Chapter 50:

Unimportant Emergency

Caroline came crashing through the trees, bush and pine that crunched underneath her yellow ballet flat shoes towards a nearby river stream.

"Where the hell did you burry him, Car?" Jeremy asked with slight agitation in his tone. Fair enough, seeing he woke up with a major head injury that occasionally would start bleeding... That, and his only temporarily dead friend was buried in the forest.

"I told you! Under the lemon tree!" Caroline snapped, not even bothering to slow down while both Klaus, who was dragging a shovel along side of him, and Jeremy tried to keep up with her. She stumbled a little as she approached the sound of running water and she stopped, trying to remember her tracks. Then she groaned in frustration and turned to Klaus, annoyed. "Ugh, what way did we go? Up or down?"

Klaus just raised a surprised brow. "Why on earth would you expect me to remember that?"

"Because I was a freaking wreck. You're the one who told me about the lemon tree!" She said accusingly, when he was kissing her forehead gently only this morning.

"Yes, love," he said, sounding more annoyed than before, "After you told me that delightful story about how Matt's lemon tree died, and how you nursed it back to life," he scoffed, "Some environmentalist you are," he said sarcastically.

Caroline gritted her teeth while Jeremy pressed his weight up against a nearby tree for support and watched them argue. It was like a tennis match. Only this was worth watching.

"What. Way. Klaus?" She growled with a pouty expression that, at this point, Klaus didn't find so adorable. Klaus irritatedly squeezed his eyes closed and pinched the arch of his nose for a brief moment before sighing heavily and saying "Up, I think."

Caroline gave him a purposefully bitchy smile, glared at him for a sec, then continued to march towards Matt's hopefully still temporarily dead body.

Jeremy hauled himself off against the tree trunk and continued to follow Caroline with the quickest pace he could manage, while his vision continued to blur. Klaus noticed. Good, Klaus thought, perhaps it'll be my lucky day and he can fall and drown in the river. Serves him right for killing my brother.

"What?" Jeremy sneered with a hateful glare when he noticed the way Klaus was eyeing him. Klaus didn't reply as he tore his eyes away from that little Gilbert boy and stared at Caroline.

The three of them kept moving onwards for what seemed like hours until they eventually reached a nourished looking lemon tree. "Oh, thank god," Caroline sighed, stopping in her place for a moment.

"You're welcome," Klaus said with a wide, obnoxious smile.

Both Caroline and Jeremy glared at him. She rolled her eyes and sneered, "You're hardly God, Klaus."

Klaus bobbed his head in slight agreement. "No, but if it weren't for me, you would have never found your bloody lemon tree where you buried your alive ex-lover."

Caroline felt a rush of something that she didn't like at Klaus's use of the word ex-lover. It was just so pointed; deliberate. "I didn't bury him, you did!" She said accusingly, just trying to forget that word.

Klaus stared at her boringly. "Love, I was doing you a favour. I was..." He hesitated, trying to find the right words, "...Being a gentleman, and all that," he said, still sounding a tad unsure of himself.

"Yeah, bravo," Caroline said sarcastically, then clapped her hands together, "Thank you so much for burying my alive dead friend!"

"Ex-lover," Klaus corrected, almost insistingly.

Caroline felt that unpleasant rush of emotion again, then stomped her foot down and said with full clarity, "Friend."

"Guys!" Jeremy snapped tiredly and with a slight tinge of hatred that Caroline couldn't ignore. They looked his way as he nodded his head towards the little lemon tree in the distance. "Do you really want him to wake up in a shallow grave?"

Caroline stared into Jeremy's suddenly vulnerable-seeming eyes guiltily, then turned and walked hastily towards the grave. The yellow in her dress that she still hadn't changed out of matched the yellow of the tree.

When she reached the grave with the others close behind her, she saw that the grave remained untouched. And for a moment, she didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Matt was still dead. Just by the sight of Matt's grave, and the lemon tree that reminded her of their time together brought on tears. She felt it's warmth as it fell down her pale cheek and immediately she brushed it away, not wanting to seem weak, or feel it. Be strong, Caroline told herself, Never stop being strong.

When she heard the crunching of Klaus's fancy shoes against the pine needles, she snapped her fingers and held out her hand, "Shovel," she demanded without even looking his way. When she didn't feel the wood from it's handle, she cocked her head to the side to see Klaus looking at her with disbelief.

"Shovel," she said with more insistence. He could see Jeremy smirk in amusement at him from the corner of his eye. Was the infamous Klaus—king of all vampires—being bossed around by a 17-year-old blonde in a yellow sundress?

Yes, he was, as shown by his reluctant exchange when he handed her the shovel. Caroline didn't notice, nor care. All she cared about was getting Matt the hell out of there before he woke up. Without hesitation, and a concerning look of determination on her face, which she used to only get when she was put in charge of fundraising events, she dug the end of the shovel into the dirt floor of Matt's grave.

Author's Notes: Finally! Reviews! Oh, how I've missed you. Thanks for the support and all that stuff. And I forgot to mention this like... fifty chapters ago? But, uh, I do not own any of these Vampire Diaries or Originals characters. Otherwise I wouldn't be on fanfiction. Duh.

Review some more. I mean, after all I did in, you know, not killing Matt, don't I deserve it?