Twelve
Caroline is twelve when she and Bonnie watch an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Caroline first thinks seriously about what it would mean to live forever.
"I think is it would be exciting," she tells Bonnie. "Think of all thing things you'd get to see and the all the stuff you'd know."
"It would be awful," Bonnie had said emphatically, "everyone else dying and everything changing and you staying just the same."
"I guess," Caroline said, though she thought that, if the people that you loved lived forever, too, none of that would matter.
Fifteen
Caroline watched as Matt leaned over and kissed Elena's temple. Elena giggled and grinned over at him and Caroline thought, even if she lived to be a thousand, Elena would still always come in first place.
Eighteen
Caroline could feel herself dying – for real, this time – her blood raced through her veins like fire. She was afraid and sad but mainly, she was angry; angry that she would die just as she was finally beginning to feel as though she was herself.
Then Klaus came and saved her. It was only fair, as it was his fault she was dying in the first place. The effect of his blood was immediate. For a second, she felt as if she knew him. As her mind cleared and she watched him sitting on the edge of her bed, looking at her, it occurred to her for the first time that he was handsome. If he'd been the age that he looked, she would have smiled at him and reached for his hand. But he wasn't, she a thought. He was a true immortal and she, despite being a vampire, was an eighteen year old girl. Then he was gone.
Twenty-five
It was pouring and Caroline ducked into the Louvre. She frowned down at her suede shoes. Ruined, she thought. It was a second's work to compel the attendant into allowing her free admission and she pushed her way through the crowd and toward the galleries. An hour later, as she was standing in front of a landscape, she thought of Klaus. If this was a movie, she thought, I'd run in to him here, staring at a painting like this. Of course, Caroline had realized long ago that, if her life ever resembled a movie at all, it would not be that type of movie. Still, she wondered where he was.
Sixty-eight
She watched from outside as Matt held his first grandson. She never visited him anymore – it was too strange and sad. Stefan had told her it would get easier. She had known he meant when everyone that she knew when she was a human was dead. Once, the idea would have horrified her. Now, it just seemed true.
She took a deep breath and went back to her car. She didn't stop driving until she hit New York. She parked, illegally, and went to sit at her usual spot at The Emerald Bar. She ordered scotch and sat hunched over the table. If had felt as her ribcage was tightening in on her. She waited.
"Care?"
And just like that, she could breathe again. "Hey," she said, sitting up and smiling at Elena.
"You got here earlier than I thought you would," Elena said. She turned to the man sitting next to Caroline, pushing her long, dark hair behind her shoulders. "I'd like to sit next to my friend. Can you please move?"
Compelled, he moved instantly.
"Yeah, no point paying attention to traffic laws," Caroline said with a shrug.
"You saw him?" Elena asked.
"Yes," Caroline said. "He's happy. He's…He's the way he should be." She smiled then. "Like us."
Elena returns the smile. "Like us," she said. "Shots?"
"Obviously," Caroline agrees. They laugh and Caroline thought, not for the first time, that there are people that she knows from when she was human that she will always know.
One Hundred and Eighteen
The Salvatore house looked the same. She'd called Damon to assure him that nothing horrible had befallen it since he'd been there five years ago. They got along, these days. She had decided the century mark was a good time to stop being actively angry about what he'd done to her when she was seventeen. She was surprised when he'd seemed relieved when she told him.
Caroline didn't mind that Mystic Falls looked nothing like it once had. She hadn't been back since her mother died and she hadn't missed it. She was walking through the center of town when she saw him, sitting on a bench and staring into space. She didn't hesitate to go and sit beside him.
"Hello, Caroline," he said, as if no time had passed since he'd seen her. She finally understood how, for him, maybe he had just seen her. What was a century to Klaus?
"Hi," she said softly. She could not seem to help smiling.
He turned to look at her, and, of course, he looked exactly as she remembered.
"Back visiting?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No one to visit here, anymore. I just wanted to stop by." She smiled, "also, the Salvatores like someone to look in on the house every few years and I, like, pulled the short straw. What are you doing here?"
He shrugged. "I haven't been here in a hundred years, love. I like to check in."
"Where are you going next?" she asked.
He seemed to consider for a moment, staring at her. She didn't look away. "I was thinking we might go to Jakarta," he said.
She smiled at him and reached for his hand. He was a true immortal and so, she thought, was she.
"I haven't been there yet," she said.