a/n: fair warning now. This is a Caroline centred story. While it is ultimately a Klaroline story (they are endgame hear me roar,) there will be mentions of Forwood as well as a lot of Caroline/OC (some explicit). It is canon divergent as of the end of season three, but other than that I tried to stay as true to the characters as possible. There will be three parts, and it will probably end up being about fifteen thousand words when I'm finished with it. All characters will feature. Regarding this part, Klaus will feature sporadically, and only have one line (which, even then, is only if text messages count).
That said, please stick with me. This is possibly my favourite of my own works up to date, and I would love it if you could stick around to see how it comes out.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognise. All rights go to the respective owners, including characters, setting, quotes, etc. I make no claims to this property. The title of the story is a quote from Trent Raznor and Atticus Ross song, 'Hand Covers Bruise' and I strongly recommend listening to their music (or just the entire The Social Network soundtrack, really). This chapter quote is a song called 'Creep' by Radiohead, but I strong suggest you all go out and listen to the version sung by Scala and the Kolachny Brothers because it is many kinds of glorious.
nb. this story totally excludes the Klaus in Tyler's body plot device. I probably should have mentioned that earlier.
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/Part One/
"I want you to notice, when I'm not around. You're so fucking special. I wish I was special."
Creep - Radiohead
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Klaus gets put in a box.
(But he gets out pretty quickly).
.
.
The only choice left is to scatter. Elena's dead which means they've nothing left to bargain with, nothing to convince him to stave off the fury. The Salvatore boys take Elena, even while they wait for her to finish her transition, and Jeremy—because she won't leave without him—and vanish, telling no one of their destination because there's too much risk of it.
Caroline is all too aware of the part she played. They have no time—barely time to think, even, breathe. She finds Bonnie and then Tyler and Matt, because they're all they have left. They've been together for long enough—they can survive.
Tyler has broken the sire bond but he's still connected. He has contacts enough to know that Klaus is awake now and on his way.
(no time, no time, no time).
Caroline sells the bracelet that Klaus gave her—far too little for what it's worth, she thinks, but she's got five grand in her pocket now, and that's what she needs. She orders her mum a ticket out of the country, (to Australia, but she'll share that knowledge with no one) under a fake name. (Willow Rosenberg, because there'll always be a part of her that wishes this was just some fiction, distanced from her by the glass of a television screen). She has five minutes to say goodbye, and then her mother is gone too. (Ty's mum goes with her—Anya Harris, because it's still kind of funny, right?) Matt writes a letter to his mum, and Bonnie hides her father with a spell.
Matt's truck is at the bottom of the river, so Bonnie gets them a hire car. It's slow—slower than if Tyler and Caroline were running on foot—but they're not travelling alone and they won't leave their friends. (They're all each other has).
They head to New York. The city is (giant, huge, mega) easy to get lost in and they pass the first three vacant motels before they stop because that's something Matt learnt from a CSI episode he watched once. They stop by a butcher to grab some pigs blood (yeah, ew) for Caroline and Tyler, and then they lay low for a couple of days.
Tyler keeps his network open, and they learn through those channels exactly what has become of that.
The Gilbert house is burned down. The high school ransacked and the Lockwood house torn apart. Caroline's house is broken into as well—rumours are flying about where the families have vanished.
The mansion that Klaus lives in is empty and the hybrids that Klaus have left are being sent all over the country.
It is immediately clear that they are being hunted.
Tyler's last contact—a hybrid that Tyler got to know fairly well—tells him this is it. No more help will come from his end. Tyler hangs up the phone and severs their last connection.
They stay up all night making plans. Bonnie and Matt have enough adrenalin in their systems that they can do so—and Tyler and Caroline have no problem. They learn that Elena's cell phone has been disconnected—as well as Jeremy's—when they try to call her and realise, a little late, that they should probably get rid of theirs as well.
Tyler wants to crush all the phones immediately, but Caroline makes him pause. Takes out her phone and writes down all the numbers she has just in case—in case she can call her mother or if Elena's phone miraculously comes back to life.
(She knows exactly how stupid she's being when she slips her phone's sim card into her pocket).
Then Tyler crushes all the phones under his boot and then he and Caroline throw them from the roof. They fly hundreds of metres in one direction (so that Klaus can't find them all and trace them to the middle of a circle).
When the sun rises, Caroline heads outside to buy new phones, while Matt and Bonnie finally rest a little bit. Tyler watches the room, protecting it. There was some debate over who got which job, but they decide in the end that Tyler is better equipped to deal with any hybrids that track them to the hotel.
Their worries are rendered useless however, when Caroline returns without incident. (She's bought four new phones, a couple of the groceries they definitely need, new clothes for all of them. She's grabbed some stolen some blood bags, and some hair dye just in case. It severely cuts into her bracelet fund, but she feels a sense of vindictive pleasure at Klaus's expense. At least the money they're using to survive is coming (technically) from his pocket).
It's only been half a day since they dismantled their old phones, but when Caroline slips her sim into the new untraceable mobile, she has a new text message.
The phone doesn't recognise the number, but she recognises the words immediately.
I'll wait for you, love.
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Caroline realises her stupidity at once, takes out the phone card again and snaps it in two. Then she flushes it down the toilet for extra measure, before replacing the brand new one.
.
They can't stay in New York for long. It's too close, to easy to search. (You know, it's got one of those grid patterns and shit). Besides, Tyler isn't sure how long his once friend is going to hold out on the information, and they're relatively certain that the phone they'd used to call him would have given him the zip code.
But Matt doesn't have a passport, so international travel is off the table, at least for now. Tyler, again, says he knows a guy (a friend of Mason's from before) who could get one for him.
Bonnie snatches the hair dye and the girls clothes from the table and tugs Caroline into the bathroom. Caroline hadn't really looked at the colours, just shoved all her options into her shopping cart—unsure if any other hair colour would work with Bonnie's skin tone.
Bonnie doesn't seem to mind about herself for the moment, shoving Caroline's head over the basin and wetting it without remorse. She massages the brunette colour in with ease, pushing to the roots. "This won't last long with your hair colour." Is the only thing she says. "We'll have to redo it soon." Caroline nods as best she can from the inside of the basin.
Bonnie pulls back eventually, to twist Caroline's wet hair up and pin it there, leaving the dye to settle. "We're changing our clothes as well." Bonnie says, not looking at Caroline and instead staring at the clothes. (It's all generic stuff, two pairs of black jeans and a couple of dark hoodies). "We need to really disappear."
Using some scissors, Bonnie rips and tears at the denim of the jeans. It gives them the grunge look in the end — the one that Caroline has always hated — but it's a big change from Caroline or Bonnie's ordinary style. The hoodies stay unchanged though, so Bonnie just gets up to rinse out Caroline's hair.
Once her hair is dry, Bonnie notices—with the first giggle since they heard about what happened at the bridge—that they've forgotten Caroline's eyebrows and she has to squeeze what she can from the empty bottle to remedy that. She's delicate with the application now, using an ear bud to gently press the dye to the hair above Caroline's eye.
She steps back and smiles a little shakily. "I know there's not much we can do with my hair." She says eventually. "But you grabbed a couple of pink and blue colours, so I figured we could give me streaks. I'll be super alternative, yeah?"
Caroline smiles as best she can but she can see from her reflection that it comes out a grimace. Bonnie gives her about the same calibre look in return.
Still, when they've washed the rest of the dye out (the pink and blue mixing with the brown of Caroline's eyebrows) they look fair enough. Caroline's got a bit stained on the corner of her brow, but it's definitely not too shabby and she can wash it away with a bit of a scrub in a couple of days.
Bonnie pulls on her jeans first, then the hoodie, hiding away the deep blue of the shirt she's wearing. It's kind of eerie to look at her—because she's dark and kind of gothic and that was never a look meant for such a lovely person. But Caroline follows suit, ultimately because all she can hear in her head is 'full of light' and 'I'll wait for you'. She doesn't want to be the person that he's looking for, and if this is how she drowns her old self out then it will have to do.
When she and Bonnie finally emerge from the bathroom, Tyler and Matt are wearing their clothes as well. They've already gotten the memo on changing style—their clothes are dark and messy, unclean and torn in places (not quite the fashion statement like Caroline and Bonnie—theirs looks more like the result of wear and tear). Caroline could probably believe that the guys have owned these clothes all their life—if she hadn't been the one who'd bought then a couple of hours earlier.
Both boys look like they don't know what to say when they see the girls, and they seem to decide that not saying anything is the best way to go. Instead, they hide their shocked looks and point to the two dollar map Caroline had snatched out of her mother's car.
Tyler wants to go to California. Matt wants to head to Texas or Kansas. Bonnie and Caroline decide that somewhere like Arizona is probably the best place for them. Definitely somewhere on the other side of the country. Staying on this coast is too close, sets their teeth on edge. He's here, he's close and he's fucking looking for them.
They get the majority though, in the end, so they leave that night, (Tyler drives) and head in that direction.
(Caroline tries and fails to think about where Elena is right now, if she's even transitioned if she's still around—alive isn't a word she can use, is it? — and how she'll probably never see her friend again).
(At least it keeps her mind from the 'I'll wait for you' though. That's all she can ask right now).
.
They don't really stop at all. Tyler and Caroline take the major driving shifts—sleeping with the other drives and such, and Bonnie and Matt drive when they find they really need something to do other than sit around.
When they get to Columbus, Ohio, Tyler has been driving for nine hours and is really done his dash—so they pull over to get some fresh air for a moment before Caroline takes the next couple of hours.
(Tyler and Caroline share a blood bag, because leaving a trail of burgled hospitals is really not a way to lie low and they need to conserve what they have now. Bonnie and Matt get McDonalds).
Caroline ducks into the bathroom for a moment, and doesn't recognise her own reflection for a moment. The dark brown locks frame her face more obviously than the blonde did, contrasting against her pale skin. She doesn't let it affect her though and just washes her hand, makes sure there's no blood on her teeth and returns to the car.
Tyler has already fallen asleep in the back of the car, and Matt's just paying for the fuel he's filled the car up with. Bonnie calls shotgun and tells Caroline that she'll stay awake as long as she can, just so that Caroline has someone to talk to.
(This is good. Caroline really can't be in her own head for too long right now—her neurotic past self is teetering on the edge, ready to take control at a moment's weakness and if she lets herself think about it too much then she'll cave in a major way).
Still, they end up driving for a couple of minutes without anything to say. Matt has slipped in the back, lifted Tyler's legs to rest on his lap, pushing his seat back a little and plugging in his headphones (it's Coldplay, Caroline can hear it clear enough).
"She'll be fine." Is eventually what Caroline starts their conversation with. She knows it's where Bonnie's mind has been hovering in this time, because it's exactly the same place hers has been. "Damon and Stefan will take care of her." She pauses, shoots Bonnie a meaningful look. "And Jeremy as well."
Bonnie lets the words hover in the air for a moment, totally still, before she nods her head. She swallows, and Caroline can see wetness gloss over her eyes.
"They're probably out of the country by now." Bonnie says, her voice soft and haggard.
Probably. Stefan and Damon know better to hang around—especially when most of Klaus's anger will be directed at them. For the moment, Caroline, Matt, Tyler and Bonnie are just the friends who got in the way.
(Caroline wonders what he's going to do to Rebekah).
"Hopefully," Caroline says. It's easier to be positive now, than negative. — even if the depression of reality is overwhelming right now, it's easy to remind themselves that Elena being out of the country is far safer than still in the country. "Stefan and Damon will take care of them."
Caroline resolutely does not think about how Stefan has promised to take care of her. He'd told her he would teach her how to deal with this sort of thing—how to deal with living forever.
But he's gone now—he chose Elena even if she couldn't chose him (not really) — and Caroline will have to deal with reality on her own.
(It's the last time Bonnie and Caroline mention Elena, Jeremy, or the Salvatore's for a long time, even if they don't know it yet).
.
It takes another twenty nine hours to get to Tucson, where they eventually decide to stop. Caroline's got just enough money left to combine with Matt's and buy them a small little four bedroom in a subtle part of town. They don't worry about the danger warnings they hear because, come on, they're vampires—and after a day Tyler has scared off anyone who might have come looking for a fight.
Caroline gets a job at a local pub. Bonnie starts working at the public library and she and Matt enrol back in school. Tyler gets them all new ID's.
Caroline thinks for a reeling moment about her mother in Australia and her best friend, dead and abroad. She thinks of her family house, torn apart, and of Caroline Forbes, the seventeen year old who died in her hospital bed, the unfortunate casualty of someone else's grudge.
She's Claire Foster (who moved here with her friends Max, Bethany and Tom) and she can lay low for now.
.
.
They stay in Arizona for two years, in the end. The life of Claire Foster isn't a hard one to live, and Bonnie even finds herself a boyfriend. (He's tall and sweet and really likes reading books). She swore of magic when they arrived and hasn't seemed tempted since. But life at the bar and in their small house gets boring, after a while, and Bonnie and Matt start looking older.
(Not in a way that's obvious to anyone but them—but Bonnie's hair grows where Caroline's doesn't—regrowth apparently isn't an issue for someone who's hair stopped growing a long time ago. Matt has to shave in the morning and Tyler doesn't).
But Caroline—Claire—wakes up one morning and realises that she really doesn't want to see her best friend grow old before her eyes and no matter how selfish that is, she isn't going to hang around to do that.
Also, that Claire Foster's life isn't the one that Caroline Forbes wanted ever.
It's been two years though, and they've heard nothing. Nothing from any hybrids, or Damon or Stefan. Caroline texted her mother (I'm okay and I love you) which had earned her a message in return (message fail: #231: this number is no longer is service). (Caroline's not okay).
Klaus hasn't found them, though, and Caroline thinks that maybe it's time that she used that to her advantage. His anger must have ebbed away if he stopped looking for her.
I'll wait for you.
Tyler comes with her because he is about as comfortable with the growing age difference as she is. They tell Bonnie and Matt one night, after dinner—and there's tears and sadness but also acceptance because Bonnie and Matt are human and Tyler and Caroline are really not.
(Matt's met a girl as well. Her name is Sophie and she's got a sweet round face and a nice smile — Caroline's totally prettier than her — they're cute together but Caroline doesn't want to be there when they get married and start talking kids. It's a life she could have had and that kind of fucking tears at her).
So she and Tyler leave. They leave Tom and Claire there mostly — in everything except name. Caroline keeps her dark hair though, even if she swaps back to her more ordinary clothes.
.
They end up going to California. It's glamorous there, loud and noisy and totally alive. It's got a beat about it that makes Caroline's blood sing—think back to the times when she'd wanted to give up everything in Mystic Falls just to try and make it here.
(Caroline runs into Leonardo di Caprio and he mistakes her for a model. After three days, Tyler officially forbids her from mentioning it again).
But it's also far more conspicuous than they're little home in Arizona, and they have to work hard to stay subtle. Caroline stays as Claire Foster because it's easier, simpler—and has to avoid getting caught in the background of the thousands of paparazzi photos taken each day.
(Which totally sucks because Caroline's always wanted to go to the Oscars).
Tyler and Caroline decided back in Arizona that their relationship made things more complex. Their friendship was the best thing for the two of them—the one where they cared for each other because of something deeper than just having sex all the time and using the label 'boyfriend-girlfriend'.
They get a small two bedroom flat with a nice kitchen. Their jobs from Arizona have given them enough money and Caroline finds it easy to again, head to a nearby bar and grab herself a job waitressing. They're not exactly living the high life, but they've kind of even got savings right now, which will totally build up when you've got an eternity to wait for interest to rise.
They lose themselves in California. Caroline spends her days off at the beach. She doesn't have to work out because her body is eternally in shape, but she can work on getting a tan (yeah, apparently the rings didn't have a UV setting or something, but she's totally getting more golden). She takes a week off from work and parties the whole time, gets high for the first time in her life (awesome) and screws four different guys in those five days (less awesome, but fun enough).
When she's finished, she thanks god (?) for small mercies like the fact that vampires don't get hangovers, and heads back to work.
It's better here now. She feels more alive here, happier. But still, the calls she gets from Bonnie once a week make her feel homesick and she desperately wishes she could see her mum. She wants to get a hold of Elena Gilbert and hug her until she knows she's there—but that's not possible right now. None of it is.
One day she goes into work and feels a prickling at the back of her neck. She's just scrubbing the counters—getting rid of the spilt alcohol that's dried there over night—and she can feel it.
She spins around and nothing's there, of course. She looks like one of those pathetic girls in shitty horror movies (only, lol, she's the vampire in the story). Still though, nothing.
It continues the whole day. A swirling mess in her stomach that makes her feel uncomfortable and hot for the rest of the day. It's present, and she could be staring in to the eyes of a serial killer with the effect this is having on her.
She goes home and sleeps with Tyler. He's pretty keen, and it's really, really good—but they both know that it's one last hurrah.
The next morning, Caroline packs her bags and leaves, not remotely sure where she's going.
.
.
She robs a bank in Dallas. (Just pulls her hoodie up, over her head, leans in close and asks the cashier to empty out everything she has). She leaves the bank with an extra seventy five thousand dollars on hand, and a decision that this is nothing—this isn't stealing, this is surviving.
.
.
She ends up in Brazil. It easy for her to leave the country, without anyone else with any problematic legal issues. She's got all the right paperwork and in the end, all she needs to do is jump on a plane. It kind of worries her that they couldn't figure out she wasn't really called Claire Foster, but she's not a terrorist, just a bank robber so it's not that bad. It's just like she's under unofficial witness protection, really.
And Rio?
Rio is good.
She gets a hotel room because she's not sure how long she'll be staying. She splurges her earned money (from her job in Cali—she's been careful to keep the stolen money and the legitimate money separate) and then heads down to see what the night life is like in this city.
And man, is it good.
She spends the majority of the next two weeks out. She doesn't go back to her hotel room at all, crashing at the homes of people who've invited her over. She makes a couple of friends, (Gloria and Sasha and Meg) and they take the city by storm. The girls tell her that she's full of life and her energy is what keeps them going. Caroline just manages to not laugh in their faces at that, but it's a close thing.
She doesn't get a job here because she doesn't want to waste he life away in another damn bar. She does start taking a course at university though, working on it steadfastly because she does need something steady in her life.
She doesn't call or text anyone for a month or two, until the guilt overcomes her and she saves.
"Jesus H. Christ, Caroline—did you know how worried we were?"
Bonnie's engaged now, to her guy from the library. Caroline's been invited to the wedding, which is in six months, but Bonnie's got a new friend who'll be maid of honour. Caroline can remember all the times they'd talked about each other's weddings and that just feels kind of wrong.
("There are three of us, though." Elena had said in her sixteen year old voice. "We'll have to split it up evenly. I'll be Bonnie's, Bonnie will be Caroline's and Caroline can be mine.")
Caroline registers vaguely that a lot of girls probably make those kind of deals when they're young and don't end up following through, but she also makes a point to point out to herself that those distances were probably the result of different circumstances.
Their situation, after all, is pretty unique.
"Sorry, Bonnie," Caroline sighs down the phone. "I just—needed to get away for a bit."
These days, Bonnie always sounds a bit thrown when Caroline uses her real name. It's like she's sunk into Beth, taken on that life because Bonnie's always wanted to just be normal. Caroline had always wanted to shine and Elena had always shone regardless.
"Care—" Bonnie says, and Caroline makes herself that it's because it's always been her nickname—and not because it's so close to Claire. "—I know. I was just a bit worried. You can always come back here if you need someone to talk to."
Caroline looks around the room she's in. It's Meg's apartment and there are four naked Brazilian men sleeping on the floor.
"Not for this," Caroline says, while she's thinking 'No. I really can't.'
Bonnie sighs again. "It'll get better Caroline. I promise."
.
The best thing about Rio, though, is that eventually it goes to prove Bonnie right again. It does get better, in the end. Caroline hides away the seventy five grand, not wanting to spend it unless she absolutely has to, and gets a job at a yogurt shop.
(It's not a bar, so shut up). (Also, it kind of changes her life).
Because one day, the door presses open and Daniel walks in.
He's not wearing a shirt. Caroline's honest enough to admit that that's probably what first catches her attention—because he's carved like a mother fucking statue might have been, with a winning smile just to set the whole image off—but it's not what keeps her interested.
She asks him what he would like (she's learnt the language fairly quickly, and the good thing about a vampire brain is that you can apparently remember more) and he doesn't pause.
"Tutti fruity." He says, and it's a challenge, like he's daring her to comment. "And lots of it."
(Caroline never backs down from a challenge).
"Really? You don't think that's a girl's choice?" She's frank with him, raising an eyebrow to smirk at him while she glances at the rainbow coloured ice cream that goes into the smoothie he's asked for.
"We are in a yogurt shop, no?" he says. "Can you direct me to the masculine products you have to offer me?"
Caroline can't so she just laughs and scoops out some of the ice cream for his smoothie. The shop is relatively empty so they end up chatting casually while she makes his drink, and when she hands it over, he makes a point to brush their fingers against each other. He looks ready to say something else, but his friend follows him inside and catches his attention. They move to one of the small tables inside, for the few people who want to sit down and eat inside, instead of enjoying this fabulous city. Caroline steadfastly refuses to look at them, instead focusing on the other customers and cleaning the bench when there are none.
They stay for another half an hour, long after he's finished his smoothie, and when they stand up, it's only so that he can approach her again.
"My friend tells me you are ignoring me on purpose, because you are interested. Is this a thing that American girls do often?" he asks.
Caroline smirks. "How did you know I was American?"
Daniel (even if she doesn't know his name just yet) cracks a grin. "We do not get girls are pretty as you here."
Caroline can't help but grin at that. It's a horrible lie—the girls here are goddesses who practically glow with energy and life—and the accent and his language make him sound far more charming than he really is—but she can't help it. She's sucked in and she likes him. She licks her lips. "Did you want my attention for a reason?" she asks coyly.
Daniel nods. "I would like to take you out to dinner and learn all about you. But if you like, I am happy with your name."
Again, he's actually really lame.
She's totally charmed.
"It's Claire." She says, and smirks when she sees he's confused for a moment — trying to figure out if that means she does or doesn't want to go out with him. She quickly clears that up for him — "My shift finishes in two hours. Maybe you'll be here?"
His grins lights up the shop.
.
Daniel is everything she wanted.
He is tall and a pathetic romantic and entirely devoted to her. He seems to be of the bizarre mindset that she's too good for him, and works for her attention every day. The sex is fantastic, yes, but he also tries to learn some English for her, and he strokes her hair in his hands whenever he can get close enough.
Caroline shifts a little bit, from the partying in Rio to just living in Rio. She invites her friends to come to her hotel room for a night, just to watch movies and hang out like she hasn't in ages (because both of her best friends have left her behind).
She spends the night on the floor, sitting next to her friends with her back resting against Daniel's leg, his fingers running through her still dyed hair. She fights for the last of the popcorn with Sasha and she introduces Gloria to one of Daniel's friends because both of them insist at different points during the night.
It feels fun and it feels normal and it's totally freeing.
(She still drinks from blood bags and she still has to fight down the urge to hunt every now and again, but it's easier to do when the reward of that self control is all of this).
.
Daniel doesn't know about her yet, and she's not sure what to do about that. She's not sure if it even is a 'yet' situation—if she'll ever work up the courage to tell him that she's actually been dead all the time. It would be so easy for him to leave her as a result, and she doesn't want to risk it, risk this, because for the moment, this is kind of perfect.
It means that she'll have to leave in a couple of years.
But a couple of years is enough, right?
(She knows that it's not).
She have sex on the balcony of her hotel room, overlooking the lit city and trying not to be too loud. He's sitting in her chair, pressing deep inside her and peppering kisses all over her chest. It's overwhelming, being with him, being happy when everything in her life (her mother, her best friends, her ex boyfriends) is so fucked up. She can't really take it.
He pushes up and she clenches down, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.
"Fuck," she says, slipping back into English because there's no way she can focus at a time like this, pull her brain together enough to think of his language. "Fuck, baby, oh shit—I love you."
She's above him in this position—he's got her thighs pulling her closer, still biting and nipping at her neck. She presses her hands into his hair, kisses the crown of his head because it's the only part of him she can reach. Eventually, she pulls him back, pulls him into a proper kiss, a real kiss and murmurs more to him in English.
"I'm sorry, I love you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She says. "I'm lying to you, this is wrong. I want—I want — I just fucking love you."
He doesn't falter, doesn't hesitate.
"I do not know what you are saying," he says back, in unpractised English. "But you should know that I am happy and that I love you more than anything in the world. You are my star, Caroline."
(That is what she has told him. Her real name. It's a part of herself that she would like for him to have.)
She shudders and falls, over the abyss she'd been teetering on. He finishes off and she presses kisses all over his face, his shoulders and his neck because there aren't words for what she's feeling right now and she doesn't have any other way to express herself. Eventually, she can think hard enough to find the right words for him.
"Eu te amo."
(I love you).
.
She takes him to Bonnie's wedding and she's happier than she's been in a long time. She still hasn't told him, no, but he holds her hand the whole time and looks nervously cute about meeting some of her old friends. She has to remind him to call her Claire, and he does so expertly. Then she pulls him over to introduce him to Tom and Max and Bethany.
He's perfectly gorgeous with Bethany, saying all the right things and selling himself on his charm alone. His English still isn't great, but he gets along fine. Caroline feels like the grin might burst out of her when Daniel takes Tyler's hand and shakes it a little bit too roughly.
It doesn't affect Tyler in the slightest, but when he does the same thing to Matt, Matt winces and pulls away.
"I guess you told him about us then, huh, Claire?" Matt asks, a little bit of a smirk on his face.
She grins happily at him and nods, because any lie she tells now would be way too obvious. And besides, she doesn't want to lie. She has a man at her side who wants to keep her, to scare away any other man who is interested. She thinks that maybe, just maybe she could tell him.
Maybe he'd be alright with it.
Bethany and her fiancé end the day as husband and wife, and the ceremony is everything that Caroline has ever wanted for Bonnie. Her family isn't here, which is sad, and neither is Elena—but Joseph (the husband) has six siblings and twenty four cousins. As a wedding gift, Bonnie's new father in law gives them a house in the suburbs, and when they pass the picture of it around Caroline sees that — ha, yes — it has a white picket fence.
Matt spends the night with his girlfriend as well. Not Sophie—who he'd been with when Caroline left—but a new girl. Equally as good for him, and probably more likely to end up having the kids talk.
Caroline doesn't care because that's not a life for her now, and for the first time she's actually kind of okay with it.
She holds Daniel's hand tighter, and when he kisses her in the middle of the dance floor (after an extravagant twirl you can only learn in a place like Rio) she only laughs more.
.
She spends two years of her life with Daniel, in the end. She moves out of her hotel relatively soon after Bonnie's wedding, and into a small flat with him. She doesn't touch the seventy five grand—just stows it in a small compartment under the floorboards inside the cupboard under the stairs. She stays working at the yogurt studio, starts another lesson at university and begins a dancing class every Friday night. They go together, and after a couple of months they end most of their evenings dancing around their flat, singing to the latest hit and professing their love to each other.
It's romantic in the best sense of the word. Everything that Caroline has ever wanted from her life—she's out in the world and she's with a man who loves her and she's really, really fucking happy.
She makes the decision at the two year anniversary. Daniel gets down on one knee and swears to her that he can't live without her, demands that she marry him and she accepts without hesitation.
The only thing left now is to tell him the truth about herself. He'll be pissed, she thinks, but he'll understand. He has to understand—because he loves her, and that will conquer anything, right?
She sets up the apartment and orders him away for a couple of hours, covering the room in rose petals and lighting candles because hello, they're called clichés for a reason. The phone rings as she's putting the final touches on their homemade dinner.
"It's me," he says. "I'm back early—may I please come in?"
Caroline lets out a light laugh. "Give me another five minutes. Do a loop around the block for me?"
He grins into her ear. "Anything for you, my love."
She finishes setting the table, and she puts on some soft music from one of their dancing classes. The evening should go well, if she tells it to him gently, makes him understand that she never wanted to lie to him and he's not compelled to stay here if he doesn't want to.
The phone rings again.
She picks it up with a grin. "All finished, babe. You can come up now."
There's a pause.
"Is this Claire Foster? I have you listed as the emergency contact for a Mr. Daniel Santos, is that correct?"
.
Fifteen minutes is all it takes for a common thief on the streets to stab Daniel Santos in the abdomen twice. The blade hits an artery and the young man in question bleeds out in minutes. He is still alive when a passerby finds him, but he is dead by the time that he arrive at the hospital.
.
Her life fucking implodes and there's nothing she can do about it. The guilt, the mother fucking guilt, clings to her every pore—every movement is weighed down by her own voice, playing on loop in her head ("Do a loop around the block for me?"). Any other night and they would have both been inside, watching the television or dancing and the mugger would have had no victim.
But she'd made the decision and he'd died.
Caroline looks into it extensively. The retribution she expels on the guilty man is illegal in every definition of the word, and it's not remotely enough.
He mugs someone else a couple of nights later, and gets caught. He refuses to confess to the murder however. The cops leave the room for a moment, a sheer second, and return to find the man dead, sprawled in a pile of his own blood and piss.
It's not fucking enough.
The fury that over takes her is only a way for her to block out the devastation. Somehow, Bonnie (fucking Bethany) finds out and tells Tyler and Matt. Caroline snaps her second sim card all over again, throws it off the roof and then curls up into a ball and fucking cries.
The thing is—she determines, that this shitstorm was never supposed to be her life. This wasn't what was meant for her she's damn well sure of it. Everything got fucked up when Stefan and Damon Salvatore came to town. When Katherine Pierce held a pillow over her head until she stopped breathing.
But in the end, everything that went wrong traces back to one person. One person with cold grey eyes and an infuriating smirk—a man who thought he could take what he wanted and get the fuck away with it. Someone who had forced to her to run across the country—to hide from him like the one woman she detested most in the world (running like Katherine fucking Pierce)—someone who told her hair colour and her clothing style and her mother fucking name.
Klaus.
I'll wait for you.
.
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/tbc/
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nb(2). the italicised speech in the Daniel segment indicates when they are not speaking English. I don't like relying on translators.
a/n: I don't really know what to say at this point. My only problem with the Klaus/Caroline relationship is how it's been handled on the show—and I think that with the way the character are at the end of season three, there's no feasible way for their relationship to even begin to work without Caroline experiencing a little bit of life for herself. I feel she needed to grow into herself a little bit, and the way that happened, in my eyes, was by giving her a little bit of that life that she's always wanted. I also didn't see it happening with Tyler fucking Lockwood, and therefore, Daniel came around. So I apologise for the Caroline/OC, but I hope at least some of you were charmed by Daniel, because I ended up being a little bit shattered when I finished with him.
Part two is on its way tomorrow or the day after. I have most of it written, so it shouldn't take too long. Also, no beta, so all mistakes are my own.
I hope you liked it enough to continue and review. x