Chapter 2 – Something To Remember Me By

A/N: Just a reminder that all flashbacks are in italics! And I'm doing the flashbacks out of chronological order because I think it makes things more interesting, and I'm the author so I can! Read and review please, hope you enjoy! And make sure to follow me on tumblr (I'm new so I have like no followers) at .com

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"Caroline love, where is your corkscrew?" Klaus called out from his girlfriend's tiny kitchen. They had been dating for three months now and he had spent countless days – and nights – at her small apartment yet still had the hardest time finding things.

"Uhhh, corkscrew, corkscrew, corkscrew…try the drawer to the left of the silverware!" Caroline shouted from her bedroom where she was changing into some more comfortable clothes. They had just gotten back from seeing a dreadful play in Brooklyn, and she had somehow roped him into watching Breakfast at Tiffany's at her place since he had never seen it.

Klaus checked the drawer thoroughly, metal clanging around, but to no avail.

"Sweetheart this wine is calling my name and I am denying it the opportunity to give me what it wants since I am still without a corkscrew!"

"Oh please." Caroline scoffed, stepping out of her bedroom just a few steps away now clad in grey sweatpants and a thin pink tank top. "You make that wine sound like your other secret girlfriend." She teased, swatting at his butt when she walked past him and began rifling through the other drawers.

He dodged her easily, laughing. "Of course not! My other girlfriend is actually a brunette, shy little thing but I tell you –"

Klaus was cut off when she started throwing silverware at him, and he yelped when a spoon hit him in the thigh.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you over your girlish squealing!" Caroline shouted, tossing one more fork at him for good measure.

Klaus picked up the fork that he had narrowly dodged and pointed it at his lovely girlfriend.

"That was rude."

"No, that was necessary." Caroline bit back with a smirk, letting out a shout of triumph as she finally fished out the corkscrew. "Found it!"

She turned to him and grinned widely, handing him the device. He took it with a chuckle, wrapping one arm around her waist and pulling her to him, kissing her firmly on the mouth, her plump lips turning up at the corners as he did so.

"Did you mean that about your other girlfriend?" She murmured, lips still lingering over his.

"Of course not love." He said, kissing her fully yet again. "You know I have a thing for feisty little blondes."

Caroline's chuckle turned into a full on squeal as Klaus suddenly wrapped both of his arms around her middle and tossed her over his shoulder, swatting her rear in the process.

"Now where did that wine go…?"

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"Caroline, can you please explain to me how you haven't had the luxury of a hot shower and nice shampoo in months, yet your hair still looks good? I mean you have dirt all over your face and under your nails, blood stains on your clothes that you've been wearing for days, you smell disgusting -"

"Oh gee thanks."

"-and yet your hair still looks perfect! So you're basically defying the basic laws of nature."

Caroline chuckled, popping her knuckles as Elena braided her hair back into a ponytail. This was a daily morning ritual for them since Caroline's bangs tended to fall out of her hair tie and get in her face. And when fighting cannibalistic zombies daily, one can't exactly afford to have stray hairs in the way.

"I guess it's just good genes." Caroline sighed. "I always loved playing with my mom's hair when I was a kid. Then she had to go and cut it all off for her mid-life crisis."

Elena laughed. "I remember when that happened. You came to school so upset, it might as well have been your mid-life crisis."

Caroline chuckled. "Yeah, well, I used to be a tad dramatic."

Elena's movements in her hair stilled. "Used to be, Caroline?"

"Oh shutup!"

The girls laughed, Elena's nimble fingers going back to the braid. Caroline sighed, she loved it when people played with her hair. Klaus used to –

No. Don't go there Caroline. She thought to herself.

"I miss your mom." Elena suddenly said, which Caroline was grateful for. "She always asked about how my writing was going whenever we came home from New York. She was one of the few people who thought my dream to be an author wasn't just wishful thinking."

Caroline was quiet. She missed her mother Liz as well, but they had been estranged before The Outbreak. When her father Bill had come out to them as a homosexual and moved away with his boyfriend Stephen leaving the girls behind, Liz had immersed herself in work as the sheriff of Mystic Falls. But nothing bad ever happened in Mystic Falls, Virginia, so doing paperwork upon paperwork of parking tickets almost drove Liz crazy.

And Caroline was left to fend for herself. She tried to connect with her mother emotionally, but it was like talking to a brick wall sometimes. So she threw herself into everything she did. Caroline Forbes, head of the homecoming committee, student council, dance committee, captain of the cheer squad, member of the honors society, and about a hundred other clubs. Every event that happened in Mystic Falls was led by her, and that's why every event went off without a hitch. Everyone praised her for how cheerful and optimistic she was, and how much town spirit she had. She was Miss Mystic Falls.

Literally, she won the Miss Mystic Falls pageant three years in a row.

But no one ever saw her pain. No one saw her as anything other than perfect little Caroline Forbes. No one until Klaus.

"I miss my parents." Elena spoke, making Caroline jump as she was brought out of her thoughts. "Katherine and Jeremy never want to talk about home. Even before The Outbreak it was like that. After my parents split, both of them just completely put Mystic Falls behind them. I mean Katherine changed her last name for goodness sake."

"Well she had to change it when she got married to Elijah." Caroline said.

"No, you know what I mean." Elena said exasperatedly. "When my parents got divorced and she found out my dad was cheating, she changed her last name from Gilbert to Petrova, my mom's maiden name."

"Wait, I thought she changed it to Pierce?" Caroline turned around and asked as Elena tapped her head to let her know the braid was finished. The two girls stood up and started making their way over to where Alaric and Damon were talking to a nomad with a trailer full of water bottles, apparently trying to cut a deal with him.

"No, she changed it from Petrova to Pierce a few years after that because she thought it had a better ring to it." Elena said with a roll of her eyes.

"Where the hell was I when all of this happened?" Caroline asked indignantly as they stopped a few feet away from where the boys were haggling with the nomad. Sometimes trades got messy – actually, most of the time trades got messy – so the girls both lowered their hands towards their weapons on their sides just as a precaution.

"This was right after you met Klaus." Elena answered her, never taking her eyes off of Damon and Alaric. "So you were a bit distracted. Understandably so."

Caroline spaced out for a second at the mention of his name.

"Yeah." She murmured. "Understandable."

She could feel Elena's gaze on her briefly. "You know you can talk to me about him, right? Klaus, I mean. You can always talk to me Care, I'm sure you must be – "

"No I can't." Caroline cut her off quickly, still looking forward. "I can't talk about him Elena, I can't even think about him. I don't have the time to. All I can think about is that that trader might have the virus and I need to watch and make sure his nose doesn't start bleeding. Or about how we need to barricade ourselves up somewhere before nightfall so we don't get caught by any Infected. Or how Alaric needs to be on his game better when he sees a redheaded Infected even though I know it reminds him of Jenna. Or which one of us would have to kill Damon if he gets scratched by an Infected tomorrow."

Caroline turned to face Elena head on as the trade finished without a hitch, the boys taking the crate of water bottles and carrying them over to where Kol and Bonnie were standing, Jeremy and Katherine nearby as well.

"If I stop for one second and think about him, really think about him, I'll never stop. I'll never stop thinking about how he's probably dead."

"You don't know that Care –"

"You're right." Caroline didn't let her finish. "I don't know that. But what I do know, is that we have about eleven hours before sundown. That's eleven hours to make sure that we don't get killed or Infected until we can hole ourselves up. Eleven hours to try and survive. So for now, I'm just going to focus on what I know."

With that, Caroline pushed past Elena, purposefully bumping into her friend's elbow as she made her way over to the rest of her group, save Damon who was walking towards Elena.

"What's up with her?" Damon asked his girlfriend in his typical snarky tone.

Elena sighed, reaching for his hand when he got close to her. "She's just stressed, like all of us."

"Well yeah, it's the friggin' apocalypse, did she think it was going to be Candyland?"

"Damon." Elena sighed.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." He murmured, reached up and pushing Elena's hair back away from her face, the pad of his thumb wiping away some dirt on her cheek. "She misses him."

"We all miss someone." Elena said dejectedly. It was quiet for a moment before she took in a deep breath, putting on a smile and straightening up. "But it's okay. Because we're going to find them. We're going to find Stefan, and Lexi, and Klaus, and Elijah, and Matt and Rebekah. And we're all going to find them in one piece."

Damon stared at her for a moment, shaking his head fondly. "When did you become Miss Optimistic? I thought that was Blondie's job."

"Yeah well it was available, so I had to take it." Elena shrugged.

Both of them looked over at the shell of who used to be Caroline Forbes, ever optimistic and cheerful, always seeing the good in everything and everyone, their rock. But now she was just that: a shell of her former self. She was hard, a killer now. All of them were killers, but Caroline better than most.

"What the hell happened to her?" Damon whispered.

"She lost him. She lost her epic love." Elena replied. "And now she's lost hope, too."

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"What exactly is your fascination with Audrey Hepburn?" Klaus asked, looking down as Caroline tilted her head back to where it was perched on his lap, her legs stretching over the arm of the couch.

"What are you talking about?" Caroline asked incredulously, her voice muffled from the M&Ms she was popping into her mouth. "She's perfect. Perfect style, perfect attitude, perfect everything! She's the definition of a classy, strong, independent woman, who doesn't need a man. But she'll take one if he comes along."

Klaus chuckled, nodding his head in mock understanding. "Well nobody is perfect, darling. Except you, you're pretty damn close."

Caroline sat up quickly, criss-crossing her legs so her knees were resting on his thigh.

"Oh no, she was definitely perfect. Her fashion sense is so important, she basically defined her generation and future ones to come!"

"Are you completely disregarding that incredibly charming compliment I just gave you, sweetheart?"

"Oh no, I heard it." She said matter-of-factly. "I'm just choosing to ignore it."

"Ah yes." Klaus said, smiling at her fondly and pushing her hair back. "The night we met you told me that you were too smart to be fooled by my charm and my, my, were you right."

Caroline smirked before a thought crossed her mind and her face dawned in realization. "The night we met, you remember that dress I was wearing?"

Klaus scoffed. "Do I remember it, I practically dreamed about it every night for the next month that you absolutely refused to go out with me."

She scoffed indignantly. "Excuse you, don't get that tone. You were being a jerk, I had every reason not to go out with you."

"Yet look where we are now." He held his hands out and grinned triumphantly.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Okay anyways, back to the dress I was wearing, that was styled after Audrey Hepburn!"

"How absolutely interesting, love. Please, go on." He muttered sarcastically, yawning dramatically.

"You know what, you're being a jerk so I'm going to make you look at the dress yourself and see what I'm talking about." Caroline stood up quickly, grabbing Klaus' hand and pulling him up as well.

"But darling, what about the movie – "

"We'll rewatch it tomorrow!"

"Damn."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, love. Nothing at all. Now where is this dress of yours? Do I get to see you wear it again if I behave?"

Caroline dragged him over to her closet and began rifling through it. "Perhaps." She said coyly, winking at him over her shoulder.

Klaus' eyes widened at the prospect of seeing his love in that divine dress yet again, she hadn't worn it since. However he quite wanted to see it on the floor more than on her if he were honest.

"Aha!" Caroline shouted. "Here it is."

She pulled out the white dress that had haunted his dreams for so long when he first met his little vixen four months ago. It was amazing how much could change in so little time. How healed a heart could be.

"Oh no!" Caroline said in horror.

"What is it?" Klaus asked worriedly.

"It has a tear! My dress has a tear! Damn!"

"Now what is this?" Klaus asked, reaching out and picking up the edge of the dress where the tear in question was. "Caroline this is a string. A single string, not a tear."

"But that little string could unravel the whole hem and then the dress is ruined and –"

Caroline snapped her mouth shut when Klaus pulled the string quickly, ripping it from the dress.

"See?" He asked with a grin, holding it up. "Good as new, like it was never even there."

She didn't say anything, just stared at the white string being held from Klaus' fingertips.

"You tore the string." She said quietly. "You're not supposed to rip the string that could mess up the whole dress."

"But I didn't!" He said with a grin, handing it over to Caroline. She took it quietly.

"Thank you." Caroline said sincerely, looking down at the string. "You know what, give me your hand."

"What?"

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his left wrist, wrapping the string around it and tying it securely before turning his hand over and looking at it with a smile. She tilted her head up to meet Klaus' eyes.

"There. Now you always have something to remember me by."

Klaus chuckled, gently taking her face in his hands.

"Well thank you sweetheart, but I don't need anything to remember you by. You're all I ever think about after all."

"Not even your secret brunette girlfr –"

She was silenced as he pressed his mouth to hers urgently.

Turns out the dress did end up on the floor that night.

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"So what we know about these zombies –"

"They're not zombies, they're just infected with some sort of killer virus. Zombies are undead creatures, these people are very much alive, just…murderous."

"Yes I am aware of that, but zombies is easier than saying all of that, so I'm going to refer to them as such. Got it?"

"Alright got it, geez."

Klaus rolled his eyes as he beat his shirt against a rock next to the creek he had just washed it in. A few feet behind him was Stefan, Matt, Rebekah, Lexi, and Elijah talking to some woman they had met up with a few miles back who apparently had information about a cure to the virus. Stefan was the one currently talking to and getting scolded by the woman.

But Klaus wasn't buying it, at all. The woman, Rose, was on her own, apparently her boyfriend or husband or someone had been killed during The Outbreak. She was desperate to find a travelling group, and everyone in Klaus' own little posse was too damn nice to tell her to bugger off. Except him of course. And naturally the prospect of being heroes and finding a cure to the incurable disease of the Infected peaked everyone's interests besides his own.

"So when someone comes into contact with an Infected through a scratch, blood sharing, bite, sexual contact, and the like –"

"Wait sexual contact?" Matt interrupted. "How the hell do you know it can be passed on as an STD?"

"I've heard stories." Rose replied, her short, dirty brown hair flopping in front of her eyes. "Everywhere I go I ask people what they know, and when a story is corroborated enough times, I accept it as truth."

"A real scientist we have over here ladies and gentlemen." Klaus mumbled under his breath so low no one could hear as he wrung out his shirt one more time and threw it over his shoulder before making his way back to the group.

"Like I was saying, when someone is initially infected, it takes about an hour for the irritability to begin. They get snappy, angered easily, sometimes a nervous tick kicks in. Then another two hours passes and their nose starts to bleed, that's the real tell-tale sign."

"Do you have any useful information?" Klaus asked cynically, making everyone turn to him. "Or are you just going to tell us things that we and everyone else on this godforsaken planet already know?"

Rose glared for a moment, her green eyes piercing his with ferocity. "I'm getting there." She said bluntly. "When the nose starts to bleed is often when the attacks begin. At first the Infected is just murderous, they want to see anyone and everyone dead, but can sometimes stop themselves if you can make them slow down and think for a moment. But after about four or five hours of the Infection spreading throughout their body, there's no hope, they'll kill anyone, even their own child."

"Yeah, we've seen that a time or two." Stefan murmured, looking down at the ground.

"But this is the real kicker," Rose continued, not taking any consideration to Stefan's implied statement, "It takes about three weeks for the Infection to fully set in. By that I mean flaky skin, red eyes, burning in the sun, all of it."

"And you know this, how?" Elijah asked, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees. "That's just speculation, no one has been able to observe an Infected for a long period of time."

"Yeah, because they're murderous bastards." Lexi said in a hoarse voice, her body racking with coughs moments after.

Stefan wrapped an arm around his friend and she leaned into his body and shivered. She was getting worse and worse each day, and Klaus wondered what Stefan would do if she didn't make it.

"I have." Rose said to Elijah, whose eyebrows shot up.

"You've observed an Infected?" Klaus asked in a bored, disbelieving tone. "And you're still alive to tell the tale? Well now we know you're lying."

"It's true." She spat at him. "About a hundred miles west of here, along the Indiana-Ohio border there is a small settlement of survivors. They have walls built all around in order to keep the Infected out at night. It's only about a mile in diameter, but it's the first established place I've seen yet."

"Impossible." Elijah said. "We would have heard of such a safe haven by now."

"Well you're hearing it now." Replied Rose. "Not many people are exactly keen on leaving the safest place in the country, maybe even the world, just to tell other survivors where it is. Yet here I am."

"Here you are." Klaus said dauntingly, leaning forwards from his perch on a tree stump. "Telling us all about this mystery safe haven, with no proof, no real evidence. How do we know you're not just sending us to a group of scientists who want to use us as lab rats for the impossible cure?"

It wasn't a far off theory. Since The Outbreak, mob groups that were trying to become the new government had tracked down scientists that had survived, forced them to find newly Infected people and cut them open while they were still breathing. It didn't last long though, since the scientists were usually killed themselves by the Infected.

"Why would I do that?" Asked Rose. "You people have been nothing but kind to me, and I would benefit nothing from sending you to your deaths. And I'm not sending you anywhere, I'm trying to tell you what I know now will you please shut it and let me finish?"

Klaus inhaled sharply and went to stand up and give this stranger a piece of his mind, but Stefan put a hand on his shoulder and forced him back down.

"Please, Rose, continue." He said, glaring at Klaus with a look that said 'shut the hell up.'

"Thank you, Stefan. Now this safe haven is called Whitmore, and its people have set up a functioning town. There is a group of ten people, five men and five women, who are like a team of mayors. There's a school, a farm with animals and fertile crops, a well with clean water, and a police-like force that patrols the walls 24/7."

"How did this all get set up?" Rebekah asked. "It sounds impossible."

"For a long time it seemed it was. Many people died building that wall, but once it was up they were able to send out the word to survivors nearby that they had a safe haven. Eventually most people in a fifty mile radius made their way to it, which meant former teachers and farmers and policemen. They were able to set up a system. And it somehow worked."

"But get back to the cure." Matt said. "How did you observe an Infected if the whole point of this Whitmore place was to keep them out?"

Rose sighed, lacing her hands together. "Because we brought one in."

"You what?" Rebekah asked incredulously. "You could have infected the entire place you worked so hard to build!"

"But we didn't." Rose shot back. "One of our patrols got to close to an Infected when they were attacking the walls one night. He got scratched, just barely, but enough for the virus to get in his bloodstream. Before he even started to get extremely irritable, before the nose bleed, we took him to a cell we had created. It was impossible to escape, we had him strapped down to a table with three inch thick iron cuffs and belts. His face was muzzled, he couldn't hurt any of us."

"You did all of this to someone before the Infection set in?" Stefan asked.

"Yes. The boy volunteered." Rose said simply. "Over the course of the next few weeks, we observed his behavior, took his vitals along the way. His skin started to flake after a week. He was sensitive to the light from the beginning, but it only started to burn him two weeks after the onset of the Infection. His eyes became red and began to bleed after just under a month."

"Did you feed him? Hydrate him?" Elijah inquired.

"Neither. He was self-sustaining for the time frame we had him. Just incredibly murderous."

"The time frame you had him?" Klaus repeated, leaning back. "What does that mean?"

Rose was silent for a few seconds. "It means we handed him over."

"Handed him over? To whom?" Elijah asked.

Rose didn't say anything.

"Answer his question, woman." Demanded Klaus. "Who did you hand the Infected over to? Why didn't you just kill him?"

Rose glared at her accuser for a few seconds before taking a deep breath.

"We handed him over to the only man capable of creating the cure. He's still at Whitmore, still experimenting on the boy as far as I've heard. And trust me, he can do it. He can make the cure, I'm sure of it."

"And what gives you such faith in this scientist in your little safe haven?" Klaus asked with a sarcastic undertone.

"Because he's the one who created the virus in the first place." Rose snapped immediately.

Everyone stilled, even Lexi who was shaking with a fever against Stefan's side.

"What?" Klaus asked, sincere for once.

"Dr. Wes Maxfield. The man who created this killer virus. He's at Whitmore. And he's trying to find the cure."

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A/N: [Rebel Wilson voice] Whoomp…there it is.

Read and review because it would make me happy! What do you think will happen next?

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