"How could you?" Elena cries in disbelief when she comes back to the boarding house to find Caroline still in the cell where Elijah had been kept. Caroline was too shaken by what she did to move. "You let him go and he almost killed Stefan." Elena's upset, and understandably so, for Elijah did go after Stefan, staking him just below the heart. "He threatened to take me away, lock me up somewhere until the sacrifice."
"I—I didn't have a choice," Caroline defends herself, slowly getting up off the cell floor. "He compelled me," she tells the brunette. Damon's standing behind Elena looking at Caroline with an expression she cannot place. Part anger and part understanding. It unnerves her.
In the end, Elena tells her she understands, apologizes for accusing her, but Caroline leaves in tears.
Caroline hates herself for what she did. She knows she betrayed them all, but what was she supposed to do? He didn't give her a choice. But she still feels guilty, and she hates herself for what she did.
-x-
He comes to her that night, tells her he likes her, that she's feisty, and thanks again. This time with a kiss.
She pulls away when she realizes what he's doing and tells him he can't do that. She says she can't betray everyone like that too.
He tells her she doesn't have to, that he'll go, but that she has to agree to see him again.
She glares. "Not in this lifetime," she says.
He leaves, and she wonders that that was about.
-x-
Two days later he's in her kitchen, helping her mother make dinner.
"What's he doing here?" she asks, not even bothering to hide her anger from her mother.
"Don't be hostile," Liz chastises her daughter. "Elijah's here researching Mystic Falls; Elena's aunt has been helping him."
She opens her mouth to say she knows who he is and that he is not here to research Mystic Falls, but she can't talk about vampire business with her mother so she stays quiet and goes back to her room to put on shoes.
"Where are you going?" her mother calls.
"Anywhere but here," she mumbles and hears Elijah's soft chuckle. To her mother she says, "Elena's; she's expecting me."
"Call Elena and tell her you can't make it, you're going to be nice even if it kills you, Caroline."
"Too bad I'm already dead," she mumbles, taking a seat.
"You could be deader," Elijah reminds her as he passes her the dinner rolls. Caroline glares at him briefly before taking one and giving the bowl to her mother.
She hates him. She absolutely detests him for making her betray her friends. Yet, somehow, by the end of the night, she finds herself talking pleasantly with him and her mother.
-x-
She goes to the Grill to speak to Matt but he's currently ignoring her, so she seats herself at the bar and orders soda after soda, determined to wait him out. Sometime after her fifth, Elijah seats himself next to her. She moves to get up, but he gives her a look and she changes her mind.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" she hisses.
"I like you Caroline," he tells her. "You intrigue me."
Caroline rolls her eyes. "Well, you don't intrigue me, and I'd rather you stayed far away from me. I've been down this road once before and I'm not going to be a willing participant this time."
He looks confused for a moment. "What is it you speak of?"
"I refuse to be some little puppet. Damon did it to me when I was human, and I will not let you do it to me again now, so please, stay the hell away from me."
She gets up and walks out, forgetting about Matt.
-x-
He's in her bedroom when she gets home from Elena's the next night.
"I don't want you to be a puppet," he says casually.
She crosses her arms over her chest. "Well then, what do you want?"
He shrugs. "Right now…you."
She hates him—she really, really hates him—but Tyler's gone and Matt's ignoring her and he's here. "Promise me," she whispers, and she curses herself for the vulnerable tone she's using and the way her hands are shaking at her sides. "No compulsion."
"No compulsion," he mumbles half a second before his lips connect with hers.
-x-
He allows her to hide it from her friends. He tells her it's because he can't be seen with her like he wishes anyway. The town would frown upon that, and if they looked too far into his background, they'd come up with quite a few holes and he can't have that. So he allows her to hate him and plot against him.
He says he's content with the little piece of her that he owns. And she hates that it's true.
There is a small piece of her that is his. A small piece of her that enjoys the way he is capable of making her feel, and the way he is completely honest with her.
But the piece that belongs to Elena is much stronger, and Elijah knows this.
-x-
One night, when they're laying beneath her cotton sheets, he tells her Klaus is coming and she immediately rolls over to pick up her phone and call Elena to warn her.
He stops her. "Don't," he says, looking in her eyes. It's not compulsion—he promised, and he always keeps his word—it's just a command that comes very close to a plea.
"Why?" she asks.
"I have a plan."
He doesn't say anything more as he gets out of bed. Before he leaves, he kisses her forehead.
She hates him for not telling her anything.
-x-
Klaus is dead and Elena's alive and Caroline's crying because Elijah is nowhere to be found. Bonnie and Stefan are with her, trying to get her to calm down, but the tears will not stop because she can't feel anything else right now. He made it possible for Elena to be alive and for that she forgives him for the betrayal he made her commit.
Through her sobs, she's trying to explain the story to them because they don't seem to know why Elijah betrayed Klaus and gave them time to stab him with the knife.
"I—I don't know—I suppose I was foolish enough to believe he did it for me because he—because I…" she tries to explain, but the words won't come out.
"You're not foolish, Caroline," a voice behind them says and Caroline stops crying immediately. In the next second, Stefan and Bonnie are watching in morbid fascination as Caroline runs to their one-time enemy.