Title: When the Autumn Moon is Bright

Rating: T for adult content and language

Summary: In the aftermath of Caroline's kidnap and torture, she has to cope with memory gaps, a thirst for revenge and a very contrite—and possessive—Tyler Lockwood.

Pairing: Tyler/Caroline, with a bit of the Tyler/Caroline/Matt triangle thrown in for fun.

Setting: Set after Crying Wolf, but Tyler never left or had his heart-to-heart with Matt.

Disclaimer: If I owned them, Caroline and Tyler would be acting out their romance for me on a personal stage somewhere.

"A man who's pure of heart and says his prayers by night
May still become a wolf when the Autumn moon is bright."
– Howl, Florence and the Machine

Chapter 1

The only pro to getting shot in the head is that the bullet usually kills you. There's no pain or if there is, it lasts a split second and then you're gone, gone even before the bullet has finished tearing through the spongy grey matter that builds up to your thoughts, your memories, your personality and your whole life.

The con to being a vampire is that, though the bullet rips through the spongy (dead?) grey matter that builds up to your thoughts and memories and personality, you don't die. You feel every second of the bullet's journey through your skull, and you feel it in full detail. Adept senses catch the sound of soft, damp tissue ripping apart; you can smell the way blood and brain matter singe as the red-hot missile drills a hole straight through. There's unconsciousness, but it's small, faint like a micro nap that doesn't do anything but make you more tired than you were, and then you're awake again before your body has even expelled the foreign enemy lodged inside your temple.

Caroline thinks she can still feel it there, sometimes. Still buried inches below her scalp. When her hair parts strangely, she panics and feels around for holes that gather and bubble like anthills. She was shot in other places too—in her chest, so, so close to her heart—but nothing's so bad as the bullet to her head.

She's forgotten things. She hasn't told anyone, because Elena would panic and Stefan would brood and Damon wouldn't care, but her memory has gaps now, like pages torn out of beat-up library books. They're little things, mostly, but things she would never forget before, like Matt's birthday or Elena's mother's maiden name. Caroline collects facts like pennies, always has; imagines the information could add up to something important one day, something worth the space it takes up.

She knows she heals—she'll always heal. There are maybe three injuries that she can't come back from, but other than those, she will never meet a wound that won't reseal itself, muscles and skin stitching back together like the time she ripped a hole in her favorite doll and her mother sewed it up. That's Caroline, the ever-repairing doll. But she thinks there are things—memories, emotions, things—that can't be grown back. If her mind is like a computer, then the computer can still function and operate once the hard-drive is wiped clean. Her body can replace the missing parts of her brain, but they're blank, empty like the eyes of a corpse.

"Caroline."

Her muscles tense and stutter, jolting her out of her reverie. It takes her a moment, only a moment, to realize who's standing next to her, and she bites back a noise of disgust. "I thought I made myself pretty clear, Tyler."

"Caroline, just let me—"

She can't take this. It's all piling up on her like dirt on a fresh grave, and she knows she's supposed to be strong but right now all she feels is weak and lost. She surges to her feet and grabs his wrists, forcing him backwards before he can finish whatever explanation he's going to heap on her. "Stop it, okay! Just—God, just leave me alone."

She steps by him, abandoning her table at The Grill and walking quickly to the exit. He catches her arm, pulls her back, and the force of it takes her by surprise. She's become accustomed to the weakness of humans, to limiting herself and hiding her unreasonable strength. Alarmed, she reverses his hold and twists his arm behind his back, the point of her chin digging into his neck.

"I'm not in the mood," she whispers, cool and deadly, grinding his arm harder before she lets him go.

He whips around so fast it's astounding, and she has to wonder if he's not a vampire too, both mixed together in one soul. She imagines that would be a terrifying thing to behold. There's caged fury in his eyes and she can tell he's itching to prove himself to her—prove that he's strong enough to stay even when she and all her vampire strength want him to go.

He fights it back with a deep gust of oxygen and says, "You can do the bitchy vampire thing all you want, but I'm not leaving until you hear me out."

"You think I can't make you?" She asks, stepping closer, so that their noses are almost touching. She imagines that the fire in his eyes is reflected back in hers, and it burns there between them, flames licking out of control.

"Can you take the foreplay somewhere else?"

Caroline jerks around, nearly smacking into Tyler's face because they're so close, and her expression falls when she realizes it's Matt. He's staring at them like they ripped his heart out and took turns batting it across the floor.

"Matt, it's not—"

"Shut up, Caroline," Matt says, slamming a tray of dirty dishes onto the table and nearly breaking them.

"Hey, man, don't talk to her like that," Tyler warns, and Caroline spares him a look of disbelief. He just called her a bitch.

"Oh, you're defending her now?" Matt demands, running a cloth over Caroline's vacated table so hard he might wear a groove in the old wood. "So it's official? She's your girlfriend?"

"Matt, would you stop?" Caroline asks, the fire melting to ember and ash inside of her until all she feels is exhausted. "We're not lying to you! There is nothing—" She breaks off, swallows. Finish it, Caroline. But she doesn't.

"What is it with you people?" Matt demands, giving up his menial tasks now, throwing the rag down and stomping closer to them. "Why is everyone always so determined to lie! I've seen you together, Caroline! At school, and then when I came to talk to you and he was at your house—"

"What?" Caroline asks, bewildered, trying to recall the occasion he means.

Matt only looks angrier, like he thinks she's denying it. He teeters for a moment, his face red like he might start screaming or pummeling his fists into Tyler's face—a feat that would end poorly for Matt—and then he shakes his head and picks up his tray. She opens her mouth as he walks away, but then she just shuts it again. A helpless sound flutters in her throat like a bird.

"You shouldn't have denied it," Tyler says, and she looks at him again. "He knows I was with you that night."

"Which night?" she demands.

He pauses, staring at her like he's trying to work out what game she's playing. "Are you serious? The night I broke in and found out what you were—when you told me I couldn't tell anyone, that we'd both die if I did."

She's afraid, and she knows he can see it playing out like a movie on her face. Her skin tautens and her eyes go wide and round, contrasting with her mouth, which narrows to a pursed line. She knows Tyler knows about her—that fact's imbedded too deeply in her to eradicate—but she realizes now that she doesn't know exactly when she told him. Or how.

"You don't remember."

She puts a hand to her head, her fingers digging into her scalp. She pulls and strands of her hair come out; she doesn't even feel it. Her fingers keep digging, looking for holes, for marks of her loss. "I haven't—ever since they shot—" A sob claws at her throat, turning it rough and raw, and she has to quit talking or she'll start crying and never stop.

He grabs her hands, making sure to twist the straw locks out of her fingers before he pulls them away from her scalp. She can feel Matt watching and she should yank herself away, but she can't do anything but drown in what she's lost. She thought it was just little things, facts that a less detail-oriented person would have forgotten. How she realizes it's whole hours, days—maybe years.

And the worst of it is, she'll never know. No one can walk step-by-step through her life with her and examine the pieces she's missing. It's a gaping loss, made all the more palpable by not knowing the totality of what that loss entails.

"Maybe it'll come back," Tyler says, sounding a little desperate, and the emotion echoes like a bell in her ears. "Caroline, maybe they'll come back."

"Or maybe they won't," she says, finally meeting his gaze again. She knows how frightened and small she seems right now, the cliché deer catching the still eyes of the hunter.

It's an illusion though, one that will shatter once she's had time to recover. She could kill him easily and almost without thought, except she's starting to believe she's a little in love with him. And she knows he feels varying degrees of the same thing, because even if she's forgotten parts of their time together, she hasn't forgotten the way he kissed her.

She could kill him, and he could kill her right back, except neither of them would ever want that.

"I have to go," she says, pulling out of his hands. He reaches again, fingers bunching the sleeves of her coat as he grabs hold of her arms. She's grown tired of this constant game of restraint, but she knows bullying him just makes him more determined.

"Don't," Tyler says, low and pleading. "Caroline, please, just let me help you. Let me fix what I've done."

"Help me how?" she demands, a spark of anger igniting in her and chasing away some of the cold. "It's done, Tyler. Jules' lapdog shot—" she stops, almost chokes on the words but forces herself to continue. "He shot me in the head and now my brain's all grown back, except things are missing. There's no way you can help with that."

"You're freaked out," Tyler persists, hands curling tighter around her like he can force her to listen that way. "And if I know you, you haven't told anyone else. I don't want you to be alone with this."

And there it is again. The perpetual reason for why they crash together; because one or the other is always alone otherwise. She doesn't know when this happened, when she and Tyler became so sequestered from their own lives that no one else can share their burdens.

"You should let go," Caroline says, instead of anything deep and meaningful, because she's still so, so angry with him. "Matt is watching—"

"So? He wants us to stop lying."

"I wasn't trying to lie!" Caroline says, and her face breaks for a second, twisting into the sob that's still caged in her throat. "I didn't remember—"

"I don't mean that," Tyler says, and he releases one of her arms to reach up and run his fingers over the line of her jaw. "We should stop lying, Caroline."

She goes still and cold like the corpse she's supposed to be. They've never discussed this, not really; they've only brushed on reasons why they shouldn't. But she's positive they've never really admitted what's going on between them, aside from that wonderful, awful kiss.

"No," she says, and his face cracks at her quiet, heartfelt denial. "No, Tyler. We're friends—we were friends until you turned your back on me for that stupid werebitch. We were never anything else, and now we're not even that."

His eyes flash and for just a moment, she sees his pupils thin and narrow until they're vertical slits swimming in brown. Fascination and a heavier emotion she can't name send ice through her veins, freezing her, and he takes the opportunity to yank her forward.

His lips crash down on hers, tough, demanding, looking to offer proof. She gets swept up in it, in the raging storm that rushes up to drown her. For one blissful moment, she's not a vampire and he's not a werewolf and she isn't Caroline Forbes and he isn't Tyler Lockwood, and she lets herself take what she knows is supposed to be hers.

A plate of dishes crashes to the floor, and the clatter jolts them apart. It only takes her a moment to remember herself and her situation. Then she looks for Matt.

She only catches a glimpse of him as he disappears behind the swinging doors of The Grill's kitchen. The contents of his tray litter the floor in angry, broken shards.

She steps forward without thinking, a reflex action rising from her desire to keep everyone happy and everything the way it was. She's not happy anymore, but maybe if she can just stop things from changing, she'll find it there again in the stillness.

Tyler catches her, his grip even harder than before, almost bruising around her forearm except it takes a lot more to bruise Caroline Forbes.

"Let go of me!" She says harshly, yanking out of his grip and resisting the urge to shove him. She can feel eyes on her and she knows they're making a scene. Her voice echoes in the sudden quiet that always accompanies the breaking of glass inside a restaurant.

Tyler notices and lowers his voice. "Just leave him, Caroline. It's better this way anyway—you said it yourself."

"No, it's not better like—like this," she says, and she can feel the pressure building under her eyes again. She can't believe how much she's cried lately, can't help feeling a little ashamed of it. "It's all wrong. God, just leave me alone!"

She yanks out of his grip but reaches for him, ready to strangle him or throw him down or something to vent her frustration, but then she stops and huffs an angry breath through her nose. They stare at each other, and the world is still for that one moment, until she turns on her heel and marches away. This time, he doesn't follow.

A/N: Reviews are to me what spinach is to Popeye.