Candice

Summary: Five years after the downfall of the Mikaelson family, Caroline returns to New Orleans to fulfill the promise she made to Marcel: one day, she would be back for the man he has been keeping prisoner in the bowels of the old compound, and she would not be leaving without him. But the plans to abandon the city's eternal loop of tragedy behind once and for all are thwarted when a new enemy with unexpected old ties resurfaces, threatening not just Eve's life, but Caroline's as well.

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S04E01 Gather Up the Killers ✨

The thing about finally getting something you longed for what feels like an eternity is the accompanying dread that it might be taken away.

Even after five years, Marcel is still not used to having it. Peace.

Nobody tells you how unsettling peace is. How it manifests as a constant nagging in the back of your mind, like you're forgetting something, getting soft, letting your guard down. It's quiet and harmonious, yes, but it's also a kind of fear. A cold shudder at the pit of your stomach, as though at any second it can all be snatched away from you.

If he doesn't watch himself, it can easily descend into paranoia.

He doesn't think there has been a single day where he hasn't been on full alert mode, looking over his shoulder, watching over the city from his not-so-new penthouse like a vigilante, waiting for the monsters to come out. And then he remembers that there are no monsters anymore. None greater than him, anyway. He is the thing that everybody fears.

He's always tiptoeing around that delicate line separating caution from madness, one sudden move around a corner away from overreaction that could send all the hard-earned balance they've achieved blown into the air.

One wrong move from turning into him.

Read the full chapter here

-- Took forever and a day, but ta-da! Starting part 4 was so much harder than I thought, but well. Here is something! Like I said, I'm not starting a new AO3 story for this, it'll be [22/34] there, but for the sake of being clearer here, I'm using the S4 numbers and a new summary.

━ #married

Why are you here, Caroline? Surely, the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted needs its headmistress across the pond. I got a phone call.