I've decided to give this website another chance, for whatever reason.

This whole story started about a year ago, because someone on the TVD wiki asked the users for help in making characters for a fanfiction, one that centered around Caroline and involved her living her own life after the events of the season five finale. I liked this idea because Caroline was always one of the best and well-rounded characters, in my opinion. That is, until Kevin Williamson left the show and Caroline Dries took over with Julie Plec. After that, the whole show started to go to hell. So I'm using this story as a sort of spin-off focusing on Caroline, but with guest appearances from the other members of the main cast.

This first chapter is sort of a prologue, letting everyone know what happened to the other main characters of TVD and why Caroline decided to move and start fresh.

CAROLINE

May, 2012

The monitor lit up with the face of a beautiful young woman, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, the very visage of the All-American girl-next-door. Though, at first, he beauty was hard to recognize, because all one would see would be the bright red and runny nose, and the eyes swollen from crying. Her golden hair was limp and tangled and the circles under those dull blue eyes were large and dark. She looked like hell, like one small bit of bad news more and she would shatter. She was a tragic sight, curled up on the computer chair she sat upon, a blanket around her shoulders.

At first, she seemed unaware that the webcam was on and recording, her eyes staring off into distant space that no one else could physically see, her mind turned inward to whatever tragic memory that assailed her. After a moment or two of reflection, her eyes flickered over to the computer, intelligence and humanity filling their watery blue depths. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes before opening her mouth to speak, only to close it again a second later.

She repeated this twice more before her eyes once again welled with tears.

"I'm sorry... I can't..." She reached out and closed the laptop, ending the recording.

-oOo-

June, 2012

The webcam was once again on and the young woman was once again in her chair, though this time a bit more put together. She'd cleaned up and was no longer wrapped up in a blanket. But, once again there was a downside. This time, a bottle of what looked like very expensive bourbon was in her grasp, half of its contents gone and not a glass in sight. The blue eyes this time were fever bright and glazed over with a drunken filter. Once again: beautiful but tragic.

"So, I'm supposed to talk to you." She waved the hand holding the bottle of whiskey at the camera. "You, anonymous people. Whoever has nothing to do with their lives but to listen to the ramblings of the heartbroken." She raised the bottle to her lips and took a long swig of the amber spirit. "But... but, what is talking going to do about any of it? Hmm?" She directed her burning gaze toward the camera, and for the briefest of moments, her eyes seemed filled with blood, the veins of her cheeks protruding against her skin. But less than the span of a blink and she was still just a drunken young woman, struggling to work though some sort of grief.

"No, talking's not going to do anything." She snarled after swallowing the booze. "They're dead and they're not coming back. No amount of talking is going to change that at all." Tears began to shimmer, unshed in her eyes. "Talking just makes me relive it all over again." One tear fell, then another. Pretty soon she couldn't hold them back.

"I can't do this - "

Once again the computer was closed abruptly.

-oOo-

August, 2012

The computer was turned on, the webcam broadcasting. The young woman once again was sitting at her desk, though this time she wasn't a crumbling or drunken mess. Her eyes were clear and bright, focused entirely on the camera, her face flesh and clean, her make-up meticulously applied. She took a deep breath and let it out before beginning.

"If you happened to have caught my last two recordings, I apologize." She said. "I..." She looked away for a moment, trying to figure out how to best articulat what she wanted to say. "I wasn't in the best place. So, let's start over." She straightened herself up in her chair and stared directly at the camera. "Hi, my name is Caroline Forbes." She smiled brightly, her smile like pure sunshine.

"You see, I had just finished my freshmen year at Whitmore College here in Virginia, when... " She seemed at a loss for words. "Well, something happened. A lot of somethings happened, actually. Just one after another after another..."

A handsome young man was facing off against and elegant, darker-skinned woman, a blood-stained grimoire laying on a table nearby while the fire roared in the fireplace and the windows burst open on account of the wind. Silas and Qetsiyah, two ancient, powerful and crazy beings, having their last confrontation on this plane.

Jesse, and older college boy she happened to like who had been turned into a vampire. Not only that, but a vampire that fed on vampires. She had though she could help him, right up until her best friend had ripped out his heart to save her boyfriend.

Katherine Pierce, scourge of her life, mirror image of her best friend and the reason she was currently what she was, laying dying in a bed, her five hundred years of life finally catching up with her. That is, only for her to turn around and through some gyspy juju, possess Elena and make their lives even more miserable.

She remembered the Travelers and the smell of roasting flesh as a dozen of them burned themselves alive. She remembered watchign another Traveler wearing the face of her ex-boyfriend rip out the heart of Stefan, letting him die there on the ground.

Caroline shook herself out of her memories before once again focusing on the webcam.

"Then there was a car accident and a gas leak in town." She went on to explain.

Damon and Elena clasped hands over the gear shift as they plowed through the side of the Mystic Grill in his vintage car, an explosion soon engulfing the entire building and killing the entirety of the Travlers that lurked inside, celebrating their new home.

"Elena was okay, but Damon didn't make it." Caroline informed her vast and silent audience. "Tyler recovered from his thing, which we won't get into." She shook her head agian, tears shimmering briefly in her eyes. "But Bonnie..." She looked away and wiped at her eyes. "Bonnie didn't make it either." She looked back at the camera, her eyes watering.

"I know there's probably a million other people we'd each rather be with right now..." Bonnie said, holding out her hand to the vampire beside her. The elder Salvatore brother looked down before meeting the witch's eyes.

"Couple thousand, at least." He joked, as he usually did, linking his hand with hers. Around them, the world... well, vibrated seemed to be the only word that properly described it, and even that didn't seem right. The light in the sky flickered, seeming to grow brighter, as if the light at the end of the tunnel was coming to them instead of the other way around.

"Do you think it will hurt?" Bonnie asked, a little tremble to her voice as she gripped his hand tighter. He returned the squeeze, watching as their end approached.

"I don't kn-"

"After that, well, we all sort of fell apart." Caroline explained. "I mean, at first we all tried to band together, help each other through our shared grief, but eventually... " She shrugged. "We just moved on, but in different directions." She sighed. "Elena decided to drop out of college and see the world. I haven't really heard from her since she took off in the middle of the night."

Elena Gilbert, dark-haired, beautiful doppelganger of Katherine Pierce attacked the couple camping out in the woods in the middle of the night, her eyes vamped out and inhuman, all traces of humanity gone. She sank her fangs into the girl's neck, draining the life-sustaining blood, her hand over her mouth to stop the screaming. On the ground at her feet was the girl's boyfriend, a large and vicious bite on the side of his neck sluggishly pumping out blood.

"Since Alaric couldn't really go home, he decided to follow Elena... keep her out of trouble."

Elena was pulled roughly away from the girl she was feeding on and thrown backward, where she rolled to her feet with a feral hiss, her beauty lost in the animalistic fury that masked her face. The man who pulled her off, one Alaric Saltzman, looked down at her with pity in his eyes. With one last hiss, she turned and ran, a small dark blur that was quickly lost in the shadows. Ric turned his gaze toward the groaning of the couple on the ground, his gaze immediatly going to the wounds at their necks, his heightened senses honing in on the blood. His eyes briefly flickered to their vampiric nature before he regained control of himself and raised his wrist to his lips, sinking fangs into flesh and releasing his healing blood.

He crouched down.

"Jeremy... well, he didn't take Bonnie's death to well..."

Jeremy sat in the cavernous living room of the Salvatore Boarding House, pouring more Bourbon into a crystal glass, only to spill half of it as he brought it to his lips and down it all. Lying around him were the mostly empty, and some shattered, crystal decanters that house the Salvatore's famous liquor selection. The young Hunter refilled his glass before leaning back into the couch, one hand holding the glass of hooch and the other holding a picture that was so handled, the edges were starting to crumble. It was a picture of him and Bonnie. As he stared at it, glass halfway to his lips, the tears started to fall and then the sobs quickly followed. With a rage-filled scream, he hurled the glass across the room, watching as it shattered against the wall. Still screaming, he got up and caused some more damage to the room, knocking over tables and spilling papers everywhere. He continued to scream, falling to his knees and curling in on himself, his impressive frame wracked with heavy sobs.

"Since he didn't have anyone else, my mom's been taking care of him."

Liz Forbes slowly entered the darkened room, taking in the mess of scattered papers and broken bottles laying everywhere. She stepped around most of the mess and made her way to the hunched over form of Jeremy Gilbert, his sobs now mostly silent.

"Come on, Jeremy." She said softly in the kind of voice you would use to talk to a frightened animal, or someone about to jump off a ledge. "Let's get you cleaned up."

"Go away." Jeremy mumbled into the carpet.

"Jeremy..." The sheriff sighed. "You're coming with me if I have to put you in cuffs and haul you out of here." Jeremy peeked out past his own bangs, looking up at Caroline's mother with red-rimmed eyes before he slowly hauled himself to his feet. He stumbled drunkenly, only to have Liz brace him, arm around his impressive shoulders as she led him through the mess and toward the front doors.

"Tomorrow, you're coming back here to clean all this up." She scolded him.

"Stefan disappeared. At first, he hung around, searching for... ways to handle it. Then he stopped returning our calls. Then he just... left. We went by his place one day and his stuff was gone."

A pair of jean-clad legs is sticking out from beneath a car in a typical mechanic's garage. The tinkering of tools could be heard as whoever was under there was messing with the engine, trying to solve the problem. As he worked, a man in coveralls came out of the office at the back of the garage.

"Hey! Get your ass in here, kid. It's payday." He shouted before going back to his office. The mechanic slid out from beneath the vehicle and there stood Stefan Salvatore, grease and oil staining his shirt and hands. He pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands as he made his way to his boss's office.

"Matt joined the community watch program. Said he was going to join the Police Academy when he was eligable." She smiled. "He said after everything that had happend to our town, he wanted to actually protect it."

Matt jogged around the town square with the rest of the Community Watch members, sweat soaking his thin t-shirt to his broad chest and powerful arms.

"And Tyler, well, he decided to make use of his clean slate. He joined Whitmore. Last I heard he was with the practice squad on the football team, working out his aggression."

Tyler continued with his push-ups in his dorm room, obviously having been at them for a while if the sweat dripping off of his bare torso was anything to go by, his muscles bulging with the effort of his work-out.

"And me, well, after a lot of thought about it, I've decided to go back to college." Caroline said. "i talked it over with my mom and she agreed that I needed to get away from this place. I mean we, not just me, but all of us, we've all lost parents and loved ones in this town. Sticking around is like wallowing in the misery." She smiled brightly. "So, you are looking at the future Class of '15 graduate of UCLA." She seemed really happy about that. "I'm finally gonna get to pursue my drama major and become the next great star... even if just for a little while.

"My plane leaves tomorrow, so I'm all packed with nothing to do. That's kind of the reason I started this video diary." She admitted with a sheepish smile. "You see, Stefan and Elena both told me ove the years how writing in a journal helped them get all this... " She searched for a word while waving her hands around. "... stuff off of my chest. I tried it but couldn't get past the first page. So, I decided to embrace the twenty-first century and try a video diary." She shrugged. "And so, here we are. We'll see how long it lasts. I just wanted to start it before I move on to my new life tomorrow.

"Good bye, Mystic Falls. Hello, sunny L.A."