"Elena?"
She was sitting at the bar drinking, like she hadn't a care in the world. She even looked slightly different. More... confident. When she didn't respond, I grabbed her arm.
"Serena?!" she asked, a look of complete and utter shock on her face. "What are you doing here?"
"Me?! What are you doing here? Klaus thinks you're dead, remember?"
"Klaus?" she asked, a paranoid look coming over her face. "Klaus is here?"
"Stop answering a question with a question. You came here looking for me, didn't you?"
She hesitated, before clearing her throat. "Yeah, of course. I... tracked you down."
I sat beside her, before remembering who was in the back room. "Elena, if Klaus sees you, he'll kill you. Marcel stopped the ritual from working. If he finds out how to correct it, you'll be the first person he finds. Go back to Mystic Falls."
"Mystic Falls," she said under her breath. "You're right. I should... go back to Mystic Falls. With Stefan."
"And Damon and everyone else, yeah."
She stood up hesitantly, before giving me a smile. "Thank you Serena, I knew I could count on you."
As she walked out of the bar, I reached for my phone and called Stefan.
"Serena!" he said, sounding relieved. "Are you OK?"
"Um, not really. What the hell are you guys playing at?!" I asked, struggling to keep my voice at a normal level.
"What are you talking about?"
"Look, I get that you're all worried about me. But first of all, tracking me to New Orleans was crazy. Second of all, sending Elena to find me when you know that Klaus thinks she's dead is... insane!"
"Elena?" Stefan asked, confused. "What are you talking about?"
"I had to convince her to go back to you guys," I clarified. "She was looking for me."
"Serena, Elena's right here. I'm sitting with her right now."
"That's impossible," I dismissed. "I was just with her. She was right here next to me two minutes ago."
"Sis," Stefan said. "I'm telling you. I'm sitting with Elena right now. Hold on..." I heard some noises that I couldn't make out, then another voice came to the phone.
"Serena?" the voice asked. It sounded like Elena, but it couldn't be... could it?
"E-Elena?" I couldn't think of anything else to say. "I don't understand. How are you doing this?"
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're in Mystic Falls? Right now? You were never in New Orleans?"
"Why would I be in New Orleans?" she asked, before I heard a sharp intake of breath. "Hang on, is this like a cry for help? You're in New Orleans? Do you need us to come and get you?"
I rolled my eyes. "No, just... put Stefan back on please."
She obliged and I heard his voice a moment later.
"See?" he asked.
"I see that I'm going crazy. I must be having hallucinations or something."
"Hallucinations? Why? Is Klaus torturing you or something? Seriously Serena, say the word and I'll be in New Orleans faster than-"
I cut him off. "Klaus isn't doing anything, this is all me. Either I'm going completely crazy, or there are two Elena's."
He didn't say anything. "Hello?" I called down the phone.
"Two Elena's," he whispered.
"I was kidding," I said. "Obviously there aren't two..." I trailed off. How could I have been so stupid?! "It wasn't Elena... it was..."
"Katherine," Stefan said, finishing my sentence.
"Is that even possible? I mean, she wasn't in the tomb with the others,"
"So she got out," Stefan said. "She's been hiding all this time."
"And today she just decided that it was time to come out and reveal herself to the world?" I asked. "I mean, if she's been hiding for so long, why would she even come back? What was she hiding from?"
"Maybe you should ask Klaus?" Stefan suggested.
"Why would I ask Klaus anything about Katherine Pierce?" I asked.
"Klaus has spent the last... however long, looking for a doppelganger, right? Isn't it possible that before Elena, that doppelganger was Katherine?"
"No," I said. "According to Damon, Katherine's been running around and being a total vamp bitch for the last 500 years. If my blood was integral to the ritual, Klaus wouldn't have even known about it while Katherine was still human. Hell, Emily Bennett couldn't have put the curse on him in the first place back then."
"Are you sure that that's what happened?" Stefan asked. "You really think that Klaus has only been trying to break this curse for a century?"
I thought about Klaus' words. He said I was integral because of Emily Bennett's connection to the curse. But his mother was a witch. Isn't it possible that she could have been the one to curse the Originals? Could this all go back to the Original witch?
"If Emily Bennett didn't curse them, then Klaus could have been trying to break this curse for a thousand years. If Katherine really is another doppelganger..."
"Then she could have spent the last 500 years running from Klaus," Stefan said thoughtfully.
"And that's why she pretended to be locked in the tomb. She was faking her death so that Klaus would stop looking for her."
"And she's coming back because she thinks that Elena's dead?" Stefan asked.
I thought about the conversation that I'd just had with 'Elena'. "She left when I told her than the ritual didn't work. She knows that Elena's alive, and she knows that you guys are in Mystic Falls," I said. If Katherine thought that it would gain her favor with Klaus, would she stoop as low as to kidnap Elena and bring her to New Orleans?
"I can handle things here," Stefan said, his mind going down the same thought process as mine. "You talk to Klaus, find out who created the curse. Find out if Katherine was the first doppelganger."
As he said this, I saw Klaus come out of the back room. His eyes caught mine.
"I will."
"Who are you talking to?" Klaus asked, coming over.
"My brother," I said. "Don't worry, I didn't tell him where we are."
"Good," he said, before gesturing to the door. "Come on, we're leaving."
"Already?" I asked, following him, his anger at Marcel pushing him to move quicker, forcing me to jog to keep up.
"Marcel isn't going down without a fight. We need to call in reinforcements."
"The other Originals?" I guessed. He smiled down at me.
"You're learning."
"I'll help," I promised. "But first, I need you to tell me the truth."
"What truth?" he asked hesitantly.
"The truth about the curse. It wasn't Emily Bennett's was it? The witches think it was, but you were trying to break it long before I even existed, before Emily existed, right?"
Klaus stopped walking.
"What makes you think that?" he asked.
"Well, if I'm wrong, why has Katherine Pierce spent the last 500 years running from you?"
I took a shot in the dark, but his facial expression told me that I was right. The ritual did have something to do with Katherine. I stood in front of him, tiptoeing slightly so that I could be at his eye level.
"Tell me everything Klaus. The truth."
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Thanks for reading!
I've decided that, with YouTubers doing Vlogmas and Bloggers doing Blogmas, I'm gonna do my own version of that with this story.
So, for the month of December, I will be putting up a chapter of this story every other day. So I hope you enjoy seeing a lot more of 'All I Need' over the next month!
The next chapter will be up on Monday, I hope you enjoyed this one!