So there it is.

Caroline thought to herself, letting out a long sigh as she gazed apprehensively down at the empty shell her body had become, lying on the dusty wooden floors of some old abandoned house wearing nothing but the remnants of her favorite sundress and, surprisingly, only one brown sandal.

For a brief moment, she allowed herself to wonder just what had happened to her other shoe. But then reality set in and it dawned on Caroline that it hardly mattered. It didn't matter what had happened to her right shoe, it didn't matter that her hair was tangled in cobwebs, fanned out and falling in between the cracks of the floor. It didn't matter that some kind of commotion was happening around her lifeless body. None of that was important anymore. Nothing else really mattered. She was dead.

She swore she felt herself tearing up, could feel a tear making it's way down her face and pooling in the corner of her mouth. She reached her hand up to wipe it away, but it wasn't there.

Blinking rapidly, she gazed at her hands, trying to process what exactly had happened and moreover, what was currently not happening to her.

From what she could gather so far, within the few minutes of her death, Caroline was on the other side, in the afterlife, purgatory. The place where people with unfinished business went to haunt the remaining living souls of their life - the ones that affected and loved us the most. At least that's what she figured from what she had read on this kind of thing. She could be wrong entirely and, although it didn't coincide with the image in her head, she could just be in hell.

And if this was hell, she was sorely underdressed with her one shoe on and her torn dress.

So she just stood there, staring at her dead self because, really, she didn't actually know what else to do at the moment. Does anyone ever anticipate this kind of thing happening with their death? Though after dying a second time one would think Caroline would have learned to expect the unexpected.

Still dazed, Caroline shook her head to rearrange her focus, finding it quite odd that she didn't feel the familiar fan of her hair across her once sun-kissed skin. This whole "dead but not dead and then now officially dead but still not dead" thing was going to be difficult to get used to.

So, she had died and in her short passing Caroline realized death, for her, was actually happening for real this time. She had expected to find some kind of peace and maybe feel the warmth of some lost loved ones, welcoming her to join them in some kind of sweet harmony, together forever, in the sky or heaven or something. All that happy, feel good stuff.

But this reality, this right now, was nothing like she had imagined. It wasn't warm and welcoming, peaceful and happy. If anything, it was disorienting.

She was here still here but at the same time, she wasn't. She could see everything, experience everything yet couldn't feel anything. If it weren't for the glaring proof of her body lying cold on the ground, Caroline might have even been able to convince herself that none of this had truly happened. She desperately wanted to believe it hadn't happened.

Bringing her focus down to her grey, veined body, she noticed that although her dress was torn, and a shoe missing, there was no blood anywhere. No mess. A quick and clean death. Four to five seconds and poof - she was gone.

Caroline sighed deeply again, her apprehension fading with each passing second and a sense of grief washed over her. She figured she had been dead for about ten minutes so far. Ten long agonizing minutes. She could sense her eyes tearing up again, but didn't flinch or move in response to the feeling this time. Once again, she reminded herself, it didn't matter.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go. This wasn't the life, or death, that she was meant for. But it was over now and this was her story.

The story of how Caroline Forbes died.

Not once, but twice.

The story of how it ends for her, forever.