okay so this is a three shot mostly centered around katoline friendship, plus klaroline, plus kalihah...eventually. so enjoy. first chapter is katoline centric, second chapter is klaroline centric and maybe there will be a kalijah epilogue I haven't decided yet.

"that's it these suckers are worth nothing, and to think you all thought that me dying would remedy that" The translucent girl complained as she appeared slowly next to Caroline, it was the morning after Liz's funeral and for some reason after so much she'd been trough Caroline didn't even bother herself with feelings of surprise "your mother died and boo hoo they have to make it all about them...Liz is fine by the way, the feathers up high are showering her with eternal happiness...that's why I never understood funerals, I mean if they knew the kind of clustersfus that went on in the ceiling up high for the good people... This would be a celebration party not a cry fest"

"Katherine? What, how...oh my gosh you are a ghost aren't you" Caroline groaned watching the translucent doppelganger dance around her room "My mother just died! And I get the ghost of freaking Katherine Pierce? Why? Haven't I gone trough enough? And if you can do this why couldn't my mom?"

"Liz said the same thing when I saw her at the crossroads, but she's a white spirit now, the good folk I mean and they can't be near anything human after they get their entry ticket into happy land, I imagine she's having a good talk with your idiot guardian angel as we speak, he's getting fired I imagine...but I'm not allowed inside the pearly gates so what should I know?...anyway since I'm not allowed into happy land and the devil thinks I'm an abomination your mom made a deal with HER guardian angel to get me out of her hair and voila here I am"

"wait a minute you mean heaven exists? And my mom sent you here?" Caroline mumbled because yep that's just the kind of thing her mom would do " what did she say?"

"Okay don't offend the big guy of course happy land exists, Heaven, Nirvana, Elysium, whatever you chose to call it, where do you think the souls of your dinners go to after you drain them? Humans go to the nicest place in the afterlife, nothing like the other side, even hell is out of this world" Katherine gushed " And as for your mother, she told me to tell you that you were her greatest achievement in life, that your love for her was all that kept her going after Bill left and that she is going to be looking after you from her spot in happy land, that she wants you to be happy, actually she said a lot of things but I'm not going to tell you about them until after you pack"

"Pack? I'm not packing Katherine please leave me alone!"

"Nope, not unless you don't want me to tell you anything else Sheriff Forbes said"

And holding that over her head, the annoying ghost of a dead doppelganger convinced Caroline to hop on a car headed north and never look back.

Okay so maybe taking advantage of an emotional just-orphaned baby vampire wouldn't grant Katherine any brownie points with the big guy up high, but as she'd learned in the time after she'd been sucked inside the void: human afterlife had way too many logistics and if Liz Forbes wanted Katherine to fill in for Caroline's guardian angel while said piece of saintly garbage was out of service, then she had no problem with it.

After all not even the devil wanted her in hell, turns out holy judgment of a five hundred and plus years soul just didn't occur in the "after" her soul knew too much and lived too much, allowing her into hell was asking for a hostile takeover and happy land didn't allow sinners with her track record in, by all means she belonged in the other side with all the other supernatural blooded people but as she'd died a human ( traveler powers negated) she was sent to the after, where nobody wanted to take her soul in, so Katherine had just been stuck in the crossroads between the good place and the bad place, sulking while other dead passes her by...everyone but Liz Forbes.

"Ready to go? Our next stop is Cairo, now chop chop, compel yourself a plane and off we go, I'm taking you to le tour di belle Mort, the tour of the beautiful death, human death is a blast cupcake, once this vacation is over you'll hopefully miss mommy dearest a lot less" Katherine sang clapping her hands and heading for Caroline's Ford.

And Caroline followed, fifty percent numb, thirty percent mourning and twenty percent too hurt for words. The appearance of Katherine's ghost with the message from her mother had been shocking enough to push Caroline away from the switch, thinking about her mother, what Liz would want, her mother wanted her to be happy, and she couldn't be happy in mystic falls, heck she didn't think she could be happy anywhere as long as her insides felt like a post apocalyptic wasteland and the ghost in her bedroom had tacitly driven that point home

"So why el Cairo? Did my mom tell you about that too?" Caroline wondered as she drove away

"no cupcake, our tour starts in Egypt because those dears had the biggest cult to the human afterlife that ever existed, trust me once we leave Cairo behind, you'll understand Liz better"

"I don't want to understand, I just want her back!" Caroline screamed into the steering wheel "I just want the hurt to go away...why haven't you ditched me? You are Katherine Pierce"

"I know it hurts Forbes and I wont pretend you can get over it, like lesser me tried to convince you, I too lost my family when I was a baby vampire remember? So I know that the thing you want the least is pity" the dead girl snapped then Katherine was silent for a moment "I'm just doing what I would have wanted someone to do for me after I lost my family, back in my days as a baby vamp I just wanted to forget, to go somewhere that didn't remind me of home...of the loved ones I'd never see again"

"I...I think I understand" Caroline mumbled and ignored Katherine as she pressed the gas pedal.

They went to Cairo first, Katherine led Caroline to the heart of Ka Osiris, the Egyptian oasis where a cult to the old Egyptian gods was focused on the afterlife, the journey of the good souls and their relation to the great Anubis, protector of the deceased, then continuing her tour the ghost girl took her to the heart of the Romani city of Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, using her clout as a "spirit guard" to get the oldest gypsy coalescent in the world to trust Caroline, it was a surprise how only true mediums could see Katherine, only the oldest of the oldest could sense her, she was a "human spirit" caught in the veil of the human after, not the supernatural one, one of a kind forever at crossroads, in a plane of existence in which only she resided permanently, so it was very hard for a normal witch to pick up on her existence.

The Romani were far kinder than the Egyptians in that aspect, having more focus on the living, their seers, not mere fortune tellers, immediately made vague but "astonishing" predictions on Caroline's future as soon as they saw her, predictions that the other gypsies seemed to be overjoyed about.

"a Queen at last, you must join us for our festival to thank the goddess" the leader of the Romani begged Caroline "oh how joyful to meet a vampire that respects Romani, we would be honored if you stayed to celebrate with us...and your spirit friend is welcome of course"

With the Romani she danced under the full moon and learned the nomadic song of their night goddess, she had her palm read, was told about red string of fate that tied all soulmates together and saw a world of blood magic she'd never imagined existed.

Her friends called her constantly in the first weeks, texted and emailed, but the only ones Caroline ever felt like replying to were Stefan and Bonnie.

Caroline where are you? Please I'm worried about you- B

It's okay Bonnie, I'm just finding myself -C
And underneath was a picture of Caroline wearing a white Indian sari surrounded by little girls similarly dressed with the indian Brihadishwara Hindu temple as a backdrop.

In India Caroline met the ancient "Sadhus" (a very revered type of wise man) of the Hindu culture and the old witches in the Brihadishwara temple even held a traditional pooja (prayer) ceremony in her mother's honor, everyone in the village attended and as Liz's only remaining family Caroline dressed in a white mourning sari and burnt incense to gods she didn't believe in, but it was among the supernatural of India that Caroline first felt a semblance of acceptance in her heart.

And there she also called Enzo, who from that moment on, became the only one she would regularly give updates to. There was just something about the absolute acceptance she found in India that reminded her of Enzo.

Enzo who rarely seemed to want anything from her in exchange for his friendship...sort of like Stefan and her used to be before the lines got blurred.

In the Himalayas Katherine led her to the Buddhist Vampires in the lost city of Shangri La, where again Caroline was welcome with the height of kindness thanks to the witches who could sense her "spirit companion", everyone could relate in Shangri La, it was a village where everyone seemed to understand her loss in an intrinsic way, it wasn't pity what they showed, more like they shared her sadness as a whole, because as Buddhists her loss was their loss, monks and their witchy guardians gave Caroline all the space she needed, blessing her in the ways if their people before she continued her journey.

It contrasted sharply with the "Dia de los muertos" festivities she was invited to in the depths of Guadalajara, where those who'd passed away seemed to be a reason for lavish parties and not any type of mourning.

Katherine's ghost powers were not many, mostly they were limited to creating force fields around Caroline but she did have an ability to change her outfits just by wishing it, so "dia de los muertos" was a blast for her too, dressing up to the nines with Caroline.

Athens brought Caroline face to face with a coven of witches who venerated the mythology associated with the Greek underworld and their eternal rulers: Hades and Persephone.

"oh look it's Klaus and you! I knew it" Katherine needled in when the coven showed them a painting depicting a faceless golden haired goddess picking a daffodil and a god covered in black Greek armor watching her from the distance.

"Shut up Katherine" Caroline snapped back, then thinking about it for a moment, she took a copy of the painting and sent it to be framed and delivered to New Orleans best museum.

And finally towards the end of their tour Caroline found herself sitting at the top of Angel Falls, breathing the purest of airs as she felt herself accepted her loss as something beautiful, there she came to terms with the pain that would never go away, embraced her human feelings as she'd never done before and purged her tears down the great waterfall, because if there was something every culture she visited had in common was their belief in the goodness of Caroline's soul. And once she was done crying, she took a deep cleansing breath... And jumped.

Plunging down one of the largest waterfalls in earth, letting go of the things that held her back while she resurfaced under the clean water.

"Ready to go home?" Katherine asked once they reached the nearest airport with a serene smile Caroline nodded "yes, I'm ready"

What she didn't know was that while she'd been dancing around the world looking for a way to make peace with her mother's death and making new friends in the most peaceful locations known to man or witch (except maybe Mexico because even trying to respect the dead those people threw a party), her friends had been getting into trouble and without any way to contact her, things had become... Strained between her friends at home.

When Kai started becoming a problem and Bonnie was again en-route to play hero and everything was once again revolving around Elena...Caroline found herself rolling up into a ball in a never-seen-before panic attack.

Turns out Katherine was right, Mystic Falls really was suffocating. But Caroline still tried her best to be a good friend...breathe past the suffocation of her lungs.

Three weeks back in Mystic Falls and Katherine decided quite pointedly that she was done with it,if she was going to spend the rest of her afterlife protecting Caroline, then the first step was to annoy Caroline into facing the big elephant in the room.

Which started by bluntly bringing the subject up during brunch.

"Hey since I'm dead now...maybe we should visit Klaus!"

An: Can you guys imagine Katherine giving running commentary on Klaroline's sex life? I can..I totally can...plus is anybody curious about what these bunch of witches told Caroline when they read her palm?...comming up next: KLAROLINE is reunited, and while commenting on everyone's sex technique Katherine gets a visit from the devil (okay he's not the devil, he's just the guy in charge of the human underworld) and you wouldn't believe the deal he has for little ole Kat.