first: very tired but I'm actually happy-ish with this, well as happy as you can be anyway. Again, not a ship fic but just a ... vague thing, I don't know this is probably terrible, what even am I doing putting this up
second: Okay, this is my attempt at dark. A bad attempt but an attempt, nonetheless. I recommend listening to Seven Devils by Florence and the Machine while reading - I was listening to it while writing and it helped but anyway I should stop waffling and ask to enjoy and review, please?
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See, I've Come To Burn Your Kingdom Down
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"Seven devils all around me,
Seven devils in my house.
See, they were there when I woke up this morning,
I'll be dead before the day is done."
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Caroline snaps necks, crushes fingers, eats faces.
Oh, what a failure the V.A.M.P Program has turned out to be. Vulnerability Aim Management Program. Steal a nobody, smother a war inside her and watch her become a somebody, were the clear instructions. Such a shame they didn't close all the loopholes. What was once created to protect, has now turned to destruct.
A loose cannon, they whisper in top secret meetings. A weapon turned freedom fighter.
She must be shut down—and then, suddenly, somehow, the world finds out.
The news spreads like wildfire, heated protests soaring, the media buzzing about like the irritating flies they are. People rally themselves for and against the government—mostly against, screaming against such injustice, such danger the girl poses now. Posters burn with her face printed on them; she smiles innocently down at them all, a little princess bestowing praise upon her people. Warning messages scream out from screens; her eyebrows are cocked mockingly, a queen taunting the fragility of her people.
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At first, she hides. Caroline sleeps in dirty motel sheets, ducks her head and runs town every time a news bulletin blares with her face. She steals from shops at the dead of night, shameful and quick, takes blood and food that isn't hers and guzzles them down in darkness. Do you see your weapon now; how she cowers, how she hides? The monster you fashioned out of her is valiantly suppressed, the hunger that beats within her, delicately controlled.
One night, she sees a storm and it rises the torrent inside her. Storm winds gather, loud and rusty and dominant, to serve Zeus' fury and Caroline watches the sky tear itself apart for the first time. There is a cold beauty in the way the lightning screams and the thunder howls for control until the two settle for taking the blue of the sky together. She feels something patter inside and stays out so late the motel receptionist refuses to give her back her lost key.
Caroline watches her face shine from the dirty TV screen in the corner, watches the receptionist follow her gaze, watches the eyes across her widen with realisation. Fast, she leans against the desk, damp hair dripping wetness across filthy surface, and pushes the receptionist's jaw upright, forcing glass into those terrified eyes.
A key is pressed into her trigger-happy fingers.
"You'll remember nothing," is her last promise before she ransacks her room, throws her last belongings into a stolen bag and leaves town faster than the storm behind her.
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Experiments increase with her curiosity.
Caroline haunts bars when she gets bored of the four walls in the motel rooms, with a look in her eye that cautions even the most foolhardy of men. She dresses herself in bloody red and a smattering of blue, leaving her curls to shine whiter in the cold lighting of dusty bars. The first bar Caroline goes to doesn't trigger anything; she scoffs, what a number they did on her. She feels no familiarity with the small crowd dusting the area, the karaoke bar in the corner and the first drink she gets makes her choke. It burns, deep and satisfying, in her stomach, running through her veins and she clings to it desperately, trying to warm the coldest parts of her.
With an indulging laugh moulded by skilful hands, she takes the microphone and scrapes the wood of the stage with her knife-sharp heels. Oh, she doesn't want your hearts, little people. She knows she's got those, from the adoring looks she's getting. And no, she doesn't want your money. She'll be having enough drinks by the end.
No.
She wants you.
Break, bend, bow.
Break as she broke, with splintering bones and unanswered calls of help. Bend until your limbs twist and feel unfamiliar, until you wake up and realise this is not your body for it will not obey you. Bow and feel your nose brush the dirty floor, where you belong. Become the weapons you were never meant to be, she orders you.
Caroline glides about the stage, hazy and elegant, crooning soulfully into the microphone, to a rapt audience. Her voice seeps into the air, infects them all, quicksand taking them slowly, deliberately.
Caroline's lips tilt for a curious moment.
The bar erupts in anarchy and blood as she shuts the door behind her with a smile.
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They would smoke her out, burn her up, Damon thinks viciously when the media explodes and the world goes insane over their government program. The head of the V.A.M.P Program increases his search ever faster when news reaches of the mass murder in a bar in Massachusetts.
In vain, Damon tries to convince his audience that there is no connection, Caroline may be untrained but she has orders to—all the TV screens are crackling, fizzling, and these stupid shiny, new iPhones, Damon swears, with their perfect high definitions.
A beautiful woman in a dusky bar and he almost mistakes her for the American flag for an instant—a cruel joke, he is rather impressed—and she is singing exquisitely, with the voice Damon had tried to muzzle. She is smiling brighter, all white teeth and red lips; the perfect predator, a ruthless weapon.
"What shade is that?" A stupid—stupid—woman asks and Caroline smiles wider before breathing, "Blood," and the woman's face is covered by Caroline's white, white teeth.
The journalists reel away in horror but they are unable to tear their eyes away from the beautiful monster who eats the stupid woman and tells the crowd to go wild. People rip into people, the camera captures crushed skulls and torn flesh thrust onto the floor in insulting high definition.
"No connection?" The bitch of a reporter, Elena Gilbert, repeats, all faux innocence when the video finishes and all that can be heard is the sound of crushed bones ringing through the air.
Damon storms through his buildings and orders his best operative. "Enzo," he says. "Assemble a team. Find her."
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But Enzo is cocky. Enzo is confident, Enzo knows her.
He finds her in New York where Caroline is entertaining another group in another bar. They are all glassy-eyed, laughing when ordered, applauding when snapped at. Enzo reaches for his gun.
Caroline's eyes fall on him first. She recognises him, smiles ever wider.
Isn't she lovely, he thinks and his fingers slump.
"Won't you join me?" She asks and her voice is soothing, lulling; it slips and falls into a drifting haze around Enzo.
Yes, he thinks. He'd love nothing more.
Caroline leads him upstage with her fingers, sways with him, presses her hands into his shoulders. Enzo closes his eyes, swaying on the spot and breathes in the dizziness of her scent. She leans in close, pushes herself into his outstretched arms and brushes her lips against his eyelids, his cheeks, his lips, his neck, presses her waist against his. A tiny pink tongue curiously darts out to lick at the pale of his neck, her teeth scraping against flesh and she sucks experimentally, liking the feeling. The glassy-eyed band continue to softly play a soothing song that seeps around the entire room, the whole bar is staring up at them; Caroline is licking and sucking at Enzo's neck as he inhales sharply with eyes still closed and an expression of pure contentment.
And then she sinks her teeth in flesh, tears it out, gorges and glories.
Enzo moans in pain and Caroline hushes him, her fingers brushing against his stomach as his shirt lifts. She remembers the crowd and turns, smiling, to persuade them to do the same. "Come on," she says, "follow me. It's easy!"
The first girl is sobbing as she watches her traitor legs move her up the stage and Caroline frowns. Maybe the compulsion isn't as strong as she'd like it to be. Oh well, she thinks and brushes her lips down Enzo's bleeding neck, watches him moan, smiling as she tugs on his earlobe with her teeth. The girl hesitantly puts her teeth to Enzo's finger and she is shaking her head, begging Caroline, "Please, I want to go home—,"
Caroline rips her teeth out of Enzo's flesh to answer but Enzo is smiling hazily, nodding. "Do as Caroline says," he says happily.
But the girl is taking too long on Enzo's finger—either she'll take it or she won't, Caroline huffs so she forces the girl's head down but she can never tell how much strength she really has. The girl's skull crumbles to the floor, her body falling against Caroline's legs. Caroline kicks them away and leans back as Enzo drowsily pulls off his shirt. Rich and dark, blood trickles down his muscled frame and Caroline, heady with delight, grazes it as Enzo sighs.
The next boy is crying but he quickly follows Caroline, eyes on the dust of the girl's bones, as his shiny, white teeth rips the skin off Enzo's hand. Enzo begins to howl, eyes startled and less dizzy, but Caroline presses her face to his, whispers, rubs herself against him. The boy throws up, bits of skin still stuck on his teeth, and some bile spatters Caroline's heels; she'll have you know, these were very pretty, she plucked them from the woman's feet specially.
So she's not to blame if Damon, Enzo and the rest of them all programmed her to lose all inhibitions in the hunt so the boy's eyeballs roll until she impatiently squashes them with her heels and grows angry once again, despite Enzo's soothing voice, his inviting arms. Caroline convinces more of the crowd to feast and she feeds off the horror, the disgust, as they chew on human flesh, sobbing, blood soaking their lips, Enzo's encouraging words in their ears.
What's left of Enzo is sent to small, failing newspaper company, in a small envelope. The world is horrified when they learn of the government agent's fate but the newspaper company does very well.
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What are you, that you would do something like this? Bonnie looks at the face of her subject, watches her design, her weapon tear into the very people she was moulded to protect. Caroline's teeth take to the screen; she shivers as the door swings open.
Katherine throws a glance towards the TV, slides a beer towards Bonnie and they crack theirs open, a silent toast to their fallen warrior weapon. "We're the biggest hypocrites," Katherine whispers when she's barely had a sip. She runs a finger around the rim of the cap, slow, careful. "We were the ones who lured her in. We made her what she is, we did this to her. The eyes, the speed, the cravings."
"It's our fault," Bonnie murmurs. They stole an innocent, fresh small town girl with big town dreams right off the streets and forced a weapon out of her, wrapped a monster inside her.
Katherine tilts her head back and imagines a smoking world, the burning sun and the lonely moon, Caroline Forbes, Miss Mystic Falls, with her blood-soaked teeth snatching it all away. "She'll come after us," she says and feels something quench unpleasantly into her stomach. There's something so twisted and poetic about the monster going for the maker. Frankenstein didn't know when to stop and neither did they.
Bonnie says, "So we find her first."
We are the monsters we try so hard to make, Bonnie thinks and shivers again.
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They take her by surprise, snatch Caroline out of a bar, stuff chloroform down her throat. Her eyes are getting bad, Katherine realises, the compulsion formula is not as strong as they had thought and it's their saving grace for she'd have eaten them faster than Enzo.
Damon takes all the credit for himself. I found her in a bar. I took her as quickly as I could. Couldn't have the rest of the world suffer for what I've done, could I? Oh, America loves you so—and so does Elena Gilbert, from the way she's eyeing you. Bonnie and Katherine cannot bring themselves to care.
They are seated in separate chairs but both pairs of eyes are fixed on the quietened figure in red, white and blue, encaged by iron and steel. This is what nightmares are made of; every Midas wants to hit poisoned gold like this, wants to feel the destructive touch of something they have created.
"I will take your fingers first," the blonde weapon whispers, dried blood still on her mouth. Her voice is hoarse, though the sweets of a honeyed tone still ring through. "I will savour the things you used to break me, the hands you used to fashion me. I will eat them in front of you as you scream."
Damon's smug voice drifts into the room, the cage rattles. Katherine's heart slams away in her ribcage, louder than the bells of Notre Dame, ringing so dangerously she's sure Caroline, with her enhanced hearing, can hear it loud and clear. She wonders about the strength of the reinforced steel of the cage. Bonnie says, her voice cracking and tearful, "We're sorry."
Caroline breathes out slowly, chest rising and falling. "You stole my body," she murmurs quiet but they can all hear her. "You cut me open, you forced weapons into me, out of me. You let me watch as you took a knife to my legs; you took out my eyes, you replaced my eyes. I used to have such blue eyes, light blue. These ones are too dark." Her voice has drifted into a pained moan.
Such a weapon, so haunting, slumped against the cage of her captors, an obedient soldier once more. Katherine repeats for them, useless and idiotic, "We're sorry."
The useless feeling lingers in the air and Caroline's stomach growls, a beast craving. Bonnie gets up to get food and Katherine knows, she knows it's stupid to leave but she can't stop her feet from moving away anyway. The cage is strong, she tries to convince herself.
It will hold.
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Caroline entices the guard they've left to her cage, slams him against the steel, presses her body to his against cold bars and watches him shiver deliciously. She breathes against his neck before snapping it and running from the building as fast as she can.
The news blows up when they hear and Damon looks more foolish than ever.
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She is dancing when he finds her.
Twisting, swaying, spinning on fresh ground, to the invisible strings of music that haunt the air. The area outside his house is completely empty but she lights up his garden like the golden beauty she is, somehow dimming and brightening the flowers, the sunlight. He pockets his gun before taking a step outside.
"Klaus," Caroline says, smiling widely. She reaches out a hand for him. "Come join me."
Klaus steps forward and takes her hand. Oh, she could crush him so easy, so quick. They sway to the flickering lights of the sun, her fingers more steady and sure over his. Dancing in the arms of the artificial devil. "You took my advice," he tells her and she tilts her head back and laughs.
"You said being a manmade weapon was a shame. That I deserved better," she muses quietly. "I took the world, Klaus. It's as beautiful as you promised."
Klaus only hums in response. Such a beauty, he'd mused sadly, such a waste. He'd slowly and carefully worked his way up until he was allowed to guard her before protecting himself with soft words laced in beauty and promise, pushing and tugging at the humanity he'd realised still shone within the cracks. He hadn't realised how trapping it was, until she'd cracked three necks and stared at him in horror.
"I don't want to die," she'd breathed, finally. Her fingers were stained with wet blood, eyes fixed on the gun he held.
Klaus lowered the gun, carefully. "And you won't," he'd said. "You know your way around here, love. Spread hell."
"You should come with me," Caroline offers now. "We could take the world together. You know we could."
"They're hunting you down. They'd hunt me down."
Caroline's eyes flicker down. She looks up at him again from under lowered eyelashes and makes a promise. "I could protect you. You know I could."
Klaus wonders about it. Outrunning the world, flying with the daring Icarus of a weapon gone rogue. It thrills him to the bone. But forever powerless, under the control of such an uncontrollable weapon? It feeds the paranoid beast in his chest.
He puts a bullet between her eyes and when she wakes up, she eats him.
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"Seven devils all around you,
Seven devils in your house.
See, I was dead when I woke up this morning,
I'll be dead before the day is done."
—Seven Devils, Florence and the Machine
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fin