Time skip because yeah. Same as always, I own nothing.


"Stefan."

He was jolted out of his slumber, turning his head towards the heavy iron door. Caroline was calling for him, he didn't know why. She hadn't spoken to him in two months. It had been a year since he put her in there, and he would only give her blood once every six months. Even then it was animal blood. She sounded so weak, so vulnerable. He felt guilty, a rock weighing his stomach down every time she spoke to him. She told him she refused to talk until he let her out. He was wary, but also curious. He stood and walked to the door.

"Stefan, I feel like I'm dead." he heard her whisper, and he instantly felt like opening the door, letting her out. But he couldn't. He remembered that feeling all too well, though. The empty feeling all over, not just in the stomach, but in the head. Cloudy vision, virtually indifferent to everything, even death.

"I know, Care." he murmured back, almost grabbing the bars of the door before remembering they were vervained. He looked at her through them, sitting on the floor with her legs to the side, hands trying to clench the concrete ground. Her head was hung, her hair shielding her face like a curtain.

"I'm a monster." She all but breathed the three words, barely audible, even to Stefan's vampire ears. He was jolted back to the first time she killed a man, the carnival worker. Damon almost staked her, but Elena jumped in front of her before he could. She said the same thing to him in the bathroom after when he was cleaning her up. He tried to be her tether to sanity then, and he wanted to do the same now, just open the door and hold her until she came to her senses.

"You're not a monster, Caroline. You're strong. You'll get through this." He heard a humorless bark of laughter at that and she raised her eyes, and he recognized the starvation he remembered Katherine had when they locked her in the tomb. Pale skin, light as paper. Red, bloodshot eyes, as if she smelled blood all the time.

"Do I look strong to you, Stefan? I feel like a human." she spat the word out as if it were poison and he gave a soft sigh. She was nowhere near ready. He once said Caroline was a genius with self control, but she had obviously lost it all. She hadn't changed at all, it seemed. She only realized what was going on within her. She still saw humans as snacks, not real beings, people with friends and families. Her humanity was still switched off.

"If I could compel your humanity back on, I would." he muttered to himself, remembering how Klaus forced him to turn his off. Maybe if he could find Klaus, he would be able to turn Caroline's back on. He doubted Klaus liked her like this. Wasn't that why he had originally liked her? She was bright, a star in a bleak existence. The one sure bright spot in everyone's life.

"He's dead, Stefan. Daggered, chained at the bottom of the ocean." Caroline piped up with a self-satisfied chuckle. "I got my revenge, you know. Rebekah and I both. He killed everyone I cared about and left her daggered in a box. We returned the favor as well as we could."

She sounded so proud, so much like Damon or Katherine would have. Not exactly who she should have been sounding like, which was self-confident, caring, bubbly Caroline, the living Barbie doll. Stefan sat back down and lowered his head into his hands. He would have to do this the old fashioned way.