A.N.: I changed the ending of the last chapter by one word: Elena's reading, not crying. It's a tiny word, but it's an important change.
Again, I can't thank you enough for the amazing reviews! I really do appreciate them.
Resurgam
41
New Normal
"You lied," Caroline repeated, murmuring. She stared at Elena, who sat up, dropping the book she was reading on the side-table, completely disinterested. She blinked dazedly at Elena. She didn't even look embarrassed. "You said it was an accident."
Elena shrugged, and said, "Well, what was I supposed to do, you wouldn't have helped if I'd told you the truth."
Caroline's mouth popped open. "And what truth is that, that you abandoned your family to become a vampire?"
Elena's face morphed into a smirk Caroline immediately wanted to slap. She turned smugly to Caroline, scoffing, "You're seriously lecturing me about -"
"Yes," Caroline hissed, realising too late that she should have waited to have this conversation when she had had time to process everything - not while she was emotional. "Because I didn't have a choice! This is not the life I would choose for myself. It wasn't my fault Bonnie told Katherine I was in the hospital and she killed me, but I don't blame Bonnie, not the way she has always blamed me for transitioning ever since." Caroline frowned as Elena continued to gaze at her, unimpressed, as if Caroline was boring her, a minor inconvenience getting in the way of an otherwise lovely day. "You didn't just choose to transition because you had no idea what was happening, or because you couldn't bear to miss out by not transitioning - you went out of your way to manipulate people to make sure it happened!" Caroline blurted indignantly. "You fed on Matt!" she added, gasping, and when Elena merely shrugged, pulling a face, Caroline scoffed, stunned, and exclaimed, "How dare you. How dare you come to me and lie to me about how you turned, how dare you think I'd help you when you almost killed my friend to get what you wanted."
"I guess I thought I had a little longer before you found out," Elena shrugged. She made a nasty face, and sniffed, "I see Giulia's stuck her nose in it already."
"Watch it," Caroline snapped, disbelieving of Elena's attitude. At Elena's mention of Giulia, in such a nasty way, Caroline went a little cold. "You wouldn't have made it to your eighteenth birthday to be pulling this crap now if it weren't for her. Your son would've been taken away by Social Services if it weren't for her -"
"I'm not Hayley, alright," Elena said laughingly, smirking, "I didn't do anything to that thing."
Caroline blinked, stunned. "Thing. That thing is your son, Grayson, and you're right," Caroline said, trying to keep herself from shouting. She was too emotional for this, too close to this. She should have waited. And she shouldn't be letting Elena get under her skin…but she was. Months of pent-up frustration, anger, envy, annoyance, sadness, all bottled up and compounded since Jessie's death, and Caroline couldn't bear it. Couldn't stand looking into Elena's bored face. "You did nothing. You've done nothing. For months. No matter who's tried to help you, you ignored that baby boy you carried - you left him." She didn't just mean the day Elena had left him at the loft to go werewolf-hunting with Stefan and Rebekah. "How could you?"
"Because I was sick of it," Elena said, with a careless shrug. Her features changed, then, into an expression Caroline had never seen before. Nasty. Relieved. Uncaring. "Sick of everyone being so precious about that thing. Sick of not feeling as guilty as people thought I should have that I didn't think it was precious. I was sick and tired of people trying to fix me because that thing broke me."
"Thing," Caroline repeated. She'd said it again. Not Grayson. Not 'my son', or 'my child'. Thing. And that made Caroline angrier than anything, more upset than finding out one of her oldest friends had turned into a vampire. More than being lied to about it.
"And now I don't have to," Elena said, sighing contentedly, and she turned to pick up a magazine. "Not my problem anymore."
Caroline stared at her, uncomprehending. "Well, you've got that wrong, completely…" she said softly, and because she was angrier than she could remember being in a long time, and because Jessie was dead and Hayley had abused her son and Giulia's husband was home - and likely dying - and Elena had the nerve to take everything she had for granted, Caroline stared at her, and said something nasty, and truthful: "You're no longer Matt's problem. He should've had you committed months ago."
"That's too bad he didn't," Elena sniffed.
Quietly, Caroline said, "Your mom would be ashamed of you."
"Which one?" Elena asked tartly. "The one who died because I had a fight with Matt at a party they didn't want me going to because I'd miss family night, or the one who abandoned her baby, and then ran out on her husband to become a vampire?"
"They wouldn't care about you becoming a vampire," Caroline sneered back, because her attitude rankled. "They'd care that you're a manipulative, self-absorbed bitch."
"Tell me how you feel, Car," Elena smirked.
"You're a selfish cow, and you didn't deserve Matt, or Grayson," Caroline said honestly.
"But you do?" Elena scoffed, laughing. "Think I don't know how jealous you are that we got married - that I got pregnant?"
"You're right. I'm devastated that I am never going to have children of my own - and you dare stand in front of me smirking about betraying Matt and abandoning your baby?" Caroline said, and the amusement slipped from Elena's face like something had literally wiped it off. One moment, she was amused, the next moment, something glittered in her eyes. "You know, at least when Katherine turned, she was looking out for herself, because she had no-one else in the world. You've had everything handed to you on a platter since the day you were born, you never earned a damn thing. And you never deserved anything you got." Caroline realised she was shouting, nearly out of breath with anger. She pushed the door open wider. "Get out."
"What?"
"I said get out of my home."
Elena scoffed, and turned the page of her magazine. "Vampire rules, Caroline," she said snidely. "Once we're invited in, there's no way to make me leave."
Caroline stared at her for a heartbeat, affronted by the veins flickering beneath Elena's darkening eyes as she turned to Caroline. She was actually -! "You think so?" Caroline exclaimed, and crossed the room in a breath, grabbing Elena's head, and wrenched it to the side, snapping her neck. She hadn't become an innate fighter when she transitioned: That was years' worth of training with Giulia and Tyler, of which Elena had none. Caroline gasped, but her anger diffused as Elena's body crumpled on the elegant guest-bed, and she found herself muttering an angry, "Smug cow."
She sat down on the edge of the bed, and cried a little bit.
She wasn't handling Jessie's death, being tortured by her own dad, nearly as well as she had thought.
And she couldn't believe that Elena had thrown everything away. Was unapologetic about it, so nasty to her…so uncaring. She reached for her cell-phone, and winced as she realised the time just as Giulia gave her a sleepy greeting. She sounded soft, and tired, and sighed gently, but listened. Just as she always did.
"I'm sorry to call so late…but I need your advice," Caroline sniffed gently, wiping her eyes.
"What's happened?" Giulia asked, sounding half-asleep.
Caroline told her, "…and so I broke her neck. I don't want her here…"
Because she wanted to burst into tears and not have Elena's nastiness to deal with when she was trying to put herself back together.
"Take her to the Klaushaus," Giulia said sleepily. "There are empty rooms there."
"With the Originals?" Caroline blinked. "Aren't they, you know, a bad example?"
"Possibly. But they don't have a history with her; they're not going to go easy on her, or tolerate her attitude," Giulia murmured, and Caroline couldn't help but agree. Elena took everything for granted…and they let her. They had taken care of her, bolstered her, made excuses for her since they were children. "She's nothing special, just one more new vampire."
"It was weird, it… It was like I wasn't even talking to Elena. You know, Elena before she had Grayson," Caroline sniffed, gazing at her temporarily-dead friend. "She said…she said she was sick of it. She kept saying how…she was pissed that everyone considered Grayson so 'precious', and she was annoyed she didn't feel guilty like people thought she should for not caring… She called Grayson 'thing'… She said they weren't her problem anymore."
Giulia sounded a little more awake as she said, "It sounds like she's abandoned her emotions."
Caroline stared into nothingness. "Why would she do that?" she whispered, horrified.
"So she doesn't have to be accountable to herself for what she did," Giulia said, truthfully and horribly. She had lost patience with Elena in high-school: Had helped Elena recently because it was Matt who was getting buried, and Grayson who suffered when she didn't intervene. Giulia sighed, "Goodnight, Caroline."
"'Night…" Caroline murmured, ending the call. She blinked, and glanced down at Elena, crumpled on the pretty handmade quilt Caroline's grandma had made her before she died.
It went against her better instincts to literally drop Elena's carcass off at the Klaushaus, but Rose wasn't going to be an ally to Elena, the boys' barn was a two-bedroom, and there were no other practical alternatives. Caroline knew Giulia wouldn't want Elena at the witch-house: She visited frequently, with Zita. The Originals who lived there were her friends - Caroline wouldn't infringe the freedom of Giulia's friendships because of Elena's choices.
And that was fair.
The Klaushaus was different. Caroline knew Isak Mikaelson lived there permanently now, so he could be within throwing-distance of Klaus - using him as a dart-board to while away the longer autumn evenings. And Rebekah lived here, too, according to Stefan: She didn't take part in torturing Klaus but apparently Rebekah and Gyda could only stay in each other's company for so long before things started to get personal - and nasty. And they were all making an effort.
They were learning how to be a family again, for the first time in a thousand years, in spite of Klaus.
When she rang the doorbell, Isak answered. She gave him an unimpressed look as he posed shirtless in the doorway, a glass of blood doctored with wine in his hand. He held the stem with surprising delicacy, his hands huge and tanned, with faint white scars hinting at a human life few of the Originals talked about.
"Well, this is a treat," he smirked luxuriously, his accent rich. There was no denying Isak was probably the most classically handsome of the Original siblings - except for Willem, of course. There was something unsettling and predatory about Isak, some nasty aftertaste that made Caroline wince. "Care to stay for a drink."
It was on the tip of her tongue to say yes; those deep blue eyes, that winsome smile. Then she looked into his eyes, and saw the darkness there. He wasn't like Willem, who didn't have a nasty bone in his body. Danger seeped off Isak like cologne. She would have appreciated the drink, but she knew better. "No, thank you. I…just wanted to…drop this off."
She sighed, and opened the trunk of her car. Elena's skinny body was folded up inside, and she glared up at Caroline as the trunk lifted.
"The trunk? Really?" she said, giving Caroline a snide look. Isak sauntered over, resting a hand familiarly on Caroline's waist, standing too close, to rest his chin on Caroline's shoulder and peer down into the trunk.
"I do so love gifts," he said softly, almost to himself, and smirked, reaching out his free hand to stroke a lock of Elena's shining hair from her face. He inhaled delicately. "Newly-turned…" He loomed over Elena, tucking his finger under her chin, turning her gaze to his. "Oh, we shall have a lot of fun, you and I."
Elena coiled with tension, climbing out of the trunk: Isak smirked, and latched his large, scarred hand around her throat before she could dart into the woods.
"None of that, sweet thing," he said softly. "We're going to play." He sidled closer, smirking richly. "I haven't had a playmate in eons. I've got such a lot to teach you." He glanced at Caroline, smiling warmly. "I thank you for the gift."
"I'm really hoping I won't regret this."
"What do you have to regret?" Isak asked, finishing his glass of doctored blood, gazing at Elena. "This was her choice. Foolish child." He trailed his knuckles along Elena's jaw. "I will see that she realises her error." He fixed Elena in the eye. "Go inside. Entertain Niklaus." Elena shot him a filthy look, but entered the house, unable to stop herself. Isak sighed, watching her go; then turned to Caroline. "I hear tell from Ejnar that this doppelgänger has a husband, a child."
"Ejnar?" Caroline frowned.
"Oh. You know him by the Biblical name he adopted when we lived in Marseilles," Isak said negligently. "I forget… Elijah. Ejnar was the name our mother gave him upon his birth. He abandoned it years ago, except outside the family…and the family has been boxed up for far too long… This doppelgänger, she had a family."
"She - she does. Did. I don't…" Caroline didn't know the delicate points of turning as an adult with responsibilities. Didn't understand how Elena could be a wife or mother any longer. Because she had no interest in being either of those things. "She…fed on her husband to complete her transition; her mother took the baby out of harm's way."
Isak shook his head.
"You did not choose this life," he said, not a question, and Caroline cleared her throat, shaking her head.
"No, I didn't."
"Nor I," Isak said, and for a moment, he looked incredibly solemn, and devastated. "Some are suited to it, though…and others…others are punished by it." He glanced at Caroline. "From what Ejnar tells me, you are all that vampires have it in themselves to be."
"That's…very kind of you," Caroline said quietly, thinking it was also very kind of Elijah to say such things about her to other people. To his family.
Isak glanced at her, and his tone was not unkind when he said, "Still…a waste."
And she remembered the family history Giulia had shared with her: Isak had been born a witch. Hated what he had been turned into, against his will. It was against the natural order of things, what they were. A miscreation of magic, Caroline had once heard a witch describe vampires.
She couldn't help what she was; but she didn't apologise for it, either.
And there was nothing she could do to change it, anyway.
It was…a masterful backhanded compliment from Isak.
He disappeared inside the blisteringly white house that smelled of blood and pain, and the door shut behind him: Caroline sank back into the driver's seat of her car. For a long time, she didn't drive away. She wasn't eavesdropping - she wasn't anything.
She was tired.
And she realised this was what Giulia felt like. Utterly drained, from cleaning up the messes, having all the answers - even when she didn't.
Elena took everything she'd had for granted. And Caroline realised they had all taken Giulia for granted. Assuming that she would always be just a phone-call away to fix everything, to drop everything to help. Even when Caroline had forgotten, and called her out of instinct, in the middle of the night, a newly-turned vampire with a snapped neck in her guest-room, Giulia had picked up the phone - asleep after a reunion with her husband Caroline hadn't even truly asked about, so wrapped up with Elena's transformation.
There was too much to think about, to do.
She sat in her car, in silence, and decompressed from the last few hours. Hours! This was what Giulia felt like all the time! And she never complained. Never said no.
Not until tonight, and Elena's transition. Not until tonight, and her husband's return.
Caroline had never met him. She had been so consumed with Elena that she hadn't…hadn't been the friend to Giulia that she should have been, when Giulia told her that her husband was back, and she was taking a step away. Caroline knew more about Giulia's marriage than most, but even that wasn't very much. Giulia was married, and they couldn't be together; and that was all Giulia really said on the subject.
In trying to do right by Elena, she had neglected Giulia.
It was Elena's choice to become a vampire: It wasn't Giulia's choice to be separated from her husband.
Giulia had only told her a little about Fabian…but Caroline knew enough to know that if he had reappeared in Giulia's life, things had to be pretty fraught.
And that was why Giulia had finally put her foot down.
Because it meant more to her to spend whatever time she had left with her husband, than waste her time on someone who took everything for granted. She had seen right through Elena years ago; Caroline had been slow to see it, but she eventually had.
She couldn't help someone who had given up everything Caroline wanted, as if it was nothing to walk away from the man who loved her, and abandon their child she had carried. As if they were nothing.
To choose…this over everything she'd had with Matt…the privilege of motherhood…
Caroline's eyes burned, and she pushed away tears, determined not to break down over this. It was Elena's choice: And the true tragedy was that…Matt's life would be easier without her.
It was a terrible thought, but it was honest.
She drove home, and resolved to be a better friend to Giulia.
It was the first time Zita had ever met Fabian, and the first time Fabian had met the child he had given Giulia.
He made delicate lemon madeleines, fresh out of the oven when she returned home from preschool every afternoon. That sold him to Zita: the madeleines were all Zita talked about for days. The madeleines, and Fabian's cello. As soon as Giulia told him that Zita enjoyed music, Fabian set up his cello, and perhaps for the first time in a very long time, he sat and played. He was, by profession, a cellist: His visions had come between him and his passion, until the visions had become his passion.
When they were together, Fabian was happy: He could remember who he was. The man, not the witch. The person, not the prophecies.
Every afternoon, Zita sat in Giulia's lap, cuddled up under a blanket with Tisiphone on one side, Gallant on the other, a little plate of fresh, warm cakes in her lap, gazing at Fabian with heavy-lidded eyes as if mesmerised; Giulia knew she was listening, in a way few did.
It took some getting used to, a fourth member in their family, but not nearly as much as people might have thought. Giulia and Fabian had been married within months, and the same intimacy they had enjoyed then returned now, only altered by the unspoken fact that Fabian's time was running out.
There was still Zita, a gorgeous little dumpling who made every day not just worth living, but a delight: And Enzo, who continued to work at the Boarding House in the kitchens, picking Zita up from preschool two afternoons a week. The only real difference was for them - because Giulia was around more: She worked from home, as much as possible. She stayed with Fabian, who had his good days - but also, bad ones. And the bad ones were significant.
They were devastating.
The first time she realised Fabian had been downplaying how bad things were, she woke up in the middle of the night to the scent of copper. She frowned, and sat up, squinting in the dark; leaning over, she turned on the reading-lamp.
Her heart caught in her throat as she turned to Fabian. Blood soaked his pillow, trickling from his ears and his nose as he endured another seizure.
"Fabian?" she whispered, devastated. But there was no waking him, no drawing him from the vision that had provoked this seizure, no stopping the bloodletting. It was to be endured, to be recovered from, not healed, or evaded. He had to endure; and so did she.
She waited, at four a.m., lingering in exhaustion, watching her husband have a bloody seizure, and her eyes burned, knowing in the pit of her stomach that this was the first of many nights to come. They were not all going to be peaceful, content, falling asleep smiling as she remembered her daughter reading the first page of The Lorax by herself; their days were not always going to end with slow, exquisite torment as Fabian took his time to relearn her, as she savoured him and their closeness for the first time in years, aching to be near this man she adored, and missed. This was the reality of Fabian's return: Debilitating seizures, gruelling disorientation, and emotional exhaustion.
But she would rather she know it now, than go on thinking their days might be perfect, until suddenly they weren't.
She had only ever experienced brutal, unexpected death. Her father had been murdered: Fabian's death would be very different. Lingering.
So she didn't feel at all guilty about jealously hoarding every moment she had with him.
For as long as they had, she would enjoy her husband; and when they couldn't do that, she would look after him, ensure his last days were not a repeat of his past. He had come to her so he could die in peace.
It was a devastating and humbling thought, one that resonated through Giulia: It was an incredible privilege to be entrusted with Fabian's last precious days.
She slowed down, and luxuriated in them.
To begin with there had been no change in her lifestyle with Fabian's appearance, only working from home so she could be near him as he adjusted to life in her home with Enzo and Zita.
Then…she did less and less for work, only the essential, inescapable commitments Caroline could not handle herself. She started work late, and finished her day early enough to pick up Zita from preschool, sometimes with Enzo, sometimes with Fabian if he was feeling up to it. Always with a smile on their faces as Zita ran down the path toward them.
The first time Fabian had a seizure in front of Zita, it terrified her: She cried, uncomprehending what was happening. Giulia and Enzo had to explain it, in plain terms, without frightening her, that Fabian was very sick, and sometimes he was "shaky". He also might be confused when he woke up; and he would need to sleep afterwards. But she wasn't to be afraid. She watched Giulia tuck a cushion under Fabian's head as he seized, stroking his hair from his face.
After a little while of the seizures happening, Giulia watched one evening as Zita tucked the cushion beneath Fabian's head, stroked his hair away from his face, and bent to kiss his forehead.
It was a sweet and devastating act of kindness and Giulia watched without Zita knowing she was there: It was heart-breaking that Zita could so easily adapt to Fabian's presence, and his illness, until, like it had for Giulia herself, it had become Zita's new normal.
And it was a testament to her child that Zita wasn't afraid, but rather concerned, and compassionate, when Fabian was ill.
Fabian hated having his seizures in front of Zita: He hated the idea of scaring her. Of scarring her childhood. He didn't get to see Zita draping a blanket over him as he endured another seizure; or kiss his forehead before bed if one came over him before bedtime.
But he wasn't surprised she did those things, when Giulia told him about them later on in the day: "She is like her mother," was all he would say, drawing her close for a lingering kiss that turned into something deeper, more urgent, hungry and intense, refusing to be ignored, and for a little while, they lost themselves in each other. Nothing else mattered, but their intimacy. How much they loved one another.
It wasn't going to last. But that was no reason not to enjoy it.
A.N.: I need to stop writing this, it's breaking my heart!
