not just a girl but a work of art (part four)

[lynzie914]

Rebekah leaves and Caroline returns to Stefan’s bedroom (it’s still Stefan’s, the Ripper’s even, never hers), and curls up in bed.

She wishes sleep would return but she knows it won’t.

She thinks about Rebekah and her chase for happily ever after, of the years she sought it out only for Klaus to crush her dreams every time. Of Stefan, who Klaus used and abused in the name of friendship, who erased their relationship from existence at his convenience.

Caroline thinks about how after all of that, Rebekah is still somehow looking for a happy ending. Still believes in one.

Once upon a time, Caroline did too.

She thought she had found it in California. Some twisted version of what she had always wanted but didn’t deserve. That she only got by default, but was still more perfect than anything that had come before it. The way Stefan had made it all go away, made everything that was wrong just disappear.

And then Klaus had torn it apart too.

He was good at that.

She wondered if it would take her a thousand years like Rebekah to finally escape his hold, to finally be granted freedom. True freedom.

Caroline wondered if she could hold out that long.

--

It was an experiment.

Not a suicide attempt or a way to end it all. Not even an act of vengeance to ensure Klaus never truly got what he wanted.

(Though admittedly, all of those things crossed her mind as she considered it; but Caroline Forbes was a survivor and she wanted to live. She always had.)

She was hidden in a grove of trees when she took off her ring slowly, holding it tightly in her hand. She felt naked without it on her finger, weak and vulnerable. She dropped it to the ground and waited, listened, breathed.

Then she stepped forward into the sunlight.

Caroline barely had time to scream before she was pulled back into the shadows. Men and monsters, pulling her back and forcing the ring back on to her finger.

She didn’t know any of them, but she knew who had sent them, why they were there.

“Klaus sent you,” She laughed on the ground.

There were four of them. Surrounding her, looking down on her, a look of fear on their faces.

“Our mission is to keep you safe.” One of them had told her.

“Whether I like it or not.” Caroline shook her head. She laughed again and the men just looked confused.

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” She told them, “I just wanted to see what you would do if I was the threat.”

“We’re to protect you, no matter what the danger.”

“Oh, I know.” Caroline said. “And I’m sorry for that.”

The first two were easy to take down, she had their necks snapped before they even realized she was off the ground. The second two were harder, older than her, and they put up a fight. But they were in a forest and wood wasn’t hard to find. She didn’t kill them, but wooden stakes still did plenty of damage even if they didn’t go through the heart.

Caroline pinned them to the forest floor with them instead.

See the thing was they couldn’t really hurt her. They weren’t allowed. And that gave Caroline the upper hand.

--

She stared at the paper Rebekah had given her a long time.

There was an unusual and unexplainable urge to call Elijah but she suppresses it, Elena and Katherine’s words (illusions of her mind) still haunting her after all this time. Rebekah’s encouragement that he would help, didn’t reassure her the way she once would have hoped it would.

She stares at the witch’s number a long time before she calls.

Her name was Gretel and it made her laugh the first time she had seen it.

“Hello, Gretel?” Caroline asks over the phone line, “I’m a friend of Rebekah Mikaelson. Well, kind of. She said if I had a problem, you might be able to help.”

“I might.” The voice replies.

“How much do you know about desiccation spells?” Caroline asks.

It was time to stop running.

It was time to be Caroline Forbes again.

Funny how it was Rebekah of all people that made her realize that.

--

Caroline and Stefan are the ones who find Elena. It’s not hard, not really, not when there is a string of bodies to follow.

They find her in the woods, campers at her feet, their throats torn out and body parts missing. Blood coating her mouth, her hands, her clothes; tears pouring down her cheeks as she rocked herself back and forth.

“Why didn’t you just let me die?” Elena asked before either of them can say anything, before they can even approach her.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Stefan took a step towards her, slow and cautious, like she is a small animal he’s trying to catch. (Only he usually ends up being the one to eat those.)

“We have a cure.” Caroline’s voice comes out too loud and too harsh and Elena scurries away from them, like they’re there to hurt her. Or maybe she’s afraid she would hurt them. Caroline doesn’t know.

“We have Klaus’ blood and Damon and Bonnie are at the lab now, they’ll have a cure for you.” Stefan said, he had stopped moving, stopped approaching, “Then this will all be over.”

“It’ll never be over.” Elena said and she had begun rocking again, her crying getting harder. Caroline wanted to run to her, wanted to envelope her in a hug and promise her it would all be okay. But the blood on her clothes could just as easily be Caroline’s. All it would take is one wrong word and Caroline has always been good at saying the wrong ones.

“I’ll still have-I still would have killed-why didn’t you just kill me?”

“Because we care about you, Elena. This virus, its doing this, not you. You just need to let us help you.” Caroline said.

Stefan moved to approach Elena again and she didn’t back away. Caroline followed him this time, braver somehow, by pure force of will maybe.

He pulled the vial of blood out of his pocket and showed it to Elena, “This will help.” He told her, “It’s Klaus’s blood it will cure you of whatever werewolf venom is in your system and it should hold you over until we can get you to Bonnie and Damon.”

Elena looked at the blood like it was a drug. Like it was everything she had ever wanted. And it was, Caroline thinks, it was what would keep her alive forever. Caroline had been there before. She’s in front of Stefan in a flash, the bottle in her hands, as she sucked the contents dry.

Her face was distorted. Elena had always been the beautiful one, so very beautiful, with her dark hair and soulful eyes. Caroline had always envied her. But now, her face was distorted, the veins so prominent it turned her into something entirely new. Dark and cold and unfamiliar.

Monstrous.

Caroline never though she would consider her friend monstrous before.

“I need more.” Elena said throwing the bottle down.

“Elena, you need to calm down.” Stefan said, placating. His hands were where she could see them, no threat to be found. “Just give us a little time-”

“I’ve given you days!” Elena roared. “I’ve given you everything. I’ve…”

She was crying harder now and Caroline wanted to run to her. She wanted to make it better. But she couldn’t do that. Not without the cure. Not without Bonnie or Damon and what they had found. All she and Stefan could offer was the possibility.

“Elena…Elena, I promise, it’ll be over soon.” Caroline said, “No more pain. No more…urges.”

She laughed mockingly. “You’ve been saying that for days.”

“Elena…”

Stefan stepped forward, out of the safe zone, and Elena lunged. (Caroline would never know what it was, if it was the hunger, the virus eating her from inside out, or if it was the consequences of being locked away for days by the people who claimed to love her.) She had Stefan by the throat and her teeth clenching down on the first piece of flesh she could reach.

Caroline had reacted on instinct. Hadn’t thought it entirely through, days spent trying to fix this, to make Elena better, nights spent on guard duty hearing her friend cry and beg her for death and no sleep in between. She hadn’t thought about the consequences.

She had just wanted to save Stefan. That was all.

Caroline moved quickly, pulling Stefan away from Elena with enough force to send him flying across the forest floor. Time slowed down in that minute as Elena went from looking at him to Caroline. She remembered her friend’s brown eyes piercing her own.

Time sped up after that, sped up so quickly that sometimes Caroline couldn’t remember what happened exactly.

She remembered Elena moving and maybe it was towards her. She was never sure.

She remembered veins and dark eyes and blood coating Elena’s lips.

She remembered vampires appearing out of nowhere, blocking her from Elena’s grasp, pulling Caroline away as she tried to help her friend.

Stefan yelled somewhere in the background.

Elena’s heart fell to ground and a moment later, so did her body.

Caroline remembers it all in a blur, too quickly and too slowly, and she can’t make sense of it sometimes. But she remembers all of it.

She wished she didn’t.

--

Gretel lives in Las Vegas and something about it makes Caroline laugh too. She runs her own magic shop, full of things real and fake combined that keep the regular customers and the tourists both coming back.

She looks older than Caroline, mid-forties maybe, short hair hidden behind a scarf, and long skirts to make her look the part. She looks nothing like Bonnie, is nothing like Bonnie, but there’s something about her, power probably, that makes Caroline think of her friend.

(Makes her wish she was still there.)

“Rebekah said that you were powerful and that you…could help me.” Caroline says.

They were in the back room, locked away from prying eyes, and sage filling the air to block out their words. Caroline thinks that maybe Gretel could kill her there and no one would know. She thinks that she’s spent too many years on her own, her only company the ghosts of Originals.

(Caroline has nightmares about Katherine still.

About being Katherine. The times change, and it’s her in the fifteenth century looking like a dead girl, her blood that Klaus wants to spill over a stupid rock.

And Klaus still looks at her the same way, like she is something amazing, like she is the sun, and she is there to save him. But he still bites into her neck every time. He still laps up her blood and performs the ritual and becomes the hybrid he is so desperate to become.

She looks up at him with dead eyes and he smiles.

“This is how it was supposed to be.” He tells her.

She wakes up with her neck aching, remembering the pain of his teeth inside her. The feeling takes days to go away.)

“Rebekah is too kind to me,” Gretel says, her voice accented, “I cannot promise I can do what you require.”

“On the phone, you said you knew about desiccation spells.” Caroline says, asks, she’s not really sure anymore. All these years and staring Gretel down, a plan in her mind, a dangerous plan, and she feels like she’s human again, uncertain of what’s going on around her.

“Yes. It is powerful dark magic used to stop a vampire’s heart. Humans as well at times.” Gretel says.

“And you know how to perform it?”

There is a long pause, as Gretel appraises her Caroline thinks, tries to make her mind up about her.

“I have performed it before.” She finally says.

“I have a plan and for it to work, I’d need you to do again.” Caroline says, “Would you be willing to do that?”

“For the right price, you’d be surprised what I’m willing to do.” Gretel smiles.

--

Caroline has a plan of course. She had started making it in her mind before she had dialed Gretel’s number, before she had reached for her phone. Then she had started sketching it out on paper. Her mind kept turning and turning, ever the perfectionist, and she was drawing out the plans still on napkins on the plane to Vegas.

All of it of course hinged on whether Gretel said yes.

And apparently for the right price, she was Caroline’s new best friend willing to do anything for her. Throwing around Rebekah’s name hurt either, an Original’s presence (seen or unseen) always carrying weight.

Caroline finally emptied out her jewelry box, sold the jewels and gold, and ended up with more money than she expected.

Apparently some of the broken hearts she had left behind had loved her more than she thought.

(She almost feels a little bad for that.)

Now, it all just depends on getting everything else in order.

It depends on if she can do what needs to be done.

If she can really end this. Once and for all.

--

Stefan’s cry of horror echoes around her.

She thinks she might be screaming too, the tears already pooling in her eyes, but then the world catches up with her and its Caroline that is moving too fast. Snapped necks and ripped out hearts and one vampire missing his head. There is a massacre when she is done, one lying at her feet, and this one Elena did not create.

Caroline speeds to her friend’s side, to her body, holding Elena to her, mixing the blood she wore with the blood still pooling out of Elena’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline whispers into Elena’s ear, “I’m so so sorry. I-”

Her voice breaks and words fail her and all she can do is hold Elena’s body as close to her as possible.

Stefan moves slowly behind her, this time it’s Caroline that’s the wounded animal he fears will lash out. He drops down beside her, and she looks at him through blurry eyes,

“She’s dead.” She says like somehow he doesn’t already know, hadn’t seen the same things she had.

“I know,” He says, tears in his eyes and it makes Caroline’s hold on Elena’s limp body tighten.

If she was alive, Elena would never let her hold her this close. She’d call it suffocating. That’s what Caroline was, suffocating.

It’s what Klaus was too and now her friends were paying the price.

Stefan leans over and Caroline lets her grip lessen just a bit, so he can she Elena’s graying face.

He reaches over and gently closes Elena’s eyes.

A sob escapes her throat.

“Caroline, you have to leave.” His voice is uneven, pain hidden under calm words.

“I won’t just leave her like this.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

Caroline had never felt the way she did towards Stefan in that one moment before or years after. Had never truly hated him like she did then.

“Caroline, I don’t want to hurt you, I just…” His eyes trail to Elena’s dead body and then back to her.

“Damon will be out for blood when he finds out what happened. He’ll be out for your blood even though this is Klaus’ fault. He’ll want you dead too and he…Caroline, you’ll either end up dead or Damon will when Klaus’s army realizes what he’s doing. Or maybe you’ll both end up dead, I don’t know. I just know you can’t be here when he finds out what happened.”

“But Bonnie-”

“You need to leave, Caroline,” Stefan says, “Please, I can’t-not you too.”

She closes her eyes and lets out a sob. Her last sob. And then opens her eyes and carefully passes Elena to Stefan. She kisses her friend’s forehead and then she’s gone, speeding through the forest until she is at the other side of town and finding someone to compel a car from.

Caroline is on the road and leaving Mystic Falls behind her in less than ten minutes. She wears her best friend’s blood on her shirt and she keeps looking over her shoulder for the things she fears. (Klaus’s army, Damon’s car, herself.)

She takes her phone out and she wants to call someone so desperately, but she knows she can’t.

She throws it out the window instead. Hopes it breaks into a million pieces. There would be poetry in that. Or irony. Something.

Caroline is on the road and leaving Mystic Falls behind her in less than ten minutes. She forces herself not to look behind her and keep driving.

--

It ends in New Orleans, just like she always knew it would one way or another.

Gretel is on the boarder of Louisiana ready, waiting. Caroline had found someone for her to perform the spell on, even gotten a Gilbert ring for her to use though she’ll never know if Gretel will decide to use it. Even if Caroline does see the other woman again, she won’t ask the question.

They have a plan in place, each one knowing it will take time before Caroline can play her part in what needs to be done. For Klaus to trust her enough, for him to be the only Original in the house, for everything to be just right. But Gretel was connected to her.

She would know when the time came. Until then Caroline had her set up in luxury to help with the wait.

Caroline is wearing in a white lace dress that grazes her thighs and she is the picture of innocence as she raises her hand to knock on the door.

(She’s had years of practice of being someone she’s not, she can do innocent just as well as she can do dangerous.

She is Beatrice and the Devil both and she will only cause pain.)

Elijah is the one who answers the door and it’s the first time she has ever seen him look surprised. It almost makes her feel special.

“Caroline,” He breathes and she smiles back at him, remembering New York all those years ago when she had seen him again for the first time since she was eighteen.

“Hi,” She says, and she puts just enough hint of nervousness in her voice that it’s believable. “I’m-I’m here to see Klaus.”

“I had imagined.”

“It’s been a century since I last danced with him,” Caroline says, “Right down to the day. And I’m finally at his door.”

She hears a chuckle and looks past Elijah and sees Klaus there, looking ever the same, a smirk on his face.

Her breathing falters for a moment (she forgets how to do it), but her heart beats evenly, and she remembers her role.

She remembers the girl from Mystic Falls and the smile she wore and the way she looked at Klaus when no one else was around to see her. She remembers the girl from Mystic Falls with blood on her shirt and mud on her boots and her hair in disarray as she clung to her mother’s headstone. She remembers the girl from Mystic Falls and she slips into the role just as easily as she has all the others.

She smiles, her eyes lowering before looking back at Klaus.

“So, are you going to invite me in?”