She refused to check the time again. Admonished herself for wanting to reach for the phone and tip it up to her line of vision, head still cradled on her pillow. The last time she checked, her mind had spun away from the digital numbers, refusing to do the math. Had time simply stopped moving? Or perhaps, time had ripped her into the future, an exact 24 or 48 hours torn away. The minutes felt like hours, the hours like minutes, and she did not know if she had slipped into sleep or had just closed her eyes for the fleeting moment. There was no relief, there was no rest and the clock-stopped part of her felt shamed by this because surely - shouldn't Elena be wrestling with her own cruel timelord. And Caroline had spent enough of her own dark nights to know that time could heal, but Elena was crisscrossed with scarring and what sort of delayed wounding would flipping the switch bring?

She turned onto her back, reached over to the nightstand and flicked the phone onto its glass face. It smacked with a satisfying sound. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and tried to hold onto a recent memory of Jeremy laughing at something Matt had said, the way his face softened, his eyes crinkled shut, his wide mouth drawn across his perfect teeth. But instead, Jeremy lying in a kind of unbelievable state in his own childhood bedroom kept invading her thoughts and she finally threw back the covers and sat up, legs over the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, hands combing through her hair. She was still in her clothes, wrinkled and mussed.

In the quiet, empty house the sound of knuckles on the front door should have had her jumping in her skin, but instead her heart leapt up at the thought of someone coming to her in the night.

She tiptoed across the cold floor, peeked around the door, down the long hallway and saw the figure outlined in moonlight. There was no moment of regret or disappointment wishing he was someone else. Or even her habitual frustration that seemed to accompany his presence. Instead she surprised herself with joy and she moved quickly to the door.

"Oh, Caroline."

His voice was stricken and she realized with a sensation similar to falling that it was not, of course, because of Jeremy. Her name in his mouth, the swallowed last syllable, the sympathetic tilt of his head; it all undid her and she stepped across the threshold and into his arms.

She was, suddenly, overcome. His embrace, Jeremy's death, the mess of living and dying. She began to cry and with one hand on the back of her head he began to rock her gently. He led her to the single step of the stoop and lowered her to it and sat beside her, somehow still holding her face against his neck.

Again, time seemed to bend and flex, stuttering between them, and she allowed him to comfort her, to be soothed. Felt the strength in his arms, the span of his fingers, the dark honey smell of his flesh, but more she found safety and compassion and somehow this broke the dam inside of her and she wept herself dry.

She breathed in once, twice, holding the third breath until it burned, then she straightened and wiped at his wet neck with one hand, her face with the other and she looked at him. "How did you…how did you…"

"Shhhh. Rebekah telephoned me. Shhhh…." With a thumb under her eye, he wiped gently at her face. He dropped his hand away and settled back on the cement, a gapping distance between them now. His face open with cautious sadness.

"Why are you here?"

"Caroline." He scowled slightly. "I wanted to make sure you weren't here. Alone."

She gestured helplessly at herself, at the night.

He nodded at this, his eyes open, his gaze fast on her face. "So I see. I'm sorry."

"Are you?" She bit her lip. "No, no, that's not what I want to say." She furrowed her brow deeply. "Thank you. I'm sorry too."

He had closed his eyes but opened them again as she spoke.

"I'm glad. Actually." She allowed a small smile, a surprised widening of her eyes and he answered with a grin of such sincere happiness that she felt something hard inside of her soften. "I'm worried about her. I'm worried about all of us, really."

"Family."

She balled both hands into fists and pressed hard under her jaw. A low moan escaped her lips and he was reaching for her again and she shook her head no. "How do we survive all of this? How?" She covered her face with her hands.

His hands helpless between his knees, he moved slightly away from her again. "Endure the unendurable, suffer what is insufferable."*

She lowered her hands and turned her body fully towards him, pulling one leg up beneath the other. Feeling she could lean, fall, into him and he would catch her. Her eyebrows were raised in question.

"Where do we measure the difference between one life and one hundred twenty thousand innocent dead. Any man's death diminishes me."**

She stood, angry now. "Why are you quoting words? Just words."

He climbed to his feet, deliberately, the wolfen and wild grace of his compact body called to her.

"The Tongan women would smash out their front teeth with rocks for their dead. No words there."

"Stop." She was horrified. "Please."

He inclined his head, a small apology. "Alright." Then he narrowed his eyes, taking in her fragility. "Let's walk. You and I."

"Walk?"

"Yes." He moved away from her, she followed close on his heel, then stepped up beside him. His strides were long but his pace casual. He smiled at her, lips closed.

"Where are we going?"

"No one place in particular, love. But," he slowed now and reached out towards her, his hand open, beckoning, "into the sunrise."

With a great sense of deliberate movement, standing on the edges of her heart, she reached across for his hand and took it in her own. Their fingers twined naturally and he lowered his arm and pulled her up beside him.

"Into the sunrise?" she asked.

"Into the new day," he answered.

* Emperor Hirohito - 6 days after the atomic bombings of WWII

** John Donne - Every Man is an Island