#laurelcestillo

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                She hated black.

                Caroline stared around the church almost vacantly.  It was a wave of black.  Black dresses, black suits, all being mocked when she looked outside, at the blue sky, sun shining.  It was nice weather, she supposed, for a funeral.

                She felt a warm presence at her side.  It was Stefan, and he took her hand, intertwining their fingers.  Caroline let him, but she didn’t feel anything.  Not as she would have, just weeks ago.  She couldn’t even feel the anger that she had been clinging to in his presence.  She just felt numb.  She stared down at their hands, then up at his face.  He gave her a sympathetic smile – the loyal friend, there to help her through her mother’s death.

                Caroline looked away.

                She went through the motions of the funeral – of listening to the pastor, of giving a eulogy that left more teary eyes in the congregation than dry, and through it all, she felt as though she were a spectator within her own body.

                She should be crying.  Caroline cried easily; The Notebook had been known to reduce her to a sobbing mess on more than one occasion.  Her mother’s death?  She should hardly be able to function.

                She couldn’t breathe.

                For the first time, she didn’t want to breathe.

                Vampires didn’t need oxygen.  They were dead, so it wasn’t a requirement.  But habits of humanity tended to cling, and Caroline couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t go through the motions – breathe in, breathe out, repeat.  But today?

                She couldn’t breathe, and she didn’t care.

                She watched the coffin lowered into the ground – beloved mother, friend, and sheriff – and she let Elena cling to one arm, while Stefan held the hand on the other.  She allowed them both to think they were comforting her, because that’s what they needed, and through it all, Caroline remained dry eyed, watching the proceedings with a dislocation she had never felt before.

                She hated black. 

                When it was done and Liz was buried, she returned home.  Stefan and Elena both promised they would be right back, that they just needed to change.  Caroline nodded, and watched them leave, gone to homes to change out of the black.  Caroline went into her own home, left to her in her mother’s will.  Anyone would be able to enter it now.  She would have to do something about that.

                She walked through halls she had walked a hundred times, and no longer did they feel like home.  They felt bare and empty and foreign.

                Caroline felt bare and empty and foreign.

                She stopped in her room, began to unzip her dress, but her hands froze as she looked down.  God, but she hated black.  She grasped either side of the dress and tore it apart, the fabric tearing easily in the wake of her strength.  She let the shreds fall to the floor.  She stepped away, and closed her eyes.  She took in a deep, unneeded breath, and found that it did nothing for.

                She didn’t need to breathe.

                She felt bare and empty, and light.

                She felt… free.

                It took a moment, to recognize the feeling, as foreign as it was.  Liz was dead and gone, and what tied Caroline to this town and the history of pain and death that it held?

                Absolutely nothing.

                She put on jeans and her brightest top and walked down the halls once more.  Bare and empty and no longer her home.

                When Elena and Stefan returned, it was to find Caroline gone.

---

                She was in Albuquerque and it was raining.

                She sat at the bus stop, letting rain soak into her clothes.  The group huddled beneath the shelter shot her odd looks, but Caroline ignored them.  What did she care, if she got wet?  It’s not like water would kill her.

                The thought made her chuckle to herself, an inside joke that made sense only to her.

                She saw one of the women give her another uncomfortable look, and Caroline simply smiled at her.  Whatever the woman saw in that smile, had her shuffling back amongst the others, hiding herself from Caroline’s view.  She shrugged and turned her gaze back to the street.  The bus was running late, and Caroline tapped her fingers on the bench.  She contemplated leaving when a man sidled onto the bench next to her.  He was dark haired and eyed with a beard, and held an umbrella.

                “I need you to help me out,” he murmured to her, and Caroline felt something poke her in the side.  She glanced down and saw a gun.  She cocked her head, amusement filling her.  She almost laughed in the man’s face, but it was the first time she had truly felt something since leaving Mystic Falls, so she decided to play along.

                “Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered, and thought that she did her drama teacher’s proud, putting just the right amount of fear into her voice.  She had spent enough time afraid in the past two years, to know just the right amount of fear that was expected of the perky blonde.

                “I won’t hurt you,” the man said in a soothing voice.  “As long as you do what I say.”

                He was good, Caroline thought.  Just the right amount of reassurance and vague threat, to scare the teenager into compliance.

                “See that man over there, I need you to smile and wave at him.  Just like that.  As long as he doesn’t try anything, you’ll be just fine.”

                Caroline wagged her fingers at the man her captor pointed out, and wondered what the folk under the bus stop’s cover would think if she snapped his wrist and then his neck.

                Better not, she decided.  Besides, the bus was coming, and Caroline really didn’t want to miss it.

                “What’s your name?” the man murmured to her as they got on the bus, gun now poking into her back.

                “Caroline,” she replied, voice still trembling ever so slightly.  She probably should have left it at that, but she had to admit to some curiosity, so… “What’s yours?”

                The man helped her into a seat, then sat next to her.  He shot her a quick, narrow eyed glance.

                “Call me Ward,” he said at last.

                Caroline didn’t reply, just kept her gaze ahead, and wondered if he would keep the gun on her for the whole of her bus ride, or if he would get off sometime before her stop.

                He didn’t – he stayed with her.

                “Just walk,” he told her, voice soothing as he directed her down the sidewalk, gaze darting around.  “We’re almost done.”

                “We are done,” Caroline replied, voice turning cold.  The man reacted quickly, gun coming up almost as soon as her voice had changed, but he wasn’t quite quick enough.  The sound of bones snapping was a musical one to her ears, and within seconds, he was on his knees, his own gun pointed at his head.  “So, Call me Ward, why don’t we have a chat?”

                His name was Grant Ward.  He was on the run from an organization known as SHIELD because he was a traitor, and what he wanted more than anything was to help a girl named Skye, the girl he loved, find her father… and hopefully find her way to forgiving him.

                Oh, and he wanted to kill his abusive family.

                Caroline didn’t really care about his government organization, but the thought of wanting to kill your own family intrigued her.  If her father had lived, would there have been a time when she would have wanted to kill him for the things he had done?  If she had killed her mother, would she have been able to avoid this… constant state of numbness that she found herself in?

                “I want to help you,” she said to Grant at last, giving him back his gun.

                “No-”

                “Or I can make you shoot yourself.”

                Grant stopped mid-refusal to look at her with a thoughtful expression.  He was clearly trying to figure out if he could get away from her, and Caroline merely raised her brows, because let him try.  Finally, survival instinct won out and he nodded.

                “Fine.  But you do as I say.”

                Caroline just looked at him, and he gave a heavy sigh.

---

                “You know, I could make your story real.”

                Grant paused in his preparations – he was going to burn his family home to the ground, family firmly ensconced within, and looked back at Caroline.  He had shaved, since they had first met.  She thought the smooth cheeked look suited him, but wished he hadn’t cut his hair so short. 

                “Why?” he demanded, and Caroline shrugged.

                “I find it interesting, that you hate your family so much.  I never could, even when they gave me reason.  Maybe I’m wondering what it’s like, this murder thing.”

                “You’ve never killed anyone?” Grant replied with some disbelief.  Caroline thought back to a carnie, and two deputies, and twelve dead witches, and gave a delicate shrug.

                “In the heat of the moment.  This would be different.  This wouldn’t be instinct, it would be cold-blooded.  I want to know if it feels different.”

                If it would make me feel, she thought, but didn’t say.

                Grant looked thoughtful, then looked at Christian who stared at them both with wide, terrified eyes.

                “Okay,” he said at last, and stepped back to let Caroline step in front of his brother.

                When it was all said and done, they stand outside the house as, inside, Christian lights the place on fire.  They both watch as the flames take over, and Caroline finds herself taking a step forward, wanting to feel the warmth from the flames.

                She doesn’t.  Nor does she feel anything, knowing that she sentenced that whole family to die, without ever hearing their side of the story.  She had thought she would feel something – hate, guilt, anything – but there is nothing. 

                “We have to go,” Grant says, and Caroline lets him pull her away.

                She thought she would feel something.

---

                She wasn’t interested in what he did with HYDRA and told him so.  He gave her a hotel key card and said he would meet her there.  She knew he hoped it would be with Skye, but instead he came with a woman with a scarred face, holding his ribs.

                “What happened?” she asked, watching as the woman – Agent 33, she had called herself – helps to bind his wounded chest.

                “Skye shot me,” Grant replied shortly.  “Three times.  I had a vest on.”

                But it still hurt, Caroline noted.  She briefly considered giving him her blood, but then decided against it.  How would he remember that love hurt, if he couldn’t feel it?

                Caroline couldn’t feel the hurt, she wished she could.  It would stop her from forming another attachment, as she knew she was to Ward.  And it was an attachment, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked him what had happened, and actually cared for the answer.

                He seemed to be the only thing that could make her feel.  Caroline wasn’t sure what she thought of that.

                “Are you done with her, then?” Caroline asked.

                Grant said nothing, and Caroline shook her head.  She could remember that, being so in love.  She had that with Tyler.  At least she thought she did.  Or maybe it was what she had with Klaus.  Or maybe it was all in her head, Caroline wasn’t sure anymore.

                She thought she might be a little jealous of Skye, though she didn’t even know what she looked like.

                “What next?” she asked, and noted that Agent 33 looked to Grant for guidance, just as she did.

                “I don’t know,” Grant admitted, and Caroline wondered if he had spent so much time dedicated to Skye, that he no longer knew what to do if it didn’t revolve around her.

                “We go under,” Caroline said at last, answering her own question, and drawing both gazes to her.  “We go under and we figure out… where we go next.”

                “Yeah,” Grant agreed.  “We go under.”

---

                They hid in Dallas, and she slept with Grant, because he made her feel something.  And the sex made her feel something, too, even if it was distant, not at all like it should have been.  At least it was something.

                Agent 33 got a name – Kara.  And she started to figure out who she was, now that she no longer had a master. 

                Grant mourned for Skye, and Caroline’s jealousy got worse.  It seemed to be a burning in her chest, and she found herself rubbing it, as if she could make it go away. 

                It hurt, and it made her gasp for breath.  Caroline hadn’t felt the need to breathe since Mystic Falls, but she had to breathe, because her chest hurt that much.

                It was pain, she realized one day with shock.  It wasn’t jealousy that she felt, not jealousy alone – it was months of pain that she hadn’t let herself feel, and now it was overwhelming her, and she found that she wished it would stop.

                She wanted to be numb again.

                She slept with Grant again, and he murmured Skye’s name against her skin, and it made her want to rip out his throat.

                It made her hurt.

                He made her feel.

                She wanted to stop.

                It was sunny, when she realized the only way to go numb again, was to kill the thing that made her feel.

                It was raining, when he smiled and kissed her, and she knew that he wished she was Skye.

                He gurgled, when her fangs made their first punctures.  He fell to his knees and looked at her with brown eyes she knew so well, confusion in his expression.

                “What?” he says, and she looks down at him, feeling her ties to humanity – ties formed for him – begin to snap.  “Why…?” He lets out a wild laugh, knowing that this was the end.  “You fooled me.”

                “I fool everyone,” she replied, feeling that numbness begin to wash over her again. 

                Something in her screamed not to do this, to hold on, because he could take her back to who she had been, before everything went so wrong.  But what about this was right?  He wasn’t right.  She certainly wasn’t right.

                She ignored the screams, and buried her fangs in his neck.

                When she left his body behind, she smiled, finally at peace.