Chapter Text
Caroline sat in her dorm, watching her former roommate pack up the last bit of her things. She almost hated to kick the girl out, but Bonnie and Elena would be coming back to school tomorrow, and she seriously doubted that Elena would be okay with her thousand-greats grandmother doppelganger living with them. Scratch that, she knew that Elena wouldn’t be okay with it. It was Katherine, after all, albeit a newly-human and utterly miserable Katherine.
The aforementioned sat down on the bed and looked at Caroline, crossing one booted ankle over another. “So that’s it.” Katherine said.
“Not quite.” Caroline smiled at the arched eyebrow she received in response, and jumped up. “Petrova, we’re throwing you a two-person send-off party! Bonnie and Elena won’t be here until tomorrow afternoon, so that leaves us plenty of time for hangover recovery. Besides, you weren’t a terrible roomie, and every roommate deserves a going-away party...” She rummaged around in the mini fridge and under her bed before bringing out a bottle of bourbon and a couple of cups, shaking them happily.
“Isn’t that like…against University policy, or something?” Katherine gave her a haughty look.
“Absolutely. But what can I say? I like my alcohol, and I can just compel anyone who finds out. Besides, when did you start caring about rules?” Caroline laughed.
“Oh, don’t lie. You just like Damon’s liquor cabinet.” She smirked, shifting into a matter-of-fact tone. “I started caring about rules when I became human and they started applying. Apparently, now that I’m ‘eighteen’ again, I can’t really do much of anything.” Katherine rolled her eyes. “Did I mention I hate my life?”
The blonde laughed. “Welcome to the real world! Now, Damon’s an ass, but he certainly knows how to pick his whiskey. So let’s get drunk, bitch about how much our lives suck, and then pass out.” Caroline said. Katherine shrugged, reached for a cup, and poured a few fingers of bourbon in.
“Works for me.” Katherine tossed back the alcohol like it was water, and then sputtered. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for supernatural tolerance back…”
-0-0-0-0-0-
A couple of hours later the bottle was finished. Katherine was moping, Caroline was giggling, and both were absolutely drunk. Well, Katherine was; Caroline, with her vampire tolerance and healing, was merely tipsy. They had gone over pretty much every topic under the sun—parents, how much it sucked being a human, Caroline’s breakup with Tyler, and where exactly Katherine bought her shoes—before they came to one that Caroline had never heard Katherine talk about before.
“I got dumped.” Katherine blurted out, her inhibitions lowered exponentially. Seriously, she was way past sloshed.
Caroline’s ears perked. “You got dumped? It was the first time, wasn’t it? Who did it?” She loved juicy information, and the fact that Katherine Pierce got dumped was almost enough to make the tabloids. Did vampires even have tabloid magazines? No, wait, of course they didn’t. Duh.
“Second, actually. The first guy who dumped me was my boyfriend in Bulgaria when I was human. The first time, that is. He knocked me up, and after a bunch of crappy life circumstances, left. Asshole.” Katherine pouted.
“Um, yeah… Douche. I hope he married a troll of a woman.” The blonde giggled.
“No, he actually married my former best friend Evangelia. She was almost as pretty as me. But that’s a moot point.” Katherine commented, shrugging slightly, clearly not even caring anymore. Either she was over it, or just drunk. It was difficult to tell.
“Well then… Who was it this time? Have I heard of him? You can’t just leave me hanging! Give me details, Petrova!” Caroline was practically jumping up and down on her bed.
“Calm your panties, Forbes. It was Elijah.” She sniffled slightly into her cup, sad to see there was nothing left inside. “We were together when everyone else was searching for the cure, but he dumped me when Klaus went to New Orleans. When my doppelganger was in bitch-mode she planted lies in his head, and they all piled up, and we never got a chance to work it out.” Katherine moaned, and flopped backwards, Caroline barely managing to grab the cup out of her hand before bourbon splatters got all over her bedding. “He’s just… He’s the only man I’ve ever loved, and I don’t think I ever stopped. Everyone else… They were all distractions, I see that now. But, now my one chance at happiness left me because some witches are conspiring against Klaus, and I was the idiotic one who told him about it.”
“Wait… You’re the one who made Klaus go to New Orleans?” Caroline sat up straighter. That was certainly new information. For all she had known, Klaus had just gone on a little trip to the city and decided that he didn’t want to come back. She wouldn’t blame him; everyone in Mystic Falls did seem to want him and his family dead, after all.
“A witch by the name of Jane-Anne Deveraux was trying to make a move against him. I caught wind of it, and like the good little nemesis that I am, sent him word. He didn’t have to go check it out—much less set up house. That was all his choice.” Katherine shot back, her words slurring as she drifted farther and farther into the alcohol abyss.
“Touché.” Caroline sighed. Her lovely buzz was wearing off, thanks to the alcohol…metabolism-thingy she had developed. And just when she had been able to enjoy it. “Katherine, what are you going to do? Because I mean… If you really love him, you can’t just let him go.” But when she looked over at the other bed, Katherine was passed out, a slight snore erupting from her nose, her arms hanging off the bed.
The blonde looked over at the girl she was supposed to hate, and instead just pitied her. It really just was not fair. Katherine was clearly still madly in love with Elijah, even after he left. And, if she was right, he had been crazily in love with her too. There was no reason for them not to be together! A wave of determination washed over Caroline. She had given Tyler an ultimatum because she wasn’t being loved the way that she deserved to be loved; or…at least the way that she felt she needed to be loved. The whole actually deserving-it part was a whole other thing. But still, if Katherine could get her love story, then she was going to damn well make sure that it happened. After all, if anyone deserved a happy ending based on a game of whose-life-was-more-traumatic, the girl on the other bed did. Caroline had learned a bit about Katherine’s past from Elena, and even Katherine herself, and it was kind of pretty terrible.
It was time to give her…frenemy (enemy? enemy-with-friend-benefits? that-person-that-she-found-herself-not-hating-even-though-she-should?) a happy ending.
-0-0-0-0-0-
When Katherine woke up, everything was sunny. And hot. And her head felt like it had just been pummeled with a jackhammer. Her first coherent thought was that Silas had finally gotten her, and was whisking her away to kill her. Then, she remembered that Silas was dead—a slightly important detail that her hungover brain missed—and in the driver’s seat was a perky blonde that was wearing way too much yellow. Honestly, the girl was like a walking Day-Glo stick. It hurt to even look at her.
“Where the hell am I? This doesn’t look like Mystic Falls, cupcake.” Katherine slowly shifted her body up and away from where she had been leaning against the door.
“That’s because it’s not.” Caroline smiled. “We’re somewhere in between Atlanta and Montgomery, Alabama.”
“What exactly are we doing in the middle of nowhere, again? I seem to have missed the memo.” Katherine’s voice took on a deadly tone.
“We’re en route to New Orleans. We should be there in oh…about four and a half hours. You were completely out of it this morning, so I just loaded you and our suitcases in the car. I figured you wouldn’t mind. I mean, we are going to go get you your man back.” Caroline flashed her trademark grin to her companion—the one with subtle undertones of bitchy—before turning her eyes back to the road.
“I’m going to die.” Katherine moaned, her head flopping back against the head rest.
“Not if—” Caroline was interrupted.
“No Forbes, I’m actually dying, okay?” Katherine’s voice took a tone somewhere between a shout and a shriek, with a slight note of panic. At Caroline’s bewildered look, she continued. “After Silas sucked the cure out of me, I started…aging.”
“Like… Menopause?” Caroline looked disgusted. “God, I’m so sorry. Bless your heart.”
“Don’t do the southern belle ‘Bless your heart’ thing. It’s insulting.” The human rolled her eyes indignantly. “Think less menopause and more daisy fertilizer. Fate’s a grand bitch, you know? I mean, I spend five hundred years running from your psychopathic boyfriend,”
“Klaus is not my boyfriend!” Caroline protested, but Katherine plowed straight on.
“Only to get killed because a crazy immortal warlock finally got fed up with his pathetic existence, and wanted to die. Said crazy immortals ex-fiancé refused to help me, and I’ve already talked to Dr. Maxfield. There’s nothing to be done, at least from the human standpoint. I’m completely healthy. Just...dying.”
“Well, I won’t take that for an answer.” Caroline said. “You haven’t given up so far, and I won’t let you give up now. Therefore, I am modifying the intentions of this trip by like…a lot. And I have an idea that might keep you alive long enough to see those intentions through.”
“Please, enlighten me. And then we need to stop so that I can pee. And eat. I’m living on the human diet, here.” Katherine peeled off her purple cashmere socks and tucked her legs up onto the seat so she was sitting cross-legged. “Bloodbags and chocolate truffles just don’t cut it anymore.”
Caroline laughed. “We’re going to need to stop anyways. There is no way I am letting you wear that,” she gestured to Katherine’s hot pink yoga pants and black tank top with ‘Princess’ written across her chest in sparkles “when we get to New Orleans. Now, here’s the plan.”