Chapter Text
Caroline ran. Branches cut her arms. Her breath hitched, uneven. Fear pressed harder, faster. The forest was a blur of black and silver. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. Every step was survival; every heartbeat a countdown. Somewhere ahead lay safety or a dead end. She wasn’t sure, but she kept running.
Of all the ways she imagined the afterlife, sprinting from Star Wars like creatures across a Lord of the Rings landscape wasn’t on the list. Caroline ducked under a low branch, narrowly avoiding what looked suspiciously like the Chesire Cat but with a bad attitude. The ground was also littered with glowing mushrooms, pulsing, like nightclub strobes, and she was pretty sure Middel-earth had never been this tacky. So maybe more Alice in Wonderland than LOTR.
Either way, she was definitely going to have a word with Bonnie. Bonnie described the other side as a real-world replica, not some fan-fiction mash-up nightmare. If this was the grand cosmic plan, then the universe had a terrible sense of humor.
Behind her, the Strill called out, a bone-chilling half rattle, half growl that sent shivers down her spine. Caroline pumped her legs harder, muttering under her breath. “This is bullshit.” She was still half expecting a hobbit to pop out wielding a lightsaber, just to complete the absurdity.
“KOL!” She shouted, straining to hear any reply. Five months ago, she would have laughed at the idea of Kol Mikelson—reckless, bloodthirsty brother to Klaus- would end up as her closest and only ally. Yet here she was, calling for him, praying he was alive and would come save her. Again. She last saw him leading the witches away to buy her time, but she hadn’t escaped. Not really. Instead, she stumbled straight into the sights of a Strill-monsters born of nightmares, that hunted the dead.
The trees thinned, and a cliff loomed ahead. Below, the faint roar of water promised either salvation or death. With no other choice, Caroline braced herself to jump, praying the river would be deep enough.
The Strill’s bone chilling call rumbled through the air, closing in. Another echoed from her left. Terror clawed at her chest, but she shoved it down, lungs burning as she sprinted for the edge. She didn’t stop. She didn’t think. She just leapt, hopefully not to her real death.
Her stomach dropped as the ground vanished beneath her. It was like slow motion as if she was in a movie. The river was impossibly far below. Then suddenly it was as if someone hit fast forward with a force slamming into her back. A scream tore free as claws ripped across her hip, and teeth sank into her shoulder. The Strill tumbled with her, dragging her down toward the raging water below.
Terror stole her breath, and she could no longer cry out as the water and rocks came rushing up and just before she hit, she closed her eyes.
Caroline gasps and smashes her head into something solid as she thrashes around, expecting the strill to be on top of her. She goes to put her hand on her head and hits another obstruction. Shifting brings home that she can't move, and she panics when she realizes she is in a container of some kind.
“What? Where am I? Kol? KOL!” Her voice cracked as she thrashes again in the suffocating dark. On the brink of hyperventilating, she manages to force herself still. “It’s fine. You’re fine. It’ll be fine,” she whispered, clinging to the words until her racing heart slowed.
“It's fine, you’re fine, it'll be fine.” She says again with a little more force.
When Caroline has her breathing under control and has calmed down, she focuses on her hearing. She hears very faint shuffling, but nothing else. It doesn't tell her anything about her situation. She doesn't recall anything after she jumps with the beast on her back. She doesn't even recall hitting the water.
Her hands fumbled against fabric, draped loosely around her confinement. She wasn’t in the same clothes either, and they shifted strangely, as if not fully on her. Cold realization struck.
“Oh my god… is this...am I in a coffin?”
The realization leaves her more confused than before. The few people they came across talked as if the souls were being used more like batteries for power. Why a coffin?Why change her clothes? The questions clawed at her as fiercely as the Strill’s teeth had, leaving her trembling in the dark.
She tries to push the lid open and though it moves a little, she hears dirt slipping in.
“They buried me?!” Caroline closes her eyes and fights against the panic at the idea of being buried. She shoved against the lid, nails clawing at the wood until her fingertips ached. The wood scraped beneath her frantic hands, but it didn’t give. Every shove was met with the crushing weight of earth pressing down from above.
Her breath hitched, panic still threatening to spiral again. Clawing wasn’t going to work. She knew that.
“Think Caroline. Think.” She says as she struggles to take a few deep breaths.
She forced herself still, chest heaving, then balled her fists. If scratching couldn’t break her free, then she’ do it the Slayer way. Buffy Summers hadn’t clawed her way out of the grave- she punched herself free.
Caroline drew in a ragged breath, braced her shoulders against the coffin walls, and slammed her fist upward. Pain jolted through her knuckles, but the lid groaned. She hit it again. And again. Each strike echoed in the suffocating dark, a drumbeat of defiance against silence.
The wood began to crack. Dust sifted down, choking her throat, but she didn’t stop. She punched harder, fueled by terror and fury, until splinters gave way beneath her fists.
It took her more hits than she would like to admit for the coffin to break, and it was even harder trying to dig through the earth. One could argue physics and what not but displacing dirt with no real space to displace it was hard to get through.
At last, Caroline dragged herself free, collapsing against the ground, gulping in the cool night breeze. Stars glittered above, indifferent to her struggle. She hadn't realized how much she missed them until now. For a moment, she lay there, aching, trembling, exhausted. Buffy made it seem so easy; Caroline was filthy, bruised, barely functional and in the nude. Her clothes were lost in the climb out.
When she raised her hand to brush hair out of her face, she saw it. Black veins spiderwebbed across her skin, her limbs shaking; she noticed her shoulder burning. Then the hunger slammed into her. Sharp. Gnawing. Unstoppable. Her fangs descended in anticipation. She hadn’t felt any of that since waking up on Elena’s kitchen floor. It clawed at her insides, demanding, and consuming.
Caroline sat up fast, heart pounding; the distant thrum in her skull wasn’t a headache. It was the sound of a heartbeat.
She scrambles up and comes face to face headstone that has her freeze.
In Loving Memory Of
Caroline Forbes
October 10, 1994- February 1, 2011
She stared, dumbfounded. Yes, she knew she was dead. She remembered the bite from Klause, and she vaguely remembers Taylor laying her down on Elena’s kitchen floor, then eyes opening to Kol’s frantic face, urging her to follow. Caroline barely had time to adjust to the fact she was dead and if he hadn't looked so freaked out, she may have ignored him completely. But something about him, in that moment, told her to trust him and she hadn't regretted it since.
She just can't comprehend how she is back in the land of the living having just dug herself out of her grave.
Rustling drew her gaze. A couple stumbled into the cemetery, laughing, drunk, whispering about ghosts.
The couple’s laughter was a siren song. Caroline’s veins burned, her gums throbbed, and the pounding of their hearts filled her skull until it drowned out everything else.
She is on them without thinking. Her fangs sink into the man's neck. The taste hits her like the first puff of a cigarette after a long time without it. The gnawing ache in her veins eased, replaced by a rush so intoxicating it made her knees buckle. She can't help the moan that escapes her as his hot blood gushes in her mouth, and she drinks greedily.
When she feels the man's heartbeat stop, she drops him and latches on to the women she kept a tight grasp on, who grunts and whimpers in her arms.
Euphoria spreads through her of being back to her old self and drinking fresh blood; she loved being a vampire, and it was something she hadn't realized she was missing.
She continued to drink until the haze of hunger began to lift. The couple crumpled, forgotten, as Caroline staggered back, wiping her mouth with a shaking hand.
Stars still glittered overhead, but they looked different now — sharper, brighter, almost mocking. Caroline’s chest heaved as the realization sank in.
She wasn’t the half‑ghost she’d been in the other world. She was a vampire again.
And after five months of being buried, she had no control. Her gaze lands on the bodies.
“Oh god, no, no, nononononono.” She checks thier pulse just in case and feels nothing. She chokes back a sob. Her hands shook as she pressed them to her mouth, eyes wide. No. Not them. Not like this. She hadn’t wanted their lives, only their blood, only relief from the gnawing hunger that had consumed her since clawing out of the grave. But she’d taken too much. She hadn’t stopped.
Caroline forced herself to breathe, to think. She doesn’t have time for this. And if the Council discovered her grave disturbed, if they found these bodies, they might put two and two together, that she had returned from the dead.
“It's fine, you’re fine, it'll be fine.”
She wiped her mouth, steeling herself. She would hide the bodies. She would fix her grave. She would make sure no one would suspect. Survival meant control, and control meant covering her tracks.
Caroline dragged the bodies into the shadows, her hands shaking. The night air cooled the sweat on her skin, but the warmth of their blood still lingered in her mouth. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, but the coppery taste clung stubbornly.
The silence was heavier than any scream.
She yanked the jacket from the man’s body and pulled it tightly around herself, shoving away the shame of taking it. She adjusted the collar, tugged the sleeves down, and forced her trembling legs to carry her toward town.
She had to find her friends. If they were still alive.
Kol had been murdered in front of Klaus by Elena and Jeremy. Not long before that Matt, Elena and Stefan killed Finn. It didn’t matter the Finn tried to kill his family, or that Kol was trying to kill Jeremy. If Caroline had learned anything about the Mikaelsons, it was that family was everything. No matter how dysfunctional.
Her chest tightened. If Klaus discovered she was back, she was sure he’d come for her and not just give her a welcome back hug. She needed answers. She needed to know why and how she just clawed her way out of her grave.