It all comes crashing down around them the night before Graduation.
Without even meaning to, Damon picks Elena. There were reasons, of course. She was out in the open (vulnerable even though she’s invincible), Caroline half-hidden (protected, sort of (not really) and just like that? The dynamic shifts.
For all her insistence that Damon stops trying to save her (I’m not weak and I’m not a damsel) the night he doesn’t is the first night that Caroline realizes something. She realizes that it’s always going to be Elena.
He apologizes later. Bourbon in hand, indescribable look on his face, he tells her that it was gut instinct to go that way, nothing but a spur of the moment thing and Caroline smiles, even nods, tells him she understands. She doesn’t. She takes a sip of his bourbon (given this time, not stolen) and it burns all the way to her fingertips.
A beat passes and Damon sighs. “Don’t do that, Barbie,” he tells her quietly, turning his gaze to hers, “Don’t do that thing where you over-analyze everything.”
She tells him she’s not but she is. He picked her. Just like Elena picked Stefan, Damon picked Elena and the only thing Caroline can see right now is that Elena didn’t even have to try. Again. She’s back where she was a year and a half ago (you and I are never going to happen) watching the guy she wants pick the other girl (the better girl - Elena, always fucking Elena) and the pang of jealousy, of I’ll never be good enough, hits her like a bolt of lightening.
She lies to Damon for the first time in a long time. She tells him that she’s having dinner with Steven and Rebecca and she has to go. The normal, sensible, unjealous Caroline - who grew up (sorta) and came to realize that the whole world didn't revolve around Elena Gilbert - might have realized that Damon lets her because he doesn’t know what to say to make this right (I picked her and I shouldn’t have). This Caroline? Knows none of that.
He lets her leave and as Caroline slips from the Boarding House it’s to face off with Elena for a nano-second, Elena who he picked, Elena her best friend, Elena who she gives that everything’s okay smile to and Elena believes it and Caroline’s heart kind of breaks again because this? Is not okay.
-----
She goes to The Grill and there she sits, a hark back to the old days where she cried at Bonnie, told her it was a competition (she doesn’t even try and he just picks her) — “And I try so hard,” she murmurs and that’s when he materializes beside her.
It fits, sort of. Because here he is, appearing on the worst night of her fucking life and does he just have a knack for this or what? “What do you want, Klaus?” She asks, mouth flattening into a thin line.
"Good evening to you too, love," he murmurs, lips quirking in affectation.
Caroline scowls, “I am not your love.” She doesn’t want to be anybody’s love - not Klaus’, not Tyler’s and certainly not the guy she’s trying to avoid thinking about with every fiber of her fucking being.
"I should have thought you’d be happy," he tells her. He’s not quite smirking but he’s not quite smiling either and when Caroline’s gaze slips upwards, she frowns. It was Klaus at the school tonight, Klaus trying to make some fucking example of what, exactly, he can do to them and Caroline doesn’t get it.
"Happy? With what, exactly? You trying to kill my best friend again? Gee, Klaus, I’m ecstatic." She pours herself another drink and knocks it back. The world is not even remotely hazy enough for her to be nice to the guy. It’s his fault they’re in this mess in the first place.
"He made his choice," he murmurs, low enough for only Caroline to hear.
She sucks in a sharp breath at that and her eyes glaze over. Oh he’s cruel. So fucking cruel. It’s not even Jenna or what he did to Stefan or all the people he may or may not have killed over the past gazillion years. He’s cruel because of this, because he knows her, because he knows the way she ticks and he thinks that, in some small way, he did her a favor tonight.
"I don’t care about Damon," she snarls back but it comes out a little shaky and Klaus just raises an eyebrow, uses her new-found whatthefuckisthisemotion to slide into the booth beside her.
"I think we both know you’re lying, sweetheart."
She is lying but she can’t say that. And she’s not his sweetheart but she can’t bring herself to say that either. She’s not his love, she’s not beautiful or strong or full of light. She’s just Caroline - crazy, neurotic Caroline, in love with her other vampire BFF and— “He picked her,” she whispers, “He picked Elena. She didn’t even try and he just—” Her chin drops in defeat and Caroline starts to cry.
She loves him - so fucking much - has done since they started spending time together, since Elena picked Stefan and Caroline made it her personal mission to pull him out of his Elena-shaped funk. She’s loved him since he put his arms around her and told her that everything would be okay (lied, basically), she’s loved him since they spent the night in that bar, playing a game where they admitted things to each other and Caroline whispered I never feel like I’m good enough and Damon called bullshit and gave her a list of reasons why she should. (You’re beautiful and gorgeous and crazy.)
Crazy? Absolutely. “I love him,” she whispers and in that moment she sounds broken and Caroline wonders how you can love someone and hate them at exactly the same time. Although it’s not Damon she hates, it’s the situation. She hates that he can do this to her, make her feel like this, because she’s not supposed to love him. She’s not supposed to love someone who can love somebody else, who can pick somebody else, because she’s supposed to be smarter than this. Does she not have one ounce of self-worth?
"Would you like me to kill him?" He asks, no mirth in his voice and when Caroline looks up the look in his eyes is—Strange. Warm, almost.
Caroline huffs out a half-sob, half-laugh (she doesn’t even know, okay?) shakes her head, “That would just make me even more miserable.”
He stays with her as she drinks herself into oblivion (who even knew vampires could do that?) and when Caroline literally cannot walk? Klaus totally pulls a Matt and scoops her up into his arms.
He takes her home, uses her keys to let them both inside and places her in her bed. Caroline is miserable enough so that when he turns to leave, she reaches for his hand. “Stay.”
She issues it like a soft, whispered command, hears his heart thud in his chest and wonders. She’s Caroline Forbes, forever 17, neurotic, slightly crazy. Why he even gives her the time of day is beyond her and yet here he is.
He sits beside her and Caroline sighs, rests her head on his shoulder. It’s clear from his position that he’s done this never. He doesn’t do the comforting thing - not Klaus. No, Klaus does the killing people horribly thing, the making everyone’s lives miserable thing. He doesn’t do this and yet—
She falls asleep.
She dreams but it’s restless. She sees eyes as deep as an ocean, sees danger, and Damon leaping towards a dark-haired beauty. Not blonde, not her. She wakes because in her dream, things don’t go okay. Damon leaps and Damon dies and Caroline is fifty-shades of fucking hysterical and it’s Klaus calming her, Klaus holding her like spun glass and she doesn’t get it.
Why is it him? Why is it Klaus who sees what she is but nobody else? He tells her she’s beautiful, strong and full of light and Damon picked Elena and Caroline wound up with nobody and what if that’s how it’s always going to be?
Always.
Forever seems pretty fucking lonely now she thinks about it.
"You should go," she tells Klaus quietly. She knows what’s next, she’s not an idiot. She slept in his arms, woke up screaming - she’s read enough Nicholas Sparks to know that she’s technically depressed enough (and single enough, which makes her even more depressed) to warrant pulling his mouth to hers.
She thinks he’d be good at the kissing thing. No, scratch that. Caroline knows he’d be amazing - all full lips and hands in new places and maybe sex, probably sex, because that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? At least, that’s the way it used to go.
He doesn’t make a move and Caroline doesn’t push. She stays there with Klaus until she’s half-dozing again, heavy lidded and trying to forget the reasons her heart feels like a dead weight in her chest.
"I could compel you," he offers later, just as the sun is beginning to slip through the slats of her blinds. Caroline’s eyes open immediately and Klaus watches as sleep is blinked out of them. This is, by far, the only thing he has ever offered that is halfway close to decent. Or honorable. Or any of the other words you can associate with offering to heal a heartbreak, "I could make you forget. Love is a vampires greatest weakness, Caroline."
"I know," she breathes out on a sigh. "Trust me, I know."
——-
He slips from her house to find the eldest Salvatore on the doorstep, hand poised and ready to knock. His lip curls into a faint smirk, his voice almost jovial. “Damon. To what does Caroline owe this pleasure?”
Blue eyes darken imperceptibly and Klaus doesn’t miss the way his nostrils flare as he takes in their mingled scent. “What the hell are you doing here, Klaus?”
"Now, now, mate," Klaus affects, letting his smirk grow, "A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. Give my regards to Caroline if you see her, won’t you?"
Damon is seething as Klaus walks away. He almost turns around and leaves. Almost. Instead, he slips into her house silently, hears the unmistakable sound of Caroline breathing and heaves his own sigh of relief (though Klaus is obsessed with Caroline, he’d never harm her willingly, he doesn’t think).
He heads to the room he’s stood in numerous times over this past year and there he finds her, sleeping, peaceful almost, fist curled around her bedspread.
His first absurd, irrational thought is that Klaus spent the night and he’s jealous. Bone-crushingly so. But then he realizes that the scent isn’t sex and it’s enough to assuage his fears. For now.
He turns to leave the way he came and then he hears it.
"Damon."
She’s not awake. He turns back and Caroline’s eyes are screwed tight shut and she’s dreaming but it’s not peaceful. Not any more.
Caroline bolts upright in her bed, breathless and with his name hanging off her lips. That’s when she sees him and her mouth makes this soft ‘o’ of surprise. She blinks sleepily, relieved to be out of that dream but confused. “What are you doing here?”
It takes him a moment. ”I… I was worried.”
Her eyes change from confused to flat in the space of a nano-second and he hates it.
"You don’t have to worry about me, Damon. I’m fine."
She’s not fine. She wasn’t fine when she left last night and she wasn’t fine when she spoke to Elena. He’s trying to work out where Klaus fits into that equation when she gets up off the bed and asks, “Is that all?”
Of course that’s not all, he wants to snap at her. She’s stubborn and infuriating and he knows he fucked up but if she’d just let him show her that he knows that—
"Only it’s Graduation and I have about a gazillion and one things to do and a hangover to get rid of, so…"
"Would you just—Caroline, stop.” He blurs in front of her, hand clasped around her upper arm. ”We need to talk.”
"Talk about what?" Her chin comes up, an act of utter defiance. "I don’t want to talk, Damon. I’m done talking. I’m fine, you’re fine, Elena’s definitely fine. I want to get dressed. I want to get dressed and go to my Graduation and pretend, for five minutes, that I’m a normal human, that I can graduate and not get beaten down by supernatural crap every seventeen seconds."
His grip on her arm tightens but Caroline doesn’t stand for that, not any more. She wrenches his arm out of his grasp, shakes her head furiously. ”No, Damon. Did you hear what I said? No. I don’t want to do this. I’m sure you’ve got some grand speech prepared about how if you could do things different you’d pick me but I don’t want to hear it, okay?”
His eyes widen. ”That’s what this is about? You think I picked her?”
Any other day, she’d be giving him her trademark 'you're such a dumbass' look. She doesn’t give him that, not today. ”I was standing right there, Damon. You protected her and I will never be sorry for that but somehow…”
She catches her lip between her teeth and her eyes glaze over. ”Somehow what?” He asks, though he’s not even sure that he wants to know.
"Somehow it’s always Elena. She always gets picked and it’s okay, I get it, I just… Maybe one of these days it would be nice to fall in love with a guy who hadn’t been in love with Elena first.”
Damon’s eyebrows crease, mouth slackening in shock. ”Did you just—”
The corners of her mouth tug downwards. ”It took Klaus to make me see it. He thinks he did me a favor last night at the school, although… At least now I know.”
“Caroline,” Damon starts.
"I think you should go."
He panics, takes a step forwards, hears his own heart thud in his chest.
Caroline lifts a hand, to press against his chest, effectively holds him at arms length. ”Damon, please. I don’t want to do this," she tells him quietly. "I don't want to. I want to go to Graduation and pretend like this never happened. I just--I want us to be friends again.”
"What if I don’t want to be friends?"
She smiled but it was sad. ”I don’t think you get a choice in that. Look, I need to get dressed. We’re okay, okay? I just need to not think about this for a while.”
It takes him a moment, but he steps back, the line of his shoulders slumping.
"I’ll see you at Graduation, right?" She cautions, meeting his gaze, voice deliberately cheery.
He looks like he wants to say something - anything - but what actually comes out of his mouth but he says it anyway, drags a hand down over his face. "I-I wouldn’t miss it, Blondie."
_FIN_