New Beginning

Chapter Twenty-two

***Hey guys, sorry for the long wait, but life, in general, has been really busy for me, that and I have had the worst time with this chapter. I did make sure it was long to make up for it though. Ive had a bit of writer's block along with real-world drama. You can blame Ellie. Elara has just not wanted to feed me her story here lately. This chapter has a bit of a time summary in it. I didn't want to do a time jump because there are still a few things I have to deal with that I can't or just don't want to skip, werewolves, Katherine, and vampire Caroline to list a few. So, this is how I handled skipping over a few things I didn't particularly care to write out. I hope it's ok. I don't plan to completely flesh out the return of Katherine the same way the show did, but I'm not going to skip it. I have my own plans for Kat that will lead to Elijah much quicker. There is a surprise in this chapter for us Original fans. A sort of taste to tide us over. I really want to know what you think and I hope you enjoy it. This chapter has been edited by my fabulous Beta Casey.***

The weeks following the opening of the tomb flew by. They were a blur of the usual family drama, with a bit of the new in the form of a game Elena had started to play called: "Who's our mama?"

Elena was shocked to find out I had no interest in her Sherlockian games. Once I informed her I had absolutely no desire to find the woman who had abandoned us, she had no choice but to join forces with Aunt Jenna and Stefan. With me out of the equation, Elena followed Aunt Jenna's suggestion to go digging up our father's old medical records. She hoped that it would help them discover who our birth mother really was. Of course, my sister's luck being what it is, they quickly found a lead. After Aunt Jenna searched the web for the faux last name Isobel had given our father, she uncovered a woman that lived nearby with the same last name. Elena, the idiot she is, took off alone to visit her. That led to a whole new bundle of revelations.

Trudie, a good friend of both our mothers, had told Elena that Isobel attended Duke University. I got curious when I remembered Alaric mentioned once that he had met his wife in college, more importantly, at Duke. A wife, who he mentioned was deceased, and whose name was Isobel.

That wasn't the only odd thing Elena discovered about Isobel's old friend Trudie. It seemed she knew a little too much about vervain and home invitations to be considered an average ill-informed human. After Elena's visit with Trudie, and the new basket full of info she had gotten from it, she received a unique visitor - a compelled one. Really, I should have been more surprised than I was. Still, after everything, one insane discovery after another, I guess I was becoming desensitized.

So, when Isobel decided to leave Elena a message she wouldn't forget, I wasn't as blown away by it as Stefan and Elena were. Isobel compelled a man to deliver her message and caught us while we were in town. Blank faced, he stood in front of Elena and told her to stop looking. She'd hardly gotten a 'who are you?' out before he proceeded to step in front of a semi-truck, killing himself instantly. Needless to say, that was a wake-up call for Elena.

That, and it also proved that Isobel was about as dead as the Salvatores. A vampire mother...now that was a new one, even for me.

When I wasn't following around my sister and dealing with our mama drama, I was worrying about Damon and his 145 years of pining. It had hit him just as hard as I figured it would, finding out that Katherine had never really loved him. The fact that he had put his life on hold for her for 145 years for nothing was killing him. He had taken to filling his time with sorority girls and massive amounts of alcohol. I spent my free time sending off compelled, half-naked college girls and helping his drunk ass up the stairs once he was too far gone to do it himself. Stefan was no help and chose to just watch his brother self destruct with only mild bouts of sympathy. So, without his help, my weekends were spent catering to Damon's whims. I allowed him to yank me to random clubs, and then back home once we were either kicked out or the sun came up. During these trips, I would act like I was drinking my fill, while I made sure he didn't kill anyone or reveal his and Stefan's secret during a drunken stupor. It wasn't how I wanted to spend my last year of life, but I had suffered through worse things in my centuries of living, and people tend to do whatever it takes for those they love.