Reviews are food for the soul. Just saying.

How can I say this without breaking?

How can I say this without taking over?

How can I put it down into words?

When it's almost too much for my soul alone

I loved, and I loved and I lost you

And it hurts like hell.

Fleurie, "Hurts Like Hell"

8. IS IT WORTH IT?

There's a brief period of time where Caroline believes everything will get better. The future's looking bright once more: her mother is at least trying to accept she is a vampire but can still have a normal life, Elena is alive, Bonnie is alive, Klaus is gone.

Elena is grieving for her aunt's death, and Caroline feels for her, but she isn't very good at dealing with loss, so she tries to keep everyone in a cheerful mood with a picnic.

Then Stefan comes, looking for Elena, and it doesn't take long for her friend to tell them what is going on: it turns out Tyler bit Damon when they were going to the Lockwood cellar, and now he is dying.

(None of that would have happened if he didn't feel guilty for feeding his blood to Elena, and if he happened to be there to help them escape it was again, only to help Elena and hopefully be forgiven).

Caroline doesn't understand why Elena cares so much about the older Salvatore. Just minutes before she was justifiable mad at him because he would have forced her to become a vampire. That alone is enough reason to hate him, but the list of bad things he's done goes on and on.

Why do people care about him so much?

He's probably dangerous, hallucinating because of the poison in his system, and yet Elena goes to see him. Caroline decides she needs to look after her friend, who apparently keeps forgetting she's human and might get killed too easily.

That's how she finds out about Stefan. She's just crossing the front door when she hears the voices coming from Damon's bedroom.

"Where's Stefan?"

"Are you sure you care?"

It's Katherine.

"Where is he?"

"He's paying for this. He gave himself over to Klaus. I wouldn't expect him anytime soon."

He's got the cure for Damon, but judging by Katherine's tone, the price is too high. And what does she mean by 'it's okay to love them both'?

Caroline stops Katherine when she is leaving.

"What does Klaus want from Stefan?"

Katherine raises an eyebrow.

"How would I know?" A knowing smile appears on the bitch's face. "What, you think you can do something about it? Don't be stupid, you are lucky that you are still alive."

And she disappears.

'It's okay to love them both'

Does Elena feel something else for Damon? Caroline remembers her dream, watching Stefan's heartbreak, and can't understand how it can be possible.

Instead of going to check on Elena, who clearly is not endangered anymore, she calls Stefan.

Once.

Twice.

He doesn't pick her calls.

She texts him.

[He doesn't deserve this, Stefan]

She calls him again.

"Caroline, this really isn't a good time."

"Are you giving up on your life because of Damon? Is it really worth it?"

"He's my brother."

"What if you lose her forever? What if Damon is also in love with her, and he doesn't care that you are his brother?"

There's a long silence that follows her words, but he hasn't hung up yet.

"Stefan…"

"Just take care, Caroline. Try not to put yourself in danger, and by that I mean befriending werewolves. Goodbye."

No one hears from him after that.

During the nights she dreams that he dies, his heart is ripped out of his chest right in front of her, and she can't do anything but cry.

She dreams that she calls him, and the only answer is the voicemail.

"Hi, this is Stefan. Leave your number."

So, as much as she tries, summer isn't really the shiny bit of happiness she wishes it was. She still smiles, of course, and does her best not to let her friends see her concern about Stefan's disappearance.

This is what she and Damon have agreed upon when they started searching for clues about Stefan and Klaus' whereabouts (The bastard only gave in after she threatened to continue her own search with her friends).

It's for the best that no one knows about what Stefan has become, though.

Caroline can barely stand it, and she doesn't know what others will think of him (doesn't know if this is what it takes for him to lose all the little bits of good things he's managed to get in his life).

"I got a tip from my mom. Animal attack in Memphis."

"Ok. I'm on it. I'll get Alaris to come with me, too."

"Don't you have a birthday party to plan, blondie?"

"Please, I can do both. In any case, finding him is more important."

"You know, sometimes I wonder what Elena would think of her friend going to such lengths to find her boyfriend."

God, she really hates this man.

"He is my friend too, Damon." Stefan saved her vampire life. If he's in need of saving now, she's going to do the same for him. "I worry more about what he would think of his girlfriend and his brother kissing while he's sacrificing himself for his family."

When she thinks about it, Caroline feels it's an offense committed against herself.

"No one asked your opinion. Now stop wasting your time and try to come up with better excuses for Elena. She's starting to suspect."

"I know."

She ends the call and sighs.

Right, the next step is to contact the private investigator. How difficult can it be to find a doppelgänger, really?

There are dreams she can never, ever, write down in her journal.

Like the dream she has on their way back to Mystic Falls, that reveals darkness she doesn't want to think about.

The madness in his eyes makes her heart beat faster.

"Like you, I'm prone to doing bad things when my humanity is off, but unlike you, I don't have an elaborate system to keep me in check."

"Well, that's not my problem." That's a lie. Everything about Stefan is kind of her problem, even now.

"Well, I'm making it your problem. If my life is gonna fall apart when my humanity starts flooding back, then so is yours. When I'm done with you, you'll be drowning in mistakes."

She walks towards him when she knows she should be walking away.

"This is seriously about revenge?"

He holds up his hands, covered in blood.

He's a murderer.

"This is me…" His fingers caress her lips, leaving traces of blood on them "forcing you to let go, one day at a time, until you break."

He's a murderer. A monster. She's turned him into this.

It's difficult to reconcile the Stefan she knew with the Stefan who, according to Damon, is responsible for these atrocities.

"It's his signature; there's a reason they call him the ripper. Feeds so hard he blacks out and rips them apart, but then when he's done, he feels remorse. It's the damnedest thing."

To be honest, sometimes she isn't sure he's someone who can be saved. He did choose to do all this, to give in to human blood knowing where it would lead him. For some reason, he thought that saving Damon is worth this. He did it willingly, and all of this.. is his responsibility.

So perhaps she is moved by not-so-friendly feelings if she keeps hoping he can come around and be the man who told her he would not let anything happen to her.

It's also difficult to be in the right mood when they are back to town for Elena's birthday party.

"Are you okay?" Matt asks, seeing her way too quiet for what should be considered a successful party.

"Nothing, it's just..."

"Tyler."

"What?" She is confused, what does Tyler have to do with any of this?

But Matt's eyes point at the guy who is dancing (in a very suggestive, gross way) with this girl, Sophie?

Caroline can say they are not on bad terms anymore, but she's held onto Stefan's last piece of advice (from when he was still himself) and stayed away from werewolf land as much as she could. All of her dreams, which more often than not have something to do with him almost biting her, don't help to build much trust.

"I thought you two were together."

"What?! No! Ugh!" She frowns and looks at Tyler, and how anyone could think of that escapes her. "I've been helping him since he's the only one of his kind here and all. But I'm not forgetting that one bite is enough to kill me." She says, explaining way more than she should. "Wait, are you jealous or something?"

It's Matt who told her he did not want to deal with supernatural stuff, but they've been talking since then, as friends, and Caroline isn't sure he knows what he wants.

As expected, he does not answer.

"I… I have not greeted Elena yet. See you around, Care."

It's not that she doesn't want company. She still wants to be loved. But getting together with men when she was clouded by her loneliness has done no good to her.

Other people, however, still need to work on that.

"I need your help." Tyler comes looking for her a bit desperate later when she is looking for a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen.

"What did you do now?"

He was making out with Sophie and accidentally used too much strength. She's hurt and unconscious now.

Seriously.

She follows him to the guest room and feeds the girl some of her blood.

"Ok. I get it. You have a supernatural need to get laid these days. But at least learn to control yourself first. You said Jules helped you with that."

"She did. They did. But…" He sighs. "Sometimes it's not that easy."

She hears the loud music outside the room, all the laughing and fun, and feels those words in her heart. It's not that easy. And she's tired of this.

"I'm going home. Are you staying around, or do you want to give me a ride?"