Luludancing asked - Caroline feels like she is losing her identity to the man she is with - either Elijah and Klaus.
Lol I chose Elijah!
She had always hated nicknames.
Whether it was Elena's playful Care bear, or Bonnie's sweet Lina, or Matt's exasperated 'Dammit Caroline', Damon's snide 'Vampire Barbie', Stefan's 'Caa-roline', Rebekah's spiteful 'The other blonde' or Kol's brotherly 'Goldilocks'.
But she could deal with these names, she would even call herself that over the other names that had been bestowed on her in the years since her departure from Mystic Falls.
Mrs Favorite original, Original Barbie, She nobleman.
These were the nicknames she despised.
Why? All the other names were after her, Caroline Forbes and her alone. But all these, they were after them, the people she was with.
The man she was with.
The original defined her now, everywhere she went, everyone she met, anyone she spoke to, the fact that she belonged to him steered everything in her life.
There wasn't a time that he wasn't mentioned or referred in any conversation of hers.
She was nothing without him.
She was Elijah's Caroline first and then her own Caroline.
She was lost.
Lost within herself, within her own life.
She lost herself in him and she had no idea how to find herself.
How do you find yourself when you've already gained everything you ever wanted?
She had traveled the world, seen its beauty and its tragedy, she had fallen in love, she was still in love, she had a family, she had laughed and cried and screamed and giggled to her heart's content.
All courtesy Elijah.
Her family was his family.
Then what was hers?
What in these 50 years of existence could she show as hers?
Painfully, she realized that she had no life, nothing absolutely nothing without Elijah.
And that was a scary thought.
"Who am I?" she whispered to herself, but knowing full well that the all powerful original would hear her.
Elijah stilled in his movement of unbuttoning his shirt as he surveyed her peculiarly in the mirror.
"Did you and Kol have a fight again?" he asked amused and she rolled her eyes.
Her and Kol's fights usually ended in one of their heads being bashed into the wall... hard. One day she actually did a Klaus and threatened to dagger him.
"No" she said seriously getting off their bed and wringing her hands together nervously.
"I am nothing without you" she said softly and he turned to look at her, confusion clear on his face as he pulled on his night shirt.
"That's very heartwarming sweetheart" he responded sincerely
"You don't understand" she hissed, angry at him for not understanding, for not seeing what she had finally seen.
His greatest strength was that he understood her inside and out.
He only shook his head dazedly, silently asking her to continue.
"If one day I don't have you... I'll be all alone. I am not Caroline Forbes anymore; I am Elijah's Caroline, Rebekah's frenemy, Kol's sister, Klaus's friend... what will I be without you?"
And now he was worried. The worrisome crease dominant on his sharp forehead as his steel eyes desperately searched her blue orbs for some relief.
"Why do you have to be without me?" he countered, his manufactured stoic voice flailing at the mere thought.
"That's not what I mean; even in our doomed infinity Elijah nothing is certain. My life is about, around and for you and it scares me" she confessed teary-eyed.
It scared him too.
"Shouldn't I be something, someone without you? Just on my own?" she asked hesitantly pleading him to see her point of view "I am lost, and I don't know where or how I lost myself. If I keep binding everything I have left to you I will never find myself"
"What are you saying?" he asked hoarsely "Are you leaving me?"
"No" she said instantly "I'm not leaving you, I will never leave you. I'm just leaving for a while, like a sabbatical. And one day when I find a little bit of what I lost along the way I'll come back to you. I promise"
All other words abandoned him as he whispered "I will wait for you"
She smiled that same smile that set his frigid heart on fire and kissed him lightly before she left.
She needed to find herself.
He needed to let her.
But the one thing she didn't seem to realize was that Elijah was no different than her.
He lost himself in her too.
His life was about, around and for her. She was everything.
And his everything was leaving him.
He could only hope that the lost Caroline still had a place for him in her life.