La route chante

by theviolonist

[sequel 'it takes a while to settle down'] Revenge is a tricky business. (After Tyler is mysteriously murdered, Caroline goes back to Mystic Falls and attempts to work her way through grief, love, and revenge.)

2. Chapter 2

a/n: i'm going to preface this by saying that yes, hayley is in this chapter. i'm adapting freely from TO canon, as in, i watched up to episode 12 and then got bored, so this is all the canon this sticks to. let's call it creative retelling.

i know what's in this chapter regarding what happened in nola isn't very clear, but it'll all be better explained in the second part.

---

"Drive," Caroline said when she finally made it back to the car, heavy with promises not to put herself in danger and to call at least once a week, before Elena had the time to ask her anything.

For once Elena did what she was asked and they were out of Mystic Falls soon enough, driving on the straight black road that led out of Virginia and on to… well, New Orleans, probably. Caroline still thought it was stupid, since Klaus probably didn't have anything to do with this whole thing, and if he didn't she wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing him. The thing was —the thing was that her body seemed to have a certain code for reacting when he was near, no matter how long they hadn't seen each other for or how much she convinced herself she hated him; Caroline tried not to think about it as magnets, endlessly pulling towards each other. She'd done well during all this time, kept away, been a good girl, and now the thought of tipping helplessly towards him as soon as she saw him made her sick to her stomach.

(Not to mention there was a 90% chance Klaus was going to be as infuriatingly smug as he always was, and he would let something slip, and Elena would ask questions and then what would she say? She'd seen that disappointed look on Elena's face enough to last her three lifetimes.)

They drove for ten hours straight, Elena refusing to let Caroline take over, as fierce in protecting her loved ones as she had always been. After a while Caroline stopped protesting and drifted into a fitful sleep, waking up every so often from nightmares so real she felt her fangs pushing out in a futile effort to defend her. They didn't talk a lot, but neither of them really minded —every possible subject of conversation seemed to take a backseat to what had happened, the omnipresent reality of Tyler in a bodybag in some unfriendly morgue, really dead this time. Nevertheless, it was good to see Elena again, jut to be with her, sitting next to her and drinking in her presence. They'd been together twenty-four seven for most of their childhood and adolescence, and the separation had been brutal. For a while Caroline wasn't really sure how to function without her, her sensible advice, her terrible taste in boys, her annoying righteousness, her trail of ghosts. She'd wondered why they couldn't just take a plane, but now it made sense —getting re-acquainted with each other, letting the dry wind coming in from the open windows lick their wounds.

Besides, if they'd taken a plane Elena couldn't have unearthed a thermos from under her seat, and they couldn't have drunk warm blood as they started talking again, in increments, about small, menial things, the things they hadn't gotten around to doing yet, how strange —and welcome— it was that Katherine hadn't shown her face in Mystic Falls in over three years now… Caroline kind of wished Bonnie were there so this was really the cross-country roadtrip they'd dreamed of for the summer after graduation and never gotten to go on because, well, Bonnie was dead, even though they didn't know it at the time. It would've made it easier to forget their real purpose, too, always lurking at the back of her mind.

When Elena started dozing and squirming on her seat they stopped at a reststop where Elena bought a coffee and a Mars bar, got chocolate all over her mouth and didn't clue in until Caroline pointed it out two hundred miles later. Caroline almost choked with laughter, frantically digging a tissue out of her handbag with one hand, and then Elena joined in, sunny and brilliant and everything that had made Caroline's heart constrict painfully before. I'm going to tell her, she thought, ready to spill all her secrets, going to dig the knife out of her bag; but something held her arm back at the last moment. Not yet. She shook the guilt; the rest of the trip went well, Elena curled in the passenger seat and visibly exhausted but light-hearted, talking about things like clubs she'd been at in Virginia that hadn't been there when they were kids and that trip to Greece Caroline had never heard about. Elena laughed some more, told her to imagine Stefan in a speedo. Caroline made a face, and soon they were just outside the city, Caroline angling into a wide street she felt like she recognized. They fell silent as if by a tacit accord.

New Orleans was bathed in a moonless night, draped over in deep-blue velvet, and it felt oddly like a graveyard. As soon as they reached the street curling into the city center, Caroline felt that something was wrong: this wasn't a city made to be visited in silence, when everything was dead and cold and there were no raucous festivals or street music. When Klaus had talked about New Orleans he'd made it seem like something you would go blind from looking at because it was so hot, so intense, so full, but this wasn't it —this was a whale's cemetery, where the only thing still singing are decaying bones. The thought of Klaus made Caroline bite her lip guiltily, and she tried not to think about seeing him on his territory, where he was king; where she couldn't pretend she'd never once been tempted to follow him. She moved her ring around her finger; thought about Tyler's in her bag, and couldn't she put it on, too, would that be enough protection?

"Care, you okay?"

Caroline nodded wordlessly. Elena had told her she knew —had known for a while— where the Originals' sprawling mansion of choice was this time. Apparently Klaus had had to battle over his old quarters from when he'd created the town with his —disciple?— and had kept two places, an old slave plantation on the edge of town and his dwellings in the middle of the city, when he'd gotten them back.

Caroline looked out the window, falling back in the familiar pattern of trying to pick out who was a creature and who wasn't. It wasn't easy —apparently there were a lot of them here, witches and vampires; no werewolves, though, they were banished from the city— but everyone looked a little odd, a little strange, like they might smile at you and reveal fangs dripping with blood, hands stained with chalk from drawing symbols on the ground. Caroline resisted the urge to hug her knees to her chest. She wasn't twelve anymore, and besides, Klaus wasn't that scary.

Elena said, hesitant, "I can go alone, if you want. It won't take long. I'll just ask him and—"

Caroline cut her off with an uncheery laugh. "From experience, I think it's better if I go. I don't remember the Originals being super fond of you, except maybe Elijah." Though it was hard to tell with Elijah, who was noble and stiff and terrifying, like all of them, except he hid his violence under a veneer of calm and politeness; not that he couldn't make your skull turn to dust with one look. But for a while he'd seemed to have a particular fondness for Elena, not the same Klaus had for Caroline —could that even be called fondness? No, probably not— but something all the same, maybe because he saw Katherine's traits on her face. Still. In Caroline's experience, monsters in love were never good news.

Elena drove them to the house in the middle of the city first. There was no badly-disguised vampire with a daylight ring guarding the door, Caroline noticed when she left the car, surprised. She said as much, but Elena just shrugged. Caroline recognized the set of her jaw: let's get this over with. She'd never been crazy about the Originals. They'd killed Jenna, hadn't they? And so many others, it was hard to keep track, harder even after all these years… The courtyard was empty. There was no one leaning on the ramp upstairs, no grinning Klaus, no Rebekah pouting and manipulative by a column, no underlings either. The whole place felt uninhabited, like no one had lived there for a long time and no one dared move in either, the wood still bearing a curse from the last occupants. Caroline felt something twist in her stomach.

"I'm not feeling this," she said.

"Let's just go inside," Elena said stubbornly. "They're probably hiding. Come on, let's get this over with."

Why would they hide from us? Caroline didn't ask, and she didn't bitch either about the fact that Elena seemed so eager to be done with this visit when she was the one who'd insisted they come in the first place.

None of the doors were locked. Inside all that remained was dust and a bunch of cobwebs; there was a dartboard and, etched on the dark wall, marks made by a knife that Caroline knew without even needing to look were kills. It took nothing, closing your eyes and inhaling, to imagine how the place might've looked, filled to bursting with daylight ring-less vampires; but they were gone.

"There's nothing there," she told Elena.

Elena made a face like, duh. She twirled the car keys in her hand, looking slightly concerned. "Let's go to the plantation, see if we have more luck there."

Caroline nodded. She wasn't uncomfortable, not really, but it was hard to pretend like Klaus's presence wasn't in every single particle of air, in every smell and chair and stone, because not only had he lived there he'd built this place, too, and it felt like it. Caroline squirmed a little and hoped Elena wouldn't notice. Yet another thing she didn't want to have to explain.

The plantation was on the other side of town; when they parked in front of the mansion Caroline couldn't help but chuckle. It looked almost exactly like the manor in Mystic Falls, big and white and completely unsubtle. The fountain in front was a mocking eggshell color, and even though nothing gave sign of life —no open windows, a dead silence only occasionally broken by the insistent screech of cicadas— the place exuded an aura of haughty, threatening grandeur. Elena raised an eyebrow at her, and they laughed.

As they walked up to the door, though, it appeared pretty quickly that something was different. Unless the Originals had forgotten to pay their gardener and he'd decided to take revenge on, like, their whole backyard, it seemed unlikely that anyone actually lived there, or had in some time. Unruly weeds were winding around the edges of the stairs, vengeful; the blinds were drawn; all around the mansion nature had given into wild abandon, trees flowering baroquely, fruit rotting on the ground, venomous-looking flowers growing in bright obscene clumps. This time the door wasn't hard to force, but everything inside was covered in a film of ash. Caroline sighed.

"Well. That's one thousand miles for nothing."

Elena made a face, not quite contrite. "I didn't — I thought they were still here. I should probably have checked."

No kidding, Caroline thought, but bit her tongue. She was just pissed because every day they spent chasing this stupid Klaus trail was one more day she didn't get to sink her fangs into the neck of the bastard who'd killed her husband. From what she'd heard the first time she'd asked around —but it was a while ago, Tyler was the jealous type and not exactly keen on Klaus, either— the Three Stooges were still there, happily terrorizing the city. She couldn't blame Elena for not wanting to check up on the guy who'd tried to kill them once a week until a few years ago, for wanting to forget and move on.

Something moved in the dust. Caroline tugged Elena to her side and opened her mouth, letting her fangs drop. "What's going on?" Elena whispered frantically.

"Didn't you hear?"

"Hear what?"

A noise again; this time something was definitely moving, shuffling its feet. Ghosts didn't move dust, and this wasn't human; didn't smell or sound like it.

"There's something there," Caroline whispered.

Elena struggled out of her grip. She lent an ear, her eyes half-closed —the next second she was on the ground, breath knocked out of her lungs in a shocked oof. Before Caroline could blink something jumped out of the tentacular shadows, all claws out, a tall animalistic silhouette. There was a hiss. Caroline took a step forward, blindly, her heart hammering in her chest. She let the transformation complete; her blood ran hot. She leaped forward —next thing she knew the back of her head hit the wall with a sickening crack and she dropped to the floor, winded. In front of her the fight was a confused tangle of limbs, engulfed in the dusty darkness. Elena spit a mouthful of dark blood on the ground; the floating shape pinning her to the ground came into focus, suddenly touched by the light as they rolled in the dirt. A wolf.

Elena took advantage of the light that was blinding her adversary to rise on one knee and bare her fangs, openly threatening. The wolf reared facing her. Caroline tried to move, but something was holding her where she was, an invisible length of rope around her throat. She hissed; both Elena and the wolf —werewolf, clearly, if its eyes were anything to go by— ignored her, locked in their staring contest. Caroline rolled her eyes, trying to ignore the fear pounding in her ears.

There was something familiar about the wolf, actually, Caroline realized, in the triangular yellow of its pupils and the smooth grey fur; but she couldn't put her finger on it. For a second time seemed to screech to a halt, slowing to that silent standstill and it was who would jump the other first; but eventually the wolf tilted its head, disturbingly human-like, and sat. There was a horrible cracking sound, bones rearranging, flesh clearing under the fur —and suddenly in lieu of the wolf there was freaking Hayley, naked as the day she was born, looking half-bored, half-annoyed. The invisible rope released its grip on Caroline's throat; she staggered forward. Hayley turned to look her in the face, rubbing her jaw with the palm of her hand.

"Got a cardigan to spare?"

—

Hayley was sitting on the stairs of the mansion smoking a cigarette she had magicked out of nowhere, how, Caroline didn't care enough to ask. She puffed her cheeks up with smoke and held it there for a while before finally releasing it in the air where it floated quietly like a funeral wreath. When there was nothing but ash between her fingers she crushed the stub next to her on the steps. Caroline took it as a sign that she was ready to start talking; they had kept silent until then, as if respectful of Hayley's singular brand of tragedy.

"What are you doing here?" Hayley asked, wrapping the folds of Caroline's favorite jacket around her chest. The edge of the pink boxers she'd gotten from a plastic bag hidden under one of the planks in the mansion's living-room was peeking under the hem, jarring.

Elena gave her a pointed look. "We could ask you the same thing."

Hayley nodded absently. "But you didn't," she said with a shrug. She looked up at Caroline. "So?"

"We're searching for Klaus." As she said it she couldn't help but look down at Hayley's belly, but there was nothing there, no traces, no scars. As far as Caroline knew there had been an accident with witches around the eighth month of her pregnancy and she had bled it out, yelling all the while with grief; it was a horrible image, and Caroline couldn't help but shudder.

Hayley gave a bitter laugh. She was really beautiful, Caroline admitted grudgingly to herself. "Of course you are. Well, he's not here. None of them are, actually. I would say you just missed them, but you really didn't."

"What happened?" Elena asked.

"The usual — they went too far and the witches decided to do something about it, except this time it worked… After they killed Marcel Elijah," something moved imperceptibly in her face at the name, "wasn't too keen on hanging around, but Klaus convinced him to stay and fight. It was horrible. Eventually they had to run away with their tails between their legs." She didn't seem particularly sorry about it, Caroline noticed.

"What about you?"

Hayley shrugged again. "I've got friends here."

"Wolves," Elena said, and Hayley nodded. Caroline vaguely remembered Tyler telling her something about her searching for her parents. Hayley the little orphan; it had irritated her at the time.

"My pack is here," Hayley said, as though trying to justify something to herself. "They're werewolf royalty." Now she seemed to be talking mostly to herself, her eyes lost somewhere behind the ridiculous fountain, beyond the limits of the plantation.

Caroline resisted the urge to snap her fingers in front of her face. "Do you know where we can find Klaus?" she asked instead.

"What do you want with him, anyway?" Hayley asked, giving Caroline a suspicious look. "I thought you two were done a long time ago, after that time in the woods."

Caroline felt her cheeks heat despite herself. "Does everyone know about that?"

"Klaus brags."

"Anyway," Elena said, "it's not about that. It's about Tyler." Caroline remembered how close Tyler and Hayley had been for a while, before she'd betrayed him, and suddenly wished Elena wouldn't have said anything. Well — it was too late now anyway.

"Yeah? What happened?" Hayley's fingers were twitching slightly, her long bare legs stretched over the stairs.

"He's dead," Elena said succinctly, and Caroline ducked her head to hide the blow. "We think Klaus may have done it."

"Fuck," Hayley eructed softly, like she'd been punched in the stomach, which —Caroline could relate. "And you think—okay."

"So," Elena pressed — she really could be quite ruthless sometimes, with people that weren't her friends, "do you know where they are?"

"They left the country for a while, but last I heard Klaus was in New York, doing… something there, probably forming his own little cult or something. Elijah went with him."

"What about Rebekah? They didn't stay together?"

There was a flash of something on Hayley's face, maybe pity. She shook her head. "No," she said. "They had a fight."

Which meant that Rebekah was probably hiding in a forest somewhere, if she was lucky, and if she wasn't it meant she had a dagger stuck in her heart and her coffin was hidden in a warehouse somewhere. Well, at least they were predictable.

They sat in silence for a moment, then Elena leaned to say in Caroline's ear, "Do you want to stay the night? We don't have to. This place is creeping me out."

Caroline shivered. She didn't like it either, this meatless carcass of a city, but she was too exhausted to drive, and not matter what she said, Elena wasn't much better. "We should stay," she said. "I'll drive tomorrow." Caroline remembered a conversation with Elena a few years back where she'd admitted that driving at night always brought back to her mind memories of being woken up by the worst phone call of her life. Elena was doing her a favor coming along, the least she could do was spare her the horrific flashbacks. She was having enough for the both of them. "So the nearest airport is…" She wracked her brains for the name, but nothing was coming. Hayley's gaze on her, blank and dispassionate, was setting her nerves on edge.

Elena straightened her back. "We're going to New York," she said in a tone that broke no discussion. "We haven't seen Klaus yet."

Caroline started unpleasantly. "Who put you in charge? You said you were going to help me."

"The condition was that we find Klaus and make sure it wasn't him before going on a completely crazy mission on the other side of the world," Elena retorted.

"That wasn't—"

Hayley was watching them like they were a mildly amusing sideshow, Caroline remarked irritatedly.

"That way we can see Bonnie and Jeremy," Elena said, managing to sound pleading and stubborn at the same time. Caroline was momentarily put off by the association —Bonnie and Jeremy, as if they were still an item. Her shoulders slumped. She didn't have the energy to fight.

"We're staying the night," she said, final.

Elena nodded. Caroline thought Hayley might turn again and leave behind Caroline's cardigan coated with wolf hairs, but she didn't move, getting another cigarette out of thin air and smoking steadily, impervious to their presence. Only when Caroline and Elena started to give signs of leaving did she look at them, remembering their presence. She gave Caroline a blank smile.

"I need a lift," she said.

Caroline felt her eyebrows raising despite herself. "Where to?"

"New York."

"I thought you had your pack here," Elena cut in, sounding suspicious. Caroline didn't really blame her; she wasn't crazy either about having Hayley huddled in the backseat of the SUV, listening in on their conversations. And she'd already betrayed Tyler once —what was keeping her from doing it again?

"I do," Hayley said. For the first time since she'd appeared crouching naked in the dusty living-room Caroline noticed the deep black circles under her eyes. She'd always seemed annoyingly energetic back at Mystic Falls, but now she was subdued, her eyes lackluster. Losing a baby couldn't be easy, Caroline reflected, and felt a stab of unwanted pity.

"I have something to do up there," Hayley explained, and when she saw that she wasn't convincing Elena, who was still standing with her arms crossed over her chest, openly confrontational, she added, "I need to talk to Elijah."

It was unexpected, to say the least. Elena's arms dropped to her sides. "Elijah?"

Hayley nodded. Caroline could feel Elena was dying to ask why, what there was between them, and so was Caroline, but neither of them did.

"What about your pack?" asked Elena. "Won't they mind that you're leaving? And the witches? You said they won, right? You wouldn't still be here if they wasn't some agreement keeping you in the city," she said shrewdly. She'd wanted to do political science at one point. "They're keeping the wolves here, aren't they?"

"Not me," Hayley said, even though Elena had obviously touched a nerve. Caroline remembered her comment about 'werewolf royalty'. She'd thought it was a little pretentious. "Besides, I've done my part. The witches killed my baby; apparently now they feel bad about it." She smiled, wry.

Elena's brows furrowed. "I thought they wanted… at some point, weren't they protecting it?"

"Well, they changed their minds. That happens a lot here," she stretched an arm, gesturing to the decrepit mansion, "as you can see."

But Elena, after all, was still Elena, and she wanted to know everything. She would be compassionate, kind and gentle: but not before she'd wormed all the information out of Hayley. "Why didn't you go with them?"

"Why should I have?"

"If you and Elijah…"

"No," Hayley said, her face closing off suddenly. "It's more complicated than that."

Katherine was alive somewhere, Caroline remembered suddenly; Elijah hadn't come when she was on her deathbed, but she hadn't died, of course she hadn't. Caroline doubted Katherine Pierce would ever die — maybe slip on a new identity like a brand new Chanel gown, maybe squirrel her soul into someone else's body again, but die? No. The thing was, Caroline had been a bit busy at the time, and besides had never really cared about Katherine all that much, and it was then that Klaus had turned up out of the blue and asked for her confession, holding her forearms against the bark of a tree… But Katherine was alive somewhere, and if what she'd heard was true, Caroline didn't think anyone would compare to her in Elijah's eyes.

"We can take her," she said on instinct, without thinking. Both Elena and Hayley gave her a surprised look, and she colored a little. "I mean, it's not like we don't have room." She nodded at Elena's ridiculous, enormous car. "It doesn't cost us anything."

Elena hesitated for a second, looking at Caroline like she was trying to decrypt a second meaning, then acquiesced. "Sure."

"Thank you," Hayley said.

After a tense moment of silence, they agreed to take off early the next morning; Hayley led them for dinner to a hole-in-the-wall pub where they had delicious, restoring gumbo and some much-needed alcohol. For once the remarkable vampire tolerance to alcohol came in handy and Caroline gulped down a few glasses that burned their way to her stomach without having to care about driving them all into a pole. Hayley ate heartily but didn't talk much, watching people walk past their table; Caroline could've sworn she was playing the same game she herself had earlier in the day, trying to pick out the unnaturals.

"You waiting for someone?" she asked, mouth half-full.

Hayley startled, then turned back to her. "What? No. I'm just—" she waved a useless hand, didn't finish her sentence.

Elena excused herself to the bathroom and for a while they were just sitting there, eating in awkward silence. Caroline couldn't quite forget who Hayley had been to Tyler and Klaus, and Hayley didn't seem particularly eager to trust her either, which, fair's fair.

"Did you want it?" Caroline asked out of the blue, incapable of keeping it to herself. "Klaus's kid."

Hayley gave her a suspicious look. "It was a long time ago," she said eventually. And then, after a while, "Besides, I didn't really have a choice one way or the other." She meant: how I kept it and how I lost it, and Caroline felt cruel for bringing those memories back. She'd never really liked Hayley, but she'd never hated her, either —there had just been men between them, and men were the only thing to keep two women from becoming friends. Not that they would've, Caroline didn't think, but still.

She didn't think Hayley would say more, but— "You get attached to something that's growing in you, even if it's a freak," she said, absently tearing her napkin into shreds. "I mean, what, half-hybrid, a quarter witch or some shit? That baby was a joke. But I did, I wanted it." She gave a bitter laugh. "Stupid, I guess. Even Klaus didn't care about it in the end, and it was his big project."

She gave Caroline a look, not accusatory, just is that who you want to go searching for? But crossing Klaus's path had always gone against all kinds of advice. Caroline wondered if he really hadn't grieved for his child, hadn't even waited until the dead of night to scream and hurl priceless crystal at the walls, maybe despair and maybe frustration over his powerlessness, the one death he couldn't control. But—

"What about Elijah?"

"What about him?"

"Wasn't he… you know, when you — you lost it, wasn't he sad?"

It was a strange image, actually: Elijah, sad. What Caroline had seen on him most resembling sadness was a sort of sour regret, disappointment maybe. "He helped me," Hayley said softly. "I don't know if he was sad, exactly. I think he was just getting used to the idea, and they move on, it's what they do, right? When you're immortal I guess you don't really have a choice."

I'm immortal, Caroline thought about saying, but she didn't. In any case she would never be immortal the same way that Elijah was, or Klaus, or Rebekah: manic and haughty and unmerciful, possessed with a beauty so similar to ugliness, that ultimate radiance only beings who have walked through history and come out unscathed can wear on their shoulders.

"Did you—" she started to ask, despite herself, to know if she and Hayley were the same in some way —it wouldn't have been that surprising— but Elena chose that moment to reappear at the table.

"Did I miss anything?" she asked, exaggeratedly cheerful.

Caroline gave her a look, but Elena only shrugged, unrepentant.

After they finished eating and Hayley left them, making them promise that they would wait for her in front of the plantation the next morning at six, Caroline and Elena debated booking a hotel room, but decided it was too dangerous: they were only staying for one night, and a short one at that; it wasn't worth risking alerting the witches of their presence. They weren't here searching for trouble, but they probably wouldn't see it that way, especially if they were keeping close watch for vampires now that the Originals were gone. Once their presence was noticed getting out of the city would be a nightmare, not to mention keeping what they were doing under wraps. Displaying your vulnerability was rarely a good move.

The night was fitful and uncomfortable. Without consulting Elena, Caroline took the wheel and started driving away from the plantation and thecity. She didn't like feeling like a sitting duck, especially in that place, with its big haunting windows and the dry fountain in the front, looking like someone had cut its life at the knees. It made her anxious. Elena talked quietly for a while about everything and nothing, fashion, classes she'd been following intermittently, everything but Tyler and their strange little roadtrip. Caroline wasn't really listening but Elena didn't seem to mind and her voice was soothing, a soft balm until it melted into steady breathing and Elena's head bumped against the window, the skin of her eyelids stretched so thin it was almost transparent. She hadn't seemed that tired when she was awake. After all this time, Caroline realized, she'd forgotten what spectacular strength Elena had when it came to withstanding whatever life threw at her. She felt a surge of affection.

The events of the last few days starting catching up to her too and her limbs grew heavier and heavier until her hands started slipping off the wheel. Caroline shook herself awake and took a turn in the outskirts of the city, into a deserted parking lot where she was certain no-one would bother them. She locked the doors, let her hair down, breathed out. The buzzing of her phone in her pocket startled her; when she took it out there was a message from an unknown number. Don't leave me here, it said simply, pleading or commanding, Caroline couldn't tell. Outside the night was syrupy and silent, the inside of the car protected by the thick glass of the windows; Caroline felt strangely sheltered, like everything was remote except this, the breath passing Elena's lips and the soft rumble of the engine. She turned it off. Darkness fell on her like a wreath, and she slipped almost immediately into a profound, dreamless sleep.

When she woke up a few hours later to the chirping of her phone the sun was nowhere to be seen, the fading night broken by a soft golden radiance. Caroline reached over to wake Elena up, but something stopped her: the optical illusion of a halo hanging over the city, a mirage shimmer, rooftops dotted with liquid light. For a second Caroline couldn't look away, didn't dare breathe, and she couldn't remember ever having seen anything so beautiful, except maybe that first and only night they'd spent in Haïti during the honeymoon, the buttery orange spreading over the horizon like a blanket of peace.

She shook Elena's shoulder gently. "Elena. Get up."

Elena snuffled in her sleep. For a few moments Caroline thought she wouldn't wake up and debated leaving her to sleep while she picked up Hayley and they left the city. It seemed like a good idea: that they would slip away unnoticed, without even scraps of conversation to alert the witches' sharp ears, and when Elena woke up they would be miles away, out of danger. But as she was thinking it Elena's eyelids opened suddenly and she was staring right at Caroline, her eyes bright and alert in the half-darkness. She breathed out.

"Good morning," she said, her voice husky with sleep.

"Hey," Caroline smiled. "You wanna get some breakfast? We only have to pick up Hayley at six."

"Yeah, okay."

Caroline drove them back into the city in silence. Elena offered to pick up food at one of the street stands so they didn't have to stop on their way and Caroline watched her climb off the car, the defiant line of her back sliding into the crowd. Seized by a strange anxiety, she kept looking intently until Elena reappeared, smiling, greasy donuts and coffee in her hands.

"Let's go," she said when she climbed back into the car, her expression growing determined, and Caroline nodded and drove them to the plantation.

It looked different in the plain light of day, flattened by the searching light. The disaster seemed even more expanded, like devastation had wanted to do a really good job, touch every corner of Klaus's self-indulgently decadent mansion and submit it to its laws. Idly, Caroline wondered if the witches were the ones who'd done it, if they'd crafted the spells back in their houses, whispered Latin curses about dust and broken glass and yellow, dried-up grass crumbling in the immense gardens; or if someone else had come here in person, modern with their limitless rage and their baseball bats, and wrecked the house themselves. Klaus had no shortage of enemies.

"Fuck," Elena said, in a tone that sounded half-shocked and half-impressed. "I guess they're not coming back anytime soon, are they?"

Caroline didn't answer; instead she fixed her gaze on the edge on the forest, trying to spy Hayley's thin silhouette walking in their direction. The leaves sticking out in the sun were washed out to a pale green. Hayley didn't appear. Caroline looked down at her watch. Five fifty. Maybe she wasn't going to show. Elena had been adamant that they would wait until six, not a minute later, and if Hayley didn't show up it was her loss. For a moment Caroline hadn't recognized her, fooled by the illusion of Elena at eighteen with her bull-headed insistence that everyone deserved to be saved —had to be saved— no matter the cost, that she couldn't let innocents die in her name or in her vicinity.

At five fifty-nine Hayley appeared at the far end of the woods, a tiny dot of a silhouette steadily growing bigger. When she was close enough Caroline couldn't help but recoil slightly at the expression on her face, the set jaw, the hunted eyes. She didn't have any luggage except for a backpack hooked over her shoulder by one strap, the handle dripping with silver charms on thin leather ropes.

"You're late," was all she said.

Hayley acknowledged her with a nod. "Let's go," she said. Caroline thought about asking her why was wrong, but Elena was already turning the key in the ignition and Caroline understood despite herself what that situational sickness was like, that gnawing in your stomach, the crawling imperative to leave somewhere, bleach a place out of your brain.

"Let's go," she echoed. They walked to the car in silence.

Hayley didn't hesitate before she slunk in the backseat, gripping the edge of the seat tightly with her right hand; she angled herself so that she was more or less buried in the slanting shadows cushioning the inside of the car, not quite curled up on herself but inconspicuous, like she could disappear at a moment's notice. Elena started chattering and Caroline let herself get swept up in it, forgetting Hayley's silent, cautious presence behind them.

It was nice to have Elena back. It hadn't seemed much, missing her all these years, nearly a decade —and sure, it was a human decade, but Caroline was still living in human years, and it would be a long time until she wasn't. Caroline remembered thinking that it was a natural growing apart, the distance that seeps between childhood friends who move away from each other. There were few letters and even fewer emails, but in itself that didn't matter much: Mystic Falls had that way of binding people forever for better or for worse, and Caroline remembered being certain that if they met again, they would pick up right where they left off, without missing a beat.

They hadn't, though, picked up where they left off, not really. There had been a beat of awkwardness that first night, a second where Caroline had thought Elena might close the door in her face, ask who she was, what she was doing here, before recognition flashed in her eyes and she opened her arms for Caroline, soothing and familiar. Even now there was something slightly off about the way they were together. Elena was doing her best to ignore it, and Caroline was going along with it because she couldn't think of an alternative, but it was strange; not exactly uncomfortable.

If Hayley picked up on their dynamic she said nothing. She wouldn't have been welcome to. Caroline tuned Elena out a little when the city started to disappear from the rearview mirror, emotion knotting in her chest. Without Klaus's presence even being there had felt futile, and even a little mean —but she would have plenty of time to return and get the proper tour when she'd avenged Tyler, wouldn't she? The French Quarter would wait, witches or no witches. When she looked at the backseat again to check on Hayley she was pretending to look out the window but really spying at the road behind them from the corner of her eye, trying to see if they were being followed.

"What?" Caroline snapped when she couldn't take any more of her little game.

Hayley started. "Nothing."

Elena gave Caroline a look, maybe to tell her to settle down, but Caroline ignored her. She felt faintly sick, like she ought to ask that Elena park by the side of the road to let her puke her guts out—such a stupid reaction, and to what?

"If the way you're looking at that otherwise pretty standard strip of asphalt is any indication, not nothing. And I'd rather know beforehand if we're going to be attacked by a swarm of angry witches."

"What, so you can dump me on the side of the road?" Hayley retorted angrily.

"I'm not—" but before she could say anything really bitchy Elena had to swerve with all her might, because a wolf had appeared on the middle of the road — and then two, roughly the size of baby cows, snarling, their jaws open and white. Elena handled the enormous car deftly and avoided running into them just barely, the car zigzagging crazily on the road. Caroline's body jerked; she clawed a hand on the dashboard in front of her. Elena kept her foot on the gas and for the longest ten minutes in Caroline's life it was the landscape whizzing past them in a blur on both sides and the wolves behind them, running in giant leaps, their eyes savage —until Caroline blinked and they were gone as quickly as they'd appeared. Caroline breathed out.

"Elena," she said, touching Elena's hand, still white-knuckled on the wheel, "Elena. It's okay. They're gone."

"What? Did I lose them?"

"I don't know what happened, but they're gone. You can—" Elena got it; soon she was driving like a normal person again instead of someone trying to outrun the fucking hounds of hell. But her face was still constricted, her eyes wide and hallucinated.

She twisted in her seat. "What the fuck?" she shouted at Hayley, her voice thick with panic.

Caroline waited a minute for her heart to stop hammering before laying a reassuring hand on Elena's forearm. She didn't feel particularly reassured herself, but Elena and Hayley were a Molotov cocktail just waiting to blow up in their faces, which Caroline would rather avoid.

Silence fell on the car again. Caroline glared at the backseat. "Wanna tell us what that was?"

"My pack," Hayley said matter-or-factly. "They weren't exactly on board with me leaving. You're lucky they only sent two."

"Lu —lucky?" Elena sputtered. "And you couldn't have warned us about this before we almost crashed into a ditch?"

Hayley shrugged, tense. "You wouldn't have agreed to take me."

"With good reason!"

Caroline thought about denying it, but it was true —so instead she said, "They did seem kinda keen not to let you go back there, actually. What, are you suddenly popular or something?"

Hayley gave her a slight, sharp grin in which glinted a hint of wolf. "I told you they liked me. By the way, if they'd been keen we wouldn't be here to talk about it."

Caroline gave a chuckle and that was it, a détente of sorts —for some reason Elena being so hostile to Hayley sort of forced her to make nice, so that the journey wouldn't end in a triple homicide. They would never be best friends, but if they had to ride all the way to New York together, making nice did seem the best alternative. In high school Caroline had been the stereotype of the bitchy cheerleader and had made a speciality of conversational evisceration, but now it just didn't feel worth the effort. Hayley wasn't awful —it wasn't her fault she'd got knocked up by Klaus, after all. Caroline couldn't imagine what would've happened if it was her one-night-stand that had gone awry. It wasn't like Hayley had been head over heels for Klaus at the time either, and having your life commandeered like that just because your bun in the oven happened to be the vampire version of the antichrist… yeah.

Hayley rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on."

"What?"

"You're doing the whole Lifetime movie thing in your head, I can feel it. It's fine. My life isn't some tragic melodrama just because I made a bad judgment call that landed me in the paws of your pal Klaus."

"I never said that," Caroline said, coloring a little. Elena was studiously ignoring their conversation.

"But you were thinking it."

Guilty as charged. Caroline didn't deny it, and for a while it was just the three of them, lost in their thoughts, and outside the windows Louisiana melting into Mississipi melting into Tennessee. They stopped for lunch at a reststop where Caroline and Elena nibbled on easily-subdued truckers behind the buildings and Hayley pretended not to notice; when night started to fall and Elena's yawns got more and more regular Caroline offered to take up driving. They didn't ask Hayley; she didn't offer. Tacitly, they decided not to stop for the night, to keep driving so they could be in New York by the morning, keeping up the rhythm. Caroline couldn't help but feel like if they stopped, if she had a moment to think then she would collapse, deflate like a plastic balloon. So they traded places and within a half-hour Elena was asleep, an arm slung over her eyes, infuriatingly graceful. The silence with Hayley wasn't exactly uncomfortable —it was a no man's land in which they picked up subtle things about each other that couldn't be learned in a stand-off: the rhythm of each other's breathing; a baseline for their lies; the heat oozing out of Hayley's body, so similar to Tyler's, animal heat. Even Elena's shoulders finally relaxed in her sleep, as though she'd resigned herself to the inevitability of Hayley's presence.

Caroline wasn't expecting it at all, and in fact was ever-so-slightly dozing off when Hayley's voice cut through the silence. "Have you ever loved someone out of your league?"

It was a laughable question, in all the ways it wasn't excruciating. "Yeah. Why are you asking?"

She glanced at the mirror: Hayley's body was curled like a comma, her forehead pressed against the window, palms splayed wide on her stomach. "I know you have Tyler, fairytale couple and all that…" It felt like a punch in the stomach but Hayley didn't notice, didn't stop talking, "but didn't you ever get pissed off about that true love shtick, how if you're in love with one half of those couples you're just wasting your time? Sometimes you can't compete, you know? Didn't you ever get angry about that?"

Guilt twisted in Caroline's gut. But she only said, "True love? What is that, anyway?"

Hayley shrugged in the thin rectangular mirror. "They go on and on about it," she said. "You'd think they'd know better, after ten centuries years… right?" She wasn't even pretending this wasn't about Elijah, Caroline thought, and she was asking because… well.

She tried thinking of an answer that wouldn't incriminate her, but came up blank. "I guess they're romantics," she said.

"I wore a wedding dress for him once, you know," Hayley went on, talking to herself now —which explained why she didn't see the pang of pure panic that went through Caroline at the words, does she know? Did he tell her that, too? No, he couldn't have. He wouldn't dare."For Mardi Gras. I was getting dressed, and he just—" she made a vague, angry gesture, "swans in, all like, do you need help with that? I mean, who does that? Noble my ass, he's a fucking tease."

Caroline couldn't help a peal of incredulous laughter. She tore her eyes off the road to look back at Hayley: she was smiling too, her eyes crinkled at the corners. Yeah. She wasn't as repulsive as Caroline had made her up to be in her mind, over the years.

"He really did that?"

"That's the least of it, actually. All the time I was pregnant with his brother's child he would always be with me, touching me with his handsome fucking face and his suits… and he wouldn't kiss me. Said it was wrong, that I belonged to his brother or some misogynistic shit like that. I mean. I don't have another hundred years, you know? We're not all immortal."

Caroline chuckled again. The guilt was still there, but it had settled in her stomach, almost friendly, like the poisonous hope that Tyler was waiting for her somewhere in the ether where only witches and mediums could see.

"I should've known better. I wasn't… I made good decisions before I met you guys, actually. Never should've gone to Mystic Falls in the first place."

"You're telling me. I emigrated to Vermont to get away from that place. I don't think any other town in the United States has seen that amount of curses."

Hayley laughed, rueful. "Do they even have natural deaths back there anymore? The three humans back there must have been compelled so often their whole life must be one big black hole."

It was a strange subject to joke about, but when you were a vampire —or a werewolf— you were bound to acquire a repertoire of supernatural jokes at one point or another, it was just fated.

Hayley was playing with her hair, chewing a strand of it, even though she didn't seem to notice. Caroline didn't tell her. It made her seem strangely childish, but it also seemed to be comforting her. They all needed some comforting.

"I should have stayed away from Klaus," she said eventually.

Caroline nodded. "I know the feeling."

Though she didn't, not really, because she'd never quite been able to make herself regret being with him; but there was still a feeling of companionship with Hayley, because weren't they both just girls who had gotten fucked over by powers too big to understand, too overwhelming to resist?

"But I guess it's useless to resist them," Hayley pondered quietly. "I mean, how do you win this kind of battle? Against them, against anything they want. I should've known from the moment he told me —he had this face, you know, I've been in love twice in my life, twice in a thousand years? And all I could think was, it's not that precious a commodity. It's stupid to fall in love with someone like that. They think they're the ones who get their hearts broken but they're blind, that's all." She took a breath, and then, "Do you know her?"

"What?"

"Katherine Pierce. Do you know her?"

"A little. Back in Mystic Falls she liked to make a return once in a while, see if she couldn't annoy one of us to death."

I would marry you a hundred times over, she remembered, Klaus's voice fresh and fervent in her mind as though it were yesterday that he had said it, his lips sill pressed against her spine, fingers splayed on her stomach. That wasn't it —she hadn't wanted to believe it then, and she didn't want to believe it now. Why should she be claimed, why should she belong to anyone, to any sort of love, mythical or not, all-powerful or not, if she hadn't chosen to? That's how love works. Well, no. (Though she couldn't deny Hayley's words were unearthing an uneasy kind of guilt inside her, a feeling that she should apologize for Elijah and his failure to love in any other way than consistently, for centuries on end.)

"Believe me," she said out of a perverse sense of duty, "these two deserve each other."

Hayley laughed, loud and almost joyous. "Thanks."

Curiosity got the better of Caroline and she asked, "What do you see in him, anyway?" It only occurred to her afterwards that it was a bit of an hypocritical thing to ask, given all that had happened, but she meant it. She still didn't know what it was about Klaus that made her fall into his trap every time she got close enough; couldn't fathom it, really.

Hayley seemed to understand. "He was just… kind. I know it seems strange when you say it, but he was. Klaus basically just moved me into his house when he found out I was pregnant and forbade me to go outside or do anything. I was freaking out, you know? But Elijah… he would talk to me like I was a person, not just a walking incubator. He was proud of me." She shrugged. "I don't know. It felt good, being near him. Besides, it's not like he's hard on the eyes either."

Caroline laughed. "Yeah, none of them are. It would be easier, wouldn't it?"

"I felt like it would be something, being loved by someone like that." She closed her eyes in the rearview mirror. "I guess I thought it made you worthwhile, for some reason, to be with them. Like it makes you more than you are." A chuckle. "Stupid, right?"

Saying she didn't know what that felt like would be a lie —how many times had Caroline done just that, gone with someone because she felt he added something to her, something essential, that made her bigger and stronger and more authentic?— But now —now it was over and she was alone. What could she say?

"No," she cleared her throat, "no, I get it."

Hayley nodded silently. Caroline's eyes slid to Elena out of habit, her elegantly sprawled form on the passenger seat, temple pressed against the window, fingers uncurled around her phone as though she was waiting for someone to call. Hayley followed her gaze but didn't comment and Caroline felt a surge of gratefulness towards her, which —weird. Feeling kinship for Hayley was really the last thing she needed.

Hayley must've felt that, because she insisted, her voice light, "You know, we're not so different, you and me. We were just distractions: things you take and play with, and break, and we're the ones who had to pick up the pieces. You think I don't know I was Klaus's distraction from you? If he couldn't have you… and didn't your friends send you to turn his head so that they could plot to kill him? When Klaus saw Elijah liked me he pouted a little, but in the end he pushed me towards him when he got bored of being possessive and realized the only thing to do was wait. It's fine once you're aware of it."

Caroline squirmed in her seat, a little uncomfortable. "Okay, alright, you win. We're the same."

There was a quick peal of laughter, and when Caroline turned her head again to peek at the backseat —she shouldn't do that so often, it would be stupid to have a real accident after they'd just avoided being attacked by angry werewolves— Hayley was startlingly charming, her head tilted to the side, eyes crinkled with amusement.

"Sorry I said you were a bitch behind your back when we were in Mystic Falls," Caroline grumbled, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "And this morning."

"I probably said it once or twice, too," Hayley said, which wasn't really an apology, but Caroline had called her a lot of worse things than a bitch and she wasn't going to apologize for those either. In general her preferred MO was not to regret things she couldn't change —what was the use? Besides, if there was a time to be practical it had to be now.

After that the atmosphere was lighter, more relaxed. It was stupid, that little ceasefire, Caroline knew it and Hayley probably knew it too and once she woke up Elena would undoubtedly remind them both, but for the moment it felt better than simmering in uncertainty, their secrets a thick wall between them. In the end Hayley was right, they weren't that different, and it didn't hurt to realize that there was some common ground between them. Those fucking Originals.

The rest of the trip was quiet. After Elena woke up and took the wheel again, Caroline let herself slump in the passenger seat, drinking in the landscapes. When she was younger there'd always been this urge —not to travel, but to leave, to leave Mystic Falls behind, not forever of course, just a little, for a breather, and that urge had only intensified once that whole vampire business had started. Sometimes she wondered: had Klaus been able to read that on her, or was the world wrapped in a ribbon a line he fed to every pretty girl he met during his travels? For a second wanderlust had pushed her to tip forward into his arms and let him whisk her away to exotic locations; one second before the other, overwhelming parts of her took over, duty and friendship and loyalty most of all.

She'd thought she'd travel more with Tyler once they got married and split from the rest of the gang, got their well-deserved peace, but that hadn't happened either. Not that she would take back any second of her time with Tyler, except maybe for a few mistakes and that last conversation… but that was just how it went: they got married and moved to Florida, and then, when Caroline had sucked all the light out of the sun and started to get bored of the beaches they moved to Vermont. Caroline remembered with painful precision what she'd thought then: one for you, one for me. That was what she'd said, convinced that they had forever to slowly get accustomed to this sudden intimacy and melt into each other's habits, even though eternity was a hard concept to wrap your head around when the age you got stuck to was the age of eternal in-betweens. She'd thought, marriage is a compromise, isn't it? but with such radiant happiness she felt a little ashamed of it now.

So she'd never travelled, not really, not to Europe or Africa or Asia and barely even to the surrounding states, and now Tyler was dead and she was reduced to looking out the window on her way to New York to find out if Klaus fucking Mikaelson was the one who'd torn his heart out of his chest, even though she was certain he wasn't. It was all ridiculous, and sad —and outside the car it was summer on sea-like expanses of fields, mountains in the distance, cities blinking by, train tracks. Caroline thought about opening the window, but even imagining the onslaught of sensations —sounds, smells, the remote howling of ambulances in the distance— gave her the beginnings of a headache. She was too tired for this shit. Why did Tyler have to die?

She startled when a hand found hers; when she looked over Elena's eyes were flickering between the road and her face, full with soft pity. It had always been surprising to Caroline, that ability she had to feel sorry so deeply for everyone, that empathy, and without meaning to Caroline got a little more choked up. This wasn't the time to cry, she reminded herself sternly.

"You can cry if you want," Elena said.

Caroline flicked a meaningful look towards the backseat. It was one thing to be cordial with Hayley, even to laugh with her, and entirely another to get weepy in front of her. Elena shrugged. She didn't care much about Hayley either way, Caroline read. Which was funny, in a sense, because they'd never really interacted in the past; Elena didn't have any other reasons than Hayley's acquaintance with the Originals and Caroline's own dislike of her to hate her, but she did, or she seemed to. Then again, maybe it was just indifference. Not that any of it mattered; in a few hours they'd unload her on the side of the road and leave her to make her own way in the city, find Elijah if she still wanted to, if she didn't realize she'd better cut her way out sooner rather than later.

There was advice to give but it wasn't Caroline's place to give it and besides, Hayley wouldn't take it, Caroline knew; she wouldn't have taken it either. She squeezed Elena hand, linking their fingers together for a second, then released her so she could drive and turned back to the window. They'd reached the very edge of the city, rows and rows of buildings bathed in pale yellow light like the glowing pearls of a disordered necklace. Klaus had been right: there were things to see, everywhere, a whole sprawling universe full of stars and wonders and violence and beauty. Too bad she didn't care anymore.

Steadily, by increments, the roads got denser around them, tighter, a network of winding asphalt tongues until there was no escape possible, no going back, four lanes on each side. Caroline burrowed into the seat, suddenly feeling a little claustrophobic. She turned to the backseat to distract herself; Hayley was sleeping, still curled in onto herself, looking young. Caroline cleared her throat.

"Hey. Hayley."

Hayley murmured in her sleep. Her reflexes should've been quicker, Caroline thought, rote, even though it was years since she'd practiced whipping her fangs out every night before sleep, when danger was everywhere. But then they'd been safe, Tyler and her, or so she'd thought —when they'd found her Hayley was in a city of ashes, naked and almost feral. She should know better. Caroline made her voice harder.

"Hayley. Wake up. We're here."

This time Hayley's head snapped up, her yellow wolf eyes glowing in the not-quite-darkness. Elena cut them a look in the rearview mirror, amused and a little mean.

"What?" Hayley snapped, her voice almost a growl.

"Relax. We're in New York. Where do you want us to drop you?"

Hayley's face fell a little, still unguarded from having just been woken up. It wasn't hard to see she hadn't thought further than getting out of New Orleans and now that she was at the end of the trip she was terrified. For the first time since she'd risen from the dust in Klaus's mansion Caroline remembered that despite their twin frames, the narrow waist and pouting lips, Hayley was younger than her. It showed, now.

Ignoring Elena's gaze on her, she said, "You can stay with us tonight if you want. We'll just get a hotel. You're probably tired. You can go tomorrow morning, if you're not in a hurry."

Hayley's eyes flashed desperate with relief, just for a second.

"Thanks," she said gruffly, over Elena's protests.

When they stopped at a gas station at the mouth of the city before getting engulfed in its gaping, blinking immensity, Elena stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her. Caroline rolled her eyes, then got out too.

"It's fine," she snapped. "It's just one night. What is she going to do, gnaw on us?"

"I thought you hated her," Elena said pointedly, shoving the pump into the side of the car.

Caroline shrugged. "She's okay. It's not her fault she banged Klaus and he fucked her over." She felt a twinge at that, went to say, I would know then remembered that Elena didn't. She'd thought of telling her before, a long time ago, but after the wedding everyone had been so happy and it had seemed obscene, and then they hadn't seen each other that often, and why ruin those occasions with some ugly secret that didn't even matter? Maybe it was cowardice.

"She's just going to be trouble, I can tell," Elena grumbled, but Caroline could see that she was already giving in. When she passed by her to get them some snacks to eat in lieu of a late lunch on their way to the hotel she made sure to nudge her shoulder. There were hundreds of ways to tell someone I love you, weren't there?

"Thank you," she said under her breath.

Over the last half-hour of driving to the hotel Caroline portioned out the sweets and they each ate that and their energy bar without much talking; when Hayley got melted chocolate on the corners of her mouth Caroline told her, sliding a smile her way, and Elena let out a frankly impressive string of curses as they got lost thirty times before finally reaching the hotel that they had had the foresight —for once— to call in advance. There were things to do, people to hunt, but that was tomorrow, and for now they tried not to think of anything else but showers and starch sheets in beds they wouldn't have to make in the morning (though Elena probably would, the freak).

The hotel was nondescript, a high and dark building in Manhattan. It had underground parking, so Elena parked her ridiculous car and they got out in the lurid underground half-darkness, looking gaunt under the yellow light. Caroline noticed that Hayley was walking a little hunched, as though the city made her feel caged. It wasn't really surprising: animals are always animals, no matter what envelope they hide in. Caroline remembered Tyler getting jumpy on the few occasions that they'd wandered into Los Angeles, long nights filled with glitter and alcohol to soak it all in before they retreated back into the vast emptiness of their mountains. In New Orleans he was afraid too, but that was different —there were other reasons.

Now that she was thinking about it actually, a lot of things about Hayley reminded her of Tyler. They worked the same, their furnace bodies and the strong bones of their faces, easily shifted; their eyes, slanted and dark, lighting yellow at the first sign of trouble. They'd slept together, too, a long time ago: Caroline remembered leveraging that infidelity —although it wasn't one, not really— against her own, to try and find a balance. She'd always been good at convincing herself.

On the other hand there was something about Hayley. This was all about surviving, after all, surviving the pounding impossibility of grief, of Tyler being gone. Elena was her best friend but everything she'd lost, she'd lost with her martyred, swan-necked despair, and Caroline wasn't like that. Caroline wanted to burn the world down one minute and curl into a ball under the covers the next. Caroline was selfish and she was a survivor: a survivor like Hayley was a survivor, a girl —woman— whose fur had rippled in the chiaroscuro of the abandoned mansion and who'd drawn up in front of their eyes like the last living thing in this apocalyptic city. Yes —there was something about her, about Hayley.

The sound of the keycard sliding into the door and unlocking it jerked her out of her thoughts. "Room for three," Elena announced grimly. "Stretching the budget."

Hayley gave a fluid shrug and slid past Elena into the room. She dumped her little bag at the foot of the bed she chose —next to the window: nearest escape point—, the charms clinking, then toed off her sandals and curled into a sleeping position on the bed.

Elena rolled her eyes. "Polite," she remarked bitchily.

Caroline kissed her cheek, a fleeting touch. "Thanks for agreeing to take her." She thought about explaining why she'd offered in the first place —I felt pity for her; she reminds me of Ty; someone ought to get what they want—, but she couldn't choose.

"Do you know how we're going to find Klaus?"

Caroline's first instinct was to say, he'll find us —in the past that was how it had always happened, the way he'd seemed to sniff out her presence as soon as she came into the room, his overly bright eyes roaming to find her. It had used to make her uncomfortable, but in the end what was more worrying was when it didn't, when it made her feel something else instead. She felt Tyler's ghost —or at least the pale ersatz of it conjured by her guilt— rearing up again and she felt sick, nausea rising in her chest. Truth was —truth was, imagining what he might say felt like the coward's way out when he was probably standing right beside her, shouting words she couldn't hear. The thought made her antsy, her hands shaking at her sides, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to control it. Bonnie would know where Jeremy was; they'd work something out with him.

"No idea. You're the one who wanted to find him, remember?"

"You're not curious?"

"He didn't do it," Caroline said, trying not to ask herself how she was so sure. It was just logic —Elena was being irrational, choosing to follow her gut even though it was wrong. "I know he didn't."

Elena didn't insist, and they left it at that. They considered starting the search for Klaus right away but after twenty hours straight of driving their bones felt like they'd crumbled to dust, so they just settled on one of the beds and set the TV on low volume not to wake Hayley up, cuddling into each other. A few hours passed like that, staring at stupid programs without ever bothering to change the channel, feeding off each other's warmth. Elena ordered room service so they could get a real lunch —"More or less," she grimaced when she poked the hotel's lackluster steak with her fork— in them for the day after, and though the nausea was still poking at her ribs when she looked down at her plate Caroline ate dutifully. It tasted like cardboard and ashes. She pressed closer against Elena's side and waited for time to pass.

When night finally started falling and Hayley was still curled on her bed, sometimes groaning unintelligible threats in her sleep, Elena stretched and swung her legs over the mattress.

"What are we going to do with her?" she asked without looking at Hayley, resting her hands on her knees.

Caroline sighed. Not this again. "I told you, El, it's just one night. Tomorrow she'll be gone and we'll never hear of her again. I don't know why you're so paranoid."

"I don't know why you're not!" She knuckled her eyes. "I don't want—listen, this wolf thing wasn't cool. For all we know she's Elijah's lackey and she's leading us right into a trap."

Caroline clucked her tongue, annoyed. "That doesn't make any sense. What would they want with us? We haven't been in contact with the Originals for years —at least I haven't, have you?"

Elena shook her head no, still looking skeptical. "I just don't like her," she said after a while, sitting on her own bed and absently arranging the pillows.

Caroline rested her back against the headboard. "Why?"

Elena shrugged, whipping her T-shirt over her head. She was wearing a blue bra, more understated than the nice lacey stuff she'd used to wear in high school. But she was beautiful —she'd always been beautiful. In fact she was one of the rare people Caroline knew who managed to be attractive in all circumstances, whether crying fountains or dripping with blood and guts.

"Just trust me on this," she said softly. "She won't betray us. She's not that kind of person, and you know I'm awesome at first impressions."

That wasn't exactly true, but Elena didn't call her on it. "If you say so. I wouldn't say no to putting them all out of commission once and for all, to be honest. It always leaves me a bad aftertaste, knowing that freaking family is still out there doing God knows what, probably slaughtering innocents and plotting machinations in baroque mansions again."

She grabbed her vanity out of her bag. On the bed near the window, Hayley's shoulders had relaxed and she was sleeping, breathing faintly through her mouth.

"Yeah," Caroline said. She would have been alarmed if she didn't know Elena so well; but she did. "Leave some hot water for me, okay?"

Elena nodded, closing the bathroom door behind her. Without her the silence was almost overwhelming, and Caroline couldn't help but wobble on her feet a little. Why was the world always so unstable? She'd been surrounded by people since they'd left Mystic Falls, she realized, not a second with herself and her thoughts, not a chance to stumble into the pit of acid that was sitting at the bottom of her stomach. She sat on the edge of the bed, stunned. In the bathroom the shower spray started, but the sound was muted in her ears, remote.

It took her a few minutes before she realized she was having a panic attack. If she weren't, well, dead, she would have been tachycardic, but as it was a thick, oppressive feeling was weighing on her instead, like her breath was stuck in her throat and paralysis was slowly spreading to her limbs, rooting her to the spot. It would pass —everything always passed— but Tyler would still be dead when it was gone, and what was the point? She felt the tears coming back, pooling at the corners of her eyes and threatening to pour out. It was stupid. It was stupid, wasn't it? She was just being a girl again, incapable of grinding her teeth and bearing it like everyone else… It was stupid, this had happened too much since —since Tyler's death, what would it change? It wouldn't change anything. Tyler would have wanted her to do something. Tyler wouldn't have cried on her grave. Tyler would have trashed a room and stomped over her killer's bowels. Why couldn't she make him proud, for once?

It must not have laster longer than ten minutes, shaking and still, her nails digging into her palms, but it felt like a decade. Her head was filled with things she'd stopped believed a long time ago, after high school, when she'd realized she wasn't what people thought she was, an empty-headed bimbo whose only skill was to throw a pompom around. Of course she wasn't. But right now she felt seventeen, sixteen, younger than she'd ever been, and Tyler was gone.

"You okay?"

She wanted to spin around but couldn't. Hayley's voice echoed in her head —okay, okay, okay? She breathed in once, hacked. "I thought you were sleeping."

She heard the rustle of Hayley's shrug against the bedding. She hadn't even undressed before dropping asleep —was she too tired or was it another of those things, a way to always be ready to run?

"I never really sleep," Hayley said after a while, and then, like she felt obligated to commiserate, maybe, in a strange way: "The witches got me when I was sleeping. The baby, I mean. They got the baby while I was sleeping."

The horror of it struck Caroline right in the chest. In the bathroom the shower was still going. Elena was her best friend, Caroline remembered, she'd agreed to leave everything for this chase without even knowing how long it would take, without asking any questions. Her best friend.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Shit happens."

In, out. She felt like she would suffocate if she didn't remember to breathe. Or, well. Dying wasn't really an option, was it? She kept forgetting —it's just that these days death felt so easy. You could be arguing one minute and lying on the damp forest ground the next.

"So," Hayley said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Caroline whispered, because what was she going to say? I'm having a panic attack? It was still Hayley, after all. "Go back to sleep. You'll need your beauty rest if you're going to be scouring the city searching for Elijah."

Hayley breathed a "Yeah" but this time her voice was crumbling. Touché. She'd never learned how to pretend, that girl, had she? You could always read all of it on her face, anger, frustration, relief. It was exhausting.

After a while the sound of Hayley standing to attention melted into her regular breathing, even though it didn't feel as real this time, now that Caroline knew that a part of her was listening, waiting, the animal inside her crouched and on its guard. It took several more minutes but she relaxed too, her hands unclenching, the marks her nails had left healing quickly, skin pulling over the red gashes; Caroline rested her forehead in her palms, trying to push the headache to the back of her mind. A little blood wouldn't have been unwelcome right about now.

Without thinking, she crouched on the ground and reached for Elena's bag. She was an expert packer —yet another irritatingly perfect thing about her—; she was bound to have taken some blood bags. They'd never been Caroline's favorite, but it would do for now, for coating the hole where her heart ought to have been, for calming her pounding headache. If she drank she wouldn't have to think.

"Bingo," she said softly when she found four bags neatly stacked at the bottom of Elena's small suitcase. She grabbed one and tore through it greedily with her teeth, sucking thick blood out of the plastic. She'd hate herself for it later, letting go, the smears of red around her mouth and the heavy nausea already settling in her ribcage: but right now she was just too hungry to care.

Elena frowned when she came out of the bathroom and found her sitting cross-legged on the carpet, deep into the third bag. "I was keeping those for later," she said, dropping her vanity on the bed, but she didn't seem mad.

"Sorry," Caroline said around a mouthful.

For a while Elena didn't say anything, just stood there with her wet hair and a green towel wrapped around her bust, beautiful like the first time Caroline had seen her anything less than perfect, a few months into their acquaintance, watching her pull on a bathing suit from the corner of her eye. Elena watched her finish the bag, shaking her head when Caroline remembered her manners and held it out for her, a little embarrassed.

"I feel sick," she said after, leaning back against the side of the bed.

Elena pulled on underwear and a shirt —probably Stefan's—under her towel and sat down next to Caroline. "You always feel sick when you drink too much," she said gently.

"Not just that." Caroline wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, frowning when it came back bloody. Elena reached for her and cleaned it with a corner of her towel, finger by finger. Caroline would have laughed at her if she hadn't been so choked up. "It's just… does it ever stop hurting? I loved him, Elena. I can't remember the last time I told him."

"He knew," Elena said, soothing.

Did he? The secret felt heavy on her tongue, silt on the bed of a river. She repeated, "I can't remember the last time I told him" to hammer the point in, because she didn't, she couldn't pin it down, the last time she'd said it without resentment or guilt or irony, I love you, the simplicity of those three essential words. "I thought we had forever. I forgot."

Now her eyes were closed, to keep the tears in, bitter salt against her cornea; she heard shifting and suddenly Elena's arms were around her, her skin uncomfortable and cold, her wet hair stuck to the swell of Caroline's cheek; but her touch felt like a wave pulling over her, making everything muted and almost bearable.

"I'm sorry," Elena said softly, and pressed closer, the soft material of her shirt brushing against Caroline's arm. "I'm so sorry, Care."

Me too, Caroline wanted to say, but she was sobbing again and it was all feeling repetitive, that crumbling down like a house of cards every time people weren't looking —how long was it going to last? How long before she could go back to Vermont, before she could see a forest without also seeing his body sprawled there on the ground, his ribs bloody and broken, heartless? How long —or would it last forever?

Elena was talking, she noticed after a while; a low and soothing murmur, like a siren chant. "It's gonna be okay, Care. It's going to be alright."

Caroline let the words overwhelm her, rub their calming rhythm into her skin, until she felt steady enough to look up at Elena and ask, "Is it? Is it going to be okay?"

Elena looked caught in the middle of a lie. It hurt. It hurt —it sliced around Caroline's heart, a bloody, messy cut, overflowing.

"Thought so," Caroline said, her tongue like lead in her mouth. She sniffed; when she tried to get on her knees she stumbled backwards and Elena's hand settled on her back, steadying her. Despite herself, Caroline remembered Elena at her parents' funeral, her face bloodless, holding Jeremy's hand, serious and high-chinned and noble. She hadn't needed anyone to steady her. "Come on. We have things to do."

"Sit down," Elena whispered. "We have time. We'll do those things tomorrow, okay?" Her thumb rubbed the knobs of Caroline's spine in tiny circles, emanating warmth. "It's okay to be sad."

Caroline shook her head. "Tyler wouldn't want me sniffling over him. He'd want me to do something. You know how he hates sitting still. He'd want me to fight for him, find the asshole who—" she couldn't go further.

Elena's eyes softened, if that was possible. "Tyler is dead, Care."

Funny, the power those words had over, to cut her at the knees and render her completely useless, a puppet with its strings suddenly snipped off. Tyler is dead. But she knew that, didn't she? No-one knew it better than her. Why was it still so surprising?

She spent a long time burrowed in Elena's chest. It occurred to her that their position was uncomfortable: that the carpet pattern was probably getting imprinted on the skin of her legs, her elbow lodged in Elena's ribs; that she was pathetic, that she ought to dry her eyes and get up; that Elena had already comforted her enough for more lifetimes that they had and that crying about Tyler's death wasn't going to resuscitate him. It all occurred to her, but she didn't move, didn't try to stop the tears leaking from her eyes and onto Elena's neck.

And Elena —Elena held her, of course she did. She didn't say anything when Caroline grabbed her shirt between her curled fists and pulled, just to have something to tear apart. She held her head like a baby, let her cry.

"Does it ever stop hurting?" Caroline asked around a moan, without meaning to, the words muffled by the soft skin of Elena's neck.

She heard Elena's heartbeat quicken to a tight thump inside her skin, one, two, three skittish beats and then settle. "No," she said. You shouldn't need more than one hand to count the people you've lost, Caroline thought. "But it gets better, I swear it does. Jenna…" Her hands stilled, fingers splayed at the nape of Caroline's neck, tangled in her hair. "I still remember so much about her, every argument we had, every time she burnt dinner and we had to order take-out. I remember everything, but I can feel it fading. Maybe it's different for other people, but for us… we're the ones who're eternal, so memory has to take a backseat. We can't carry all those things forever, it doesn't matter how much we love them." She added, softer, "I think they're still alive, somewhere, in some way. I feel them, sometimes. It's like they're looking over us."

Her voice was honey, a calm golden river, a fix, soothing her to sleep; Caroline thought blurrily, she was always the one who knew the words, in church.

"It takes time," Elena continued. She wasn't comforting Caroline anymore; she had the laminated voice of a ghost, walking in the ashes of her burnt house. "You can't burn memories, humanity switch or no humanity switch. You can't make it stop hurting forever. But I don't remember my parents' faces anymore, not really, not well. I have a picture in my wallet but I don't even take it out that often. That's what happens. It gets better, Caroline. It starts stinging less after a while." She cradled Caroline's head in her hands, tender. "You'll be okay. You'll be okay." A breath. "I love you."

It was stupid to believe her, you'll be okay doled out like candy, to make the tears stop; but she did. She closed her eyes, a firm press down of her eyelids in what she hoped conveyed, alright. Elena got it. Caroline couldn't help her eyelids from slipping down again —she hadn't realized she was so tired— but she saw, in glances, Elena stand up and tug her hair into a loose ponytail, and reach for Caroline's hand…

"There you go," she said when she had her sprawled gracelessly on the middle bed, sitting next to her, undoing her shoes. There were things to do, Caroline had wanted to take a shower, plan, call people, but now the exhaustion was pulling her under. It was impossible to get used to it, this feeling of constantly walking around with your insides scooped out, like you'd gotten eviscerated when no-one was looking.

"Thanks," Caroline said, or at least she thought she said it, although what came out was probably only an intelligible mumbling.

"I love you," Elena repeated, a little forceful. Then she was stripping Caroline out of her clothes with unbearable gentleness, pulling the blankets over her, kissing her forehead, a feather touch of her lips that felt like a shot of warmth through Caroline's body, enduring against the grey coldness of grief.

There was a bit of puttering around the room. Caroline felt suspended between sleep and wakefulness; she couldn't stop turning Elena's words in her head, you can't burn memories; it starts stinging less; you'll be okay, a litany of promises slowly searing themselves in her mind.

In her last waking moments, she opened her eyes with excruciating effort, to get a glimpse of something beyond the inside of her head —and caught sight of two yellow eyes fringed with dark lashes, glowing in the obscurity, firmly open as though to say, I'm listening. They blinked once, a permission, maybe an offering for peace.

Caroline let herself fall.