Fic! TVD/Justified crossover
Apr. 21st, 2011 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rillaliciousOkay, so here's the thing. I got this bunny for a TVD/Justified crossover that wouldn't leave me alone, and I couldn't concentrate on my Colby fic until it was finished. So now it's finished. My guess is that no one reads it, but I'm thinking that there's a chance I'll return to it once both seasons have ended, and maybe write more.
Anyway, here is.
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries/Justified (crossover)
Characters: Caroline, Jules, Doyle, Raylan and Boyd
Word Count: ~3300
Rating: PG
Warnings: Character death, country music
Summary: Caroline has a body to bury, Stefan sends her to Eastern Kentucky to do it. But she's not going alone.
A/N: Special thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ellensmithee for the beta! Vague spoilers for Justified through s2, Spoilers for TVD through s2.
Tammy Wynette came on the radio just as she crossed the state line into Kentucky. It was enough to make her laugh. Stand by your man. Right. She glanced up at the rearview mirror, her gaze coming to rest on the top of the back seat, the part that would pull down and pop open to reveal the body in trunk.
Her man.
His corpse.
"Loyal to the end, weren't you, baby?" she said, and her voice sounded so hostile, so foreign, that it gave her a chill.
Damon had been surprised that she wanted to take care of the body herself, but he hadn't been in a position to argue. He had to take care of her mother. It may have been stupid and naive to trust him with that, but what else did she have left? And besides, if Damon hadn't killed Liz the last time, when she'd pumped him full of wooden bullets, he probably wasn't going to start tonight. Not after she'd stopped Matt from staking him.
She turned off the radio, but Tammy Wynette's tinny echo continued to bounce around in her skull as she drove on into the night.
~*~*~
When Caroline finally pulled off the road, onto the gravelly drive that Stefan had told her about, she finally relaxed. She didn't want to know how Stefan knew about this place. Every once in a while, he had a dark secret that cropped up out of nowhere, made her wonder if she should be a little more wary of the faith she'd placed in him. Even Damon had been surprised when Stefan mentioned this location, though his trademark smirk had conveyed more admiration than shock. As it would. She imagined Damon was fond of unmarked graveyards.
She got out of the car and walked around to open the trunk, her body going stiff as the gravel crunched beneath a new set of tires.
In a flash, she was in the woods, behind a tree, watching a truck, headlights off, pulling up behind her. She knew that truck. She pressed her back to the tree, looked up at the sky, at the waning moon, and swallowed.
"Come out, little vampire," called Jules. She didn't close the driver's side door.
Caroline breathed through her nose. She could hear Jules tapping on the trunk of the car.
"Caroline," she said, and this time the taunt was absent from her voice. "Tyler sent me. He didn't want you to do this alone."
The leaves barely rustled as Caroline moved quickly through the trees to the other side of the clearing.
"Are you alone?" she said.
Jules spun around, facing Caroline's direction now. "Yes."
Caroline scanned the area, the pick-up truck, her mother's car, from the safe darkness of her shelter between the trees. Jules seemed to be telling the truth. Caroline stepped out into the moonlight.
"Tyler knows?"
Jules nodded. Caroline approached the car.
"He saw everything," said Jules.
Now Caroline nodded, and she pressed her thumb into the keychain. The trunk popped. Jules lifted it open.
Matt's body was wrapped in a bright blue tarp. Inside that, he was stuffed into garbage bags. Like trash. Like he didn't even matter. Caroline's throat tightened. The smell was awful. She didn't know why, but she hadn't expected that, for Matt to smell like decay after he died. For him not to remain young and handsome and perfect.
"Come on," said Jules, and one hand was on Caroline's arm. Caroline watched as Jules reached into the trunk with her other hand, watched as long fingers curled around one of the ropes binding the tarp around Matt's body.
Stand by your man.
Caroline reached in, too, meeting Jules's eyes as she took hold of the other side. For just a second, what had happened that night in the trailer was irrelevant. They were somehow in this together now, and until it was over, they'd stumbled into an unsteady truce.
~*~*~
When the sheriff's car pulled up, they had just finished covering the grave with leaves and dirt. They'd pulled the tarp off and it lay on the ground by Caroline's feet. It was bloodless, smeared only with a little dirt and an oily patch from the trunk. As if it had never touched Matt's body at all. Caroline tensed, felt the veins in her forehead rise to the surface, and started forward.
"I can take care of this," she said, but Jules's arm on her elbow held her back.
"No," said Jules. "We don't have to solve it like that. No one here has any reason to be suspicious."
A second vehicle pulled in, but Caroline couldn't see what it was. Someone got out.
"Evenin', Doyle."
"Raylan."
They knew each other. Caroline wondered if it would be enough of a distraction to let her and Jules escape.
"You're my sister," Jules whispered. "We're out here to have a little girl bonding time this weekend. That's all."
Caroline nodded. The men were talking about the cars now--hers and Jules'. At least Jules had had the good sense to shut the trunk before they'd buried Matt. Otherwise, well, that would have looked bad. Jules tugged her forward and Caroline followed.
"Hello, officers," Jules said, stepping out into the open. "We're not parked illegally, are we? I thought we were far enough off the road."
"No, your parkin' job's just fine," said the man in the cowboy hat, pacing forward a few steps to get a good look at them.
Caroline straightened up instinctively.
"My name's Raylan Givens, ma'am. Deputy US Marshal. This is Sheriff Bennett. We were just discussing the matter of two seemingly abandoned cars out here in the middle of nowhere."
The sheriff cleared his throat, giving Caroline the impression there was way more to this story than the marshal was letting on.
"We're camping," said Jules, and she stepped in front of Caroline.
Caroline didn't get werewolves and all this possessive/protective bullshit. For God's sake, Caroline could tear out all their jugulars before they even knew what hit them. It wasn't like she hadn't done it before. After last night, though, she didn't want to. She wanted desperately for Jules to be right that there was another way to deal with this.
"Camping?" said the marshal. "I see. We don't see much in the way of campers around here. Especially not on private land."
"My--our family knows the... Crowders," Caroline said quickly, hoping beyond reason she'd remembered the name Stefan had given her correctly.
"Is that so?" said the marshal. "Problem is, this isn't the Crowders' land anymore. Belongs to the Black Pike Mining company."
"You girls wanna revise that story?" said the sheriff, and there was something more malicious in his tone. He was waiting for the marshal to leave.
"My mom's a sheriff," Caroline said suddenly, and she felt Jules entire body stiffen beside her.
"Your mama's a sheriff," said the sheriff. He snorted, dismissing her as insignificant. Then he shot the marshal a look that wasn't returned. "And that makes you above the law?"
"No!" said Caroline. "That's not what I meant."
"Now, Doyle," said the marshal, and Caroline caught the motion out of the corner of her eye as his hand came to rest just above his gun, "let the ladies explain. They're clearly not from around here. As a matter of fact, I believe you're a bit outside your jurisdiction, too. Isn't that right?"
The sheriff only glared and Caroline pressed her lips together, covering her elongating fangs. Jules pressed a shoulder in front of her again. She stayed where she was, watching the silent showdown, digging her nails into the palms of her hands as she waited for the sheriff to back down.
Finally, he did.
Once he'd left the scene without speaking, though the sentiment was clear--whatever had happened between the sheriff and the marshal was far from over--the marshal turned back to them.
"If you ladies are friends of the Crowders, I reckon you know better than to 'camp' this close to Bennett territory. Might I suggest heading to a motel for the night?"
Jules smiled at him, slowly, a very canine smile. Caroline swallowed.
"Of course," said Jules, but before she could say more, the sound of footsteps echoed from the far side of the clearing.
All three turned around, Marshal Givens with a hand on his gun.
"Well, hello, Raylan," said a man, stepping down from a rocky rise just beyond the cover of the trees.
"Boyd," said the marshal, and he turned to look back at Jules and Caroline, suspicion all over his face. "What're you doin' out here?"
Boyd watched Caroline for a moment, then looked back to the marshal.
"I was just doin' a favor for an old acquaintance of the family," he said in a soft voice. "From Virginia." His gaze moved back to Caroline.
"You're Boyd Crowder," she said suddenly. "Stefan mentioned you."
"Miss Forbes," said Boyd politely. "I've come here to inform you that the land upon which you stand is no longer my family's property, unfortunately."
"So we've heard," said Jules. "We'll just pack up our things and be going, then."
"Then I take it you've," Boyd paused meaningfully here, and the marshal cocked an eyebrow, "set up your camp completely?"
"No," said Jules, but Caroline didn't let her finish, catching his double meaning immediately. She didn't know who this guy was, but Stefan obviously trusted him enough to let him know Caroline was burying a body out here in the woods. At least she hoped that was what he was getting at.
"Yes!" Caroline said. "Yes, we have. But it's not much. It'll only take us a minute. And then we'll be out of your hair. I'd much rather sleep in a hotel anyway, than out here with all the bugs and... creatures. Come on, Jules."
She grabbed the werewolf's sleeve and pulled with all her strength, dragging Jules back into the woods while the two men resumed their conversation. As soon as they were once again hidden by the trees, Jules shoved her away.
"Get off me," she hissed. "Are you insane? We need to get out of here now!"
"I know that," said Caroline. "That man knows Stefan. He knows what we're doing here. He's helping us."
"What we're doing here?" said Jules. "I was only here to keep an eye on you for Tyler. I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't know vampires were stupid enough to drop bodies in the middle of populated areas!"
"Stefan didn't know anyone would be here!" Caroline said.
"Maybe he should have thought harder," said Jules. "And I was beginning to think he was smarter than Damon after all."
"Why don't you just go," said Caroline. "I'll take care of this." Her heel sank into the soft, loose ground beneath the leaves, and all she wanted to do was run down to the creekbed and be sick.
"Because you're incapable of taking care of yourself and Tyler wants you to stay alive."
Caroline didn't know which part of that statement set her off the most; that Jules thought she had any right to judge what Caroline was capable of, or that Tyler thought Caroline's safety had anything to do with him. He certainly hadn't cared when Brady was pumping her head full of wooden bullets.
She lunged forward, fisting her hands in Jules shirt and slamming the werewolf against a tree.
"I could leave two bodies out here in the woods," she said, breathing heavily in Jules's face. "No one would even know."
"You go ahead and kill me," said Jules, meeting her gaze without fear. "And then you explain to Tyler why you did it."
"Gladly." Caroline flashed her fangs and hissed, the hazy red filter that clouded her vision making Jules hair look like it was on fire.
"Ladies, are we gonna have a problem here?" The marshal's voice filtered through the trees.
Caroline felt as though cold water had been poured over her shoulders, the hot rush of blood receding from her face and chest, and her weight rested back on her heels.
"No, sir," she called out, and she let go of Jules's shirt. Reaching up on impulse, she smoothed the wrinkles her fists had imprinted. "We're just collecting our things!"
Jules turned away, swept the tarp off the forest floor, and pushed her way through the narrow path toward the cars. Caroline pressed her hands to her face, parted her fingers to peer down one last time at Matt's unmarked grave, then followed.
"You'll have to forgive my friend Raylan," said Boyd once Caroline had joined them again in the clearing by the drive. Jules was stuffing the tarp into the back of her truck. "He tends to be a bit acrimonious when it comes to the Bennetts."
"You're using the term 'friend' awful loosely, Boyd," said Raylan, and Caroline could hear the warning in his voice.
"Are we done here?" said Jules, shutting the back of the pick-up.
"I suppose we are," said Raylan, giving her another look. "I trust the two of you can find your way back to Virginia."
"Of course we can," said Jules, and she looked at Caroline, her expression wavering for a moment. Caroline saw it then, the mirror of her own panic and uncertainty, and she swallowed hard.
"Yeah," she said, forcing a smile in the marshal's direction. "We'll be fine. We'll both be fine."
"Ladies," said Boyd. "Raylan."
"Not you," said Raylan, turning wholly toward Boyd now as Caroline slipped into her mother's car. "You've got some explaining to do."
Caroline shut the door and exhaled, counting five deep, steady breaths before she turned on the ignition and pulled away. As she neared the main road again, she slowed on the gravelly access road, waiting to see Jules headlights in her rear view mirror before making the turn. She reached down to put on the radio.
Just beneath the sound of static and white noise, Tanya Tucker was crooning about small birds and hurricanes, and Caroline shut it off again.
She looked up at the road, her lower lip trembling as they drove, on the same road, in the same direction, yet somehow thousands of miles apart, into the night.
~*~*~
"The last time I was here, I wasn't exactly a welcome guest," said Jules, looking around the Salvatore living room as she followed Caroline inside.
"It's Elena's house now," said Caroline. "And she says it's all right. You helped us."
"I also had you kidnapped and tortured." Jules watched Caroline pour two drinks.
Caroline pressed a glass into Jules's hand, then sat on the couch, watching the dark fireplace.
"I'm still friends with Damon," she said. "And he's done worse."
"I believe that," Jules murmured. "Friends? Is that what you're calling this now?"
Caroline sniffed, an odd feeling coming over her as the corner of her mouth curled upward. It felt like she hadn't smiled in days.
"According to someone's Facebook status last week, 'a friend will help you hide, a real friend will help you hide a body'." Caroline raised the glass to her lips.
Jules snorted. "Friends, then," she said. "By that definition." She paused for a beat. "Did he love you as much as Tyler does? The boy we buried."
Caroline looked up, blinking. "What?"
"Oh, don't play coy. He's so far gone it's pathetic." Jules looked almost apologetic for a moment. "Disgustingly sweet, anyway."
"I don't..." Caroline shook her head. "I can't even think about that right now."
"Fair enough. The marshal wasn't hard on the eyes," said Jules, holding her drink away from her body as she sank onto the couch beside Caroline.
"No," Caroline said, faintly amused. "He wasn't."
"And that accent. Delicious."
Caroline's head snapped to attention, but Jules just snorted.
"I'm not planning on eating him," she said, her annoyance tempered by a smile. "I was using it figuratively. We're not all animals, you know."
"No," said Caroline. "I really don't know that."
"You'll learn. Aren't you a little young for," Jules sniffed her glass, "what does Damon keep in here, bourbon?"
Caroline shrugged. "It puts off the cravings a little bit. And I'm never going to get any older than this."
"True." Jules sipped her drink.
"How did Stefan know that guy?" asked Jules.
Caroline smiled and shook her head. "He used to bootleg, during Prohibition. The Crowders were big bootleggers, too. He's known the family for a long time. They're into some..." She trailed off, wondering how to put it.
"Shady shit?" said Jules
Caroline laughed. "Uh, yeah."
The moment faded, both of them staring into the empty fireplace.
"Have you seen your mother?" asked Jules. "That was her, right? The sheriff?"
Caroline shook her head. "I'm not ready for that yet, either." She sipped her drink again. "I'm just one gigantic coward right now. Caroline, the cowardly vampire."
"Hey," said Jules. "You just buried your boyfriend. That takes balls."
"Or something," said Caroline. A bigger gulp of her drink this time, and it burned going down.
"No, I'm serious," Jules said. "When I had to bury Br--" She shook her head. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."
Caroline wondered how cold it must be under the ground, if the marshal would return and start digging around out there in the woods. If Boyd Crowder would tell him what they'd been up to. If the sheriff would come back to Matt's grave. Caroline didn't like the feeling he'd given her. She'd spent enough time around really bad people lately to know how to spot them from a distance. That guy had been one of them.
She wanted to ask Jules if she thought Matt would be safe there, then she realized that 'safe' was not the word she was looking for, and before she could come up with something better, the front door opened.
"And I am done with that shit!" It was Damon's voice, loud and cloying, and beside Caroline on the couch, Jules's hackles rose. She could feel it.
"It's over now, Damon." Elena sounded quiet, small.
They were carrying something between them, Stefan and Damon, and Damon grunted as he propped it against the wall. A body, maybe. An unconscious one.
Caroline looked over at Jules, her teeth digging into her lower lip. Jules rolled her eyes, took a drink. Caroline smiled; she wanted to laugh, really. Here they were, a bunch of normal abnormal people, in a house protected from evil vampires, waiting for day to break across a night that claimed both friends and enemies, and somehow, the denouement (Caroline had learned that word in English class and loved the way it rolled off her tongue) of their bonding adventure happened over Damon's whiny entitlement.
"Aren't you going to go to your friend?" Jules asked, her voice soft. She, too, wanted to avoid the others' attention for a while longer.
"In a minute," said Caroline. She raised her glass, feeling about a hundred years older than the last time she'd rolled out of bed, then drained it.
"Thank you," she said to Jules. "For helping me do what I needed to do."
Jules watched her for a moment, her eyes going a bit golden in their intensity, and nodded. Caroline rose slowly to her feet, setting her glass aside.
Jules raised her own drink. "Until the next time. And I've got the feeling there's going to be a next time."
"You might be right," Caroline said, and then she finally looked away, turning to see Elena in the doorway, arms outstretched.
And Caroline rushed to her.
[END]
Anyway, here is.
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries/Justified (crossover)
Characters: Caroline, Jules, Doyle, Raylan and Boyd
Word Count: ~3300
Rating: PG
Warnings: Character death, country music
Summary: Caroline has a body to bury, Stefan sends her to Eastern Kentucky to do it. But she's not going alone.
A/N: Special thanks to
ellensmithee for the beta! Vague spoilers for Justified through s2, Spoilers for TVD through s2. Tammy Wynette came on the radio just as she crossed the state line into Kentucky. It was enough to make her laugh. Stand by your man. Right. She glanced up at the rearview mirror, her gaze coming to rest on the top of the back seat, the part that would pull down and pop open to reveal the body in trunk.
Her man.
His corpse.
"Loyal to the end, weren't you, baby?" she said, and her voice sounded so hostile, so foreign, that it gave her a chill.
Damon had been surprised that she wanted to take care of the body herself, but he hadn't been in a position to argue. He had to take care of her mother. It may have been stupid and naive to trust him with that, but what else did she have left? And besides, if Damon hadn't killed Liz the last time, when she'd pumped him full of wooden bullets, he probably wasn't going to start tonight. Not after she'd stopped Matt from staking him.
She turned off the radio, but Tammy Wynette's tinny echo continued to bounce around in her skull as she drove on into the night.
When Caroline finally pulled off the road, onto the gravelly drive that Stefan had told her about, she finally relaxed. She didn't want to know how Stefan knew about this place. Every once in a while, he had a dark secret that cropped up out of nowhere, made her wonder if she should be a little more wary of the faith she'd placed in him. Even Damon had been surprised when Stefan mentioned this location, though his trademark smirk had conveyed more admiration than shock. As it would. She imagined Damon was fond of unmarked graveyards.
She got out of the car and walked around to open the trunk, her body going stiff as the gravel crunched beneath a new set of tires.
In a flash, she was in the woods, behind a tree, watching a truck, headlights off, pulling up behind her. She knew that truck. She pressed her back to the tree, looked up at the sky, at the waning moon, and swallowed.
"Come out, little vampire," called Jules. She didn't close the driver's side door.
Caroline breathed through her nose. She could hear Jules tapping on the trunk of the car.
"Caroline," she said, and this time the taunt was absent from her voice. "Tyler sent me. He didn't want you to do this alone."
The leaves barely rustled as Caroline moved quickly through the trees to the other side of the clearing.
"Are you alone?" she said.
Jules spun around, facing Caroline's direction now. "Yes."
Caroline scanned the area, the pick-up truck, her mother's car, from the safe darkness of her shelter between the trees. Jules seemed to be telling the truth. Caroline stepped out into the moonlight.
"Tyler knows?"
Jules nodded. Caroline approached the car.
"He saw everything," said Jules.
Now Caroline nodded, and she pressed her thumb into the keychain. The trunk popped. Jules lifted it open.
Matt's body was wrapped in a bright blue tarp. Inside that, he was stuffed into garbage bags. Like trash. Like he didn't even matter. Caroline's throat tightened. The smell was awful. She didn't know why, but she hadn't expected that, for Matt to smell like decay after he died. For him not to remain young and handsome and perfect.
"Come on," said Jules, and one hand was on Caroline's arm. Caroline watched as Jules reached into the trunk with her other hand, watched as long fingers curled around one of the ropes binding the tarp around Matt's body.
Stand by your man.
Caroline reached in, too, meeting Jules's eyes as she took hold of the other side. For just a second, what had happened that night in the trailer was irrelevant. They were somehow in this together now, and until it was over, they'd stumbled into an unsteady truce.
When the sheriff's car pulled up, they had just finished covering the grave with leaves and dirt. They'd pulled the tarp off and it lay on the ground by Caroline's feet. It was bloodless, smeared only with a little dirt and an oily patch from the trunk. As if it had never touched Matt's body at all. Caroline tensed, felt the veins in her forehead rise to the surface, and started forward.
"I can take care of this," she said, but Jules's arm on her elbow held her back.
"No," said Jules. "We don't have to solve it like that. No one here has any reason to be suspicious."
A second vehicle pulled in, but Caroline couldn't see what it was. Someone got out.
"Evenin', Doyle."
"Raylan."
They knew each other. Caroline wondered if it would be enough of a distraction to let her and Jules escape.
"You're my sister," Jules whispered. "We're out here to have a little girl bonding time this weekend. That's all."
Caroline nodded. The men were talking about the cars now--hers and Jules'. At least Jules had had the good sense to shut the trunk before they'd buried Matt. Otherwise, well, that would have looked bad. Jules tugged her forward and Caroline followed.
"Hello, officers," Jules said, stepping out into the open. "We're not parked illegally, are we? I thought we were far enough off the road."
"No, your parkin' job's just fine," said the man in the cowboy hat, pacing forward a few steps to get a good look at them.
Caroline straightened up instinctively.
"My name's Raylan Givens, ma'am. Deputy US Marshal. This is Sheriff Bennett. We were just discussing the matter of two seemingly abandoned cars out here in the middle of nowhere."
The sheriff cleared his throat, giving Caroline the impression there was way more to this story than the marshal was letting on.
"We're camping," said Jules, and she stepped in front of Caroline.
Caroline didn't get werewolves and all this possessive/protective bullshit. For God's sake, Caroline could tear out all their jugulars before they even knew what hit them. It wasn't like she hadn't done it before. After last night, though, she didn't want to. She wanted desperately for Jules to be right that there was another way to deal with this.
"Camping?" said the marshal. "I see. We don't see much in the way of campers around here. Especially not on private land."
"My--our family knows the... Crowders," Caroline said quickly, hoping beyond reason she'd remembered the name Stefan had given her correctly.
"Is that so?" said the marshal. "Problem is, this isn't the Crowders' land anymore. Belongs to the Black Pike Mining company."
"You girls wanna revise that story?" said the sheriff, and there was something more malicious in his tone. He was waiting for the marshal to leave.
"My mom's a sheriff," Caroline said suddenly, and she felt Jules entire body stiffen beside her.
"Your mama's a sheriff," said the sheriff. He snorted, dismissing her as insignificant. Then he shot the marshal a look that wasn't returned. "And that makes you above the law?"
"No!" said Caroline. "That's not what I meant."
"Now, Doyle," said the marshal, and Caroline caught the motion out of the corner of her eye as his hand came to rest just above his gun, "let the ladies explain. They're clearly not from around here. As a matter of fact, I believe you're a bit outside your jurisdiction, too. Isn't that right?"
The sheriff only glared and Caroline pressed her lips together, covering her elongating fangs. Jules pressed a shoulder in front of her again. She stayed where she was, watching the silent showdown, digging her nails into the palms of her hands as she waited for the sheriff to back down.
Finally, he did.
Once he'd left the scene without speaking, though the sentiment was clear--whatever had happened between the sheriff and the marshal was far from over--the marshal turned back to them.
"If you ladies are friends of the Crowders, I reckon you know better than to 'camp' this close to Bennett territory. Might I suggest heading to a motel for the night?"
Jules smiled at him, slowly, a very canine smile. Caroline swallowed.
"Of course," said Jules, but before she could say more, the sound of footsteps echoed from the far side of the clearing.
All three turned around, Marshal Givens with a hand on his gun.
"Well, hello, Raylan," said a man, stepping down from a rocky rise just beyond the cover of the trees.
"Boyd," said the marshal, and he turned to look back at Jules and Caroline, suspicion all over his face. "What're you doin' out here?"
Boyd watched Caroline for a moment, then looked back to the marshal.
"I was just doin' a favor for an old acquaintance of the family," he said in a soft voice. "From Virginia." His gaze moved back to Caroline.
"You're Boyd Crowder," she said suddenly. "Stefan mentioned you."
"Miss Forbes," said Boyd politely. "I've come here to inform you that the land upon which you stand is no longer my family's property, unfortunately."
"So we've heard," said Jules. "We'll just pack up our things and be going, then."
"Then I take it you've," Boyd paused meaningfully here, and the marshal cocked an eyebrow, "set up your camp completely?"
"No," said Jules, but Caroline didn't let her finish, catching his double meaning immediately. She didn't know who this guy was, but Stefan obviously trusted him enough to let him know Caroline was burying a body out here in the woods. At least she hoped that was what he was getting at.
"Yes!" Caroline said. "Yes, we have. But it's not much. It'll only take us a minute. And then we'll be out of your hair. I'd much rather sleep in a hotel anyway, than out here with all the bugs and... creatures. Come on, Jules."
She grabbed the werewolf's sleeve and pulled with all her strength, dragging Jules back into the woods while the two men resumed their conversation. As soon as they were once again hidden by the trees, Jules shoved her away.
"Get off me," she hissed. "Are you insane? We need to get out of here now!"
"I know that," said Caroline. "That man knows Stefan. He knows what we're doing here. He's helping us."
"What we're doing here?" said Jules. "I was only here to keep an eye on you for Tyler. I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't know vampires were stupid enough to drop bodies in the middle of populated areas!"
"Stefan didn't know anyone would be here!" Caroline said.
"Maybe he should have thought harder," said Jules. "And I was beginning to think he was smarter than Damon after all."
"Why don't you just go," said Caroline. "I'll take care of this." Her heel sank into the soft, loose ground beneath the leaves, and all she wanted to do was run down to the creekbed and be sick.
"Because you're incapable of taking care of yourself and Tyler wants you to stay alive."
Caroline didn't know which part of that statement set her off the most; that Jules thought she had any right to judge what Caroline was capable of, or that Tyler thought Caroline's safety had anything to do with him. He certainly hadn't cared when Brady was pumping her head full of wooden bullets.
She lunged forward, fisting her hands in Jules shirt and slamming the werewolf against a tree.
"I could leave two bodies out here in the woods," she said, breathing heavily in Jules's face. "No one would even know."
"You go ahead and kill me," said Jules, meeting her gaze without fear. "And then you explain to Tyler why you did it."
"Gladly." Caroline flashed her fangs and hissed, the hazy red filter that clouded her vision making Jules hair look like it was on fire.
"Ladies, are we gonna have a problem here?" The marshal's voice filtered through the trees.
Caroline felt as though cold water had been poured over her shoulders, the hot rush of blood receding from her face and chest, and her weight rested back on her heels.
"No, sir," she called out, and she let go of Jules's shirt. Reaching up on impulse, she smoothed the wrinkles her fists had imprinted. "We're just collecting our things!"
Jules turned away, swept the tarp off the forest floor, and pushed her way through the narrow path toward the cars. Caroline pressed her hands to her face, parted her fingers to peer down one last time at Matt's unmarked grave, then followed.
"You'll have to forgive my friend Raylan," said Boyd once Caroline had joined them again in the clearing by the drive. Jules was stuffing the tarp into the back of her truck. "He tends to be a bit acrimonious when it comes to the Bennetts."
"You're using the term 'friend' awful loosely, Boyd," said Raylan, and Caroline could hear the warning in his voice.
"Are we done here?" said Jules, shutting the back of the pick-up.
"I suppose we are," said Raylan, giving her another look. "I trust the two of you can find your way back to Virginia."
"Of course we can," said Jules, and she looked at Caroline, her expression wavering for a moment. Caroline saw it then, the mirror of her own panic and uncertainty, and she swallowed hard.
"Yeah," she said, forcing a smile in the marshal's direction. "We'll be fine. We'll both be fine."
"Ladies," said Boyd. "Raylan."
"Not you," said Raylan, turning wholly toward Boyd now as Caroline slipped into her mother's car. "You've got some explaining to do."
Caroline shut the door and exhaled, counting five deep, steady breaths before she turned on the ignition and pulled away. As she neared the main road again, she slowed on the gravelly access road, waiting to see Jules headlights in her rear view mirror before making the turn. She reached down to put on the radio.
Just beneath the sound of static and white noise, Tanya Tucker was crooning about small birds and hurricanes, and Caroline shut it off again.
She looked up at the road, her lower lip trembling as they drove, on the same road, in the same direction, yet somehow thousands of miles apart, into the night.
"The last time I was here, I wasn't exactly a welcome guest," said Jules, looking around the Salvatore living room as she followed Caroline inside.
"It's Elena's house now," said Caroline. "And she says it's all right. You helped us."
"I also had you kidnapped and tortured." Jules watched Caroline pour two drinks.
Caroline pressed a glass into Jules's hand, then sat on the couch, watching the dark fireplace.
"I'm still friends with Damon," she said. "And he's done worse."
"I believe that," Jules murmured. "Friends? Is that what you're calling this now?"
Caroline sniffed, an odd feeling coming over her as the corner of her mouth curled upward. It felt like she hadn't smiled in days.
"According to someone's Facebook status last week, 'a friend will help you hide, a real friend will help you hide a body'." Caroline raised the glass to her lips.
Jules snorted. "Friends, then," she said. "By that definition." She paused for a beat. "Did he love you as much as Tyler does? The boy we buried."
Caroline looked up, blinking. "What?"
"Oh, don't play coy. He's so far gone it's pathetic." Jules looked almost apologetic for a moment. "Disgustingly sweet, anyway."
"I don't..." Caroline shook her head. "I can't even think about that right now."
"Fair enough. The marshal wasn't hard on the eyes," said Jules, holding her drink away from her body as she sank onto the couch beside Caroline.
"No," Caroline said, faintly amused. "He wasn't."
"And that accent. Delicious."
Caroline's head snapped to attention, but Jules just snorted.
"I'm not planning on eating him," she said, her annoyance tempered by a smile. "I was using it figuratively. We're not all animals, you know."
"No," said Caroline. "I really don't know that."
"You'll learn. Aren't you a little young for," Jules sniffed her glass, "what does Damon keep in here, bourbon?"
Caroline shrugged. "It puts off the cravings a little bit. And I'm never going to get any older than this."
"True." Jules sipped her drink.
"How did Stefan know that guy?" asked Jules.
Caroline smiled and shook her head. "He used to bootleg, during Prohibition. The Crowders were big bootleggers, too. He's known the family for a long time. They're into some..." She trailed off, wondering how to put it.
"Shady shit?" said Jules
Caroline laughed. "Uh, yeah."
The moment faded, both of them staring into the empty fireplace.
"Have you seen your mother?" asked Jules. "That was her, right? The sheriff?"
Caroline shook her head. "I'm not ready for that yet, either." She sipped her drink again. "I'm just one gigantic coward right now. Caroline, the cowardly vampire."
"Hey," said Jules. "You just buried your boyfriend. That takes balls."
"Or something," said Caroline. A bigger gulp of her drink this time, and it burned going down.
"No, I'm serious," Jules said. "When I had to bury Br--" She shook her head. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."
Caroline wondered how cold it must be under the ground, if the marshal would return and start digging around out there in the woods. If Boyd Crowder would tell him what they'd been up to. If the sheriff would come back to Matt's grave. Caroline didn't like the feeling he'd given her. She'd spent enough time around really bad people lately to know how to spot them from a distance. That guy had been one of them.
She wanted to ask Jules if she thought Matt would be safe there, then she realized that 'safe' was not the word she was looking for, and before she could come up with something better, the front door opened.
"And I am done with that shit!" It was Damon's voice, loud and cloying, and beside Caroline on the couch, Jules's hackles rose. She could feel it.
"It's over now, Damon." Elena sounded quiet, small.
They were carrying something between them, Stefan and Damon, and Damon grunted as he propped it against the wall. A body, maybe. An unconscious one.
Caroline looked over at Jules, her teeth digging into her lower lip. Jules rolled her eyes, took a drink. Caroline smiled; she wanted to laugh, really. Here they were, a bunch of normal abnormal people, in a house protected from evil vampires, waiting for day to break across a night that claimed both friends and enemies, and somehow, the denouement (Caroline had learned that word in English class and loved the way it rolled off her tongue) of their bonding adventure happened over Damon's whiny entitlement.
"Aren't you going to go to your friend?" Jules asked, her voice soft. She, too, wanted to avoid the others' attention for a while longer.
"In a minute," said Caroline. She raised her glass, feeling about a hundred years older than the last time she'd rolled out of bed, then drained it.
"Thank you," she said to Jules. "For helping me do what I needed to do."
Jules watched her for a moment, her eyes going a bit golden in their intensity, and nodded. Caroline rose slowly to her feet, setting her glass aside.
Jules raised her own drink. "Until the next time. And I've got the feeling there's going to be a next time."
"You might be right," Caroline said, and then she finally looked away, turning to see Elena in the doorway, arms outstretched.
And Caroline rushed to her.
[END]
