Chapter Text
Work: activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result; be employed in a specified occupation or field.
It’s the next day, and Elena never actually does it.
That is—confront Katherine.
She tells herself it just doesn’t come up. But the truth is, the more she thinks about it, the more she can’t figure out why either of them looked so surprised in the first place. Nothing ever told her they weren’t related. So finding out they are? It doesn’t feel like a revelation. Not really.
Seventeen years with only a brother, then almost a year in jail with no one. She’s gotten good at folding the silence into something livable. Filling in the blanks with pretend answers. But this? Katherine? It doesn’t slot into anything. It lingers.
And now her head aches, a slow thrum behind her eyes as she stares down at the sizzling grill.
“Hey!” a voice snaps. “Quit daydreaming, Gilbert, unless you’re trying to burn down my entire kitchen!”
Elena jolts. Herma. Right. She drops her eyes back to the charred sandwich on the grill. Another one ruined.
Fifth? Seventh?
Herma storms over, eyebrows drawn so tight they might snap. “That must be the tenth one you’ve ruined!”
Elena says nothing. The spatula is pried from her hand.
“Go be useless in the dish pit. Maybe there you can’t burn anything.”
Elena keeps her mouth shut. No point arguing. The back kitchen is steam-heavy and sour with soap. She steps inside, blinking against the fog.
Caroline is already there.
Sleeves rolled, gloves on, humming some old tune as she dunks a tray into a cloudy sink.
“Don’t worry,” she says without looking. “She grows on you. Like mold.”
Elena almost laughs. “Who?”
Caroline jerks her head back toward the kitchen. “Herma. Queen of Carbon. You get used to the yelling.”
“I don’t think I want to.”
Caroline shrugs. “No one does. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”
The familiarity throws Elena. Caroline hasn’t so much as glanced at her since her arrival. Since she mistook her for Katherine. But now? She’s smiling. Not forced. Not mocking.
“Are you just gonna stand there?” Caroline asks, grinning. “Gloves are over there. Conveyor’s here. Stack, rinse, rack, repeat. C’mon, Stray.”
“Stray?”
“You know—Bonnie’s rescue project.”
Elena chuckles under her breath. The name lands oddly warm.
The work is rhythmic. Rinse, stack, scrub. Elena gets through a few trays before the question slips out.
“So… why are you talking to me?”
Caroline glances over. “Because I feel like it.”
“You didn’t before.”
Caroline shrugs one shoulder. “Bonnie likes you. That’s usually a good sign.”
“You trust her judgment?”
“Over yours? Absolutely.”
Elena laughs before she means to. Caroline smirks.
“But also,” Caroline continues, “maybe it’s because Katherine’s not here. Maybe it’s because I got tired of pretending you weren’t.”
“She hates me, huh?”
“No. She just doesn’t like being surprised.” Caroline wipes a hand across her forehead. “And you were definitely a surprise.”
Elena tilts her head. “And Rebekah?”
“Rebekah hates everyone. Don’t take it personally.”
Elena smiles faintly. “And you?”
“Didn’t really get around to deciding.”
They work in silence for a beat. Then Caroline says, quieter, “Doesn’t mean we can’t be friends now.”
Friends. The word settles somewhere Elena didn’t expect.
“Sure,” she says. “Yeah. Okay.”
“So,” Caroline pivots, “how long have you been here now?”
“Few weeks. Maybe more. I’ve kind of lost track.”
“First kitchen shift?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure they stuck me here because I put down ‘cooking’ on my intake sheet.”
Caroline snorts. “What do you actually cook?”
“Microwave noodles. Once set them on fire, though.”
The blonde cackles, leaning on the edge of the sink. “God. Okay, I like you.”
Elena smiles.
Caroline grins. “You also probably know the place by now, right?”
She nods. “Mostly. We’re locked down half the time.”
“Cards, then. Or chess. I can never beat Kat—” She stops short. Winces.
Elena raises a brow. “Did she tell you about yesterday?”
Caroline blinks. “What about it?”
“The blood drive. We got sorted together. She left.”
Caroline nods slowly. “After you confirmed the twin thing.”
“It wasn’t exactly a surprise.”
“No. But it makes it real.”
“Then why won’t she talk to me?”
Caroline leans on the sink with a steady huff. “Where are you from?”
“Mystic Falls.”
She raises her brows. “That a real place?”
“Apparently.”
“I’ve never heard of it. And I don’t think Katherine has either.”
Not a lot of people have.
“You know,” she says after a beat, quieter now, “she really was surprised yesterday. Katherine. I don’t think she expected it to hit her either.”
Elena looks up. “Did she say anything to you?”
“No. But… Around her. It’s not always what she says.”
“I just don’t get it,” Elena says. “I didn’t ask to show up here with her face.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Caroline looks down into the sink, hands still in the water. For a moment, she just watches the bubbles rise and pop. Then she pushes a cleaned tray toward Elena—gentle, like an olive branch.
“Kat runs cold, even when she cares. I don’t know why she’s closed off. Just… give her time.”
Elena lets out a dry laugh, but there’s no humour in it. “Time’s the one thing we’ve got in here. Still feels like I’m the only one paying for it.”
“I doubt you’d have to wait long,” says a voice from the door. “It shouldn’t be too far off.”
Both girls look up.
Isobel. Polished. Composed. Standing like she owns the room.
Caroline stiffens, her fingers curling around the edge of a tray. Elena notices.
“What are you doing here?” Caroline asks, a smile on her face but her voice is taut.
“Just checking on the kitchen,” Isobel says. Her eyes land on Elena. “So. Elena Gilbert. Mystic Falls. What were your parents’ names?”
Elena stills. It takes a beat for her to reply.
“Why?”
“I know a few Gilberts.” Isobel smiles. “I might know them. Horatio. Melanie. Grayson and Miranda?”
The names hit harder than expected. Elena stares. For a second, the heat of the kitchen falls away.
Grayson. Miranda.
Not names she forgot—names she learned not to say out loud.
The last words she heard from them were in a courtroom. Their backs turned. Their faces blank.
The verdict had come in. Guilty. And they hadn’t said a thing.
She stares at Isobel like she’s hallucinating. “How do you know those names?”
Isobel only smiles wider. “Just seeing what rings a bell.”
“Gilbert! Forbes!” Herma roars from the kitchen. “Trash duty!”
Caroline grabs the bin like it might anchor her. Elena follows, pulse too fast.
They toss the bags into the dumpster. The air outside is sharp with rot and chill.
Elena breaks first. “She said my parents’ names.”
Caroline throws in the last bag with force. “I heard.”
“How does she know them?”
“I don’t know. But don’t go asking.”
“I thought you were on her side.”
Caroline doesn’t answer right away. Then she turns, jaw tight. “Isobel doesn’t have sides. She has leverage. And she knows how to use it.”
The words aren’t loud, but they land hard.
Elena watches her, surprised by the sudden edge.
They stand there a beat longer, the sour stink of the dumpster curling in the air. Then Caroline grabs the cart handle, metal squealing faintly as she pushes it toward the door with a little too much force.
Elena hesitates, then follows. “You really don’t like her.”
Caroline’s laugh is soft. Dry. “That obvious?”
“Kind of.”
The blonde shakes her head.
“She ignored Katherine for weeks when she first got here,” she says without looking at Elena. “Didn’t give her the time of day. Then, out of nowhere, she’s got a ‘connection.’ Starts dropping hints. Says she knows who her parents are.”
Elena frowns. “Her parents… the Pierces?”
Caroline glances at her, and something flickers across her face—surprise, maybe, or wariness. She slows her steps. The cart squeaks as it rolls over a crack in the floor.
“No.” She hesitates. “Not the ones who raised her.”
Elena blinks. “You mean… our parents.”
Caroline nods once, almost reluctantly. “Yeah.”
That word hangs heavy between them—our.
Elena doesn’t know what to think. Her first instinct is to scoff, to say that’s insane. But it isn’t. Not after yesterday. Not after the matching blood type, the shared birthday. Not when she’s been asking the same questions since she was old enough to realize no one would give her real answers.
Caroline casts her a glance, like she’s weighing whether to say more.
“So,” Elena straightens, “does she? Isobel, I mean.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Kat didn’t even want to believe it at first,” she says, more gently now. “But when someone dangles something you’ve never had… it’s easy to want it to be true.”
The words settle between them.
Elena swallows but her eyes are hard.
She gets it.
Elena glances sideways at her—Caroline’s face is calm, but her hands flex on the cart handle like she’s still holding something back.
Like she’s said too much already.
-x-x-x-x-
When they get back inside, Herma splits them up. Caroline to trays in the hall. Elena to the sink.
The noise from the dish line carries on—metal, water, shouted orders. But Elena doesn’t hear it.
All she hears is that smile in Isobel’s voice. That calculation.
Grayson. Miranda.
Not origin. Not blood.
But still hers. Still the people who raised her. The ones who turned away. Who didn’t show up at her trial. Who didn’t write. Didn’t call.
The ones who believed she did it.
She’s not sure what stings more—that they abandoned her, or that she still wants to believe they had a reason.
And now Isobel—Isobel with her slick smile and smug little checklist of names—walks in like she has the keys to every locked door, dangling their names like bait.
Elena’s hands shake as she scrubs a dish too hard, splashing water up her sleeves. She doesn’t even feel it.
She stares down at the soap-scummed sink, at the reflection of herself in the water—and sees someone tired of waiting. She had waited in custody, waited in jail and now here she was. Still waiting in prison.
If Isobel knows something, why play coy? Why the performance?
Because that’s the game. Because that’s the power.
But what burns hotter than the mystery—hotter than the insult of Grayson and Miranda being weaponized like that—is Katherine.
Katherine, who confirmed they were blood. Who stormed out of the blood drive like a coward and then said nothing. Like it didn’t matter. Like none of this mattered.
Like Elena didn’t deserve to know.
‘You knew,’ Elena thinks bitterly, gripping the edge of the counter.
‘You knew we were related.
You knew there were answers somewhere.
And you said nothing.’
She exhales hard, chest tightening, gloves creaking with the fists she’s made. Her jaw aches with how hard she’s clenching it.
She could go to Isobel. Ask outright. But she won’t—not yet.
Not when Katherine owes her more than silence and a mirror image.
Elena tosses the dish aside, water splashing as it hits the rack.
Her heart is pounding now, furious and fast.
She doesn’t want patience. Doesn’t want breadcrumbs.
She wants answers. And she’s going to get them.
Not eventually.
Now.