Chapter Thirty-Eight – Dreaming With a Broken Heart

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
the giving up is the hardest part
She takes you in with her crying eyes
then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering was she really here?
Is she standing in my room?
No she's not, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone…

"This is a joke, a sick joke!" Klaus screamed, sending the antique box flying across the cave and shattering against the wall. The pieces if the box scattered to the floor along with the stake, falling at Caroline and Stefan's feet. "I did everything I was supposed to. Everything I was told!" His fist crashed into the wall behind him as the other flinched in the wake of his rage. He didn't care. This was his chance. His only chance of fixing Caroline and it was a complete and utter failure. He could not help her now. Not without another hunter potential and there was no telling how long that would take.

He looked back at her for a moment. Her expression was neutral and numb, eyes glazed over. He wondered what she was thinking about. Was she worried about her future? Was he angry with her? Did she feel like he had let her down? This was the one thing he had promised her. He would fix this and he did not know how. There was no plan b. He wanted to roll his eyes at Stefan's promises. Empty, each and every one of them. They had no way of fixing this. As much as he wanted to comfort her, he was not sure he could face her right now. He could not tell her that he didn't know what to do next. He couldn't tell her he didn't know how to fix things.

"Nik, it's-"

"It's a stake! A bloody stake! That's the cure of vampirism? Death," Klaus seethed, his whole body clenching as stood there. "I'm sure the witches had a laugh at this one. We would chase the cure to the end of the earth only to see it was a death sentence." His voice gave way. He hid the crack well, shaking his head as he took another swipe at the cave wall. The stone cracking under the pressure of his hands. It crumbled to dust under his fingertips.

"We'll figure something else out, Klaus. There has to be another way," Stefan said, looking over at him. He took a step towards him, trying to try to get him to calm down. He had not given up yet. They would fix Caroline.

"What? What is the other solution?" Klaus spat angrily. Taking a step towards him and towering over him in angry. There was no other solution. Not in the immediate future.

"I'm sorry," he heard Caroline whimper and his head jerked in that direction.

"Caroline," he muttered, making his way over to her. He caught her as her body as she fell. His own legs giving way as he looked down at the tears running down her greyed face. As his knees hit the stone ground. His chest tightened, finding it impossible to find breath. He felt like all of the air had been sucked from the room. His world turned to grey just like Caroline's body. "Don't do this, Caroline."

No one else in the room said a word. They didn't dare interrupt the silence that the room had fallen into. Stefan stood over to the side, looking down at the scene. The tears were on his cheeks. Silent, yet free flowing. He had failed. It was his only job and he had failed to keep her safe, failed to protect her. She was like his little sister and here she was, lying dead on the ground and there was nothing he could do. He could not go back in time and fix it, he couldn't bring her back. She was gone.

Rebekah made her way over to him, setting her hand on his shoulder as she tried to comfort him. She did not dare touch her brother. Not in this state. He was volatile on a good day, but it was clear this was worse. He was lost. She had never seen him quite so gone. He was void. Void of everything. She had always been able to read him. Tell what he was thinking just by looking at him, but she couldn't see anything right now. He was paler than normal if possible.

"We're going to give you a moment, Niklaus," Elijah said solemnly, herding his siblings Stefan and Bonnie out of the room as Katherine followed beside him. He knew his brother well enough to know that he needed time right now.

As they all left him alone, he shifted to the ground, resting Caroline's head in his lap as he looked down at her. There weren't tears. He didn't know if he could cry. It was worse than anything he could ever imagine. He had lost the only thing that had ever mattered to him more than the hybrids. More than anything. His hand smoothed over her blonde curls, they seemed flat in death, lacking their normal luster. She was beautiful, even in death.

Death. She was gone. His hand reached into his pocket, feeling the weight of her gift in his hand. His fingers toyed with it, opening the face of it and closing. He found a rhythm, trying to distract himself from the fact that she was dead. He could only think of solutions. No solutions that would work. No witch would agree to bring her back. Not for him. They wouldn't find him worthy of his love. They wouldn't believe someone as good as Caroline would be with someone as demonic as him. All he could do was sit. All he had left was a grey body and a pocket watch. A pocket watch he still didn't understand. Caroline had been so careful with her other gift. He clicked the button to open and close it, repeatedly, until it finally popped open twice, emitting a small glow. Inscribed on the inside in words that could only be Caroline's, 'For when you need a light of your own'. And that was his breaking point.

"Why are you doing this?" he said softly, looking down at her. "Haunting me. It's going to be like this forever. Always going to be wondering if that blonde hair is you. Your laugh in the air. I've taunted my brother about his pre-disposition to fall for every doppelganger that came along, but maybe he had the right idea. If something happens to one, wait enough time and another one comes along. Another Caroline Forbes is not going to waltz into my life."

He gave a dark chuckle, looking at her. "I promised nothing would happen to you. I promised you do much. Broken promises are a specialty of mine. I'm sure Rebekah can attest to that."

He sat there for what seemed like hours, her head cradled into his chest. His mind unable to compute a world without Caroline in it. She changed everything when she walked into his life. Turned everything upside down. "I need you, Caroline."

| With or Without You |

Stefan closed his eyes tightly, hoping this was all a horrible dream he would wake up from, but it was real and it ripped him apart. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. The tears turning his eyes dark as he sat on the ground outside the cave. Rebekah was seated next to him, but they hadn't spoken in hours.

"Maybe we should…" Rebekah trailed off when she realized she didn't know how to finish the thought.

"What?" Stefan asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "There's no one to inform. Her whole family is dead. No one has lost more than Caroline because of the supernatural and now it's taken her too. It shouldn't have been her. All she ever does is try. She makes us all better and now she's gone. Just like that. There was no goodbye. No closure. Nothing. She's just gone and I lost my best friend."

"There's nothing you could have done, Stefan. There's no stopping the hunter's cure without finding a new hunter. We were lucky with Jeremy. We wouldn't get that lucky again. It would have taken us years, decades even. She wasn't indestructible like Nik. It would have only been a matter of time."

"That doesn't make it better, Bekah. She didn't deserve this." He rested his head in his hands. "I promised her. I promised her I would never let anything happen to her. I stood in a bathroom the night she turned, looked her in the eye, and promised she would be safe and I would facilitate that. Do you know where I was when she died? She was standing right next to me and I didn't stop her. She's my best friend and I was standing next to her when she died." He didn't fight her as she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer to her as they sat against the cave wall.

"You didn't know she was going to go for the stake, Stefan. You are raking yourself over the coals for something that you couldn't control." She ran her hand over his back, "What can I do?"

"I don't think there's anything to do. Kol took Bonnie went to tell Damon and Elena. Without Liz to falsify documents, we'll have to produce a body or compel someone. Her cause of death isn't exactly explainable." He ran his hand through his hair. He was trying to be practical, but he could not think about anything aside from the fact that his best friend was gone.

Rebekah leaned in and pressed her lips to his softly, wordlessly reassuring him that they would get through this together. "We should check on Nik."

Rebekah walked through the cave opening slowly. Her steps tentative as she watched her brother closely, waiting for any kind of reaction from him. He was still seated in the same position she had left him in, Caroline's body still cradled to his chest. His eyes were closed as his head reclined again the cave wall. If she had not known better, she would have thought he had died as well, so still as he sat there even when their footsteps alerted him to their presence. He was lost in through, that much she could tell. Lost in a place far from here. She knew her brother well. She knew he had already run all of the possibilities in his head. Ways to bring her back that did not exist.

"Nik," she started. His eyes opened slowly, the expression on his face blank. She had never seen him like this before. HE had been sad before, devastated and broken, but this was different. Stefan remained a small distance away as Rebekah approached her brother. She had once been his comforter, but that torch had been passed to Caroline long ago and she didn't know how to get it back. Crouching down next to him, she set her hand on his shoulder. "We should take her home, Nik. She should not be in this cave. There are things to be done now."

"What things, Rebekah? Putting her in a box? Lowering her into the ground? Burying her?" he asked. His jaw tightened but he could not find it in himself to raise his voice.

"Not necess-"

"Then what? Funeral fire? Put her out to sea? All of those put her even further away from where she belongs," he snapped before looking down at her. He tucked a blonde curl behind her ear. She was exactly where she belonged as far as he was concerned. With him, in his arms. She was strikingly beautiful, even grey. It killed him that this was the only way he would see her now.

"She's gone," Rebekah said harshly, trying to snap some sense into him. She softened significantly when she saw his face crumble at the insinuation. Her hand grazed his shoulder once again in a comforting motion. "She's gone, Nik, and we can't bring her back. I know you love her, but we can't sit in this cave forever. Let's take her body home. You can decide what to do or what not to do from there."

Reluctantly, he nodded. Stefan pushed away from the wall he was leaned against and walked over to the two of them. Rebekah reached her hand down to help her brother from the ground, but he rejected it, standing up of his own accord. He looked down at Caroline one more time and reached down to pull the stake from her chest. Unable to look at it any longer, though he was not sure the site of her bloody wound was better. He lifted Caroline into his arms. Her blonde hair hung limply over his arm as he adjusted her against his chest.

The three of them walked of the cave where Elijah stood next to the SUV. He slipped behind the driver's seat while Stefan, Rebekah, and Klaus climbed into the car. Silence engulfed the car once more and no one dared to pop the bubble. It was the only thing holding most of them together. The thin line keeping Klaus from killing the entire town in an attempt to feel anything. It was still in consideration. The only thought that stopped him was how much it would upset Caroline, but that didn't matter anymore. She wasn't there.

That's when he felt it, he looked down and watched as a small trail of blood began down his arm, the arm that held Caroline's body against his own. He shifted to look down at her, the sudden movement making Stefan and Rebekah do the same.

"She's healing," Stefan said, a smile taking over his face as he looked down at her chest. The hole where the stake had been beginning to close. He moved closer to her, her legs draping over his lap as he and Klaus looked over at her. The bleeding stopped as her perfect skin healed. The color slowly returned to her, her skin turning back to it's normal pink flush. "Caroline," Stefan said hopefully, trying to get a reaction out of her.

It took a few moments more, but Caroline's eyes opened as she gasped for breath. She coughed up blood for a moment as she tried to get the breath that seemed to allude her.

"Caroline," Klaus said, shifting her on her side in hopes that she would be able to breath better than on her back.

"Water.." she requested through coughs. Rebekah produced a bottle from the front seat ad Caroline gulped it down as if she had been wandering through the desert for weeks. As soon as she was finished, she finally took a normal breath as Klaus crushed her into his chest. "Can't breathe," she said as he loosened his grip.

Silence fell over the SUV as the realization hit them all at once. In the silence, they all heard it. A heartbeat.

Author's Note: Hi! I hope this makes up for the last chapter. Many of you guessed right, though I may have refused to comment to some of you when you guessed correctly. I couldn't possibly kill Caroline! Klaus needs her too much. I hope you guys enjoy the update. There's only a few chapters left now. You guys have been amazing through this whole thing. Reviews and support. Please keep it up until the end.