x
Most little girls want to be fairies or princesses or mermaids when they grow up. When Caroline was little, the only thing she wanted to be when she grew up was Elena.
Caroline was cursed with wavy blonde locks of hair that fell sloppily around her neck and those stupidly blue eyes and that ivory skin where you could always tell that she was blushing in her cheeks. She didn't have a pretty straight curtain of chestnut hair that laid with ease on her shoulders or chocolate colored eyes or lovely olive skin. She didn't crinkle her nose when she laughed and she didn't walk gracefully on her toes, instead she snorted like a hyena and tripped over flat surfaces scuffing her messy pink toenails. She didn't whisper delicately, but boomed out her words with fumbled insecurity of their veracity.
Caroline had always wanted to be like Elena: beautiful, graceful, soft spoken. But she wasn't at all.
x
People didn't like Caroline very much besides Elena or Bonnie and even still, somedays, they didn't like her that much.
There was Damon. You are the only stupid thing here. And shallow. And useless.
There was Tyler. She's an insecure neurotic bitchy little twit.
There was Stefan. You and me, Caroline, it's not gonna happen.
There was Matt. I don't like you.
There was Bonnie. You don't even understand, and why would you?
There was Elena. Who said nothing but the way she looked Caroline was everything wrong with her.
x
And then came along Katherine Pierce who had Elena's face before Elena did, but she was nothing like her, and Caroline kind of loved and hated her for it.
The bitch stuck a pillow so far down her throat that Caroline choked on it and woke up wishing to suckle on the veins of the nurse in her hospital bed.
And she was not Caroline anymore. And she wasn't Elena. She was a goddamn abomination.
x
The first time she tasted blood, it was cold and murky and disgustingly satisfying, and the second time it is hot and pumping and so orgasmic that she almost forgets to stop herself until she feels someone's hands on her shoulders and feels the dried liquid on the swish of a gold curl and tastes the coppery felt on her tongue.
She knows that it shouldn't feel so natural, but for the first time in seventeen years, she is finally starting to feel comfortable in her own skin. And for some reason, she is actually not feeling that fucking guilty about it.
x
She is still flawed, forever cursed with that damn blonde mop of waves and stung permanently with the ivory cheeks, those blessed blue eyes, and will never ever be graceful or lithe like Elena, and some days she really hates that.
But on other days, it doesn't matter so much. On other days, she doesn't have to apply foundation or eyeshadow and she doesn't have to worry about eating everything on the fried foods list at the grille and she won't ever need to shyly ask the clerk at the CVS for her birth control ever again. On those days, she feels like the fuckin' queen of the world. Because she is something that Elena will never be:
ageless, strong, fearless.
x
There is a boy. (There's always a boy.)
First his name is Stefan, then it's Damon, then it's Matt, then it's Tyler. All of them boys with brilliant eyes and sparking grins and beautiful bodies and warm souls even if they keep them hidden away from time to time. Each is lovely and respectable in their own manner of speaking. Each gives her that pulse of blood in her non-existent beating heart and pumping veins.
Stefan is the breathtaking stranger that appears out of thin air, like a modern day fucking Darcy.
Damon is sin, lustful and dizzying and all the bad things in life that a good girl wants but isn't supposed to.
Matt is innocence and humanity and all the world that reminds Caroline of what she could have been, who she could have been.
Tyler is all — consuming passion and hope and that one true love that she thinks and giggles in her bedroom with Elena and Bonnie about forever, until one day he isn't anymore.
There is always a boy. And then there is a man. And he messes everything, and she means everything, up.
x
Niklaus Mikaelson comes to her as Klaus the day of her eighteenth human birthday. He is so beautiful that it makes her angry because his only goal that day was to have her killed and yet he has the audacity to show up in her room looking eternally handsome and irritatingly so. Then to top it all off he is kind and soft spoken and genuine, and she wonders how many faces the devil can possibly have and if she is so easily tricked, then she can see why the world bows before his feet in homage.
All these people in all these centuries had been doing his bidding for so long, and still they continued to flinch at the sound of the syllables of his name.
x
Here is why he messes everything up.
Klaus is a monster, an abomination, the devil in disguise. Or so she is told.
All Caroline sees is a young man that asks her to dance, asks her to look at his paintings, asks her to tell him about her time and time again, asks her to run away with him. And she remembers being small and not wanting to be a princess or a queen or a mermaid or anything else but a girl with a stolen face and remembered olive skin and cocoa eyes, and Klaus doesn't know nor does he care about those things because he doesn't even want her to be any of them. He just wants her.
That fact blinds all around her out of focus.
x
You're beautiful, you're strong, you're full of light, I enjoy you, perhaps one day, it was all for you, I intend to be your last he tells her in whispered sounds from cherried lips. He doesn't look away or appear embarrassed or even doesn't expect any answer in return.
She realizes that this is what truth sounds like.
x
When he leaves Virginia, the news echoes out like a gunshot and the wound seeps and makes a blooming furl of crimson in a way that she doesn't quite understand herself because they are free and Klaus is gone and we can live our lives again and Tyler can return, but all that she really hears is the notion that he is gone. It unsettles her more than she'd like to admit.
Because for the first time since she could recall, she was perfectly fine with being Caroline.
Caroline is beautiful with her golden curls and her shocking baby blue eyes and her ivory skin that is gorgeously tinted in the apples of her cheeks with a fading blush. Caroline is strong and fierce and a force to be reckoned with, especially if you insult or injure her friends or her mother or her goddamn decorated gymnasium that she spent twelve hours perfecting for the winter formal. Caroline is not afraid of anything or anyone and she will survive even til the brink of death just to prove that she can. Caroline is graceful and wonderful in the way that she catapults into everyone's arms and Caroline is always heard, considered when her voice shakes the space around her.
Caroline is not Elena. And she is more than fine with it. When she grows up, if she grows up, she will be herself. Not a fairy or a princess or a mermaid. Unless you know, she gets a crown or something.
x
Klaus is a man, yes, and more importantly than that, he is the resurrection that she never saw coming. But even more integral than that, there are sighs that she had wished he heard each time he stole away a piece of something she didn't think she needed but had the whole time.
You're strong you're beautiful you're full of light I enjoy you, he had told her. You're gorgeous and a desperate wreck and look amazing in that tuxedo, her eyes had burned him.
Take a chance, he had begged. I would, maybe in another life, she had thought.
Perhaps one day, he had whispered. Where to, she had silently questioned.
You're safe it's me you're safe, he had choked. I knew it'd be you, she had left in his wake.
If Tyler was still sired to me, he wouldn't have hurt you. I wouldn't have let him, he had commanded. I know, she had forgiven.
It was all for you, he had said, desperation cracking in his tone. Don't leave, she had begged internally.
What are you afraid of, he had cried out. What we could be, she had shouted in her head.
I intend to be your last, he had confessed. You're my first, she had grinned.
x
I'm scared as hell to want you, but here I am, wanting you anyway.