I Used to Live Alone Before I Knew You
One of the first things that Caroline learned after being turned was that being a vampire was a lonely thing, almost cripplingly so.
(Vampires had the market cornered on 'Lone Wolf Syndrome' despite the wolves being around first from what she'd heard.)
The day after her visit to the cemetary she is back, with another bouquet. This time, though, they are tigerlilies, because, though she enjoyed the gesture when a boy would fuss over her and bring her roses, few knew that to truly impress one Elena Gilbert, you'd best come bearing spotted tigerlilies and deep fried oreos.
(Elena couldn't eat deep fried oreos anymore but Caroline munched from the package as she sat cross legged in jeans and a navy blue long sleeved shirt that she'd stolen from Damon's closet.)
"Hey, Elena, it's me! Caroline!" she begins cheerily, setting the lilies on top of the headstone that told her that Elena's last name was no longer Gilbert but Honeycutt. "But you probably knew that already." Caroline continues awkwardly, going off into telling Elena what she'd been doing the last one hundred and fifty years and getting so distracted that she doesn't notice Jeremy standing in the shadows of the old church, smiling gently at her.
The next week is filled with cemetary visits and library visits and visits to the Town Hall to get caught up on her history.
Apparently, Elena had gone to college at Yale, dropped out and went on to become a vet before marrying her college sweet heart, Ibrahim Honeycutt. The couple had three children, twin boys named Jensen and Johnathan and a girl named Caroline Rose.
Her own father had gone on to surrogate and had a son he named Shiloh, who grew up to marry Bonnie's daughter, Adeline.
Adeline and Shiloh Forbes were Jane Sheila Bennet's parents, calling her Janie, a nickname that stuck with her for her entire life. Janie took her mother's maiden name after a particularly bad falling out with her parents and she moved in with Bonnie.
Carol Lockwood died at the ripe old age of ninety three, finally having lost a long-standing battle with a mysterious disease no one could understand but was classified as cardiomyopathy.
Matt married a girl from out of state and went back to live in Wisconsin where she was born. (Caroline didn't blame him for fleeing Mystic Falls. She would be a hypocrite if she did.)
Her name was Kaitlyn Grossman now Donovan and they had a bouncing baby girl they decided to name Victoria. They called her Tori for short and she died shortly after her fifteenth birthday in a bad car accident that left Matt in a vegetative state and his wife and daughter in the ground. (Caroline made a note to visit Wisconsin soon. He was her first real love. She decided that would sing The Bangles in memoriam.)
Ric spent some time at the Salvatore Boarding House, acting as a caretaker there for eight years before he simply vanished. No one had seen him since. (A thought niggled in the back of her mind regarding Damon and his unnatural obsession with Mr. Saltzman while they still lived in town and she couldn't help but wonder if Ric was out there somewhere, living it up with a Salvatore brother of his very own.)
She wound up at the Grill in the same booth that Jeremy had led her to the day she returned, bourbon in her hand and Jeremy's journal sitting before her on the table.
(It wasn't time yet. It couldn't be. Not yet.)
She downed the bourbon, grabbed the journal and went to visit Janie Bennet.
"Yes?" Janie asked as Caroline stood at her door, the same door where Bonnie used to live, unable to cross the threshold.
"Can I come in, please?" Caroline pleaded, lifting the journal and waving it in front of Janie's face. The girl remained unmoved.
"No." Janie said definitely, closing the door behind her as she exited the house and moved to the patio furniture.
"Why not?" Caroline asked, slightly offended. (It wasn't like she was going to kill anyone in the house.)
"Because, Miss Forbes, whether or not you refuse to acknowledge it fully, you are a vampire. You are a killer and I don't allow people like you into my home, regardless of whether or not you are one of my grandmother's best friends. She was weak when it came to you in particular. I am not so inclined." Janie said as Caroline sat in the chair across from her. The smug look from before was replaced with one of seriousness that Caroline feared.
"I haven't killed anyone in years. I wouldn't." Caroline protested and Janie shook her head.
"You misunderstand me, Miss Forbes. I will not let you into my home not because I dislike you but because I don't trust your nature. There will always be that underlying thing that doesn't care about anyone or anything except the blood. You will always have the monster inside of you, rather like Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Jeremy." Janie explained, turning her head slightly in question. "You haven't read Mr. Jeremy's journal yet, have you? It's very informative for someone like you."
"Someone like me."
"Gone a long time, Miss Forbes." Janie said, cocking an eyebrow at Caroline's dismissive tone. She rose from the patio furniture and brushed her hands on her apron. "Miss Forbes, I can't help you with what you came here for. I'm sorry."
Caroline huffs at Janie's apology and is halfway down the walkway before she hears Janie's voice again.
"I can help you in another way, if you'd like. But it's dangerous."
Caroline turns on the walkway and stares at Janie's still form, hand resting on the beam framing the stairs. (She didn't notice until now that the Bennet house was no longer white but a faded red, like dried blood.)
Caroline knows that Tyler and Jeremy both know that she's there, watching them on their pseudo-date at the Grill.
They flirt while playing pool, Jeremy curling behind Tyler's form playfully to help him shoot better even though Caroline knows for a fact that Tyler is a master player at the tablegame. Tyler turns his head and buries his face in Jeremy's neck even as the pole slides through his fingers and the red striped ball goes bouncing off the table in her direction.
The ball rolls slowly and stops when it hits her foot under the table.
Jeremy and Tyler stare at her as she reaches down to pick it up and set it on the table, playing with it with the tips of her fingers as Jeremy leans down to murmur something in Tyler's ear that she doesn't catch.
"Wanna play?" Tyler's voice breaks through her silence and she turns to glance at him before turning back to the ball.
"Sit." she says and Tyler is across from her in a heartbeat, a desperate look plastered across his eighteen year old face as she studies it. "Even in death you're older than me." she murmurs, rolling the ball across the table into Tyler's waiting palms.
"But you're still prettier." he shoots back with a cocky, hesitant smile and a smile of her own tugs at Caroline's mouth.
"And less of a kiddie pool." she mutters and Tyler's brows knot in confusion. "Right. Wrong boyfriend. That was the human one. Sorry."
"Caroline, why did you leave?" Tyler asks and the silent 'Why did you leave me?' hangs in the air between them.
"Because I broke my promise." she whispers, leaning back away from the table, watching as Tyler struggles to figure out what she's talking about.
She sees the light dawn in his eyes suddenly as his brow smooths out and he reaches for her hand across the table. She pulls them back and hides them under the wooden structure. He leaves his stretched across the table.
"Caroline, I-"
"I hated you." she interrupts, the table creaking as Tyler's hands grip it. "I hated you, Tyler, for everything you did."
"I hated myself." Tyler says, voice thick with regret. (There's that word again, that feeling.) "I couldn't control myself, Caroline. And I know that's no excuse but it's the only one that I can come up with."
"Janie's going to show me the journal." Caroline said evenly and Tyler's head popped up from where it had rested on the table.
"What?" he asked and Caroline stood, shaking her hair out.
"Janie's going to show me Jeremy's journal. In living color." she says and suddenly Jeremy is at the table, too, asking her what she means. "She's got a spell that can send me into the journal and experience it firsthand."
"It's too dangerous Caroline. Please." Jeremy begs, grabbing her hands in desperation. She sees Tyler's brows furrow at this in the edge of her vision.
"I'm going to do it regardless, Jeremy. You can come with me and help or you can sit around and wonder." she huffs, dropping Jeremy's hands and sweeping out of the Grill like a hurricane.
What she failed to mention was that Janie's spell is unstable and that she might not come back. That if she dies in the journal, she might die in real life.
(She might be okay with this.)
Caroline spends the next week exploring the Boarding House. (How she never knew there was this much space amazes her.)
She reads a quarter of Damon's massive library and most of Stefan's journals, avoiding her own as she does so.
She comes across a few more of Jeremy's journals, but they are so confusing without her having read that first one that she gives up after the first journal with a sigh.
The day before the ritual, Caroline decides that, if she survives, she will enroll in Mystic Falls High School once more. Maybe she can coerce Jeremy and Tyler into it as well.
The day of the ritual arrives and Caroline(and Jeremy and Tyler) show up on Janie's doorstep and the witch directs them to her backyard, where she says the ritual will take place.
(They can go around the side of the house, thank you very much. Watch out for the vervain bush and the wolfsbane vine and don't you step in my Black Magic rose bush!)
There is a fire and chanting and Janie reaches for Caroline's hand, slicing her palm so that her blood-that-hasn't-been-her-blood-for-years slips out and slidestricklesdrops into the bowl of water laced with other smelly things that Caroline doesn't want to remember the name of.
There is more chanting as she waits for her hand to heal, confused when it doesn't.
(That's when the fire beneath her skin starts.)
Caroline's eyes snap shut and she screams.