Chapter Text
Elena always thought she would not live to get old.
It was fundamental knowledge she had ever since she could remember; the sky is blue, the roses are red, Elena Gilbert will not live long enough to see her children grow old.
It was ok. The teenager made amends with it early in her life, understanding not to mention it to her parents or grown-ups to not scare them away, and trying to fix her or convince her about being wrong, and then spent her valuable time trying to help others cope with her imminent death.
No, the moon will always appear, the snow will always be cold, and Elena Gilbert was going to die young.
By the time the ritual was brought up, and her significance on it the teenage was fully prepared for that to be her finals moments, Klaus breathing on her neck, thanking her and then proceed to drain her, Elena thought it was a more dignified death than drowning in the river, and surprisingly, a lot less painful and messy than expected. Done, no more pain, just peace.
But then she opened her eyes again.
And everything went to shit.
You know, Elena never really thought how compelling worked, or why when one became a vampire, all previous compass fall apart, kind of like when the body enters in post mortem state their mind goes under “reset mode” and showed them a movie of their lives in their final moments, moments that may or may not were compelled to forget.
The difference for this case is that no person who wasn't then became a vampire has risen from an actual death before, until Elena.
It was a simple fact that's often overlooked, again, the grass is green, violets are blue, and Elena Gilbert is Human. She didn't go through the process of transformatio-despite a certain someone best effort- and came back in transition, no, she was gone and came back human.
Or well mostly human, all the ways that mattered.
And humans' brains can not process information in extreme stress like vampires do, so once one teenage girl who had just come back from the grave realized she was not in immediate danger, it took her a minute to process information and then send it to her conscience.
Making her remember everything that she was made to forget.
¿Who would think that the little choices one makes daily were the ones that shape our lives? Not Elena.
The 17-year-old never minded much when Aunt Jena used to say that “little things make big things happen”, usually because that phrase was followed by her mother scolding her in the head for almost falling in a scam about making yourself your boss. Turns out, that half sleep deprived Aunt Jena had more truth in those words than anybody knew. Elena didn't know if that made Jena really wise or just anybody else around her stupid in comparison; in any case, that wouldn't matter anymore, because Aunt Jena was not there.
Aunt Jena was long dead to see Elena harvest what she sowed.
Good, cus she would be fucking pissed, Elena knew she was at least.
It took her a while to realize something was not right. Elena admits that it took her 8 full days, many headaches, and a couple of broken glasses to realize that it was not something that she's been missing. Everything was in plain sight for her to see, like old stakes of tees she used to collect and drink religiously to relieve her chronic muscle pain, or the books that decorate the shelves in her room that nowadays seemed to just collect dust.
Everything was there , everything, every little thing that made Elena be Elena was still there, still exposed in her house that looked more like a museum than a home, the movies, the music, her garden .
God if there is one on this earth, Elena swore she would be the one in charge of the punishment they were going to have.
They.
The Salvatores.
These last few months of her life could be a TV show featuring how the Salvatore brothers-mostly Damon- realistically and royally screw up dealing with the sight of a much vulnerable double of their ex psycho girlfriend, who ruin their relationship and is responsible of their immortal life, adding how young vampires-Yes,150 is young for a vampire- over compel humans even without noticing to shape them into what they desired to be.
Seriously, it was truly something the butterfly effect one moment had on the trajectory of her life, and how one simple phrase said in less than 2 minutes could change how the teenager was fundamentally for the last year.
"You want a love that consumes you. You want passion and adventure, and even a little danger."
"How do you know that?"
"Because that’s who you are.”
Because that's how he wished her to be.
Turns out, the compelling worked wonders on her, clinging to the notion like a lifeline and effectively making that all she was…leaving everything else that could obstruct that goal behind, and what was supposed to be a drunken conversation with a stranger changed the way she lived her life from then on.
By the end of the realization, Elena threw up the little she had managed to eat in the last few days and took the longest nap she remembered having in months, while half convinced that Jeremy was having a very bad case of the flu and needed to rest.
It took her about 12 hours, 3 unread text messages, one look at her kitchen, and a lot of repressed emotions to decide she didn't give a fuck what Damon and Stefan Salvatore wanted anymore.
By the time the fire fighters were called to the mansion the very next day, the house had a large damage, it was not down but definitely the library, basement and some of the room were in a bad state or so she recall when Jeremy arrived the next day to tell her about it, the official story was that some young delinquents saw that the house was abandoned for a few days and then decided to host a college party and go way to hard which caused a fire that damaged tree quarters of the property.
Anyways, anybody related to the crime was long gone before the firefighters arrived.
¿The rest of her friends?, as far as Jeremy could gather from Matt, they were pretty sure this was a revenge type of deal, most likely by some dire wolf's courtesy of what was left of Julia's pack seeking revenge for her alpha's death and the demise of a good part of their pack, Tyler confirmed there were some scatter members still around how periodically were seen in town, with no other place to go for the moment and wanting to cause nothing more than mayhem for how they think we're responsible of the demise of their pack.
Elena may or may not know about them, and she may or may not have called them from an old disposable phone, given them the Salvatore address, and left the insignificant detail that Demon Salvatore was out of town for a while and his ancient house, abandoned.
To be fair, she had considered going herself opening all the gas heaters of the house that she could find, wait for Daemon to arrive turn the lights and see how his body pieces fly in the air like the fireworks in 4 of July, had a relatively small fire and a couple rooms ruined was the best result of what she had expected.
Elena didn't feel anything anymore. She wanted to throw up again.
Instead, she made herself a tea and saw a marathon of halloween movies in the middle of July under the hawk-like eyes of his brother.
-I thought you didn't like those anymore. Jeremy appears behind Elena's back, rubbing his eyes and suddenly looking every bit of the 15-year-old he was. He tilted his head to the side, looking at the cup in her hands. He sniffed for a second, a whistle- Is that chai? geez, that flu must be tough if you are dusting off your collection -
The double eyes immediately tear up at the words, because that's one of the reasons why she didn't even bother to call her so-called friends and let them know about her discovery. Tyler she could forgive after all they weren't as close as they used in the last year with him dealing with his own issues with his father; it was Caroline and Bonnie nearly indifferent to her silence followed by so abrupt change that was messing with her head, especially by Caroline just reacting when she decided to left her cheerleader position, it made the girl specially hurt. Elena used to be the relaxed one of her friends group, taking all the time of the world to anchored Caroline to earth whenever the blonde one was getting more anxious than usual, or Bonnie had a specially rough night after speaking with his father; she was the friend her friends went to sec comfort with something so small as a few words before a test or a full on intervention ending on her house preparing a good greasy meal with a teary sleep over.
This is how Elena spread her love to her friends, by taking care of them.
That's why the pain the girl was feeling felt very visceral, when the friend she had known all her life saw how she became a less convenient parody of herself with an obnoxious condescending vein bigger than the great Canon, in a few months, Elena had become like the girls she used to laugh about in corny movies.
In all honesty, Elena thought grief could change people, but if they thought she could change that much because of it, it was utterly ridiculous.
The girl left a sob out of her before she cracked like a cookie; she folded so hard, so quickly that the repress she's been holding for the past week broke under the pressure of her emotions, being Jeremy the one she's been neglecting the most, the one to notice something was wrong may Eleana think the air of the whole room got trapped in her lungs and panicking moment, she thought she may had experiencing an anxiety attack,
-Oh God, Lena-.The boy, apparently not thinking so far behind her, had taken the same conclusion and very rapidly one Jeremy Gilbert had full arms of the disaster Elena Gilbert had been forming in the past days, maybe the past year, being familiar with these types of attack her older sister used to experience in the past, but hadn't fully had in a couple of years
And just like that, still ugly sobbing trying to get the room stopped spiraling, the double started to tell everything she could remember to her brother, how, by some miracle remained attached to her body in a thigh hug listening quietly to her sister; everything that had been going on, the new the old and the even older , dreams she had forgotten once upon a time and wrote on her dream diaries that now might not be exactly dreams, people with her face and odd clothes from a time the English language was not even a thing.
Some she remembered with clarity, and some were too painful to even try.
Amara
Helena
Tatia
Ane
Katerina
All of them were part of a past the double didn't want to touch with a 5-foot stick. In her mind, the theories of nurture vs nature unravel behind a very bad closed door waiting for her to open and start to explore. All of what was supposed to be lucid dreams, starting to become a very real possibility, made her feel dizzy again.
-I'm tired, Jere-.Let Elena out with a hoarse, her trough hurt after crying so hard, it was a sensation she used to be familiar with years ago, when this kind of episodes were more common as a child.-Im just tired of running, tired of psycho vampires that belive they have a rigth over me because they used to fucked somebody who happend to have my face- Elena's voice craked while ahe continued talking, she knew that when she stopped she probably she would not be able to use it for a while after.- I was here first, I was bothering no one, they came to me, they need to go, not me-
The teenage boy just looked at her sister with a very controlled expression, one that a 15-year-old boy should not have.
“We are going to take care of it.” his voice was all but soothing, very different from the sound it used to make even a few months ago.”But not now, definitely not today, and not with you like this”-pointing out at the massive breakdown her sister was having, being covered with the sequels of it on his hoodie.-Baby steps- like Jenna used to say
Elena buried her head on Jeremy's hoodie like she wanted to drown in there.-OK- the girl sniffed."baby steps".
The rest of the summer felt like a strange blur; a lot had to be done in what seemed to be little time but felt like an eternity. Funny enough, the most stressing parts were not the legal paperwork Elena had to file to be legally responsible of her brother, was not taking care of the family funds her family had left them her parents, aunt jena and uncle john respectively; it wasn't even she preparing to graduate early by getting advance exams to get her GAD. The hardest part of her summer was having to rediscover herself and, metaphorically, having to put herself together by rebuilding her life and having weekly sessions with a therapist.
Court orders.
When a teenager gets bombarded with the sudden death of 4 of their closest relatives in the space of a year, that could damage the psyche of a normal 17-year-old or 15-year-old, so Elena and Jeremy found themselves, for the first time in a while, awkwardly sitting in a lobby of a mandated counselling therapy session. To be fair, when the therapy was brought out the judge had barely ruled out she could have the custody of his brother and the girl didn't even thought in dispute it, after all even if Mystical Falls was a tiny town it was a very risky deal to let a 17 year old into taking care of a 15 years old, some concessions had to be made, one was the therapy.
The other was a boarding school.
It was just by a loving grace Jeremy wasn't present in the hearing, she shouldn't have in all honesty, but after weeks of her family lawyers rushing off about the custody deal and being able to have a quick apt in court, Elena knew that the only reason the judge ruled in her favor because there were no more relatives, nobody else was ruling against her, she already counted with 4 separate trust funds and the fact that her father use to be judge Brown wife's doctor. The decision was rushed and in her favor; however, that didn't mean the law wasn't a bit nervous about her taking care of her baby brother.
That's when the boarding school idea came up.
Jeremy had talked about assisting art school for years and years, and were one of the things her parents were discussing to do, so when the opportunity came to apply for it, the teenager had convinced his tutor and sent some of his art as samples to the institute-of course that's the official story the double gave to a relief judge, instead of the awkward version her brother had reluctantly confessed a mere week ago when the acceptance letter arrived; apparently he just vaguely remember filling out the application before the accident, and then in one of his half stoned moments with Vicky, he forge aunt Jena signature, pick a bunch of his work and send the application the teenager saw a few days ago in an advertisement on his phone.
-It was supposed to be a joke!-. Said the stunned boy while holding the letter, wearing his PJs even though it was way past mid.- This thing is in London, how the hell am I supposed to get to London?¡ I don't even like fish, ¿¡Why are you not panicking!?-
-Must be the boldo tea- the double took a sip of her tea while scrolling by the homework she was trying to get through, Elena could feel how her eyes wanted to shoot down and go back to bed, and still, the double took another sip and looked at her eyes with her brothers.-Do you want more pancakes while you panic? Coffee? We need something stronger if we are going to Google about your fancy school and then you are going to explain to me why on earth I'm hearing about this just now¿,k?-
-...Can I pour some of dad's licor in the coffee?-
-No-
Thankfully, the advertisement was not a scam and turned out to be a nice boarding school that accommodates mainly foreigners on their different programs, and seemed to be interested in Jeremy's art and story, inviting him to be part of their art programming September, giving the teenager time enough to book the tickets and star to work in expanding his portafolio.AND just like that, in 2 months, Elena Gilbert had successfully gained her brother's custody, took care of the legal stuff around her family, started therapy, and was on an accelerated career into finishing her GED early so she didn't need to go back to school next year.
Everything showed signs of starting to fall into place for one Petrova Dopeldanger.
But again, good things appear to never last long in the double experience, after all, there was one big bad wolf and suit men on the run who sooner or later would find out little red was not as gone as they thought she was.
And the consequences that come with it.