Oh, I don't wanna grow up
Wish I'd never grown up
Could still be little
Oh, I don't wanna grow up
Wish I'd never grown up
It could still be simple

"Never Grow Up" Taylor Swift.

7. GROWING UP (It's not what it was supposed to be)

"I just wanted him to find peace. Please, help him find peace."

It's not something Caroline can do.

With the curse in place, she isn't going to find peace once she dies. In fact, her soul won't go anywhere. Caroline feels the old, familiar heartache digging deeper into her chest. She isn't going to see Stefan. But she isn't going to stay around either.

"The only one who can help him do that is you, dear. You are Klaus' only light."

The young woman has tears in her eyes. And Caroline understands. Hope has already lost enough people, and she'll feel responsible for this, adding to the list of regrets that don't let her make peace with herself. But she'll be fine, one day.

"I can't… we can't lose you too. You need to find peace, and my father needs to find peace too."

"Tell Lizzie and Josie I love them."

For her girls, she'd given up the love of her life and continued living far longer than she wanted to. And even though her life had been marked with tragedy after tragedy, the years she spent watching them grow into beautiful young women

"Mom!" Lizzie is here, and Josie follows behind, both of them out of breath. "Mom, hang on, we're going to find a way."

Caroline shakes her head.

"We'll lift the curse."

It's just impossible, and there's no time left.

The only thing she regrets is that, after all they've gone through and all the years of waiting, she can't be reunited with Stefan in the end.

She dreams that she is dying, and has to say goodbye to her daughters. The pillow is drenched with her tears when she wakes up.

Even when her dreams have nothing to do with some plausible future, they don't bring any pleasant feelings.

It's not like she will ever be a mother.

Caroline looks at the clock, it's not even 6 a.m. yet, but she can already hear her mother downstairs, either coming back home or going to work, she doesn't know.

Going back to sleep after the intense emotions that were triggered by her dream is not an option, so she gets up and goes to take a bath, deciding that her day will start just a bit earlier than usual (she has a lot to do checking the last details for the dance anyway).

She's a bit surprised that Matt still wants to attend the dance as her date. "Let's go together as friends", he says, and she wonders if her not very specific compulsion and the 'we broke up and are on friendly terms' will backfire on her.

"Yeah, sure." For some reason, or maybe because of everything going on, she hasn't really tried to get a new partner, and better Matt than some random boy.

Her friends are not really around for most of the day, surely dealing with some kind of trouble or making plans that won't include her which would have bothered more in the past. Perhaps it's because her day already started with the saddest feeling possible, she spends the rest of it staying positive. Acting as a normal high school student is nice, and Caroline really makes the best of it.

Besides, this outfit looks awesome on her.

She's just finished getting ready when her mother walks through the front door.

"There you are! You almost missed me. How do I look?"

"Jackie O?"

Her mother compliments her, but looks tired and there's not much time for conversation as Matt comes to pick her up.

"Have fun."

When she thinks about her relationship with her mom, there are so many things Caroline wishes were different. It wasn't always like this, of course, the uncomfortable silences or the annoyance she felt when her mom did try to talk like mothers and daughters should. Things changed after her father left home, and for a long time she refused to accept that her family was irrevocably broken, far from the perfect childhood fantasies she held close to her heart.

Sometimes, Caroline comforted herself thinking that she would have her own family one day, and it would be nothing like this. She would have a perfect, loving husband, perfect, beautiful children, a nice house, and a nice job that she would never put above her kids.

This will never be possible, and the only family she has is the mother who, she knows, will not be able to live with the fact she's a vampire.

Matt tells her she looks pretty, and she lights up with a smile.

No, there's no need to think about vampiric-related issues tonight.

Or that's what Caroline wants to believe, up until the moment Stefan comes to talk to her.

"Do you mind if I steal your date for a moment?"

If it wasn't because she knows Stefan would not compel people just because, she would suspect he's just compelled Matt, because he leaves them alone in less time than it takes to count to three.

Stefan takes her hand and easily replaces Matt as her dance partner.

"What's wrong?" She asks.

"Klaus is here."

This is bad, really bad. She knows it. But somehow the sense of danger doesn't settle in the way it should.

"Where?"

"We have no idea. But keep your eye out for anything that might be weird, ok?"

It would be more useful if she could at least know what Klaus looks like, but so far he's only been mentioned in her dreams (and that is, trusting that her dreams are somehow accurate, which sometimes she still doubts).

"What was that about?" Matt asks when, just a bit later, Elena appears to be frantically looking for Stefan, who is already long out of sight.

"Oh, you know, just the same old drama."

They won't tell her all there is to know.

It's the fate of people who are just pawns in another's games. Caroline realizes this when she wakes up at the tomb, chained against the walls.

Tyler is there, too, and Caroline doesn't have a good feeling about this. When she tries to stand up, her body fails her.

This is Klaus doing. A vampire. A werewolf. What Klaus needs to break his curse, wasn't that what Elena told her?

This is why Katherine turned her, the reason Caroline is what she is now.

"Tyler… you shouldn't have come back here." She tells him everything she knows about the original vampire and the sacrifice.

"He's going to kill us?"

"I think so."

"This whole time I've been gone, Jules has been helping me come to terms with what I am. How to deal with it. I guess none of it matters anymore."

His words resonate with her. Her life as a human was cut short too soon, and at first being a vampire felt like it'd be too much to handle, but she's learned to control this. And there are perks to being a vampire that she quite likes (the world is more beautiful, she's stronger, she won't be limited by time as humans do).

For a moment she wonders if this is how it'll end for her, and once more she's overwhelmed by her desire to live.

Then Damon arrives to save them, and it might be the first time in Caroline's vampire days that she cannot completely hate to see him.

"Donovan is outside with a rifle loaded with wooden bullets. You have some explaining to do."

That's not their most urgent problem, though. Tyler is going to become a wolf tonight, and there is not much time left.

"If you leave him here, Klaus can still make his ritual happen. Making a new vampire for a sacrifice is much easier for someone who doesn't care about it."

The silence in the living room is deafening.

Tyler is still unconscious on the couch, and Matt… he won't meet her eyes now that the most dangerous part of this whole thing is over.

Her mother knows. Her mother hates vampires. Her mother hates her.

"Do you hate me too?"

She's used to not being loved. She's used to being ignored. She's used to being disliked, even. But to be hated by people she cares about, that's a different thing.

"You are still you. I can feel it. And I understand that you were trying to protect me this whole time." He says, blue eyes finally meeting hers. "But your life now…"

"Never a dull moment." She smiles, but her attempt to take out the gloominess that is falling upon them fails miserably.

"This is all Damon's fault. He killed my sister. He made you a vampire-"

"Actually, he gave me his blood, but the one who killed me was Katherine, remember?"

Matt gives her a look of disbelief.

"How can you forgive him for what he's done?"

It warms her heart that seems to be angry on her behalf, and that's taking into account Caroline didn't tell him the ugliest details (the things she can only keep to herself).

"I haven't." She only tolerates his existence because everyone else seems to be okay with him, and why is she going to antagonize the few people who accept her as a vampire? And he is Stefan's brother. "I will never forget what he did to me. But I'm a vampire now, and there are so many things happening in our town, I have to stick to the people who don't hate me for being a vampire, and that includes Elena and Stefan. They care about Damon, so what else am I supposed to do?"

Does she have Matt, too?

She wants to ask, but she doesn't dare, because she remembers her dream and how this conversation went like in there.

He sighs.

"I get it. This is your life now. You know what my life is, Care? My life is an absentee mom. And a bunch of bills to pay, and school, and a job, and it... and it sucks sometimes. But it's my life. And I think that I just want to live it without all of this."

Matt stands up, ready to leave.

"So… we are no longer friends?"

"I don't know, Care."

He walks out of the door, and Caroline feels the last bits of the little girl she used to be disappearing behind his back.

She dreamed that she was dying and that she had to say goodbye to her daughters. She won't have daughters, she hasn't seen her father in years, and her mom is the only real family she has right now.

It's with a heavy heart that she waits for her mother to come home, and when Liz Forbes walks into the living room and their eyes meet, Caroline feels unsure once more, doubts this is what she ought to do.

But her mother can't hater her, she needs to believe that her mother's love is bigger than this.

"I'm not a monster, mom." She says, lips trembling as she speaks. "It's still just me."