It was dark when the news came. Katherine Pierce was dead, and the messenger who had found him seemed elated by the information. With an exuberant grin, and something akin to cheering, the messenger was describing his Katerina's death as something to rejoice in. The cure. Silas. Rapid aging. The whole story laid out bare for the Original. Elijah, on the other hand, was completely and utterly gutted by the information. He hadn't thought he could still feel that way about her, but Elijah should have known better. There was no getting over Katerina Petrova - and there was no getting past Katherine Pierce. Even with all the drama and excitement going on in New Orleans for his family... this news still took him out of it. For all that Katerina was a younger vampire (by his own standards) he had been quite certain she would outlive... well... everyone. It was what she did. The woman had been through all sorts of ordeals that nobody else he had ever met could have endured. And still, she did it with a smirk and a flip of her hair and pretended that it had been in her plans from the start - perhaps sometimes it even was.
It was an unconscious reaction as he ripped the tongue straight out of the messenger's mouth. It was only once he was cleaning his hand on his pocket handkerchief and hearing blood-murmured screaming from the vampire in question that he realized he had done it. "I suppose we'll need a new messenger." He announced to the room, which had gone quiet. It was an eerie sort of quiet at that. The kind where noone dared to speak for risk of offending the Original. "Perhaps my sister can locate one that isn't a complete fool while I'm gone." He added, dropping the ruined hanky at the screaming vampire's feet before he was leaving the room.
The rest of the morning was a bit of a blur, truth be told. All he could think about was Katerina. Mystic Falls. Seeing if the news was actually true. If @survivingpierce really had perished. Somewhere in the haze, that was exactly what he ended up doing. He ended up in Mystic Falls once again, even though he had once said he would never come back, and it was midday when Elijah saw Elena. And anger rippled through his whole being. Because she was not the doppelganger that he wished to see, after all. Merely the newest of the lot. Which was infuriating... until he saw it from afar. Elena was speaking with one of her little friends, and while he could barely even hear them speak with his vampire hearing, he could hear the distress in her tone all the same. He'd recognize the whine anywhere. And the whine was good. Accurate, even. But the way Elena smirked over the other girl's shoulder when she hugged her little friend... that was not Elena Gilbert.
No. That was his Katerina. Somehow. He just knew it. So the moment Elena broke away from her little friend, the Original was using every ounce of speed at his disposal to drag the doppelganger out of sight. Backing her up against a tree as he examined her. "I truly should have known better than to be mourning." His lips twitched. "Strange. Though I can see the confusion. However did you manage this one, Katerina?"
