Fic - Fooling My Selfish Heart (Caroline Forbes) pg, 1/1
Title: Fooling My Selfish Heart
Summary: If nobody else was going to believe in her, she was going to have to start believing in herself enough for everybody. Five different futures - all with various degrees of possibility.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 4,253 words. Definite Caroline/Matt, Caroline/Stefan, and Caroline/Tyler undertones. General series spoilers up to 2x19. Nothing past that point is taken into account here. Thank you to leobrat for the fantastic beta. All remaining mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
i.
They dig the graves together in the woods behind the burning boarding house, each one lined up side by side, perfectly symmetrical and rectangular. Elena’s is first, then Tyler’s, then Damon’s. Days ago they had turned Elena, but it was to no avail. Caroline thought she could protect her friend in the aftermath, they all did, but they underestimated Klaus’ thirst for revenge and his affinity for carnage. Damon died in his own attempt for vengeance and Stefan had found Tyler long after the battle, his face buried in the earth and covered in blood, his eyes still wide open to the world.
Caroline doesn’t cry, barely even thinks as she uses her foot as leverage to push the shovel deep into the ground and into the dirt beneath her shoes. Stefan is next to her, always the model of efficiency. His actions are slow and methodical, the silver of his ring glaring and mocking him under the harsh moonlight. She twists her own until it digs into her palm, the hardness of it breaking her skin with every motion of her shovel, the blood gushing then disappearing simultaneously.
Tonight, she wishes she still had the ability to carry scars.
Jeremy and Bonnie are long gone, Jenna and Alaric too, the four of them spreading to the ends of the earth in an effort to never be found again. Stefan and Caroline remained to clean up the mess, the carnage, to bury their friends, their loved ones with the respect they deserved.
Faulty wiring the papers will report, and Andie Star will do a gorgeous expose on those who died too young, on all the wasted potential. All six of their names will be listed in black and white amongst the dead. Her mother will cover up the war and bloodshed that ensued on the very ground they’re standing because the council has been doing it for centuries, because good mothers will do anything to save their daughter’s life and reputation. Good mothers will do anything to preserve the pristine image of their daughters, of their babies in their mind.
When they’re done Stefan marks the graves with stones and nothing else while Caroline draws small crosses in the dirt with the toe of her shoe. Time will see them washed away with the elements, with the wind and early morning dew, but it seems necessary right now, appropriate in a way. She watches Stefan stand there in silence, his shoulders tight, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Caroline wants to tell him she’s sorry, that she wishes she had done more, that she wished she had been able to save them, but it would be a worthless attempt. She knows that. He’s lost the love of his life and his brother in one night and nothing Caroline says is going to make that better. Nothing anyone does is ever going to change that.
“We should go,” Caroline breathes after a while, her voice cracking around the edges of the words. The heat from the fire sets her skin on fire periodically, the smell of burning wood and singed stone flooding her senses.
Stefan only nods. “I know.”
“It won’t be long before they come looking for us.” Her voice is gentle and soft and Stefan’s eyes stray from the tiny piece of earth where they had just buried his brother to hers and back again in one solid movement.
“I know.”
There are memories that flood through her then - of Elena and Tyler, even Damon. She remembers five years old and carefree; the summer before their lives changed irrevocably, when things were happy and good and Caroline knew nothing of the life she would end up enduring for eternity. She thinks of that night all those months ago, her very first kill, and how Stefan was there for her, always a source of unwavering strength. A knot starts in her stomach and spreads upwards, lodges itself in the back of her throat. She swallows against it and tastes nothing but anger and regret mixing with the saltiness of her tears. Caroline tries to do the same for him now, to be strong for him when he needs it the most. She grabs his hand because she can, because she’s here, with him, and she sure as hell doesn’t plan on going anywhere now.
Caroline wants him to know that. She needs him to know that, so she just reaches for him, her fingers tight around his before intertwining softly. They stand there for a while longer, shoulder to shoulder, his hand in hers, and Caroline squeezes every so often, the pressure slight but present, her way of letting him know she’s still there.
Eventually, the sirens can be heard in the distance and Caroline looks up to see the smoke billowing for miles, announcing their presence. They leave soon after, mumble their last goodbyes to the cold ground and try to never look back.
They struggle on together.
ii.
The thing about Caroline that nobody really ever counts on is just how driven and ambitious she is underneath the persona she tries so very hard to perfect.
So, at sixteen when she tells her mother she wants to become a broadcast journalist, she means it, and she spends her remaining years in high school making it happen. She words hard, joins the school newspaper, makes editor her senior year. She gets accepted into every college she applies to, but gets wait-listed at Columbia - the only one that really counts, the only one she really wants. It's a long-shot and she knows that - her grades are good, but not that good, and Caroline is convinced she blew her admissions interview because she talked too much about all the wrong things and too little about all the right ones - but she doesn't give up. Despite her mother's urging and Bonnie and Elena's desperate pleading, she denies her acceptances at Maryland, BU, and all the others, waiting out her summer in vain, checking the mailbox every day with a heavy heart and shaking hands.
She decides, once and for all, that if nobody else was going to believe in her, she was going to have to start believing in herself enough for everybody.
It pays off. A month before fall semester commences the acceptance letter arrives in the mail and she screams and she yells and jumps up and down until her head starts to pound from all the excitement. Her mother hugs her tightly and cries, whispers I'm so proud of you, honey against Caroline's soft curls and Caroline will never admit to anyone, but she cries a little too. For years she keeps that acceptance as a keepsake of sorts, a closely guarded treasure that she will pull out during finals weeks and all those lows that exist between highs, so she can remember that she can do anything if she works at it hard enough.
After graduation a local news station in upstate New York offers her an internship position. She takes it despite the fact that it pays barely enough to cover her bills. Moves into a crappy apartment the size of her mother's living room and spends her first year as a college graduate fetching coffee and running errands. Eventually - after months of pleading and begging and countless audition tapes slipped in with her producer's morning coffee - she becomes a weekend newscaster, doing fluff stories and human interest pieces nobody really pays attention to.
After paying her dues at the station for five long years she finally makes it. The nightly, female broadcaster retires and Caroline's steps into replace her. She drinks champagne and strawberries the night she gets the call, calls and Elena and Bonnie and they celebrate via a three-way phone call. Next month they will meet in the city and have a night on the town dancing and drinking until the sun comes up, but until then their pseudo-celebration will do.
It takes a while to acclimate, but when she does, when she sits back in her chair and takes in how far she's come and how hard she has worked, she quickly decides it isn't enough. Caroline always needs more, always wants what she doesn't have, so she starts sending out tapes to the producers at Today and Good Morning America. Starts spending more time in the city making contacts and establishing her name. She meets men and falls in and out of love regularly, focuses on her career and little else.
She's back in Mystic Falls for Jeremy and Bonnie's wedding when her assistant, Lucy, calls her frantically, telling her that she heard from this person who heard from that person that Ann Curry is leaving The Today Show and taking over Katie Couric's spot on CBS Evening News and they're looking for somebody young and hip to take over her spot. Caroline's not exactly sure if "hip" was an appropriate word to describe her, but she can be hip if they need her to be. She can be anything they need her to be. She spends the rest of the weekend drinking wine and toasting to her best friend's happiness, trying so very hard to not be hopeful for an opportunity she may not even get the chance at having.
When she goes back to work on Monday, there's a message sitting proudly in the center of her desk and Lucy stands in the doorway with the proudest grin her face.
Caroline's hands are shaking when she picks up the tiny slip of paper. "Is this a joke? Because if it is, it's the meanest joke ever and I think I might just fire you."
Lucy shakes her head, giggles slipping out of her mouth as she hugs the files in her hands close to her chest. "Nope."
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God." Caroline's eyes go wide and knees go weak. She starts to hyperventilate, her heart and stomach lodging in her throat and she sits down in her chair before her legs give out completely. It takes her a moment, a full moment, really, but eventually she calms herself and regains composure. "It's just an interview. It's just an interview, right? There are probably plenty of people more qualified and experienced up for the same job."
"Yes, but they don't have that infamous Caroline Forbes wit and charm."
"You think so?"
Lucy just laughs. "I know so."
The interview is a week from Monday. Caroline aces it. They offer her the job a week later. Elena and Bonnie are her first phone calls (her mother second because some things never change) and Caroline invites them all up to visit for a long weekend when she settles into the brand new apartment she's always decorating in her head.
iii.
They turn Elena too soon, long before they’ve exhausted all of their options. In the end, after everything is said and done, they manage to kill Klaus and it’s the victory they’ve all been working towards. The one they’ve all been praying for. Caroline should be relieved. She should be thankful, but Elena’s face is now eternally beautiful and Caroline doesn’t know how to accept that. She hates that what should have been a carefully calculated decision was done in quiet and without thought, and at Damon’s incessant urging.
Eventually Caroline will understand. Eventually she will come to terms with the fact that she really did think it was the only way out, her only remaining option. The knowledge doesn’t come easily though, doesn’t flood her like a sudden, timely epiphany, so Caroline doesn’t stick around for long afterwards. She merely packs her bags after graduation and spends days weaning Matt and her mother off of the vervain.
Compels her mother to never come looking and Matt to forget he ever loved her.
She spends the next decade traveling the world. France, Italy, Australia. She acclimates and adjusts. Falls in love with random men, uses others as means to an end. Finds herself and then promptly loses herself over and over without thought or remorse because she has all the time in the world to do so.
At what would have been her twenty-third birthday she cuts her hair too short and attends Oxford. Falls in love with every single thing the city of London has to offer. Perfects her British accent as she studies Chaucer and Shakespeare. Backpacks through England and Ireland and takes in the sights and the sounds of the places where Wordsworth and Shelley found so much inspiration. She tries Russia after, but finds it too dreary and cold. The Middle East is too warm and war-torn and despite being a vampire and having the ability to flick a switch and turn off her humanity, she still has too much heart, cares too much to stay and watch as people do nothing buy try to destroy each other. In Africa she joins the relief effort and helps build a clinic with her free hands. Does the same in South America and actually starts to believe that she’s making a difference.
It’s not until she is twenty-nine and a half that she steps foot back in the United States.
In Florida she finds a bar and buries herself in the corner, ankles wrapping around the bottom rung of the stool to anchor herself, to help resist the urge to flee and return to her life on the run, the life she’s grown too accustomed to living.
Naturally, Caroline feels Tyler’s presence before she see him. Recognizes the heavy sound of his footsteps even after all this time. It’s a little known fact she wouldn’t share with anyone, but despite the urge to leave everything Mystic Falls represented behind, she did stay in contact with him. There were letters and post cards, sporadic phone calls. He understood why she needed to run when nobody else did and it’s why she’s here now, waiting him out. Caroline feels him behind her, hears him pause a few feet away like he’s not sure what to do or how to approach her after all of this time.
“You going to stand there and lurk?” she says after a moment, twisting her neck to look at him, smile soft and sure.
“How did you know it was me?” He’s smiling as he falls onto the stool next to her, eyes sweeping her up and down in appreciation and there’s a sudden spark of something inside her, for something they could have had all those years ago before things became so horribly messed up.
“You smell like a dog, Tyler,” she jokes and he laughs. “It’s kind of hard to miss.”
After a moment he laughs again, the sound softer, more casual. “You’re different,” he remarks quietly and her shoulders square on instinct, as if she were preparing for battle.
“That’s the curse of time, I think,” is all she says, bottom lip between her teeth in a characteristic Caroline Forbes move - one of the few things that haven’t managed to ebb away with the passing days.
It’s probably the truth. Her edges are more jagged, colors a bit more muted. She’s okay with that, she muses, because life, she’s found, is a bit easier to navigate when you don’t take everything so personally.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Tyler laughs and he seems different too - softer, calmer, more like the little boy she grew up alongside when werewolves and vampires were things of legends, not reality. He smiles at her again, appreciative and kind. It warms something inside her that she had forgotten existed. “Whatever it is, Caroline Forbes, it looks good on you.”
If she were human she would have blushed, but instead she merely smiles and ducks her head as she murmurs a soft thanks.
He’s grinning again and so is she. Despite the time and distance, she thinks, just maybe, they’re still the same people under it all. The knowledge is refreshing in a way she hadn’t expected.
“How about I buy you a drink? I very wise girl once told me alcohol helps.”
Caroline laughs around her quiet okay.
iv.
Caroline flicks that proverbial switch and becomes a very good vampire. With a little time and effort Caroline becomes the sort of vampire that Stefan and the newly, pseudo-moralized Damon don’t play very well with.
In Italy her hair is too long and the color too dark as her curls spill down her back. Katherine sits across from her, smile wide and dangerous, eyes cold but still managing to sparkle as she draws an index finger around the edge of her wine glass. They’re sisters this time - sorority, maybe even familial. They haven’t found the time to decide yet. Caroline watches the movements of Katherine’s skillful hands drawing patterns around the rim of her glass and leans back in her chair, legs crossing and re-crossing under the table. Caroline flicks her attention to the people coming and going around them and back to Katherine periodically - always one eye on her mentor and the other on the potential kill because innate knowledge has taught her that trust is a luxury she can no longer afford.
“I like that one,” Katherine breathes after a little while. Her smile is tight as she tilts her glass towards a man across the street - short hair, dark eyes, and square shoulders. Katherine is playing Elena today - the sweet, young American with her hair perfectly straight, clothes dreadfully plain, and doe-eyes wide and impressionable.
“Uh-uh,” Caroline mumbles, sound rumbling in the back of her throat as she scans and re-scans her surroundings, smells the hearts beating and blood pumping from the passerbys. It’s her favorite part of the hunt. “That one,” she smiles, tone soft and full as she nods her head to the side, towards a man near the bar. Katherine slips the heel of her shoe off as she tilts her head back to laugh, her shoulders shaking as she drags the spike of her stilettos across the bone of Caroline’s shin. Caroline mouth quirks quietly in response, body moving forward just slightly into her touch.
Katherine’s eyes are teasing when she murmurs something concerning Caroline’s affinity for blondes behind her wine glass. The merlot leaves red stains in its wake.
After a moment, she flicks her wrist towards the bar with a sigh, as if to say it’s your turn anywayand Caroline’s grin is wide with anticipation.
Later, in some dark ally in some nondescript part of the city, Caroline draws her lips over the man’s throat, closes her eyes and counts the pulse at his jugular beat for beat. She traces the pattern of blood in the back of her head as it flows out of his heart and through his body before finally coming to flow right under her lovely mouth.
“What’s your name?” he asks breathlessly, his Italian impeccable, and it’s like music to her ears. He draws his fingers down her back, under fabric and against the smooth column of her spine. She pretends to shiver.
“Anything you would like it to be,” she laughs, pulling back to smile something beautiful just before she relinquishes control and bites down, teeth piercing his flesh . Caroline’s hands are strong at his shoulders in an effort to keep him upright, to control the struggle as the insatiable taste of copper fills her mouth and floods her senses, driving her closer to that always elusive edge.
Off to the side Katherine watches with a proud smile.
Next week they’ll head to Paris. Caroline always had an affinity for French cuisine.
v.
Caroline tells Matt she loves him when they’re doing the dishes after dinner one night. He’s in the middle of telling her some stupid joke she’s only half-listening to, and there is water splashed on her favorite shirt and her hair is going in a million and one directions because his oven never seems to warm the entire house and her curls never take well to humidity. She laughs at his joke without really understanding the punch line and hands him the plate she’s been diligently washing for longer than necessary.
“You alright, Care?” he asks after a moment. He has his left eyebrow raised in concern, his voice softer than usual, and his fingers are warm as they spread across her forearm. It’s a simple gesture, something he does often, and it’s probably not even registered as remotely significant to any passerby who cared enough to notice.
To Caroline though, it’s everything because she knows that this is how he shows his affections - quiet movements and gentle touches, in the way he says her name softly and without pause.
She loves it. She loves him for it and before she can stop herself, before she can bite her lip and stop the words from falling out of her mouth in a jumbled mess of regret, she tells him she loves him. Just blurts it out in his tiny kitchen with her hair a mess and her shirt covered in soapy water. It only takes half a second for it to sink it, for the regret to burn at the back of her throat, and she slaps her forehead with her pruny hands and groans inwardly.
For the longest time she doesn’t look at him. She merely berates herself for not being able to stop while she was one step ahead, for letting her heart get ahead of her brain.
And then she looks at him. She notes the smile, the gentle chuckle that escapes his lips and falls onto her shoulders with ease, the sound somehow managing to calm her just slightly.
“I love you, too,” he says, finally, like he’s almost in awe of the words, and she just stares at him for a while. For the longest time she just looks at him with her mouth gaping open and her eyes wide because she’s been through this scenario a million times over in her head and hardly any of them included this outcome.
“Yeah?” she somehow manages to squeak, a small smile forming brightly at the corners of her mouth. Matt only nods, his own smile full of teeth and reaching his eyes, laughter slipping around his quiet yeah.
Just like that something shifts - in her, in him, in the both of them. It’s menial, insignificant in the whole scheme of things, really, and Caroline spends the following couple of weeks thanking whatever God she believes in that he loves her back, that he chose her and not somebody else. That life is no longer a competition or a constant game of playing second best. Her father calls a few weeks later and asks her to come visit for a long weekend, tells her to bring Matt. The only weekend that works for the both of them is the one directly following the Founder’s Day parade, but Caroline makes it work because she loves her daddy and she loves her boyfriend and for some reason she can’t explain, there is an innate part of her the needs the two of them to get along.
(In the back of her head she’s already making plans and thinking things like this feel like forever. She doesn’t tell him that, though. She doesn’t tell anybody that. Caroline’s always had a profound belief in jinxes.)
They head south immediately after the parade and miss all of the commotion. There is no accident. No hospital stay. No reason for Damon to both save her life and inadvertently take her life at the same time. Caroline and Matt live out the remainder of their high school years blissfully unaware of the war that is raging on around them. While Elena is fighting for her life and the lives of her family and friends (the two of them included), they are making plans for college and their future.
They choose UVA both because of the proximity and because it’s the only place they both get in. Caroline studies journalism. Matt starts off majoring in business, but ends up changing his major the first semester of their sophomore year to history. Says he wants to be a teacher. Caroline finds a job that summer waiting tables instead of heading back to Mystic Falls so she can be with him while he takes summer courses so he can graduate on time. They move in together shortly after. Fight about the stupidest things, make up, and somehow manage to build a life together with an unshakable foundation.
After graduation they stay in Charlottesville. Matt gets a job teaching and Caroline works her way up at the local news station.
He asks her to marry him somewhere in between their twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays.
Naturally she replies, yes, yes, yes over and over again as she kisses him with her arms tight around his neck, pulling him as close as possible.
Matt laughs in her ear like he didn’t expect anything different, like he knew it all along.
(Already, in that moment, she is designing a house with a backyard the size of Montana and a perfectly constructed white picket fence. She thinks Victoria would make a lovely name for a little girl with blonde ringlets, bright blue eyes, and a smile as bright and warm as her daddy’s. They will take to calling her Tori for short, not Vicki, because there are some wounds that don’t ever entirely heal.
Caroline will mention this to Matt when the time is right.)
Summary: If nobody else was going to believe in her, she was going to have to start believing in herself enough for everybody. Five different futures - all with various degrees of possibility.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 4,253 words. Definite Caroline/Matt, Caroline/Stefan, and Caroline/Tyler undertones. General series spoilers up to 2x19. Nothing past that point is taken into account here. Thank you to leobrat for the fantastic beta. All remaining mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
i.
They dig the graves together in the woods behind the burning boarding house, each one lined up side by side, perfectly symmetrical and rectangular. Elena’s is first, then Tyler’s, then Damon’s. Days ago they had turned Elena, but it was to no avail. Caroline thought she could protect her friend in the aftermath, they all did, but they underestimated Klaus’ thirst for revenge and his affinity for carnage. Damon died in his own attempt for vengeance and Stefan had found Tyler long after the battle, his face buried in the earth and covered in blood, his eyes still wide open to the world.
Caroline doesn’t cry, barely even thinks as she uses her foot as leverage to push the shovel deep into the ground and into the dirt beneath her shoes. Stefan is next to her, always the model of efficiency. His actions are slow and methodical, the silver of his ring glaring and mocking him under the harsh moonlight. She twists her own until it digs into her palm, the hardness of it breaking her skin with every motion of her shovel, the blood gushing then disappearing simultaneously.
Tonight, she wishes she still had the ability to carry scars.
Jeremy and Bonnie are long gone, Jenna and Alaric too, the four of them spreading to the ends of the earth in an effort to never be found again. Stefan and Caroline remained to clean up the mess, the carnage, to bury their friends, their loved ones with the respect they deserved.
Faulty wiring the papers will report, and Andie Star will do a gorgeous expose on those who died too young, on all the wasted potential. All six of their names will be listed in black and white amongst the dead. Her mother will cover up the war and bloodshed that ensued on the very ground they’re standing because the council has been doing it for centuries, because good mothers will do anything to save their daughter’s life and reputation. Good mothers will do anything to preserve the pristine image of their daughters, of their babies in their mind.
When they’re done Stefan marks the graves with stones and nothing else while Caroline draws small crosses in the dirt with the toe of her shoe. Time will see them washed away with the elements, with the wind and early morning dew, but it seems necessary right now, appropriate in a way. She watches Stefan stand there in silence, his shoulders tight, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Caroline wants to tell him she’s sorry, that she wishes she had done more, that she wished she had been able to save them, but it would be a worthless attempt. She knows that. He’s lost the love of his life and his brother in one night and nothing Caroline says is going to make that better. Nothing anyone does is ever going to change that.
“We should go,” Caroline breathes after a while, her voice cracking around the edges of the words. The heat from the fire sets her skin on fire periodically, the smell of burning wood and singed stone flooding her senses.
Stefan only nods. “I know.”
“It won’t be long before they come looking for us.” Her voice is gentle and soft and Stefan’s eyes stray from the tiny piece of earth where they had just buried his brother to hers and back again in one solid movement.
“I know.”
There are memories that flood through her then - of Elena and Tyler, even Damon. She remembers five years old and carefree; the summer before their lives changed irrevocably, when things were happy and good and Caroline knew nothing of the life she would end up enduring for eternity. She thinks of that night all those months ago, her very first kill, and how Stefan was there for her, always a source of unwavering strength. A knot starts in her stomach and spreads upwards, lodges itself in the back of her throat. She swallows against it and tastes nothing but anger and regret mixing with the saltiness of her tears. Caroline tries to do the same for him now, to be strong for him when he needs it the most. She grabs his hand because she can, because she’s here, with him, and she sure as hell doesn’t plan on going anywhere now.
Caroline wants him to know that. She needs him to know that, so she just reaches for him, her fingers tight around his before intertwining softly. They stand there for a while longer, shoulder to shoulder, his hand in hers, and Caroline squeezes every so often, the pressure slight but present, her way of letting him know she’s still there.
Eventually, the sirens can be heard in the distance and Caroline looks up to see the smoke billowing for miles, announcing their presence. They leave soon after, mumble their last goodbyes to the cold ground and try to never look back.
They struggle on together.
ii.
The thing about Caroline that nobody really ever counts on is just how driven and ambitious she is underneath the persona she tries so very hard to perfect.
So, at sixteen when she tells her mother she wants to become a broadcast journalist, she means it, and she spends her remaining years in high school making it happen. She words hard, joins the school newspaper, makes editor her senior year. She gets accepted into every college she applies to, but gets wait-listed at Columbia - the only one that really counts, the only one she really wants. It's a long-shot and she knows that - her grades are good, but not that good, and Caroline is convinced she blew her admissions interview because she talked too much about all the wrong things and too little about all the right ones - but she doesn't give up. Despite her mother's urging and Bonnie and Elena's desperate pleading, she denies her acceptances at Maryland, BU, and all the others, waiting out her summer in vain, checking the mailbox every day with a heavy heart and shaking hands.
She decides, once and for all, that if nobody else was going to believe in her, she was going to have to start believing in herself enough for everybody.
It pays off. A month before fall semester commences the acceptance letter arrives in the mail and she screams and she yells and jumps up and down until her head starts to pound from all the excitement. Her mother hugs her tightly and cries, whispers I'm so proud of you, honey against Caroline's soft curls and Caroline will never admit to anyone, but she cries a little too. For years she keeps that acceptance as a keepsake of sorts, a closely guarded treasure that she will pull out during finals weeks and all those lows that exist between highs, so she can remember that she can do anything if she works at it hard enough.
After graduation a local news station in upstate New York offers her an internship position. She takes it despite the fact that it pays barely enough to cover her bills. Moves into a crappy apartment the size of her mother's living room and spends her first year as a college graduate fetching coffee and running errands. Eventually - after months of pleading and begging and countless audition tapes slipped in with her producer's morning coffee - she becomes a weekend newscaster, doing fluff stories and human interest pieces nobody really pays attention to.
After paying her dues at the station for five long years she finally makes it. The nightly, female broadcaster retires and Caroline's steps into replace her. She drinks champagne and strawberries the night she gets the call, calls and Elena and Bonnie and they celebrate via a three-way phone call. Next month they will meet in the city and have a night on the town dancing and drinking until the sun comes up, but until then their pseudo-celebration will do.
It takes a while to acclimate, but when she does, when she sits back in her chair and takes in how far she's come and how hard she has worked, she quickly decides it isn't enough. Caroline always needs more, always wants what she doesn't have, so she starts sending out tapes to the producers at Today and Good Morning America. Starts spending more time in the city making contacts and establishing her name. She meets men and falls in and out of love regularly, focuses on her career and little else.
She's back in Mystic Falls for Jeremy and Bonnie's wedding when her assistant, Lucy, calls her frantically, telling her that she heard from this person who heard from that person that Ann Curry is leaving The Today Show and taking over Katie Couric's spot on CBS Evening News and they're looking for somebody young and hip to take over her spot. Caroline's not exactly sure if "hip" was an appropriate word to describe her, but she can be hip if they need her to be. She can be anything they need her to be. She spends the rest of the weekend drinking wine and toasting to her best friend's happiness, trying so very hard to not be hopeful for an opportunity she may not even get the chance at having.
When she goes back to work on Monday, there's a message sitting proudly in the center of her desk and Lucy stands in the doorway with the proudest grin her face.
Caroline's hands are shaking when she picks up the tiny slip of paper. "Is this a joke? Because if it is, it's the meanest joke ever and I think I might just fire you."
Lucy shakes her head, giggles slipping out of her mouth as she hugs the files in her hands close to her chest. "Nope."
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God." Caroline's eyes go wide and knees go weak. She starts to hyperventilate, her heart and stomach lodging in her throat and she sits down in her chair before her legs give out completely. It takes her a moment, a full moment, really, but eventually she calms herself and regains composure. "It's just an interview. It's just an interview, right? There are probably plenty of people more qualified and experienced up for the same job."
"Yes, but they don't have that infamous Caroline Forbes wit and charm."
"You think so?"
Lucy just laughs. "I know so."
The interview is a week from Monday. Caroline aces it. They offer her the job a week later. Elena and Bonnie are her first phone calls (her mother second because some things never change) and Caroline invites them all up to visit for a long weekend when she settles into the brand new apartment she's always decorating in her head.
iii.
They turn Elena too soon, long before they’ve exhausted all of their options. In the end, after everything is said and done, they manage to kill Klaus and it’s the victory they’ve all been working towards. The one they’ve all been praying for. Caroline should be relieved. She should be thankful, but Elena’s face is now eternally beautiful and Caroline doesn’t know how to accept that. She hates that what should have been a carefully calculated decision was done in quiet and without thought, and at Damon’s incessant urging.
Eventually Caroline will understand. Eventually she will come to terms with the fact that she really did think it was the only way out, her only remaining option. The knowledge doesn’t come easily though, doesn’t flood her like a sudden, timely epiphany, so Caroline doesn’t stick around for long afterwards. She merely packs her bags after graduation and spends days weaning Matt and her mother off of the vervain.
Compels her mother to never come looking and Matt to forget he ever loved her.
She spends the next decade traveling the world. France, Italy, Australia. She acclimates and adjusts. Falls in love with random men, uses others as means to an end. Finds herself and then promptly loses herself over and over without thought or remorse because she has all the time in the world to do so.
At what would have been her twenty-third birthday she cuts her hair too short and attends Oxford. Falls in love with every single thing the city of London has to offer. Perfects her British accent as she studies Chaucer and Shakespeare. Backpacks through England and Ireland and takes in the sights and the sounds of the places where Wordsworth and Shelley found so much inspiration. She tries Russia after, but finds it too dreary and cold. The Middle East is too warm and war-torn and despite being a vampire and having the ability to flick a switch and turn off her humanity, she still has too much heart, cares too much to stay and watch as people do nothing buy try to destroy each other. In Africa she joins the relief effort and helps build a clinic with her free hands. Does the same in South America and actually starts to believe that she’s making a difference.
It’s not until she is twenty-nine and a half that she steps foot back in the United States.
In Florida she finds a bar and buries herself in the corner, ankles wrapping around the bottom rung of the stool to anchor herself, to help resist the urge to flee and return to her life on the run, the life she’s grown too accustomed to living.
Naturally, Caroline feels Tyler’s presence before she see him. Recognizes the heavy sound of his footsteps even after all this time. It’s a little known fact she wouldn’t share with anyone, but despite the urge to leave everything Mystic Falls represented behind, she did stay in contact with him. There were letters and post cards, sporadic phone calls. He understood why she needed to run when nobody else did and it’s why she’s here now, waiting him out. Caroline feels him behind her, hears him pause a few feet away like he’s not sure what to do or how to approach her after all of this time.
“You going to stand there and lurk?” she says after a moment, twisting her neck to look at him, smile soft and sure.
“How did you know it was me?” He’s smiling as he falls onto the stool next to her, eyes sweeping her up and down in appreciation and there’s a sudden spark of something inside her, for something they could have had all those years ago before things became so horribly messed up.
“You smell like a dog, Tyler,” she jokes and he laughs. “It’s kind of hard to miss.”
After a moment he laughs again, the sound softer, more casual. “You’re different,” he remarks quietly and her shoulders square on instinct, as if she were preparing for battle.
“That’s the curse of time, I think,” is all she says, bottom lip between her teeth in a characteristic Caroline Forbes move - one of the few things that haven’t managed to ebb away with the passing days.
It’s probably the truth. Her edges are more jagged, colors a bit more muted. She’s okay with that, she muses, because life, she’s found, is a bit easier to navigate when you don’t take everything so personally.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Tyler laughs and he seems different too - softer, calmer, more like the little boy she grew up alongside when werewolves and vampires were things of legends, not reality. He smiles at her again, appreciative and kind. It warms something inside her that she had forgotten existed. “Whatever it is, Caroline Forbes, it looks good on you.”
If she were human she would have blushed, but instead she merely smiles and ducks her head as she murmurs a soft thanks.
He’s grinning again and so is she. Despite the time and distance, she thinks, just maybe, they’re still the same people under it all. The knowledge is refreshing in a way she hadn’t expected.
“How about I buy you a drink? I very wise girl once told me alcohol helps.”
Caroline laughs around her quiet okay.
iv.
Caroline flicks that proverbial switch and becomes a very good vampire. With a little time and effort Caroline becomes the sort of vampire that Stefan and the newly, pseudo-moralized Damon don’t play very well with.
In Italy her hair is too long and the color too dark as her curls spill down her back. Katherine sits across from her, smile wide and dangerous, eyes cold but still managing to sparkle as she draws an index finger around the edge of her wine glass. They’re sisters this time - sorority, maybe even familial. They haven’t found the time to decide yet. Caroline watches the movements of Katherine’s skillful hands drawing patterns around the rim of her glass and leans back in her chair, legs crossing and re-crossing under the table. Caroline flicks her attention to the people coming and going around them and back to Katherine periodically - always one eye on her mentor and the other on the potential kill because innate knowledge has taught her that trust is a luxury she can no longer afford.
“I like that one,” Katherine breathes after a little while. Her smile is tight as she tilts her glass towards a man across the street - short hair, dark eyes, and square shoulders. Katherine is playing Elena today - the sweet, young American with her hair perfectly straight, clothes dreadfully plain, and doe-eyes wide and impressionable.
“Uh-uh,” Caroline mumbles, sound rumbling in the back of her throat as she scans and re-scans her surroundings, smells the hearts beating and blood pumping from the passerbys. It’s her favorite part of the hunt. “That one,” she smiles, tone soft and full as she nods her head to the side, towards a man near the bar. Katherine slips the heel of her shoe off as she tilts her head back to laugh, her shoulders shaking as she drags the spike of her stilettos across the bone of Caroline’s shin. Caroline mouth quirks quietly in response, body moving forward just slightly into her touch.
Katherine’s eyes are teasing when she murmurs something concerning Caroline’s affinity for blondes behind her wine glass. The merlot leaves red stains in its wake.
After a moment, she flicks her wrist towards the bar with a sigh, as if to say it’s your turn anywayand Caroline’s grin is wide with anticipation.
Later, in some dark ally in some nondescript part of the city, Caroline draws her lips over the man’s throat, closes her eyes and counts the pulse at his jugular beat for beat. She traces the pattern of blood in the back of her head as it flows out of his heart and through his body before finally coming to flow right under her lovely mouth.
“What’s your name?” he asks breathlessly, his Italian impeccable, and it’s like music to her ears. He draws his fingers down her back, under fabric and against the smooth column of her spine. She pretends to shiver.
“Anything you would like it to be,” she laughs, pulling back to smile something beautiful just before she relinquishes control and bites down, teeth piercing his flesh . Caroline’s hands are strong at his shoulders in an effort to keep him upright, to control the struggle as the insatiable taste of copper fills her mouth and floods her senses, driving her closer to that always elusive edge.
Off to the side Katherine watches with a proud smile.
Next week they’ll head to Paris. Caroline always had an affinity for French cuisine.
v.
Caroline tells Matt she loves him when they’re doing the dishes after dinner one night. He’s in the middle of telling her some stupid joke she’s only half-listening to, and there is water splashed on her favorite shirt and her hair is going in a million and one directions because his oven never seems to warm the entire house and her curls never take well to humidity. She laughs at his joke without really understanding the punch line and hands him the plate she’s been diligently washing for longer than necessary.
“You alright, Care?” he asks after a moment. He has his left eyebrow raised in concern, his voice softer than usual, and his fingers are warm as they spread across her forearm. It’s a simple gesture, something he does often, and it’s probably not even registered as remotely significant to any passerby who cared enough to notice.
To Caroline though, it’s everything because she knows that this is how he shows his affections - quiet movements and gentle touches, in the way he says her name softly and without pause.
She loves it. She loves him for it and before she can stop herself, before she can bite her lip and stop the words from falling out of her mouth in a jumbled mess of regret, she tells him she loves him. Just blurts it out in his tiny kitchen with her hair a mess and her shirt covered in soapy water. It only takes half a second for it to sink it, for the regret to burn at the back of her throat, and she slaps her forehead with her pruny hands and groans inwardly.
For the longest time she doesn’t look at him. She merely berates herself for not being able to stop while she was one step ahead, for letting her heart get ahead of her brain.
And then she looks at him. She notes the smile, the gentle chuckle that escapes his lips and falls onto her shoulders with ease, the sound somehow managing to calm her just slightly.
“I love you, too,” he says, finally, like he’s almost in awe of the words, and she just stares at him for a while. For the longest time she just looks at him with her mouth gaping open and her eyes wide because she’s been through this scenario a million times over in her head and hardly any of them included this outcome.
“Yeah?” she somehow manages to squeak, a small smile forming brightly at the corners of her mouth. Matt only nods, his own smile full of teeth and reaching his eyes, laughter slipping around his quiet yeah.
Just like that something shifts - in her, in him, in the both of them. It’s menial, insignificant in the whole scheme of things, really, and Caroline spends the following couple of weeks thanking whatever God she believes in that he loves her back, that he chose her and not somebody else. That life is no longer a competition or a constant game of playing second best. Her father calls a few weeks later and asks her to come visit for a long weekend, tells her to bring Matt. The only weekend that works for the both of them is the one directly following the Founder’s Day parade, but Caroline makes it work because she loves her daddy and she loves her boyfriend and for some reason she can’t explain, there is an innate part of her the needs the two of them to get along.
(In the back of her head she’s already making plans and thinking things like this feel like forever. She doesn’t tell him that, though. She doesn’t tell anybody that. Caroline’s always had a profound belief in jinxes.)
They head south immediately after the parade and miss all of the commotion. There is no accident. No hospital stay. No reason for Damon to both save her life and inadvertently take her life at the same time. Caroline and Matt live out the remainder of their high school years blissfully unaware of the war that is raging on around them. While Elena is fighting for her life and the lives of her family and friends (the two of them included), they are making plans for college and their future.
They choose UVA both because of the proximity and because it’s the only place they both get in. Caroline studies journalism. Matt starts off majoring in business, but ends up changing his major the first semester of their sophomore year to history. Says he wants to be a teacher. Caroline finds a job that summer waiting tables instead of heading back to Mystic Falls so she can be with him while he takes summer courses so he can graduate on time. They move in together shortly after. Fight about the stupidest things, make up, and somehow manage to build a life together with an unshakable foundation.
After graduation they stay in Charlottesville. Matt gets a job teaching and Caroline works her way up at the local news station.
He asks her to marry him somewhere in between their twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays.
Naturally she replies, yes, yes, yes over and over again as she kisses him with her arms tight around his neck, pulling him as close as possible.
Matt laughs in her ear like he didn’t expect anything different, like he knew it all along.
(Already, in that moment, she is designing a house with a backyard the size of Montana and a perfectly constructed white picket fence. She thinks Victoria would make a lovely name for a little girl with blonde ringlets, bright blue eyes, and a smile as bright and warm as her daddy’s. They will take to calling her Tori for short, not Vicki, because there are some wounds that don’t ever entirely heal.
Caroline will mention this to Matt when the time is right.)