"That was really stupid" Caroline groaned into her hands. She was sitting in the middle of her bed with a Gilbert twin on either side.
"No, it was badass!" Katherine protested. Caroline had summoned her best friends to the Fobes household the moment she had stepped through the front door. Her head was reeling from what had transpired during the morning she had spent on the Mikaelson estate. She could hardly believe her own actions.
Katherine had reacted with glee over Caroline's confession, lapping up every word of the incident that her best friend was describing. Elena however, had been nearly silent since sitting down in Caroline's room.
"It was dangerous," Elena said quietly, looking down at her hands that were folded neatly in her lap.
Katherine whipped around to face her twin, shocked at the words that had come out of Elena's mouth.
"Shut up!" Katherine demanded, brushing off her sister's concern.
"Think about it" Elena pressed, her voice now louder and strong.
"Think about what kind of people the Mikaelsons are, think about what kind of people all of our families are. Women who make a fuss disappear"
"Don't be dramatic" Katherines snapped, suddenly not enjoying the conversation.
"It's true Kat. You can't deny it. If I'm being dramatic, then tell me, where is Isobel? Where is our mother?" Elena fired back, any fraction of meekness completely wiped from her speech.
Katherine looked as if Elena had slapped her. Isobel wasn't something they ever talked about. Uttering her name out loud was like cursing in the middle of the lord's prayer during a Sunday church service. It was a bomb dropped directly into a conversation.
The Gilbert twins rarely acknowledged their true parentage, preferring to defer directly to their adoptive parents as their only parental figures. Their biological uncle and his wife had taken the girls in just before their first birthday when John Gilbert had shown up on his brother's doorstep with two toddlers in tow and no wife to be seen.
John and Isobel had only married out of hast due to their impending parenthood. Their relationship had never been a love match but in order to maintain their reputations, they had gone along with the charade of being a happy couple, joyous to be expecting twins.
But no one had seen Isobel for over twenty years. The official story shared was that Isobel had run off, and John, too heartbroken at his loss, was unable to care for his two infant daughters. It was the story that Elena and Katherine had grown up believing. The truth hadn't come out until the two were 15 when an overhead drunken argument between John and Grayson had revealed the truth. That Isobel had not run off, that her body was buried several miles out of town. Her blood was all over Johns's hands, but Graysons and Mirandas were not entirely clean. They knew what had become of their sister-in-law but they sought no justice. Loyalty was the glue that held their world together. Sometimes people went missing, and the best course of action was to pretend they'd simply slipped away into a new life, rather than being weighed down with a stone and dropped to the bottom of the river.
" And no one has seen Esther Mikaelson in 10 years. Like father like son" Elena finished, her words going weak at the end with their implications.
Caroline's head was still in her hands as she rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Her head and heart were both poundings.
Men like Mikael and Niklaus Mikaelson valued few things in life. Loyalty, power, and obedience. While Caroline's connections via her father's company could offer a small amount of the second, she would never be able to give her future husband the other two. She had no loyalty to the Mikaelson outfit or that of her fathers, and despite what she knew was smart, her pride would never be able to condole herself into being a submissive obedient wife to a domineering husband.
She'd spent the years since her mother's death surviving by trying to show some semblance of obedience to the men in her life. She'd tried to follow her father's wishes in order to avoid his wrath, she'd let Tyler walk all over her and use her in so many ways because that was how she would survive. Not live, survive. Those years had been spent in understanding that the time on the clock would soon run down. She could count off days to her college graduation and see freedom in her future. So she did what she had to survive.
But this, this future, what was the point in surviving when there was no actual living on the horizon? Because she knew that even when she gained access to her trust in 7 long years, a marriage contract of the nature she was to enter in, could not be broken with a good lawyer and a generous settlement agreement. There was no divorce in their world. It was always to death do we part. Hence, the wives who disappeared in the night without a trace, that was as long as their husbands knew how to clean up after themselves.
"Ugh" Caroline groaned once more, laying down flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom.
How had her life changed for the worse so quickly? She cursed herself for believing that things couldn't get any worse when her only problems were her father's temper and Tylers advances.
"I was just" Caroline felt lost for words for a moment "Overcome"
"So overcome that you pushed one of the most powerful men in the state"
"In the world" Katherine corrected
"In the world" Elena continued "Into a lake"
"It was more of a murky pond" Caroline corrected, although it made the scenario no better.
"I just thought that" Caroline paused again, "I thought for just a second that I saw something in him. Just a hint of a possibility of a soul. But then..." Caroline trailed off again.
The moment the two of them had shared in her father's study at their engagement party had left a flicker of hope in Caroline. Was it possible that the man she was to marry wasn't 100 percent vicious? That hope had been extinguished the very next time she encountered him when he was once again cold and condescending. When utter disgust flashed across his face each time he looked at her. How he cringed backward on the rare occasion she spoke during their short meeting.
Men like her father and Mikael Mikaelson were not one's to keep their promises, so why should Caroline have ever believed for a second that what Niklaus had said to her that night was the truth? He may have even meant it at that moment, but she knew what kind of man he was. She had been raised by one. What may begin as good intentions very rarely resulted in subsequent good actions.
She wanted to believe him, god she wanted to believe him, but everything her father had ever taught her, told her not to let down her guard.
What did that say about the state of her own heart?
...
Caroline woke up the day before her wedding to a Gilbert twin of her either side. The sisters had spent the night with her as her "Bachelorette party".
"An extraordinarily lame Bachelorette party" Katherine had amended when she and Elena came bursting through her bedroom door and announced their plans.
"But a bachelorette party none the less" Katherine once again declared, unearthing a bottle of tequila from her ridiculously sized purse.
"As long as theirs no banner that says 'same penis forever' because I will be physically sick" Caroline deadpanned, thinking of the ridiculous decorations that adorned the party aisle in the one big box town within the Mystic Falls township.
"I do have some class" Katherine replied as she tried to pry the stubborn lid of the liquor bottle off with her teeth.
The bottle of tequila now lay empty by the side of her bed, and the three girls were all suffering the consequences.
" I can't believe we drank that much last night" Katherine groaned, her face pressed into a pillow, trying to block out the sunlight that was leaking its way into the room through the gap in the curtain.
" I can't believe you're getting married tomorrow" Elena muttered to Caroline whose arm her face was currently resting against.
" I think we drank so much because I'm getting married tomorrow" Caroline concluded, laying her hand across her eyes in hopes of finding some relief from the ache in her temple.
" That sounds like a bad joke" Kat stated, trying to make herself comfortable in a third of the bed that she had allotted.
" sounds like a nightmare I still haven't woken up from. Tomorrow I'll be married to someone I've met a grand total of 5 times"
" yes, but on one of those occasions, you dunked in him a substantial body of water so that really ups the intimacy level" Katherine joked.
" ugh please don't use the word intimacy" Caroline groaned, flipping over and pressing her face down into the pillow as if she could disappear into it.
She really didn't want to focus on her "wifely duties". Tyler was the only person she had ever been with and although it had been years and countless times, each time he entered her body felt like a violation. Like he was taking a little part of her each time. Now she'd have to surrender her body to yet another man. A lifetime of someone taking from her. A lifetime of closing her eyes and waiting for it to be over. Waiting for him to be done using her for his own gain.
The memory of Mikael's statements in her father's study made her shiver. The way he had spoken about his son breaking her. Of him snuffing out the fight she had left. She almost became sick at the thought of Mikaels threat of doing it himself. She knew the older man would take pleasure in it, in her pain, in her defeat. She was sure he would derive just as much pleasure from that as he would from her body.
" I need a drink" Caroline muttered, her whole body tense from the struggle raging within her caused by her recalled memories of the Mikaelson men.
" Coffee first. Unfortunately, we can't get drunk right away again this morning, not if we're actually expected to show up at this rehearsal" Elena pointed out.
" Shit" Caroline muttered under her breath. She had forgotten about the stupid wedding walk-through that would take place that day, followed by the lavish rehearsal dinner which by the sounds of it was essentially going to be the same size and caliber of the actual wedding reception.
" why do we need to practice" Katherine moaned. She and Elena along with Klaus's two sisters were Caroline's bridesmaids, which meant that they too would be subjected to the torture of a rehearsal.
" it's not like it's complicated. We walk down the aisle, you hand me your flowers"
" I sign my freedom away" Caroline interjected.
" They pronounce you unhappily married, we clap, we throw rice, we go get drunk. It's really not complicated"
" Try telling the planner that" Caroline grumbled.
She'd been presented with a schedule for her wedding weekend and Caroline could hardly believe her eyes as they scanned over the itinerary. If she wasn't so opposed to the wedding in general, she'd be impressed at the persuasion and detail of the whole affair.
She had to stop her whole body from shaking at the thought of it all. It was bad enough that she had to go through the ceremony once, did she really need to partake in a dress rehearsal as well? There seemed to be no alternative.
Which was how several hours later, Caroline found herself standing at the front of one of the ballrooms of the nicest hotel within 100 miles of Mystic falls. Hundreds of golden Chiavari chairs lined either side of the makeshift aisle leading to the front of the room and the wall of white flowers that had been erected to act as a backdrop to their vows.
Seeing the room made Caroline want to be sick. It was beautiful, and she absolutely hated it. She didn't want the ceremony to be breathtaking. She didn't want the room to be magical. She wanted to hotel to burn down mysteriously and to make an escape off the continent in all the confusion.
The rehearsal was mercifully short. Caroline and her bridesmaids were lined up in order of entry, with Rebekah going down the line first, followed by her sister and then both of the Gilbert twins before Caroline would finally step into the room. Caroline was happily surprised by how unoffensive Klauses other sister seemed. Freya had arrived from Europe that day, and despite her obvious jetlag she had been perfectly pleasant to Caroline and had even hugged her upon their meeting. It was such a stark difference between her first impression of Rebekah who had been nothing but venom and spite.
Caroline was lectured by the overbearing and over-enthusiastic wedding planner, about the exact moment to enter so that her appearance was timed perfectly to a specific cue in the music, and then lectured once again about the exact speed of her walk.
Something that both enraged and pleased Caroline, was that her fiance was nowhere to be seen. She was happy not to have to go through the awkward motions of this wedding ceremony twice but enraged that Klaus didn't also have to suffer through this additional embarrassment.
After only 40 minutes of torture, the planner set the group free, pledging to see them in a few hours at the rehearsal dinner, which was being held in the Mikaelson manner. Dinner seemed to be too weak a word for it, as the dress Caroline had been sent to wear that night was almost as formal as her actual wedding gown for the next day.
The cowl neck dress was such a pale pink that it was almost white and its heam brushed against the floor. The dress hugged every curve of her body, the only reason she was able to walk was the ridiculously high slit on the left side. The cut in the dress began just below her hip bone, leaving Caroline self-conscious that the wrong movement would expose her to the entire room.
"You look hot" Katherine encouraged as Caroline started at herself in the mirror of her bedroom.
"I don't want to look hot" Caroline complained, her blood running cold with the thought of how Mikael had looked at her with such lust.
"Well, there's no stopping it. You're a total babe" Katherine continued, walking up behind her and appraising Caroline's appearance in the mirror.
"Seriously your boobs look amazing" Katherine teased, jokingly reaching around Caroline's torse and cupping her best friend's breasts.
"Kat!" Caroline gasped, bumping backward against her friend's body, unable to stop a laugh from bursting from her.
Caroline turned around and wrapped Katherine in a tight hug. She wouldn't have made it through the last month without her friends by her side, but there was something about Katherine's sharp wit and take no prisoners attitude that kept Caroline from letting her head sink under the water.
"Ready for this one babe?" Katherine asked, leaning back from Caroline to look into her eyes.
"As ready as I can be" Caroline sighed. Katherine pulled her back into a hug again.
"You'll be ok Care. I'll make sure of it" Katherine promised, pressing her friend hard against her.
"Thanks, Kat" Caroline whispered into Kats's shoulder, wishing her friend had that kind of power.
...
The Mikaelson manor was filled to the brim by the time that Caroline arrived with the Gilbert twins in tow. There were even more people there than there had been at her engagement party, and she hadn't even known half of the individuals at that event.
Being the bride, it was impossible for Caroline to enter the party unnoticed. The moment she stepped foot into the foyer she was swept into a whirlwind of well-wishers and introductions to men whose connection she couldn't trace to herself nor the family was set to be marrying into. She'd long lost Elena and Katherine in the crowd, and though she had spotted Bonnie across the room chatting happily with a man who appeared handsome enough to pass for a Mikaelson but whom she didn't believe was one of the brothers.
In the hour before dinner, she'd been passed around to so many different groups of strangers that she could hardly tell up from down. She had almost been grateful when dinner was announced, meaning that she could retreat from the crowds of strangers and find solace at the head table. Her relief was cut short when she remembered who'd she be sat next to.
Her place card was set with Klaus on one side and her father on the other, neither of whom she was eager to have a conversation with. After all, she'd barely spoken a word to her father in the past month and the last time she had spoken to her fiance she'd had a fit and pushed him into a dirty pond.
Caroline was silent through most of the meal as her father and Mikael spoke to one another over their children who were both staring down at their plates and not engaging with each other or anyone else around them.
As dessert was served, Caroline took the opportunity to slip away while everyone was distracted by the creme brulee that had just been placed in front of them.
She knew anyone who noticed her absence would assume that she had excused herself to freshen up. If she had to guess, she'd figure she'd have ten minutes tops before anyone became suspicious of her.
She planned on using every second of it. Caroline was desperate for a chance to catch her breath and regain her composure. She'd felt on the verge of crying all night. She couldn't have that. If she started crying, she'd never stop. Caroline knew she needed to be done being weak. If she ever had to be strong, it was now.
Caroline walked up the grand staircase of the house in search of a quiet place to collect her thoughts. She'd just started down the long hallway when a door opened to her left and a hand shot out, yanking her roughly into a dark room.
Caroline stumbled at the force and if it weren't for the strong hand holding tight to her arm, she would have ended up sprawled on the floor.
The light in the room flickered on, revealing racks loaded down with coats that had clearly been set up to accommodate the belongs of the vast number of guests. Once she'd regained her balance, she realized who she was in the room with.
"Jesus christ Ty, what are you doing here?" Caroline demanded, her attitude shifted from startled to furious in the blink of an eye.
"I had to see you. You weren't answering my calls" Tyler spat, clearly just as furious as she was.
"Yeah, there was a reason for that" Caroline muttered, rubbing a hand across her face. This was the last thing she wanted to deal with.
"You don't just get to end us like this Caroline. In a fucking letter!" Tyler demanded, brandishing a piece of wrinkled paper in her face.
When Caroline had gotten back to her house after tossing her phone into the water, she'd sat down and written Tyler a long note, saying everything she needed to say to him, and explicitly stating that they were to have no contact from that point forward. Frustration bloomed into Caroline and exploded into a fire that she could not control.
"There is no us Tyler! There was never an us! There was you, and what you wanted"
Tyler narrowed his eyes at her.
"You don't want him" Tyler asserted, disgusted at the idea of the other man.
"No I don't, but I also don't want you"
Tyler closed his eyes, trying to regain his composure. When he opened them again, he was scarily calm. His face breaking out into a condescending smile.
"Listen, I've been thinking about this, and really, nothing has to change" Tyler stated, taking a step closer to her. Caroline stepped back in response, bumping into one of the racks of coats.
"I mean it's not like we were ever going to get married anyway. My parents were never going to let that happen. Not with who your father is, it was the reason I broke up with you after high school. So you're marrying someone else, eventually, I'll marry someone else, but that doesn't change what we have" he reached out to brush a finger across her cheek.
"You'll still be mine" he stated, his voice husky. He took another step towards her, and with the rake at her back, Caroline had no way to put more distance between them.
His breath was hot on her face now and his hand found the slit in her dress, grabbing at her.
Caroline acted without thinking, bringing her hand back and slapping Tyler's cheek with as much force as she could muster.
Tyler took a step back, shocked for only a moment before he retaliated. The back of his hand struck her across her face with such force that she fell backward into the coats behind her, bringing many of them to the floor with her.
Her face stung and she could feel a trickle of blood stemming from her nose.
"It didn't need to be like this Caroline" Tyler stated cooly. She heard him undo his belt buckle, and suddenly she couldn't breathe.
She was transported back to the day of her mother's funeral, her face shoved into a pile of coats and Tyler forcing himself inside of her. The parallels of that moment and this one were enough to make her sick to her stomach.
Before she could summon any strength to try and get up the door to the room opened. Caroline pulled her head off the ground in time to see Tyler slammed against a wall, and a strong hand wrapped around his throat.
"Get out of my house" growled a familiar British voice.
Caroline pushed her way to her feet in time to see Klaus smash Tyler against the wall once again for good measure, before forcing him out the door.
"I-" Caroline began, her whole body feeling numb with shock.
"Don't worry. Enzo will get him out of her discreetly"
"Was that the boyfriend?" Klaus asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pristine white handkerchief, and offering it to Caroline. This gesture reminded Caroline that her nose was in fact bleeding. She accepted his offering, bringing the cloth to her face in an attempt to steam the flow of blood and mop up the mess that her face surely was.
"Thanks" she muttered as she dapped her nose " and no, not a boyfriend not a friend at all"
"Ahh," Klaus said simply as though he suddenly understood.
"an ex then" Caroline had to stop herself from rolling her eyes.
"Something like that"
"Don't worry. He won't be coming back" He promised, stretching the knuckles in his hand.
While she was grateful that she wouldn't have to deal with Tyler anymore that night, she hated having to be rescued, especially by her would-be husband. She was sick of being a damsel, but the sheer amount of forceful men in her life seemed to perpetually push her in that role.
"Are you alright?" Klaus asked, with something that could have passed for caring.
"I'm fine" Caroline stated, wiping her nose one more time with her knuckle to push away any remaining blood.
"Thank you," she said again, her eyes fixed on the floor.
"Pay it no mind" He replied cooly.
"How did you even know I was up here?" Caroline questioned. Klaus gave a none committal shrug.
"Something just felt off"
Caroline narrowed her eyes at him but chose not to push the topic further.
"We should probably get back before too many people get suspicious" Caroline stated, trying and failing to brush out the folds in her dress that had results from her not so delicate fall.
"Although at this point I think half of the room will have assumed we've sunk off to have sex" Klaus commented nonchalantly. "and to be perfectly honest with you, your wrinkled dress won't help."
Caroline scoffed, rolling her eyes as she did so.
"Well if I'm going down, you're going down with me" She stated with an air of confidence she didn't quite feel.
She strode up to him until they were mere inches apart, she took hold of his tie, dramatically loosening the knot before she popped open the first two buttons of his shirt. With final flare, she pushed her fingers through what had been his neatly styled hair until his natural curls were mused into their natural state.
"Fair is fair" she stated, before turning to leave the room, feeling his eyes on her as he followed in her wake.