"You're leaving?" she asks sadly, her tone the only allusion to her feelings on the matter. Like always, Caroline doesn't beat around the bush, but for the first time, Elijah isn't grateful for this quality of hers. He nods slowly, not looking at her.

"I never said we were going to be forever," he reminds her, although the words are only a cover to mask the truth of his departure.

Caroline sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed, beside his suitcase. Elijah watches her carefully, something he has done from the moment he met her so many years before.

"You could have told me," she tells him. "I would have understood."

"I didn't want you to think it was your fault," he says. "I wanted to leave without you knowing so you could hate me."

A small smile tugs at the corners of her lips. "Don't you know by now that I could never hate you?"

He shrugs, tries to forget those words. "You'll learn to."

She doesn't deny the charge.

-x-

"You know I'd come with you," she says as she helps him carry his suitcases to the cab outside their house.

He looks at her incredulously.

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Don't think I don't know that you want to go as much as I want you to go." She looks directly into his eyes for a moment, "You're protecting me."

There's a bitterness there that hurts as he takes another step forward. He doesn't look at her as he speaks. "It has been too long," he tells her. "There's an old promise I have long kept from fulfilling."

Caroline knows of that which he speaks and he catches the sadness in her eyes at the memories of her past and his part in Klaus's continued reign. "My offer still stands."

-x-

"This isn't forever," she announces as the cab driver loads his suitcases in the trunk.

Her optimism astounds him. "I might not survive this time," he reminds her. "I don't have you to pull out the dagger."

"I know," she whispers, and it feels like the dagger is being plunged into his chest when he sees the tears fall down her face. "But you'll come back," she continues. He hears her voice break. "You wouldn't leave me alone forever."

He pulls her close and soothes her for a moment. He has always hated seeing her cry. "I love you," he whispers against her skin. "Don't you ever think for a moment that it isn't so."

He kisses her one last time before he gets into the cab. It is not an ending, he tells himself; it is a reason to survive.

A reason to come home.