So sorry everyone! I said I was going to update yesterday, but the site was being weird so I couldn't.

But here we are, the final chapter, I'll just let you guys read and say my bit at the end :)

Caroline saw Klaus's face flash in front of her and then the burning all over her body. She felt and heard nothing but fire. Why wouldn't he make it stop? Couldn't he hear her screams? Something was burning her, she felt like she was going to die. Then slowly the burning stopped. It left her feet then legs then arms and then her chest. Then blackness, nothing. She couldn't open her eyes or move at all. Was Klaus still there? She tried to say his name, but her lips wouldn't form the word. Everything sounded far away, like she was underwater, until she drifted off into further into nothingness.

"Caroline."

Suddenly her eyes opened, blinded by a bright light. The fog in her head lifted and everything came into focus. She was lying on her back, looking up, at the last face she expected to see.

"Good to see you again Barbie," Damon Salvatore's crystal blue eyes looked down on her, a small smirk dancing on his lips.

"Caroline, you're awake!" She heard Elena from across the room.

Her friend pushed Damon out of the way and came to her side. Caroline tried to push herself off the bed but found she couldn't.

"Why can't I move?" Caroline croaked out.

"Atrohpy," Damon replied pouring something in a sippy cup and walking back to the bedside. "You've been out for almost four days."

As Damon spoke, Elena helped Caroline into a sitting position. Caroline noticed that she was in one of the Salvatore's guest bedrooms. It was morning, or daytime at least. Someone had changed her into a pair of her own pajamas, she hoped to god that it had been Elena and not Damon.

"What happened?"

"Well, the story we heard was you were stabbed with a white ash dagger while trying to rescue Klaus," Elena explained. Caroline remembered, she remembered the feel of something bursting through her and falling to her knees. Elena continued, "your blood had to be drain out of your body and then you had to drink Damon's blood and basically reincarnate. I'm not sure how it works, some witch explained it to us over the phone."

"It was touch and go for a while," Damon added handing Caroline the cup, she took it and position the straw at her mouth.

"What is this?" Caroline asked. She could smell that it was blood, but it smelled different; less sweet, more bitter.

"My blood," Damon replied. Caroline looked at him questioningly. "That's the small caveat of this whole ordeal. You have to feed from me roughly every 72 hours or else the poison in your system will start growing again and kill you."

Caroline frowned. Great. Now she really was bonded to Damon for all eternity.

"And don't worry," he continued, "your boyfriend took some drastic measures to make sure that I would live up to my half of this bargain for all eternity. Looks like you and I are going to be adding a whole new meaning to the term BFFL."

Elena passed Caroline a knowing look, Caroline just rolled her eyes. Then she suddenly realized what, or rather who, was missing.

"Where's Klaus?" Caroline asked.

Elena cast a silent look at Damon, who shrugged and turned toward the door, leaving the two girls alone. A feeling a dread came over Caroline. What was going on that she didn't know about?

"Nothing bad Caroline," Caroline must have been making a worried face that she didn't realize she had been making, "just—Damon wouldn't let him in the house. Can you blame him?"

Caroline snorted. "No, I guess not." She took another large sip from the cup. Damon's blood wasn't nearly as good as human blood, but it wasn't awful. Maybe it was just an acquired taste, like the man himself.

"He's outside though, just below your window. He's been there all day for the past four days," Elena told her. Caroline wished she had the strength to go over to the window and see for herself that he was really there.

"You know Car, I wasn't sure about this whole Klaus thing, especially not when you ran off to New York to go save him. As soon as you left I ran and told Damon and tried to get him to go after you. But he wouldn't and we got into this huge fight. But when Klaus brought you here, seeing you in his arms, the look on his face—Damon gets that look sometimes. I can't explain it, it's just this weirdly hopeless look. Even when he tells me he loves me, he still looks like that sometimes. That's the look Klaus had."

Elena got up then and went over to the door, leaving Caroline alone in the bed with her cup of blood. Down the hall she heard Elena talking to Damon.

"Fuck that!" Damon's muffled yell came from down the hall. Elena's voice got slightly louder too. Apparently they were reopening the discussion on admitting Klaus into the house. A few moments later the yelling stopped and footsteps passed her door. She finished the cup of blood and set it down on the nightstand next to her.

Finally the footsteps came back to her door, she could see a shadow beneath the doorway. Caroline's breath caught in her throat. She was happy and nervous to see Klaus. This would be the first real conversation that they had since she had left New York the first time. Flippantly she thought about how bad her hair must look after days of not being washed. The door creaked open and Caroline watched as Damon, not Klaus, stepped through.

"He's leaving," Damon said simply, "I told him you were awake and that he could come in but he said he had to go."

Caroline frowned. She threw back the covers and with all the strength she could muster, heaved her legs over the side of the bed. It hurt like a bitch to move, that white ash must have done a real job on her, but she ignored the pain and stood slowly, wobbling a bit. Weakly, she took three small steps to the window and looked out into the Salvatore's yard.

There was Klaus, walking off toward the woods, his back turned away. It felt like New York all over again, her banging on the window of the car, screaming his name, willing him to come for her. But it was different. Caroline's delicate hand rest against the glass, no sound escaped her lips, she just watched him walk away.

Klaus stopped by the edge of the forest and turned back, looking up at the window where she stood. Her heart leapt and the ghost of a smile forming at her lips. But as soon as he looked at her, he flashed away, into the trees. Just like that her heart sunk back down and her hand fell away from the window. Damon flashed to her side to support her weight. Caroline looked down, confused, at his arms underneath hers. She looked back up at him questioningly as he led her back to the bed.

"My blood is in you now, we're a lot closer than we used to be," Damon answered her unspoken question, "just go with it."

It took Caroline a few more days before she felt like her old self again, at least physically. On the inside she still felt like she was dying. Klaus had walked away from her, again, and gone who the hell knows where. Once Caroline was recovered from her mysterious "flu" she returned back to school, greeted by even more weird looks than before.

"I guess my queen bee days are over," Caroline muttered over lunch one day.

"Take it from me," Elena said, "It's not so bad being the exiled queen bee. You get used to it."

Caroline laughed slightly and took a bite of her sandwich.

"Wow, Car, I think that's the most you've smiled in about a month," Bonnie said next to her.

"Well I guess I can't do depressed forever," the blonde replied, "besides, I know I'm starting to get on Damon's nerves."

Now that Caroline had a large amount of Damon's blood running through her veins, not to mention the spells that Klaus had put on Damon to keep him in check, there were few secrets between the two. Damon could feel all of Caroline's emotions and Caroline could feel some back in return.

"Look, Damon can shut his mouth. You take all the time you need," Elena said.

"No I really do need to get back to real life. And feeling sorry for yourself is bad for the complexion."

Bonnie and Elena laughed. "Caroline, you'll never change."

Caroline smiled and took another bite of sandwich. Her friends were wrong. She had changed, she realized. She remembered walking down the street in Manhattan, admitting to Klaus that she had felt so confused since she had become a vampire; that she really didn't have an idea of what she should do with her life now. But all of those feelings had gone away when Klaus came into the picture.

A quick movement caught her eye, breaking her out of her thoughts. Caroline's head whipped to the side. Someone, or something, was watching them. She saw a figure move behind a group of trees, on the edge of the forest behind school. The bell rang just then, signaling the end of lunch period.

"See you after school at cheer practice?" Bonnie asked.

"Yep, see ya then," Caroline answered. She glanced back at the forest. Whoever had been watching them was gone. She quickly gathered her things together and headed off to class.

Later on, at cheer practice, she sensed the presence again. Watching from the shadows. But every time she looked back, no one was there.

"Caroline, you ok?" Bonnie nudged her. She snapped out of it and looked back at the rest of the cheer squad. They were all giving her sour looks. Bonnie grinned at her sympathetically.

"Yeah, I'm just not feeling well. I think I need to head out," Caroline said. She quickly grabbed her gym bag and purse off the ground and headed toward the parking lot. Bonnie ran after her.

"Hey, what's going on?" The witch asked, grabbing Caroline by the arm.

"I think I'm being followed," Caroline said quietly.

Bonnie's eyes flicked around nervously.

"Don't worry," Caroline told her friend, "just go back to practice. I can deal with this."

Bonnie nodded and jogged back toward cheer practice. Caroline got in her car and turned the ignition. In her rear view mirror, she saw a male figure dart off into the forest. Caroline flung open her car door and flashed off after him.

Caroline could still feel her body protesting the quick movement. It was so frustrating. Vampires were supposed to be quick healers weren't they? The stalker was quick, but not quick enough, Caroline eventually caught up to him, pushing him to the ground as she reached him. She leapt over him as he crashed to the ground, and spun around, crouched to attack. The man shot up and lowered himself into a similar position. It was a hybrid, one she didn't know. Caroline's heart sunk. Until that second, she hadn't realized that she had been hoping the person following her was Klaus. Caroline stood up out of her attack position.

"Never mind," she said to the hybrid.

The hybrid boy stood up as well and cocked his head at her.

"Go!" Caroline shouted. "And stop following me!"
He just stared at her curiously and then ran off in the opposite direction. Caroline sighed in annoyance, blowing a lose strand from her ponytail out of her face. She stalked slowly through the trees back towards the parking lot and her car. The walk back gave her time to think. To remember how angry she should probably be.

Klaus had sent her away once before, in Manhattan, in the most horrible way possible. Now he had left her in Mystic Falls without a word or an explanation or anything. But yet he helped save her life, he stayed to make sure she would be ok, and clearly now he was sending hybrids to check up on her. Who did he think he was? Who did he think she was?

This was it, she decided, she had had enough. Suddenly all the thoughts she had been thinking over the past few days collided and the answer was clear. She knew what she had to do.

Klaus awoke with a start. It was pitch dark inside of his bedroom. Well, his newly acquired bedroom. Since finishing off Charles and the rest of his coven, Klaus had taken up residence in the Van Statten mansion, along with Rebecca. He heard a crash downstairs. So that's what had awoken him. An intruder.

He swung his legs around the bed and made his way to the door, grabbing a shirt from the end of the end and pulling it over his head. Klaus crossed down the long hallway and towards the stairs, he could still sense Rebecca in her room, so he knew that she wasn't the one making the noise. Another crash told him that whomever it was he was about to kill was in Charles's former office. Klaus smiled wickedly, clearly the intruder was wanting to be found. He grasped the handles of the office doors and flung them open. His eyes widened and his mouth gaped open at what he saw. There she was, sitting cross-legged on top of the desk, smiling her frustratingly sweet smile.

"Took you long enough," Caroline said.

Turn for the Epilogue... :)