Elena Gilbert

Elena Gilbert wants to be a normal girl. She wants it more than anyone could ever possibly understand. Elena Gilbert also has to share her body, her mind - and worst of all, her loved ones - with a vindictive and heartless teenager who wants nothing more than to inflict the suffering she feels onto others. Elena Gilbert has to share herself with Katherine.

A Normal Life
Elena Marie Gilbert was born at 9:07am on the 3rd of April, 1994. A perfectly normal, healthy baby born to a perfectly normal, healthy family, no one could possibly have guessed what the future held for her while watching the screaming infant that day in the hospital. She was a perfectly normal, if a little sickly child, and passed through the usual milestones no farther before or behind any other child. In fact the only thing not normal about Elena's life was her parents. Grayson and Miranda Gilbert were both psychics - not remarkable by any means, but the limits on both of their abilities grew exponentially when around each other. Determined to let Elena and her brother lead a normal life, they did everything they could to mask their abilities from anyone. The extended time around each other allowed the psychic blocks to prevent any kind of penetration from a distance, and for years they thought that they were safe.

Grayson Gilbert had to leave Fall's Church for a weekend on business. A weekend wasn't too long, in fact it worked out as less than forty-eight hours. There wasn't a chance that anyone would be monitoring them that closely that a forty-eight hour window would make a difference. A thirteen year old Elena hugged her dad tightly as he left and asked him to bring her something pretty back from Pittsburgh. He promised he would find her the most beautiful necklace in the whole state. A nine year old Jeremy hugged his father tightly and begged him not to leave, and Miranda had to physically unhook their son from his father's leg. They all waved him goodbye and then settled in to watch the Friday night movie on cable.

Humanity At Its Worst
Grayson Gilbert never made it to Pittsburgh. They found him in a matter of hours without the protection of the psychic blocks, and two particularly unpleasant Breakers dragged him back to Fall's Church, back to the Gilbert home and forced their way in. Miranda only had enough time to usher Jeremy out of the back door and whisper "run" into his ear before they broke the door down. Elena was sitting halfway up the stairs and as soon as she saw the strange men, who held her father's neck tight enough that their knuckles turned white, she started screaming. They were long, loud piercing shrieks of terror that seemed to go totally unnoticed by the surrounding neighbours. Elena didn't stop screaming. She didn't stop when the men shouted at her to shut her mouth, or when they beat her mother to a sobbing, bloody heap at the bottom of the stairs. She didn't stop screaming when one of the men dragged her down the stairs, and she didn't stop when he gripped her hair tight enough to force her head in the direction of her parents. Then the other man pulled out a gun and put one bullet squarely between the eyes of Grayson Gilbert and Elena suddenly went silent. Both men stopped, watching her intently for signs of anything, but Elena's only sounds were the small sniffs as tears ran down her face. She heard a small grunt of frustration and a mutter of 'have it your way' before the solid thud of the gun's handle connected with her mother's temple. Elena tried desperately to look away, but the tight hand gripping her hair wouldn't let her move her head at all. She was forced to watch as her mother was slowly beaten to death and when it was over she was subjected to a series of cold, clinical tests. Evidently not getting what they had come for, the men left with exactly as much explanation as they provided on entry, and Elena was left alone with the bodies of her parents and her brother nowhere to be found.

She'll Be Okay
Jeremy was found two weeks later, body stuffed into a ditch on the highway out of Virginia. Elena spent weeks being shuffled from foster family to foster family as psychologists ran tests chillingly similar to the ones practised by those men, and once they pronounced her psychologically sane she was taken in by her aunt on her mother's side, Jenna Sommers. Any onlooker would think that Elena was beginning to start her life again. She was going to school every day, completed all her homework on time and even maintained a passing grade. It wasn't her usual B+, but under the circumstances most teachers were pretty forgiving. Elena was more jumpy, quieter, everyone had noticed these, but what could you expect from a girl who had watched her parents murdered before her eyes by that awful serial killer?

Elena started dating Matt Donovan, the nicest guy you could ever meet. He was nice enough to take the couch every time she begged him to stay over 'just for the company', and he was nice enough to keep the piercing, hair-raising screams that Elena let out during the night to himself. He was nice enough that when she started acting out, behaving more and more recklessly, he didn't say anything. He didn't want to impede on her freedom in any way, and so he sat by and watched as his once-perfect girlfriend slowly tried to destroy herself.

Her late night visits to the next town over also meant late night visits with the more unsavoury characters in the otherwise charming area. She said nothing as a man threatened her on knife point for her bag, just silently handed it over. When she returned with the replacement and a new wad of cash for the painkillers that were keeping her emotions at bay, that one was taken from her too. These muggings always took place after the pills were in her possession, and she never had them taken away from her. If she put more thought into it, she would realise what was going on, but Elena didn't care. She was a shell, a mere shadow of the former, vibrant young girl that she used to be.

The Final Straw
And then they came back. Two years later and with different men this time, but she could recognise that cold hard stare anywhere. Jenna was in the room upstairs, if she screamed loud enough then maybe she would call the police. No such luck. Jenna came running down the stairs and then suddenly froze. Elena watched as a trail of blood ran down her nose, and then let out a sob as her aunt's body tumbled down the stairs. Elena couldn't scream any more. She stared as the men advanced on her, and all she could feel was everything sliding as her vision went black.

Elena woke up to the metallic smell of blood surrounding her. Both men were dead, another man that she hadn't even seen lay in a similar state at the doorway, and she had blood all over her hands. She ran to her aunt, but even as she pressed shaking fingers to her neck and wrist she knew that she wouldn't find a pulse. Elena washed her hands, extracted the knife from the chest of one of the men and gripped it tight as she took the cordless phone into the cupboard and called the police. She didn't cry again until she had hung up, and when they arrived at her house an hour later she was still sobbing loudly, body shaking as she held the knife tightly with both hands.

The Superflu
Subjected to yet more psychological tests, Dr. Sulez genuinely believed she was on the verge of a breakthrough with understanding just how deep Elena's trauma ran when the superflu hit. Of course, it wasn't called superflu at this point. It was just a particularly bad bout of flu, and at this time of the year it wasn't exactly rare. One week later, fifty seven people in Fall's Church. Twenty days after the initial outbreak, Elena watched as the last person in the town passed away. Old Sandra Reilly, the oldest woman in town, was the last to die, and then there was just Elena left. That same night, she dreamt of a town. She saw a lighthouse, and all she knew was that it was in Maine, and the lighthouse meant safety. She left for Maine the very next day.