Crashing Down

When she wakes, Tyler is sitting next to her with his back braced against a tree trunk. He offers up a slight, tentative smile. It’s kind of adorable, but the only thing she can really focus on is the warm blood rushing through his veins. It makes a kind of whooshing noise in her ears. She’s weak when she pushes herself up into a sitting position.

“Caroline, your eyes…” Tyler says, and he’s scurrying up from the ground, tripping over himself to get distance from her.

“Oh, God.” She cries, and she turns from him, running.

Her feet don’t stop moving until she’s sobbing too hard to go on, until the hunger pains halt her in her tracks. But instead of feeding she collapses to the ground, watches mutely as the wild life moves about her, around her. Avoiding her like everyone else in society. When footsteps approach she assumes its Tyler, covers her face with her arms.

“What are you doing?” an exasperated, slightly annoyed Damon asks, and he lifts her up effortlessly.

Caroline avoids his eyes, instead looking at the nearly full moon. A smile spreads itself across her face, the first real one in a long while; Tyler will be going through a transformation of his own soon. Damon grips her chin and yanks her face so she’s looking at him. Normally she would’ve defended herself, but she’s starved and weak. Her unfriendly eyes meet with his angry ones, creating a battlefield of World War III between them.

“Stop starving yourself. And if you’re going to be a vampire, could you do it right? The woodland creature’s thing is Stefan’s forte.”

“You’re only keeping me alive because Elena wants you to.” Caroline says bitterly, her face distorted in an ugly scowl.

Damon releases her, his face a mix between bewilderment and confusion. It amazes her how easy it is for him to lie to himself, to convince himself of something other than the obvious truth. Everybody around him can see it, can feel his affection for perfect Elena with the perfect hair and perfect eyebrows and perfect figure.

“Quit being stupid, Caroline.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Sure you’re not,” he replies, sarcasm dripping from every letter.

He drags her out of the woods and practically carries her down the street until they’re standing outside an all too familiar house. Caroline, shocked and scared, backs away from the home until she bumps into an SUV across the street. The alarm blares, and covering her ears she makes a dash for Bonnie’s backyard, for the cover of darkness. Damon joins her shortly, annoyance clearly written across his forehead.

“Tell me again how you’re not stupid.” He snaps, and she fights back the flood of tears waiting to break through.

A light is on next to the tall tree, and Caroline reminisces of all the late nights her and Elena had climbed that very tree and snuck into Bonnie’s bedroom, sharing late night chats of their latest crushes and woes. The sight of Damon climbing it, exactly as they had, shatters the pretty memory.

Much to her dismay Damon’s compulsion works, which leaves Caroline to wonder why Bonnie has stopped drinking her vervaine laced tea. From above, the devil himself whistles for her and she has no choice but to comply; it’s not like she can run from him. Mystic Falls is a small, small town.

When she slips inside the window he has Bonnie seated on the bed and already blood seeps into her nightshirt, drips down his chin. He wipes it away lazily, smiles a bloody grin at her. But much to his distaste she shakes her head no, stays as far away from Bonnie as possible despite the tingling in her teeth, the pulling in her cheeks.

“No, Damon. I won’t drink from my friend.”

“Your friend?” he lets out a hollow laugh. “She refuses to speak to you, to barely look at you for more than a minute. If she could, she would probably kill you. Luckily for you, her powers aren’t strong enough.”

“I don’t care, Damon. She was my friend; she’s done a lot for me in life.”

Exasperated, Damon yanks the witch up by her hair and drags her to Caroline, shoving the bloody bite marks beneath her nose. “Drink or I will kill her.”

Caroline’s stomach flip-flops, rolls with the idea of having to drink from her former best friend; but she would rather do that than have Damon kill her. With tears streaming down her face she sinks her teeth into the fresh puncture wounds, losing herself in the intoxicating taste of magic.

Damon has to pull her from Bonnie’s neck, seemingly hours later, and when he does Caroline buries her face into his leather jacket, sobbing quietly. Much to her surprise, he wraps a firm arm around her waist; strokes her side comfortingly.

“I have to compel her to forget now. You might as well go home.” He murmurs and his voice is the softest it’s been since he first lured her into his trap of a life.

Whimpering like an abused puppy, Caroline climbs out the window and makes her way down the street slowly; to her bedroom, her empty house, and her uncaring mother.