❰ elena reacts... much as anyone might react, really, to finding out about their doppelgänger. damon can't help but wonder just how stefan went about telling elena the truth, once he was forced to — at the very least, damon got ahead of the whole mess with the melainotype, and that must be better, right, for her to learn of the resemblance from him, by his choice, than from a hidden photograph? that's what he wants to believe, anyway, but with the distress radiating from elena in almost palpable waves, he's really not sure.

it's not going to get any easier.

damon watches elena tense and force herself to relax, sympathetically balling and unballing his fists as she does. this is going to be worse, it's so much worse, she shouldn't have to hear this from him — ❱

You were adopted, Elena.

❰ is there a better way he could have said it? led into it more, let her come to the conclusion on her own, so it was less jarring? stefan should be here. stefan would get this right. ❱

A teenager from a neighbouring town came to your father's clinic one night, already in labor. She disappeared after you were born, and your parents took you in as their own, falsifying your birth records to say that they were your birth parents. Your real birth mother was descended from Katherine.

❰ there's more to the story. with as open as damon is right now, trying to soak up all the tension radiating off of elena in an effort to fix it, it's obvious he isn't telling her everything. but he doesn't know if she should know about isobel, or even about john — she'd never liked him, after all, and isobel had been nothing but a disappointment — and then, what to say about why she was a doppelgänger in the first place? what to say about klaus, about his need for her blood?

what does she need to know? what does she want to know? ❱