Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just playing around so don't sue. Title is from Explosions in the Sky.
A/N: Caroline packs Tyler a bag and finds herself with two broken houseguests.
have you passed through this night
Carol's visitation is at the Lockwood mansion, which is kind of horrible, in Caroline's opinion, since Tyler still has to, you know, live here. Everyone's in black, there are mourners on the back lawn by the lake and she lost Tyler in the crowd a while back, but she's pretty sure he's avoiding her anyway.
She just can't do it, okay? Tyler's a walking zombie, Stefan's completely lost in his own head, Jeremy glares at all of them like he's plotting their slow and painful deaths—because he probably is, let's be real—and Elena keeps sneaking longing glances at freaking Damon, which Caroline can't even think about right now because no slash ew slash where is the brain bleach.
So when no one is looking, Caroline slips away and goes to Tyler's room to back him a bag. There are too many ghosts in this house—figuratively speaking, but God, with this awful town probably literally too. She refuses to let him stay here alone and there's seriously no way she's moving in here. Liz had taken the announcement that the Forbes family inn was expanding with surprisingly little argument, but Caroline thinks her mom's probably painfully aware that she's the only parent left now.
She dumps the contents of his t-shirt drawer into a duffel bag that smells absolutely rank and hauls it over her shoulder to peek out of his room. She watches as the black-clad figures walk solemnly around the foyer and when she spies an opening, she sneaks out the back to where her car is parked.
"Skipping out on the dear Mayor's visitation, are we?"
Caroline's spine snaps straight and she nearly yanks her door off of its hinges. "Come to see your handiwork in person?" She throws the bag in the backseat and turns to give Klaus her best glare because seriously, fuck this guy.
He has the nerve to look amused. "I don't need to see it in person, sweetheart. I was there, remember?"
Blood starts to roar in her ears. "Do I r–" she sputters furiously, unable to form complete sentences. He watches her with a half-smile on his face and it just confirms that he's a crazy person.
"Leave," she orders, crossing her arms and fully aware that she sounds like sullen teenager making demands of a parent. Whatever, she literally could not care less—not after what he's done. She takes aim—"Why don't you go where you're, you know, actually wanted?"—and fires. "Oh right. That's nowhere."
Something dark and scary flashes across his face and Caroline is fairly proud of herself for feeling only a small tremor of fear.
"You would best remember to whom you're speaking," he says dangerously and okay, now she's starting to get a little scared.
She hides it well. "I know exactly who I'm speaking to," she tosses back, slamming the car door and locking it before brushing past him without another glance.
... ... ...
"There's spaghetti in the fridge," Liz offers, hovering just outside of the spare bedroom awkwardly as Caroline sits on the edge of her bed, eying Tyler worriedly. "I shouldn't be at the station long."
Tyler is silent and Caroline shrugs weakly at Liz. "Thanks, Mom."
When the front door clicks shut quietly, Caroline pulls her legs up onto the bed so that she's sitting cross-legged in front of him. He hasn't moved since she led him into the house by the hand two hours earlier—she doesn't think he's even blinked.
"Tyler," she whispers, reaching her hand out to touch his face; and he stirs.
"Don't," is all he says, pulling away from her before reverting back into vacant staring. Caroline bites her lip and nods once before sliding off the bed, shutting her bedroom door behind her as she leaves.
... ... ...
She sweet-talks Stefan into going with her to pack up more of Tyler's stuff.
"He won't talk to me at all," she confides unhappily. The foyer to the Lockwood is starting to gather a thin layer of dust; it makes her nose itch as they climb the stairs together.
"You have to let him grieve," Stefan says sagely, and Caroline shoots him a no shit, Sherlock look. Because seriously, no shit, Sherlock.
"Well, duh," she says irritably. "It's not like I haven't done this before." She says it flippantly but there's more than a kernel of truth in there (there's mountains of it, in fact).
Tyler's room is unchanged from the way she left it and Stefan offers quietly, "You should get Matt to talk to him."
Caroline starts to take the sheets off the bed and Stefan goes to the other side to help her. "Matt's preoccupied," she says and it comes out more bitterly than she means for it to. "I mean he's been busy helping Jeremy." She pauses and wonders how she can un-bitchify everything she just said. "Which is good," is her lame attempt.
Stefan doesn't even seem to hear her, his eyes drifting to the placid lake. "What happens to this place?"
She shrugs, pulling dress shirts out of the closet and dropping them into a cardboard box. "I guess it's Tyler's now. But I dunno." And she doesn't—as far as any of them know, Mason was the only other Lockwood.
Stefan tears his eyes from the yard and helps her pack in silence.
... ... ...
They bury the Mayor the next day and it's the first time Tyler shows any signs of life. He's silent but he puts on his suit, ties his own tie and she thinks he's doing better than she was at this point when her father died. She tells him as much, hoping for a reaction—hoping that he'll just look at her—but he doesn't.
Caroline holds his hand at the cemetery and he lets her. His fingers grip hers tightly before he walks up to throw the first handful of dirt into the grave. When he comes back to stand beside her, he doesn't reach for her and she doesn't push it.
Instead she cries a little on Stefan's shoulder and pretends his arm around her is Tyler's.
... ... ...
It's been three days and Caroline curls herself around Tyler, her arms looped over his and her chin resting on his shoulder. He doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge her presence and she scoots a little closer, the big spoon to his little one.
"I love you," she whispers, pressing her nose into his shoulder blade. "You know that, right?"
He exhales heavily and she takes it to mean yes.
... ... ...
She drinks with Stefan on her couch and casts the occasional worried glance over her shoulder at her closed bedroom door.
"Okay, spit it out," he orders gently and Caroline blinks at him in confusion. "Don't give me that Scarlett O'Hara fake-out, Care, because I knew several of her and you're better than that. What's going on?"
She blinks again. "Scarlett O'Hara was fictional," she reminds him, wrinkling her nose. Stefan raises an eyebrow at her and she sighs deeply.
"Fine," she mumbles, pulling her legs underneath her and setting her glass down on the coffee table. "It's—it's Tyler."
"Could've guessed that," he says dryly.
"Do you…" she tugs on the stray ends of her hair nervously. "Do you think that I could have maybe, if I had tried—maybe I could have stopped it?"
"No," Stefan says immediately and the quickness of his response is comforting. "Look, Caroline, Klaus has some weird thing for you, but what happened wasn't about you, or me, or betrayal—it wasn't even totally about Tyler. It was about power." He pauses before adding lowly, "And about what happens when the powerful lose it."
It's relieving to hear but the ominous edge to his voice makes her sit up straighter. "Do you think Klaus is going to come after him?" Her voice is barely louder than a whisper.
Stefan stares down at the rug. "I don't know," he says finally, moving his wrist so that the ice in his glass skates around the edges. "It's hard to say with him, but I think for now…" he trails off and Caroline shivers slightly.
"I'm glad you're here," she tells him softly and the look he gives her is full of anguished gratitude.
Sometimes she forgets that he's just as self-loathing as she ever was.
... ... ...
There's a knock on the door and Caroline knows who it is before she goes to answer it. She shouldn't even open it, but in the back of her mind, she thinks of twelve hearts lying ripped open on the forest floor and has no doubt that if Klaus hadn't run into the Mayor first, it would be Tyler she's mourning.
Even though right now she's kind of mourning him regardless.
She swings the door open hard enough the hinges squeak in protest and she puts a finger to her lips even though Klaus hasn't made to speak. She walks outside like she expects him to follow her. And he does.
I'm a shitty, shitty girlfriend, she thinks miserably, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. My boyfriend is lying comatose in my bed and I'm—
They're halfway down the street before Caroline speaks to him.
"I don't know why I was surprised," she says flatly, her shoes rubbing together as her feet move restlessly. "Tigers, stripes, and all that."
He tilts his head at her. "You shouldn't have been surprised at all, love," he agrees gravely and oh there are so many things about him that piss her off.
"You can go right to hell, love," she snaps tiredly and he does actually look angry at that, but she doesn't give two shits what he's feeling. "You killed your own mother for God's sake, so it's no surprise you—"
"You know, sweetheart," he practically growls at her and she jumps, because she doesn't think he's used that tone with her since the night they almost killed Kol. "I have been very patient with you and it would do you well to remember that. You and your merry band of friends have tried to kill me more times than I can bloody count!"
Her blood is boiling in her veins; she wouldn't be surprised if he could hear it. "Oh yeah," she says sarcastically, hands going to her hips. "Make yourself the martyr, good job. It's all about you, isn't it, the world according Klaus, even though you destroyed all of our lives first and anyway aren't you like nine hundred and eighty-five years too old for this pity party?" She stops because she can feel herself toeing the fine line of hysterical with that run-on and the anger slips away as quickly as it had overtaken her.
"Not that you care," Caroline continues quietly, "but he won't even look at me." She bites her lip and looks away, arms returning to hug herself. "I think – I think he thinks I could have stopped it. Could have stopped you." Before Klaus can refute it she adds hurriedly, "I mean, it's total crap, but he – I don't think he can actually spend anymore anger on you and it has to go somewhere, right?"
And before Klaus can say anything—if he even wants to, which Caroline hopes not—she walks away from him and back inside her house.
She sleeps in her mother's bed.
... ... ...
At some point, the silence starts roaring in her ears and it kind of drives her crazy. When Caroline honestly can't stand it anymore, she pulls on a pair of ratty Chuck Taylors and an old Mystic Falls football sweatshirt that still smells a little like Matt Donovan. She doesn't tell Tyler that she's leaving, mostly because she's pretty sure he's in a waking coma like she saw on The X-Files once.
The only light outside beams down weakly from the street lamps and from the windows of her neighbors' houses. Caroline buries her hands in the front pouch of her sweatshirt and drags her feet a little, because she seriously has no destination in mind.
She may have nowhere she wants to end up, but her feet do and they lead her straight to the Gilbert front door. She blinks at the knocker before taking a deep breath and lifting the heavy handle.
Matt opens it and she starts talking before he can even open his mouth.
"Tyler really needs you right now, Matt, like maybe worse than in his whole life—like he won't even look at me and you're his best friend and his mom just—and you—"
Matt's jaw sets as he holds a hand up to stop the rest of the words from tumbling out of her mouth. "Okay," he says, pulling a coat on and walking through the doorway. She's kind of astonished it was that easy.
When she pulls him by the bicep into her room, Tyler actually looks up at him and Caroline tries very hard not to feel hurt by it. Healing is healing, right? She just wants her boyfriend to be whole again.
Then Matt and Tyler are bro-hugging and she quietly ducks out of the room, her heart stinging a little more than she would like to admit.
... ... ...
"Hey," Tyler says as she makes pancakes the next morning. She jumps as though she's been shot, her sudden movement spilling pancake batter on the stove. He winces and grabs a dishtowel. "Sorry."
She shakes her head immediately, grabbing his wrist. "It's okay," she says softly, and he just looks at her, his eyes so dark she could fall into them. "How are you, Tyler?"
He shrugs a little, not breaking her gaze. "Better." He reaches up and tucks a stray curl behind her ear. "Do you hate me?"
Her mouth drops open at that and she gapes at him like a fish on a hook because where the hell did that come from? "What? Tyler – of course not. I couldn't hate you. You –it's been tough, and I'm not –" She breaks off and shifts her eyes down to his chest as his arms wrap themselves around her waist. "Do you hate me?" His grip tightens slightly.
"I –" he stops and sighs, resting his forehead on hers. "No. No, Care." He kisses her forehead. "I love you."
The words wind themselves around her heart and her empty insides feel warm for the first time since – maybe even since before Hayley showed up. She gives him a small smile and he kisses her.
"You can stay here if you want," she tells him in a whisper, her ear pressing against his cheat. "You don't have to go back there."
His hand moves up and down her spine, his thumb stroking the bones of her vertebrae. "I know," he says and his voice rumbles a little in the ear she has resting over his heart. "I know."
... ... ...
end.
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