"Why are we here?" Elena asked once more, watching Rose turn on a lamp in the dusty room. Ana watched, sat on one of the many old armchairs around, amused.

Rose shook her head "You keep asking me these questions like I'm gonna answer them."

"Why won't you?" Elena asked.

"That's another one."

Ana just frowned at Elena, saying "Just lay off, won't you? Rose won't tell us anything, she's made that part clear."

Shrugging her shoulders, Elena said "You got us. Okay? It's not like we can go anywhere else. The least you can do is tell us what you want with us."

"I personally want nothing with you. With Ana, however, I'd love to knock her head right off her shoulders for the amount of running her and her sister have brought upon me and Trevor. That is, if I didn't know the consequences that came with it." Rose gave Ana a pointed look, and the girl just grinned back. "I'm just a delivery service."

Elena walked forward slightly, not bothering to ask any more questions about Ana's past because the vamp seemed pretty defensive about it. "Delivery to who? Elijah?"

"Ah, heh." Rose chuckled under her breath, moving things around the room still. "Two points to the eavesdropper."

"Who is he?" Elena asked "Is he a vampire?"

Leaning over the armchair and making herself at home, Ana remarked "Careful, Elena. Curiosity killed the cat, after all."

"He's one of the vampires, the originals." Rose explained, earning an eye roll from Ana.

"What do you mean, the originals?" Elena questioned, her eyebrows furrowed and forehead creased as she tried to figure out what she was doing with these vamps.

Ana huffed "She means what she said. An original, and original means first. Translation: the first vampires."

"Haven't the salvatores been teaching you your vampire history?" Rose asked, turning to Ana and giving her a highly cynical look.

Elena tilted her head "So, you know Stefan and Damon."

"I know of them." Rose confirmed, looking through a book on her desk " A hundred years back, a friend of mine tried to set me up with Stefan. She said he was one of the good ones. I'm more of a sucker for the bad boys, though, but I digress."

"I don't understand? Who are the originals? How are they the first vampires?" After hearing Ana's short definition, Elena became overwhelmed with questions and the eagerness to understand what she was becoming involved with.

Rose turned around and sighed "Trevor and I have been running for five hundred years. We're tired. We want it over. We're using you and Ana to negotiate ourselves out of an old mess that was created by Ana and her sister in the first place."

Coughing loudly, Ana muttered "Katherine, not me."

"But why us? I mean, I can kinda understand that Ana has some sorta past with the originals, but me? I've never even heard of them before today." Elena asked, frowning.

Tilting her head upwards, Rose said "Because you're a Petrova doppelganger. Ana was lucky, you see, her mother had an affair when she gave birth to her so she never carried the real Petrova gene, but you - you're the key to breaking the curse."

"Curse?" Elena asked, now switching her gaze between Ana and Rose, whom were both looking at her with tense expressions "The Sun and the Moon curse?"

"Ohh. You do know your history." Rose smiled, her head swinging to one side.

"What do you mean I'm the key? The moonstone is what breaks the curse."

Ana interjected, now stood from her armchair "Actually, the moonstone is just a binder. Sacrifice is what breaks it."

"Sacrifice?" Elena asked.

"The blood of the doppelganger. Once my sister's blood, but now yours. You're the doppelganger." Ana explained, her brown eyes sparkling now they were speaking about a topic that Ana was familiar with. "Which means in order to break the curse, you... you have to die, Elena."

Elena blinked, her mouth hanging open as she struggled to process what she had just been told. She would have to die?

★·'¯'·★

"Tell me more." Elena demanded, looking at Rose and Ana desperately.

"Elena, some of it you aren't ready to hear yet, trust me." Ana told the teenager, clasping her hands together in earnest "I wasn't ready and you aren't now."

From behind the three women, Trevor marched from the room he was in, turning to Rose and saying "Captivity has made the doppelganger pushy, eh? What do you want to know doppelicious? Hey Ana banana, I bet Elijah is going to snitch on you."

"Shut up, Trevor." Ana said, glaring at the british vampire. Trevor put a hand to his chest, pretending to be upset by her attitude.

Noticing her friend's agitated behaviour, Elena asked Trevor "Who are you running from?"

"The originals."

Elena rolled her eyes, replying "Yeah, I've been told. What does that mean?"

"The first family - the old world - Rose and I annoyed 'em." Noticing Rose's pointed gaze, Trevor added "Correction - I annoyed them. Rose had my back. And for over half a millennium, they've wanted us dead." Upon finishing, Trevor threw a book at Elena's feet, causing the brunette to tense and shift slightly closer to Ana.

Elena persisted "What did you do?"

"He made the same mistake countless others did." Rose explained, turning her gaze onto Ana "He trusted Katerina Petrova."

"Katherine." Elena breathed.

Trevor turned to Ana, frowning slightly "You know, me and Rose were surprised to find you alive. We assumed Katherine killed you or something."

"No, she did something worse." Ana snapped, her eyes flashing red "She condemned me to a life of loneliness and hunger."

Rose nodded at Ana's confession, saying "That was Katerina, the one and only... the first petrova doppelganger."

"I helped Katerina escape her fate, and the doppelganger wouldn't leave without Ana, so we went back for her. And now I've- sorry, - been marked ever since." Trevor explained to Elena, sending a purposeful look at Ana like she didn't already feel guilty enough.

"Which is why we're not gonna make the same mistake again." Rose called from the steps behind them all.

Slamming a book back onto the pile, Trevor strolled past Elena and Ana, sending them a deadly look, a look dark enough to send chills through Elena.

"We'll be fine, Elena, okay?" Ana told the human, smiling reassuringly.

Elena frowned, looking at Ana and responding "You don't know that. This Elijah, if he really intends to use me in the Sun and the Moon ritual... he wants me dead, Ana."

★·'¯'·★