thinking about how caroline basically had blair waldorf's relationships in a scrambled/reversed order, with highlighted her regression. tyler as her dan, stefan as her louis/chuck cocktail, klaus as another chuck, and matt as the nate.
caroline, unfortunately, gets her dan/blair story second. the relationship that heals wounds, grows with her, reflects both her flaws and her good parts, bends but doesn't break because tyler refuses to let it. the partner that sees her in her entirety, not just the good or bad parts, and accepts her as a whole.
dan: look, blair, i don't think you're that bad of a person. maybe not my type but you're not terrible. and whatever it is that happened between you and chuck, i'm sure you can fix it because if there's a pair meant for one another, it's you two.
this mirrors tyler's view on matt/caroline and caroline as an individual; she's messy and rough around the edges but "sometimes you gotta take the good with the bad" and he believes matt to be a better man than he is, a man worthy of caroline's affections. at least to start.
she becomes her best self with him.
and then klaus enters the picture.
dan: so i didn't lose you to chuck, i lost you to the idea of chuck?
he is everything caroline believes she does not want, and yet. there's that itching curiosity, the thrill of danger, the opportunity to do something bad, to let loose, to release herself from the shackles of her neurotic tendencies with no push back, no moral code, the weight of her expectations for herself gone with the wind.
we accept the love we think we deserve. and what does klaus tell her she deserves? a fairytale.
diamonds and rubies, being wined and dined, an eternity in his embrace, shrouded in his shadow. not her friends, not the life she was building, not anything she could begin building in mystic falls. what she deserves is klaus' affection.
and isn't that just so, so sweet? idyllic. simple. easy.
it's easier than trying, than waiting, than constantly having to make compromises and negotiations with a life partner who views you as a fully-fledged human being and requests you treat them and their values and their desires the same way.
klaus is the simple science of push and pull. all she has to do is shrink herself into the image he's presented, fit perfectly in his arms—("whenever chuck's around i just feel like a weak little girl")—and he'll take care of the rest.
they have sex but ultimately, she is not the blair to his chuck. she is a stop, not his destination.
occupied by a life beyond just her, tyler's love for her is now sharing space with people and causes she cannot see, refuses to entertain, and seemingly cannot fathom. it's messy and difficult and scary and too new, even for them.
caroline parks herself at a crossroads.
blair: it seems as you've found your way, i've lost mine.
she leaves tyler behind. enter stefan.
blair: who is it?
louis: someone completely undeserving of your love and affection.
her chase for frivolous adventure is vindicated, upheld, and supported. she was right to retreat into the simplicity of a will-they-won't-they. she was right to throw away the love of her life in his time of need for empty promises.
succumb to doing the easy thing, not the right thing. she does it once, with a kiss. twice, against a tree. and then her mother dies and honestly, wouldn't it just be easier to turn it all off and be mean?
blair: we are not servants to our emotions. we can suppress them, ignore them, stomp them out like bugs.
stefan understands. in his way. in the way she sees a reflection of her worst in him. but he can be better, she's seen it. and so can she, right? she can be better. better than before. they can be better—together.
in the midst of her nightmare, her confusion, her loss of self, she finds him: a safe harbor, familiarity, something that reminds her of the girl she used to be, once. the girl she learned to love. the girl her base desires and new, unfamiliar insecurities rose from, like a mangled phoenix born from ashes.
blair: every voice in my head screamed "don't", but i didn't listen. i followed my heart because i love you. i can't deny that our past has been complicated but in the end love makes everything simple.
she didn't listen. she doesn't listen to the voices in her head anymore. the ones that remind her of a girl long gone, a girl buried in the empty mansion of a boy she used to love. of the things she wants, the future she could have built, the person she could have become.
loving stefan is supposed to be easy. the simple science of friends to lovers.
louis: my mother told me love has nothing to do with marriage. now i know she was right.
she dons the memories of his exes as she walks down the aisle, all smiles. she weeps the tears of a widow, husband lost to a war he fights for brother and their shared love—elena.
though she wears a ring and carries his name like a cross, caroline is just another stop along the way. never the destination. never the one.
dan: you ended up with no one. chuck will never be finished fighting with his father and that ring around your neck will never be on your finger.
she smiles for the children that aren't hers, for the father that isn't her husband, in memory of a vampire who left her nothing but a note in lieu of being her last, in honor of a man who tore her down as steadily as the years of loneliness will be spent with caroline trying to convince herself she's been building herself up, up, up.
dan: say life is giving you signs, and you're ignoring them because you're afraid of the thing they're signaling you to do. but - then you think, what if these signs are here for a reason? and ignoring them just makes me a coward?
leave mystic falls? her family, her friends? her life? the only purpose she's ever known? for something altogether and unfamiliar? for a war she cannot promise either of them will win, for a freedom that might never truly come, for the promise of together in a landscape she cannot visualize?
this was going to be caroline's big adventure. the tough one, with tough choices and new faces and unfamiliar places. and tyler lockwood was going to be at her side.
but fairytales aren't meant to be hard won. and caroline, more than anything, has worked so, so hard for everything. why not choose the easy path, just this once?
dan: you know, you had someone who loved you unconditionally, treated you right, and wanted to be with you every day and then you threw that all away to let chuck bass decide when he's ready for you? you think you two have an epic love but all you have are excuses.
she may have married a prince but she never got to be or feel like the princess. not with stefan, not even with klaus.
blair: i just need to know that you'll be there for me
dan: always
once upon a time, in a land that looks a lot like home, a princess found a boy. he was battered and bruised but devout and unyielding, and to that boy, whose eyes glowed with all the care and love she shared, she promised forever. a spell she spoke, gentle as her heart broke, to find a way through heaven and hell.
for him it was a simple dance: he would always be there, to love and to hold. but in a room one fateful night, lights dim and spirits low, he asked:
and what is i lose everything?
the reply was akin to the words he had uttered to her so many times before. and for once, she would not be the princess but he, instead, would be the damsel in her story. she flinched away and said:
just be the love of my life.
simple and sweet. as all fairytales should be. and yet.
her prince was right there,
waiting for her.
but she wasn't ready for him yet.
