A/N: Hey all! So, this is my newest story that hasn't left me alone for months now and I just thought that I would get started on it since one of my other fanfiction's will be coming to an end soon.
Anyways, It's a bit more darker than other things I've written before and it has a lot of complicated relationships tied together in different ways. Oh and parts of this story will be M rated for smutty scenes. I might change it to be all M rated later. But, I'm still not sure.
So, this is just the prologue for it and if I get enough people interested in it. Then, I'll continue with it.
Disclaimer: I do no own the Vampire Diaries in any way. I just use the characters for my own enjoyment! ;)
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Within Temptation- Prologue-
Deception- The action of deceiving someone. Deceit. Fraud. Delusion. Cheat.
Elena Gilbert was a fraud and a cheat amongst a lot of other things. It was written all over her face as she stared into the mirror and placed the expensive silver necklace that he had given her for tonight around her neck, exhaling deeply when she spun her thin and olive colored fingers around her now bouncy and overly curly dark brown hair.
It was haunting, the image looking back at her with her thickened dark eyelashes and smoky eye shadow. She looked just like her, Katherine Salvatore. Katherine was one of Chicago's most affluent and educated women in the large Illinois city and yet, somehow as it was reported in the news just a year earlier. Katherine, wasn't able to protect herself from being kidnapped in broad daylight. You see, the thing was that Katherine Salvatore also hid a very dirty little secret and no one knew about it except for Elena Gilbert. That was now stepping into the shoes, of one of the most powerful, wealthy and talented women that Chicago had ever seen.
"I can't pretend to be her anymore, this isn't right. I need to tell him that I'm not her and I need to do it tonight." Elena mumbled to herself, slipping off the necklace and staring intently back at her reflection. It was uncanny, the resemblance between them. But, Elena knew why. It was because the two women, who had never had the chance to meet in their lives had one thing in common, their blood line. Katherine and Elena were identical twins. Although, if you had known the girls your whole life. It was still fairly hard to spot the differences between them. Until you looked close enough.
Katherine, the woman that Elena adored and had dreamt of meeting ever since she found out about her, just a year earlier was more of a feisty and to the point type of person and when she lied, she did it well. However, Elena on the other hand had a heart of gold and was overly compassionate and concerned for others. Never a very good liar at all. But, all Elena wanted was to meet her sister, whom their parents had separated when they were babies. She dreamed about telling Katherine all the things she had gone through, all the struggles she had endured while she lived in numerous foster homes. But, she hadn't planned on meeting her sister in this way. Not in taking over her life an assuming her identity, not in seeing Katherine's face plastered on every single tabloid, almost all of them saying that she was dead. However, part of Elena feared that it was true, that impersonating Katherine would be the closest she would ever get to knowing her.
"Katherine?" Elena heard the voice coming from behind their bedroom door, a man's voice with its husky raspy tone and her stomach instantly flipped at the sound of it. She knew who it was and part of her wanted to disappear, vanish right into the floor boards of the Salvatore's home that was once a rundown hotel. Which they had split up with a pair of friends that all lived under the same roof.
"I'm indecent. I'll be there in just a moment." Elena replied, hurriedly grabbing her robe and slipping into a pair of slippers that were near the vanity. She stopped for a moment though, inhaling through gritted teeth when she caught a glimpse of herself. This wasn't her, this was never who Elena had intended on becoming and now if anyone found out about what was really going on and that she was fooling every single one of them. They'd turn her in for fraud or even worse, they'd kill her without a second thought and make it look like an accident. Maybe just like what they had done to Katherine, maybe that's why everyone looked so pale and sick to their stomachs the night that Stefan had found her at the shelter and brought 'her' back home. So sure of himself that the woman standing in front of him was his wife, so happy that she had finally come back home alive and yet, Elena could see the small doubt in his eyes as he held her in his arms and cried against her shoulder before they left the homeless shelter. Elena remembered the look on his face, the relief in his green eyes when they walked through the front door of their home and he kissed her lips, saying how happy he was to have her back beside him, how lost he was without her.
Stefan was beyond thrilled to have his wife back. But, if he only knew. If the man that Elena had learned to secretly love over the last year from afar as she pretended to live Katherine's life as well as she could. If Stefan knew about the lies she was telling or the facade of being something she wasn't. If he knew about who she really was and why she had worked her way into his life and everyone around him. He would surely hate her forever. Everyone in the city, every person that Elena had come into contact with within the last year, would want to burn her alive just to hear the truth of why she had done it being uttered from her lips.
So, maybe that's why she didn't want to ruin the moment between them in beginning of it all. Maybe the reason for it was because Elena couldn't bear to look Stefan in the eyes and tell him the truth about who she was and how she had come across finding out about Katherine's disappearance and her true family history. Although, deep down inside of her heart, somewhere in it where nothing had yet to be touched by lies and tainted by the secret affairs she had now been having . Elena knew that Stefan was the one who her heart belong to, even if she wasn't being completely honest to herself or with him. There was something about Stefan Salvatore that Elena Gilbert was drawn to, that made her think twice about who she wanted to be and what she could easily have, if only she could came clean and tell him the truth.
It was guilt and the pressure of keeping things under wraps though, these lies piling up like a mountain of cards in a deck. It was guilt for sleeping in his bed and making love to him, the whole time having him believe that she was his wife of two years. Having him whisper Katherine's name upon his lips instead of hers. Elena would lay in bed beside him, wanting to tell him after keeping it a secret for so long. But, she never could. Not until something happened and she snapped. Until she realized that she couldn't keep loving him as her sister. She had to tell him the truth, she had to explain to him who she was and how much her heart hurt because she had been in love with him since she first met him, so unconventionally. So, she figured that tonight, after a year of playing these charades. Tonight would be the night that all the lies were put out on the table and she placed her heart on the line, for the man that she was falling so deeply in love with. Stefan Salvatore, the man that could never be hers and would always be everyone else's.
Elena snapped out of her day dreams quickly as she heard the voice call out again. "Katherine, open up. Please, I have a very nice surprise for you." He said, his voice becoming light and velvety as she finally pushed the door open and saw a pair of darkened brown eyes staring back at her.
"Elijah, I figured that you'd be out with your friends, tonight." Elena inquired, eyeing him up and down and placing her hand on the door, staring up at Elijah as if she could tolerate him being in the same room as her for more than five minutes. But, the truth was that when Elena made the connection between the affair that her sister was having with one of Stefan's best friends. Elena's heart broke for the youngest Salvatore more than it did for anyone else. Although, here she was, deceiving him in an entirely different way, than her sister had.
"You know my dear. I could have any woman that I want and I do have a beautiful wife. But, Katherine. The truth is that she will never fill the hunger inside of my soul or entice me the way that you do." Elijah hissed out, brushing past Elena and swiping his hand across a pair of diamond earrings that Stefan had given her, just a few days before.
"Elijah, you shouldn't be in here. Stefan's going to be home from the airport from his business trip overseas any minute and if he finds us together. You know how bad it would be for us." Elena told him, watching as Elijah took a step closer towards her, a small smirk on his face when he lifted his hand and pushed a strand of her curly hair behind her ears, all the while lingering his fingertips against her cheek as he spoke in a soft tone.
"You act like this is the first time we've gone behind his back. My sweet and beautiful, Katherine. This isn't the first time and it surely won't be the last." Elijah warned, leaning in to kiss her face as Elena stumbled back from him, letting out a nervous laugh.
"I'm not in the mood for your games tonight, Elijah. Why don't you go back upstairs to Rose and leave me alone tonight. You and I would never work anyway. I love him, Elijah. I love Stefan. I'm trying to be faithful to him. As you should try to be to your wife and fix your relationship." Elena tried to reason with him, hearing as the downstairs front door opened and her stomach tightened at the sound of Stefan's luggage hitting the marble floors.
" You usually can't resist me. You seem different tonight, I just don't know what it could be. Trying to be faithful to him? Ha, that's a new one. Oh hear that? You just got saved by my best friend. You're lucky he came back earlier than expected. Because if he didn't..I would have thrown you in my bed and never wanted you to leave. Think about that tonight, Katherine. When you're making love to him." Elijah told her, taking a step back from her, right after he left a kiss upon her cheeks and left Elena standing there, feeling like she was going to vomit all over herself from the growing anxiety she felt.
"I love him and you're just a distraction. This needs to stop. You and I, we need to stop. We'd never work and your wife, Rose would be heartbroken if she found out about this!" Elena began to say in a voice that was just above a whisper. She watched as Elijah pivoted on his heels and smirked at her, exhaling deeply when he straightened out his blue shirt and grinned as he said "As long as your with him and I'm with her. This is just the beginning of it all. Besides, I'm still waiting on the day that you look at me like you look at him. Don't think that I don't see it. You love him, Katherine. You love him more than you love me and all I want is for you to look at me in that way, to see me with those loving brown eyes and tell me that you love me just as much as I love you. I don't love her, I don't love Rose like I love you. Remember that!" Elijah added, watching as Elena gripped her hands into fists and her face became pale.
It was now or never. It was time to make the biggest confession of her life. Because in the last year, she had gotten in too deep with the Salvatore's and their philandering had started to lose track of who she was when this whole thing started and it was coming to the point where some days she would wake up and envision never telling a living soul, just resuming living this lie and being in the delusional bliss of another person's life.
Within the moment she looked up at Elijah. Her heart was shattered for the life she could have had. With Stefan, if they had met under different circumstances and she wasn't posing as his missing wife. As tears in her eyes began to form when she heard Stefan walking through the hallway and his hands slowly began to open the door to their bedroom. Elena stood her ground and watched the open the door. She exhaled deeply and shook the tears away on her face as she opened her mouth and uttered the one secret that she had been keeping from everyone for almost over a year now.
"I'm not who you think I am. I'm not your trophy wife or a secret love affair to avoid the real problems with your wife. You're best friends and I am not her. I won't come between the two of you anymore. So, I'm finally telling you the truth. My name isn't Katherine Salvatore and I'm not this rich socialite." Elena shouted, watching as the Stefan and Elijah both looked over at her with dumbstruck expressions on their faces, staying silent as she continued to release all of her truths out into the open and began taking off the jewelry that the men had given her, watching it all fall to the floor. Just like her heart was in the moment, falling to the pit of her stomach.
"My name is Elena Gilbert and Katherine is my long lost identical twin sister. I've been lying to everyone in this house for the last year and I've been living this lie as Katherine to find out more information about her and why she was kidnapped." Elena admitted, watching as the two men's eyes locked on her face and they stood in front of her not saying a word. Just allowing for Elena's words to sink in and trying to swallow the fact that they had both been baffled by the truth and by the woman they had thought they loved.
A/N: So, Elena posing as Katherine and coming between the two best friends?! Oh boy! Also, who was she before all of this started...and how did she even find out about her and Katherine being related?! All of those answers will be revealed in the first chapter which will take place "One year earlier." It may seem a little confusing now. But, throughout the story secrets and past histories will be revealed. ;)
PLEASElet me know what you all thought and feel free to leave a review, if I should continue this story or not. Loved it? Hated it..Want me to stop this tangled mess of love affairs I'm about to create!? O.o
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-Until Next Time!-