AN: I'm not too evil, this will be updated again on Monday!
Life goes on, and it passes like a routine. Rebekah dates but never settles on someone to go steady with, Klaus and Caroline act like an old married couple and they all do what's necessary. Alaric fakes a tragic death and then teaches at vampire focused universities. Caroline's mother dates and Caroline still visits at least every three weeks.
Freya creates a spell to make humans think vampires age. The rest of her family won't stick out quite so badly. Klaus tells her it's not time yet. Rebekah and Kol win back what they lost and bet on other things. Elijah visits Elena and it's not until Elena's next birthday that Caroline bursts into tears and breaks Elijah's heart with a single sentence.
"Oh my god, Elijah, she's aging." Elena knows that she's a vampire, but she feels too old to look like a teenager anymore. Mentally, she's in her twenties and things are hard.
Days turn into weeks turn into months turn into a year that melts into two years then three years and a decade sneaks up on them.
Then another. Things don't change very much, Elijah keeps the ice cream shop alive, and Bonnie calls for the first time in years. It's for Elena. She apologizes. She apologizes that they got into this mess and that she broke Jeremy's heart, but she's going to live with a coven that doesn't like vampires. She won't visit very much.
Caroline just holds her as Elena doesn't move, and then listens to it with Elena in her head. Things will get better, she tells Elena.
It's hard to inspire hope when you don't have any and when worry bubbles in your stomach like violent soda. But Caroline tries to be hopeful anyway.
Matt gets married to a nice girl who loves him, a human girl with bright eyes who wants children and knows absolutely nothing about the supernatural. She doesn't know that the flowers he grows with her favorite flowers keep away vampires and werewolves, doesn't know he adds little dried flakes of it to her coffee in the morning. She just knows that he's all she wants and needs and they love each other more than anything.
Caroline visits when his wife is out of the house or out of town, and is careful to avoid the media. She's already famous in a different setting.
Bonnie visits him too and so does Jeremy. He's sad that they didn't work out but he lives his life. He retires from football after four years of playing professionally. He's known for not spending his money, unlike so many others. He came from a humble background, and he's always tried to keep that, is all he says in explanation to the press.
Jeremy is a comic book artist in Texas, not for any other reason than it's not too far away from Elena. He draws and draws and draws and sketches until he can't think. Freya offers to stop his aging until Elena wakes up. He tells her he'll think about it.
Two decades pass. Elijah's never suppressed saying the words I love you for so long before. He knows logically that it's barely anything from his lifetime, but he can't remember the last time a decade every felt so long. There's a year where Elena sleeps, and whoever wants in her head experiences her dreams with her while they talk, and then one year where she tries to stay awake the entire time.
Bonnie almost has children and then doesn't. She decides someone else can carry on the Bennett line. She's over it.
Another decade passes through Elena's fingers like sand and she wonders if she's numb from everything. She's beginning to have laughter lines, like that Bastille song in the playlist Elijah made.
Then one day Caroline comes to her head and cries for an entire day and Elena's mind palace floods a few inches.
Liz Forbes is dead from a heart attack at the age of seventy four. Caroline kisses Elena's forehead and tells her that she'll leave a space for her, but she has to go plan a funeral and Elena can't come. Klaus does, and Elijah and Kol run things that Klaus is usually in control of. Freya calms the witches who think it's a bad sign, Klaus has rarely left the city in decades. Rebekah calms the hybrids and vampires who think it's a bad omen. It's not. Death is a natural part of life.
He finds her far away from her mind palace, almost blending in with the darkness. She has a bottle of some kind of alcohol, there's no label on it.
"I wish this worked here." She says. He asks her to let him take her to his mind palace. He has plenty of memories of being drunk from his first few centuries.
They're in a pub that doesn't exist anymore while the music she listens to for mourning plays and she cries and does shots and drinks a few bottles. The feelings aren't really real, but she stays in Elijah's mind for a week and he has to leave because he's needed in the real world and then the feeling of sobriety returns.
Caroline shows her the funeral and they mourn together. Elijah pours everyone in the house a drink.
Four decades and a year, Elena counts as Elijah spends January first with her. Then another year and something shifts. Caroline is the first to get the news out of them, she got it from Matt. Freya and Rebekah can't tell if she's crying because she's happy or if she's sad but it's both. Bonnie is dying, an incurable disease she can barely pronounce. She has a handful of months left. Elijah should not feel hope spark in his chest, should not have run to Elena's room the way he did.
He knows this, but he knows Caroline understands. They all do.