The years fly by and Elena and Damon have long since given in to the reality that Stefan is well and truly off the map, as it were, and have settled into a cozy life in a small town in Georgia running a bar. Bonnie and Jeremy left to go searching for answers to both Bonnie's heritage and Jeremy's seeing ghosts problem, and Tyler contacted a werewolf he knew in Florida. She turns twenty one and still has the face of a barely-legal (as Damon puts it). It is painfully obvious that she cannot stay in Mystic Falls for Caroline doesn't know how to move on.
She moves into the boarding house the year she tells her mother she's leaving Mystic Falls. She gets twenty three miles out of town before she realizes she has nowhere to go and turns right around again. Outwardly, the boarding house appears to be empty, taken care of by Alaric Saltzman and a redhead while the Salvatores are out of town. Caroline keeps the red hair because it helps her distance herself from her pre-supernatural life.
She sleeps in Stefan's old room because she refuses to sleep in a guest bedroom. Of course, there was the option of the much larger, more decadent elder Salvatore's bedroom; but Caroline, despite being friends with her vamp-daddy (as she often teases), she cannot help but associate Damon and beds with anything other than sex games and mind games and all that Caroline has vowed never to be again.
There is a large supply of blood bags in the basement and Alaric stops by every now and again to keep her company. Alaric calls Damon up when he knows Caroline's running low, and in a few days, Damon and Elena stop by with a large van full of coolers for her.
It is a lonely life, but the time passes and she is hardly aware of the years that slip by without her knowledge. All of a sudden she is twenty seven and one day she wakes up to find Stefan staring at her. His shirt is soaked with blood—human, she knows by the smell—and there is a manic expression in his eyes.
Caroline doesn't ask what happened, for that much she knows; and Stefan doesn't ask either, and she supposes he can guess.
She springs up and latches on to him and tells him that she missed him and he wraps his arms around her after a moment's hesitation. She cries and while he doesn't, she gets the feeling that he wants to.
Not long after, he asks her to lock him in the basement and help him readjust to animals. "I can't be his ripper anymore, Caroline," he pleads, and something in her breaks at his words.
She does as he asks, and it takes a few months—months in which she has no contact with anyone else; not Alaric, not Damon, not even Elena—but she does get him back on animal blood.
The night he is finally free of the basement, he catches her in the process of moving out of his room. "You don't have to leave," he whispers. "It would be alright if you stayed."
Caroline shakes her head, refusing to be that girl, although she only moves to the bedroom across the hall.
Caroline finally calls Damon and Elena, who come back at the news.
Stefan masks his hurt at seeing their closeness, and Caroline winces for him at each tender touch and each subtle (but not subtle enough) catching of the other's eyes. Caroline is all too familiar with being pushed out of someone's life and knows just how much this is hurting Stefan.
Damon and Elena leave that night and Stefan locks himself up in his room. Caroline goes to check on him before she goes to sleep herself.
"I knew it was ridiculous," he tells her like he's telling her a secret, "but I had hoped that when I came back everything would just be the way it was before. That we could all just pretend to be who we once were and everything would be fine; but nothing's the same. Even your hair has changed."
Caroline laughs wryly and moves to sit beside him on his bed, one she had slept in for years. "Not everything has changed," she whispers after a moment. "I'm still your friend."