Chapter Text
Caroline woke up feeling like she'd been hit by a train.
The colors in her room wouldn't come into focus, her eyelashes barely separated from each other, and her muscles felt completely numb. Caroline got out of bed with a sigh.
I guess this is what happens when you sleep from the exhaustion of tears, Caroline thought.
Her partially inert body still couldn't understand how everything went so wrong in just one day. How all her efforts to keep her friends alive had gone down the rain in a few hours, and worst of all: Caroline couldn't do anything to stop it.
She'd been too busy trying to survive as the hostage of a super vampire with psychopathic tendencies. Caroline had watched Alaric make the decision not to complete the transition, watched Klaus leave with Esther's body through the woods, watched the Original witch's entire plan fall apart.
So, imagine her surprise when she woke up with half her forehead split open in an ugly gash, Elena passed out beside her, and Ric's cruel smile in front of her. Caroline could still feel the muzzle pressing against her face to stop her from casting spells. When Alaric pointed that dagger at her heart, Caroline knew she was going to die. She'd fought so hard to learn to defend herself, to memorize as many spells as she could, meticulously studied every grimoire she could get her hands on, but in the end, somehow, this was always how she ended up. Defenseless in the hands of a vampire.
"If I make you bleed more, maybe he'll show up faster," Alaric threatened with an amused look and a sadistic smile on his lips.
Why, in the name of all the spirits, making her bleed would attract an Original Hybrid who had probably already left that godforsaken town, she didn't know. Until he showed up.
Caroline was running for her life in the hallways of that school seconds after gathering all her strength and throwing Alaric across the room with a glance, Elena had screamed for her to run, when hands pulled her back from behind. The witch struggled in pure panic, desperately trying to free her bound hands and attempt another reckless magical blow, but then she heard a voice that instinctively calmed her down.
Klaus.
What the hell he was doing there, risking himself like that, Caroline didn't have the strength to ask, but she knew, deep down inside, that he wouldn't hurt her. He ripped the restraints off her wrists and her muzzle with a surprising gentleness, considering the contained fury in those blue eyes. Klaus told her to go home and lock the door, that he would take care of it.
Caroline was too tired to disagree, so she ran out of the high school and went home, exactly as he said. The witch waited restlessly in safety for someone to call and explain what was happening, but when she finally got a call, it was late at night, and with the worst news anyone could receive.
Stefan was dying. Stefan was dying because he, Damon, Elena, Bonnie had the brilliant idea of using the dissection spell Abby used on Mikael to trap Klaus instead of Ric. And the hunter had jammed a White Oak Stake into the chest of a defenseless hybrid, locked in a chained coffin and incapacitated in a completely desiccated body.
One of her best friends was counting the minutes until his death and her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, whatever Tyler was at this moment, would be doing the same somewhere near the mountains where he'd be breaking the sire bond of who knows how many hybrids.
Regardless of Caroline's controversial feelings about her failed relationship, it was still Tyler. Someone she loves—or loved—was dying.
Caroline broke down in desperate tears for her friends, for the brief goodbye words she exchanged with Stefan on the phone. And yet, even if she'd never admit it out loud, for the hybrid who looked at her as if Caroline were the dawn after a long night.
So, with willpower drawn from the pure necessity of washing away the rest of her tears, the witch walked to the bathroom and prepared to start a new day. Even if that day was composed of back-to-back funerals and irreparable losses.
Caroline left the room looking as impeccable as possible to console Elena over the loss of more loved ones and offer the support her friends needed at that moment, despite feeling drained inside herself. Caroline forced breakfast down in an empty house; the witch would need energy to survive until the end of that day without completely breaking down.
She'd just placed the plate in the sink when she heard the doorbell ring. Caroline frowned, having no idea who would be looking for her when all her friends should be at Elena's house, trying to offer maximum support to their friend after losing the Salvatore brothers, and whatever relationship those two have with her.
Or had.
Caroline opened the door, revealing the familiar face of someone who should be dead. The dark eyes that had once made promises of eternal love, the lips she had kissed countless times, those same lips that said he was leaving. That said he was abandoning her.
"Tyler," she sighed, relieved.
Caroline let her resentments about Tyler's abrupt departure die away before the warm relief that spread through her body at seeing the impossible in front of her. She didn't hesitate to throw herself into his arms, holding him tightly as if he would somehow vanish.
Even if Caroline could no longer continue loving him, he still occupied a space in her heart. How could he not? They had sort of fought or sort of broken up just two days ago; everything had been very indefinite after that.
Tears welled in her eyes as she breathed against Tyler, trying to summon some of her dignity and hold back her crying.
"How?" she questioned, her voice weak and desperately shaky as she felt Tyler's arms around her body. "I thought... Stefan said... You should be dead."
Caroline pulled back just enough to look at him. She placed her hand on his face and almost saw a kind of admiration in Tyler's eyes, as if he had just woken up in a dream.
"You should be dead," she repeated, her voice failing again. A few tears finally escaped her eyes. "Stefan told me Klaus died."
Tyler's hands rose calmly to touch Caroline's arms, a touch so soft that it made her frown slightly. Tyler had never touched her like that. Then a terribly familiar smile slowly made its way into the wrong lips.
"I appreciate your concern, love," the smile broadened. The strangeness took over Caroline's face as Tyler smugly tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. "But as it happens, I'm quite difficult to kill."
It took exactly five seconds for Caroline to understand that it wasn't just the smile that was wrong; the touch, the look, and the manner of speaking were too. She knew the person she was talking to, only they were using the wrong face. The wrong body.
Caroline took a step back, recognizing the person beneath Tyler's brown eyes, watching that smile grow larger and larger.
"Klaus?" she inquired in a perplexed breath.
Her mind stopped for a moment in shock. Stefan said Klaus had died, that Damon saw with his own eyes Ric stick a stake into his desiccated body, and suddenly, he was standing in front of her... Caroline stopped.
What was she doing? They were talking about Klaus here. Of course, he'd find a way to dodge a White Oak Stake in the hands of a super vampire created by the Original witch, even if he was chained in a damn coffin.
"Hello, love."
Klaus was about to say something when Caroline grabbed Tyler's wrist and pulled him into her house so quickly that the hybrid only had time to stifle a laugh at the conspiratorial way she closed the door behind them, analyzing the surroundings to check if anyone had seen them.
"Darling, if you're expecting a certain hunter to show up at your door, I'm happy to inform you that I am perfectly capable of covering my tracks," Klaus amusedly said with a smug smile on a face that didn't belong to him. "Besides, there is only one person in this cursed town who knows about my brief, yet inconvenient, stay in this body."
Caroline turned to Klaus, alarmed. She barely managed to process everything he was saying due to the calm, ego-soaked tone so characteristic of Klaus, yet so out of place in Tyler's voice.
"How did this happen?" Caroline formulated, blinking frantically at the completely wrong figure standing in her hallway. "How the hell did you end up in Tyler's body?"
Klaus smiled in Tyler's body and, with an extremely irritating calmness in Caroline's opinion, he walked into her living room, observing every inch of the place.
"As it turns out, the Bennet witch proved to be surprisingly more intelligent than your other idiot friends and put my soul in this body sometime between that history teacher finding me and Damon doing what he does best and failing to secure the safety of the bloodline he belongs to," Klaus replied distractedly, meticulously analyzing the photos on the fireplace.
Caroline slowly drew a breath to stop herself from screaming at him. I mean, she spent the entire night thinking her friends were dead; damn it, she was preparing to organize multiple funerals. And now Klaus was here, in her maybe-ex-boyfriend's body, proudly talking about how he ingeniously escaped death and looking at her childhood photos as if it were just another Wednesday. What kind of person does that?
"So, no one died?" Caroline asked in a controlled tone of voice, holding her temper by a thread and reminding herself that she should be celebrating the fact that Klaus had miraculously shown up on her doorstep.
"It's all really a matter of time, if you want my opinion."
Caroline let out a sigh of relief that finally made Klaus turn to her. Tyler's familiar eyes scanned her body as they had many times before, but this time it wasn't with desire, but with... concern, or something similar. As if he were looking for injuries from the previous day on Caroline.
She didn't have them anymore. Klaus's blood had healed everything long ago. Still, he found himself looking for any sign of damage. Caroline couldn't help the relief that surged in her chest at seeing him alive, even if it was just to annoy her. He had saved her the day before, and regardless of the hidden motives that might exist behind the action, he had done so by putting himself at risk in the process, and it had almost cost him everything.
"What are you doing here, Klaus?" Caroline's question broke a brief silence where they observed each other, something deeper than the witch could handle inhabiting his eyes. The moment passed. Klaus resumed his proudly nonchalant posture and allowed himself to sink into a comfortable armchair.
"I need you to perform a small spell and put me back in my body," he replied.
Caroline frowned.
"Shouldn't you be looking for Bonnie for that?"
"I would be if she'd be so kind as to answer her phone," he stated. "And since I'm not too inclined to remain in this body for much longer, I can not wait."
Wait. Bonnie isn't answering? If Caroline thought her friends' silence after Stefan's call was due to grief, that idea died when Klaus rang her doorbell, so there was only one other explanation for her gang's recent disappearance.
Something was terribly wrong.
"What do you mean Bonnie isn't answering?" Caroline inquired, worry returning to her face. "She wouldn't just forget to..."
Her sentence was abruptly interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. She breathed a momentary sigh of relief, thinking it was Bonnie, but the feeling died the instant Caroline recognized her mother's name on the screen.
Liz never calls.
"Hi, Mom," Caroline answered, her heart rate abruptly accelerating. "What happened?"
"Caroline, we have a problem."
It was the phrase Caroline hated because when her mother recognized there was a supernatural problem in Mystic Falls, it meant a total catastrophe was approaching. She gripped the phone tighter, and Klaus shamelessly leaned his head in to hear the conversation better.
"Alaric handed all of you over to the Council last night. They've taken control of the town hall and ordered my men to arrest Carol and me at the police station. I managed to steal the phone of one of the younger ones to warn you..."
Caroline could hear her heartbeats echoing in her ears. Klaus stood up, tense, watching her.
"What? Mom? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Caroline listen to me," Liz commanded, her firm voice masking her own desperation. "They're planning an attack. I need you to grab Bonnie and everyone you can and get out of town now."
Caroline blinked several times, trying to shake off the ice-cold fear running through her veins.
"Mom, I can't..." she tried.
"Yes, you can, my love," Liz cut in a little more gently. "They won't kill me, but they will kill you. Get out of town now and don't look back until you are far away from here."
Caroline wanted to say no. She wanted to refuse to leave her mother behind, trapped in her own police station, but the rational part of her brain understood that the Council would never hurt a human like her mom. Witches, on the other hand, they had a certain history of burning at the stake. Caroline looked up at Klaus, deathly serious as he returned her gaze.
"All right," the witch agreed. "I'll run."
"I love you, honey," Liz said goodbye. "Stay safe."
Liz ended the call without another word and Caroline was about to run to her room, grab a bag to stuff the few grimoires she had into, and bolt out to her car, when a sequence of unpleasant sounds was heard coming from outside. Four heavy thuds echoed before the most complete silence took over the house.
Caroline looked at Klaus in panic for a second, raising her hands defensively. She dredged up any spell she could use to escape a situation like this without accidentally killing anyone. If the Council thought she'd be an easy target, they were sorely mistaken.
The next second, Klaus was already opening the door. Caroline standing defensively behind him, both to stop him from killing anyone on her porch and to remind him that he was no longer in his invulnerable Original body. But when Caroline and Klaus stepped outside, all they saw were the bodies of four police officers—hopefully—unconscious on her front porch and a man standing, wiping blood from the corner of his lips.
Kol smiled at her.
"Oh, look, the witch I was looking for," he looked disdainfully at the two officers beneath his feet. "I hope you don't mind me dirtying your lovely porch, but in my defense, they didn't seem to have very good intentions."
Caroline had never gotten this close to Kol before, only having met him once, at the Mikaelson ball, and even then, there were hundreds of people between them. Now that the witch could get a clear look at the Original Hybrid's younger brother, she saw the same dangerous glint all of them carried in their eyes, the nonchalant presumptuousness in his posture announcing that he was the most powerful creature in the room, and the snobbish curve of his lips as if he knew exactly the means he could use to get what he wanted, no matter who stood before him.
Caroline knew she needed to be cautious with him. For all Kol knew, his brother had just been brutally murdered because of her friends' stupidity.
"What are you doing here, Kol?" Caroline questioned, looking at him suspiciously.
The vampire just smiled at her.
"Invite me in, and I'll be happy to tell you all the sordid details," Kol leaned against the fence, his dark eyes gleaming with danger. "You should be very happy that I need you. In other scenarios, I would have already handed you over to your little Council to be burned alive, or whatever they do with witches these days, and set your house on fire for your part in my brother's murder."
Caroline really tried. But she had been too overwhelmed with information in the last few minutes to be blamed for her recklessness.
"Yeah, well, get in line behind the Originals who want my help," she retorted, completely ignoring the vampire's threat. "Apparently, I'm opening a Mikaelson charity center."
Kol narrowed his eyes at Caroline, violence bordering on a explosion within him. Then, Klaus, who had observed the exchange discreetly, saw an opening for his intervention.
"As much as I appreciate your sense of vengeance on my behalf, Kol," Klaus interrupted, looking sternly at his brother in Tyler's body. "Caroline certainly had no part in my murder, and I am definitely not dead."
Kol stared at the hybrid boy for a few perplexed seconds until he understood why that attitude sounded so irritatingly familiar to him.
"Oh, Nik, you wickedly genius bastard," Kol swore, making a proud smile emerge on his brother's face. "I should have known you're too evil to die."
Klaus was about to open his mouth to give him a sarcastic reply when Caroline stepped forward.
"Look, I'd love to stay for the family reunion, but I have an entire town hunting me down right now. I need to find my friends and get the hell out of here as fast as possible, so maybe next time."
Caroline had turned to go inside, determined to grab her car keys and leave with just her wallet and the clothes on her back until Kol spoke again.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news for you darling, but your friends must be as far gone as my sister by now."
Caroline turned around abruptly.
"The Council got Rebekah?" the witch asked, surprised.
How much arsenal could they possibly have to take down an Original? Hell, how many people did they have on their side besides the police department? Caroline knew the Council had a secular hatred for supernatural creatures and had been accumulating a considerable amount of weapons, but she had no idea how large it was.
"They got all of them," Kol stated, his face suddenly serious. "Now, are you going to invite me in or not?"
With the police officers properly disguised by a quick spell and two Originals snooping around her living room, Caroline finally allowed herself to feel the gravity of the problem she had buried herself in up to her neck just an hour after breakfast.
She tried calling Stefan four times, then Bonnie, then Elena, Matt, and finally Damon. None of them answered. And while Caroline desperately tried to contact her friends, the two Originals in her house were happily analyzing everything they saw completely unconcerned about leaving her to her lost search.
"You know, I'm loving this new century," Kol commented, observing the small sound box in the corner of the room. "You have devices where you can listen to music whenever you want. That's quite impressive."
Klaus smiled pretentiously as he gracefully sat on Caroline's couch.
"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, brother," Klaus began, a flash of threat in his dark eyes. "Let's make sure it stays that way."
Another unanswered call and Caroline was already getting annoyed by the ringing sound. She gripped the phone tightly; it's impossible that even Jeremy wouldn't answer.
"Is that for your little witch inviting me in? How cute," Kol smiled, returning his brother's gaze, completely oblivious to the blonde nervously pacing with the phone to her ear.
The smile died on Klaus's lips immediately.
"Kol, you would be wise not to provoke me."
Damn it, Jeremy, answer the bloody phone, Caroline thought.
"You know, Nik, when you try to threaten me like that, it makes me start to regret having mourned you."
Klaus's reply was interrupted by a string of curses that escaped Caroline's lips after the twenty-seventh unanswered call. Kol cracked a genuinely amused smile.
"I think I might end up liking her," he told his brother, making Klaus's frown deepen.
Caroline shoved her cell phone into her pocket and turned to Kol with a resigned sigh, almost as if she couldn't believe this was happening.
"This makes no sense at all. If the Council is targeting supernatural creatures, why would they take Elena, Matt, or Jeremy? For all intents and purposes, they are human," Caroline asked more to herself than to the Originals. Trying to create some kind of logic in this disaster.
"The doppelgänger?" Kol interfered with a mischievous smile on his lips. "I don't think she fits that category anymore."
Caroline suddenly paled. Panic running cold throughout her body as she looked at Kol.
"What does that mean?" Caroline inquired slowly.
Kol shrugged as if he didn't understand the witch's fear.
"After your history teacher killed my dear brother, his next target was Rebekah. The idiot was trying to free you, Nik," Kol recounted simply. "She managed to escape and called me for help, but when Bekah told Elijah what happened at the warehouse, well, he did what he's been doing for the last thousand years— protected his favorite siblings. Or what was left of them."
Klaus clenched his fists, leaning on the couch. Dark anger in his eyes.
"Kol, what did Elijah do?" he inquired, his voice no longer allowing for stalling.
"He threw Rebekah's friend's car off a bridge," the vampire replied without hesitation. "With him and your precious doppelgänger inside."
Caroline let out a horrified gasp, covering her mouth with her hand.
"I'm almost certain she's a vampire now and the hunter is dead," he added, looking at Caroline as if trying to appease her despair.
"Matt?" she managed to ask.
"Alive."
She let out a sigh of relief. For a second, Caroline thought her ex-boyfriend and her best friend were dead. They were still alive, but not without a price. God, Elena must be devastated. Maybe she would end up organizing those funerals after all.
Klaus stood up, furious. He paced back and forth across Caroline's living room, trying to placate his temper.
"He shouldn't have done that," his voice sounded low, threatening even through Tyler's tone. "I needed her human."
Kol rolled his eyes at his older brother's anger.
"Nik, you were dead," he retorted. "You didn't need anything anymore, but I'm sure Elijah will love to hear your complaints about creating more hybrids. He must be depressed somewhere near New York."
Caroline had already understood that Kol and Klaus had a tendency to start conversations with provocations that would eventually lead them into an incessant fight, which one of them would lose control and try to murder the other. That would probably be Klaus. But the witch didn't have time to waste listening to the squabbles of a thousand-year-old problematic family; damn it, she had friends to save.
"Okay, I need focus here," Caroline interrupted, drawing the Originals' attention to her. "If Elena is really a vampire—I can't believe I'm saying this—then Ric is dead, which means we have one less maniac hunter to worry about."
"There is no 'we' here, darling," Klaus interfered, his expression completely closed off. "I just want my body back and to get out of this filthy town without looking back."
Caroline put her hands on her hips, irritation finally overcoming the control of her logical thought. She looked at Klaus as if she could make him spontaneously combust with her eyes alone.
"Well, right now, I'm the only witch willing to do that, so you're going to help me stop a council of lunatics from killing my friends and your sister."
Caroline's tone of voice left no room for further objection, but of course, Klaus would try.
"Rebekah can not be killed," Klaus countered, shrugging with a cruel smile. "In fact, she shouldn't be capable of being caught by a bunch of humans with stakes. Kol, would you care to explain how this happened?"
There was accusation in Tyler/Klaus's voice when he turned to his brother, his eyes burning with a threat. Kol hesitated, Caroline noticed, as if considering lying options a second before deciding. His brother clenched his fists, noticing the same thing.
"Rebekah called me needing help," Kol began, his voice calm and slow, his shrewd eyes carefully analyzing his brother's posture. "She wanted to plan a revenge when we were ambushed. As it happens, our dear sister was smarter than any of us. Before running from the hunter, Rebekah fought him and managed to steal the only weapon he had against us."
Tyler's dark eyes gleamed in recognition, his lips slightly parted in surprise as Kol slowly pulled the White Oak Stake out from inside his jacket. Caroline gasped, stunned.
"The Stake," she murmured.
"Rebekah gave it to me and told me to warn Elijah, who would love to participate in our little plan to wipe this town off the map. She would take care of those idiots and meet me at the Mansion," Kol recounted, carefully putting the only weapon that could kill his family back into his jacket. "But she never showed up."
Caroline completely ignored the part about the White Oak Stake. In fact, it was even good that the Originals had it. That piece of wood had caused too many problems in the hands of her friends, like Finn's murder at Jeremy's hands not long ago, which incidentally caused the death of who knows how many thousands of vampires worldwide. One mass murder was enough, in Caroline's opinion.
"So wherever Rebekah is, everyone else is too," the witch assented. "I'm going to locate her."
Caroline was about to hunt down all the elements needed to perform a locator spell when her cell phone's ringtone flooded the room. She sighed with relief when she saw Matt's name on the screen.
"Matt! Thank God, what the hell is going on?" Caroline inquired the second she put the phone to her ear.
"Care, the Council found out about you guys," Matt recounted. "They took Elena right after the Salvatores. I tried to stop it, but Elena told me to keep Bonnie safe. Everything went wrong this time, Care. I don't know how we're going to fix this."
That makes two of us, Caroline thought, I also have no idea what to do to fix this mess.
"Where's Jeremy?" the witch asked, her brow slightly furrowed in concern as she tallied how many butts she would have to save today. "Was he caught too?"
"No. I'm with him and Bonnie at the witch house," Caroline knew that was how Matt referred to the place where a hundred witches were burned alive, but she couldn't help but frown at the mention. "She's trying to contact the Ancestors to help."
"Matt, Elena is a vampire now," Caroline stated, trying to find some kind of reasoning in that dialogue. "How could Bonnie possibly help her?"
"How do you... You know what? Never mind," Matt fumbled. "Elena isn't a vampire yet, Care, she's in transition. Bonnie is trying to bring her back so she doesn't have to be one."
Okay. That is absolutely insane.
Caroline had never heard of anything like that being possible, and judging by the looks she got from Kol and Klaus, literally the first vampires ever created, they didn't know either. The witch didn't know how to respond to that.
"Okay," she tried.
"But from what I'm understanding from her and Jeremy's conversation, it's not going very well," Matt let out a sorrowful sigh. "The Ancestors are angry at Bonnie."
It was no surprise. Caroline might not know the details of the spell Abby used to stop Mikael, but she knew the price it demanded. A life. And even if Bonnie had used Jeremy for it and he had come back to life with the Gilbert ring, it was still a dark kind of magic. The kind Bonnie's Ancestors didn't like one bit.
And if she knew her friend, Bonnie wouldn't stop until she managed to do the impossible for Elena to have her whole life back, even if it cost her own.
"Okay, Matt, I'll take care of this," Caroline announced.
"What do you want me to do?"
"I need you to stay there with Bonnie and make sure she doesn't end up getting hurt," Caroline commanded. "If the Council finds you, I need you to grab her and Jeremy and run as far away from this town as possible."
"But Care..."
"Matt, I'll take care of this, I promise," Caroline interrupted, incisively. "But I can't do this if I'm worried about whatever crazy thing Bonnie is doing. She needs help, and I can't be there for her right now, so you're going to have to do it. If I'm not with our friends by the end of the night, get out of town and never look back."
That was all Caroline said before ending the call. She didn't have time to listen to Matt's protests. If Caroline was right, they didn't have much more time to spare.
The witch ran to one of the living room dresser drawers and pulled out a map. She went to the kitchen, where she spread it out on the dining table.
"Why do you look so worried, love?" Kol questioned, calmly walking into the kitchen, where Caroline was rushing back and forth to prepare the spell.
"Because if I'm right, the Founders' Council could burn all my friends alive at any moment," Caroline said, positioning the candles around the map.
Kol crossed his arms, leaning against the wall. The vampire watched the witch preparing the spell with keen eyes.
"And how can you be so sure of that?"
Caroline filled a small bowl with water and placed it on the table, facing Kol and the newly arrived Klaus with seriousness.
"I grew up as a member of a founding family," a shadow fell over Caroline's bright blue eyes. Memories of her father and his torture trying to make their way to the surface. "I know the kind of hatred they have for us. They proudly remember how they burned all the vampires in Mystic Falls in a church in 1864, how do you think they would react upon finding out they are back?"
Klaus had a somber look on his face.
"They would try to burn them again," the hybrid's voice was low, somber as he met Caroline's eyes. There were emotions the witch didn't recognize behind Tyler's brown irises, and unfortunately, she didn't have time to unravel them.
"Exactly. So," Caroline raised an eyebrow at the two Originals. "I need blood to locate Rebekah. Kol, if you don't mind..."
Kol approached the witch, causing his brother to become even more rigid a few steps behind. Dark veins covered his eyes as his fangs emerged, his eyes gaining a completely crimson hue, but Caroline didn't back down. She waited for the vampire to bite his own wrist and let his blood stain the water in the bowl red. Neither of them looked away from the other for a second.
Caroline knew the younger Original was trying to decipher her, to understand her weaknesses and desires to discover if he could trust that solitary witch from a small town. But she didn't let herself be intimidated. Caroline had learned not to fear vampires a long time ago and ever since she discovered her powers, she refused to bow to one again as she had done with Damon.
"That's enough, thank you."
Kol was the first to break the contact between them and step away. If he managed to find what he was looking for, Caroline didn't know, but what she did know was that until they stopped the Council from burning his sister alive, they would have to work together. The witch lit the candles with a wave of her hand and began the spell.
The Latin words flowed easily from her mouth. The sound of each one carried contours of the power running through the witch's veins. Words that could change the world at her will. Caroline often felt less of a witch than her friend Bonnie due to the lack of Ancestors to guide her, a disconnection the blonde undeniably felt in relation to that world. But Caroline never felt as much of a witch as in the moment she cast a spell.
So, as she poured the water mixed with Kol's blood onto the map and her words guided the liquid to Rebekah's location, Caroline felt there was no hunter in the world who could stop her from going after her friends. The spell that unleashed the power inside the witch returned to its slumber, and suddenly, she knew exactly where all of them were being held.
"It's the Young Farm," Caroline announced. She rushed past the Originals, quickly grabbing her bag and car keys. "I know where it is, let's go."
Kol followed with a slight frown, impressed by the witch's unstoppable determination as she crossed the front door.
"Is she always like this?" he asked.
A mischievous smile spread across Klaus's lips, a dangerous glint in his dark eyes.
"I'd be happy to answer you, brother, if it were any of your business."
"Hey!" Caroline called out, stressed, with one hand on the car door handle. "Are you coming or not?"
Caroline turned to the car, ready to open the door. She noticed the officer out of the corner of her eye a second too late. The shot seemed to echo in her ears, accompanied by the cold sensation of fear.
She heard heavy breathing but didn't feel the pain of the bullet. Something had stepped into the way. Klaus was standing in front of her. The shot had hit him in the shoulder, but he hadn't even blinked.
No. His eyes were wide open, consumed by an immense fury, a desire for violence.
Caroline couldn't even scream to stop him before he lunged in front of the officer, who fired three more times with wide eyes before Klaus delivered a precise blow with his hand. And the man's head flew away from his neck.
The witch let out a gasp of horror, but she didn't feel personally guilty for the death of one of her mother's officers. She could feel her hands trembling as the truth slowly hit her.
They weren't trying to capture her. They were trying to kill her.
That officer would have killed her in front of her house without a single word. She was barely eighteen, Caroline hadn't even graduated high school, for God's sake! Extreme violence aside, she couldn't find the spark of anger within herself to yell at Klaus about beheading people in the middle of the street.
What did that say about her?
Klaus wiped his hand on the officer's jacket before appearing in front of her again. Caroline hadn't even noticed she wasn't blinking until the hybrid placed his hands on her arms, anchoring her to reality.
"Caroline, are you alright?"
In her ears, Caroline knew it was Tyler's voice. He had asked her that countless times since they began that unexpected friendship, but the witch couldn't help but hear Klaus's low, husky cadence. She couldn't help but wish it was his voice.
"Thank you."
That was all the witch said. Her voice low, still in shock, but it hit Klaus with a power Caroline didn't know. It was the second time he had saved her life in less than 48 hours.
"Let's go. We don't have time to waste."
When Caroline parked her car in a wooded area, it was already late afternoon.
"Do you have some kind of plan?" Kol inquired, a nonchalant smile on his face, as he approached Caroline in the woods surrounding the Young House.
The witch slung her bag across her shoulders. Caroline didn't like to brag about finding a perfect bag for occasions like that, but she recognized she had combined good taste with ingenuity, putting together everything a witch would need to perform some basic defense spells in a perfectly cut beige leather.
Caroline made sure to prove every second that witches had a reputation for style to maintain.
"Get in, grab Elena, Stefan, and Rebekah, and leave," Caroline replied with a shrug.
Klaus approached the witch from the right, an ironic smile on his lips.
"What about Damon?"
"I really don't care about him."
The hybrid's smile broadened, mischief enveloping his features as he looked at Caroline.
"I'm liking this plan more already," he commented.
Kol rolled his eyes with a bored posture.
"Can we skip to the killing part? I'm getting a bit bored here."
Caroline gave him a warning look, as if she were about to break his head with a hammer.
"Not to be a buzzkill for vampires with psychotic tendencies," the witch began with an incisive tone, but Kol merely tilted his head in approval of her description. "But, despite not being inclined to defend a bunch of false moralists wanting to burn me alive, I strongly suggest this doesn't turn into a generalized bloodbath."
Kol pretended to consider for a second, too quickly.
"I won't make any promises, little witch."
Absolutely incredible, Caroline thought, I'm walking into the lion's den with two vampires whose favorite pastime is mass murder.
Caroline watched as Klaus simply made himself visible to half the police force and the Council hunters with the tranquility of someone entering a tea house on a sunny day.
"Good evening, community of Mystic Falls," Klaus greeted, the proud smile looking almost wrong on Tyler's lips. "I believe you are in possession of something that belongs to me."
Pastor Young emerged from the main house's front door. The face was so familiar to Caroline that it hurt to think he would put a bullet in her heart before she could even blink.
"Tyler?" the pastor asked with a frown.
Pastor Young walked down the porch steps, stopping right behind at least two dozen men armed with rifles. All weapons pointed at the nonchalant hybrid in the center of the lawn.
"I'm sorry, but no. Tyler is not available at the moment, to your misfortune," Klaus smiled. "No, you're dealing with someone much worse."
Kol scoffed from where he and Caroline were observing the hybrid. The two remained hidden under the shadows of the trees, while the hybrid masterfully drew the attention of the entire farm to himself.
"Oh, please," Kol complained. "Can he be a little less dramatic?"
Caroline shrugged, unimpressed. The witch had already watched him enter Alaric's body just to make a grand entrance in Mystic Falls. She knew well the dramatic potential of the Original Hybrid.
"I think it runs in the family," she murmured.
Pastor Young stared at Tyler's face for a long moment before making his decision. The decision, Caroline imagined, that Klaus wanted him to make.
"Put him with the others."
And so the pandemonium began.
Caroline's ears were burst by the deafening noise of the gunshots. Before the witch could see the color of the blood of what she knew would quickly become a massacre—despite all her warnings to Klaus and Kol—the Original grabbed her arms and ran with her at vampire speed into the barn.
What Caroline saw in that place, she thought she'd never see outside the screens of a horror movie. Cages were in the places where there should have been stalls, and her friends were slumped inside them, breathing heavily. The witch breathed in the air charged with something she recognized immediately, its characteristic taste caught in her throat. It was verveine. There was verveine in the ventilation.
"Oh my God..." Caroline whispered.
"Hey!" an officer burst in from the other side of the barn, raising his rifle. "What are you doing here?"
Caroline watched the cruel smile on Kol's lips out of the corner of her eye, as the Original discreetly positioned himself in front of her.
"Did no one ever tell you to shoot before asking questions?" Kol inquired, forcing his face into a mask of disappointment, his dark eyes gleaming, mischievous. "People of this century, honestly."
In a second, Kol was in front of the officer, throwing his rifle to the ground and then hitting him in the face with a punch that had probably dislocated the man's jaw.
Caroline found Stefan slumped in a pile of dirty hay, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"Stefan."
Caroline murmured two quick words in Latin, and the cell lock broke. She pushed the grating, which creaked as it opened, before kneeling beside Stefan.
"Caroline..." he tried.
The witch draped one of the vampire's arms over herself and strained to support Stefan's weight as she tried to lift him.
"Stefan, you need to snap out of it, okay?" Caroline gasped. "I can't carry all of you out."
"Elena..." Stefan began again. His skin deadly pale, his lips colorless. The vampire struggled to put one foot in front of the other as the witch dragged him out of the cell. "She's in transition... she's dying..."
That was all Caroline needed to hear before running to the stall next to Stefan's, where her best friend was barely breathing, her forehead resting against the wood. The witch could almost watch the life draining out of her friend, her heart nearly leapt out of her chest.
"Elena!" she called.
Caroline broke the lock with a bang and had her hands on Elena's face within seconds.
"Elena, I need you to wake up!" Caroline tried to keep her voice firm, but her eyes kept welling up.
That was the girl Caroline grew up with, the smile she had learned to recognize as a part of herself, the eyes with which she had shared practically every important moment of her life. And she was dying in front of her.
Caroline felt panic settling in her throat. Fear threatened to paralyze her limbs like in the night that haunted her nightmares, but the witch stabilized herself on her feet. She was no longer the superficial little girl that vampires considered an easy target; Caroline was a witch now, and a very good one. She definitely wouldn't let her best friend die.
Caroline grabbed Elena's waist and threw her weight over her shoulders to drag her out of the cell. Her knees were already starting to protest after carrying a second person like that, but the witch refused to stop until her friend was kneeling beside the unconscious officer.
Rebekah already had the poor man's wrist under her fangs, and Caroline waited until Elena did the same with the other with a kind of sickly hesitation on her face.
"Caroline, could you..." Stefan began, pointing to the cell where Damon was slumped.
Could she? Yes. Did she want to? No. But it was Stefan asking, and it wasn't like Caroline could let her friend's brother and whatever he meant to Elena die in a cell full of verveine. Not that she didn't want to, of course.
The witch murmured the same spell as the other cells to break Damon's lock, but she didn't go in to retrieve him. That was Stefan's role. Caroline watched the moment those cold blue eyes gained sudden perplexed and relieved emotions upon looking at Elena.
Caroline found that too disgusting to keep looking as the Salvatores helped Elena stand up and wipe the blood from her mouth. She could keep her opinions about the relationship of those three to herself, but she was definitely not obligated to watch.
Instead, the witch watched Rebekah stand up and cast an astonished look at her brother, her blue irises covered with tears the vampire was too proud to let fall.
"You came for me."
Then, Kol flashed the most genuine smile Caroline had seen all day at his sister.
"Well, someone had to stop you from ruining the family name by being captured by humans, sister," Kol joked. "Imagine what our brother would say."
Rebekah's hurt look reflected such profound pain that Caroline felt bad for watching the exchange.
"He'd definitely lecture me about my recklessness," the Original said. "And I wouldn't hear the end of it until the next century."
Klaus, as if summoned just by the mention of his siblings, entered the barn in Tyler's body. Covered in blood. Caroline couldn't contain the pang of irritation that made her clench her fists. At this rate, this town will run out of a police force, for God's sake!
"What did I say about bloodbaths?" she scolded, shooting daggers with her eyes in Klaus's direction.
The hybrid shrugged with an insolent smile on his lips as he faced the blonde.
"Don't worry, love, they're still alive," Klaus affirmed, positioning his hands behind his back, not particularly sorry about anything. "Most of them, anyway."
Caroline pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, searching for a calm within herself that the adrenaline, the fact that her best friend was now a vampire, and the killing weren't allowing her to have.
"Tyler?" Damon called, his brow furrowed in confusion. "You should be dead."
But Rebekah knew better than that. She would recognize the way her brother's eyes shone after a killing spree anywhere. The way he spoke to the witch reached the Original's ears with a painful familiarity. The vampire's lips parted, tears finally wetting her cheeks as she watched Tyler. And who was behind that face.
"Nik?" Rebekah risked, her voice low.
Tyler's dark eyes rested on his tearful sister. A smug smile appeared on those lips.
"Hello, Bekah."
While Stefan, Elena, and Damon's faces paled, Rebekah ran and threw herself into her brother's arms with all the strength she still had. Caroline would never admit it, but she found the scene more beautiful than she should have.
The witch always wished for a bigger family, but after her parents divorced and she found herself alone day after day in that house, the girl wished for siblings to keep her company, to hug her and tell her everything would be alright. Sometimes, having someone with whom to unconditionally share life's monotony made a difference simply by reminding you that you're not alone. Not that Caroline would know what that's like, she never had siblings.
"I hate you, you controlling, selfish bastard," Caroline never thought she'd hear those words in such an affectionate way. "If you ever do anything like this again, I swear I'll take the stake and kill you myself."
Klaus smiled at his sister after pulling away.
"I see you're still as gentle as a dagger, Rebekah."
"Ah, sorry to interrupt this touching family reunion," Damon intervened, standing up, his blue eyes serious. "But we really need to get out of here."
"I heard Pastor Young talking to the other Council members earlier," Elena added, still looking stunned by the human blood staining her clothes. Caroline couldn't help but feel sorry for her friend; she almost felt tempted to ask if Elena was okay, but dismissed the idea upon realizing how stupid the question was. "They're going to blow this place up."
Caroline shot a meaningful look at Kol in a silent "I told you so." Everything became a blur as Caroline felt hands around her and the wind in her hair, while someone carried her out of the barn at vampire speed.
Caroline could only identify that it was Klaus by the metallic smell of the blood on his clothes. They only stopped when they heard the roar of the explosion. It was so loud that it completely consumed Caroline's senses, but when she turned around, it wasn't the barn that was engulfed in flames.
It was the Young House.
Caroline's lips parted, stunned, as high flames rose to the sky from what was once an elegant country house.
"The Council members..." she whispered.
As far as she knew, there were more than a dozen people in that house. Even if they weren't the best citizens in the world, they were still people. Many of them whom Caroline might have known at some point in her life.
"Oh my God," Elena lamented beside her, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Stefan put an arm around her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. Caroline looked at Klaus, who contemplatively watched the flames, the fire reflected in his dark eyes.
"Was that you?" the witch asked.
Klaus looked somber when he replied:
"No."
"It wasn't me either," Kol declared beside his brother. The Original's face was covered in shadows, his eyes always calculating something only he seemed to know.
"Whoever it was did us a favor," Damon affirmed, staring at the burning house, impassive. "Everyone who knew about us was in that house."
The witch didn't know about that, but a bad feeling crept up her spine. Almost like a shiver that consumed all her bones, tensing all her muscles. Whatever happened in that house, Caroline doubted it was anything good.