A seven sentence drabble request from DESI2747 on my tumblr (dragonqueenofall)- Klaus and Hayley ask Caroline to care for the baby while they fight their respective werewolf/witch battles in NOLA. Caroline takes the child and sacrifices years of her life. As the baby ages, Caroline transitions from mother, to nanny, to sibling. Finally, things become safe in NOLA and Caroline must let her go back to NOLA.
(Feel free to send me drabble requests by PM or on tumblr.)
At first it was hard, giving up her life to care for a child that wasn't hers, a child of the man she loved and the woman she hated, but Caroline Forbes was nothing if not used to putting others before herself and she would have never forgiven herself if she had left the poor defenseless little girl in the raging battlefield that was New Orleans.
So she took little Aela as her own and cared for her, becoming her mother until the time would come when it would be safe for her to return to her real family, never expecting it would take as long as it did.
Caroline had been prepared to babysit for a few months, a year, tops, but much like everything else in her life, this situation did not turn out as she had expected. The first year flew by, then the second and third, until Aela had turned 5 and Caroline had to pretend to be her nanny instead of her mother, her eternal youth becoming an obstacle instead of a gift. The child adapted well, turning out to be exceptionally smart and surprisingly even mannered, especially given her parents, and she never once slipped and called Caroline 'mommy' in public (not that the vampire had encouraged the monicker in the first place, it had turned out to be an inevitable development, what with pretending to be her mother to keep her safe).
The years passed, each spent in a new city, sometimes a new country, always moving and staying under the radar, avoiding detection and discovery by those who knew of the girl, of the mystical loophole child who should never have been but Caroline would never give up for anything; until they day she had to.
Aela was 17 when the call finally came from Rebekah, saying it was safe to return, that the child was to be brought back as soon as possible, thanking Caroline for looking after her, and could she please send her on the next flight, they would be waiting to pick her up; as short and unemotional as if she had merely been watching a pet for a few days.
Caroline stood at the gate, watching her now pretend sister boarding the plane, tears in her eyes and her heart heavy with a pain she never knew she would feel, never knew she could feel after the day she had died, at the same age as Aela was now, and her chances of having children were ripped away. How could her heart be breaking over losing something that was never truly hers in the first place, she wondered until her eyes met her sister's, her charge's, her daughter's, and she knew that Aela had always been hers, from the moment she had taken the little purple bundle of crying baby in her arms and ran.
It wasn't until Klaus found her a week later, Aela dragging her father across Rome to their last shared apartment, feeling her familiar warmth as the girl hugged her tightly, sobbing into her shoulder as she told Caroline she would always be her mother, and she met Klaus' eyes, the familiar look of love still there, now combined with a happiness she had never seen in him before, that Caroline's heart began to mend again, feeling like she had a family again.