Disclaimer: disclaimed.
Notes: written for the vampire diaries ficathon over on lj.
we're waiting for that someday
They leave Mystic Falls on the eve of their graduation.
Caroline has a pair of toothbrushes, a comb, and toilet paper in the backpack she's never used. In her hand she holds her diploma (it's a reminder, she tells Tyler—it's a reminder of everything they've lost, everything they still have to gain). Tyler walks behind her, his head turned to the side even as his feet plow forward.
He's scared. They're both scared. Mystic Falls does not allow its residents to leave alive, and even now they feel her chains curling around them, whispering Elena, Bonnie, Matt, mommy mommy.
For seventeen miles, they walk. Uphill and downhill, past puddles and homes where little kids peer out the window at the two bigger kids. They walk at a human pace, feel the steady thump of each foot greeting the earth, and then they do it all over again. Cars are not an option, not because Tyler doesn't know how to hotwire a car (Mason taught him. Mason could have taught him a lot), but because Caroline wants to feel the sting of the air as the sky grows darker, to feel reckless in the night even though she's more terrified of it now than ever before.
Tyler plays along. He always does, these days. He's half in love with her but that doesn't matter right now—all that matters is that they're leaving. They're going to go to college somewhere far away, they're going to laugh and get drunk and be red in the face. They're going to have dungeon parties somewhere once a month and they're going to go bunny hunting.
Most of all, Tyler and Caroline are going to live. (And if on the eighteenth mile Caroline's free hand kisses Tyler's, they make no mention of it. Not yet. They aren't ready yet.
But they will be, someday.)
