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Elena Gilbert's first life is her own. She is her mother's daughter as her fingers card through her hair and her fathers too as he gifts her a kids doctor coat. She is her brother's sister when she gets to hold him on her own for her first time, she remembers his big wide eyes and her soft exhale of awe under the harsh hospital lights. Her first life is her own. It's messy, it's cruel, it's drowning over and over in Wickery Bridge as every time she comes back. Her first life is her own, she meets the Salvatores and is torn between them. She learns of vampires, werewolves, witches, and hybrids. She learns that life is in equal measure fragile and immortal.
Elena's first life is inherently human. Even as she turns into a vampire, to human once more; That life is human because of the way it bleeds with hope. With every funeral she goes to, hope is there in a bright shining light like the sun.
Her first life she chooses Damon. Time and time again she said she will choose Stefan, but in the end it is Damon's hand she holds as she walks down the aisle. It's Damon's hand she squeezes with all her human strength as she gives birth to their daughter. It's Damon she kisses sweetly as their child retches dramatically, and it's Damon who's fingers card through her slowly greying hair as years pass.
Her first life is her own.
She steps away from the supernatural. She hears of Klaus's death years later from Caroline who calls sobbing. And Elena finds out Elijah died too, and late at night when Damon is out drinking with Jeremy, she let herself grieve the only vampire who was an ally before they anything else. Elena meets Hope, she watches her grow, just as she watches her own daughter along with the twins.
She ages. Her features shift and change and for the first time in all of exstince vampires get to see what a doppleganger's face looks like past eighteen. Her hair grows and she cuts it short, grey peppering her roots until eventually her daughter has her own kids and the grey gives way to white. Elena buries Damon on a Sunday in June, there is a warm breeze that blows against her skin. Her daughter stands next to her to her left and to Elena's right stands Caroline, still young and seventeen. Bonnie isn't there, and Elena knows better to ask why her best friend grieved Elena's husband so hard.
Her first life, Elena dies on a Monday in late August the same year. The warm breeze that came with her husband's death leaves as she passes, giving way to the cold fall winds.
---
Elena's first life is her own.
It's a messy, cruel, beautiful, wonderful thing.
She doesn't expect to wake up once more, eyes wide looking up at her mother under the hospital lights.
---
In Elena's second life, her parents still die. She didn't go to the party, she stayed home and convinced them to have a family game night. She doesn't know about the candle warmer left on in the kitchen that night until it was too late. Elena curls in her hospital bed as Jenna brushes her hair out of her eyes. In her first life this version of her died in water. In her second she died in flames.
Her second life, she chooses Stefan and things change but stay the same. Caroline still turns, Katherine is still Katherine running away with fast feet and fire in her steps, the sacrifice still happens, but this time she takes Elijah's elixir and gives monthly blood donations her life void of Originals. Jenna lives. John lives. Isobel breaths. Stefan...Stefan is everything. He is kind, helping her rise every time she falls. When her guilt for everything she lost from her first life consumes her, he kisses her until her wet laughs echo around them and they brush away eachothers tears.
In this life, she never turns.
In this life, she ages again but Stefan takes the cure. Together they get married, and it's Alaric who did the online certification to do it for them. Caroline braids her hair before she walks down the aisle and it's Damon who kisses her cheek before standing next to Stefan as Best Man. Jeremy walks her down the aisle and she gives him a bone crushing hug, in a way its her refusal to never let him die. Later she'll learn Klaus was at the wedding. And so was Elijah.
She ages. Stefan does too. Together they watch Mystic Falls from the Gilbert House that has become theirs. They watch as Bonnie falls for Damon and Damon falls for Bonnie. They watch as Caroline goes to college in New Orleans and ends up staying. They watch Matt start dating a sweet girl from out of town. They watch Alaric finally propose to Jenna after ten years of dating. Their grief is never ending. Stefan never forgets a name and neither does Elena. In this life, she changes things. She makes sure Enzo is freed. She helps Kai. She has Enzo and Kai work together without her to figure out whatever killed Elijah and Klaus in her last life.
She doesn't tell her husband about her first life. She doesn't tell anyone. Sometimes late at night when Stefan is out drinking with Damon, Elena will let herself cry.
Time passes, she has a son and a daughter like the vision she once saw.
Elena doesn't die of old age in this life.
She's driving her son to soccer with Stefan, he's sixteen and dramatic, wanting to go to parties and hang out with his Uncle Jeremy more than he does her. The old White Oak bridge that is Wickery Bridge finally cracks when her car drives over it. Stefan gets out and goes to pull her too, but they both decide in a split moment their son will survive. She watches through the water as Stefan drags their son's limp body through the water.
Her son survives.
Elena does not.
---
She wakes up again.
---
Elena does not wake up a child this time. This time she is sixteen, standing on the road phone in hand about to call her parents, looking at the space where she knows Damon just compelled her to forget he was ever there. The grief pulls at every inch of her chest, she grieves both lives. She grieves her children. Her friends. The versions she can never hold on to.
She doesn't call her parents. She doesn't condem them to death. Instead, Elena calls a taxi. Her first life she chooses Damon, her second she chooses Stefan, and this life she chooses nothing but her own grief. Elena ends up in New York somehow. As days etch by, she finds a job, lies about her age, her name and history; She makes friends, they don't know her, no one does, but they are friends nonetheless.
Elena claws a spot into New York City to make her own. Her apartment is full of diaries scribbled and filled with nonsensical ramblings of a woman who is trapped in a loop of grief and loss and time. Her friends drag her to parties as the years pass, she lets herself laugh, and slowly the laughs don't become forced. She claws her spot into New York. She becomes a regular at a coffee shop where the barista's know her drink orders, and she eats at the same greasy diner where she knows the owners who give her free milkshakes on Tuesdays.
Elena does not meet Damon. She does not meet Stefan. She does not look back to Mystic Falls.
This life she is detirmined to be alone.
She makes a mistake going to the Met one day. Elena forgets the soft whisper of awe from Caroline in the dark telling her Klaus liked art and she forgets the excited rambling calls from Caroline when she was traveling the world with the Hybrid by her side as they went to every art musemn they found. She looks over and by pure chance and by pure fucking fate it's Klaus Mikaelson who looks just as startled to see her there as she is to see him.
Elena dies in the ritual that month, she barely catches a glimpse of regret on Elijah's face as the world grows dark as he thinks he was too late in saving her.
---
She wakes up again.
---
This life Elena dedicates herself to becoming her mother's daughter. She is societies perfect doll, and the elegant scion of the Gilbert Family Line. Her parents survive this time and no Salvatores come to Mystic Falls. She avoids the supernatural until she reaches eighteen, and she's formally invited to the Council by her mother and father. She lets them explain it all to her even though she knows far more than they do. She declines the offer, deciding to be her mother's daughter.
She marries Tyler Lockwood who never unlocks his werewolf gene. They are happy. He becomes mayor and the town flurioshes under them. He kisses her teasingly, fingers tracing the pearls on her neck. And she kisses him back tugging on his tie. The match wasn't their choice, that was given to them by their mother's and both of their need to make them happy, the match wasn't their choice but they made it theirs.
Elena dies at thirty two, choking on a french fry because Elijah Mikaelson walked into the Grill.
---
She wakes up again.
---
The next life she is her fathers daughter. She becomes a hunter, she becomes a doctor, and she leads the Council. She doesn't marry, she lets her grief consume her again and again.
---
Elena wakes up and time restarts.
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Every life passes her by and Elena finds herself wondering if this was what being a vampire was like. Restarting. Over and over, watching patterns and grief echo across time, screaming and singing with fate in a cruel harmony.
Elena is raised by Alaric in one life, a six year old trying to find her biological mother after an illegal adoption took place, and Isobel declared dead she was placed with Alaric. He's the one who cradles her eighteen year old body that was marred by vampire bites because a vampire thought she was Katherine. In the next, it's John who raises her. She goes to college this time, she makes friend, she meets Tom Avery and they date for years before one day Elena runs into Elijah and Klaus. She's dead within the week before Elijah can even pull the elixir out of wherever he had it stored.
Life times pass her by, slipping thrugh her fingers as she tries to claw onto slices of happiness.
Every reset she is thrown to a different point from her first life. Sometimes her death throws her to her childhood, others to her grey haired days. Most lives it's a complete redo. She hates that she likes those the best. She hates how in those lives she doesn't have to try and remember names she can't quite recall and small details of the life she was thrown back into and forced to fit in.
Time passes, time shifts in her head. And suddenly years aren't important, she starts to keep track of time by these lives. When she realizes this she is six years old playing with Jeremy as Tyler and Caroline run in the grass around them. She cries when she wonders how Elijah stood it for so long.
---
With every life that passes, Elena starts to understand Katherine. Fast feet and fires left behind in her footsteps.She finally manages to ask her if her life restarted over and over again. Elena's eyes trail Elijah's in the distance and she hates how Katherine laughs at it. The noise settles over her skin, familiar and cruel just like every life.
"It'll stop when you stop dying," Katherine assures, condensending but eyes full of understanding
The older doppleganger bites into her wrist holding it out for Elena.
"Magical deaths or vampirism is the only ways for girls like us to go. It's one way ticket out of millions of life times of hell."
Elena doesn't drink.
The wound heals and Katherine looks at her calculatingly before leaving in a flash. Elena is left in New Orleans, watching Elijah argue with some witch who is trying to blackmail him and his family across the street.The wind blows around her, warm and cold, reminding her of death and the peace that comes with it before she is ripped back to life once more.
Elena walks into traffic.
---
Time restarts again and Elena is holding baby Jeremy in the hospital.
---
She gives herself one life to think about Katherine's words.
One lifetime.
She spends it by the sea. She picks sand off of her skin and her hair curls with the salt. She doesn't fall in love. She doesn't make friends. She hoards every magical grimore she can find, and she rips through every text about dopplegangers and death trying to figure out if Katherine was telling the truth or not. She never learns the truth.She withers away, growing old by the sea until her hair grows white, blowing curls in the wind as she stares at the sea one last time.
Elena dies.
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When she wakes up she is being held by Rose and Trevor. When Elijah enters the room, the world tilts on it's axis and Elena knows this life will be different. He hesitates over her lips before whispering hello there as if it is a prayer.
"I'm Elena Gilbert," She says, "And I..."
Elena lets out a very tired sob before looking up at Elijah, the man she knows will help her. She knows it like she knows the name of every child that was hers. She knows it like she knows every fact of her families history, and every outcome in every life her loved ones could possibly have. She knows Elijah will help like she knows her own soul. She knows he will help because in every life where the Ritual happened; Elijah tried to save her. Even when he was too late, he still tried.
Her words come out in a croak, worn by time and fate, ready to accept true immortality just for the end of everything to finally stop.
"I need your help. Because every time I die, time has been reset. And the only way out is magical death or becoming a vampire," She inhales and exhales
Elena straightens her back as his eyes widen slightly in shock.
"Elijah, would you like to make a deal with me?"