Caroline swallowed as she watched the original hybrid - Klaus - and what kind of name was that anyway? His parents clearly didn't like him very much. Anyway, as much as she wanted to be brave, she couldn't deny that she was terrified out of her mind as she watched him rip the heart from the chest of that bitch shewolf who'd kidnapped and tortured her. Jules or whatever the hell her name was. Even though she held a lot of justified resentment against her, Caroline empathized with her, mostly because she knew she'd be facing much the same fate in only a few minutes at most.

She couldn't believe that this was how it was all going to end for her. As some sacrificial lamb on the alter of a crazed original vampire and his whackjob groupie-witch. Speaking off... Turning her eyes away from the bloody remains of Jules lifeless body, her eyes briefly strayed to Elena who was watching the same thing she was, before they moved towards the groupie-witch who was chanting over that stupid - now literally burning - moonstone. God, she was so happy that Bonnie was a good witch. It would totally suck if one of her best friends was some crazy voodoo-priestess who made blood sacrifices and cast nasty curses on people.

"Your turn," Caroline's eyes moved to the hybrid as his voice carried through the night and she climbed to her feet as the flaming circle she was trapped in stopped flaming and she knew that it was - in fact - her turn.

"Caroline, no." Elena called out and tried to step towards her, only for the flames to blaze higher, forcing Elena to step back.

"It's alright, Elena. I know what I have to do." And she did. Despite what everyone thought about her, Caroline wasn't stupid. She'd learned a lot and grown up after becoming a vampire, and one of the things she'd learned was to pay attention. One of her best friends was a witch, a powerful one at that, and she knew that without the witch, there would be no spell and without a spell there could be no sacrifice. The only logical answer was to take out groupie-witch Gretha, and she knew she'd die no matter what, but at least she'd save her best friend from becoming a sacrifical lamb at the hands of a certified madman.

Before she had the chance to second guess her decision, she vamped over to Gretha, wrapped her arms around the witch's neck and twisted until she heard the snap of her neck and her body went limp. She heard the hybrid's outraged roar of fury before she found herself thrown to the ground, his hand punched through her chest and squeezing her heart.

"Caroline, no!" She heard Elena's tearful cry and even as she was coughing up blood and wheezing for breath, she forced herself to turn her head towards her best friend and give her a sad smile.

"Turn it off, Caroline. Just turn it off, you won't be afraid anymore." Elena urged her, but Caroline wasn't afraid. If this was the way she was going to die, then at least she'd gone out fighting. She could feel the hybrid's hand tighten around her heart as he prepared to tear it out of her chest, and the last thing she saw before unconciousness swept her under was the sight of Damon appearing and vamping Elena away.

Good, she thought, then it all went black.

Caroline woke up feeling like she'd been run over by a train, then backed over by a truck, and run over by a train again. Her head was pounding, her chest was aching and she was so damn hungry.

It was hard and took a lot of effort to even open her eyes a smidge, and everything seemed so bright, except something was very, very wrong.

"Well, look who finally came back to the living." She knew that snide voice, and given the fact that she was supposed to be dead, it made absolutely no sense that the first person to greet her in death would be Katherine Pierce.

Groaning, Caroline rolled over on her side to find she was lying on the floor in what she figured had to be Alaric's old apartment seeing as that was where the hybrid kept his evil lair, and sure enough there she was. Katherine Pierce, in the flesh, tied to a chair with what seemed to be vervain ropes given the bubbling skin around the dopplegangers wrists.

"I'm supposed to be dead." Caroline declared, mostly to herself, but also kind of to Katherine in the hopes that the other vampire could explain why she wasn't.

Katherine snorted and pinned her with a look.

"After the stunt you pulled, you think Klaus would settle for just ripping out your heart? No way, carebear. Take it from someone who pulled a slightly different version of your stunt and spent five hundred years running because of it. He's a thousand year old original vampire, he's practically indestructible and he has eternity to punish you. The way he sees it, death would be too kind for you."

Great, just great. She'd succeeded in thwarting his evil masterplan and saving her best friend from becoming a human sacrifice in the process, and the price she'd have to pay for it was an eternity of misery. It was so typically her luck.

A year ago she'd been perfectly normal. A little stupid, a whole lot naive and totally selfish and superficial, but normal. And she'd grown up as a human too. She'd had a great thing going. She was a straight A student, the captain of the cheerleading team, she dated the cutest guy in school and she was even starting to get along with her mom again. Then she had the bad fortune to get a brain hemmorhage after Tyler had a crazy headache that caused him to swerve the car and she almost died, until Damon fed her his stupid vampire blood that was, and Katherine smothered her while pretending to be Elena just to send a message to Stefan and Damon. And just as she was starting to get a hang on the whole vampire-thing, this had to happen. Seriously, she could not catch a break.

"This sucks." Caroline informed her fellow captive as she pushed up on her hands and knees and managed to stagger to her feet. Honestly, she was surprised he hadn't tied her up like he'd done to Katherine.

"Trust me, it's going to get a lot worse." Blowing out a breath, Caroline scowled as she cast her eyes around the room before returning them to Katherine.

"I take it there's no point in trying to escape?" The apartment had to be cursed with some kind of boundary spell, and that's when she remembered. Both the witches the hybrid had brought with him was dead, and any spell they made would have died out with them. As this thought entered her mind, she threw a considering glance at the other vampire and thought over her options. She could wait around for the hybrid to return and beg him not to torment her to the end of days, or she could make a bargain with the lesser of two evils.

"The witches are dead, which means whatever boundary-spell was put in place to keep someone in or out isn't working anymore. Which is why I figure you're tied up the way you are."

"Your point?" Katherine asked through clenched teeth.

"My point," she said and held the dopplegangers eyes, "is the fact that I could get you out of those restraints if you promise to tell me everything there is to know about staying hidden from a thousand year old seriously pissed and vindictive original vampire out to torture me for eternity."

"How do you know I won't stab you in the back the second you let me loose?"

"I don't." Caroline stated, "But I'm a little low on options here and it's not like I'm asking you to be my companion as I try to survive however long I have left to live, I'm just asking for some tips in how to make that happen. You can even stay here, tell him which direction I ran in and save yourself by selling me out, just give me a little head start before you do."

Katherine watched her with that sly look she had down to a pat, and then a slow smile curved her lips upward.

"I underestimated you, blondie. I might even begin to like you. Let me out of these ropes and I'll tell you everything you need to know."

Caroline didn't know if she could trust the cunning vampire, but she didn't really have much of a choice. She was a seventeen - almost eighteen - year old girl (okay, vampire girl) and she had no idea how to begin hiding from the greatest evil to walk the earth. The only option she had was to trust the one person who'd been successfull in escaping and running from the same man who wanted to torment Caroline for eternity, and that was not an option. She'd rather throw herself on a stake before she allowed that to happen.

Sighing, she walked over to the chair where Katherine was, made quick work of removing the ropes, hissing as the vervain soaked into her skin and then she stepped back as Katherine rose and rubbed her wrists.

"Right," Katherine said and Caroline watched her expectantly, "let's get out of here before he comes back. In the mood he was in when he dumped you here, he's probably out slaughtering half your little town and we don't want to be anywhere near him when he gets back."

After delivering that horryfying prophesy, Katherine promptly strutted out the door and Caroline followed right behind her. She hated the fact of leaving her friends and family behind, but the truth was simple. Caroline wasn't Elena, her friends would have written her off as dead already and there was no rescuemission on the way to save her from a fate worse than death. It sucked, but she'd come to terms with it a while ago and now all she cared about was getting the hell out of Mystic Falls and hopefully not die in the process.

~3 months later... London, UK~

"Yes, Kat, I got everything. I'm on my way back to the flat now."

Carrying a dozen different shopping bags from some of the worlds biggest designers, it was not an easy feat to move through the crowded Oxford street on a mission to find the nearest available cab.

After making her escape from Mystic Falls three months ago, with Katherine Pierce of all people as her companion, the last thing Caroline had ever expected to do was walk around in broad daylight in one of the world's metropolitan cities, shopping. When she'd thought about running, she'd thought of staying in dingy motels, shopping at thriftstores and hiding out in the most remote corners of the world. Then again, she hadn't factored in the aspect of her being a vampire, the many perks of compulsion and the fact that this was not Katherine's first rodeo.

"Well, hurry up. Our flight leaves in four hours, and you've barely packed anything." That, unfortunately, was the one down-side to running for your life. They couldn't stay in one place for too long. Klaus - yes she referred to him by his name now - apparently had spies everywhere, and staying in one place for longer than a few months would be more than stupid. As it was, even though Caroline had dyed her hair a bright red and Katherine was now a blonde, the two of them rarely went out together in fear of being recognized.

So, this latest shopping trip (although Caroline didn't really think it was shopping as such, seeing as she hadn't paid for any of it. Compulsion and all that...) was all about preparing for their next move. Kat had already made all the arrangements, so when they landed in Beijing sometime tomorrow morning, an apartment would be all set up and waiting for them. Aside from the fact of constantly feeling like she had to look over her shoulder, and the semi-frequent city-hopping, this running-thing wasn't all that bad.

After their escape, Caroline had been able to get in touch with Bonnie to tell her friend she was still alive and also with the ulterior motive of asking for a favor. Bonnie, being the best friend that she was, didn't hesitate to help her, so for the moment both Caroline and Katherine were protected by a cloaking spell. She didn't have any delusions though, she knew Klaus with all his minions would find them eventually, but hopefully not in the next five hundred years or so.

"Fine, just get here. I'm starting to feel antsy and I don't like feeling antsy."

Well, Caroline didn't much like it when Katherine was antsy either. It didn't bode good things for her.

She managed to find a cab five minutes later, and with the heavy traffic, it took twenty minutes before she made it back to their apartment. Paying the cabbie, she got out of the car and smiled at the doorman of their building as he held open the door for her, tipping his head and everything. Caroline had gotten used to this, and she was going to miss Henry when they left, but in order for her and Katherine to really dissappear, Henry wouldn't remember either of them after they'd left. Katherine would probably make her compell away all his memories of them, and that sucked, but whatever, her whole life sucked for the most part these days.

She took the elevator up to the fifth floor, dug out her keys as she headed down the hall to the apartment at the end, balancing all her bags expertly, and finally locked herself into their shared flat.

"Hello love."