AN: And here it is, the first meeting of Caroline and others post-Silas.
Five. Little House
"Something's scratching its way out, something you wanna forget about." ~Little House, The Fray
Klaus, Rebekah and Stefan were just returning to the boarding house, empty handed, when Klaus' phone began to ring. He pulled the phone out and glanced at the ID screen.
Caroline.
He paused mid-step and quickly answered the phone.
"Caroline, where are you?" he demanded, foregoing any greeting in favour of the more important questions.
"Driving down the I-75," Caroline replied, and Klaus' stomach sunk at the sound of her voice. Gone was the normal energy that infused everything about her, instead her voice was cold and bleak. "I stole Silas' car. It's nice, all things considered. I killed Matt, Klaus."
"I suspected as much," Klaus replied, meeting Stefan's eye. Both the younger Salvatore and Rebekah were listening closely to the conversation, and Stefan looked ready to take off and meet Caroline on the highway. "Come home, Caroline."
"I have no home. Not anymore," Caroline replied. "Mom is dead. Matt is dead. There's really not a whole lot left for me in Mystic Falls."
"Your friends are here. They're worried about you." I'm here, he wanted to add, but he didn't know how Caroline would receive that in her current mood.
"I killed Matt," Caroline repeated, as if Klaus hadn't heard her the first time. "There's nothing left for me there. I need your help."
"Anything," Klaus replied. "Just come back to Mystic Falls and I will give you anything you want."
"That's the first place Silas will look for me. I… I don't want him to find me, Klaus. I need to find Katherine, and I need you to meet me with whatever information Damon got about her location." There was a loud honk on the other end of the line and Klaus heard Caroline curse. "Choose a lane, jackass!"
"Why do you need to find Katherine, Caroline?" Stefan asked, and Caroline paused on the other end of the line.
"You two are working together still?" she asked, a vague note of surprise in her voice. "You guys must care." There was another honk and more cursing. "Seriously, does no one know how to drive anymore? I want to find Katherine because I want the cure, Stefan. I know you guys had big dreams about returning Elena to her innocent human self, but that's not going to happen."
"The cure won't change anything that's happened, Caroline," Rebekah interjected, and Klaus shot her a sharp look, because he knew Rebekah's worry was over the thought that she would lose the cure for herself, not worry for Caroline. "It won't bring Liz or Matt back."
"I know, Rebekah," Caroline replied. "And I'm so very sorry you're not going to get your white picket fence and two-point-five kids, but I need that cure to kill Silas."
The three other vampires paused at her words. Whatever they were imagining her wanting the curse for, it hadn't been Silas' death. Caroline simple wasn't killing for revenge type. At least, she hadn't been.
"Think about this, Love. Silas is two thousand years old. Do you really want to go against him?" Klaus asked, worry for the blonde rising in him.
"I snapped his neck and stole his car after pretending that I was considering sleeping with him," Caroline replied coolly. "He had his tongue in my mouth at the time. I think I'm already against him, Klaus. Are you going to help me or not?"
"Tell me where you are," Klaus replied, his voice filled with barely restrained rage at the thought of Silas touching the girl he cared for.
On the other end of the line, Caroline smirked and told him where to meet her.
STILL-DOLL
Elena had managed to wrangle her way into joining the Caroline greeting committee by swearing to cause as much chaos as she could if she wasn't. Elena was pretty sure Klaus would have happily staked her, and Rebekah would have helped, only that would have taken precious seconds away from their departure, and Klaus was so desperate to meet the blonde baby vamp that he told Damon and Stefan to shut up and even held the door of the SUV open for Elena. So it was that the two Original siblings, Elena Gilbert, and Stefan Salvatore wound up on a road trip together, while Damon and Bonnie were left behind to hold down the fort.
"How did she sound?" Elena asked after they had been on the road for twenty minutes. Their location was ten minutes out, and Elena wanted to be prepared.
"She sounded cold," Stefan replied, when it became obvious that Klaus was going to ignore the question that had been directed at him. "She sounded cold and… tired, maybe."
"She's turned it off then," Elena mused. "Maybe I shouldn't have come, considering what happened between us the last time we met."
"Then why are you here?" Rebekah demanded. "It's not like your presence is necessary."
"I need the Klaroline reunion for my fanfiction," Elena deadpanned. "It's all very romantic. Why are you here?"
"I'm here for Nik," Rebekah replied. "And because someone needs to be here who will snap Caroline's neck if it's necessary."
"I can also fulfill that duty," Elena stated. "So really, you don't serve a purpose. Isn't that what you told me on the island? Or something along those lines?"
"Oh, go make another gif," Rebekah snapped, turning her attention away from the doppleganger and out the window.
"Will both of you shut up?" Klaus snapped from behind the steering wheel. "We are here for Caroline, not so the two of you can continue your petty little vendetta with each other. I thought you had decided to be a team after New York."
"We did, but then Rebekah turned out to be as useless at finding Katherine as you, so I decided to go back to being petty." Elena leaned forward between Klaus and Stefan so she could see Klaus' face better. "Speaking of which, how are we going to find Katherine? Because Damon's information really turned out to be less than useless, and we all know how good you are at finding her, so… are you going to disappoint Caroline or just snap her neck and drag her back with you like a caveman?"
"Get out of my personal space, Elena," Klaus growled with a scowl. "As for Katherine, I don't need to find her. Elijah already has."
"Elijah?" that caused Elena to lean back with shock. "Seriously, the honorable Elijah has been shacking up with Katherine? Wow, and I thought he was the smart one out of you idiots."
Klaus' eyes flashed to Elena in the rear view mirror dangerously and Elena gave him a little smile and a finger wave.
"Stop antagonizing the dangerous hybrid, Elena," Stefan muttered from his seat in the front of the SUV. "And it would have been nice to know that you already knew where Katherine was before Damon put hours of his time into trying to find out."
"And if I trusted Damon even a little bit, I may have. But I don't, so I didn't."
After that, the four vampires fell into silence. After a few minutes, Elena began to tap her fingers against the door, but a glare in the mirror from Klaus quickly put a stop even to that. It was the longest ten minutes of Elena's life, and she had to admit to being ecstatic, or at least as ecstatic as she was capable of being, when they finally pulled into the parking lot of a rundown diner.
Caroline was sitting in a corner booth watching the door when they entered. She looked perfectly healthy, dressed in jeans and a red camisole with her hair in its regular perky curls, but there was something inherently different about her. At first, it eluded Elena what that difference was, until realization smacked her with the force of a freight train as she slid into the booth across from Caroline.
The energy that had always surrounded Caroline, that had given her the ability to energize a room and bring out the best in everyone, was gone. Her eyes no longer sparkled with life, instead they were cold, empty. It was as if bright, bubbly Caroline had gone stagnant.
"I got the whole welcome committee," Caroline said as she slid over to make room for Stefan. Rebekah joined Elena, and Klaus stayed standing, his hands braced on the table. He was the one Caroline addressed. "I really only needed to meet you. I don't suppose you've miraculously discovered Katherine's location?"
"Shacked up with Elijah," Elena offered helpfully.
"Huh," Caroline replied, looking at Elena and appearing vaguely surprised. "What is it about your face that turns normally intelligent men into idiots? I mean, you guys are pretty enough, but look below the pretty and what's left?"
Elena raised her brows at that and felt a bit insulted.
"Do we really want to get into that battle, Care?" Elena responded. "We both know who the first choice always is."
"It's you," Caroline agreed. "I always figured you must be a real freak in bed, to keep them around even when you're sleeping with their brother. I mean, you did it, Katherine did it. From what I understand, even the original did it. The Petrova Doppleganger… screwing up relationships between brothers since 1000 B.C. You should get a t-shirt made."
"I didn't come here to be insulted," Elena snapped, irritated that the blonde didn't appreciate the trouble she'd gone through trying to find her.
"I don't really know why you did come, Elena. Trying to shove a stake through my heart is rather telling of your opinion of me. But you're right, you're not here to be insulted. You're here to tell me where Katherine is." Caroline looked back to Klaus and taped her fingers on the table top. "I'm waiting."
"You'll be waiting for a while, Love. I'm not telling you anything. I just came to bring you home."
"Seriously?" Caroline looked between the four other vampires. "The Hybrids turn on you, you kill them all and Tyler's Mom. Damon sleeps with Rebekah there under false pretenses, and she tortures him. Silas kills my mom, he tortures me, he manipulates me into killing Matt, and I'm supposed to just come home like a good little girl and what? Wait for him to come for me again? Let him wage some psychological warfare against me?" Caroline shoved Stefan violently out of the booth so she could flash up to get right into Klaus' face. "You're disappointing me, Klaus. Silas promised to let me have everyone who ever harmed me at my mercy if I stayed with him. He told me I could kill them all… Damon, Hayley, Katherine. Hell, he'd even bring back all the ones who died, just so I could do with them as I wish. Yet you won't let me avenge my mom's death? Well, maybe I made the wrong choice."
"The difference between Silas and I is that he wants to destroy everything that makes you Caroline. I want to preserve it," Klaus responded, refusing to step away from Caroline, forcing them to remain toe to toe and nose to nose.
"You really believe that, don't you?" Caroline asked with a furrowed brow. She took a step back from Klaus and gave him a smile that almost looked genuine, for all that it was heartbreakingly sad. "Oh, Klaus, there's nothing left of that girl to save. You buried Caroline Forbes with Liz and Matt. All that's left is a sad shell. The only thing that's keeping me going is vengeance. I want that, and then you can bury me for real."
"You're a fighter, Caroline," Stefan said, joining Klaus in facing down the blonde baby vampire. "You've fought through so much. You can get through this, too."
"And if I do, then what?" Caroline shot back. "I go back to being Miss Mystic Falls, the ever cheerful and bubbly? I could recover from killing twelve nameless witches, because it means Bonnie's alive. Those two deputies of my mom's? Well, at least you and Damon made it through. Even that Carnie the first night, I got past it, because I could tell myself I didn't know. But I killed Matt for revenge, Stefan. I killed him because Silas did what he does best, and he fooled Matt, but I didn't care about that. All I cared about was that my mom was dead, and Matt had done it, so he deserved to die too. Only he didn't, did he? I still loved him, you know. He was the first boy who ever seemed to like me for me, and you never quite get over that first love. How do you come back from that? And what kind of person would it make me if I wanted to?"
"I thought you shut off your humanity," Elena mused. "You shouldn't care about any of that stuff."
"Just because you forgot who you are when you flipped off your switch doesn't mean that I did, Elena. I still know who I was, and I know what I can live with and what I can't. I'm not out to hurt people just because, or to kill random humans, I want one thing. I want Silas dead. Right now, that's all I care about. That's all I can care about. So either help me, or leave me alone."
Elena opened her mouth to say she would help her, because despite what Caroline thought, Elena did remember who she was before. She could remember that girl, and sometimes she even missed her, but Jeremy is dead, and who was that girl without family? Jeremy was the very best of Elena, and without him she's just the girl who can never make a choice. And Elena understood wanting revenge, because there was a part of her that lusted to hunt down Katherine and rip out her heart, but the thought of coming face to face with Katherine terrified Elena. Elena knew that if she met Katherine now, it would be like looking in a mirror that showed the future, because Katherine was Elena once, back when she was still Katerina, before she met Klaus and lost her family. And if Katerina was Elena with humanity, then Katherine was what Elena would be in five hundred years. But Elena never got the chance to say those things, because Rebekah was serious when she stated what her purpose was.
She was there to break Caroline's neck if Caroline was difficult, so that's what Rebekah did.
STILL-DOLL
Caroline awakened knowing she was in Mystic Falls. She would recognize the smells and the sounds of her home town anywhere. Normally, they would be intermingled with the smell of home and that scent that was distinctly Liz, but today it is Klaus she smells upon awaking.
She was in his bed, and he was lying next to her, awake and staring at the roof.
"I told you I didn't want to come back," Caroline said, rolling onto her side so she could look at him. She knew she should be angry, but Caroline can't muster the energy to feel it. She supposed that somewhere, deep inside of her, she knew it would come to this. She knew that her final battlefield would be Mystic Falls, and she can't blame Klaus and the others for not trying to fight the inevitable.
Klaus copies the movement and rolls onto his side as well, and they lie there with a foot of bed between each other and a whole host of things that need to be said but won't come out.
"I can't just give up on you," Klaus said at last, after the silence and the tension became almost too much to bear. "And you can't ask me too. Not when I've done so much worse and you deserve none of what has been forced on you."
"You can't fight this battle for me, Klaus," Caroline replied. "And I don't want to fight it. I'm afraid of who I will be if I come out of this alive. Right now it's simple. I feel nothing, I regret nothing, but if I let go of that and try to go back to the girl you want? I don't think I'm strong enough."
"You are the strongest of any of us," Klaus replied. "You got away from Silas, didn't you?"
"I let him think he was seducing me," Caroline replied coldly, rolling onto her back. "It was a very Katherine thing to do, and I feel no pride in it. The girl you fell in love with would be disgusted with the girl who let Silas touch her like that."
"The girl I fell in love with and the girl who did what she had to do to survive are the same person," Klaus replied, and it surprised Caroline that he didn't try to deny it. Klaus didn't do love, yet here he was doing it for her. "Perhaps I can't fight this battle for you, but I can at least give you strength until you can fight it yourself."
"Or you could just tell me where Katherine is." Caroline sat up and looked down into Klaus' eyes. "I don't want to be at his mercy again, Klaus. I would rather take off my ring and walk into the sun. If I am with him again, I will completely forget that girl who was so full of light that she attracted even you. As it is, I've already lost her. Don't make me lose her memory too."
Klaus sat up as well, and reached out his hand. He laid it on top of Caroline's, and when she didn't pull away, he intertwined their fingers.
"Silas drove me out of my mind with madness. I thought I was dying, and you stayed by me. You didn't have to, you had every reason in the world not to, but you stayed. I am not a good man, Caroline. I probably never will be. But you make me want to be better. Won't you let me help you do the same?"
Caroline stared at their intertwined fingers. She knew she should pull away on simple principle. He killed Jenna, he drove Tyler away, and he took away Stefan's humanity. There were a whole list of reasons why she should turn away from Klaus, and go running to her friends for comfort and help.
But Klaus had told her once that they were the same, and she had come to realize that was true. As dark as Klaus was, Caroline had that same darkness inside of her, and right then it wanted to consume her. Klaus' hand in hers was like a tether holding her to reality. He didn't judge. He wouldn't look at her and mourn Matt.
"I know you all want me to return to who I was, but I can't right now, Klaus. Not while Silas is still alive. I need to be as strong as I can possibly be, and right now that's what I am." Caroline tightened the hold between their fingers. "Help me kill Silas, and then we'll talk. Then, we can see if anything of Caroline can be saved."
Klaus didn't say anything at first, and Caroline feared that he might refuse her request, but then he gave a sharp nod.
"We'll take care of Silas first. Elijah is on his way here with Katerina now. But you won't be going anywhere near the cure, Caroline. Elijah and I will figure out the best way to kill Silas with it, and you'll stay safe."
Caroline doesn't make any promises, and she lets Klaus take her silence as agreement. But she remembered her promise to herself, that she would never be anyone's victim again, and she knew that she would be paying her own visit to Katherine when the older vampire got into town.
It was time for Caroline to take her own fate into her own hands.
AN: Now, Caroline's reactions may seem a bit erratic. That is done on purpose. It's going to be covered more in-depth in future chapters, but to make a long story short, when Caroline turned off her humanity she had reached the end of her sanity. She'd been physically and mentally tortured for days, she watched her mom die, and then she killed Matt. To put it bluntly, Caroline's gone a little batshit, and so one minute she'll seem almost normal, and the next she'll be so cold you'd get frost bite if you touched her. Also, I enjoyed writing Elena this chapter, because I figure that she'd be aware of why everyone wants her to turn her emotions back on, and I figure there's probably more than this is too much fun to why she refuses to. So yeah… there's my justification.
Also, speaking of Elena, I've posted the first chapter of The Adventures of Shipper Elena. It's Elena-centric, and set in the Still Doll world, and is pure crack fic. It's my way of getting away from the seriousness of my stories, and Shipper Elena is great fun to be with. So, if you like that character, go and take a look at that.
As always, please review, and if you read Conversations With Myself, then you're getting a double update today.