This story is dedicated to my friend Eidolon02, who inspired me to write it during a conversation in which we compared these two shows that have very little in common other than a main character named Elena. Hope you get a laugh out of it, amigo.

Disclaimer: I own neither Bitten nor The Vampire Diaries.

Warnings: this is a parody, not a serious story, and fans of TVD might find it offensive since it pokes fun at what, in my opinion, constituted such big problems with the show that I quit watching after 4x06.

Timeline: s2 of Bitten and s4 of The Vampire Diaries, although I took some liberties with chronology for comedic effect.

3/17/2020 update: This story now has brand new cover art thanks to the wonderfully talented and generous Phoebe594, who's been kind enough to share her time and talent with the less artistically gifted in order to give our stories that extra bit of pizzazz a good cover can add. Thanks, Phoebe!

Aleister was a very frustrated warlock. All he wanted to do was destroy the entire race of witches as revenge for his mother trying to have him drowned in a bathtub at birth - which seemed perfectly reasonable to him - yet his plans kept getting thwarted. First Elena Michaels had freed Savannah from his compound, then she'd helped Clay find the strength to free himself from Aleister's possession… In fact, Elena Michaels seemed to be at the root of all his present difficulties. Everything would be so much easier, Aleister reflected, if she just disappeared. He could find another, less troublesome werewolf to use in his ritual.

With Clara's help, he looked into ways of making Elena disappear, and discovered that erasing someone's entire existence was no simple matter; he couldn't completely get rid of Elena, but he could shift her into a parallel dimension. Either way, she'll be out of my hair and I can get on with the Undoing. That'll work.

###

Meanwhile, in the alternate universe town of Mystic Falls, Bonnie Bennet was searching for spells she could use to protect her best friend Elena Gilbert from Klaus after his recent ominous statement that he might still have 'uses' for her even though, as a newly turned vampire, she should have been safe from him. Eventually she stumbled across one that could hide Elena by temporarily relocating her to a different dimension. Klaus can't reach her there, but I'll be able to bring her back as soon as it's safe. That'll work.

Klaus came looking for Elena the very next day, giving Bonnie a reason to use her reality-shifting spell. Coincidentally, Aleister cast the same spell on the Elena of his world at precisely the same moment, causing an unforeseen phenomenon to occur. It's a well-known fact that nature abhors a vacuum, so when the two Elenas were simultaneously pushed out of their respective dimensions, nature filled the resulting vacuum by forcing one into the space vacated by the other, and vice versa. Everyone's memories also got distorted to accommodate the switch, and that was how the trouble began…

###

In Stonehaven, Clay Danvers woke up to the sight of his girlfriend, Elena Gilbert, staring moodily out the window. It seemed like she'd been doing that a lot lately. "What's on your mind, darlin'?"

She sighed. "I was just thinking it'd be nice to go back to Toronto. Don't you ever get tired of dealing with rogue mutts and witches, Clay? Don't you wish we could just live normal lives?"

Clay wondered where this was coming from; sure, Elena had had a hard time adjusting to life in the supernatural world at first, but he'd thought she was past that. "Well, we can never be completely normal, can we? Being a wolf and a vampire is part of who we are."

"I didn't want this to be who I am! I was happy being human, and I don't get how everyone can expect me to just be okay with having that taken away! All you ever want to talk about is 'Malcolm Danvers' this and 'Aleister' that; it's like you don't even care how I feel. Although I guess I shouldn't expect too much understanding from you since you would've bitten me yourself if I hadn't become a vampire first!"

Her little tirade left him really confused. "I thought Jeremy told you I only would've done it to save you. He would've killed you after he thought you saw him change."

"But I never asked you to save me." Elena stomped out, muttering about how she wished she'd stayed in Toronto with Philip.

###

In Mystic Falls, Elena Michaels woke up to the sight of her friends Bonnie Bennet and Caroline Forbes bringing her a huge plate of pancakes and bacon. "Hey guys, what's the occasion?"

"Well, we know you've been down in the dumps over getting turned into a werewolf-"

Elena remembered that but, looking back, she couldn't make sense of her attitude. "Yeah, it was a big adjustment, but I'm over it." As her friends gaped at her, she continued, "I mean, I would've died otherwise, so I guess living like this isn't so bad."

"But…what about all the times you said you'd rather die human than be turned into something else?" Bonnie asked uncertainly.

Elena hopped out of bed with a shrug. "That's just silly; I don't know why I would've said that. Anyway, don't we have more important things to worry about?"

Caroline's eyes lit up. "You're right, we've got that event commemorating the Civil War battle that was fought in Mystic Falls, and wait till you see our costumes! They're perfect Gone With the Wind replicas! Are you going to the dance with Stefan or Damon?"

"Another party?" Elena sighed. "Guys, we've already had a 1920's-themed dance at school, a formal ball at the Mikaelsons' mansion - and am I the only one who thought it was weird that the family of psychos who keep trying to kill us invited us to their house and we went? - a beauty pageant, and a kegger at someone's house, all in the last week! Don't you ever get tired of dressing up every night?"

Her friends just stared blankly.

"And why would I ever go to a dance with Damon Salvatore? You do remember he's the same guy who terrorized the town and repeatedly used his compulsion powers to hurt Caroline and brainwash her into coming back for more, right?" She paused, her fists clenching as her suppressed memories of childhood abuse at Victor Olsen's hands tried to fight their way out of her subconscious; then the moment passed and she forgot why Damon's mistreatment of Caroline outraged her so, except for the obvious reason that it was morally repugnant.

"I mean, it's one thing to work with him now that he's sort of turned over a new leaf and we've got worse enemies to deal with," she continued, "but why would I want to date him? Besides, he only got interested in me in the first place because I happened to look like his psycho girlfriend Katherine. Come to think of it, that's what first caught Stefan's eye too, which is kinda creepy. But why are we wasting time on my messed-up love life and Scarlett O'Hara costumes when Klaus is still out there?"

More blank looks.

Elena threw her hands up and left to go for a run, leaving Bonnie and Caroline wondering - very appropriately in this instance - who this girl was and what she'd done with the Elena they knew.

###

In Stonehaven, the pack, plus Ruth, Paige, and Savannah, were wondering the same thing. They had been discussing how to find Aleister and stop him once and for all when Elena piped up with the ludicrous suggestion that they didn't need to look for Aleister since he would probably show up at the next party. Jeremy's statement that there were no parties planned for the foreseeable future had her complaining that there was never anything fun to do at Stonehaven and once again bemoaning the fact that she wasn't living it up in Toronto.

The youngest witch had just made up her mind to look into whether there was some enchantment affecting Elena, because this whining nincompoop couldn't possibly be the same woman who had fought her way out of Aleister's compound and freed Savannah from his control, when the wards Ruth and Paige had set up to warn them if Aleister tried to attack the house went off.

Jeremy ordered everyone to split up and search the grounds for him; as luck would have it, Elena found the warlock first. "Well, well, well," he chuckled, ensnaring her with a spell even as she called for the others. "If it isn't Elena Gilbert, the stubborn little vampire who keeps ruining all my plans. Time to get rid of you."

"Oh please, like you're really gonna kill me. You bad guys are all the same - you talk big, but you never actually kill anyone. Not anyone important, anyway."

"What are you talking about? I'm evil, so of course I kill people! In fact, I'll kill you right here, right now!"

"Oh well, if you do kill me my friends will just bring me back with some ritual, or a magic ring, or by putting me in a different body or something like that."

"What is wrong with you?" Aleister screamed, seriously perturbed now. "I don't know what world you've been living in, but in this one dead people don't come back! And I'm going to prove it!" With a flick of his wrist, he made the magic ring that protected the vampire girl from burning up in daylight fly off her finger.

Elena started to sizzle just as the pack and coven arrived on the scene. "Oh my gosh, Clay, I'm burning up!"

"Get in the shade! There's a tree right behind you!"

But she was too distraught to move the three feet it would take to get out of the sunlight on her own. "Clay, what's the matter with you? Save me!"

Jeremy, Nick, Logan, Ruth, Paige, Aleister, and even Savannah were hoping Clay would just let her get turned into a crispy critter (even Logan's girlfriend Rachel, who was no slouch in the 'whining at your boyfriend' department herself, would've been thinking the same thing if she were there) but unfortunately Clay decided there must be a reason he loved this girl, so he'd better save her. He tackled her, pushing her under the tree and smothering the flames with his jacket while Nick reluctantly retrieved her ring and Aleister took advantage of the distraction to kidnap Savannah again.

###

Back in Mystic Falls, Elena had been persuaded to put on her ruffled green and white dress (complete with an oversized straw hat tied on with a big green ribbon) and was on her way to the Civil War commemorative celebration with the motley assortment of vampires and werewolves, plus one witch (Bonnie) and one human (Matt Donovan, who had somehow avoided being turned into any kind of supernatural creature even though practically everyone around him had become one, leaving him as possibly the only remaining human teenager in Mystic Falls) when Klaus popped up in full Rhett Butler regalia, flanked by his brother Elijah, also in costume.

"You again!" Elena exclaimed. "Don't you have anything better to do than show up at parties and taunt us?"

"Nope," Klaus replied with an obnoxious-but-sexy smirk that made Caroline swoon a little, though she tried to hide it because she knew it was wrong to be attracted to someone as evil as him. But still, that face…and that accent… "In fact, I'm here to abduct you; you're the world's strongest werewolf, so I'm going to make you a vampire hybrid like me, and then we're going to make an entire pack of insanely powerful hybrid pups together. What do you think of that?"

"The hell we will! How about I tear your head off instead?" She started giving her friends instructions to surround him, but they weren't paying attention. Caroline and Tyler were bickering, with him accusing her of liking Klaus while she insisted she only loved him, Damon was complaining that he didn't see why everyone was making such a big deal over Klaus when they already had him around to provide obnoxious-but-sexy smirks, Stefan was sulking because his thing was being a tortured, brooding vampire and nobody liked that as much as the 'cocky bad boy who only misbehaves because he's hurting' act, and Matt was standing around uselessly because, as a human, he was powerless against the two members of the original vampire family.

"Never mind," Elena muttered, "I'll just do it myself."

Elijah stepped in front of Klaus as she lunged at him, forcing her to deal with him first. "I'm sorry, Elena, I know what a pain in the ass my brother is, but he put our other siblings in a magical coma with his special daggers which are the only thing that can harm an Original, even though we're ridiculously invincible against everything else, so I can't let you kill him until I find out what he's done with Rebekah, Kol, and Finn."

Klaus, Elijah, Rebekah, Kol, Finn, that other sister who vanished a thousand years ago, and those are just the Originals we know about, assuming they don't have any more family members out there, waiting to come out of the woodwork - how many freaking kids did Mrs. Mikaelson have?! Out loud, she just said, "And you actually think he'll give them back if you work for him? How many times has he double-crossed you before?"

That made Elijah pause, because she had a point - it really was kind of absurd that he kept letting Klaus suck him in when they always ended up betraying each other all over again - and she seized the moment to drive her claws through his throat. He collapsed, because it turned out even Originals couldn't survive having their heads almost completely removed, clearing her way to Klaus.

"Wait, wait!" he protested as she marched toward him with her clawed hand covered in blood, looking more ferocious than anyone had a right to while wearing a replica of Scarlett O'Hara's garden party outfit. "I know you think I'm an irredeemably despicable person, but I only tortured and killed all those people because they tried to stop me from creating a new hybrid race, and I want to make more creatures like me so I'll never be alone again like I was during my horrible childhood! Don't you feel sorry for me because of my tragic background?"

"I don't care," Elena growled. Just as she was about to carry out her threat to tear Klaus' head off, the clock ran out on the spell that had switched her with Elena Gilbert. She was instantly transported from Mystic Falls to Aleister's latest lair, where the pack and coven's combined effort to rescue Savannah was in progress.

She was almost happy to see Aleister - finally, a decent villain who was unapologetically evil and actually went on the attack instead of just snarking at her! - but that didn't stop her from killing him. He had kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured her, tried to corrupt Savannah, murdered countless others, and worst of all, possessed and nearly killed Clay, the love of her life; no amount of childhood trauma excused that.

As soon as he was dead and the Undoing averted, her pack swarmed her, all expressing their relief that the real Elena was back and that crazy brunette had gone back where she came from. "Just one question, darlin'," Clay interjected after lack of oxygen forced him to stop kissing her. "What the hell are you wearing?"

Elena ripped the straw hat off her head and threw it away. "This was my costume for some Civil War celebration, although I don't know why anyone in Virginia would want to celebrate being on the wrong side of history; then again, everything in that world was messed up. All anyone wanted to do was go to parties and angst over their screwed-up relationships even though they were in the middle of a war with a vampire/werewolf hybrid, but every time he showed up to 'fight' them nothing really happened. It was like living in a bad TV show where the plot just went around in circles and nothing ever got resolved!"

Everyone agreed that sounded terrible, and then they went back to Stonehaven so Elena could change into normal clothes and burn her dress.

###

Elena Gilbert, meanwhile, was restored to her rightful place in Mystic Falls, and everyone was glad to have her back instead of the scary blonde who had no interest in teenage romantic drama or pretty dresses and actually wanted to kill bad guys dead. Klaus had to put his current scheme on hold until he could find a way to resurrect Elijah - because plotting alone was no fun - Elena's friends vowed to stop him, and they went their separate ways after a few sarcastic parting shots.

This pattern would be repeated many more times in their subsequent encounters with the Originals (including Elijah, who came back, of course, and all the other Mikaelson siblings, who were released from their dagger-induced comas and then re-daggered, and resurrected and reincarnated several times along with several other characters) until new bad guys came along, although Klaus and his siblings were still around to stir up trouble as needed…which probably explains why The Vampire Diaries is still going strong with no end in sight.