A/N: Koroline is my crackship. So forgive me if I'm super indulgent with certain things.
"What happened to your arm?"
The real story is hard to stomach, but Caroline can't tell anyone that someone ripped through her forearm with a two-by-four without raising alarms. It was really meant for her head, but she caught the shadowed reflection off the framed photos perched on her fireplace mantel just in time to turn around and shield herself. She remembers the crack of hard lumber splitting over the point of her elbow, the searing pain of sharp wood digging into her skin as it dragged all the way to the bone of her wrist.
It hurt like a bitch. She spent the next hour picking splinters out of her wounds, but not before remarking to her assailant about what a huge jerk he was; her cousin Mike, the ridiculously boneheaded highschool slacktivist, had been invited to stay for a few days by her mother. And no, the dweeb said he couldn't recognize her.
She had far ruder words for him sitting on the tip of her tongue, but she wanted to keep it classy.
Caroline looks at the scabs sheepishly. Her healing isn't kicking in fast enough for this, and there isn't nearly enough blood she could drink to make it go any faster. At least without overdosing on the stuff anyway. Even vampires need time, she supposes.
The yellow cardigan she donned should have covered it up, but she didn't realize that it wasn't opaque enough to hide the dark claw-like cuts until she met Elena by the quad. Always with the sharp eye, that girl.
"I fell down," Caroline tries to sound convincing about it. She swats Elena's hand away and hurriedly rolls her sleeve back down so as to not draw any more attention – the girls from Campus Security Femme can get a little aggressive with their activism. "Just an accident." She frowns for effect. "Seriously."
Elena clearly doesn't believe her, but what matters is that she stops asking about it.
"Look," she shows off the lightened scar. "All healed up." Another couple of hours and the marks will fade into nonexistence, thanks to the extra helping of platelets she sipped in the morning. Caroline doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.
"That's not the point," Bonnie says, with that reprimanding look she gives whenever Caroline graces trouble. "What if it was me waiting around in your house?"
"Well, it wasn't you, and trust me, I want him out of here more than anyone else." Caroline rolls her eyes. "I have to share a bathroom with him."
Her best friend shoots her a disapproving frown. "You know that it's the least of your problems, right?"
Caroline answers defensively. "You've never shared a bathroom with him."
And it's true, because he's the worst possible slob to live with. Doesn't put the seat back down. Uses her hand soap as body wash. Applies her ultra-hydrating moisturizer to the calluses of his feet. There's nothing more that she wants than to pull out his spine from the front but everyone will be jumping at her with their moral codes. Oh, Caroline, you can't, he's only an innocent human being! They all grow up! The police department does not condone murder, young lady!
Bonnie shakes her head, attributing Caroline's cousin woes to a case of minor territorialism, but still seeks confirmation that she's not in imminent danger. "Look, he may not be trying to kill you, but you have to tell your mom about what he did. You can always stay with me." This isn't comforting, but it's better than a recommendation to lock herself up in the old cellar hidden deep in the woods.
"Thanks for the offer," she says, "but I'm not about to leave my house full of luxury skincare alone with that monster."
"Don't hurt yourself," Bonnie replies, with just a little bit of sass. Caroline laughs and looks away.
Something odd falls into her line of sight. A figure, standing next to the lamppost a great distance away, somehow too still to be just a passing figment of her imagination and too out of place in the background scenery to ignore.
The hairs on the back of her neck rise at the possibility of being watched, but she isn't sure if it's just the psychology of being recently injured that's turning her slightly paranoid.
Whatever it is, the form disappears when she blinks, leaving nothing but an empty space where she thought she saw it staring.
"What?" Bonnie notices her sudden shift in mood.
Caroline chalks it up to a wild imagination paired with too much frustration over her cousin. "It's nothing," she half-assures, even though if it feels like something.
It comes out of nowhere.
First, she hears the air slicing with a swoosh. Then she looks down.
There's a bolt lodged in her gut.
The pain strikes her seconds later, and still astonished at the abruptness of it, she grits her teeth and extracts it from her body with both hands.
Caroline does a quick scan of her surroundings, but sees no one - she's alone in the gym, and it should be easy to catch the person doing this to her, given the lack of places a person can hide. But she can't detect any movement, even with the adrenaline kicking her senses into overdrive.
As sudden as the first, Caroline lets out a sharp cry that rings throughout the gym when the second quarrel pierces her shoulder from behind. She spins on her heel and spots him, leaping away with cat-like reflexes - Mike displays a great amount of fear and freezes in place after being seen.
Well this is awkward.
Nobody moves an inch or says anything, but there are definitely thoughts. For him, regretting being caught, and how he can save himself; for her, trying to come to grips with the fact that a member of the family has tried to murder her twice now. It doesn't look like he's going to stop anytime soon, either.
It's until she hears the nocking of a bow that she listens to her gut to flee. Not sparing another moment, Caroline speeds back home as quickly as she can to lock all the windows and doors in the house.
"Great," she mumbles to herself. With heavy feet, she clumsily makes her way to the refrigerator in the garage where rows of blood bags are piled on top of each other on every shelf. Taking in a lungful of icy air, she pulls the projectile from her body swiftly.
Ouch.
The bolt hits the ground with a clatter and Caroline slumps herself against the heavy frame, letting the wisps of cold air wrap around her body and soothe the open wounds.
Damn it. She's living under the same roof as a hunter. A slayer? Oh god, Mike is male Buffy. The first incident had not been as innocent a mistake as he'd made it seem.
That loser. Hunting her on her home turf.
She scoffs at the absurdity of the situation, snatching a bag of B+ from behind her head and taking a comforting bite. It may be cold, purified and clinical, but it still tastes of the life it once had been. The only thing that could top this would be if she sought it raw from the source.
Caroline tilts her head back and enjoys it to the last drop, letting it distract her from how pissed off she is over Mike's nosy antics. Then she reaches for a second helping.