"Hey Care-Bear...time to wake up.."

Tyler. Honey smooth tones and puppy dog eyes...that's what boys are made of...Caramel voice and Wolfish grin – that's what men are made of...

Caroline opened her eyes slowly, fuzziness biting at the edges - -

"God, my head absolutely kills...Tyler?" She reached for him as he smoothed back her blonde hair from her face, fingers caressing casually. She frowned.

"Tyler..where am I?" The light was...all wrong. Too soft, too bright, too cold. Caroline looked around with her super vamped vision. Everything glittered slightly. All the surfaces bounced hundreds of coloured rays back at her.

"It's time to wake up, Care-Bear, you've been sleeping too long...You have to go back, Care, it's time to wake up.." He soothed softly, his expression was so sad that it ached inside her.

"Tyler, are you...? Is this where I think it is?" She wondered whether she had ever left Mystic Falls, ever traveled to the Appalachian mountains and stayed here, in this cabin, in the wooded glades. Time was not linear any more to her. She could be...anywhere, in any time.

"I feel like friggin' Doctor Who!" She muttered. Tylers' lips quirked upwardly into a rueful smile.

"That's my girl, Care."

She shook her head, blonde curls bounced around her shoulders, bare under the cool crisp cotton sheet of the bed, "Don't talk so cryptic, Ty. It's creeping me out."

The edge of the mattress dipped as he sat on it gently. Physical. Material. Tangible. She thought to herself, "So...I'm not dreaming. I felt that. The last thing I felt..."

"...Was unconsciousness. Yeah, I know. Then you turned up here, in my...errmmm...you turned up here, Care." Tyler finished. He fought to control the rage that eternally boiled inside him. Fought to dampen the wolf and bat that wrestled with his soul. Had wrestled with his soul, he countered.

Momentarily, he caught the concentration on Caroline's face before realisation that she had listened in to his thoughts – however deceased – dawned.

"You heard that?"

Caroline was shaking uncontrollably, her body visibly quaking. Her fingers nervously picked at the cotton – a habit she had of distraction when stressed, "You're dead? You're friggin' dead?! When were you gonna tell me, Ty? Does everyone know?"

His perplex-ion increased, along with the sense that, yup, this was Caroline, and she was fine...

"Well, frankly, Care," Exasperated he looked across at her, a mass of quaking temper in the bed..naked, in the bed, he added internally...before finishing his statement, "Talking wasn't exactly top of my agenda. What with not having a voice box and all!"

She frowned, took a deep breath in and out, her fingers continued to turn the material between them. She didn't look up at him, still caught in the thoughts she had heard, "Yeah, well, does that mean I'm dead too then...?"

Tyler tilted his head to look at her more closely, he assessed her slowly, smiling occasionally, before looking back up to her stricken face, "I can safely conclude, without a doubt, that you are Caroline Forbes and you are by no means dead. Though what the hell has meant you can cross to the other side beats the heck out of me." He finished pointedly, "Wanna spill?"

Caroline shook her head...should she tell him? He was dead dammit. Dead. She could tell him everything and no one would ever know. Well, maybe no one. She'd loved him. She loved him - - and maybe not the 'forever' love, the love she felt Klaus could give her, and she could give him, but the first love – the passion love, the exploration...and now he was – accessible only to her it seemed.

"Okay, Ty, but you first...tell me what happened – after I left you, where did you finally, y'know, bow out?"

He shrugged nonchalantly, his broad bare shoulders packed with muscles causing her to breathe even deeper. She focussed – Caroline Forbes, you have made a decision. You always stick to your guns, young lady, she chided herself.

"Things like that – they don't matter here, Care – but I'll tell you," His eyes implied mischief and promise as they met hers, " - if you tell me yours."

She nodded. And he nodded in response, before beginning -

"After you left...I was heartbroken, Care, I really thought – I felt that it would be us, forever...I spent a lot of time just roaming, y'know? I could come back here. It would have felt wrong. I know that you wanted...you need more than I can give you.

It kills me – well – it killed me to think that the only creature who could was the one who meant that I couldn't. He's a complete bastard, Care! Everything he has ever done has been to serve himself. Everything. And that he has you...Well," He glanced across at her quickly, before turning to the window, where faked brightness shown like sunlight on the wooden interior, "I thought I should go back to the Pack. You remember?"

She frowned in acknowledgement at the mention of the Pack Tyler had joined to break his Sire bond.

She didn't talk and he continued, "When I reached the Pack house – I thought it must have been deserted. It had been so long since I'd been back and with Klaus...you catch my drift, any hybrids' Pack would be fair game at that point to him. But it wasn't. It wasn't deserted at all. Hayley was there..." The remembrance of the fury on Hayleys' face when he had found her caused him to falter in his speech. It had been so real, so raw to him - - the child. Caleb, so like himself in look and manner but then...

"She had guards. It gets a bit hazy, the death bit at the end, Care. Survival mechanism – take the pain away at the point of...I remember...They were Klaus' guards. I recognised his style on them, could smell him on them immediately. They were there to protect the child, Care. His Child. But it wasn't, you just had to see, Caroline, it wasn't his child - -" His gaze locked with hers as he made the final stab home to her. She stiffened as he said the words she knew were coming, "It was mine."

Caroline reeled. She physically reeled. Her whole being felt like it crumpled inside her, and for a moment, the concentration on being felt too much. Too overwhelming. She hugged her knees under the cover and tried to maintain a dignity that she didn't feel. Tyler was watching her closely. He knew every nuance and expression that Caroline had, but the vampire stillness coupled with..something else made him feel as though she were an elusive figment driven here to snare him for eternity in a cold hell.

Pull it together, Forbes, pull it together, ice blue eyes met chocolate ones, "Yours? Friggin' Hell, what is it about that woman that gets men going? It's the brunette thing, isn't it? I mean, y'know she's a deadly bitch werewolf who...pants...around and gets all the guys. All the guys that I've ever shown an interest in, and you're telling me that at some point in time when we were together still you cosied up and made babies? As if the fact that I couldn't...I can't..." Racking sobs escaped as her voice broke. Not hysteria, but the pure emotion that comes from knowing that the family you seek can never be. All her hopes...all her dreams...ripped. Damon. Bastard.

Another deep breath and she held it back in, even as Tyler reached out in comfort, his tanned strong hand – searching and kneading on her shoulder. She shrugged it off determinedly, he persevered, "You're different now Caroline...If I could have..Hell, Caroline..What can I do?" He beseeched at her.

"What happened next?" She pressed. Her lips a thin scar of pain, tight together.

He sighed, "I tried talking to her..to find out what the hell had been happening...to talk about...everything. She was pissed. Really pissed. Like, angry beyond belief. Said that I was ruining everything, even though.." A quick shrug again, as if to say, you know, "There's no way back when you have no head on your body." He finished.

Caroline, with her usual remarkable skills of recovery, felt beneath the pain inside her and let the golden glow of her powers flare. Tyler sensed the surge of power, of pure life and breathe in the room...his eyes darkened, even the golden Wolf in him dimmed in the presence of a channel of immense clarity and vision. He hesitated, "There was a twin, Care. A twin girl – Hope – Hayley had lost her, given her to another Pack wolf as...collateral." The word was said with distaste and bitterness, "You have to help her, Care. Find my daughter, please...Caleb has been – damaged – by the Original taint, but Hope..." The sentence trailed away.

She snorted. She couldn't help it. Even her sense of justice and fair play couldn't deny the anger which threatened to consume her. She hesitated at her humanity switch – everybody else – everybody, got exactly what they wanted, but she...always the one on the outside, he had said, always on the sidelines. Wallace. Her Klaus. She wouldn't disappoint herself though, and the noble spirit which battled inside her against her feline vampire nature had now an avenue of resource she had never known before. She looked at her former love. A part of her former life. And she nodded. She would find Hope.

And I shall love her, Ty, as though she were my own...

Tyler staggered backward, knocking into the wooden table, holding it by the edge, his expression one of utmost fear and respect and something else which still resonated inside her too, at times, "You...spoke...inside my head, Care. What's happened to you?"

A little smile played upon the edges of her lips now, as she let that thought gain speed. Damn Klaus. Damn him to Hell and back. At least, for now. There was more eternity than she could have imagined – now she was truly immortal, "No 'thank you for taking care of my daughter' ? Geez, boy...okay," She took a breath, before commencing, "There's a problem – well, maybe another problem," - She counted these new revelations up in her head - "Apart from your illegitimate hybrid child – being brought up as an Original vamps kid and the other being raised by Wolves in some Pack somewhere by some unknown but probably backward Wolf – and the fact that Hayley's a deceitful bitch – which, I might add, I always knew. And you being, well, totally dead. Apparently.

There's another doppelganger. Well, the first doppelganger, it seems...Wallace – he was – is Klaus' demon nature balance twin. And he's Silas' supernatural heir-thing and he's super-charged. Like, not a werewolf, or a vampire or a witch. He's all of them. In one."

Tyler had settled on a pine chair next the table he had stumbled against. Watching her and listening intently, "A werewolf-vampire-witch?"

She nodded gravely.

"Scary."

She frowned again. It was becoming a bad habit, "At first. But he wants to die Tyler. He wants to die and come here. Be free of his burden, but he needs to - - come to an arrangement with Klaus.."

"An arrangement?" Tyler interjected ruefully, arching an eyebrow.

"Well, more like, get him to kill him. But he needed me to channel the power inside him so that at the end - - he can...go. So that's what I am now. I'm a Supervampire-witch-werewolf."

Tylers' quizzical expression showed he wasn't fully convinced, "Isn't that completely against the laws of nature? Two super vampire...whatevers...?"

"Yeah. So I'm not sure what I am. Like a super mother Earth creature or what. But I don't need to feed any more, Tyler. No blood. And I can walk in the sun without a witch jewellery thing on. I can stop time..."

"..And travel to the other side of it," He muttered.

"Yeah, that too. And read mind. Compel. It's...limitless." Caroline finished. Her expression was slightly glazed with power thoughts. Tyler waved a hand in front of her face to bring her back down.

"So you're here...why?" He pushed.

She looked embarrassed. Blushing fiercely. "Because I wanted to see you. I was..sick. I couldn't handle it in one go, I needed time out of..time...to cope with it. And I needed you. To feel safe." She measured her tone cautiously. Testing his reaction – especially since the news of his betrayal – before finishing, "I'll come back Tyler. With...some way to bring you back. I promise."

Tyler smiled, "I know you will, Care. I know a Miss Mystic Falls always keeps her promises. But keep safe. And wake up.." He whispered softly.

The smile on his face stayed with her as she closed to the scene. Renewed and ready.