling me the truth. But Stefan is another matter, isn't he?"
Damon gave her his full attention now. Even the pain and fever took a back seat. "What's that supposed to mean? Stefan's gone."
"For now, but eventually, one of will find him, and you know that. It might be me, or Klaus, or Elijah. It might take a year or a century, but one of us is going to find him, and maybe what you tell me today will make a difference in whether or not he's granted mercy," Elena said. Elijah would be proud of her word choice. She said that it might make a difference, not that it would. She had no intention of ever showing Stefan mercy, and she knew that neither original would either.
Damon laughed. "Please. You couldn't promise to spare Stefan's life if you wanted to. Klaus is going to kill him. We both know that."
"Yes, we do. I never said Stefan would survive, but maybe a quick death is in the cards," Elena suggested. Again, she was very careful with her word choice.
Damon thought about it for a minute. Well, as much as he could given his near-death position. As much as he resented his brother for leaving here to die alone, he was still his brother. He had to try to help him. "What do you want to know?"
"Stefan abducted me, didn't he?" Elena asked. She kept having a dream where she was being grabbed by someone and she kept screaming for her father. She was fairly certain it was real.
"Yes," Damon said.
"When? When did it happen?" Elena asked.
"I think he said it was around 1914. I don't know for sure. I wasn't around. He grabbed you on Katherine's instructions. I guess she came across you one day. She knew you were a doppelganger because you looked just like her at that age," Damon explained.
"What did she want with me?" Elena asked.
"Revenge against Klaus. I'm not sure what her plan was at first. Maybe it was to torture you and Klaus. Eventually, she came up with the idea to have Klaus kill you in the ritual. It was her perfect revenge. He wouldn't have broken his curse because you weren't human, and he would've killed his own daughter. Unfortunately, the plan failed. When Stefan compelled you to dagger Elijah, he didn't realize that it would trigger your werewolf side," Damon said.
Elena had had a feeling it wasn't her idea to dagger Elijah. She hadn't remembered that compulsion yet, but she did remember not wanting to hurt Elijah. "Why did he want me to dagger Elijah? Elijah was trying to make the sacrifice happen. For that matter, why did both of you try so hard to stop it?"
"I never cared about Katherine getting what she wanted. Stefan was no longer following her lead either. He fell for you. He wanted a happily ever after with you," Damon sneered.
"A happily ever after with the girl he forced himself on?" Caroline asked in a disgusted tone. She couldn't believe how much she'd misjudged Stefan. She'd thought he was a good guy, but he was a monster. There was no other word to describe what he was. He was a monster, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was a vampire.
Elena had to try very hard not to throw up. Damon's words sickened her. It sickened her even more that less than a week ago, she believed she wanted that too. "What about you? What were you after?"
Damon shrugged. "At first, I just wanted to play with Stefan and Katherine's favorite toy."
"You sick bastard!" Bonnie snarled before moving to go closer.
Caroline held her back. "Not yet."
"But I started to fall for you too," Damon said. "And it helped that it got under Stefan's skin to watch me try to undo all his hard work with you. You know, I tried to compel you to love me the way you did him, but I couldn't get past his compulsions. I could barely compel you to consider me your friend."
"I never loved him! He was a sick freak! He forced himself on me!" Elena yelled. Soon, all the windows in the room blew out.
"What the hell? I didn't do that," Bonnie said.
"I think I did. I had a flash of being told I was a witch," Elena said.
"But you couldn't be compelled if you were a witch," Bonnie said, still confused.
"Katherine had her magic blocked. That's how she got around it," Damon said.
"How did I become Elena Gilbert? And what happened to me by between the time I was abducted and becoming her?" Elena asked. So far, she remembered nothing between hat time. That was almost a full century of a gap.
"I don't know what happened to you in that time. Stefan didn't tell me. I didn't really care to know anyway. As for becoming Elena, you were compelled to be her, to take over her life. Stefan learned about her life and created the story for you. He made you think you remembered all her life as your own. He took note of her personality and made you mimic it," he told her.
"When did he do that?" Elena asked. Her hands were shaking. She was beginning to reel, but she couldn't fall apart. She needed to know more. Plus, she refused to break in front of Damon.
"Two years ago," Damon answered.
"No! No, that's not possible," Bonnie said in a shaky tone. That meant that Elena wasn't Elena. She wasn't the Elena that she and Caroline had grown up with. It also meant that something terrible had happened to her friend.
"What happened to the real Elena Gilbert?" Elena asked. She knew the answer. She'd been forced into that girl's life. They'd had to do something with the real Elena, and it was very clear that none of these individuals had a soul between them. That girl's fate wouldn't have been good.
"You know what happened," Damon said.
"Say it!" Elena screamed. She wanted nothing more than to cause Damon pain, and then suddenly he was in pain.
Damon clutched the side of his head. "Alright, she's dead. Stefan drained her dry and then burned the body! Stop!"
Elena could hear her friends sob behind her. She felt awful. The girl she was forced to replace was gone because a couple of psychos decided to play a sick game with both their lives. Elena knew it wasn't her fault, and she refused to take responsibility for it, but the pang of guilt was still there.
"You son of a bitch!" Bonnie yelled before moving to attack him.
Elena turned and grabbed Bonnie by the arms. "Bonnie, no!"
"They killed her! She was our friend! He deserves to die!" Bonnie sobbed.
"I didn't kill her," Damon said.
"Shut up!" Elena snarled at him before focusing on Bonnie. "He's going to die, Bonnie. He's going to die in this room in agony while we watch the light leave his eyes. Killing him before that happens would be mercy. He doesn't deserve mercy."
"She's right, Bonnie. Let him die slowly, like he deserves," Caroline cried.
Bonnie nodded after a minute.
Damon suddenly looked away from them. He looked towards the doorway. He was looking at nothing, but he didn't know that. "Katherine?"
Elena turned and glared at him. "Don't worry, Damon. She'll soon be joining you in Hell, along with your brother. Damon, look at me," she said before grabbing the sides of his head to force him to focus on her. She wanted him lucid for what she was about to say.
Damon turned to face her, his facilities coming back to him.
"You're going to die soon, and I'm going to watch gleefully as you do. It won't be as satisfying as it would be if I got to torture you to death, but I'll take solace in the fact that I'll have that chance when I get my hands on Stefan," Elena said. She felt a thirst for blood and vengeance that she'd never felt before. She wanted the people who did this to suffer for it, and she would make sure they did.
"You said you'd show him mercy," Damon reminded her.
"No, I said that maybe mercy was a possibility. I never promised I'd show it. I'm going to make Stefen suffer. You thought Klaus was going to be the problem? No. I'm the one your brother has to worry about, and I'm going to make sure he knows that the next time we meet," Elena said with a smirk.
"You bitch. I guess you inherited a bit of Katherine's cruelty," he said.
Elena chuckled. She knew that was supposed to bother her, but it didn't. It didn't because she knew she hadn't inherited a damned thing from Katherine, other than her face. Her thirst for revenge was passed onto her by a more immediate family member. "What makes you think I got it from Katherine?"
Damon became unfocused again. He looked away and started mumbling to himself.
Elena pulled up a chair and sat down. She meant what she said. She was going to watch the light leave Damon's eyes and enjoy every moment of it.