The sound of a beating heart
Right now, she wants to think about anything else then what went wrong for her friends on the island. When Klaus was able to leave the barrier and he explained it with the fact that something had happened to Bonnie, she knew that they failed.
The fact that she hasn't heard a word from them doesn't make it any easier and cleaning up the mess Elena and Jeremy created when they killed Kol hasn't calmed her as she thought it might do.
It's when she scrubs the floor of burn marks that she gets the first sign of life from them and it's not an encouraging one. Stefan is carrying a dead Jeremy through the front door.
"Come on. Let's get him upstairs." Elena says, and Caroline can only stare at the sight in front of her.
She thinks that it might be a good idea that she plans to keep her new powers a secret for a while, just in case they would expect her to wake Jeremy up like she did with Kol and she is quite certain that she would fail.
At the same time, she's suddenly a bit relieved over the voice message Tyler had left her where he told her that he is leaving town for now, not feeling safe around Klaus and he still has the idea that he can find a way to help her. At least he isn't here to tell her friends.
Ever since Cyrena had left the Gilbert house she's kept herself hidden, possibly in her cabin that they can't get to without her permission, and he has tried countless times to get through her spell so that he can get some answers.
Compared to Caroline, he doesn't have the patience to wait her out, and Kol was completely useless he didn't know anything more then what could be read in legends and he had no interest what so ever to help Klaus search the forest.
He looks around and sighs, trees as far as he can see and no cabin or witch, he hasn't seen the boy that guided him the last time again either.
Starting to think that it's time to give up a sound draws his attention, the sound of a beating heart, maybe it will lead him to where he needs to go.
If she has understood everything right, then her friend has lost it more or less. It's obvious that Elena is in complete denial about Jeremy's fate and Stefan trying to be a good friend aren't willing to burst her bubble just yet.
She can understand it, to a degree. They haven't found Bonnie and have no idea if she is even alive so maybe Elena needs a little hope, Caroline is just afraid of what will happen when her friends need to accept that she has lost her last bit of family.
At the same time, she isn't sure that she likes Stefan's idea of how to help her through it. "You want Damon to use the sire bond to convince her that everything is okay?"
Stefan nods as confirmation. "I'm not in denial." They hear Elena's voice. Caroline turns to her friend with a sad smile while Stefan turns off the tap.
She lets her friend speak her mind, to tell them of her belief in the Gilbert rings magic and the whole time she just wishes that Elena could see that it isn't happening, that if the ring would have worked then he would already be awake.
At the end of things Elena doesn't even let her speak, she doesn't want to hear them say that it won't happen. "There's absolutely no way that my brother is dead." She says determined but Caroline can feel that the words are said not to convince them but to convince herself.
When Elena leaves them, Caroline wants to grab her, shake her and make her realise that this is happening and after when she has accepted it, she can be a friend and help her through it. But she doesn't instead she follows with Stefan's plan of waiting.
She isn't sure what she's supposed to do. There's nothing she can help with and just sitting around doing nothing isn't really her. She wonders if they shouldn't be more prepared to deal with someone's death by know and the fact that it has become somewhat of a norm for them scares her.
Needing to do something at least she tries to reach Tyler to inform him of Jeremy's death. She isn't sure if he is going to care much, she has no idea if he and Jeremy were close in any way, but he might want to know that they utterly failed to get the cure.
Dialling his number something else catches her attention, a heartbeat. Normally she wouldn't think much about it, she could usually hear the heartbeats of those around her, but ever since Cyrena did her magic on her, her hearing has gone down.
Looking around she tries to find whoever it can belong to but nothing, no one is there except her friends in the house. Maybe it's just the stress of everything that has happened these days, she thinks and tries to ignore it for now.
She leaves a message for Tyler when he doesn't answer and soon thereafter Stefan joins her on the porch offering a cup of coffee. "Do you know where he is?" he asks having heard her message.
She shakes her head. "We sort of had an argument, he didn't even tell me he was leaving in person."
"About what?" he wonders.
Of course, that he would ask, now she must think of a way to explain without telling him what has really happened to her. "The cure." That's the first thing that comes to mind. "When we learned that there were only one, I might have seemed a bit relieved that he couldn't use it on Klaus." It isn't a complete lie.
Stefan hums. "Maybe not celebrate yet if you care about Klaus immortality, we have no idea what Katherine is planning on doing with it."
Well, she doesn't think Katherine is going to be stupid enough to go up against Klaus, is more likely that she is going to barter for her freedom. Caroline just wishes that her means to do so didn't come with waking an ancient and dangerous being, why do those two words always seem to go together.
Looking back now at what they lost, she does wonder why they even went after the cure, to begin with. "All of this only too make things worse." She says with a sigh.
Stefan leans against a pillar looking out at the quiet street, the rest of the city have no idea what has happened, the dangers they have gone through. Sometimes she does miss those simpler times when the worst thing that could happen where if a guy didn't like her.
"Yeah. I mean, talk about denial. In my head, I was thinking there was no way Elena was gonna stay a vampire forever...And now without any family." Stefan's voice draws her out of her thoughts. "I couldn't understand why you wanted us to leave it alone."
She takes a deep breath. "I just had this feeling that something bad was going to happen, I can't really explain it, but maybe it's just that a lot of the things we try usually makes thing worse." Especially when it comes to making life easier for Elena.
Which is exactly what they are doing now, it's just become so normal for them, that sometimes she thinks that they forget that what Elena wants isn't always what's best for them.
But to be fair, it was Stefan that wanted the cure for her, not being able to see her go through all the bad of being a vampire, and when it turned out she was sired to Damon, they all wanted to help. But maybe her friend should have thought about if she wanted to be a vampire or not before she started to date one and fall for a second.
Wherever she has gone today the sound of that beating heart has followed her. It's faint and she can easily tune it out if she wants to but when she listens after it, it's there and she can't figure out where it comes from.
But she has managed to keep herself busy, talking to her mother about a cover story for Jeremy's death and sent Meredith over to convince Elena that Jeremy is dead and Matt to help comfort their friend.
A part of her is starting to feel like she is in denial too. She knows that Jeremy is dead that's not the problem it's just that sometimes she thinks that all this horror that has happened to them must be a joke and at any moment now someone is going to laugh over the fact that they fell for it.
She looks down at her phone once more, reading the message from Stefan that gave her some hope that maybe they can have some luck. Bonnie has been found and according to her, she knows how to save Jeremy.
Waiting outside the Gilbert house to avoid the stench inside, she is filled with relief when she sees Damon's car and Bonnie that comes out of it. "Thank god. We were so, so worried." She embraces her friend not wanting to let go when they are now all home.
But the look Damon gives her starts to fill her with dread instead. "Could you get Stefan out here?" there is no hope in him and at her confusion, he looks at Bonnie, something isn't right with her friend.
The more time she stands there with Bonnie and walking beside her to the door, she can feel it herself. Energy is surrounding the witch that is making Caroline feel sick, whatever it is that's causing it, she can't be around Bonnie right now, which is why she joins the brothers on the porch.
When she closes the door behind her and they understand that she will be staying, both of them is looking at her weirdly. "Caroline could you…" Damon starts to say.
"I need to be here." She makes absolutely clear. "Just start talking." She adds when he isn't saying anything.
Taking a deep breath Damon is looking at them in a way Caroline hasn't seen before. He is serious, but at the same time, he's afraid of the things Bonnie has told him. "The whole flight back home, all she could talk about was how she's the one that can drop the veil between this side and the Other Side." He explains to them.
So that is how she plans on saving those they have lost, by bringing every single supernatural being that has died back to life, that can't possibly end well.
Kol was right, if that happens it would be a hell on earth and all of this for a stupid cure that was never meant for them in the first place.
On top of it, Damon has more bad news to give them of how raising the veil is done. "Three massacres, three hot spots, and the witch spell of the century, and every supernatural being over there is back with a vengeance."
"The Pastor and Klaus' hybrids." Caroline thinks out loud. If she is right and they are a part of the massacres, then there is only one left and it might explain why Bonnie is making her feel sick.
If her friend is drawing her powers from the dead and not in the way that the spirits are lending their powers to her, then perhaps the thing Caroline has become, with her new connection to nature, is reacting badly to all that dark magic.
Their conversation is interrupted when both brothers hear something inside, she really hates having lost her vampire hearing. All she can do is follow them inside where Elena has answered the phone.
She can barely make out that it is April her friend is talking to and whatever the young girl has said breaks through Elena's denial. "I'm sorry. He's dead." She says and hangs up.
Disappearing upstairs with Damon just a few steps behind, the rest of them are at a loss of what to do. should they stay and help, what is the best thing to do in these situations and why haven't they learned to deal with this yet.
"I think we all need to rest." It Stefan that comes with the idea. "Matt why don't you take Bonnie home." He suggests, and Matt isn't planning on complaining.
"Do you need me?" she asks once her mortal friends have left the house.
Stefan shakes his head. "Not as long as you really want to be her. I'll call if something changes." He says to Caroline's relief.
She wants to be there for her friend but the energy from Bonnie lingers and she isn't feeling well right now. At the same time, the heartbeat has become louder. Apparently, it's trying to tell her something and she can't ignore it any longer and staying her won't help her figure it out.
It's not until he sees the cabin that he notices that it has gone dark, the guiding sound of a heartbeat was in no hurry to lead him here, not that he is complaining he has found the witches hiding place and can now force some answers from her.
But the closer he gets to the cabin the less he hears of the heartbeat and instead the crying of a baby takes its place.
Carefully he opens the door, not certain of what he expects to see inside. He is faced with a sight that is very different from what it looked like the last time he was here. Instead of the home it was it now looks like one big nursery.
A crib is standing in the middle, with the baby laying there, still crying until he comes to stand beside it, looking down at the child that is now reaching its little arms up towards him.
Klaus smiles at the sight, feeling some sort of connection to the child that he can't explain. He picks it up, holding the child in his arms. "Who would leave you out here all alone?" he looks around searching for any sign of Cyrena but can find none.
The baby makes a sound, almost like laughter and when he puts his focus back on the child once more it disappears, and he is once again standing in the middle of the forest with the cabin nowhere in sight.
It all felt so real and now he's not certain if he ever were in the cabin or not. He wouldn't be surprised if Cyrena has laced the surroundings with her magic in a way that could have caused hallucination but why they would be of a baby he can't explain.
Whatever is happening, this only left him with more questions and no answers. Witches truly are a pain in the ass, he thinks, making his way back to his mansion.
Sitting on her bed with her phone in hand she sighs when she once again couldn't reach Tyler. This time she decided to tell him everything she felt he needed to know, even if it had to be through a voice message.
She let him know about Jeremy and how she thought about his idea of still wanting to find help for her, help she doesn't even want.
She knows that she can't stop him, but she can at least let him know that if he wants this to continue working between them he should be here with her and not out there because he thinks that is the right thing to do.
Feeling somewhat relaxed for the first time today she gives herself a chance to find the heartbeat that is still surrounding her. Closing her eyes, she allows herself to just listen.
When she finally locates the sound, surprise fills her. Gasping, her hands go to her stomach. Could this really be happening, she thinks, could she really be pregnant?