lmao whassup everyone i'm finally finishing this fic today! ok but in all seriousness, i have not been able to forget this story, not for a single day, in the past seven years. partly it's due to tyler and dj's unrelenting badgering. you should thank them. i certainly will.
to be honest, i didn't know yesterday i was going to finish this. i just sat down earlier, picked up from where i left my draft off in 2016, and started to write. this is unbeta'd, i haven't read through it, i just want to present this to you, damn.
let this fic be testament for all the unfinished, seemingly-forgotten works-in-progress out there. there is hope.
thank you for letting my story into your heart. this is for tyler, for dj, and all of you who stuck it out with me all these years.
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hoppípolla
vi
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It was the absence of both sound and fury.
The cold spread through the room. Outside there is an infinity of colours and dusty white stars.
The Witching Hour.
With two monsters staring at her, something terminal reads through the room.
Caroline was not soft.
True, maybe she had never been soft, but she had tried. Soft for her mother, then her father, then for Damon and Elena and then upon her vampiring she tried to be soft for Stefan, to harm no human and swallow down everything she was built to be. A primal being, at the beck and call of blood and wonder.
This century wait had held her in a bed-like hold, caught in blankets, lulled into a comfort that was edged with the knowledge that this would not – could not possibly – last. That the sun would rise, as it always did. That she would have to get up, or be found in this unfathomably vulnerable state.
Even with the arms-length of space Damon and Stefan allowed her, Caroline found her own freedom. She'd chosen their new homes—terraces, condominiums, sometimes estates and sometimes shared flats (Never again, Damon threatens hoarsely after they had to escape one, singed and bleeding one, loud Moroccan night)—made the rules, ordered the upholstery and reworked the floors. Her wardrobe changed, her hair falling in different layers every other country or so. She went to school, tried her hand at rebellion and tasked Damon to teach her how to fail classes (That she had to hire Damon is still something Stefan smirks at). She was generous to herself when it came to feeding. She knew when to stop, but sometimes didn't — some sort of reward born of vengeance, the righteous fury that she should be able to take when she wanted to. So she did.
Caroline was not soft.
Caroline was not soft, because she had plenty of time to be soft some other century, but for now she wanted to feel ageless and powerful.
She remembers: the record playing in her mind in its jagged broken stream, ageless and strong and brave and beautiful and goodbye, as Damon with his bowtie discarded and collar unbuttoned heaves the last of their bags into the back of his '69 Camaro.
There's still some icing on his chin, but Caroline doesn't comment on that.
Caroline tries for some light, fun conversation. "Said your eternal goodbyes?"
Damon grunts and doesn't even bother to answer. He has an almost scornful look on his face, but she knows it's a front. "You?"
"I left a letter for my mom," Caroline says. She looks back at her house. Like a traitor.
The backseat's a mess of bags and other paraphernalia. Caroline couldn't bear to give up her collection of polaroids; Damon had insisted on practically half his liquor stock from the boarding house. They share one long look, and Caroline can tell Damon is about to say something not snarky, but actually meaningful—
—when a single duffle bag is dumped over the heap.
And it's Stefan's hand wrapped around its handles. He smiles at them: briefly, haggardly.
"You coming?" Caroline can't contain her shock.
"'Course," Stefan says shortly, and slides into the driver's seat. "Knowing Damon's navigational skills you two would find yourselves in the middle of fucking Buffalo."
Damon manages a weak laugh, attempts an eyeroll but abandons it. Flashing into the passenger seat appeared to have used up the last of his efforts to aggravate. "Backseat, Barbie. Stefan's on his period so you might want to buckle up there."
Caroline bristles. She was not—
"—soft," Klaus says. His eyes are remarkably blue, they have stayed blue throughout the years and centuries, magic stitching his skin together, blood mending his bones. And he still looks down with curled lips at the dust beneath his shoes. Like that isn't what his fate would have been had he not been changed into what he is now.
"Too soft, too slow," Klaus comments. His hands fold behind his back. His eyes are blue, his lips are red, his breath is held, Caroline knows, because she's been counting the manufactured breath of everyone in the room and had heard Klaus' slow down while Stefan's sped up.
"Again, Stefan." A command.
But this time it's her. Caroline swallows the thing lodged in her throat and peers at Stefan. It's too stuffy in this room, she struggles to breathe. "Say it louder. Like you mean it. Like you don't regret it."
"Caroline—"
"Say it again."
Stefan looks thoroughly put in his place. He thins his lips, his eyes search hers but must have found nothing, because he takes another deep breath and says, rigid, "I… asked Klaus to kill Tyler."
Caroline nods. "I see." This new truth settles around her, grows, sprouts claws and wings and ugly teeth, threatens to burn their skin in this little room. She will not look at Klaus to see what sort of look he has on his face now. "I see."
"Caroline, I'm—"
"You're not going to say sorry, are you?"
"What?"
"You're not going to tell me you regret it."
Stefan opens his mouth to responds, and then closes it again.
"Because if you do…" Her voice is trembling, oh what the fuck, "because if you find yourself regretting it and find yourself thinking, Oh, there actually was another way, another plan, something that didn't involve killing Tyler and burying him in his own backyard, his head attached so fucking mockingly to his neck , then so help me God—"
Stefan takes a step forward, his arm reaching for her. "Caroline, I'm sor—"
His mouth crumples against her fist.
When she pulls it back it's wet with his blood, and she doesn't know who's more shocked: him or her or Klaus with his own mouth slightly open now, but Klaus makes no move to stop her. He's rooted to the spot by the door, inches away from the cabinet filled to the brim with knick knacks and trinkets and other frilly things, shoulder just grazing the "IF IT DOESN'T HAVE A LABEL IT WAS PROBABLY STOLEN" note Damon tacked there six months ago that no one had bothered to throw out.
No one had bothered about a lot of things in this house, that much is sure.
"You do not have the luxury of apologizing." Caroline says, quite calmly, all things considering. She tucks her hair behind her ears. Her fingers leave a wet, red mark on the high points of her cheekbones. "Not after a hundred years. Not if you truly meant what you did a hundred years ago. Not if there was no other way. Because if you're feeling sorry now then you—then it—then he was all for nothing, and I. I could never forgive you for that, Stefan."
Stefan's mouth mends itself; his bones creak into place, his wobbly teeth settle into their rightful places in his gums. He sighs wretchedly, "But I am. I'm sorry I never told you, I'm sorry I was the one who made you feel this way—"
Caroline remarks, "Now that's putting way too much importance on yourself."
Klaus makes a strange sound behind her. Like a laugh masked as a cough.
Caroline was not soft. She looks at Stefan as though seeing him for the first time—and in a way, maybe she was. He looked sorry, and afraid, but determined, still, to reach her. She was not soft, she shook her head, she turns to go. She does not spare a single glance at the apartment she would be leaving behind. "Don't any of you fucking follow me."
She brushes past Klaus on her way out. Though it's the barest of contact, the skin of her bloodied knuckles hum against the sharp cut of his suit.
.
.
circa 2013.
The lights are blinking down lazily, an autumnal glow setting about the mist of the evening. Elena is drunk, but the kind of drunk that makes you look radiant and rosy-cheeked, hair falling down her back and chin propped on Matt's shoulder. Matt is holding her the way he's looking at her (the way he's always looked at her), gingerly, tenderly, the single act of devotion in the way he brushes his knuckles across her jaw.
There's no music playing anymore – the DJ and the pianist drunk in a corner somewhere, so yes – they're that couple. Caroline's not even surprised. Of course they'd already have Hallmark card memories to tell their grandchildren just hours after exchanging vows.
Her mother comes to sit next to her. Caroline is grateful, suddenly, that she'd already discarded the empty bottle of champagne she'd been swigging straight from the lip; in her hands is a half-full glass of seltzer now. Not that her mother would have said anything. But considering everything, it was… nice. To still be able to keep up appearances.
"You danced yet?" Mom asks. She looks beautiful, out of her sheriff uniform and in a dress, glitzy shawl draped around her shoulders. Caroline remembers the dress. She'd helped Liz choose it, aeons and aeons ago, but hadn't actually seen her wear ever.
"I'm all danced out," Caroline lies. "Find me eleven sisters and there'll be a fairytale ending come morning."
"I didn't see Damon around."
"He's walking it off."
Mom, thankfully, doesn't ask. It's not exactly a secret in these corners – at least, the corners that had shelves stocked with vervain. "And Stefan?"
"Stefan's being the gallant man that he is," Caroline says, pointing with her chin. She knows how envious she must sound, amazed, as always, how Stefan is always able to come off looking like the bigger person. The better brother, she so did love to enthuse, and he'd stand there with a marginal pain in the set of his brows she always scoffs at.
There's a movement by the bar, and Caroline turns to look, and she freezes when she sees Rebekah. Rebekah's studying her with a scrutiny that makes her blood boil: she has that look on her face she gets when she's about to do whatever the hell she wants.
Don't, Caroline warns as hatefully as she musters, her lips parting in a silent snarl.
Don't come closer.
Rebekah sets down her champagne and makes her way to their table.
"Excuse me, Sheriff!" she trills. "Could I have a word with your dear daughter?"
Without waiting for a response Rebekah hooks her arm through Caroline's and drags her off to the arch Elena and Matt had kissed under just two hours ago, with summer bells and fireflies and slow burning candles awash in the air around them.
It was so perfect Caroline could've seethed.
"I couldn't go without telling you first," Rebekah begins. She's not nervous (she's never nervous). Her chin is held high, and as usual she's so matter-of-fact, and it's so annoying that it runs in the family. I'm telling you something brash and you must take it. "Nik and I are leaving. Tonight. Elijah's decided to depart from this pony town as well. You might see Finn around – or you might not, seeing as how we barely know if he's in Denmark or right in his room most of the time. And Kol—"
Caroline halts her talking with a wave of her hand. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Twitter only has 140 characters," Rebekah scowls, "and since you've blocked me on every other medium I saw no other way."
"But I don't care," Caroline tells her earnestly.
"You do," Rebekah says. "I know you'll hate me regardless, but you'll hate me more if I just left without saying goodbye."
And then Rebekah grows hesitant. "I… wondered. If you and I might keep in touch."
"The answer is so obviously a no. No wonder you dropped out of Mystic Falls High that fast," Caroline says.
"Caroline."
And she can't do it, she can't look at Rebekah – not without that well of betrayal opening up in her like a black maw; not without seeing her knocked crossbow, aiming straight for Tyler's throat.
"So leave," she shoves out. "Leave while everyone's dancing and having a good time. Leave before you take whatever bit of happiness this town has with you."
Rebekah's jaw twitches. Her eyes narrow. That Mikaelson anger, that clench of a dagger. "I am sorry for what Nik had to do, Caroline."
"But you're not sorry he's dead."
"Don't think so low of me," Rebekah says, remarkably small. "I'm not as heartless as you've been led to believe. I thought – I thought your perception of me would have changed by now."
"And I thought," Caroline answers savagely, "that you said you were leaving?"
Rebekah looks at Caroline, and looks for a long time. Her eyes are an icy blue, as they always have been. Frozen to the years. Never bending, not even in the winter: especially not then. Her shoulders lift with the volume of breath she inhales, and then they droop again. "Send my condolences to Matthew."
It's the final nail in the coffin. Caroline's cheeks flame but she doesn't retort: it's exactly the kind of outrageous and provoking, two things Rebekah is best at – she won't give her the satisfaction. Caroline stares resolutely ahead, at the bodies draped over one another on the dance floor, and pretends not to notice the hurt look Rebekah throws her way before pushing away from the roses. Caroline doesn't know it yet, but it's the last she would hear from Rebekah in a hundred years.
As loathe as she is to admit, speaking to Rebekah did give her a few ideas.
She stomps through the party, ducking her head and lifting the white covering of every single round table until she finds Damon under one by the DJ, choking down a disgusting concoction of liquor.
"You. We're going somewhere. Get the hell up."
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—
It's the Witching Hour, the god damned Witching Hour. Damon has his mouth agape and his hand reaching out to her, and Todd looks at him, frightened yet intrigued, a mouthful of ham and lettuce in her mouth.
"What did you call me?"
"Désolé je ne comprends pas," Damon tries, shooting an apologetic smile.
"Drop the act, I know you can speak English," Todd accuses. "You're the guy from the market."
"Je pense vraiment que vous vous trompez—"
Todd starts walking towards him, still chewing. "Are you American? How do you know my name?"
She finally reaches him, the tips of her boots inches away from his shoes. Her face takes on a peculiar glaze as she looks him up and down once, twice, and a final time, and takes a deep breath to ask, "Is your name Damon Salvatore?"
A horror coalesces inside him so sharply that his mouth gape wordlessly, for air, for clarity, for terror. "P-pardon?"
"You are." Todd smiles. There's a piece of lettuce stuck, tiny and green, to a corner of her lip. "I've been wondering when I might run into you."
He's never been so fucking speechless. She has a slyness to her like Katherine did, a beaming, beautiful grin the way Elena would always smile, and he has to rein himself in to stop from crumpling because he hasn't thought of Elena as being beautiful for years, hadn't dared to think of her that way, because he loved—
He loved—
"A dead girl," he whispers raggedly.
Todd stops in her tracks. "What?"
"Good night, Todd." He gives her a curt nod and turns the other way, muttering under his breath.
"Wait!" her voice cracks like a whip behind him. "Aren't you the least bit curious as to how I know you?"
"I have a sneaking suspicious Klaus was behind it," he says without turning around.
Elena.
Elena.
Ele—
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Caroline tried to method it out.
She checks herself into a hotel. The first thing she does is empty the mini fridge and order copious amounts of room service. The next: sublimate with alcohol.
It doesn't surprise her at all that in the middle of her drunken stupor, Damon climbs in through her window. She is surprised that he's sober.
"Get out," he says.
Under the covers, rolled up like a sushi, she shakes her head adamantly and stays put.
"Get out, Goldilocks. The bears are home," Damon says exasperatedly, nudging the lump on bed that she's become with his knee. "You're going to lose your job. We can't both be unemployed together. There needs to be wine in the house at all times."
"Plus," he adds, "an unemployment beard wouldn't suit you."
"At least you're happy," comes her muffled mumble.
"Ah," Damon says like he's caught her out, "you're forgetting that I've got a one-track mind."
Caroline is quiet for a while, as if processing this information for the first time. Mourning it. And then she says, "So does Stefan."
Damon all but slumps over and he sits by her side, uncaring if the lump he's propped his elbow on is her face. It is. She finally surfaces for air, batting his elbow out of the way. "Did you know?"
"My brother was a man of many secrets. See, maybe, maaaybe, if we'd just read his journals… that would have sped up the grieving process by forty, fifty years." Damon does his twitchy head jerk as he calculates. "Give or take."
When Caroline doesn't respond, Damon nudges her side gently. "Told you snooping was healthy."
Caroline doesn't laugh. Maybe Damon hadn't expected her to, because he sighs and settles in, seemingly for the long haul. "Look. You know why you left with me and Stefan. I'm not the kind to bemoan what's lost. Sure, I can be a bitch about it, but I sublimate and I live with it. Stefan – Stefan chews."
"He didn't try to derail my clash of guilt for a hundred years because he was guilty too. And you know it," she drives home when Damon starts to protest. "I left with you two because I knew you wouldn't poke at it. You had your own shit to deal with. And Stefan never said a word. Which, looking back, if I hadn't been so obsessed with my own problems, should've been a warning sign."
"Caroline," Damon says in a long wrought-out sigh. "Caroline, you will never let me repeat this again. I'll say I was sober, and everyone knows I'm never truthful when I'm sober. We're family, Caroline. We're all we've got. Forgive Stefan."
Caroline reels back into the sheets. "Damon, what the fuck—"
"Forgive. Stefan," Damon says firmly. He drags a hand down his face. "Got any more of that tequila?"
Caroline clutches it to her chest. Mine. "Family," she snorts derisively. "You really eat up your own bullshit, don't you?"
"We lie and we hurt and we love just as much as the Originals – just as much as the Gilberts, the Donovans… Have you forgotten good old Papa Forbes?" Damon doesn't even flinch at Caroline's cutting look. "We treat each other with as much respect any fucking family in America would. Simpsons was a satire of the dysfunctional nuclear family, remember?"
"Why don't you write a book about it!" Caroline screams.
For a second there, Damon almost looks hurt, which might have alarmed her if she wasn't so overwhelmed by tonight's happenings already. She will not be soft, she will not be, she has been soft for so long—
"Just to be clear," Caroline says savagely, "We are not family."
Like a fucking Disney prince, Damon wears the hurt on his face. It all feels like a show she definitely wants nothing to do with.
"I'm leaving. Your grief is making you stupid." Damon announces, looking hard at her like he's daring her to interrupt his leave.
Her temper flares up again, and she clutches at it, it breaks through the haze of grief and sadness and turns into iron.
Those brothers. They're the same.
They're the same brand of poison.
The difference between Damon and Stefan is that Damon's strikes quick. He lashes and he leaves, he's not patient. He won't sit there and watch you writhe, watch you turn into a sad excuse of what you used to be. Watch you die. It makes her so raw to realise that Stefan had that in him. Stefan's never really left his Ripper behind. Stefan is patient, calculating, and he will wait. He will wait to see you draw your final breath.
And she'd just drawn hers tonight.
She was her own brand of poison, too, but definitely not theirs. She was so sure.
"Don't come back." As he moves - to the door this time, wow, manners - she adds scathingly: "And I'm a Forbes. Don't you ever fucking forget that."
.
.
Rebekah looks like a ghost, standing by the window of their apartment.
Quite fitting, Klaus thinks with what might have been a smirk; they'd not been here in more than two decades. The help had done what they could, but the furniture, whilst expensive, makes the interiors look dated now.
Rebekah looks especially like a ghost where she is now: His art room that he had ordered not to be cleaned. She stands surrounded by things that could be her other ghost friends (ghost army, that unshakeable part of him suddenly insists), dusty white sheets reaching out of the darkness.
"You know," his sister says, breaking the silence. "I have never regretted leaving Mystic Falls until I met Caroline again today."
I am the same, his heart mourns, but he won't tell her this. Of course not.
"The Salvatores got to you already?" Klaus asks in amusement. He hopes that the withering look Rebekah shoots him isn't a prelude to a white oak stake in his heart. He'd hate to be forced into a nap whilst he had more pressing matters to attend to.
"Yes," his sister admits. Klaus growls. His sister is so honest, so vulnerable, all the time, it's hateful. It's treachery.
His voice is low as he steps closer to her. "We always hear tales of how the mighty fall. Never did I dare think my sister would re-enact myth before me tonight."
"Spare me, Nik." Rebekah sounds so weary. "So what now? You're going to kill the girl?"
"Our charming Todd will live to see more of this beautiful, ugly city." Klaus tries for reassurance, but knows his sister isn't convinced. Doesn't blame her, really.
"You mean she's useful to you?"
"To a certain degree, maybe. She doesn't have the blood of the doppelganger, to be sure, but—"
"But if you kill her you sever your chance of ever being with Caroline," Rebekah snorts. "Everyone in fucking Paris knows this."
"I'm not that boring," Klaus dismisses. "Perhaps I've changed. Learned mercy over the years."
"Mercy for Caroline," Rebekah smirks. "If only she knew how high of an honour you offer to her, and still she denies you every time."
A fist grips around his heart, but no, he's smarter than this, he won't fall to his sister's taunts. "You're back early. Thought you'd be rolling with a Salvatore right now. Which one is still up for debate."
"Mere sex doesn't tempt me, brother, you know this." Rebekah says wickedly. "I get plenty of it already. It's you who's in such sore need."
"Ha," Klaus says shortly to mask the burn of her humiliation. He turns away from her to guess at the artwork hidden beneath a sheet, brings up the memory of that day he'd finished painting it. He can see it all: the dust swirling in the mid-afternoon air, the sweat on his brow, the stroke of his paintbrush. He hums through this little memory, until his sister clicks her tongue.
"What's this, no retort? Maybe you really have changed," Rebekah says in a show of amazement. "I'm packing up. Bored already. Elijah's asked me to join him in Peru to look for Kol."
"Leave him," Klaus groans. "You know he disappears on purpose. The ransom note wasn't even convincing."
Rebekah tilts her head, pretending to consider. "Nah, I'm alright, big brother. Even if Kol isn't being held ransom by a witch he'd pretended to love, it's still nothing compared to the farce you've got me in here."
Klaus bares his teeth. His sister bears hers right back.
"Could you just fix things with Caroline already?" his sister continues lamenting. "I'm dying for a proper chat but she keeps getting drunk every time I try."
"Maybe you're not right personality for her."
"And maybe you should realizes when your love isn't being returned." Whether she meant to hurt him with the lie or the truth he really can't tell in this moment. His grip curves as muscle memory takes over. He wishes for a dagger to thrust into his sister as she says, oh so fucking mockingly, "Trust me, I'm an expert at that."
"Try to convince the Salvatores to leave with you," Klaus manages to spit out a beat too late. Rebekah has won. The invisible ghosts in the room applaud politely.
"I'll try." It's easier to be nice when you've won an argument, isn't it, Rebekah?
Just before she leaves, she sends him a look that looks to be quite sincere. "I wish you all the best, Nik."
"Whatever for?"
"I still believe in your heart. It beats, it means it must still work. Caroline is the only other person outside of our family to ever be foolish enough to believe in it, too." Rebekah looks sad. So, so sad. "Don't ruin it. I mean it, Niklaus. Mind her heart. It's a sign miracles exist that it still beats for you."
Klaus is truly, truly vexed now, and suddenly he fears he might not see his sister in a very long time.
He's half-right. Rebekah will come back to him in a few years, with a tan, with a brand new smile, and then she will leave again without even having to tell him. The power of their secret had taken a hundred years to finally collapse, and the worst of it all is over. Rebekah is free.
If he doesn't do right by Caroline, he might not be as lucky.
He makes his exit not a second after Rebekah, but he knows she is far away now, running with a newfound energy that he'd never allowed her to use. With a sinking feeling he wonders when Rebekah had realised he has let her go. And why it took him so long to figure it out.
He rests his palm against his chest. Sure enough, his heart is still beating.
.
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Caroline wakes up to the sound of a door closing. She snarls, she had slashed viciously at the DO NOT DISTURB door sign with a thick black marker the words NO SALVATORES ALLOWED.
Clearly her sign was being disrespected. The audacity of those boys thinking they could do whatever the hell they want. The room tilts out of order as she tears her head out of her covers to find—
"Bonnie," she breathes.
Bonnie is standing with her hand still on the doorknob, a deer in headlights. "Damn. Would have liked for you to wake up with me caressing your hair gently."
"Vampire, remember?"
"As if you ever let me forget it." Bonnie smiles. "You and your perennial existential crisis."
Her hands are strong and she stands without a cane, her chin lifted with centuries of Bennet pride. Caroline can only stare. A wave of guilt washes over her, suddenly she can't remember when their last conversation had been.
"Do you know how long it took me to get here?" Bonnie chides. The age in her voice is apparent: Caroline suddenly feels like she'd just been caught stealing a cookie from the jar. The smile drops suddenly from her face when she realizes why Bonnie must be here.
"Cleaning up everyone's mess again?" Caroline can't help but joke, because how can she even pretend around Bonnie? She'd never been able to be anything but an open book to the witch. Bonnie never had to try so hard to read her, and that – wow, she misses that, she misses the devotion in Bonnie's eyes, different than Klaus', than Stefan's and even Damon's.
Bonnie never wants anything in return.
"Aren't I always?"
"I'm sure I'm taking you away from Layla," Caroline says, memory of Bonnie's daughter recollecting even through her groggy state. She takes in Bonnie, with crow's feet around her eyes, milky with age. Her hair, white as bone, her wrinkles and fine lines and laughter etched into her skin, still so resilient, and a tear collects in her throat, expanding into a sizable lump, and the next sound that comes from her is a broken sob.
Bonnie is the only beautiful thing left in the world.
"Oh baby," Bonnie sighs, going to her. Caroline can hear how her bones work against one another to perform that simple a task, cries wetly as Bonnie carefully lowers herself onto the edge of Caroline's bed to envelope her in a hug. "Don't cry."
"You haven't been brewing your potions," Caroline cries into Bonnie's shoulder, the paper-thin skin against hard bone. "Why?"
"It seemed… counterproductive," Bonnie said. Her voice was so different, like the soothe of old silk, raw and beautiful still. Her bony fingers rake through Caroline's pillow-mussed curls. "Counter-intuitive as well, to be lecturing my children about the beauty of a mortal life when I keep drinking those down. And for what? Vanity? Plus," Bonnie added playfully, "They weren't exactly easy to digest. Life truly is a bitter pill to swallow."
"Not vanity, no," Caroline shakes her head, refusing to believe so low of her friend. "You wanted to be deathless, there's no shame in wanting to enjoy life." And then she's the one ashamed, because, God, Klaus really has rubbed off of her, hasn't he?
"Vanity, immortality." Bonnie waves dismissively. "They're the same, really. Being beautiful gets old so fast. I met my wrinkles head on, like a boss."
Caroline snorts, but a bubble of snot comes out, which makes Bonnie laugh. Caroline looks at her like this, so old, so peaceful. She's not sure how she should remember Bonnie, as being once young and beautiful, or as she is now, aged and learned and ready to die—and beautiful, beautiful still. "Bonnie. Everything hurts."
"I know. Youth does that."
"Wow, ok Boomer." Caroline cringes and sticks out her tongue. "Did I just regress several decades while you became Rumi's teachings, like, personafied?"
"Age does that too," Bonnie snickers. "You've got your super strength. Let me have this."
Caroline smiles sadly. "A meaningful life."
"A life made meaningful," her friend corrects. She has grace enough not to roll her eyes. "You are what you eat. Layla's decided to go vegan, can you imagine? All that kale she has Tesla buy."
"Still can't believe you named your kid Tesla," Caroline gripes.
Bonnie shrugs. "Nikola thought it was funny, you know this."
Caroline tries laughing again, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand, feeling very grubby indeed in the cloud of Bonnie's perfume. "Well you sure as hell didn't marry him for his looks."
"Scars make a man look sexy," Bonnie objects. "I see you're just as petty as I left you."
"Not petty. Just heartbroken."
"Over something that happened a hundred years ago? Petty."
Caroline takes a deep breath. Did she really spend a hundred years being petty? Somehow, that single adjective changes things, it didn't make her last century romantic, a novel, a perfected arc. It cheapened her pain, it made fun of her drawn out depression. She lets out her breath, and her will disintegrates.
"Bonnie," she cries, "Bonnie, have I been stupid?"
"No, Care—"
Caroline cries harder at that, reminded of Liz, of Mom, coining that nickname and using it in endearment, exasperation, anger, relief, madness. Her human mother who is now dead, but who had allowed grief into her life with resigned grace, who aged it well and put it away peacefully. Caroline had worked so hard to keep it at bay. Why is she always the last to learn this?
"How you felt was valid," Bonnie says firmly, holding her tighter. "Everything. Don't let some pretty boys who've been trampling over you for the past century make you think your emotions weren't deserving. We were all in pain. Some just bear it better."
"I should've stayed with you." Her tears won't stop coming. Regret. Her most feared adversary, finally come to her. She gives in to it, knees weak. "I should've stayed and worn it like you did. Like armour."
"It was heavy, but we could've managed it together," Bonnie confesses softly. "You hurt me when you left so suddenly, but I understood. Nobody held it against you. Especially not Elena."
"Saintly Elena," Caroline whispers Damon's nickname of her. She feels sick. "You two made me better. The best version of myself."
"Good thing you've got forever, quite literally, to study self-help books." Bonnie smiles impishly. "It'll be easier for you. I don't miss falling headlong into my mistakes, but I'm glad I don't lose so much sleep over them now."
Caroline closes her eyes, leans into the warmth as Bonnie sweeps Caroline's tangled fringe away from her forehead. She's still crying – they come uncontrollably – but they don't leave her in the wreck she'd been just minutes ago. Her airways clear and she feels relaxed in a way she hasn't felt in a long, long time.
Bonnie doesn't stop caressing her hair. "I'm so wise now, aren't I?"
"Didn't need to rub it in, Bon," Caroline laughs, a true one. "You were always like this, even when we were kids. Pissed me off so much."
"I knew it!" Bonnie wheezes. Her purse vibrates, and Bonnie fishes a phone out of it. There's still humour in her eyes, but they're narrowing as she reads her message. "For Pete's sake, Tatiana."
"Who?"
Bonnie snaps her phone shut and groans. "Tatiana Gilbert. Drives her mother crazy. She's a naughty one, that Todd."
Caroline gasps. "Todd! Of course! Of course she'd be here, and you—urgh, why do I still believe in coincidences at all!"
"No," Bonnie says. "Yes, Nina might've asked me to check on her daughter, but I was already on the way." At Caroline's questioning frown she answers, "The witches tell me whenever Klaus is near you. Todd's on some European adventure with her best friend so, yeah, coincidences still happen."
"Life," Caroline smirks. "What's happening with Todd? Also – Todd?"
"I know," Bonnie rolls her eyes. "But the girl watched The Fox and the Hound one time and insisted to be a fox forever. As for right now? Todd's hanging out with a couple of Salvatore vampires."
Caroline splutters. "How do you know?"
"Because she told me." Bonnie holds up her phone.
Making up her mind then and there, Caroline rolls out of bed with a grunt, ignoring Bonnie's triumphant smirk, and grabs the first item of clothing she sees. She shoves her arms through her dress goes to the bathroom to wash her face, brush her teeth, freshen up. When she swipes her lipstick on, Bonnie hums approvingly.
"She really takes after her entire bloodline, doesn't she?" Caroline grumbles as she helps Bonnie into the elevator.
"You should've met her grandmother," Bonnie says conspiratorially. The elevator takes them all the way down.
.
.
It's almost comical that they all end up in the same place. Bonnie's towncar pulls up to a swanky club that looks like it's cursed to relive a night in the '20s again and again. Arguing on the cobblestoned pathway, predictably, is Damon and Klaus.
Fortunately Damon is distracted mid-brandishing a rude hand gesture in Klaus' face when he sees Bonnie.
"Bon-Bon!" A look of utter compulsion overtakes him, and Caroline remembers with a pang just how much Bonnie is loved by everyone. That she doesn't command a bigger space in her friend's heart.
Even Klaus nods his reverence.
The ability to age had never been so hungered for. Caroline, Damon and Klaus observe in unison her Bonnie's earned weariness, the rings of blue around her pupils, her hair so white, so pure. The pool of sparking youth paled in comparison to the ancient, unknowable sea.
Caroline can feel a wetness growing behind her eyes. Why did it take Bonnie to remind her of how damning it is to be a vampire? She swallows her revelations and clears her throat, businesslike suddenly – Klaus glances curiously at her – says: "Let's get our Todd."
"I was in the middle of stopping Klaus from his own Mission Evil: Steal Doppelganger," Damon seethes.
"Mate, if you know what's good for you, get your finger out of my fa—"
"Stop," Bonnie says.
She says it only once, but immediately Klaus and Damon relax from their fighting stances.
"Klaus," Bonnie allows with a sniff. "Why are you here?"
"Only to deliver a message of assurance." Klaus grins. "Elena's granddaughter will not be harmed – she's of no use to me, bloodwise, if you get my meaning."
Damon butts in hurriedly, "And I was trying to tell him how pathetic he is for resorting to that old trick."
"It's not a trick, Damon," Caroline says. Damon looks at her in interest. Does that mean we're…?
She shakes her head in warning. No, we're not okay…
…Yet.
Damon accepts this with a sigh. "Okay, so you one-upped us. Made us, what, reignite unrequited feelings for Elena. Congratu-fucking-lations."
"Now, Damon," Klaus says wickedly. "Nobody said anything about that last bit. But yes, I manufactured a lie and you fell for it. I estimated your love for Elena just right, but I thought at the very least it would just be in her memory—"
"Quit taunting him, Klaus," Caroline snaps. "You would've done the same if it was all real."
Ever so pragmatically, Klaus replies, "But it wasn't real."
"Can we cut the bullshit and just get my damn god-greatdaughter?" Bonnie leaves them all on the sidewalk as the bouncer lets her in without even a glance.
"So classy," Damon sighs, momentarily forgetting that he still has a finger in Klaus' face.
.
.
"What's your game?" Todd demands, but there's no edge to her voice. She tilts her head back to drop a cherry into her wide, open mouth, chews on it quickly, then spits it back out into an empty margarita glass. "Was everyone obsessed with grandma or something?"
"To put it mildly," Damon says, "yeah."
"Cool," Todd nods.
"Caroline and I were her best friends," Bonnie reminds her.
Todd's face lights up as she takes Caroline in. "You really look the same in all the pictures I've seen."
Caroline blushes. "You know all about us?"
"Uhh, yeah," Todd snorts. "Gilbert's motto is 'The best offense is a good defense'. So now we're all constant vigilance, and agency in information. There have been only two unsolved animal attacks since y'all left."
"Probably because Klaus left too," Caroline mutters into her drink. Klaus tuts disapprovingly. She narrows her eyes at him, no, they were not okay either.
Stefan is silent through the conversation. He's sunk into the velvet cushioning, looking uncomfortable. Sometimes he breaks his train of thought to send Caroline a beseeching look, which she ignores.
"Anyway, I'm pretty much done for the night." Todd dusts her hands off and hops to her feet. "Sorry if this was anticlimactic, But I wanted a drink and figured I looked enough like grandma to be able to fool these fellas into buying one for me."
"Hey," Damon and Stefan object, simultaneous in their affront.
Todd just shrugs. "It is what it is."
It's only after she leaves with a very clearly chastising Bonnie that Klaus muses, "It is certainly what it is."
"O-kay Plato," Damon blows out a breath. "That's all I've got for this really long, really messy night. Ciao, or whatever the French say." He leaves with a lift of two fingers, a layman's salute.
"Caroline," Stefan starts.
"It will take time," Caroline says, getting right to the point. "I will forgive you, because I understand your intentions—"
"That Tyler had the hybrid equivalent of rabies and had to be put down," Klaus supplies. To no surprise he is ignored.
"—and I realise now that they were pure. You were looking out for me. Which isn't really what I can say about you," Caroline shoots a glare at Klaus, who stops smirking.
"I know I've already said it, but I'm sorry," Stefan says mournfully. "But if I knew… if I could just go back…You grieved for so long that I thought you'd never stop. I was an idiot. I knew what love was, I loved Elena, and still didn't expect that you'd be overtaken by your emotions. You never shut it off. I'm awed by it."
"Never thought even you would underestimate me, Stefan," Caroline says. She doesn't mean it. She sends him a small smile, which he returns.
Maybe she'll never be a Salvatore, and he seriously doesn't look like a Forbes.
But maybe they could be a new kind of label.
Stefan stands to leave.
Maybe.
Stefan brushes his fingers against her knuckles as he turns to leave, and Caroline feels it then, the love he has for her, and the love she returns so freely. No, she doesn't regret any of it. Stefan was a coward and lied, but love does make you a bit of a coward, doesn't it? She would know. Oh, she would know.
And then it's just her and Klaus.
She looks at him. He looks back at her.
"Have I… Have I acquit myself as well?" Klaus asks gruffly. He's never been able to hide it, hasn't he?
"You, whose hands severed Tyler's head?" Caroline asks coldly.
"Yes," Klaus breathes.
"No," Caroline says, surprising herself with the truth. "No, I haven't forgiven you. You pursued me so much, made me feel things that were so real. How could you not know how I'd feel? Did you ever really see me?"
Caroline searches his eyes. There's a desperation in them. She thought she'd had Klaus pegged, all those years ago. Knew he was dangerous, was terrified out of her mind of him – and yet still attracted to him. She remembers their kiss. The shift in his eyes tells her he remembers too.
Stefan, Bonnie, Matt, Tyler, Elena, even Damon; she forgave them for not knowing her, but being sweet enough to try. To come close. She never hid herself from them. It was Klaus who had needed to prove himself. Klaus the unimprenitable. Klaus who claimed he loved her.
She'd had such high expectations of him.
And she had fallen so, so hard.
Only to realise that, no, he never really saw her.
She goes to leave, too.
Klaus catches her wrist. He says, in one long breath, "You fool everyone but you don't fool me. You'd like everyone to think the years have hardened you. Turned you into steel. You don't like anyone thinking you soft. But I did see you, Caroline. I saw it so clearly the night I killed Tyler, your potential. If I had to kill him a thousand times over for us to end up here, right where we are, I would do it all over again."
Caroline snatches her hand away. His skin has struck her, hurt her, the contact shocking her body awake. She wrings her hands, caught, once again. "You're wrong," she hisses. "Yes, I was soft, but I was soft for everyone but you, and it killed you. And then you killed Tyler, and you killed her too. I'm not the Caroline you know anymore. I am not soft."
She emphasised the I to indicate a rebirth of the pronoun. This is not the story you know. This isn't the girl you know. This girl exists on a completely separate plane from you. You do not even deserve to have her image in your mind, seared there forever.
Well, that's history for you.
She thinks she's done. Her speech has drained her of what little energy seeing Bonnie had generated. She is ready to go to sleep again.
But of course Klaus has to speak.
And how softly he speaks.
"Being soft was never your weakness." Klaus says it like he's mourning, shoulders hunched and eyes unseeing over a fresh grave. He hasn't forgotten he had killed her, too. But he won't give in to her lies. "Being soft - it was your strength. It made you untouchable… the ease in which you let everyone in. They loved you. I envied you. I loved you." Klaus swallows difficultly, and takes a breath and looks up at her, he looks up at her and swears, "I love you still."
It's her turn now, isn't it? Her eyes fall shut. Briefly. She won't let her guard down despite despair ripping up her insides at his confession. No, that's not the word. At his suggestion. That they could have anything other than a tragic star-crossed bullshit of a romance.
"It will pass," she tells him as gently as she can.
She doesn't expect him to beg, but his eyes bear into her when he chokes out, "How long will it take?"
"A very long time." Damn her, she's crying. She'd built herself up so well, but the sight of Klaus sitting, looking up at her, while she stands so, so tall overwhelms her. He makes her feel untouchable, it was maddening. It felt strange to hold such privilege over another life. She won't say power. She's not the kind. That's why she says, "But you will forget me, eventually."
"No." He's a stubborn one. Made undone by whatever it is he feels, any other word but love. "Sweetheart, I'm a vampire. We—"
"Never forget," she finishes for him. Why does it sound like a warning to him, in her ears? Like she's requesting him not to forget her.
"I'll never forget you," Klaus says, his second vow of the night. "It's not possible."
"Okay," Caroline accepts. Her tears fall freely now. She doesn't stop him when he stands to cup her face, to thumb her wet tears away. "You'll love me forever, is that what you're saying?"
"Yes." She wishes he doesn't sound so fervent all the time.
"Then you'll still be here when I come back," she says. She tries not to say it with the loathsome relief she feels.
"…Come back…?" Klaus repeats. "Are you leaving?"
"Yes," Caroline decides.
Klaus, he's so shameless. He asks, "Would you like me to come with you?"
"No," Caroline decides.
Her own hands wrap around his. They fight, for a moment, but then her fingers are being held so tenderly in his. He lowers his lips to her knuckles, breathing them in, and brushes a kiss softly against her skin.
Their last kiss for a while. Judging from the goosebumps that have flared across her arms, he wants to make her regret leaving. It almost works.
They don't say anything else. He walks her out, and then watches her walk away.
.
.
It is a long, long time of waiting after that.
A year passes. Then two, then ten, then a hundred – who can tell?
He is still without Caroline, isn't he?
Klaus doesn't drown himself in drink, to the condescending disbelief of his siblings. Instead, he puts his mind to other things. Like honing his carpentry skills, getting Finn to recommend him the most durable wood against water. If Finn is surprised that Klaus - who before was very vocal about not giving a shit that Finn is a pirate - has taken a sudden interest in his trade, he hides it well under years and years of finely-tuned dignity, the skill only Elijah and he seemed to have mastered.
Kol, after having plead with the witch Sharufa to spare his life, and that his feelings for her indeed was real, and then proceeded to agree himself into something that seemed to them a marriage but for her coven, just a show of good faith. Klaus wasn't so convinced, especially when he had to travel all the way to fucking Peru to watch his brother take part of a hand-binding ritual. Rebekah hollers in delight, Finn nods sagely, and even Elijah gets soft around his eyes.
Kol doesn't seem to mind so much. He spends his time in Peru and in New Orleans, delighting the covens there with stories of his pseudo-wife's eccentricities. Once, he visits Klaus in an island in the Aegean Sea with bottle of bourbon in his hand.
"Far away from the mayhem, innit?" Kol asks, taking a seat on the block of wood Klaus had been sawing.
"Didn't you know Niklaus has always had a yearning for peace?" Finn asks. Klaus is never sure if he's being mocked with straight, sombre Finn.
"If what Rebekah says is true and that he is building a fucking house in this coastal village, and that you're helping him?" Kol laughs his delight and takes a swig of Bourbon. "I might believe you."
Elijah appears from behind a set of large blueprints Klaus had meticulously planned – the house was still in its foundations yet, but how magnificent it will be when it is finished.
Kol looks like he is thoroughly enjoying himself. "Lijah! You're here too?"
"Of course," Elijah says. "Anything for Niklaus' pursuit of peace." He and Finn exchange a companiable look, and Klaus is intrigued – they've got inside jokes now, have they?
His youngest brother's eyes dance. "Now where's Rebekah?"
"Here," comes her voice, and they all look up. She's standing on a particularly stable-looking boulder, colour swatches in her hand. "I'm gathering materials for the interior to make sure Klaus' brutish tastes doesn't takeover. Everything has to be perfect."
"Oh, but for who?" Kol asks innocently.
Nobody dignifies him with a response because Klaus is seething to much, embarrassed into silence, and the rest of his siblings are snickering into their palms. Kol is snickering into his bourbon.
Kol wags his eyebrows knowingly, for who indeed.
.
.
True to her word, it does take a long time.
And true to his word, he never forgets her.
It is impossible.
Klaus finds that perfection isn't easy to achieve in such a short time, so the building of his home had taken a while.
But it is finished.
Elijah helps him put the final board into place, Rebekah brings them workmen uniforms that she had stolen from a nearby construction site, and the five Originals start to paint Klaus' house bone white. Wide, sheer draperies are installed, the surfaces polished until they gleam. His new furniture was well broken into and even replaced to suit the passing trends by the time Caroline arrives.
He isn't too fussed that she'd ambushed him during his lunch.
No, it's not an open neck over his sink. He's having marinated octopus, thank you, his tastes have assimilated to the flavor of his new seaside home.
Caroline hums her approval, and reveals a bottle of blood-wine from her bag.
Never has there ever been a slower grin to slick upon a man's lips.
.
.
Klaus lives by the sea, now.
Caroline huffs when she finds out. Oh, he thinks he's so fuckin' romantic.
He is, though, an older, more wisened Todd - who sometimes even agrees to go by Tatiana – wraps her lips around her teacup.
She'd grown out of Elena's doe-like features, her eyes had taken over the look of a fox. There is even some blue in them. She still has Elena's fire, but she's got that Donovan goodness in her too. Caroline has never been so relieved.
"You're delusional, Caroline," her voice adopting Bonnie's lecturing voice. "I'm going to get my second PhD by the time you finally figure yourself out."
"It's by no fault of my own," Caroline retorts. Then she's fond all over again, as she always is, of Elena's granddaughter. "That's 'cause you're such a smartie."
Todd protests at being spoken to like a child despite looking ten years older than her god-aunt. But she likes it. Reminds her of home.
"Just go," Todd groans. "I'm fine, thanks for checking in, I've got a write-up and two meetings to go to. And no, I'm not planning on settling down yet. Thanks for coming to New York."
"Just making sure," Caroline says reproachfully. She pinches Todd's cheek before leaving the pastry shoppe, straight to the airport.
.
.
Klaus wears a lot of white now, too.
The light of the sun glares off of his shoulders. He has never looked as powerful to her as he is now, sitting on a table by the wide window that offered a view of the rolling, blue sea. If his Mystic Falls attire was business casual, then this surely is the definition of casual. He's wearing super cliché linen, the outfit of the wealthy who retire and then go do something even more cliché like live out their wealth in coastal Greece.
Evidently, this is what he's doing.
Klaus seems pleased that they match: her wide sunhat (yes, cliché, whatever) and her white sundress (shut up). She looks so clean, like a clear glass of water in his room lit too bright by natural sunlight.
And then the light shifts, the sun ended its role for the afternoon, and a shadow comes creeping across the sea, to reach his seahouse.
When the sun dims the room, Caroline gets right to the point, as always, and demands: "Would you have killed him, even if Stefan hadn't asked you to?"
The shake of Klaus' head is resolute. "No. I would have tried another route. If you'd asked, I would have—sought a cure. I knew some witches in the French quarter. I had Travellers with their penchant for supernatural lobotomy at my disposal. They're long dead now, but—"
Caroline interrupts Klaus' gloating. "So why didn't you?"
Klaus is silent as he rubs his chin. He considers his answer, because she's been nothing but truthful to him, and he should be to her, too. That was always her request—her only request.
Klaus studies her face. Caroline waits.
"Because I'm selfish. I'm a selfish, opportunistic man, unmoved by any mountain or sea. I was a vampire who wanted to best the sun, and then as a wolf I conquered the moon. As a the first hybrid, I wanted to take the earth, too… but then I chanced upon you," his single gaze is blue, and honest, and frightening, "…and could have no one else. You moved me, Caroline, and I'm selfish. I want. But you knew all that already. I am what I am, what I have always been. You had a century to make peace with it, love. The mystery is solved, the secret is out, the whodunnit bullshit over. So I have to ask— why are you here?"
Klaus looks immortal, in a swift and sudden way. He has always able to reduce himself to little more than just a man around her, a compact study of a man. Sinews strung together: ligament to muscle to bone. He keeps secrets too, Klaus—the most arcane was his age; the most meaningless, to her at least, his blood. It is meaningless because he's never held it hostage from her. He'd always been so free with it. She doesn't for a second doubt that if she asked for the world, he would show her his wrists. Always so brazen, so sure. And therein lied his immortality.
"I'm not sure," she says. She waits to see if he'll swell up – he doesn't.
Klaus leans back in his chair. "Would you like to stay?"
"Maybe."
He looks at the floor. Immortal or no, he could never quite hide his grins from her, could he? "Would it be a long stay?"
"Maybe not."
"Would you like me to come with you, when you go?"
Beyond him, the tide shifts in greens and blues. It isn't a hot day. It's the kind of day that used to come rarely in Mystic Falls. She'd wake up to a cool grey, a sky populated with clouds, and it would smell like rain, but never actually would rain. A day of placidity, of calm existence.
She turns her eyes back to Klaus. He's simply watching her.
"No," Caroline decides, after some time. This time she's sure. She waits to see if he'll deflate.
He doesn't.
Klaus just changes his language.
"Could I come with you?" he asks.
"If you like," she shrugs.
He doesn't even skip a beat. The words barely leave her before he's answered, as though he is the next breath after a lull, the strike of of a wooden, sunbleached floor following worn leather soles. How quickly he is before her, looking at her so feverishly. "I would," he tells her. And again: "I would."
He presses his palm against her heart, and yes, the relief melts his shoulders.
It all comes back to him: the balls, the kisses, the fights, the nights she seeks him out in cold, miserable Mystic Falls.
The sun hasn't been blown out, not completely.
Her heart still beats for him.
Caroline smiles at that, tilts at him in teasing wonder, "How could you forget?"
Vampire, she doesn't have to say.
.
.
fin
i sat on this story for a long time because i couldn't come up with a half-ending you all deserved. but now here i am, with this half-ending, because i always like it when readers make up the other half. nothing feels concrete. klaus and caroline are still out there, floating, existing.
thank you.
we finished.
bye for now. i'll be at highgaarden on tumblr if you need me.