"Grief is a Freight Train,
Oh what's a little pain
When you've got so much to Love."
Disheveled.
That's what he said, he said to look 'disheveled'.
And that, is why Caroline Forbes is shuffling bare feet across the city, her hands clutched to her chest for warmth.
He told her this was the only way, the only way for them to be together.
'You need to die, Caroline. You need to die so that you can begin to live.'
People give her odd looks, but nobody stops to ask. Nobody cares in the city, not really. She makes her way to the train station, the concrete steps icy beneath her feet. Maybe, she should have put shoes on. Maybe she should be at home in bed.
She wonders if Tyler has woken yet. If he's noticed that the spot next to him is cold, if he's reached for her in his sleep, but come up empty. She loves Tyler, and in return, he loves her.
Tyler loved Caroline before Caroline loved Caroline.
But she needs him.
'Come to me, love.'
She hears his voice like whispers when the winter air passes her, and she smiles, knowing she's so close.
Caroline is going to love him, and show him how to be loved, and he- he's going to save Caroline. She slides her ticket into the machine, and when the light flashes green, she passes through. More odd looks, but nobody stops to ask.
"I love you." She whispers, and she knows that he can hear her. He always hears her, when no one else did. She trips over her own feet, and a man stops, gripping her by the elbow so that she doesn't fall to the ground. He's tall, broad, with dark hair, and piercing green eyes. He stares at her, intense and brooding, and she thinks that maybe, he can see the chaotic mess in her eyes, that maybe he'll notice what she's about to do.
He smiles at her, an oddly tragic smile, and let's her go, passing her by.
She wonders if he saw, if he cared, or if he understood, but no one would ever understand it, understand him.
How does she begin to explain it to anyone? That he came to her in a dream. She was eighteen, and still attending therapy sessions. She'd been diagnosed with anorexia at sixteen, although Caroline had been positive that it wasn't a problem, but it was. The food, her weight- it was an obsession with perfection, about not being able to control about how everyone felt about her.
She'd made a healthy recovery, and saw her therapist regularly, along with his other patient, Tyler.
Tyler went to her school, and had always seemed like something of a dick, then she'd found out about his damages, about his dad, and then, he hadn't seemed so bad.
She'd began dating Tyler, much to her mother's joy. It seemed like Caroline was finally going to have a normal life again, but she still couldn't escape it. It was like she'd been branded, anorexic. People whispered, looked at her with sympathetic eyes, constantly watched what she ate.
It was the night before her graduation, that she had dreamed of him.
He told her about foreign cities, countries, and continents. He told her about the world, and how she could do more than read about it in a book.
Three weeks later, she dreams of him again. It wasn't long before he began appearing to her even when she wasn't asleep. He'd be standing in the street when she walked to work, he'd sit on the end of the couch with her feet in his lap as she tried to take a nap, he'd sit across from her and Tyler in a restaurant.
And so, five years, and one college degree later, here she was.
Caroline Forbes, twenty three, teen beauty queen, control freak, standing in a train station in her bare feet, waiting for the 9:23 train to pass through.
"I'm going to be waiting for you at the other side." She hears, and cannot help but smile.
As the clock strikes 9:21, her hands begin to shake. She tries to take deep breaths, in through her nose, and out through her mouth. It sort of works, till she starts crying. A couple of people stop to stare. Most people are waiting for the 9:26 train to the outskirts. They're waiting for the train just like she is.
They are going home.
She is going home.
9:22
For a split second, Caroline thinks she can smell freshly cut grass and- the train blows it's horn to signal it's arrival, Caroline closes her eyes, and steps forward- and spring flowers. She can smell primroses, freshly made lemonade- she can hear her grandfather telling a dirty joke to her father, something at the time she didn't understand, she later re-told it at school and was put in a time out. She can see her mother excusing herself to go cry in the car, her grandmother tells her son how proud she is that he's got the perfect family.
She can hear the beat of grandfathers heart, as she sits swinging her legs on her his knee as he traces letters on her back.
She can hear Klaus's heart beat, as he drums his fingers across her naked sides, telling her how good she is.
She can hear her heart beat, as she takes one step then two, the train horn screeching, and then she's falling, and suddenly-
there is no sound, not even the beat of her own heart.