A/N: I suck lmao I'm so sorry. But tbh I only figured out how to write this without having to write the whole thing from the show like a week ago. Which is pretty sad considering I'm constantly thinking about updating but never get around to it. I'm so sorry. D:

BUT HUZZUH, here we go :D

It was an average day at school for Elena. It had taken some convincing for the Salvatore brothers to avoid keeping Elena locked up in the Salvatore boarding house, but with the help of Bonnie, the ever-powerful Bennett witch, they relented in giving up their attempts. They both knew that Bonnie had enough power to keep Elena safe.

No one knows who or where Klaus is, and even with everyone's help, no leads could be found. They were playing a waiting game and it was putting on everyone on edge. Every step taken and every word spoken felt as if it could be their last. Elena had been trying to maintain a calm composure, but since it was her Klaus was after, her friends who were in danger, and Katherine who's life was currently on the line, or (and the option she avoided to think about) already over, it has proven to be difficult to remain passive.

Elena was walking with Caroline and Bonnie through the hallway to get to history class.

Caroline had been updating her mom, the Sheriff, about the whole situation so that Sheriff Forbes could keep an ear to the ground about any suspicious activity that could be linked to Klaus, but has yet to come up with results. Bonnie had accessed her ancestral witch reserves after finding where they were buried, and was ready to release any major power if need be. Matt and Tyler kept a close eye out for any new people in town, and Elijah was still trying to find where Klaus was hiding. No one had heard from Ric but Damon had left a voicemail about the situation.

When the three girls walked into class and sat down, Elena saw that Stefan was already there. Elena wondered if Stefan was ever tired of pretending to be a seventeen year old boy in high school, but when she flashed him the '60s Decade Dance' poster with a smile and he shook his head, she decided that he deserved to be sitting in a boring high school history class as an eternal teenager. She turned in her seat and showed Bonnie the same poster with the same smile and Bonnie grinned back and nodded. Elena turned toward Stefan again and shot him a smug look while he rolled his eyes.

At that moment, Alaric walked in. "Hello, class." He set his books on his desk and looked through a stack of papers. "What are we learning today?" he mostly mumbled to himself as he tried to find his place.

A girl from the front of the room spoke up, "with the decade dance tonight, we've been covering the 60s all week."

"Right. The 60s."

Elena was quietly rummaging through her things and straightened out the leather jacket that Katherine had left in her room and she decided to start wearing. When she glanced up to pay attention to what Ric was saying, she caught him staring at her with a focused look but he turned back to the board.

She stared perplexedly at the back of Alaric's head, but thought nothing further of it, thinking that he probably just had a long night.

"The 60s. I wish there was something good I could say about the 60s, but actually they kind of sucked. Except for The Beatles of course, they made it bearable. Uh, what else was there," Alaric continued in a dry tone.

Elena turned towards Bonnie and gave her an odd look, but she simply shrugged in response.

Alaric began pacing the room absentmindedly. "Cuban missile thing, the uh, we walked on the moon! Watergate…-" Alaric mumbled on.

"Watergate was in the 70s, Ric," Elena interrupted good-naturedly. Alaric stopped pacing and faced Elena. In fact, everyone turned around to face Elena, and as her face reddened and smile faltered, she corrected herself. "Uh, I mean, Mr. Saltzman."

After a beat, Alaric smiled. "Right. It all kind of mushes together up here. Sixties, seventies. Thank you, Elena."

Alaric kept his gaze on Elena for a moment too long before looking back at the board behind him.

During Elena's lunch period, she was conversing with Bonnie when one of her classmates walked up to the table with a giddy expression. Elena glanced up with a look of amusement at her excited peer.

"Hey, Elena, there you are. Okay, this is gonna sound freaky, but this totally hot guy asked me to ask you if you were going to the dance tonight."

Elena laughed and Bonnie piped up. "Tell him she has a boyfriend." Elena gave Bonnie a look but the witch simply shrugged. It was an easy excuse.

"You could at least meet him," she pressed on. "He'll be at the dance tonight; look for him! His name is Klaus."

Both Elena and Bonnie's expressions morphed from amused to fear in a second. "I-I'm sorry, what did you just say?" Elena asked, needing clarification.

The girl looked back and forth between the two girls with confusion. "His name is Klaus? I know the name is stupid, but I swear he's hot."

"Where is he? Is he here?" Bonnie asked casually.

The girl stared blankly at the table for a moment. "I don't know."

Elena kept her eyes on the girl as she worried that she might be compelled to do something else. "She's been compelled."

As if she didn't hear Bonnie speak, the girl continued. "But he wants to know if you'll save him the last dance. How cute is that?" She grinned.

Elena and Bonnie shared a glance before getting up and left without another word to find Stefan.

Katherine had given up fighting against the compulsion and it got to the point where she couldn't even feel the knife being driven into her thigh by her own hand. Small pools of blood had formed and started spreading across the hardwood floor underneath her chair, and her thighs were smeared with crimson.

This could be a lot worse; Katherine had been thinking this over and over in her head all day. This isn't so bad. She thought as she once again drove the knife into her left thigh with barely a flinch.

While she had been impaling her leg all day, she had been trying to think of some sort of plan. There was a very small chance that Elena and the Scooby gang had any idea that Alaric was Klaus and they were probably spilling all their secrets to their enemy without even realizing so she had to think of a way to tell them.

Katherine had lost her phone when she was taken and she couldn't see any land line in Alaric's apartment. Damn this new age of technology.

A noise at the door caught her attention and she snapped her gaze to the door as Alaric walked through the threshold. He ruffled his hair and walked passed Katherine without a glance just as she pulled the knife out of her thigh.

Katherine watched him cautiously as he was mumbling to himself and typing quickly on his phone before disappearing into the bedroom. The vampire tried to listen to what he was doing but all she heard was rummaging and drawers opening and closing.

"Katarina?" Klaus called out from Alaric's room.

Katherine closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Yes?" She spoke before opening her eyes.

Klaus roamed back into the room shirtless with a button-up in his hands. "I have to attend a high school dance tonight." He pulled his arms through the button-up and began adjusting his sleeves. "Elena Gilbert is saving me a dance," he grinned with a wink and a flourish of his arms as if he were slow dancing with the air.

Katherine felt bile rise up in her throat but forced herself to maintain an air of calm. "Oh, I'm sure she'll love that," she glared.

"Don't be jealous, Katarina." Klaus stopped and bent down in front of Katherine with a smug grin. "We can dance when I return," he purred. Katherine turned her head away from the man with disgust as he straightened his back and buttoned up his shirt. Klaus stepped around Katherine, entered the kitchen, and grabbed a drink from the cupboard. "By the way, I never said stop," he said, pointing at the knife in Katherine's hand.

With a quiet hiss, she pushed the knife in her thigh once more but she heard Klaus laugh from behind her. "Oh Katarina, you can stop for the night. I'm getting bored of this punishment. I'll find something else for you later. I'm feeling generous." He moved around her once more and strolled over to the couch where a suit jacket was casually draped. He picked it up and slipped his arms through and pulled on the hem. "So?"

Katherine's face scrunched into a grimace.

Klaus' lip turned to a pout. "You're right, it seems too formal with all this," he gestured to himself, "maybe I'll just go back and change into what I was wearing earlier." Klaus' phone chimed from his pocket and with a quick check, a devious smile formed on his face. "It seems that my witches are ready for tonight," he said as he pocketed his phone in his suit jacket. "Excuse me for a moment."

Katherine watched the vampire occupying Alaric's body walk back into the bedroom as he began to take off the clothes he had just put on. While the man was out of the room, Katherine dropped the knife on the ground and stood to stretch her limbs. She looked down at herself and wished she had other clothes to wear. Maybe she could get Klaus to get her new clothes and she also made a mental note to shower once Klaus had left to get all the dried blood off of her body.

Klaus walked back out of the room in the black button up shirt he had worn to school and dark jeans. "Well, I'm off to catch myself another doppelganger. You can't have too many, you know." He winked at Katherine and strode out of the door.

"Fucking jackass," Katherine mumbled under her breath. After fixing herself a drink, the vampire began to snoop around and started with Alaric's bedroom.

The first thing she noticed was the suit jacket that Klaus had thrown off when he was changing. She was about to disregard the jacket when she noticed a bulge in his jacket pocket.

His phone.

She immediately took the jacket and pulled the small phone out of his pocket. Oh my god, thank you Universe. She scrolled through Alaric's contacts and found the number she was looking for before sending a quick text message and deleting the outgoing message. She returned the phone and the jacket where they belong in the blink of an eye before speeding off to one of the dressers in Alaric's room and opened it.

"My, my, are you scavenging?"

Katherine turned to face Klaus, who was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. She could hear him return but she didn't have enough time to leave the room without charging right into him and this was the best she could do. She hoped that he had not been around long enough to hear what she had been doing.

"Well, you know me. I'm a curious person." Katherine pulled out a random, hard object from the drawer that she knew to be a stake. "This man sure does have a lot of vampire hunting stuff everywhere."

"If you're lucky, maybe I'll use some of that on you," he grinned sadistically.

Katherine ignored the chill that tingled down her spine. "What're you doing back so quickly? Don't tell me you missed me."

Klaus walked forward and took his suit jacket, taking the phone from the pocket. "I forgot this little thing." He waved the device in the air. Katherine feigned surprise and disappointment. "Oh, did you not get to the jacket while rudely invading another person's privacy? What a shame. You could have called home."

"You're the one to talk about rudely invading a person's privacy. You're in another person's body," she snarled.

Klaus had immediately stepped forward and grabbed the stake from Katherine's hand and drove it between her ribs, just stopping short of her heart. The vampire gasped out in pain and held onto the dresser for support as she felt the wood of the stake scrape against her ribs. "Be nice, Katarina. I'm being very kind to you today. You deserve much more than this," he said as he twisted the stake, slowly inching it towards her heart. He pulled the stake out and neatly placed it back on the dresser top. "I have places to be. Don't wait up," he said cheerily as he left once more.

Katherine collapsed on the floor as blood escaped her and small pieces of chipped-off wood shifted inside her.

Elena, Damon, Stefan, and Bonnie were standing in the main hallway of the Salvatore house discussing their action plan. Damon was pacing back and forth, throwing out the only idea he could muster up.

"We go to the dance, and find him."

Stefan turned towards his pacing brother with a skeptical look. "Really? How are we going to do that? We don't even know what he looks like."

"Something tells me he isn't going to be 16 and pimply," Damon retorted.

"He could be anywhere, at anytime." Stefan put his hands on his hips in frustration. Elena could feel his impatience and she understood his reluctance, but there are little options to consider. "He compelled somebody at school." Stefan continued. He looked at Bonnie and Elena with annoyance. "I guess it's not as safe as you guys thought, hm?"

Elena could admit that Stefan was right about going to school with the current dangers, but they never would have gotten the information that Klaus was going to be at the dance if they never went.

A knock sounded at the door and Alaric let himself in.

Damon turned and threw his hands up. "There you are."

Alaric closed the door behind him before stepping forward. "Sorry I'm late."

"Hey, I need you to put me down as a chaperone for the dance tonight. Klaus made his first move," Damon informed him. Alaric looked surprised at Damon's statement and walked down to stand with the others in the hallway.

"Okay, so we find him and then what?" Elena asked, looking between all of her friends. "What's our plan of attack?"

"Me." Bonnie piped up from beside her. Damon turned to look at the Bennett witch with a raised brow. "I'm the plan. He has no idea how much power I can channel. If I can get near him, I can kill him."

"Well, it's not going to be that easy," Alaric said with a lighthearted smile. "He is the biggest, baddest vampire ever."

"Alaric has a point," Damon said. "I mean, what if he-" Damon started but then charged at Bonnie at full speed. Before the black haired vampire could near the witch, Bonnie thrust him backwards and over the couch where he rolled backwards and landed not so gracefully on his back. He quickly popped himself up on his knees to look over the couch at Bonnie. He looked like a startled child.

Elena laughed out loud and Stefan nodded his head. "Well, I was impressed," the youngest Salvatore brother said.

Elena pulled her phone out to see how long they had left until the dance and noticed a text message from Alaric. The human glanced curiously at Alaric who was watching Bonnie cautiously and figured he must have sent the text before he left to arrive here.

"It doesn't matter if he's an original. I can take down anyone who comes at me." Bonnie elaborated with confidence.

Elena unlocked her phone to check her message while Bonnie was talking to the others about their plan but she froze when she read the text.

[4:54pm] Alaric is Klaus –K

Elena stared at the message with confusion. Alaric is Klaus? What does that mean? Klaus is in Alaric's body? And 'K', is that Katherine? Elena felt absolute relief at the knowledge that Katherine could be alive and well enough to be able to warn her. She knew she couldn't message back since it came from Alaric's phone and he was currently standing in front of them.

But Alaric was Klaus. Klaus was pretending to be their friend and was listening to their current plan.

Elena knew she couldn't bring attention to it, not in front of everyone. Klaus would kill them all.

"Hey, Stefan?" Elena said as evenly as she could. Stefan turned towards her and raised his head. "I need your help with something. Damon and Alaric, work out the details for the chaperone thing to get into the dance, and Bonnie, try to save your energy and avoid throwing Damon across the room again," she said with a smile as she walked out of the room with Stefan trailing after her.

Once they made their way into the kitchen of the boarding house, Elena turned around to face the Salvatore brother and put a single finger to her mouth. Stefan raised an eyebrow and narrowed his eyes when Elena showed him the text message.

Elena watched as Stefan's curious expression turned to shock. She knew if she had shown Damon, he would have rushed Alaric/Klaus and would have gotten everyone killed and if she had shown Bonnie, the witch would have immediately started an attack, which might not be the worst thing at the moment but they needed to think of some sort of plan, and Elena could see that Stefan was having the same thought.

If they cornered Klaus now, he would be blind-sighted, whereas if they went with the dance plan, Klaus would have made his preparations and he would be ready for whatever happened; plus he knows their plan now. Elena wished she had checked her phone earlier.

Stefan cleared his throat and moved around Elena. "Well, I know Caroline is going to want all of us to go together, you know how she is," Stefan said out of nowhere as he made his way to the kitchen sink and turned it on.

Elena walked over to stand beside him and began washing her hands for the sake of having the sink running for a reason besides to drown out their voices. "We should call Elijah," she whispered.

"There's no time," Stefan whispered back. "How do we know this message isn't a trap? It could be from Klaus trying to get us to turn on each other."

"We don't know, but do you really think it could be?" Stefan's expression showed defeat. "We have to believe it's from Katherine and that it's a warning. Besides, Alaric has been acting weird all day."

The vampire was silent, lost in his own thoughts. "You really think Katherine would risk her life to send this?" He asked quietly and genuinely.

Elena thought for a moment about everything the two doppelgangers had talked about in private, and everything the vampire had done for her in the past. "I do."

Stefan's green eyes regarded her carefully before he nodded once. "Send Elijah a message, and I'll get Bonnie alone to pass the message so we can make our move before tonight. We have the upper hand and we have Katherine to thank for that." Elena stared at the message on her phone from Katherine for a long moment. "We'll save her, Elena."

Elena tried to smile at the boy standing in front of her but failed. She shut off the water and dried her hands off on a nearby hand towel. "Okay, well I'll text Caroline and let her know of our plans and you go talk to Bonnie."

With a quick nod, the vampire was out of the room and Elena was left alone in the kitchen with the sound of the others in the next room quietly talking.

The others including a homicidal ancient vampire, who has her… who has someone who she is quite fond of, held captive; and all because Klaus wanted her.

This was all her fault.

She quickly typed out her message to Elijah and hoped that the vampire was nearby, and made her way back into the main area where she took a deep breath to brace herself against what was about to happen.