main verse timeline.
(early s1) stefan & zach have damon locked in the cellar in the boarding house. after being starved of blood for a few days, damon manages to summon caroline to the boarding house to free him using their mental link (??? it's never really explained how tf he does this). since it's not actual compulsion, caroline is not fully in damon's control, so she's able to break a leg off of a chair before making her way over to him. and since damon's not as strong as he usually is, right before he attempts to feed from her, caroline manages to catch him off guard and gets the stake into his chest, killing him :). by the time zach gets down there, damon's already dead, and caroline is gone.
stefan eventually does find out caroline killed him, but knowing what his brother had done to her, he doesn't (fully) hold it against her. at least he's not mad enough to try and get back at her.
vicki never gets turned (therefore doesn't have to die), lexi doesn't die either, and andie star is saved from becoming another one of damon's victims <3.
anna kidnaps bonlena like she does originally but this time she uses them to blackmail stefan into working for her and finding the grimoire. he finds it, and they work together (+ sheila) to open up the tomb. luckily stefan doesn't actually want katherine free though, so he agrees that so long as she only gets her mother out of the tomb, he'll do what she says. they open the tomb, stefan discovers katherine isn't inside, anna frees her mother, and sheila ends up burning up all the other vampires.
pearl begins plotting to take over mf like in canon (though w/o the other tomb vampires). john gil.bert shows up to try and stop her, but he's unsuccessful in killing her (though he gets close). after that, pearl decides it'll be safer for her and anna outside of mf, at least while john's there, so they leave for a bit. anna will absolutely want to stay and stick with jeremy, but she like just got her mother back, and knowing that john almost killed pearl she decides to leave with her (but only for a while. once uncle john's gone she can return and janna can be cute again or smth).
blah blah gil.bert device shenanigans. stefan gets outed as a vampire but escapes before john can kill him. tyler crashes the car with caroline in it and caroline ends up in the hospital.
bon convinces stefan to give his blood to care when she's in the hospital. stefan does. katherine smothers caroline with a pillow later, killing her. caroline wakes up in transition and becomes a vampire <333.
caroline ends up killing that boy at the carnival. stefan and elena find her there. cue iconic stero/line bathroom scene.
(mason also gets to live now yay?)
since mason isn't dead, jules and her gang have no reason to show up and caroline does not need to get put in a cage and tortured for several hours! rose also doesn't get bit by her and gets to live.
maro.line break up. the mar.tins don't die.
caroline & mason get captured as sacrifices for the ritual. caroline manages to get free of her restraints (basically she starts crushing the bones in her hand until she can slip them out of her shackles), is about to free mason from his, until the witch guarding them returns and tries to kill her. that's when tyler shows up (he came to rescue them), killing the witch to keep him from killing caroline (triggering his werewolf curse in the process).
we can now commence with the for.wood bonding <333 my children <333.
since damon is already dead and doesn't get bit by tyler, stefan doesn't have to go on his little ripper road trip with klaus. caroline and tyler officially start dating <3333 but carol finds out, knocks caroline out, and tells bill about her.
caroline gets tortured by bill for a bit before liz and tyler come to rescue her.
klaus returns to mf after trying (and failing) to start his hybrid army. tyler gets turned into one. caroline decides she has officially had it with mystic fa.lls and decides to leave, hoping tyler will go with her. he says no since he's sired to klaus (not that they know yet), so caroline leaves on her own.
she tells bonnie and elena and her mother what she's doing and where she's going ofc, but she keeps the communication kind of minimal tbh. she's trying to Discover herself. she finishes high school, gets her diploma, then goes to college somewhere new, somewhere interesting.
she gives up her dreams of broadcast journalism (since she's a vampire now and showing up on tv would just be inviting trouble) and decides to pursue interior design instead. it was a kind of split second decision, but she doesn't regret it. she has so much fun in college, in fact, that after she gets her degree she decides to keep at it. studying anything and everything that she can, for as long as she wants (criminology, just for the heck of it. because she thinks it might be useful, given the kind of stuff she and her friends get into. maybe even chemical engineering, because people seem to think she can't do it and whenever someone tells me i canât do something, i prove them wrong.)
caroline's got a long road ahead of her, and she's going to spend it doing whatever the fuck she wants <3.
