Author's Note: I do not own Vampire Diaries or the last line of the story, which comes from one of the tv show episodes. All rights go to their respective owners.
She runs. She runs at the dead of night, fleeing with barely anything except for a few cherished belongings to remember those she is leaving behind. She vanishes without goodbyes, even to her mother, Elena, Bonnie; even to those who deserve goodbyes because she's afraid that with them, she won't have the courage to take off. She runs because she's scared and lonely and most of all empty because everywhere she looks, there's nothing left. Caroline has been Caroline for so long, performing the same detached motions everyday, running through them like a magician's well-performed card trick, and summoning the appropriate enthusiasm that everyone expects soon becomes a second nature, an easy way out. So instead of playing that farce once more, living that illusion that has become her life, Caroline escapes from Mystic Falls and from everything that Old Caroline was. Most importantly, however, she escapes from Klaus and his advances, because at the ball, his well-chosen words hit the mark a little too deeply and she's not ready to face the truth not now not ever. So she runs, a desperate escaping of the truth and problems she no longer wants to deal with, deciding along the way to become someone else, someone different.
Caroline picks a state blindly on the map, although with slight cheating that she'd never admit, fastidiously avoids Wisconsin and other boring states like Utah. She ends up in Pennsylvania with the name Rosalie Cern, a name picked from one of her favorite fluffy romance novels. It isn't as if it matters because who would question her authenticity anyway when she has compulsion on her side? She enrolls in the local high school, well because she can, and she wants to remember normalcy once more. Everything is okay for a month or two when she becomes captain of the cheerleading squad and all-around popular girl, but then one day, late at night, she feels that irrepressible restlessness again. That night she packs her bags because Pennsylvania no longer has what she wants, and to get rid of that empty feeling haunting her she flies to California. It's sunny when she arrives, and for a while, the weather is all she needs to make her happy. She fits in here, Caroline thinks, an idle reflection she has while relaxing by the beach; the sand between her freshly painted toes. Here she becomes Jenn Melensy, a typical go-with-the-flow California girl who wears bright printed tanks, platform flip-flops, denim shorts and has a casual fling with a surfer whose name she fails to remember. It's all fun and games, but soon, as always, Caroline becomes sick of the routine and her ache revives itself. For her, it becomes this never-ending chase for satisfaction and belonging and fulfillment as she travels through Tokyo, Prague, and Italy; yet as she goes, she still can't shake the wrong feeling she has that she should be there with someone, viewing tourist attractions with the person who promised he would show her the world. Even though she remembers that Klaus is a ruthless Original and that she's fleeing because she can't face her feelings, during times of loneliness in the middle of the night she wishes there would be someone to hold her without wanting anything in return. Caroline, full of light, of strength, of beauty, is lost, because those she helped didn't care enough to try to save her when she fell. She's empty and that wanderlust she has, that desire for requited love can't be wished away by trips to airports and changes in scenery no matter how hard she tries.
He comes when she least expects it, but it rather makes sense when she later thinks about it, the coincidence of his timing. Klaus waits until she's hit rock bottom and comes to her with promises of jewelry and love and a new life, plying her with gifts until she gives in and stays at his chateau for a week, two weeks, six months. Then, one day he leaves, abandoning her, vanishing without a trace, no goodbye or note or explanation. She becomes bitter and hardened, determined not to let his leaving affect her, trashing his chateau in revenge for good measure. Caroline takes up travel again, visiting the Bahamas, Africa, China because she has an eternity to live and she's going to do what she pleases, she thinks, damning Klaus for his actions. When she calms down sufficiently enough, she takes on a different persona, because even after all these years, she still can't face herself and her identity as Caroline Forbes. In Paris, she reinvents herself as the epitome of a French girl, wearing washed pastels and chic silk blouses paired with saccharine flouncy skirts; every bit inspired by Clemence Poesy and Audrey Tautou. Her literature taste improves over time; she no longer reads rubbish novels voraciously and instead, devours sturdily bound books on photography and artistic influences sitting at a table in a quaint Parisian sidewalk café. Caroline begins to find more of the world, learning how much is truly out there now that she's no longer small-town human Caroline and has no boundaries. She explores, and learns more and more about her likes and dislikes and her identity each day.
Caroline sees traces of him everywhere, her eyes always searching for Klaus in the midst of crowds, in restaurants, at the aisles of grocery stores. She was angry at first for his desertion as she has every right to be, because now he's like everyone else in her life, despite how he vowed not to be. Regardless, two years apart without his presence teach her why he left. She grows in maturity and learns lessons of life and love and forgiveness. She starts one day, when she realizes how her impulsiveness has declined and how she has slowly come back to wearing her own clothing, no longer masquerading in personalities thought up by her mind. Caroline, in the end has come full circle, finally at peace with herself and as it happens; that is when he turns up once again, the last loose end of her life.
It would have been her nineteenth birthday if she were not a vampire. She sits alone in her cold hotel room, glancing at the diamond bracelet Klaus gave her that night of the ball, the fated dance between them beneath the stars. Just as she thinks of him, Klaus steps through her hotel window, half scaring her, but mostly igniting her curiosity. He tells her, his voice taut with regret that he never wanted to leave her, but he was too afraid to lose her. He recognized that deep intrinsic need to flee within her, and he knew that she hadn't found her way yet or come to terms with herself, so he left before she could leave him. But I watched you, he said, I watched every transformation you went through; and I knew this time you were okay at last. Klaus gives her a promise to stay by her side forever, never to leave again and she accepts. He has changed as she has, becoming mellower and less vindictive. And, as Caroline leans back in Klaus' arms in the hotel room that no longer seems empty to her, she realizes she has finally come home. She no longer wears her French girl clothing, or bright tank tops like Jenn Melensy, or acts like Rosalie Cern and instead is just Caroline, simply Caroline. The two take afternoon walks, Caroline learns to cook and Klaus, strangely, takes up an obsession with terrariums, but both learn as long as they have each other, everything is all right. Together, they visit Mystic Falls and find surprising change: Elena is happily married to Damon; Stefan has found his soulmate in Lexi, and Bonnie loves Jeremy. Mystic Falls is a different place now. It's been quiet for years.