A/N: Just a short little drabble. I don't know where this came from. Kind of a love letter to Forwood I guess? One of the most plec'd up relationships on TVD
Disclaimer: Proud to say I do not own the rights to TVD. I'm not responsible for this season. I also don't own CW. All rights go to their owners.
She wishes she had run.
Back when his mom was alive, standing next to hers and she promised him that I will go anywhere with you. If we have to spend the rest of our lives running, I will run with you.
She wishes more than anything that she had run with him, before Klaus had taken over his body.
She wishes she could go back into the dungeons on the night of his first transformation and look herself in the eye and say "Don't. He needs you. You need him. Nobody else is worth it."
She'd stand next to him, and apologize for every horror he's lived through, knowing that this night would only be the first. The first of many more, then sire bonds, then death and more death and betrayal and fuck she broke him too. She's on his list of torturers.
Stefan says he almost killed her.
Stefan doesn't know Tyler Lockwood.
But at the same time, Stefan's the only one she can look at without feeling like her world is falling apart.
She wants to stand next to him as he begins to break his sire bond. Scream "It's not worth it! I'm not worth it!" She wants to go back to their first kiss and promise him that she cares, Tyler. That no matter what, she will always care and she's sorry and she loves him and please just can we go back to when things were simple?
She wants to tattoo the words "Until We Find A Way" into her heart and mind because that was not the start, that was not bliss but if she could pick up on that night, on that porch, she'd do it all over again. Run with him, because Elena's humanity wasn't quite worth staying for.
Or prom. She'd make him stay. She'd flee with him. Anything. But that would still leave Carole Lockwood dead. Maybe, just maybe, she had to go back to the night they first slept together.
She wouldn't sneak out. She'd stay in bed with him. Tell him she loved him. Tell him to stay away from Klaus, from Rebekah. She'd protect him from the traumas life had yet to bring to him, look in his eyes and swear to God she'd protect him and herself from harm's way.
But that wasn't how it turned out. He did die. He did become a hybrid. He broke every bone in his body one hundred times, just for her. Promised to run with her. Saved her from her father. Tried to get rid of Klaus. Had his mother killed. Lived on the run. Had his hybrids killed. The love of his life slept with the man who stole his free will and killed his mom.
She finds his football jersey, thinks of them as kids. And she begins to cry. Not because of the guilt she feels. That she can live with. But because this wasn't how their lives were supposed to be. This wasn't him, and this wasn't her and if the last year of their life just hadn't happened, eternity would still be theirs. But she nailed that coffin shut, she thinks. The true villainy of Klaus was what he did to their lives.
She shredded pictures of her and Tyler and suddenly she wishes she hadn't. Move on, sure. But to give up precious memories?
In that moment, she becomes Caroline again. She is back on her porch, being kissed by him for the first time. He tastes like promises, like love. Like the life she was meant to have, the life she wants. The one that lasts forever.
Caroline decides she wants him. She is going to get Tyler Lockwood back someday, be it tomorrow or in a hundred years. Because they are broken, and they are damaged but damn it if they can't be broken together.
