AN: The multi-shipping strikes again! This time have some Caroline/Marcel, as requested by CKhybrid. It turned out darker than expected, but there it is.
Baton Rouge
She fell in love with her best friend.
It's a cliché that's been done a thousand times in a thousand rom coms, and Caroline never thought she'd fall victim to it, but there it is. She fell in love with her best friend. For a brief while, she thought he loved her back – she knows he loved her back… but it wasn't enough. Not to beat the universe, not to beat the pull of Elena Gilbert.
Caroline fell in love with her best friend, took a gamble with her heart, and lost horribly.
So, she found herself in a bar in Baton Rouge, and if you asked her, she couldn't really say how she got there. Her car would be the short answer, but the detailed one? It's a mass of numbness and simply needing to be as far away from Elena and Stefan and their romance written in the stars as possible. After a dozen whiskey sours, she could finally breathe. That's when he sat on the stool next to her and began to buy her more.
She didn't know his name, didn't want to know his name. He was a vampire, older than her, which left her wary at first, but he was also hot with dark skin and even darker eyes. He reminded her a bit of Jesse, which reminded her of a time before she fell in love with Stefan that she wanted nothing more than to return to. So, she let him ply her with drinks and they began to talk. It was small talk, meaningless, revealing nothing of importance about themselves. He had no accent, but he said he was from the south, and with the way he oozes charm she can believe it. She told him she was from a small town and left it at that. His name was Marcel, she had no idea if it was real or not, but she told him that hers was Bonnie. They both loved karaoke. He sang Only the Good Die Young to her, and the hungry look in his eyes as he did so told her that he wanted to seduce her.
Her response was to drag him on stage for a rendition of Looking For a Good Time that not only had the drunken patrons of the bar hooting and hollering, but also made it very clear that she was open to be seduced.
He had moves. That was Caroline's thought when he shoved her against the wall of the bar and attacked her lips with his. Even in their lust induced rush, the man was smooth. His every touch was hot seduction, geared towards making her body react. She considered letting him screw her right there, against the wall. It wasn't as though she had no experience with vertical quickies, after all.
But there was a world of difference between a forest outside of Mystic Falls and a dirty alleyway in Baton Rouge, so instead they tumbled into a taxi and made their way back to her hotel room. He had offered the use of his own, but Elizabeth Forbes hadn't raised a fool, and there was no way Caroline was going to a strange room with a strange man. Bad enough that she was taking him somewhere she was somewhat familiar with.
Much as they had tumbled into the taxi, they tumbled into her bed. His lips had hardly left her body since their exit from the bar, and if she had thought they were talented, she soon discovered his tongue was even better. She was pretty sure she could have let him go down on her for hours and left the room happy. But he wanted his turn as well, and who was Caroline to turn down the chance to ride the hot stranger like a rodeo cowgirl?
"You were spectacular, Bonnie," Marcel said when they finished and she collapsed next to him on the bed, ruffled and sated. She felt a jolt of confusion for a moment when she heard her deceased friend's name on his lips, then she remembered that was who she was in Baton Rouge. She was Bonnie, because if she used her own name then she would be found and dragged back to Mystic Falls, because no one got to escape that town and live. Not unless they were actively trying to outrun it.
"You weren't so bad yourself," Caroline replied with a smile. She stretched her arms above her head and saw the way that Marcel's eyes zeroed in on her chest when she did so. She had planned to kick him out now that they'd had their fun, but she reconsidered when she saw that look. He rolled over onto her, his lips surrounding a nipple, and Caroline ran her hand over the back of his head and arched into his hungry mouth, her decision made.
Round two it would be.
BATON-ROUGE
Round two somehow turned into the weekend. And what was supposed to be a simple one night stand became a travelling companion. She still didn't tell him her real name, but his look when they hit Lafayette and she used the name Jenna was both amused and unsurprised. She shrugged unapologetically at him.
"You know, I gave you my real name," he commented while she shimmied into a short, tight red dress and viciously high heels. "You could return the favor."
"I could," she agreed with a cheerful smile – the one she had perfected while telling Stefan that of course she understood that he still loved Elena, and of course he owed it to them to see if they could make it would – that was utterly false and carefully blank. "Or you could call me Jenna and not ask questions. It keeps things more interesting."
"Wanna know what else would be interesting?" Marcel asked, pulling her to him. "You out of that dress."
She laughed, and this time her smile was genuine, and there was no more talk of real names.
BATON-ROUGE
He all but refused to leave Louisiana, but he never once suggested they travel to New Orleans.
Caroline thought it was odd, but considering her own refusal to tell him her actual name, she supposed she didn't have any room to judge. He also never asked why she was willing to stay within the State, so she figured she could allow him his own secrets. The last thing she wanted to explain was how she'd originally come to Louisiana to visit Klaus and perhaps take him up on that offer of someday, only to realize how foolish it would be to play with that particular fire while being in love with another man.
Her various names made him smile in amusement – Elena, Jenna, Katherine, Vicki – and it wasn't until she used Rebekah that she got any more of a reaction out of him.
"Interesting way to spell it," he commented, when he watched her sign for the hotel room before she paid with cash, as she always did. "I thought it would have been with a couple of 'c's."
Caroline paused for a moment in her retrieval of her bag to survey him carefully. She couldn't really say that she knew him after six weeks of travelling from Louisiana town to Louisiana town with him – she hadn't really tried to get to know him. He was an amusement, someone to keep her company because she couldn't have the one she really wanted, not someone she wanted to get to know better.
"I knew a girl once," she replied with a simple shrug. "She was a bitch, to be honest, but she left an impression. I suppose this is my way of remembering her."
"Hm," Marcel replied, his hand sneaking down to run over her ass, seemingly already over the brief flash of curiosity, and Caroline rolled her eyes and swatted his hand away, but she didn't forget the look in his eyes, that brief flash of something – alarm? Longing, perhaps? – and she filed it away to ponder over another day.
BATON-ROUGE
At two months, she realized he was up to something.
It wasn't that he stopped paying attention to her, or anything so obvious as that. No, he was as… attentive as always. It was the furtive conversations with new vampires in towns they had just arrived in. It was the way he smiled, as though he was about to win a prize he'd coveted for years. It made Caroline's hackles rise and her mind scream danger!, because she had developed nothing over her years in Mystic Falls if not a finely honed survival instinct.
She continued to fuck him senseless, to enjoy his company, but it was with a guardedness that hadn't been there before, not even at their first meeting in Baton Rouge. He had begun to look at her as though she were a particularly clever toy he had found, and it made Caroline begin to develop her escape plans.
She had a ticket for Munich within the day.
He had her unconscious and chained up before she could use it.
"I thought we had something, Caroline," Marcel said to her, holding the ticket up in front of her. Caroline watched him with cold eyes, even as the vervain soaked chains burned her wrists. How many times had she been here? The damsel locked up and tortured.
If Marcel thought he could break her where so many had failed, he hadn't done his homework.
"You know my name. How?" she asked, and Marcel leaned against the bars of the cell he had found for her.
"You shouldn't have used Rebekah's name," Marcel replied. "It's too unique, that way of spelling it."
"Klaus," Caroline said, closing her eyes against the realization. "Of course it's because of Klaus. Who did he kill? Your mother? Your father? Maybe an aging aunt?"
"On the contrary," Marcel retorted with that easy grin of his, but there was ice behind it that hadn't been present before. The smile of a man who wouldn't show her mercy. "He was my father."
Caroline looked at him blankly for a long time, then she began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. There was no mirth in the laugh, because there was nothing funny about the situation. It was just another testament to how fucked up her life was, because of course she'd sleep with Klaus' son – adopted son? That was the sort of sick joke the universe liked to play on her. Elena Gilbert got the perfect guy, the perfect love story, and Caroline Forbes ended up having sex with the son of the devil himself.
"I'm glad you can see the humor in this situation," Marcel said with that same empty, charming smile. "You should hold onto the humor. You won't have much to laugh about. Thierry, let's get started."
Another vampire Caroline hadn't noticed joined Marcel with the usual torture apparatus – stakes and more vervain and a gun with wooden bullets. The sight just made Caroline laugh even harder, and she knew she must sound mad, must look mad, but she just couldn't stop. Thierry looked at her with eyes that said exactly what he thought of her sanity, and then he turned her laughter to a scream of pain by shoving a stake into her stomach.
"Torture?" Caroline asked Marcel with a cruel smirk. "What do you hope to achieve with it?"
"Klaus took my kingdom, my home, and in return I'll take the only thing he's ever cared about. I'll take it, and I'll break him," Marcel replied with a shrug, and Caroline though there might be genuine regret in his eyes when watched her as he ran a finger along the barrel of the gun.
"That doesn't explain the torture," she pointed out, gritting her teeth as Thierry shoved in another stake, this one into her thigh. "Just kill me."
"That won't break him, Caroline. Your death means you're dead. To get to Klaus… to break Klaus, I need to break you first."
"How did you even know about me?" Caroline asked, resigning herself to whatever would come next, and preparing to bide her time until escape was an option. Marcel picked up the gun and pointed it at, and she looked up its barrel at him. "You owe me that much at least, Marcel. How did you know about me?"
"You really shouldn't have used Rebekah's name, Caroline," Marcel replied instead, before pulling the trigger.
BATON-ROUGE
Caroline Forbes had always been a planner. It was what she was good at, where she excelled. She could plan and plot with the very best. Patience wasn't a virtue she held in spades, but it was one she had forced herself to learn.
She was also a torture survivor.
Marcel had expected it to be easy to break her. She knew that. It had been clear in the way he and Thierry had gone about their torture. They had expected some gunshots and a few stab wounds to be enough to break her, but Caroline had once been tortured by her own father for over a day. Forget about physical torture – if the mental torture of that experience hadn't kept her on her knees, then nothing the pair before her could do would.
But they expected her to break, and if Caroline had once been able to trick Katherine Pierce, the queen of survival and manipulation, then tricking Marcel and Thierry into believe they had succeeded in their goal was simple.
"I thought she might last longer," Thierry said with a snort when Caroline hung there, limp and seemingly no longer interested in survival.
"She was a kid, Thierry," Marcel replied, his voice cold and distant, and Caroline thought she heard that regret once more. "Take her down and bring her out to the car. We have a trip to make."
Caroline heard Marcel leave, but she remained limp. She felt Thierry come to her side, and then the chains that held her up fell to the ground, and she let her body fall with them. She listened as Thierry moved around, preparing to leave and take her as well. She glanced up beneath her lashes, watched as he turned her back to him.
Then she made her move.
She wrapped the length of chain that hung between her shackles around his neck and pulled. Thierry reached up, clawing at the chain, but Caroline grit her teeth, pulling tighter, tighter.
"It takes more than someone like you to break me," she hissed darkly, and then wrenched the chain with all her vampire strength.
Caroline had killed before. She had killed the Carnie, her mother's deputies, twelve witches, and had snapped Luke's neck, though he'd come back. She wasn't afraid to kill… but Thierry's death was so very, very messy. With his head removed, blood spattered across her, covering her clothes and face, landing in her hair. Caroline let his body drop, blood still spurting from the decapitated stump of his neck, and did her best to wipe away the blood on her face with her hands. All she succeeded in doing was smearing it more.
She had bent down to pick up one of the stakes that had been used on her when Marcel returned.
"You're a good actress," he commented, when the initial shock of her standing tall and strong over Thierry's dead body had passed. "You had me fooled."
"Of course I did," Caroline replied coldly. "You never knew me. Fooling you was astonishingly easy. You expected me to be weak."
"I expected you to be a teenage girl," Marcel agreed with a shrug.
"I'm not a teenager," Caroline replied. "My birthday was three weeks ago. I'm twenty now."
"I'm older."
The two stood across from each other, caught in a stale mate. Caroline knew she couldn't take on Marcel one-on-one. He was older and stronger. Marcel was too cautious to rush her, because armed with a stake even a human could be potentially lethal to their kind, and Caroline was no human.
"There's no scenario where you walk out of here, Caroline," Marcel said at last, trying to be placating, to appeal to her better judgement. "The only reason you took out Thierry was because you had the element of surprise. You're weakened by the torture, and I can outwait you."
"Then I go out on my own terms," Caroline replied, and she turned the stake on herself, shoving it deep into her chest. She felt it just graze her heart, and she let out a choking laugh, her knees giving out under her.
"No, dammit!" Marcel swore in reply, flashing to catch her as she fell to the ground. "Dammit, Dammit. Not this way."
Caroline let out another laugh, because who would have guessed that Marcel actually cared about her? There was genuine anguish in his eyes as he held her close, and it hurt all the more because this was a story that she had lived what seemed like a hundred times.
They always cared, but they never loved enough to choose her. Not over revenge, or their kingdom or an ex.
"You made the wrong choice," she said to him as she looked up. "You chose a kingdom, but kingdoms are empty comfort at night, Marcel."
"He took everything from me," Marcel replied with a shaking head. "Everything, don't you get it?"
"Not everything," Caroline replied. "You still had your life."
Marcel let out a gurgle, his eyes widening in pain and shock, and he looked down. The stake that had been in Caroline's chest, that had grazed her heart so painfully, now protruded from his.
And this time it's aim was true.
Caroline rolled out of his arms, away from him, and came to a sitting position next to Thierry's corpse. Marcel remained kneeling in place, his skin turning grey even as he looked up at her in surprise.
"I'm an excellent actress," she said simply, but she didn't know if Marcel heard her final words to him, or if he had died before she finished them.
Caroline got to her feet and looked around the cell. The final resting place of Thierry and Marcel, the fools who thought they could break her. And they had been fools. Fools for underestimating her, and fools for not realizing one very simple truth.
You could break what was already broken. And Caroline had been shattered by far too many men to leave any pieces for them to break further.
AN: Well, I did mention in our PM session that if anyone tried to use Caroline, they'd end up hurting… or in this case dead. But I hope it was somewhat what you wanted.
