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.)

4. Chapter 4

A/N: In response to Elelith who asked me if Caroline/Elena was a serious pairing in this fic, just a word about that. This story's pairing Klaus/Caroline, but I think it's obvious that the main topic is Caroline's journey and growing up. This involves Elena in large part: asking her for help, getting to know her again, accepting each other's faults, rebuilding a more equal friendship. There is sexual intercourse between Elena and Caroline in this story, some of it graphic, so if that's not your cup of tea I understand. However, as you'll see, the main thought behind this intercourse, whether the characters realize it or not, is to become closer and understand each other better, and it is more platonic than romantic. Hope that makes sense; feel free to ask me about it if it doesn't.

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She was feeling drained when she came back to the hotel. She opened the door and Elena was sitting on the edge of the bed, pretending not to wait. Her hair was draped over her shoulder in a half-finished braid, like she'd started making it and then had got distracted halfway through.

"Well?" she asked. "Did you find him?"

Caroline nodded.

"What did he say? Is he— did he do it?"

"No," Caroline said. There was a headache between her eyes, and she knew that the coming conversation wouldn't improve anything. It was inevitable, though.

Elena frowned. "How do you know? What did he say? Tell me what he said exactly."

"He said it didn't make any sense for him to kill Tyler. Which I knew. Which I told you, actually."

"Well," Elena said, chin jutting out, "did he tell you where he was when it happened?"

"If he'd killed Tyler he wouldn't have been able to shut up about it. He's not a very discrete murderer, I don't know if you've noticed, Elena." She was being bitchy, but she couldn't help it.

"So what you're telling me is that you went there and had a nice conversation with Klaus which doesn't help us at all. God, Care."

"I said from the start that this was useless. We should have left right away. Klaus never had anything to do with this."

Elena snorted, but she seemed angry. Of course she was angry. "Figures that you would think that," she said. "You and he have always been so close." She managed to make it sound like an insult. Caroline knew it was unfair, but couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt anyway.

"I can't believe you're still not over that," she said instead. She didn't want to fight, she really didn't. She wanted to sleep, and in the morning she wanted to catch a plane to Peru and start all over again. Or —no. The day after, Elena had said.

Elena did want a fight. She was spoiling for it, stubborn in a blind, violent way Caroline was pretty sure she hadn't been before. "I can't believe you are," she spit. "Sleeping with the vampire version of Hitler doesn't strike you as a big deal?"

Caroline recoiled at the comparison. "It was twice!" she shouted, knee-jerk, louder than she meant to.

Elena yelled back, "It was—" at the same volume. Then she stopped.

It took a few seconds —frozen, blinking seconds, Elena looking right at her with something akin to hysteria— before Caroline realized what she'd said. She felt stupid —it was such a dumb mistake. Then again, she'd never been really good at keeping secrets. Her policy was that they didn't help you, secrets: they were heavy and weighed you down, and then you ended up drowning.

Elena sat back down on the bed. "What?" she asked, her voice worryingly cold.

Caroline grimaced. "Look —no, I—"

"Was it before or after the woods?"

Caroline just stared at her.

"Before or after?" Elena repeated. She sounded like a jealous girlfriend. Caroline wanted to tell her that this wasn't about her, that she had no jurisdiction over who Caroline slept with —but it was untrue, to an extent.

"After," she said.

Something angry rippled on Elena's face. Her hands were balled in fists at her side. She looked uncomprehending and bizarrely small and so, so furious. "When?"

"At the—" Caroline's breath caught in her throat—this had to be the hardest part, "at the wedding. Just before —he came into the room when I was getting ready."

She watched realization dawn on Elena's face as she was talking, and the succession of expressions: shock, anger, disappointment, disgust. One part of her thought that it was unfair, that Elena had done worse things than sleeping with someone who wouldn't even use it against them; the other part was buried under crushing, nauseating guilt.

"Is that why you wanted to go alone?"

"No," Caroline said quickly —too quickly, she realized when she saw Elena's eyes on her face, searching. She didn't believe her.

Elena shook her head. Caroline could almost see her replaying the entire night in her head, trying to pinpoint what she had missed, when exactly Klaus had closed the door behind him and—

"Why? Why would you do that?"

Caroline didn't know how to answer. The first time, after the woods, Elena hadn't understood either, unable to fathom why Caroline would fall into the arms of someone like Klaus. She saw that he was past redemption, and it set them at different ends of the universe, irreconcilable. In the end her biggest mistake had been to assume that Caroline was like her, would always strive towards goodness.

Caroline could have said a lot of things right then —I wanted to; he was there; I was afraid; he forced me—, but she kept silent instead. She didn't want to lie, and the truth would only make things worse.

"Fuck, Care!" When Elena was angry she got incandescent, her long hair undone, whipping her cheeks, her eyes bright as embers, her whole body hard and tensile, a piano chord on the verge of snapping. "I can't believe— I didn't think it could get worse than you sleeping with him once, but—"

"I didn't think—"

Elena whipped around, righteous. Her cheeks were red. "No, you didn't! You didn't think! If you had none of this would've happened!"

"None of what?"

"You still don't think Klaus killed Tyler?"

"Of course not! I just told you he didn't. What does the fact that he—that we—" she couldn't say it, "change?"

"That's how those people work, Caroline. You put something they want in front of their nose and they—" she breathed in harshly through her nose, "they don't give up until they have it. You give them an inch and they want a mile, they want the whole fucking country. That's how they work. They have no restraint, no sense of justice. They're animals."

It took Caroline a few seconds to digest that tirade, because at first she didn't understand what Elena meant by 'those people': they didn't know anyone else even remotely similar to Klaus, except maybe his siblings; and she—

"Are you calling me a tease? Are you seriously saying that I'm the reason Tyler got killed?" Just the day before Elena had whispered in the darkness that it wasn't her fault, eyes glowing like the mere idea of it was preposterous.

Elena squeezed her eyes shut. "If the shoe fits," she said through pursed lips. Then she seemed to realize what she'd said, or that she'd let herself say it, and her face melted with guilt. "I mean—"

No takebacks, Caroline wanted to say. She plowed on, "You mean that I fraternized with the enemy, and I got what I deserved. That's a little manichean, don't you think, Elena?"

Elena must have been too angry for poker faces —it was obvious that she was surprised. Maybe it was Caroline hearing talk like that —when they were younger Elena had always let herself think that they were on the same track, Elena's track—; or maybe it was that Caroline knew the word 'manichean'.

"This isn't about that," Elena said. She was calmer, but still fuming. In a few minutes she would start pacing, and she would be beautiful and righteous, striding back and forth across the room. Caroline wouldn't let that happen. "It's about trust, and loyalty. How can any of us trust you now? The others —they'll never—"

Caroline couldn't help but snort. "What others? How long has it been since you've last seen anyone from back then other than Bonnie?"

"I live in Mystic Falls," Elena said, chiding.

"Okay." Caroline amended, "How long has it been since it was the Scooby gang against the world, plotting to defeat evil? We're not a they. We were never a they, actually: just a group of scared kids running around trying to save their skin, and failing more often than not. This is about you, as usual."

"Bonnie—"

"I'm pretty sure Bonnie slept with Kol Mikaelson," Caroline said, and Elena gaped as though she hadn't suspected as much for years.

But— "Not on her wedding day," she said viciously. She meant for it to hurt, and it did.

"Do you think I meant for it to happen? It's not like I planned it in advance, Elena."

Elena tilted her head. She wanted to be judge and jury again, trace the delimitation between right and wrong. But it wasn't that easy; it had never been that easy, and Caroline wasn't going to pretend for Elena's benefit any longer.

"You tell me," Elena said. "It's not like I understand anything that goes through your head, apparently." It was supposed to be cutting, but it fell flat, and she just sounded sad. This, somehow, hurt even more than the insults had.

Caroline knuckled her eyes. Now that the adrenalin was settling she felt tired again, and ashamed. "He was…" It was always difficult to explain Klaus. Caroline wasn't sure she understood how this —thing between them, if there was still —ever— a thing, worked; most of the time it seemed to her that it was purely chemistry, the same kind of animal magnetism that made the sea strive endlessly to rise and touch the underbelly of the moon. She sat down on the bed facing Elena's, her head in her hands. If she didn't look at Elena it would be easier —to remember, and to tell. "I got married when I was twenty-three, Elena. I know it doesn't really mean the same thing, for us, but… there were so many things I wanted to do before settling down, and I was so afraid. And all of you —it was like you were counting on me to be happy on everyone's behalf, make it all okay. I'm not that person. I'm not—" She meant to say, you're the martyr, the one with the world on her shoulders, but she realized it would be cruel. She looked up at Elena. "I thought you would be the first out of all of us, to get married."

Elena blinked. "You did?"

"Yeah. I thought you and Stefan—or maybe Damon would sweep you off your feet and marry you in a Vegas chapel, what do I know, but I thought when all this was over and we were safe —safer, anyways— then you would get married and be happy enough for all of us. You do that. Not me."

"There was nothing to be afraid of," Elena said.

"Of course there was!" Caroline almost-shouted, frustrated. "There always is. The world is so frightening, Elena. I was so scared that day. I didn't want to walk down the aisle without my dad. I was afraid I would trip over the words. Fuck, I'd never even lived with anyone before, except in the dorms with you. What did you think—" She squeezed her eyes shut. "I didn't premeditate it or anything. Klaus was just… there." That wasn't exactly the truth, but it would do for Elena: it was the only thing she would understand, Klaus being a passing commodity. If you didn't see the attraction then it was no use, and Elena had never seen the perverse shine of darkness. Her particular hell was a grim and immoral desperation, one you went through with gritted teeth; never the wild ecstasy that Klaus preached.

"But it's Klaus," she said, proving Caroline's point.

"He doesn't judge me," Caroline said with a shrug. "He didn't judge me then. He didn't tell me what I had to do. He just wanted me, not the bride. Not the best friend, or the —survivor, just… me." It sounded stupid, now.

"He doesn't want you," Elena said, frowning and certain.

"Why not?"

Caroline knew why not: she didn't think people like him —tyrants— had hearts. If they did it would make everything more difficult. That was why she couldn't love Damon without trying to redeem him, and why Caroline resented it, because she knew Damon didn't have enough respect for anything to let love be a redemption. "It's just a game for him," Elena said.

"After seven years?"

Elena looked genuinely puzzled by it, bothered. Caroline just sighed. "Look—" she started, but Elena was already halfway through a thought, and then a sentence, "—he's still Klaus, you know."

Yes, Caroline felt like saying; he was still Klaus, and would probably always be Klaus. The question was whether Caroline would remain Caroline much longer, if she was even still the same Caroline Elena had in mind, and that was less certain. Not certain at all.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you," she said instead. "It happened. It was good. You know how it is, with me." She realized she was saying it like an apology: you know how it is, with me; I see something I like and I grab it. But she didn't amend her words.

"I just wish you—hadn't," said Elena. "I don't know how—"

"I'm still the same person, Elena," Caroline said, half-annoyed and half-pleading.

Elena's eyes got sharp. "Are you?"

And that was really what this whole thing was about, wasn't it? It had been so long since even that last time, with Klaus: if it didn't make sense then then maybe Elena had been on the wrong track the whole time, and Elena didn't like to be wrong.

Caroline ducked her head. "I guess not. You're not who you used to be either."

"I didn't sleep with Klaus Mikaelson," Elena said, with a gentle honesty that felt cruel in her mouth.

"I seem to remember you doing a few reprehensible things in your day," Caroline said, because Elena might want to hold that one over her head but damn if Caroline wasn't going to fight back. Sixteen was a ways behind, now. "What about that time you, oh, switched off your humanity and went around in queen bitch mode for months after torching down your own fucking house?"

Elena caught her bottom lip between her teeth, stubborn. "But that was just me, Caroline. Klaus is… he's a wild card. It's not a good idea to—"

"Dangle meat in front of his nose?" Elena winced at the formulation. "For god's sake, Elena, will you just let it go? Believe it or not, we don't all need true love to get into bed with people—or an agenda."

"Maybe you didn't, but he—"

"Thought it was true love?" Caroline exploded, bitter. Yes—maybe she was tired of Elena thinking the only thing she could be to people was a useless pawn. She dared Elena, chin held high. Say it, come on. Say it.

Elena didn't say it.

Elena didn't say anything; she stayed frozen in the middle of the room, hair flung over one of her shoulders, her face a kaleidoscope of expressions Caroline didn't want to decipher but couldn't help trying to, out of habit. Elena believed in things and she believed they would never stop being true, because she didn't believe in change. She had seen Caroline be weak and second-choice, once, twice, three times, to men who had loved her more than they had Caroline; and out of her pity had grown a loving sort of contempt, soft, understated. To Caroline it felt like a hand pushing her face down in the mud.

But—she looked at Elena's face, her earnest, youthful, expectant face, impossible to render ugly—but Elena was her friend, and she loved her.

She sucked in a breath. It was stupid that she felt like crying now, when the fight was almost over. She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair where she had dropped it during their confrontation, to free her arms for gesticulating.

"I need to go," she said, already pushing past Elena.

She had prepared her body for some resistance, was coiled to tear an arm out of Elena's surprisingly strong grip, to tuck her chin down and run for it, even if it seemed juvenile, because she really did need to go, not to look at Elena for a while. If she stayed she felt like she might not remember why they were even friends in the first place.

In the end it was just two fingers, light as anything, pressing down on the pulse point on her wrist. Caroline didn't stop walking, but she allowed herself to hear Elena speak in a half-whisper, saying, plaintive and decisive at once, "I love you."

Caroline nodded. She wasn't sure if Elena could see it now that Caroline was turning her back on her, walking down the corridor. Elena didn't come after her. Caroline listened for the closing door but there was no sound, only a cushioned silence, like Elena was trying to breathe as unobtrusively as possible, watching her leave.

You couldn't stay mad for long when you were walking in New York: there was just too much that demanded your attention, too many lights, a crowd so dense and disparate that you just had to look, catch a backwards glance of that girl with the blue hair, the man, there, who— and when you turned back you couldn't remember why you had been angry to begin with. Caroline ended up on the platform in 28th St and felt drained instead of righteously furious, even though she had a right to be angry, now that it was her turn. Mostly it made her sad. It was the same feeling that you would have holding two parts of a broken mirror knowing that a shard in the middle had rolled away under the furniture, in the dust, where you wouldn't be able to get it back: at a loss and a bit disappointed, discouraged. She thought: maybe I should just leave while I still can. For her sake and for mine.

But even as she formulated the thought she knew she wouldn't. It was selfish but she needed Elena: needed her like a crutch, like a lifeline, like half of her beating heart and like the best friend that had never been replaced after all. In the end it didn't really matter whether they had changed: right now everything was a matter of life and death and Elena couldn't leave, wouldn't leave even if Caroline asked her to. All this time she had been a phantom limb where Caroline didn't really need it, muscles that she hadn't exercised for years on end, this singular blend of ferocity and kindness like an itch between her shoulder-blades: now she needed it. She couldn't do it without Elena. She wouldn't go two steps without collapsing. Even now —even earlier in the warehouse— she felt out of step, like she was waiting for someone to catch up with her. But it had only been —what, two weeks? And before that Tyler was her anchor. And before that— She cursed herself, reflexive: damn it, Caroline. How about you learn to walk on your own?

Getting to Bonnie's was a long drift and when she got there there was someone in Bonnie's hallway, as though her arrival had been anticipated and prepared for. Caroline hoped it wasn't, in vain: the apartment smelled like incense and there were five witches, not including the one at the door, scattered at different spots in the living-room. One of them, perched on the arm of Bonnie's beautiful red couch, flicked a ringed finger at Caroline and asked Bonnie, "Is this her?"

Bonnie nodded. "Yeah," she said. She gave Caroline an apologetic glance, sorry I knew when you were coming. Caroline felt like she was floundering for a minute: she'd come here to have some time to breathe, to get her balance back, and there she was getting jostled around again.

Then she got a hold of herself. Tyler was more important. If the witches were there, it meant they were ready to help her, put her in contact with Tyler, Tyler's ghost. She wondered how Bonnie had got in touch with them so fast, how many favors she had collected on.

"We don't have all day," said another of the witches, with thick curly black hair and a downturned mouth. "Let's go." When she moved towards the door the tattoos that covered her arms and neck shimmered and seemed to move. There was a siren curled around her elbow, mouth open as though the city was too oppressive and wouldn't let her breathe. It didn't seem entirely preposterous to Caroline that she might be actually trapped inside the ink, underneath the skin, some fight's supernatural bounty.

The witches took the stairs except the one that had spoken first, so it was just her, Bonnie and Caroline in the tiny elevator, the silence thick and uncomfortable. Bonnie was smoothing her fingers over a talisman Caroline didn't recognize, a bronze bracelet—or maybe it was a necklace—but Caroline couldn't tell what animal it represented, because its head kept disappearing between Bonnie's fingers. They got out of the elevator and stood in the hallway in tense silence until the other witches clambered down the steps in groups of two and threes. This time Caroline looked more closely: they were almost all black or dark-skinned, with thick hair and heavily made-up eyes; they wore leather and silver jewelry that made gong sounds when they moved. They weren't discrete, not by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same they seemed cautious, on the ready. Though they had appeared disorganized at first glance Caroline realized it would have been impossible to cut through them; something invisible bound them at the waist, some small facet of them turned in the same direction, an unchecked compass at the base of their spines. The only remotely similar thing Caroline had ever seen was the wide circle of— Guilt hammered in her throat. She wondered if the witches knew about that — their sisters. But geography was as definite a separation as you could imagine; Elena and her were the perfect example of that, after all.

No words were exchanged. The witch who had ridden with them in the elevator —"Adaeze," Bonnie whispered in her ear—, obviously a leader of some sort, surveyed the others as they spilled out into the street and seemed to scatter there too, leaving in different directions. One of them had hot pink hair and the color exploded in the sun until she reached a motorcycle and climbed on it, hiding the wondrous hair under a helmet. Another girl, who couldn't be older than sixteen, rounded the motorcycle and climbed behind her, fastening her arms at her waist. Caroline heard the rumble of an engine and looked over her shoulder only to see a small black car whiz past them and into the noisy traffic. There were another few minutes of frenzied activity until it was just the three of them in the sun, the street returning to its usual state of regular New York bustle. Adaeze nodded.

"Follow me," she said.

Her car was parked in a nearby street, one of those small and winding alleyways you wouldn't imagine actually existed in New York; a Fiat, yellow and small and perfectly unimpressive. The crushing foreboding in Caroline's chest she hadn't even realized was there let up a little.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

Adaeze didn't even dignify her with a look. Out of a tacit understanding between her and Bonnie, Caroline got relegated to the backseat, where she squeezed her limbs without complaining. Adaeze twisted her key —it was entangled in a mess of charms, little kistchy things Caroline didn't know whether to believe were actually magic— in the ignition.

She asked a few more questions before catching on to the fact that it was useless since Adaeze —or Bonnie, for that matter, though in her case it might be that she just didn't know— had no intention of answering any of them. It took them about thirty minutes to leave Manhattan and they waded into Harlem, the décor sparsing out in the window. Caroline imagined how incongruous the car must look in those long, dark streets. When the adrenaline of being ambushed by an entire (or so she could only assume) coven of witches settled she remembered the fight with Elena and tipped her head against the window. She'd come to Bonnie for support, and now— well, now they were in a car with an unresponsive witch and Caroline had no idea where they were going. Maybe she was just the vampire sacrifice of the week, she thought —wouldn't have been the first time.

Point was—point was, the argument was still real, and all that had hurt before she'd left the hotel room still hurt, and Tyler was still dead. Though at least Bonnie was here —not exactly forthcoming either, sure, or maybe she was talking to Adaeze in some secret kind of morse code Caroline couldn't catch; but there, real and alive, for all she bore the portal to an unimaginable world inside her chest. It felt good just to be near her. Caroline listened to the blood pulsing in her throat and it was like a lullaby, a strong, almost-healthy rhythm lulling her to sleep. She let herself doze off.

When she came to the sky was cloudy and the car was stopped. Someone shook her shoulder. She raised her head; it was Adaeze, looking down at her with an unreadable expression. She pulled back to let Caroline get out of the car and examine their surroundings.

"Where are we?" Caroline asked.

Adaeze tilted her head, acknowledging the question, but didn't answer. They were still in Harlem as far as Caroline could see, at the very edge of the neighborhood and possibly of the city, an abandoned industrial wasteland dominated by concrete and rough, unworked steel. The ghosts of factories were hovering in the distance, but the only lights were miles away. Here everything seemed to have been abandoned, or rather fled from, as though some nameless evil had whispered to them that they better chose somewhere else to plant their roots. Caroline shivered. Vampire or not, this wasn't her kind of place.

When she gave a second look the small, ant-like figures of the witches detached over the foamy late-afternoon obscurity. Pink Hair was leaning against her motorcycle, talking earnestly with the young witch. In the peculiar light Caroline noticed shots of silver —studs on belts and boots, piercings, jewelry— that she hadn't seen before, melted in the plain city sunlight.

"How did night fall so fast?" she asked to no-one in particular.

She wasn't expecting an answer this time, but a hand cupped her elbow and before she could freak out Bonnie was behind her, slim and smiling. "You arrived at the edge of decline," she said, which seemed kind of prophetic for Bonnie, but she just smiled from the side of her mouth and explained, "I'm a specialist in in-betweens now." It sort of made sense.

But for once being the ambiguity of her position didn't seem to bother Bonnie all that much. From what Caroline had seen of her in the city she did her best to keep out of it, magic and supernatural vendettas and all the trouble that came with them —seemed to consider it enough that she was the anchor and couldn't really do anything about it, even now that she was better. But here she advanced confidently in the night and held her head high, back ramrod-straight, exuding a confidence the witches seemed to feel like the slash of a whip. They straightened too. There was a hum in the atmosphere, everyone coming to attention, that finally settled into silence.

"I need your help," said Bonnie.

They obviously already knew that, since they'd all driven to this honestly kind of creepy place at six in the afternoon, but Pink Hair still crossed her arms and scowled.

"We don't owe you anything," she said.

"No," Bonnie agreed, "you don't. I guess I could always go ask La Maria."

Pink Hair scowled even harder at the name. "That bitch doesn't even know about you. Why should she care?"

Adaeze was watching on like this was all a rather boring sideshow which she had no intention of interrupting. Caroline wondered if she was really as much a leader as she'd seemed.

Bonnie's eyes turned to steel. "It always helps to have the Anchor on your side," she said, and Caroline could feel the capital A in her voice. "Isn't that why you agreed to come here tonight?"

"We thought it was something actually important," Pink Hair spit, her voice full of contempt, "life or death stuff, not just doing some newbie vampire's bidding."

Caroline would have objected to being called a newbie —sometimes it felt like she'd been a vampire forever, like there was nothing else she could revert to, her humanity wiped off by the smooth sheathing of her fangs into the flesh of her gums, the strength inside her. It was probably true, but it didn't change the fact: by vampire —and witch, apparently— standards it hadn't been long, not long enough to even test that immortal barrier. She was too annoyed by the Originals in general, not to mention Katherine, to ever be awed at their having lived through the centuries, and Stefan was too homely by now to feel like the centurial trooper he actually was, but once you thought about it it really was humbling, to be in the presence of people who had lived this long, seen this much.

Pink Hair threw a glance her way and it was very clear; to her Caroline was a blood-sucking parasite, no more no less. Caroline half-wanted to rip her throat out, just a little, to show her how wrong she was, but that wouldn't really be conducive to her and Bonnie getting the help they needed. Caroline had to admit, deep inside herself, that she would probably have been able to find Tyler's murderer without his help, be it only because she would move mountains, would not rest until she had them under heel —but she wanted to talk to him so bad. Maybe if she'd known Bonnie would have to go to such lengths, she thought —but no. She was still too selfish, and it was too important.

"We'll do it." It was Adaeze, who Caroline had forgotten was even there, standing quietly by Bonnie's side; she hadn't raised her voice a decibel. Caroline amended herself —she definitely was the leader.

Pink Hair opened her mouth like she was going to argue, but Adaeze said, "Karen," trenchant and definitive, and she fell into sullen silence.

Adaeze turned to Bonnie. "We'll help your friend," she told Bonnie, not looking at Caroline at all. "In exchange you have to promise us that you'll help us in turn, if we need it, and that we'll be the only coven you're in contact with."

Bonnie frowned. "Exclusivity?"

"La Maria is powerful," Adaeze said. "We don't need her to have even more power, and the ancestors don't like free agents. There are rules to magic."

The color drained from Bonnie's face, a little; but only Caroline, who had known her since they were children, seemed to notice. "Yeah," she said. "A lot of them."

"What do you want from us?"

Bonnie looked at Adaeze strangely, her gaze oblique. "I told you about it before. Just a manifestation spell."

Where they were situated in front of them in a loose half-circle, the witches crowded closer together and started talking in a dense murmur. Adaeze regarded them placidly. The setting sun hit the silver buckle of her belt.

"Breaching the space between our world and the other side is never a good idea," she told Bonnie. "You should know that better than anyone."

"I do," Bonnie said. Caroline thought she would explain about Caroline's circumstances, why she needed to see Tyler and talk to him so bad, but she didn't elaborate. When Caroline opened her mouth to supply the information herself Bonnie's hand closed on her forearm. Just as Caroline was about to protest, she was distracted by the buzzing of her phone in her back pocket.

While Adaeze and Bonnie were engaged in what looked like a staring contest, she slid the phone out of her pocket. The message was from Elena. Caroline hesitated, but curiosity won out and she opened it; it said, WHERE ARE YOU? in all capitals, shouty and urgent. When Caroline scrolled down there was another message, about half an hour before, that just read, i'm sorry. Caroline didn't know how to answer; she looked down at the message for a handful of seconds, then shut off her phone and put it back in her pocket. Later. She'd deal with it later.

When she looked back up Adaeze had joined the circle of witches, and they were preparing the ritual, moving slowly and purposefully, a dedicated energy behind every one of their movements. Caroline watched as Adaeze led two of the witches to the yellow Fiat and opened the trunk, from which she took out an armload of candles which looked like they had been bought at Bath&Beyond as well as what Caroline supposed were other witchy ingredients, rope and books and long sticks of colored chalk like the ones Tyler had explained to her were used in tagging to delineate the contours back during his street art phase.

Bonnie's head was ducked; she looked exhausted. "You okay?" Caroline asked. "Sorry to make you do all this."

Bonnie seemed to snap out of a daze. "Huh? No, it's— they said they'd do it. Witches keep their word."

"Is that, like, from the secret handbook or something?" Caroline asked, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth, but Bonnie took it surprisingly seriously.

"Something like that, yeah."

For lack of something to say, Caroline surveyed the witches' progress. They were walking across the wasteland, their arms laden with what they had collected in the Fiat. Caroline wondered how it could all have fit in the small trunk, if there was some spell to help them cram it all in. Probably not; if Bonnie was too be believed, the ancestors likely wouldn't appreciate being called on for the equivalent of making a box bigger on the inside.

"You're not helping them?" Caroline asked. It was strange, in a way: she was so used to Bonnie being the one bent on her wax and chalk —even though, she couldn't help but notice, Bonnie's materials had usually been much more traditional, like something out of a fairytale—, and now she was just standing there with her arms crossed, looking faintly dissatisfied with it all.

"They wouldn't want me to," Bonnie said as they started following the witches across the gravel. Caroline didn't insist.

They were led into what Caroline could immediately tell was a graveyard. As it was, it didn't look like one at all: it was only a gated part of the greater industrial waste, and the graves, it they could be called that, were either slabs of concrete or just spots on the ground delimitated with jagged stones and makeshift crosses held together by wire and hard black rubber, sometimes even frayed rope. They were disposed in a broken circle, all pointing towards an uncertain center, all twenty or twenty-five of them; when the witches got to their level they dropped their bravado and bowed their heads as one would upon entering a church. Caroline almost expected to see them genuflecting.

Two of them, Karen's companion and another young girl with ripped fishnets and a spiked nose-ring, crouched and started to organize the candles on the graves. It all seemed a little extensive for a manifestation spell, but it wasn't like Caroline was an expert in magic, and besides that the witches' cooperation was uncertain at best, so it was probably better not to antagonize them. Caroline couldn't help but let her thoughts drift back to Elena: was she worrying? No —of course she was worrying. The question was, how much? Caroline bit her lip. She turned to Bonnie; they both needed distracting.

"You used to be able to do this alone," she said, nodding to the witches. The rest of them were hanging back; Karen was tracing a pentagram on the ground in hot pink.

The silence stretched for so long that Caroline started thinking that maybe Bonnie hadn't heard her. But—

"Yeah," she said eventually. She kept staring straight ahead, not really looking at the witches or their preparations but beyond them, where Caroline imagined ghosts were squirming restlessly, maybe sensing that they were about to be pulled of their inoffensive peace. "I'm not as strong as I used to be. I need the ancestors. And the coven won't send only one of theirs with me—with us. They don't trust me."

"Why can't the ancestors just lend you power?"

"They don't trust me either. I'm not part of the coven, part of the family; I'm not their daughter. They know that I'm the anchor. They're afraid of what I might do with that power."

"Are you?"

Something shut down in Bonnie: for a terrifying second she seemed to wither under Caroline's eyes, her skin getting thin and papery, as though she were going to become a ghost again. Caroline held her breath until she recovered the appearance of flesh and bone.

"Sometimes," Bonnie said, her voice colorless.

Now Adaeze was turning towards them and without words she beckoned them closer, showed them to the complete pentagram. She said quietly the name of each witch —Malia, Soo Jin, Hélène and Karen's young friend, Remedios— and they placed themselves on the arms of the crossed star. No matter how modern their clothes were, how edgy their piercings and tattoos; in the gloomy light of the in-between time curtailing day and night they all seemed solemn and powerful, that line of khôl under their eyes a priestess's mask. The pink line of the pentagram started glowing; the air was humming with magic. Even on the sidelines, Bonnie looked like she was in pain, and Caroline assumed it was the fact of being in such a close proximity with magic and yet unable to practice it, to connect. Then again those things tended to be impenetrable, so maybe it was something else.

Caroline breathed in as they started chanting. It ought to have been hot, the sticky warmth that New York took on in the early evening, but there was a deep chill in the air that made Caroline shiver. This time he was going to show. It was Tyler, he couldn't not: he was loyal and generous and he always, always kept his promises. Caroline had been the changing one, not him. He was going to show, this time. He had to.

Bonnie's fingers curled around hers; it made Caroline look up, back at the witches. With a whoosh, the flames swelled in their cradle of scented wax. The smell of pine and artificial sweetener rose in the air. In the distance the yellow Fiat had shrunk to a tiny square of reflected light, like a lightning bug. Adaeze spoke louder and louder with every word; she seemed to know every word by heart, unlike Bonnie who had always been bent over grimoires, learning even as she tried to save their lives and succeeded over and over, every time. One day Caroline might stop feeling guilty for taking Bonnie for granted every time for so long, but it wasn't today.

"They know the spell by heart," Bonnie said absently, as though she was reading Caroline's thoughts.

As she said the words her grip on Caroline's hand tightened, enough to hurt. Caroline swore under her breath. One of the witches —Soo Jin, with the supernatural blue eyes and the tattoos curling from mid-thigh to the base of her chin, fantastical creatures in bright colored ink—, distracted, flicked her an irritated glance and frowned. Bonnie didn't stop crushing Caroline's hand; maybe she hadn't even noticed. She was looking right ahead, eyes bugging out like she was having a stroke. She was trembling; it seemed like there was something tethered in her stomach, a hook, trying to pull her forward into the pentagram. Caroline bit down on her lip to keep from crying out.

Panic was surging in her chest and her fangs had pierced through the skin of her lip, blood trickling into the inside of her mouth, down the enamel of her teeth. Caroline felt nauseous. But— This is working, she thought, because the witches' eyes were glassy and dark, doll's eyes, a deep well of strange sleep nothing could have woken them out of, and their hands were linked and welded together and they were beautiful in that intense terrifying way that only came from magic, so it had to be working, didn't it? She tried to remember the few other times ghosts had materialized in front of them, back in Mystic Falls: Alaric, Anna, Mason Lockwood, skittish at first, their eyes wide and terrified at having been roused until they settled in a blank sort of acceptance. Caroline couldn't imagine how it must feel, to be pulled out of what had to be an at least somewhat painless rest back into the harsh realm of the living, corralled by witch-power. Realizing you were dead, and then having to go back.

But she needed him, Tyler. If he didn't come back and tell her something, anything, what she had to do, she would rend to pieces, she just knew it. This panic was just a foreboding, a first taste of what was to come if she was left alone without the man who —who had lived with her every day for seven years, for one, and loved her and died because of her, in an oblique, complicated way. If it wasn't for her—sure, the werewolf gene ran in the family, but she was the magnet for trouble. It didn't even matter that she hated herself for it, for his death, because he would come back and tell her it was okay. That there was nothing she could do now, except avenging him. After that there would be peace for both of them. Right and wrong, wasn't that—

There was a startled cry, then a heavy thump. When Caroline looked up the girl, Remedios, had collapsed on the ground.

—

The witches all ran to her in a disorganized stampede. Even Adaeze, who had been perfectly expressionless all this while, was crouched near the girl's body, taking her pulse. Caroline felt frozen. She watched Adaeze's fingers, two on Remedios's wrist and two on her thigh: tap, tap, tap. She was alive. Bonnie joined them around the body, even though there were too many people and Karen was opening her arms to corral them backwards, saying, "She needs to breathe." Because that was what you did, wasn't it? When someone— You went to them. But Caroline felt dirty, and she couldn't help but think, irrationally maybe: this is my fault. I killed her.

"You didn't kill her," said Adaeze when she looked up and her eyes met Caroline's, straight and hard and black. It felt like she was saying: you might have, but you didn't. Caroline nodded.

She came closer. Malia and Hélène were each holding one of Remedios's hands. They raised their heads when they felt Caroline approaching, glaring like lionesses guarding a cub. "What happened?" Caroline asked.

"It hasn't been long since she's in full possession of her powers," Adaeze said slowly, sensibly. "She's not used to this kind of ritual. It's heavy on the mind."

Karen didn't seem to be as forgiving. She was the coven's resident troublemaker, Caroline realized when Karen balled her fists at her sides and opened her mouth to speak; the heavy-hitter. But she didn't head towards Caroline. All this time, apart from that hateful glance at the beginning, it had seemed like Caroline didn't exist to her. The others looked merely uneasy with her presence.

Karen stalked in Bonnie's direction. "You," she said hotly, pointing a finger at Bonnie's chest. Her pink quiff quivered as she bobbed her head in anger. "It's your fault, bringing a fucking vampire on our grounds." She turned to Adaeze. "I don't give a shit if she's the anchor, she can go to La Maria for all I care—"

Adaeze gave her a cold look. "Don't yell, Karen. Remedios is unwell."

Karen looked temporarily chastised. There was only one question burning on Caroline's tongue: did you find him? Where is he? He might still be concealed behind one last veil of darkness, in the thick syrupy night: either that the witches hadn't completed the ritual or that they were vindictive, and didn't want to show him to her. She felt like sprinting to the center of the pentagram and pawing the air like a madwoman. She held her tongue.

Remedios was still in her line of sight, Hélène bent over her. She had showy cascading red hair, like the Helen in the legend; Caroline wondered if it was on purpose. Remedios opened one eye and looked straight at Bonnie, who was standing a few feet away, turning her back at her. She said, "I saw the other side." Bonnie turned around and they all saw the pity in Remedios's eyes, like she had just realized what Bonnie went through everyday as the Charon of the supernatural world. Bonnie winced and turned back around, her mouth already half-open to talk to Adaeze. Caroline could understand. Pity was repellent; pity was useless and bothersome. Kindness was an anti-acid, but pity didn't serve any purpose and made your throat itch with tears.

"She just needs some rest," Hélène said. "We've got to bring her back to her mom."

"Thank God it's not a school night," Malia said. It sounded strange coming out of her mouth because she didn't look like she believed in God, or like she was even out of high school herself.

Remedios yawned and stretched, leonine. "I'm fine," she said unconvincingly. "I can do the ritual again if you want." Her eyes skittered across the cemetery, the candles, then bounced on several of her fellow witches. "But—"

"Not tonight," said Adaeze, and Caroline couldn't help the numbing disappointment that crashed on her with all its weight. "Karen, can you take her home?"

"Why me?" Karen asked. She shot a look of apology to Remedios, but it was clear she wanted to stay to yell at Bonnie some more, that she was spoiling for a fight.

"You came with her," Adaeze said simply. She was a good leader. "The air will do her good." The motorcycle was pushed against an overturned crate not far, gleaming like an insect's shell in the night. The candles hadn't stopped burning when Remedios had collapsed; they projected their sickly glow on the metal.

"I guess," Karen said reluctantly. She hitched up the sleeves of her leather jacket. "Let's go," she said, and presented a hand to Remedios to help her up, but there was tenderness in her voice. Bonnie remembered how being a witch had meant family for Bonnie too, once upon a time, before everyone was killed. She thought Adaeze might respect that. But maybe Bonnie hadn't told them that story. It wasn't a particularly fun story to tell, after all.

They watched Karen and Remedios disappear in the distance, silent. Remedios was leaning on Karen, their arms threaded together. They didn't look like sisters, because they didn't look alike at all, but there was this undercurrent of quiet affection between them, the good-natured ribbing, the wonder and worry. Caroline had never minded being an only child, but right now she kind of did. Of course she had Elena and Bonnie, and that was nearly the same thing, what with how unconditional their friendship had turned to be, but—still. The last ten years didn't make for a great track record.

"I'm sorry," Adaeze said to Bonnie once the motorcycle had roared away, the engine noise reduced to a slight, fading hum.

Bonnie nodded. She still looked exhausted. With her left hand she rubbed the bony, skeletal wrist of her right. The bronze pendant on her bracelet glimmering weakly.

"Why?" Caroline asked. "What happened?"

Adaeze met her gaze head on. She wasn't afraid of anything but she wasn't particularly kind either. "It didn't work," she said.

Caroline felt cold foreboding settle at the back of her neck, but she refused to believe it. There was no reason for it not to work. She turned around, silently begging a denial of Malia and Soo Jin, or even just an explanation, but they avoided her eyes. "What do you mean it didn't work? It has to work. How can it not work?"

"We didn't find him," Adaeze said.

Bonnie touched her arm. "Sometimes—" she started, but Caroline shook her off.

"You didn't find him? That's bullshit. He's there. I know he's there."

"He's not there," Adaeze said.

"That's—" Caroline wished she were a witch so she could do it herself, go and find him, and show them. Trust Bonnie to choose a coven that couldn't even practice right. Caroline knew she was being unfair, but she didn't care. She didn't care about anything—hadn't for a while. Except Tyler. Without Tyler nothing made sense, she couldn't go on.

"Did you look everywhere?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief second. "The other side—"

"We know about the other side," Adaeze said. "We looked. He wasn't there. I'm sorry."

She didn't sound sorry, Caroline thought vindictively. Or rather she did, but not nearly sorry enough. But she was human. She ought to know—she ought to know, what death meant when it was definitive. Unless maybe Elena had been right that time, and there was a purgatory for them too.

Caroline breathed in, to keep her voice from trembling. "Did you look everywhere?" She didn't even know what it meant, everywhere. Maybe the other side wasn't even a real place, just darkness upon darkness, scary and unending. Maybe it didn't have boundaries or walls, nothing to delimit it.

Adaeze nodded. "We did. That's why Remedios collapsed, because the ritual took so long. We looked everywhere we could think of, to make sure he wasn't hiding, or lost." She looked at Caroline. "I like to be thorough," she said, as though she was afraid Caroline would think it was a favor.

Something stuck. She said, lost and the reality of it hit Caroline like a freight train —that Tyler was lost, that she wouldn't see him again, never— and she just—lost it. It was unthinkable. But it was true, wasn't it? This was the kind of shit people flipped their switches for. Suddenly Caroline understood, sneered at that old feeling she'd thought was bravery but was really the absence of a greater pain; thought, there's nothing I would like more than to be off right about now. She couldn't control it. She focused on the tight thrum of blood in Bonnie's jugular not to hear Adaeze's words, and it took her over.

She had always known —it was hard to ignore— that there was something feral about being a vampire, something deeper than the panicked hunger she'd felt when she'd woken up that first time. It had been horrific, sure—but she hadn't had the time to get really hungry, powerfully and scaringly hungry before Stefan and Elena had rescued her, explained the rules to her. And she'd known that vampires were real beforehand. What she was feeling now was what she imagined a random college student whose neck had been snapped after one of Damon's drinking binges would feel like. She was just so mad. She felt like she could have struck down mountains if she'd tried.

And it was beating in her, like a heart, like a drum, it was pounding and inescapable and painful and so loud she couldn't hear anything over the roar of it. She felt her nails break the skin of her palms, her fangs unsheath. She felt herself whir through the air. Everything belonged to her but death, and death she could reclaim. Adaeze's throat between her hands. She was wearing a necklace made of colored wood. The skin near her jugular was black and smooth and smelled like perfume and sweat and magic. Like fizzy water. Like lemonade. Caroline bit down.

The thing was—well, she'd never been all that good with instinct control, had she? That was what the whole Klaus thing was about, and it was significant, even if she didn't want to admit it to herself—otherwise she wouldn't have been tracking the guy ten years later, trying to find out if he'd killed her husband over her. This was instinct too. Now the witch wasn't so proud. She couldn't find Tyler. Had she even looked? Had she looked like a woman in love would? Caroline had been in love with Tyler. She still was. Maybe she wasn't, but she needed him, and it amounted to the same thing, more or less. The witch should've known that. Pain made her so hungry. Pain made her want to drink until there was nothing else in her brain but that red ecstasy, bright burning sparks against the back of her eyelids. There was blood everywhere, in her mouth, on her skin, her hands, and it felt good. Nothing had felt as good in a long time, though Elena had come close in a different way, the soothing honey of her kindness. But Elena was mad at her now, because of a mistake she had made a long, long time ago and never really regretted afterwards. So this was what was left. Blood.

She heard it behind her—a tense second of bewilderment, surprise, shock, horror; then Bonnie crying out, and something hit Caroline's back. A spell. Malia had her nails in Caroline's shoulder. Bad idea, little girl, Caroline thought, and flung her onto the ground. She had no pity for these people. Humans died all the time. She licked Adaeze's blood on her lips. There was no vervain in it, or any other concoction that would have made Caroline's lips burn. In a way it reassured her a little, at the same time as it kindled her hunger. She thought, they don't know what they're doing at all. Maybe they were wrong about Tyler.

It could—it ought to—have calmed her, but she was too far gone. When Hélène tried to hit her with a lead pipe she'd grabbed off the ground Caroline whipped it off her hands, snarling, then to punish her scratched the long and bloody mark of a claw on her throat. She'd learn. They all needed to learn. Bonnie flung herself in front of her, "Caroline!" but Caroline's arm caught her windpipe and she fell backwards, winded. Caroline felt the mercy dwindle down in her bones. She didn't care about the witches. She wouldn't kill Bonnie, but—

"Enough," Adaeze said.

Caroline growled at her, fangs out, her body taut as she jumped and slammed her down onto one of the concrete graves. The spell was still pulling at her skin but it didn't matter. She scraped her teeth across Adaeze's throat, surprised at her own control, and for the first time since they'd met she smelled fear on Adaeze, dirty and pervasive. Finally, she couldn't help but think. Finally she understands.

"Give me a reason not to kill you," she whispered. There was no reason; that was the trick. Caroline hadn't known where the line was until she'd crossed it, and now she was standing on the other side with no room in her heart for repentance.

Someone's hands on her shoulders, but she twisted out of their grip. There was the sickening sound of bones breaking. Caroline didn't care—couldn't, even if she'd tried.

"What do you want?" Adaeze asked, trying to keep her voice level and failing.

"I know you're lying," Caroline said. The pain was still gnawing at her, stronger than her bloodlust, stronger than everything. It was only a matter of time before it broke down Caroline's barriers. "This isn't the only thing you can try. Tyler isn't lost forever, it doesn't work like that. There are resurrection spells."

"The ancestors will never let us," Adaeze croaked, and Caroline was grateful that she didn't even try to convince her that it wasn't a good idea, that it was black magic, even though she knew it was just because Adaeze was afraid.

"Force them," she said. "Force them, or I'll kill you."

Adaeze closed her eyes, breathing through her nose, fear still seeping out of her in claustrophobic waves; seemed to consider it. Her body was tight in Caroline's grip —it smelled delicious and Caroline couldn't help but lose her head, a little, picturing how easy it would be to just burrow her head into that soft neck and drink until there was nothing left, until she was full, no room for memories, for—

This moment of distraction was enough. When she looked back down Adaeze was mumbling under her breath, grimoire Latin, and Caroline felt the spell growing stronger and meaner; her strength was slipping away from her. She tried to hold it in, to bite down and kill the witch once and for all. She was so angry. If it went away there would be nothing left.

She heard Bonnie scramble to her knees behind her and join in the spell. Belatedly Malia, Soo Jin and Hélène did as well. Caroline had to bit her lip not to whimper. Her grip on Adaeze faltered until eventually all it took was a push and she was lying down on the ground, incapable of getting up, the witches towering above her. Dust got in her eyes; once she started to cry trying to stop was useless, her tears —not tears of sadness: of frustration, of rage— humiliatingly warm on her skin. The spell felt like she was being flayed alive, like her skin was being painstakingly pulled away from her bones, inch by inch. She tried to scream, couldn't.

It went on forever, pulling the energy directly from the marrow of her bones, sucking every atom of power out of her, the witches' dark eyes riveted on her. Her face shifted back to its human form, her fangs slid back in; it felt unnatural and wrong, like maybe she was losing them forever. Not now, Caroline thought—pleaded. There was a time when she could have wanted it, but it was long gone now. Bonnie —Bonnie would've understood. Why was she doing this? Couldn't she see? Caroline would never have killed her, not in a million years. Why wasn't she helping Caroline, why were her hands up, like Caroline was one of the smirking adversaries they had fought together? She opened her mouth to speak but only blood came out, stale and nauseating.

"Don't—" she heard Bonnie's voice, cut off, altered, then the hard edge of a boot in her stomach. She vomited more blood; it dribbled on her chin, rank and acid but still addicting. Nails on her throat. She blacked out when her neck snapped.

When she came to Hélène was looking her in the face, sneering, from the other side of a new pentagram. This one was green. Hélène was holding her arm gingerly against her chest, something wincing when she moved; Caroline guessed it was broken and felt vindictive joy, which soon dwindled into weariness.

"Hey," Hélène called to the others, who seemed to be having some sort of pow-wow to the side, "she's awake. Why can't they ever stay dead?"

Caroline's head was killing her. The memories of what she'd done flowed back in a rush. She felt ashamed, but most of all she felt desperate, the loss of Tyler eating away at her. She looked at Adaeze moving in her direction, thought: I would kill her in a blink if it meant I could have Tyler back. Klaus would have been proud.

"I'm sorry," she said to Bonnie. "I would never have hurt you." Bonnie nodded, her face hidden in the darkness, unreadable. She would forgive Caroline, though, in time. She always did.

Adaeze crouched in front of her. "Don't try to get out," she said, looking wary, as though Caroline was going to try to jump her again. She was right to be careful, Caroline thought a little petulantly. "Don't make any sudden movements. We will kill you."

Caroline laughed. "You just try," she said. "You're not the first to make that promise."

She was afraid; she felt cold and weak. But she wouldn't show it. She would make Tyler proud now, for once, even if he couldn't see her.

Behind Adaeze, Malia growled and took a menacing step forward. Adaeze stopped her with her arm. Malia just glared at Caroline; Caroline smiled back at her, fangs out. Then she turned back to Adaeze.

"Give him to me," she said, trying not to make it sound too much like she was begging, even though she was. "I'll do anything you want."

"You have nothing I want," Adaeze said calmly. Her throat was still bleeding, just a little trickle that smelled heavenly. Caroline felt dizzy with want.

"Don't you want to be immortal?" She leaned in. "I'll turn you. Then you can do anything you please, frolic around the city shoving it in La Maria's face or lunch on all of Manhattan, I don't care. Just one spell. Can you imagine being a vampire witch? That has to be pretty awesome. That has to be something."

"Being like you doesn't appeal to me," Adaeze said, not unkindly. "I have no desire to be immortal."

"Everyone wants to be immortal."

Bonnie turned away in the darkness. Caroline couldn't help but track her with her eyes, her slim, proud silhouette.

"Will you try anything if I let you go?"

Caroline thought about it. "No," she lied. She played the scene in her head: Adaeze would break the pentagram and Caroline would snap Soo Jin's neck. She'd have to act fast. The terror would be enough to force them to do the spell. Then if they wanted to bring their little witch back Caroline wouldn't begrudge them.

"Magic always has a price," Bonnie said in a dark voice, like she had so many times before. "Especially this kind of magic." In the past Caroline had nodded sententiously; in the past Caroline had been on the side of the good guys. But now she was a free electron—the solvable for x.

Caroline looked her in the eyes. She'll never trust you again, Elena had said. Well, she would take that chance. "This time I'm willing to pay it," she said.

Bonnie flinched. Adaeze tilted her head.

"Death hurts," she said, "but it's not the end of things. If I —if we— bring back your husband he won't be the man you remember."

"He wasn't a man in the first place." It had never felt as true as it did now.

"He won't be that either. He won't be a ghost. He won't be anything you can identify. He will be full of darkness."

Caroline thought about Jeremy Gilbert and Bonnie dying for him, to bring him back; thought, am I not worthy enough to do it? Is the exchange not equal? Jeremy was full of darkness too, scary and intangible, but he was allowed to survive.

"There's darkness in everyone," she said instead, tipping her chin up. "I'll deal."

"Not that kind of darkness. That kind rots and sullies."

Adaeze looked so sserious; Caroline laughed. "You don't think we're already sullied? What kind of world do you live in? We've killed —we've killed so many people, whether we wanted it or not, and we'll never go to jail for it, we'll never feel the consequences. I'm pretty sure you did some murdering of your own. You think we still live in the world of light and darkness, justice and peace? Get a grip."

"You don't believe that," Bonnie said.

"No, you don't believe that," Caroline retorted. "But it's the truth. Why can't I have Tyler back, when you got back your boyfriend and Elena her brother? Where's the justice in that?"

Bonnie blanched. "That—was a mistake. I died for it."

"And I'll die for Tyler." Caroline grinned, but it was twisted and desperate. She thought about messages from Elena accumulating in her voicemail. "An eye for an eye. That's how it's worked all this time."

"I won't bring back your husband," Adaeze said.

Caroline stood up in the pentagram, her heels digging in the dirt. "Fine. Then I'll ask someone else. Who's that Maria you were talking about?" Fierce anger flashed on Hélène's face. "What, you think I don't listen when you pretend I'm not there? Bonnie told you how nice and docile I was, is that it? Well, tough luck. I'm done with being nice."

"Tyler wouldn't want you to—" Bonnie started, but Caroline interrupted her.

"What the fuck do you know about what Tyler would've wanted? You don't know shit. You barely knew him at all. Are you the one who spent seven years married to him? Are you the one who watched him turn and hunted with him? Are you the one who lived with him, and loved him, and nursed him when he was sick?" Bonnie paled. "I didn't think so." Caroline realized distantly that she was yelling. "Tyler would've wanted to live. He deserved to live."

"It's not your fault, it's—"

"Stop telling me it's not my fault! You don't know anything! Stop lying! I'm not asking you the moon. Just bring back Tyler. Then we can be done, Bonnie."

"I don't want to be done," Bonnie said. She had her fists balled at her sides. "I want to help you."

Caroline laughed again. It hurt her throat. "Yeah, and look how that's worked out." She opened her arms to invite Bonnie to take in the situation: Caroline in the pentagram, Adaeze with her blood-sticky neck, Hélène's broken arm, Bonnie and the bruises under her skin from Caroline's arm across her windpipe, ready to bloom. "Give him back to me. Give him back to me. He has to be somewhere."

Her cheeks were wet, and Adaeze had a horrible look of pity on her face. Caroline wanted to hit her.

"Sometimes death is just the end," Adaeze whispered. "That's how it has to be. We close the door and we mourn. Our dead are somewhere, you're right, just not somewhere we can get to them. They look over us. They love us." She reached a hand through the protection and touched Caroline's cheek. Caroline didn't even think to tear her wrist to shreds. "Tyler is gone, but you're still here."

"That wasn't the deal," Caroline said, her voice breaking. All of a sudden she felt so tired, so terribly tired. "We were supposed to be together forever. We got the blood-sucking and the hunger and the fear. In exchange we got to be together forever. That was the deal."

"Yes," Adaeze nodded. "It's unfair. The universe doesn't keep its promises."

There was a moment of silence. Hélène looked disgusted, and Soo Jin and Malia were holding hands. Bonnie came closer. She kneeled in the dust, but didn't reach through the pentagram.

"Will you hurt us if I let you go?" Adaeze asked softly.

"No," Caroline said.

Adaeze hesitated. Caroline could feel it, in the way her eyes flitted over her face, trying to detect a lie, and in the absent-minded twitch of her fingers. Of course she wasn't as composed as she seemed. No one was. But—

"Alright," she said eventually. She called the other witches close, except Bonnie, and they muttered in Latin for a few minutes. In the old pentagram —the one for Tyler—, the candles lit back up reflexively. Malia seemed reluctant but she did what Adaeze asked without complaining.

Caroline felt something loosening. There was a flare of dust around her, and for a minute she was in a small, cluttered world of mist and dirt and she couldn't see anything, not the slight shine of sweat on Bonnie's bare arms and not Adaeze's moving lips, not the silent tombs and not the horizon. She thought about Elena. She thought, if I had died for Tyler I would have missed Elena. That was when she realized she wasn't thinking about it anymore —dying for Tyler, in exchange for his life—, that the time for that had passed.

"Thank you," she said when the dust abated.

Malia snorted. Her hands were twitchy too; she shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack, angrily, and lit it between her lips, a red glowing circle that made her pupils orange and wolf-like. Caroline could've laughed at the irony, but instead she just felt sad.

Adaeze rested a hand on her shoulder. Caroline had to fight the urge to shake her off. She stood up in the pentagram. Adaeze's hand slid on her arm.

"You will heal," said Adaeze.

Caroline thought about Klaus. "Unlikely," she said.

She stepped out of the pentagram. An invisible construction, tightly woven magical threads somewhere in the vicinity, collapsed around her—or at least she thought it did, just like she had thought she could feel Tyler in Bonnie's living-room, breathing words she couldn't hear to spur her along. Survive. Survive.

"Scars are valuable," Bonnie said when she sidled up to her. Caroline frowned. Scars were ugly, even the invisible ones, they ruined your figure. But she didn't say anything.

Tendrils of light were dripping in the horizon, dawn before its time. Bonnie took a step closer as though she were going to hug Caroline but didn't. They looked each other in the eye, and Caroline felt like they were meeting again. Maybe it was more real this time, truer to who they were now. Bonnie pushed Caroline's hair behind her ear, matted with dirt and blood. She wasn't mad.

"You look like shit," she said, her voice tender. "You should take a shower."

Caroline shrugged, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Yeah, that's in my schedule between 'ancient spells' and 'flying to Peru to avenge Tyler'."

"You'll—" Bonnie's fingers stuttered on the lobe of Caroline's ear. "You'll let me know how it goes, right?"

"Of course," Caroline said. "We'll call you every day."

Bonnie made a face, you won't, and Caroline laughed. "Do you have work tomorrow?" she asked.

"Yeah. I should go."

"Don't worry about me," Caroline said.

"I will," Bonnie said, like a promise. Then, softer, "I really wanted to help you. I'm sorry." Caroline just nodded.

This time Bonnie did reach for Caroline and they hugged, close as lovers, Bonnie's fingers digging painfully in the flesh at the small of Caroline's back. "You bitch," she whispered in Caroline's ear. "You freaked me out. Don't do this again."

Caroline hugged back just as hard. "I'm sorry," she said. She didn't mean she was sorry for what she'd done, because she wasn't; but shewas sorry to have frightened Bonnie. Maybe it evened out.

"I don't want to lose you." Bonnie's breath was hot and damp in Caroline's neck; maybe she was crying. Under the cover of darkness, no one would call her on it.

"You won't."

They disentangled; Caroline stuck her hands in her pockets and watched Bonnie walk away, her small, determined silhouette melting into the darkness with Adaeze at her side. There was a future for Bonnie here, and thinking about it made Caroline happy—they wouldn't disappear, then, they would leave a legacy. There seemed to be a tacit agreement that non-one would ask Caroline if she wanted to leave with them; Caroline was grateful for it. Hélène threw her one last dirty look, pulling Soo Jin away with her uninjured hand and there they went too, dust blowing in the soft wind that accompanied them out of the witches' cemetery. There was the distant rumble of cars starting, the tiny dots —yellow and black— getting smaller and smaller on the winding road, and then nothing. Silence.

Caroline breathed in. The air smelled of candle-smoke, dirt and, faintly, of blood. When she turned around the long shadows of the stones and makeshift graves sprawled on the ground. Malia was kneeling, collecting the candles and erasing traces of chalk. Her posture was defensive, like she was afraid Caroline was going to come up behind her and tear her throat out. She could've, but the urge was gone, replaced only with the soft habitual ache of hunger.

"Need help with that?"

"Not from you," Malia sneered.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself."

She sat on one of the concrete graves. She didn't want to go back into the city, and this felt good, the slight early-morning chill that always preceded the sticky New York heat, silence reverberating for miles and miles. Even Malia kneeling at the middle of the pentagram, with her long braided hair and clunky silver earrings, was a strangely peaceful sight.

As Caroline watched her, she noticed Malia was careful not to turn her back on her. It made moving difficult, a contrived shuffle around the graves.

"I'm not going to attack you," Caroline said. "I'm over it."

"Yeah? And why am I supposed to trust you, exactly?"

"It doesn't look very comfortable, that's all." She shrugged. "You can't help me anyway."

Malia snorted, didn't answer, but Caroline noticed that after a while her shoulders relaxed a fraction and she stopped tip-toeing so much. When all the candles were a half-melted pile of wax and the chalk had been reduced to a faint pink trace on the ground she got another cigarette out and lit it with her hands cupped around her mouth, protecting it from the wind. She sighed out the first inhale. Her shoulders slumped.

Caroline bit her lip. There was blood thumping in Malia's knuckles, in her heart, a faint background soundtrack to Caroline's thoughts. "Got one of those to spare?" she asked.

Malia's eyes fluttered open, as though she'd forgotten Caroline was even there. She looked surprised that Caroline had asked; her first instinctive reaction was a snarl, but then she just looked hesitant. In the end she just held out the pack and looked away.

"Thanks," Caroline said.

The lighter —silver; Caroline was noticing a theme— wordlessly got placed next to Caroline's thigh on the grave. She cradled the flame between her fingers. The first lungful of smoke felt like heaven.

"Thanks," she repeated, a little too eager.

Malia snorted. "Don't overdo it," she said.

For a while they stood there in silence, the smoke curling in white tendrils over their heads and drifting up in the bruise-colored sky. The cemetery didn't feel like a normal place —it was as though there was still some mysterious spring of energy buried under the earth— but when you got used to it it became a background thrum, a gentle shiver that carried you out.

"We don't like you," said Malia. "You hurt Remedios; the ancestors don't like that, and neither do we. They want you to go away."

"They'll get their wish, don't worry."

Malia shrugged. She was young, Caroline realized, but not young like Caroline herself was, smooth and eternal: Malia was fresh still, eighteen at most, and her defiance was adolescent, reflexive almost. Her big round earrings and her nose ring glinted sharp in the half-light.

When her cigarette was finished Malia crushed it on the ground with the heel of her boot. She loaded what remained of the candles in a big gym bag with a skull stenciled in with rhinestones on the front, collected the grimoire from atop one of the graves.

"Cleanup duty," she said aimlessly, not for Caroline's benefit. She didn't seem to want to leave, to go back to the city.

She sat on a grave whose side had been tagged on, the jagged contours of a name, and rested her elbows on her knees. After a long while her eyes flitted to Caroline, then dropped back to the ground.

"My dad died," she said brusquely.

"Mine too," Caroline said, but Malia ignored her.

"He was a deadbeat jerk, anyway. I don't miss him or anything. It's just—well, when he died, my mom, she was—she was pretty fucked up." She slid out of a flask from the lining of her leather jacket and unscrewed the top nervously. "You want some?"

"Yeah," Caroline said. She took a sip out of the flask; the silver was cold between her fingers, but the rim was warm. The alcohol —vodka, Caroline registered absently— bloomed hot in her stomach.

"I mean," Malia continued, playing absently with her rings, "she didn't get out of bed for a month. I was like, really? He left us eleven years ago. I was like, why do you even care? But she—she would've done anything. She tried. The others—they had to keep her from fucking everything up. But there's a balance. Adaeze helped her, set her head straight. You can't mess up with those kind of things."

Caroline didn't say anything. She wasn't sure she could've—wasn't sure she had anything to say that wasn't, they should have let her. They should have let me.

Malia ducked her head. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this. You tried to kill Adaeze, for fuck's sake. You could kill me."

Caroline didn't deny it.

"Life is so fucked-up," Malia said, with a desperate, self-deprecating laugh, and it was like a punch to the stomach—for a second Caroline was sure she was looking at herself at eighteen, the weight of the world on her shoulders and no-one to go with her through it.

"You'll be fine," she couldn't help but say.

"Yeah? Like you?"

"You're not like me," Caroline said.

"Well thank God for that."

"Those people—" she nodded pointedly at the road ahead, made almost unreal-looking by the morning light, "they love you. You'll be fine. I'm not gonna tell you your dad is looking over you, because I have no clue. I'm not sure. But people—we survive worse than this. You'll be okay."

"A pep-talk from the resident vampire with anger issues," Malia snarked. "Yay me." But she seemed somewhat quieted, not as fidgety and angry as she had been a few minutes ago. Caroline would take what she could get.

She took another sip of vodka. "Cheers."

"Can you even get drunk? I thought all that stopped when you became a vampire. No more hangovers."

"Doesn't stop me from trying," Caroline said with a slight smile. "Otherwise what's the point of no hangovers, right?"

Malia almost smiled back. It took another twenty minutes of silent drinking for her to start getting really tipsy, mellow and friendly with her eyes unfocused, staring into the undefined horizon.

"Sorry 'bout your husband," she slurred at some point. "Must suck. How long…?"

"Seven years." The flask was almost empty; the vodka burned but it was like it evaporated in her stomach, hitting her and never leaving any bruises.

"That's like 'alf a second for you, though," Malia said. She really could've been a wolf, Caroline thought. Tyler would've liked her.

"We grew up together," she said.

"Aww, high school sweethearts," Malia attempted to snark, but it ended up sounding a little choked-up. "Logan's not—whatever."

Caroline ribbed her softly with her elbow. "Tell me." Gossip always did raise her spirits.

Malia shook her head self-deprecatingly. One of her braids had fallen undone, the frizzy hair making a halo around her ear. "Nah, it's just—he doesn't know about us. Did—" she squinted up at Caroline.

"Yeah. I thought you knew. He was a werewolf, actually. A hybrid."

"I thought those were just a myth!" Something mischievous and vaguely awed lit up in her eyes. "Are you—wait, are you Caroline Forbes?"

Caroline stilled with her lips on the rim of the flask, surprised. "Is there any chance you'll believe me if I say no?"

"I can't believe I didn't put the pieces together! Remedios will freak." She frowned. "Well, maybe a little less now that you've, you know, tried to kill her—" Caroline didn't bother denying it, "She loves you. That shit with the Originals was like Twilight, man."

"Is that supposed to be flattering?"

Malia punched her weakly on the shoulder. Then, narrowing her eyes: "Did you really sleep with Klaus Mikaelson?"

Caroline grimaced. "Does everyone in the supernatural world know about that?"

"More like in the world," Malia snorted. "Actually I'm pretty sure one of the girls in La Maria's coven wrote a book about it and, like, got it published." She shrugged. "Apparently it's on the New York Times bestseller list or something."

Caroline laughed helplessly. Maybe she was a little drunk; this was surreal, and vampire consitution could only do so much. "Of course it is. My life, ladies and gentlemen."

"It's—" Malia gnawed on her lip, hesitant, "well, I'm sorry anyway. For your hybrid guy. Even though Remedios thought you had, like, run away with Klaus Mikaelson and that's why he hasn't made any trouble with the witches since he's been here. But maybe he's just planning something. Maybe he's, like, settled down."

"Sorry to disappoint," Caroline said, even as she couldn't help but think Klaus usually wasn't that into long-term planning. But people did change, if not on a deep, structural level—not Klaus, anyway. Thinking he might be different wouldn't lead anywhere good. "I'm the one who settled down."

"I guess you have to, at some point. Even you." Malia didn't mean it as an insult, Caroline noticed before she could get pissed: she just meant, even people like you—vampires, freaks. Witches were obviously another category in her mind. "Can't be Edward and Bella forever."

"That wasn't—" Caroline made a face, and Malia laughed. "Why do I even bother."

There was a silence, longer this time: Caroline was thinking about some twisted-up version of her life in a book, how strange it was that she had ended up the heroine in some strange, turnabout way instead of Elena; and Malia was thinking about whatever it was she was thinking about, sometimes laughing to herself at random intervals.

"I told Logan I wanted to study architecture," she said eventually. Caroline raised an eyebrow. "I know, right? Do I even look like I want to draw buildings all day? I panicked when he asked me; I didn't know what to say."

"What do you do, anyway?" Malia gave her a look like, duh. "I mean, apart from that —and school. It's not like there's a supernatural crisis every twenty minutes." Even as she said it she couldn't help but remember their senior year, where it really had been that: someone dying of mysterious and bloody causes while they were still trying to uncover another mystery, everything crumbling around them while they ran frantically, trying to keep the world standing.

"Oh," Malia said. "I thought you knew. Makes sense, I guess. My mom's—she's pretty powerful. Used to be, anyway. She's been grooming me for this gig since I was a kid. I'm supposed to become a liaison for urban witches or some shit like that. You know, running around trying to make sure everyone plays nice or whatever."

Caroline couldn't help it; she laughed, remembering Malia trying to jump on her, her fiery eyes and spitfire temper.

"Yeah, yeah," Malia grumbled. "Laugh all you want. Adaeze says I've got things to work out."

"Adaeze's always right, huh?"

"Pretty much," Malia said, either not picking up on the sarcasm or willfully ignoring it.

"Why didn't you tell your boyfriend about being a witch?"

"We're not supposed to. Besides, it's not like we've been going out that long, it's only been three months. I like him, though. He's sweet. He listens to Swedish jazz."

Caroline scrunched her nose. "He listens to what?"

Malia laughed. "I know, it sounds pretentious. But he makes it palatable." She sobered up, glanced over at Caroline; seemed to remember who she was talking to, even drunk as she was. She straightened. Caroline saw it in the set of her shoulders, the determination: you have to trust someone, right? "Anyway. I haven't told him. Sometimes it feels like I'm a completely different person when I'm with him."

The moon was waxing white and sickly over them. The wind had dispersed the smell of smoke—now it was only blood and vodka, the skittering rhythm of the quick pulse in the nooks of Malia's elbows.

"I like it," she whispered.

Caroline nodded in the half-darkness. "Yeah," she said.

They drank until the flask was empty, then Malia replaced it in the lining of her jacket which she pulled tight across her shoulders. Her pretty earrings were a dull shine in the night. She hooked the bag of candles on her back, the grimoire under her arm, dusted off the back of her legs.

"You staying here?" she asked eventually, looking unsure as to whether going was the best option.

"Don't worry about me," Caroline said.

"I'm not." She seemed to hesitate. "Just… why?"

Caroline looked away. "I just need some time to think. I want to be alone, that's all. I'll walk back."

"It's like three hours to Manhattan," Malia frowned. "By train."

Caroline didn't point out the fact that she could run at superhuman speed probably cut that time in half. "I'm not in a hurry," she said. "Go. I'll be fine."

"Yeah. Everything will be tip-top, right? That's your philosophy?"

Caroline laughed, open-throated. "You could say that." Elena would've.

Malia regarded her for what seemed a long time, her youthful face cut in sharp angles by the moonlight. Standing there in the dust with her ripped fishnets and the distorted, glowing skull at her back she looked like a vision for some distant future, and it didn't seem so unrealistic that she would be the one running through the town brokering peace accords. Caroline tried to read the expressions on her face: pity, concern, a faint trace of disgust. Tomorrow she would have forgotten all about that strange night.

"Well," she said eventually, "whatever."

"Whatever," Caroline replied, gentler than she'd intended. They could've been friends, she thought, if she'd met Malia in the corridors of Mystic Falls High, if they'd squared off on the cheerleading squad. That life felt like centuries ago, now.

Like the others before her —Bonnie and Adaeze, Remedios and Karen, Hélène and Soo Jin— Malia turned her back to Caroline and started down the path that lead out to the road. She stopped at the boundaries of the cemetery —if you could even call them that: it was just scraggly bits of barbed wire, broken slabs of concrete erected like tentative gates and covered with resistant brambles— and turned around. She was smiling. She took a few steps forward and held out her pack of cigarettes, a thumb creasing the front.

"One for the road?" she asked.

Caroline smiled back, tilting her head. "Yeah," she said. She picked one in the middle; their hands brushed as Caroline deftly slid the cigarette out and stuck it between her lips. "Light?"

Malia leant down and cupped a hand around Caroline's mouth, messing up her hair. It could easily have caught on fire, Caroline thought, but she didn't push it back. The little flame shot up: blue in the middle, then yellow, then orange, with red tendrils here and there at the periphery. Caroline leant forward until the tip of the cigarette touched the blue, then inhaled. When she breathed out the cloud of smoke looked like a comic-book bubble waiting to be filled in with dialogue, a thought.

"Thanks," Caroline said belatedly.

"Anytime," Malia said.

She straightened up, and this time when she left she didn't look back; within seconds Caroline was alone in the cemetery, the distant growl of the engine of Malia's car dwarfing to insignificance. It felt good to be alone again, like a needed pinprick. Caroline smoked the cigarette to ashes, then crushed the stub on one of the graves.

"Thanks for nothing," she told the gray stone. It didn't answer. Caroline snorted delicately to herself, and it resounded in the deserted cemetery. "Typical."

She dozed there for what seemed like a long time but probably wasn't. It wasn't really uncomfortable because early dawn was always the best time in the summer, even though Caroline had never really bothered getting up that early before: that dew-covered fresh-smelling chill that announced the crushing heat, the sun barely peeking out from behind the moon. Caroline listened to nature wake. There were sounds she'd seldom taken the time to listen for before, now that she could hear them: buds breaking open, petals unfolding, trees breathing out. The busy, minuscule life of insects, with their undecipherable dialogues, the plastic clicks they made when they talked. In the distance the city humming, not yet a full song. One hour, Caroline told herself.

She was surprised when she woke up to find that she really had fallen asleep: the ground was rough and uncomfortable but she'd slept better than she ever had since Tyler'd death. The sun was out in full; the world was loud but not ungentle. Caroline dug her phone out of her pocket. As soon as she turned it on it started buzzing almost continuously, panicked texts and voicemails from Elena, Bonnie and Elena, then just Elena again. Caroline sighed. You had to face your problems at some point or another, right?

She hesitated for a moment, then dialed Elena's number.

"Oh my God," was Elena's response—her voice was breathy and high-pitched. "Are you okay? What happened? Well, Bonnie told me, but I didn't know— Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Caroline said. She winced, forgetting Elena couldn't see her. "Although I'm pretty sure I messed up Bonnie's relationship with this particular coven pretty badly."

"You're really okay?" Elena asked in a small voice.

"I swear to you. I'm fine."

Elena was being suspiciously quiet at the other end of the phone.

"Elena?"

"Wait. You've been okay all night, and you didn't call either me or Bonnie? Fuck, Care. I thought—I thought something had happened to you. Why didn't you come back? You could've—"

"Well," Caroline couldn't help but snap, guilt nagging at her, "it's not like we parted on the best of terms, is it?"

"I don't care," Elena said fiercely the way only she could, like her particular set of moral laws was an evidence. "You call me. I don't care how much we fight."

"You're not my mother," Caroline said, but it sounded weak and ridiculous in her mouth.

"Fuck," Elena said softly. There was a rustle on her end of the phone, like she was sitting down on the bed. "You scared me so badly." There was a silence. "You know, when Bonnie told me about… what happened I didn't know what to think. It's not you. You're not that person."

Caroline sat down on the grave. Her head hurt; the sun had risen and slapped its gigantic coat of light on all of the earth, ridding it of shadows where Caroline could've hidden. She was still wearing the pretty purple top she had put on to see Klaus, and her wedding ring.

"I am, though," she said, twisting it around her finger. "I'm not like you, El. Sometimes I just—"

"Listen to me." Elena sounded as agitated as she ever got. "You think I don't want to grab someone off the street and tear their throat out sometime? I just hide it better. We're the same, Caroline. You have to trust me. I didn't—" she hesitated, her voice sticking in her throat, "I didn't change that much."

"But you did. Change."

"Everyone does. Does that mean you can't trust me anymore?"

"Of course not," Caroline said, too fast, before she even knew what she was saying. It just seemed like such a ludicrous idea, not trusting Elena, when she'd been the first one Caroline had come to after Tyler's death to ask for help. When Elena had opened the door, and followed her.

"Then call me next time."

There was nothing to say to that. Caroline was breathing too hard, and the sun was hard on the back of her neck. She'd get sunburn, and she didn't even want to think about what she looked like after last night. Jesus.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Elena breathed.

"But that doesn't mean I take anything I said back. Or—" she swallowed, "what I did."

The silence on the other end went on so long Caroline had to check if Elena hadn't hung up. "Okay," she said eventually, her voice careful. "I still think he's manipulating you. And I don't understand how you could sleep with him."

The familiar outrage roared in Caroline's chest at that, but she tamped it down. She laughed, weak and fake. "Glad we're on the same page."

They stayed there for a few minutes, breathing in each other's ear. For all knowing that Elena still thought like that, that her words hadn't just been thrown around in anger, hurt —and it did—, it felt uncomparatively good to have her there, near, alive, still a friend after everything. Caroline squinted into the sun, wishing she had had the foresight to bring sunglasses with her. Then again—

"Are you coming back?" Elena asked carefully.

Caroline stood up and stretched extensively, grimacing when her whole body expressed its discontent with such strenuous physical activity after everything that had happened. Vampire healing my ass, Caroline thought.

"I am," she said. "Just… not right now." She sucked in breath. "Did you end up booking the tickets?"

"I did that this morning, printed them on the hotel printer. It's gonna take us a whole day to get there," there was a rustling of paper, "the flight to Cusco is twenty-three hours long. We have two stops, one in —Columbia and one in Peru. I haven't checked yet what the difference is, and the rest is pretty straighforward, the flight's out of JFK, Transamerican Airlines. Cost us a pretty penny but at least it's done. Does that all work?"

"Yeah. I'm glad we're leaving," Caroline said after a while. She knew Elena would understand what she meant: maybe I won't miss Tyler as much if I'm in another hemisphere. It was a hollow wish, but they were the only thing you could hang onto when you lost someone you loved, Caroline was learning.

"Hm," Elena said. "We'll find whoever did this. We'll make it right."

"We'll find them," Caroline agreed, because she couldn't concur for the second part; nothing could make this right. But she suspected Elena knew that too.

"We have to be honest with each other," Elena said then, painfully earnest. "Otherwise we'll never—I want us to be friends forever." Caroline made a small sound of surprise. "I know we never said it, it just made sense for so long and now… I don't want to lose you, Caroline. Not again. Shit." She might have been crying, Caroline realized. "Tyler… I loved him too. Not like you, but I did, and I can't believe he's gone. I guess I thought… I never really wanted to think about living forever, but that's what's going to happen, isn't it? And it just seemed so unfair, that Tyler wouldn't get that, after everything that happened to him, I—"

"And then what?" Caroline interrupted her, her voice hoarse and croaky.

"What?"

"You said 'it seemed unfair'. And then what? It doesn't seem unfair now?"

Elena not knowing what to say; now that was a first.

"It is," she said finally, in a whisper. "It is unfair. But what we got is unfair, too."

"What did we get? More trouble, people suddenly wanting to kill us left and right? Klaus fucking Mikaelson showing up and messing up our lives?"

"You know what we got."

It was like roleplay, Caroline thought absently: Elena arguing that it was a gift and Caroline that it was a curse.

"Other people… their lives are easier. And the hunger doesn't get better, but we survive through everything. That's what we get, Care. You and I—we're still here."

"So what, Tyler just wasn't strong enough? He wasn't up for the job, is that it?"

Elena sighed. "I don't know. I don't have all the answers, Care. I just—" her voice was like a hand reaching through the screen of Caroline's cell, "I don't want you to do something you'll regret."

"Too late," Caroline said. There were so many things she regretted. She realized belatedly that Elena would probably take it as an admission of guilt, but she didn't correct her.

"You should come home," Elena said. She shaped 'home' like a softness, something cosy and comfortable and timeless light-years beyond their makeshift king-size in the too-small hotel room. "When you're ready. We can talk."

Caroline laughed. When she went to wipe a fleck of dirt from her cheek, she realized she was crying. "Talk? About what?"

"I don't know. Girl talk. It's been a while since we've had a sleepover."

We've been having sleepovers every night since my husband died, Caroline thought about saying, but she knew what Elena meant. Those hadn't been sleepovers; they had been long, restless nights filled with nightmares, and Elena sleeping besides her.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, okay. I'll come back tonight." She cleared her throat, tilting her face up into the sun. It must be noon now, or something like it —already. The salt from her tears would dry in messy, invisible tracks, but she didn't mind. "What are you going to do today?"

"You know, I never went to the Empire State Building," Elena said wonderingly, and Caroline laughed. Elena joined in after a while and it felt good, like high schools summers and rides in Bonnie's convertible feeling on top of the world. "Other than that I thought I might try a library."

"Feeling studious?"

"I still have your pictures. Of the knife. I thought I might see if I can dig up a Quechua dictionary and start with that."

"Oh." There were other things to say, maybe point out that most of those signs actually looked like they were drawings and not words, but Caroline just said, "Well… good luck, I guess."

Elena didn't ask what Caroline was planning on doing, which was a good thing, because Caroline had no idea. The city was shining in the horizon and it looked like an ancient monster that would swallow her if she so much as dared to come close. In comparison, the cemetery seemed safe. But now—now was the time to take all the risks she never had before, right? It wasn't like she cared about the consequences anymore. Regardless, she was grateful.

"Be careful," said Elena softly. "Whatever you do."

"You know me," Caroline said, trying for light and jokey and ending up square on questioning. "Prudence is my middle name."

Then— "No more secrets from now on," Elena said, completely serious and somehow managing to make it sound neutral, not like she was accusing Caroline at all, even though she probably was. "We can't lie to each other anymore."

"We're not—" married, but the word stuck in Caroline's throat. "Okay," she croaked out. "Don't lie to me either," she said before she could think twice about it. She hoped Elena would understand what she meant: don't pretend to be more than you are.

Elena didn't answer. "I'll see you, then? Text me before you come back. I love you." She didn't wait for an answer —uncharacteristic, for Elena— and hung up.

Caroline stared dumbly at her phone for a few seconds, then laughed. She stuck the cellphone in her jeans pocket and started walking in direction of the city.