The Truth of Caroline Forbes
She looked up the definition of blood once in the dictionary. She thinks it might have been easier to just put a picture of her face and have done with it all.
She had never really thought about it before, because thinking had hurt and because it was easier when all she could see was Stefan. Stefan, who held her in a bathroom while she cried, Stefan who taught her to hunt bunnies and to breathe through her fears, Stefan who saved her and understood her and loved her. Because Stefan is Damon's brother (and Stefan was turned by Katherine), if Damon and Stefan shared the same blood, were created of the same blood, then some of Stefan had to pass to her. Katherine may have killed her and Damon's blood may have changed her but Stefan is a part of all of them and it is this thought that had made it okay. She had thought she could live forever if she could be a part of him.
Until now. Until she is staring at Sage's body, grey and wasted and terrifying and Stefan looks confused and uncertain and small. Because she does have his blood in her veins, but she also has Damon's and Katherine's and some woman name Rose's and maybe just maybe, her fears whisper, maybe she also has Klaus's blood. And these are the things that she doesn't think (because Caroline Forbes is all bright smiles and boundless energy and cheap carnivals and decades dances) but she does remember. She remembers Stefan with Elena's blood drying on his chin and a cold blankness in his eyes and she remembers Damon with her innocence fading on his tongue and her death sliding down his throat and she remembers Katherine with her future on a white hospital pillow and her past on the unplugged call button useless in her hands and she remembers Klaus with his too sharp smile and the seduction of whispered promises and she remembers two deputies dead on the ground with their blood warm and fragrant on her lips and the smell of mother's fear in the silence and if there is one thing she has learned from all of this, it is that blood never lies.
She sees her truth on the floor of the Salvatore mansion, spelled out in a grey skin and broken veins and 900 years of death that mean nothing in the face of what none of them can avoid. Blood is the only thing that matters in the end.
When she looks up blood in the dictionary, she finds five definitions. She thinks she has never been described so perfectly.
the fluid that circulates in the heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins of a vertebrate animal carrying nourishment and oxygen to and bringing away waste products from all parts of the body
the shedding of blood;also:the taking of life
lifeblood;broadly:life
human stock or lineage; relationship by descent from a common ancestor
blood regarded as the seat of the emotions