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Things seemed to go a lot faster when living in WVD than watching it. Jeremy was fine now, if a bit weak, walking and talking again, probably healed by the guilty Stefan, the comet had come and gone, Elena missing all the fanfare because sleep was a lovely thing and she didn't give enough of a fuck to stay up just to see it and next week would be the Founder's party ball thing.

Yes, everything moved a lot faster when not watching it.

Then again, things were different than they were in the tv series, mostly because Stefan's tortured mystique held no actual appeal to Elena, nor did any of the teen drama. For the most part Elena was getting very good at tuning people out. Caroline's insecurities rearing up again? Monty Python started playing in her head. Stefan desperately chasing after her? She solved the calculus worksheets they'd been assigned. Some terribly dull cheerleader passed comments on Elena's 'goth' phase? Well, alright, that she dealt with by making the girl cry by reminding her of her mediocrity.

Bonnie was just about the only one she could stand and even that faded in comparison to the fondness she felt for Vicki.

Who was to be leaving them soon, alas. Her scholarship had been approved and she was soon to be studying at Whitmore college.

"What are you going to do without me?" Vicki asked, fingers steepled as she sat in the chair looking at Elena.

"Probably die." Elena answered, flippant. "At least in the summer I had some freedom but high school is a grating experience. Jenna won't let me skip grades because she wants me to grow up normal and I don't quite have the patience for that."

"You refer to death easily, why is that?"

That was true, Elena dropped gallows humour and references to dying much more now than she did in W1. There were many reasons for that fo course, the main one being that dying once had landed her in a fictional world and not the one she preferred. Maybe dying as Elena in WVD would lead to her being resurrected as Wonder Woman in the DCU, who knew.

And more to the point, "There are worse fates than death, especially in this world. Those of the supernatural inclination go to this ghost world type of purgatory when they die and stay there for forever. I'm more afraid of being turned and having to either live forever or die and be trapped in that world than I am of dying. Although a doppelganger is a magical thing anyway so perhaps I'd end up there even if I die as a human." Elena shuddered at the thought of it.

"I still don't understand what a doppelganger is and why they repeat."

"Did I not explain that?" Vicki shook her head in the negative and Elena explained, "It all happened because of the usual appendage that wrecks the world, the penis. This guy from ancient times, Silas, wanted to dip his stick in this woman, Amara, forever, despite already getting some from his fiancee Questiyah. He got Questiyah to create this immortality spell, telling her it was for the two of them while it was really for him and Amara. Amara and Silas did the deed and were immortal which went against the rules of nature and et voila we have doppelgangers. Even that purgatory place is that penis' fault, his fiancee discovered them, got pissed, originated the idea that hell hath no fury like woman scorned and created that place as a torture dungeon for Amara and tried to coerce the penis to return to her instead. Spoiler alert, it did not work."

"This is exactly why I never did couples counselling." Vicki pulled a face before tossing something to Elena. "My going away present."

Elena opened the box and frowned in confusion. "Is that an insulin pump?"

"Yes."

"Well...thanks, but I don't really have diabetes?"

Vicki rolled her eyes. "I modified it, it's a vervain pump now."

"You're joking!"

"Steady and constant stream of vervain injected subcutaneously so it's not broken down too fast, but I'd suggesting keeping some dried on your person anyway."

"How are you so perfect?"

"I died in one world and then fell into the body of a much more conventionally attractive person but with all my processing skills intact."Elena blew a kiss her way before trying to figure out how to put the insulin pump on. "So, when are you going to kill Stefan and Damon?"

Of course Vicki had guessed at her next hopeful plan of action. She was so smart!

"Not quite sure. It kind of makes sense to keep them around and alive to use as a human sh-well, vampire shields for when my face invites more danger. But Stefan is also a doppelganger and Damon is a loose cannon so I'd really like to be rid of them. Pretty sure Katherine keeps an eye on them and that's how she found out about Elena being a doppelganger, though I can't be sure. Don't quite know what to do and I keep wondering, how am I going to hide it so that none of their special vampire friends don't find out and try to take revenge?"

"Kill them and then take off on a road trip?"

"Katherine and I still have the same face even if the packaging is different and that woman really got around. Like five hundred years worth of Vicki getting around and pissing people off and fucking them, if someone sees me and thinks its her it's still a problem. Otherwise I would have convinced you to be the Sam to my Dean and run off with me hunting yellow eyed demons a long time ago."

"Is that another pop culture reference I won't get?"

Elena put down the vervain pump to look at Vicki in astonishment, "You cannot be serious?!"

"I miss the old days when the pop culture references I had to listen to were Cheers and Frasier and Friends." Vicki sighed. "Can't you run them out of town at least?"

"How would I go abo-" An idea came to Elena like a freight train through a tunnel. "I think I might actually be able to do that!"

There was a voice in Damon's head that only ever spoke to him when he was scared. It came into existence when he was held and tortured by the Augustine society. It kept him a bit sane, took his mind off the torture, off the pain and fear. It sounded like Stefan in one of his Ripper phases, drawling with sarcasm and with that smirk in it that always seemed to die when he turned 'vegetarian'.

And the voice said, 'You are a strong, independent vampire and you don't need anyone.'

Stefan had said that once after one of his binges. Back when he had been the only thing Damon had left of humanity and he wanted to hold on to his little brother for as long as he could. A long, long time ago.

Elena sang softly under her breath as she walked up the driveway blue hair swishing side to side as she swayed.

"He said 'Now hush love, here's your gown. There's the bed, lantern's down', But I don't want to go to sleep, in all my dreams, I drown"

And Damon felt like he was trapped in her dream again, drowning. The tumbler of scotch in his hand sloshed around, jostled by his trembling.

And the voice said, 'You are a strong, independent vampire and you don't need anyone.'

She giggled, a demented sound when compared to his own heavy breaths and kept on singing."His berth, it rocks, heave ho, heave ho, the ocean gnashed and moaned. Like Jonah, we'll be swallowed whole and spat back teeth and bones."

And the voice said, 'You are a strong, independent vampire and you don't need anyone.'

He all but ran down the stairs in his rush to open the door if only to get her to stop singing that wretched song.

"You must be Elena," He said and she finally stopped singing only to smile eerily.

"Elena is only the name I was given," She said in a floaty voice that threw Damon off, "Please, call me Rainbow Sparkles. I chose it to represent the new me that I became after achieving inner peace."

What?

"What?"

She snorted. "I'm fucking with you, you Salvatore boys are so easy." Elena walked past him into the house, "So where's Stefan?"

"I'm sure he'll be along shortly. Did he know you were coming by?" Damon asked, trying hard to be his usual self, charming and seductive. Her eyes flitted over him and he felt like he was in her dream again, one of many in a crowd, not a real person at all. He fought to smile but his hands felt sweaty and wet.

"No, I just figured that considering that he's a self professed loner he'd be loning away at his home." Hearing the disdain for Stefan from a mouth so like Katherine's was just a bit vidictifying for him. But then she turned that same disdain towards him and asked, "Who're you anyway?"

"I'm Damon. Stefan's older brother."

She laughed dismissively. "I guess your parents must have read that half-baked novel Johnathan Gilbert was writing."

And Damon's ears pricked up. "Johnathan Gilbert?"

"Some ancestor of mine. Apparently he fancied himself a fantasy novelist. Wrote this piece of crap like a journal from an alternate universe of vampires and witches. Like the Tristram Shandy books, only bad and with creatures of the night."

"And you think our parents read it?"

"Named you after some of the characters didn't they?"

"Interesting," Damon made sure to keep his voice bland even as his heart sped up. "What was this other Damon like then?"

"Typical southern repressed boy, easily led around by the local town slut slash vampire. Johnathan set it in his time, everyone was either a polite southern boy or an abusive alcoholic."

"Local town slut slash vampire, you say?" Damon wanted to rip her throat out for daring to speak about Katherine like that.

"Yep, apparently she slept with a lot of people. I mean, all kudos to her, she wanted dick and she got dick. And she got the perks they offered her too. In a way she might actually be my favourite character in that villainous sort of way."

"Why is that?"

"Well, in the novel, she's on the run from someone and decides to settle into Mystic Falls. Then she fucks around with these brothers—your and Stefan's namesakes actually— and ends up outing vampires to the town. Then when the town people decide to sort of trap the vampires to kill them in a fire, she seduces one of the higher ups too and basically fakes her death in the fire before fucking off into the world."

And Damon feels his life crashing down upon him.

"Are you serious?"

"Hmm?" She said flippantly, not even looking up from the book she had picked up from the end table in the living room. "Oh yeah, it was very melodramatic. But I kind of appreciated that he didn't shy away from portraying a woman as an abuser, you know? A lot of these kind of novels deify women as a holy maiden type of figure but here's Katherine just shacking up with a bajillion dudes to get what she wants and to survive. But Johnathan also kind of shied away from calling Katherine what she was, I mean she compelled people to be okay with her bloody thirsty ways and sleep with her, that's clearly rape."

"No, what you said about her running off-"

"Oh that, in the book there's some other supernatural creature too who's hiding away as part of this council thingy,, you know? And she made a deal with him to let her out of the tomb or something like that, in exchange for her silence and some magical artifact she had. I don't know, it was kind of annoying after a while. Very 'My kingdom for a vagina' type of thing."

"What was she running away from?"

"Some crap about the Original vampires or something-"

"Fuck" Damon cursed under his breath. He had heard about the Originals but thought they were a myth. But now he thought about all those times Katherine had seemed terrified and he understood. Of course she ran away and of course she couldn't have taken Damon with her, he was just a newly turned vampire back then, more a hindrance than anything and he would have slowed her down and the Originals would have caught up to them. Katherine wouldn't risk him like that, not when it was obviously safer for him to be on his own.

She was trying to save him by leaving, he could see that now.

But he was better now. Stronger, more powerful than he had ever imagined he would be. Now he could finally be the partner Katherine deserved.

He just needed to find her.

Damon looked Elena, still rambling on. He saw the resemblance she bore to Katherine. Katherine must have had a life before them, one where she had a child. Damon had seen Pearl and Anna, he couldn't imagine Katherine wouldn't have turned her child the way Pearl had.

If he wanted to find her, he would have to find her child. Another time and he would have tracked that child going back from Elena but he knew that she was adopted. Grayson Gilbert had had a few too many talks with his wife about when it would be the right time to tell Elena to know otherwise. No, that wouldn't quite work.

But Katherine had spoken more than once of England, of meeting Pearl there, so that is where he would go.

A humming broke him out of his thoughts and he turned to see Elena pouting at her phone.

"Stefan said he should be here soo-"

"Elena!" Came a breathless whisper form his brother. He all but lit up at the sight of her and Damon was hard pressed not to roll his eyes at the lovesick behaviour. "What are you doing here?"

"Mr Tanner said to ask you for notes on what I missed this last week."

"Oh, yeah they're upstairs, would you like to-?"

"I'd rather not go up to a teenage boy's room alone, thanks."

"Right, but-" The angry but afraid look Stefan threw at him told Damon what he was worried about and he rolled his eyes.

"No need to worry about me corrupting the youth of today, brother dear." Damon grinned deliberately, knowing it would thrown Stefan off, scare him even more. "I've got some packing of my own to do."

"Oh, you going somewhere?" Elena said and Damon gave her a proper smile.

"Got an ex-girlfriend to woo."

Stefan startled, "You reall-"

"Maybe you guys should have the family discussion without strangers around." Elena interrupted his brother. "And I'd like those notes, please."

Stefan stared soulfully at ehr for a few seconds before ducking his head bashfully and agreeing, making sure to pull Damon along with him.

"What's this about going to England?" He asked Damon while picking books out of his bag.

"I've got a lead on an old friend of mine." Damon didn't want Stefan to interfere and fuck things up for him, any mention of Katherine always got him the judge-y look. His little brother opened his mouth to speak again but Damon clucked at him to get him to stop. "Now, now, wouldn't want to keep your girlfriend waiting."

Stefan all but growled, poking his finger at Damon threateningly, "This isn't over." He said and made his way down to Elena. Damon shook his head and turned to look out the window. He could hear Stefan's attempts at conversations being shot down repeatedly as Elena turned all his date ideas into Mystic Falls tour sessions or group outings. Before long she was out the door and sitting in her car, doing up her seatbelt. She waved at the door where Stefan was probably stood, waiting for her to get out of Damon's sight. The engine roared into existence and as she pulled out of the driveway he heard her chuckle.

"Men are so easy." She said with laughter in her voice and Damon shook his head even as he agreed.

The way she'd handled Stefan really did make him seem that way.

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