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Eurydice

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Caroline Forbes greets death when she is seventeen, scared, tired, and alone.

She awakes in a station, the sort with looming arches and high ceilings that isn't found anywhere in America. It's a beautiful place, merry and bright with a gleaming scarlet train and thick plumes of smoke that rise up in the air like gentle clouds.

Her father and his ridiculous love for all things old and archaic and needlessly outdated would have been enamoured with it, undoubtably willing to sell his firstborn - not that that was saying much because it's not like he had even bothered trying to keep in contact with Caroline for the last year - just to catch a glimpse at such a magnificent sight.

Even, Caroline, who loves all things new and exciting, snubbing her nose at the archaic exhibits Bill had drug her too as a child, before he decided to pack up all his stuff, move to Texas, and leave his only daughter behind, can appreciate the sort of ancient grace the train station holds.

The place is just flat-out gorgeous and there's no denying it, yet all Caroline can do is shiver and shiver and shiver. Despite the certain sort of warmth the station emits she is down right cold and whether that is because she is wearing nothing more than a slip of a sheet for clothing or because her freaking best friend just murdered her goes unsaid.

And truly, that's how she got into this mess in the first place. Elena fucking Gilbert straight out murdered her, suffocating her with a pillow in some twisted spoof of the numerous pillow fights they had growing up together. Except it's not a spoof, it's a fucking murder weapon and Caroline wants to laugh and cry at that because there is something just so ironic about being killed at the hands of Elena. For all her shortcomings, the one thing she never believed Elena could take away from her was her life.

Apparently even that's a lie.

And that realization hurts more than anything her dad could ever do.

Which is why, when he finally finds her, she is lying on the hard cobblestone, curling in upon herself and screaming and crying and shaking because she's Miss Mystic Falls. She was supposed to have a perfect life and marry her golden boy quarterback and buy that goddamn white picket fence that wouldn't have a single chip in it because she's a neurotic control freak. A neurotic control freak in love, of course.

"Everything's going to be alright, love." There is a hand upon her back now, rubbing gentle circles into her shoulder and it is with tear-filled eyes that Caroline looks up to meet a vivid green gaze.

"Are you God?" she whispers brokenly between sobs and it is the choke of a man that greets her in response.

"I'm afraid not," comes his response, though he does look the part with a black halo of hair surrounding an impossibly pale face. "My names Harry. Some know me better as Death."

Caroline doesn't know what to say to that. Instead, she just starts crying harder.

"I'm sorry," Death, no, Harry, says, looking incredibly awkward and not that all grim reaper like in his dark jeans and baggy, wool jumper - a faded green that had perhaps been as vivid as his eyes at one point. "You'd think I'd be better at this after one thousand years, but no such luck."

A hiccupping sniffle escapes the small blondes mouth at the absurdity of it all and she knows she must look like a wreck, face flushed and hair matted, but she can't find it within herself to care.

"I'm Caroline," she offers.

"It's nice to meet you," Harry responds before quickly trying to backtrack, toying with the unruly ends of his hair sheepishly. "Not that I'm glad you're dead or anything, of course, truly would have been nice to meet you later not that you aren't bad company either. Oh Merlin…"

He trails off and Caroline honest to god giggles. She's dead, just experienced the most emotionally draining sobfest of her entire existence, and is now giggling because that's apparently what her existence has become - pure and utter madness.

She's not going to lie, for all of his awkwardness, he's definitely got a certain charm to him with his dark hair and bright eyes and, of course, that lovely british accent. Caroline has always been a sucker for guys with accents.

"I get what you mean," she reasures him, Harry's eyebrows rising at the absurdity of the situation, because he, as Death, should truly be the one comforting her. "I'm glad you're the one here to bring me to the other side."

"That's the catch," Harry responds, "because you're not truly dead, or, at least you've still got a choice."

He gestures to the dazzling scarlet train beside them, his gaze lingering on the strange sign, one that reads Platform 9 ¾ , that sits high above her figure. "You can go back."

"And if I don't want?" Caroline asks, head spinning with Elena and the fake, fake, fake smile she wore before suffocating her.

"We are in King's Cross station. I think if you decided not to go back, you would be able to… let's say… board a train."

Caroline frowns at this and she can feel the radioactive eyes of a god, albeit an awkward god, wearing the mask of a man, gazing down upon her, ready to cast his judgement.

"There is nothing to fear from death, Caroline," he murmurs softly.

"But if I come back, I come back as a…" Caroline begins, yet she can't bring herself to say the last word. "Isn't that cheating death?"

Harry shakes her head and it is with a strange sort of gentleness that he reaches across the divide between them to take one of her hands within his own. "Do not pity the dead, Caroline. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love." He pauses, green eyes caught in a memory. "A man told me that long ago. He also told me that death was but life's next great adventure. I think he meant it a bit differently in my case, but perhaps he did not. He was a strange, old man, a bit of a tosspot but brilliant at the same time. Whatever the case, do not fear death, Caroline, but even more than that, do not fear living."

He looks at her with impossible understanding and Caroline is struck with the notion that he was once in her place, a Caroline Forbes sitting before death and awaiting to see which way the scales would tip.

"What did you chose?" she can't help but ask.

He startles at this, before chuckling, an airy sort of noise that reminds her of fairy dust and all things mystical that she had once dreamed of. "I chose life."

"And if I was to do the same?"

He tilts his head to the side, face lovely and solemn like the statues of old. "Then I would say you were incredibly brave."

A warmth fills Caroline at the sincerity of his statement. Nobody. Ever. Has truly called her brave and said it with such conviction as if believing otherwise was ludicrous.

"Will I ever see you again?" she asks.

"Hopefully, not for a very long time," he responds, eyes flashing and it is in that moment that Caroline knows she has made her decision.

She awakes to the sterile smell of her hospital room, ache in her gums and dreaming of a world in which Orpheus's ballad had risen above things as petty as death.