title: my destiny (lies in the hands that set me free)
category: vampires diaries (tv)
genre: drama/romance
ship: caroline/stefan ; bonnie/damon ; sarah/matt
chapter rating: pg-13/teen
overall rating: nc-17/r
warning(s): explicit violence, strong language, sexual content
word count: 3,503
summary: Caroline Salvatore has spent nearly all of her 145 years of undead life cleaning up her brother Damon's messes. But when a familiar face draws her home to Mystic Falls, nothing could have prepared her for what was to come. [AU – Caroline and Stefan, life switch]

-1-

[1864]

Were one to ask Caroline Salvatore how she expected to die, she could honestly say that it would not have been in the middle of a dirt road, while attempting to help her impulsive, love-struck brother rescue his vampire lover from certain death. And yet… That was exactly how it happened.

Laying in the dirt, she stared dimly at the night sky, watching a comet crawl slowly across a dark blanket of twinkling stars, gasping her last breaths, a hand atop the gaping wound where once her belly had been intact. Blood seeped through the cracks between her fingers, warm and sticky. Most certainly, it was an unnecessary thought, but she couldn't help the errant musing that her dress had been new and was now surely unfixable. Her brother would deem her last thoughts utterly moronic and uninspiring, as he was surely thinking of his great love Katherine Pierce.

Caroline had a few choice words for the woman they had failed to save, none of which were kind. But once upon a time… a few short weeks ago, in fact, she too would have thought of Katherine with fondness. Perhaps it was her brother's one unfailing flaw. Though he would deny it with every fiber of his being, Damon was a ridiculous romantic. Even, sadly, when the one he'd given his heart to had never deserved it in the first place. And now, due to such frivolity, she would be joining him in death.

Turning her head, she sucked in one last struggling breath, and let her gaze land upon the only man she had ever held a fondness for. Her big brother, her mentor, the hand that always led her to safety, the smirk that promised good humor, and the pale blue eyes that had, up until most recently, never failed her. She wondered if he thought it worth it in the end. And then, she wondered nothing at all.

[…]

The sun was so warm, and yet Caroline couldn't quite shake off the cold feeling that had settled into her bones. She found Damon by the edge of the creek, pale-faced and teary-eyed.

It had been a surprise, to say the least, to find herself awake and alive, lying on the floor of an abandoned quarry, just north of town, with Emily Bennett standing nearby, keeping watch. The fact that Katherine had been compelling Caroline to drink her blood for weeks was not nearly as big a shock as it should have been. Much as they didn't always see eye to eye, there was a time when things were different… When they were different. But it was brief, and Caroline had made her opinion very clear. Or, at least, she thought she had. Katherine had a way of seeing things her own way, no matter what anyone else said.

"I woke up last night, I didn't know where I was," Damon said, seeming to have noticed her presence at his back. "I went to the church and I saw them drag her inside… Then they set fire to it. And the whole church went up into flames." He turned his head then to look up at her, his gaze still distant and his mouth trembling. "They killed her, Caroline. She's gone." A tear streamed freely down his cheek.

Caroline drew a deep breath and folded her hands together. "I'm sorry… I know how much she meant to you."

"To us, you mean?" Damon cast his gaze back out to the creek. "Or would you lie about your affections even now?"

She swallowed tightly, biting the inside of her lip. "She was always yours, Damon. I… She was curious about me; that was all."

"And what curiosity was there to be found in a kiss, hm?" He looked back to her, a brow raised. "I'm not accusing you, sister. She told me of her liaison with you. We kept no secrets."

"It was no liaison. It was a kiss. One taken rather than freely given, and I'd thank you to remember it." She balled her fingers up when her hands shook. "We are squabbling over nothing. Katherine is dead, and you loved her. I'm sorry we could not save her."

Humming, he nodded, and let his eyes wander once more.

Needing a distraction, she walked past him toward a bucket by a pair of large, mossy rocks. "We should clean your shirt; the blood might yet come out." She gathered the bucket and dipped it into the water. When it was filled, she walked back to him, picking up the shirt he'd shucked and dipping it into the water. "Do you think father knows that we've… died?"

"As if he would care," Damon muttered. "He betrayed us."

"Can you truly blame him? Katherine was not the only vampire in town, there were others, and some were not so kind."

"I care little for the town. What good has it done for me? People we grew up with, that we'd known all our lives, are the same that shot us dead."

"It sounds so simple when you say it like that." She shook her head, and rung out his shirt of the chilly water, passing it toward him. Her dress, regrettably, was unsalvageable, just as she had expected, but Emily had brought a spare for her. Though the fabric was a little rougher in texture than she was used to, it fit well. "And whether you care for the town or not, this was our home, and I understand why they would want to defend it. Even from the likes of us."

He scoffed bitterly. "Saint Caroline, empathizing with all she meets, even the ones that readily shoot her in the belly."

"Better to be shot in the front that stabbed in the back," she murmured.

He turned to look at her, his brow furrowed, and then stopped, blinking wildly and turning away. "The sun hurts my eyes."

"It's a part of the transition. The pain and discomfort, it's all a sign that we need to finish what was started, or die as the townsfolk intended." She sighed, shaking her head.

"That's not going to happen," Damon told her.

"What isn't? Death." She snorted, in a fashion her father would have scolded her for being quite unladylike. "I think we've quite proven that."

"No, the transition will not happen."

Caroline paused, and then frowned at him. "You would rather die?"

"This was all to be with Katherine," he reminded her. "She's gone… I want it over."

Staring at him a long moment, she felt a heavy weight settle in her stomach, and then a flood of anger rushed through her. "You romantic idiot," she spat.

"Caroline…" he sighed, rolling his eyes heavenward. "You must understand—"

"I mustn't do anything." Pushing up from the ground, she found herself even angrier when her heels slipped in the mud and he reached to steady her, to which she slapped his hand away. "You begged me to help you save her, Damon. It was because of your desperation and love that I found myself in the woods in the middle of the night. Because of your obsession with that—that woman that I am even here, contemplating the virtues of life or death. And when the only option for any chance of surviving past this moment is upon us, you would abandon me to your sacrifice for true love?!"

His jaw ticked as he stared up at her.

Her cheeks were damp with tears that she was adamant were of the angry variety, and before he could say anything more, she turned on her heel to march away.

"Where are you going?" he called after her.

"What do you care?" she shouted back. "You'll have no responsibility to me after today."

She heard the exasperated sigh he let out, but refused to turn and see him.

"Caroline…"

Continuing forward, she shook her head, and wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hand. If he would not live, she would not cry for him.

[…]

When Caroline returned home, the halls were empty, echoing with the sound of a childhood lost. It was a funny concept, that home was where everyone turned to in the darkest of hours. Even when home, to her, had never been a bright place. Well, no, that wasn't true. There were times, brief as they were, in which life had been kind to her. Weeks at a time, when her father was away on business trips, and her mother was still alive to hug and kiss and cuddle her. When Lily would stand at her back and brush her hair or have tea parties with her in the garden or play the piano as Caroline sang. But then her father would return, and with him came the dark cloud of discipline and cold, unforgiving rules that were never to be broken or bent. Despite this, Caroline tried to love her father as her mother would have wanted her to. She tried to hope that there was something in him that was salvageable. But, like her dress, Giuseppe Salvatore had always been and would always be, beyond repair or redemption.

She found him in the office, quite predictably she thought, penning away in his journal. She wasn't certain what she had expected. A broken man drowning his sorrows in a bottle of liquor, begging for forgiveness, or for God themselves to return his children to him. But instead, he shed no tears, seeming calm and collected for a man who had lost his only children.

She stood in the doorway, her hands folded across her stomach. "Papa."

"Dear God." Giuseppe gasped and stood from his desk to stare, wide-eyed, at her.

She saw no hope, no joy, just shame, and it hurt far more than she expected.

He slowly began to circle the desk, never relieving her of his gaze. "You're one of them now."

"No. Not quite. It's a… delicate process. One that I'm still figuring out." She stepped into the room, and offered him a faint smile when he seemed to flinch. "Damon has made his decision… One that I don't support, wholly, but when has that made any difference? He's always made his own choices, regardless of what others thought." Her smile wavered. "It was a trait I often admired in him, but perhaps less so now."

Not seeming to hear a word she'd said, Giuseppe replied, "I watched you die."

Caroline went still then, her eyes searching his. "You were there when we were killed?"

Brow heavy atop his eyes, he said, quite simply, "I pulled the trigger myself."

Her head drew back then, eyes wide and eyebrows arched. Her hand rose to her throat as she felt a swell of emotion—Hurt? Bitterness? Betrayal? A mixture of all three, perhaps. "You did this to us… You— You killed me, papa? Your own daughter?" Her eyes burned with tears. "And you couldn't stop at just one of your children; you had to kill us both!?"

"You were both dead to me the moment you sided with the vampires."

Caroline laughed, short and caustic. "Sided with them? I sided with my brother." She stabbed at her chest as she walked toward him. "My romantic fool of a brother who thought he had found something worth dying for in Katherine Pierce. A woman, I might add, that you invited into our home." She pointed at him accusingly. "A woman that seduced your son into thinking the only choice he had was to die in order to love her. And let us not forget that he would not have been so easily manipulated if only his father had treated him better. If only he had known love, real love, in those around him, and didn't need to search for it elsewhere."

"You would blame me for your actions?" He sneered. "How typical of your kind."

"My kind?" she scoffed. "If I'm a monster, it was of your making, and it happened the day of my birth and no later."

"You speak blasphemy, and I only thank God your mother isn't alive to see what a disgrace you've become."

"Do not speak of my mother," she spat through gritted teeth as she lurched forward another step. "She was better than you or I have ever been, and she would die a thousand deaths to have spared me and Damon your pitiful attempt at being a father. Were she here now, it would not be I she would call a disgrace, but you!"

"Already the sickness has turned you into a vile and vicious creature!"

"Better that than whatever you would have of me."

"I would have nothing of you, daughter," he sneered, before grabbing up a shovel from the fireplace. He broke off the bottom as he brought it down over his knee and then raised the handle as a makeshift stake. "Nothing but your end!" He lunged at her, and Caroline, surprised by the attack, reacted by raising her arms up in defense. She tried to knock the stake from his hands, but an unexpected burst of strength forced her father across the room. He slammed into the wall and fell to the ground, the stake now embedded in his ribs.

Shock, regret, and horror flooded through her. "Papa!" she cried out, and hurried toward him, kneeling at his side on the floor. "I… I never meant to…" She stared down at the stake, her hands raised in a calming fashion. "Let me help you."

"Get away from me," he grunted.

"Will you not take my help even now, you—you stubborn goat!?" She glared down at him and reached for the handle, pulling it abruptly from his body.

He grunted at the pain and gasped for air, struggling as he laid in front of her.

Caroline nearly dropped the stake, but her eyes caught on the blood coating the end. The scent of it was… intoxicating. Her stomach twisted and turned, hungry. She could hear her heart – or was it her father's? – pounding in her ears. And her vision narrowed to the blood, coating her fingers, flowing freely from his wound, tempting her, drawing her every closer.

"Just a taste," she whispered to herself. "Just… a drop…" She licked it from her fingers first, but it wasn't enough, she wasn't sure it would ever be enough, and then… She proved herself right.

As first victim's go, perhaps her father had it coming.

[…]

When Caroline returned to the abandoned quarry, Damon was looking worse for wear. She could hear his weakened heart beating, see the sweat pearling on his sallow skin, and knew that his time was coming to an end.

"Brother."

Damon turned to her, his brow knitting as he blinked in confusion. "Who is he?"

Caroline glanced at the man beside her. "You're right, how rude of me." She turned to him, catching his gaze. "Tell me your name."

"Archibald," the compelled man answered her. "Archibald Franklin."

"There." She waved to him. "Mister Franklin was passing by the outskirts of town when I flagged his carriage. He was kind enough to stop for me." Flashing a smile at him, she said, "Isn't that right, Mister Franklin?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered.

"This is my brother, Damon," she continued, drawing him a few steps closer.

Damon struggled to stand, his body weak. "Why have you brought him here?"

"Do you remember when I was younger, and you would tell me that I was terribly spoiled and selfish? When I would get a new gown and you would tell me that I was far too occupied with my appearance, or that it was unbecoming to look at myself too long in a mirror?"

He shook his head. "I was jesting. You know you're beautiful."

"I do, and I am," she admitted, quite frankly. "And I was only ever ashamed of that fact when you or father would tell me that I shouldn't be so sure of myself. That I should, what did he call it, 'quiet myself so others might hear the sound of their own, much more earned, accomplishments.'" Her smiled turned sharp. "Truthfully, I am selfish. And quite possibly conceited. But that is a separate issue, the more vital piece to take from this is that I am deeply selfish, Damon. I make decisions that I know will benefit me more than other people. Perhaps it is how I was raised or perhaps it is simply a flaw in my character. Either way, I've made a decision."

He stared at her, frowning. "What decision is that?"

"I've decided… I won't let you die." She stepped forward, drawing Mister Franklin along with her, his arm tucked around her elbow. "I'm not ready to lose you, and since I'm likely to live a great deal longer than I ever expected, I want you to live just as long."

"Caroline… No." He shook his head and stumbled his way down a wooden step, keen to walk right past her and on into oblivion. "I have told you. Katherine is dead. There is nothing left for me."

"That is where you and I disagree… The way I see it, there is a great deal left to see and explore." She shook her head. "I know that right now you are grieving, but there are ways around that. Once you turn, you can make all those feelings go away. You can forget all this hurt and pain."

"I don't want to." He pushed past her, but Caroline grabbed at his wrist and drew him back.

"If you don't feed, you will die, and no matter how many romantic illusions are playing havoc with your mind right now, that is not something to take lightly."

"Let me go," he told her, tugging at his arm.

"I won't." She drew Mister Franklin around to face him. "I have lost enough, brother. I won't lose you too." She turned then, her eyes darkening, and she buried her mouth against Mister Franklin's neck, piercing it with her teeth before she drew back. As the blood pearled against his pale skin, she pushed him forward, standing before Damon's mesmerized gaze. "Don't fight it. Let it happen."

Damon leaned closer, drawing a deep breath. Caroline stood, smiling, and wiped a dribble of blood from her own chin with her finger, licking it away as her brother met his destiny, teeth first.

[…]

"Are you happy now?" Damon wondered, peering at the night sky as he wiped blood from his chin. The poor Mister Franklin lay dead not but a few feet away. "This is what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"There are many things I wanted," Caroline replied. "The first being that I didn't die at seventeen, and yet here we are."

He snorted at that, and drew a hand back through his hair. "And what now, little sister? What plans do you have for us going forward?"

She turned to him, her arms wrapped around her knees as she sat atop the cold grass. "Truthfully, I had not planned past this moment."

He smirked at that. "You were always rather shortsighted."

She sniffed, irritably. "Forgive me for not planning out an eternity when I had never planned to live so long."

"Perhaps not an eternity, but you must have a plan for the near future. For tomorrow, at least."

Caroline hummed. "We must leave Mystic Falls… The world is huge, and there's much for us to explore. Perhaps tomorrow I will know more, but today… Today I only know that we're alive."

"What good it does us," he muttered.

Leaning over, she rested her head atop his shoulder. She could still smell Mister Franklin's blood drying on Damon's shirt and her teeth throbbed for a taste. But he was wrung dry, and though she wanted to feel something about that, she would much rather feel nothing at all. "Do you resent me for making you turn?"

"Honestly?" He paused. "Yes."

"Okay."

He frowned as he looked down at her, a brow raised.

"I will accept your resentment, even your hatred," she decided. "So long as you're alive."

"I will give you today. I cannot promise tomorrow."

She smiled. "If I have to fight you every day, I will. And I'll win."

He laughed, shaking his head. "Arrogant."

"It is not arrogance if you're right," she argued.

His mouth ticked up faintly, but fell just as swiftly. "What you said before, about turning it off… How do I do it?"

Caroline raised her head to look at him, her lips pursed thoughtfully. "Do you think it truly necessary?"

"I cannot feel like this forever…" His eyes swam with a sudden film of tears. "I love her, Caroline. I should have saved her. I should have—"

"Shhh…" She squeezed his arm and shook her head. "I will show you."

There were a great many things Caroline would grow to regret in her life; this was one of the biggest.

author's note: i can't even tell y'all how excited i am for this story, because there is so much awesome female friendship, steroline, caroline&damon brother/sister stuff coming. i've got 40k currently written and i'm trucking through at a good pace. while this does cover season one, it will focus primarily on caroline, stefan (who has a little sister, and she's awesome), damon, bonnie, and lexi. because if caroline was going to live stefan's life (minus the ripper side, because their personalities haven't switched, just their lives), then she deserved a lexi! so it does cover the timeline, but there are a lot of ways it changes. like, sarah salvatore is alive and living at the boarding house, and so is her mom, gail. so it'll have some unexpected faces and plots that didn't happen originally, but have been awesome to explore.

next chapter picks up in 2009, by the way. this is more like a prologue. there will be little flashbacks throughout, though!

hope you enjoyed it, thanks so much for reading. please try to leave a review; they're my lifeblood.

- lee | fina