Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2012-12-25 12:38 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2012-12-25 12:38 pm
the vampire diaries } { if the fates allow
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Title: If the Fates Allow
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Carol Lockwood, Richard Lockwood, Bill Forbes, Liz Forbes, Gracin Gilbert, former Mystic Falls council members, Tyler Lockwood, Klaus Mikaelson
Warnings: SPOILERS through 409: O Come All Ye Faithful and big honking chunk of headcanon.
Word Count: 3235 words
Summary: They both try to find ways to guide him—Richard with his hands and Carol with her words, and in the end, neither of them are right, but Tyler is always a good son.
Author’s Notes: So she rose out of my headvoices like some kind of vengeful spirit and slammed me with this while I was at church last night. If I write it down, maybe she’ll go away.
Disclaimer: I do not own. I’m just borrowing and will put everything back where I found it.
Richard’s father never likes her.
She doesn’t understand why at the time. As far as the rules are concerned, she’s a catch. Breeding is everything in the South and she had it in spades. Her mother had prepared her for the role of a debutant from the time she was two. She was a history major, but she went to college for a husband, and she found that in Richard Lockwood. He is everything her upbringing demanded. He tells her he’s going to be mayor of his hometown one day, and she imagines herself as the next Jackie Kennedy—minus Richard’s tragic death, of course.
(Funny how that works out.)
He is everything she knows she’s supposed to have, and she loves him, despite his father, despite the fact that his hometown is much smaller than she originally envisioned, she loves him. She is groomed to be the perfect mayor’s wife, and she’s not going to let some grouchy old man ruin that for her. If anything, Carol is stubborn, and when she knows what she wants, she’ll play whatever game she has to, to keep it.
Still, Robert Lockwood won’t look at her twice and she has no idea why. Then, out of nowhere, he offers to take her on a tour of the old Lockwood property, and (stupidly) she jumps at the chance. History was a little more to her than just a major—not that she would tell her mother that.
It isn’t until he forcibly drags her down into one of the old cellars that she realizes something is wrong. Two of Richard’s friends are there—Bill Forbes and Gracin Gilbert—along with Sheriff Forbes and his deputy, Liz. They have a man she doesn’t recognize chained to the iron bars on the door. He’s covered in blood, almost as though he was being tortured, but she doesn’t see any wounds.
“What are you doing?” The words, shocked and horrified, fall out of her mouth before she can stop them. All the faces in the room turn on her in surprised, but Sheriff Forbes is the one to speak.
“Robert, what is she doing here?”
“If she’s going to be a Lockwood, she needs to see for herself.”
“See what?” Carol is many things, but she’s not a bad person. (Not yet.) “You can’t do this. People have rights.” As she’s speaking, she’s pushing past them all to cross the room, trying to find a way to get this man out of his chains, and Gracin shoves an arm out in front of her before she could get too close.
“Carol, don’t—”
He doesn’t need to finish. The minute she’s within arm’s reach, the man comes to life, snapping and tugging on the chains that hold him in place. His eyes turn blood red, and dark veins extend below his eyes. His teeth—she doesn’t think teeth like that are possible. Gracin drags her away from the man, and she lets him, holding tight to his sweater as her eyes continue to look on in horror.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Carol, meet your first vampire.” Robert’s voice is smug and knowing at her back. “Welcome to Mystic Falls.”
Bill Forbes shoves a stake into the vampire’s heart, and she can’t take it anymore. She runs. Up the stairs and past the car they had driven in, and while she can hear Gracin on her heels behind her, she doesn’t stop. She makes it about twenty yards into the woods before doubling over and vomiting next to one of the nearby trees. Gracin, the well meaning doctor that he is, puts his hand on her back as he tries to get her attention.
“Carol—”
“Don’t!” She snaps, jerking away from him as her hand comes up to wipe at her mouth. She can feel the salty slick wet tears sliding down her face, and she knows there’s probably mascara everywhere, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she just edges her way around him, heading back to Robert’s car for her purse. “Just take me back to the house.”
He does. As he does, he talks—about the history of the town, their history of vampires, the Founder’s Council—and while Carol never says a word, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t listen.
***
She leaves Mystic Falls that night. She tells Richard that she needs time to think, but in her mind, she knows she has no intention of coming back. She did not sign up for vampires. It hurts because she loves Richard, but at the same time, she won’t subject herself to that. Constant paranoia did not help you age well.
She goes back to her apartment, and she tries to figure out how to tell him. He calls every day but she doesn’t answer. It’s not fair, she knows that, but what his father did to her wasn’t fair either. She knows that he knew that this is what would happen, that she’s simply giving him what she wants, but she also isn’t going to put her life in danger, either. Especially not with what she learns shortly after.
Bill Forbes shows up a few days later, and she can tell by the look on his face that this isn’t going to be something as simple as him lobbying in his best friend’s favor. Still, she lets him in. There’s a part of her that wants to hear what he has to say, wants to know if Richard sent him (even if Richard should have come himself).
“You need to come back, Carol.”
“Is that the best you’ve got?” She pours them both a glass of water as they stand in her kitchen, and she eyes him skeptically. “Because I have to say, in comparison to ‘vampire’ that’s a little weak.”
Bill Forbes has this intensity to him that she doesn’t quite understand. She knows that he’s married to Liz, the deputy that is in the tunnels with them, but there’s something … off about the whole thing. It isn’t enough to draw attention, however—Bill does that all on his own.
“Do you really think that just by not being in Mystic Falls, you’ll be safe? Vampires are everywhere, Carol.”
She hasn’t considered that. Her mind has been preoccupied with too many things, and she should have drawn that conclusion herself. For all her flaws, Carol isn’t a stupid woman. She can put two and two together and still get four.
She looks down at the glass of water in front of her, and drums her fingers against the table. This should be wine. This should be a giant glass of scotch. They shouldn’t be having this conversation sober, but Carol is not a stupid woman, and there’s some things even she won’t risk.
“I’m pregnant, Bill.”
The worlds fall off her lips before she could stop them. Bill should not have been the first person he told. It should have been Richard. Richard should have been the one to know.
The look that crosses his face is something she hadn’t anticipated. Bill is hard to read on a good day, and this certainly isn’t one, but whatever it is that he’s thinking, it’s enough to drive him around the counter that had been sitting between them and gripping her arms tightly.
“You need to go back.”
“No.” She pushes away from him, holding up a hand to maintain the space between them. “No, are you insane? Vampires may be everywhere, but I’m not going to go and raise a child somewhere where they decide to congregate for their summer vacation!”
(She wasn’t always a terrible parent.)
“Listen to me, Carol.” He doesn’t need to say it. She’s already listening—Bill commands that kind of respect. Still, she turns to face him anyway. “We can protect you. We know about the threat and we can protect both you and your child.”
“Until the moment when you can’t.”
“Where else are you going to go? Back to your parents?”
No. No, that wouldn’t work. Her parents would disown her the second she found out she was pregnant. It is incredibly unclassy to be an unwed mother, and Carol would be on her own.
“I’m not helpless.”
“What about Richard? Doesn’t he deserve to know his child?” He plays the cards in his hand, driving each one home like he did the stake in that vampire’s heart, and she so desperately wants to hate him for it. If only he were wrong. “Like it or not, that child is going to be a Lockwood. If you come back to Mystic Falls, they’ll have a legacy to grow up in. They’ll have family, friends, comfort. What quality of life can you offer them now?”
She turns away from him, hands resting against the counter as she thinks. This isn’t a situation she wanted to be in. This isn’t something she asked for. But when weighing the options, she doesn’t see how she has any other choice.
“If I go back you tell me everything you know.” Her voice is cold and determined, unwavering. She won’t lose her child, or herself to one of those monsters. “Everything, Bill.”
“You have my word.” His voice is calm and reasonable, and later she’ll come to recognize that as being happy he got his way. “When would you like to leave?”
***
She returns to Mystic Falls, and she and Richard are married by the end of the month. That’s the lovely thing about a small town—you don’t have to pick a reception hall and most estates are large enough to hold all the people you need to invite. Six months later, Tyler is born, and people have the decorum not to mention how short a pregnancy it was.
Even her parents.
After that, things are different. Things have been different since she came back to Mystic Falls, but after Tyler is born is the first time she could feel it. Richard is different, treating her with a coldness that she expects from his father, not from him. His temper gets sharper, which in return sharpens her. They pull themselves together for public appearances, act like the loving couple with a newborn that they’re supposed to be, but once they came back to the mansion, they were on opposite ends of the spectrum—Richard in his office and Carol with Tyler.
Not that she really knows what to do with Tyler. Her mother taught her to navigate social politics, encouraged children, so long as they were attached to the right man, but never really taught her how to be a mother. She’s awkward with anyone under the age of ten, and her own son is no different, but there are moments where she gets it. She can read him a story, listen to him create one of his own with his toys on the floor, and she feels like she’s doing something right. Those moments are few, and far between, but she tries.
When Tyler starts to get into art, she keeps everything, from finger paintings to old sketchbooks to crumpled drawings she finds in the trash, locked in a drawer in her closet. She feels like she should display them like a normal mother, let Tyler plaster them all over the walls of his room, or hang them on the refrigerator as a gaudy representation of her pride, but Richard will have none of it, and his temper isn’t something she’s about to risk. Richard thinks that Tyler should be into practical things, like sports. Something that “builds character” and “keeps him active” and for the most part she agrees. Tyler likes sports. They keep him out of trouble. At the same time, she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with finding ways to express yourself when words can’t, something with truth in it.
Words don’t really hold a lot of truth in the Lockwood house. They’re usually targeted to hurt.
As Tyler gets older he gets caught in the crossfire of his parent’s unhappiness. He excels at sports, starts to grow into a young man that Carol has always been proud of, and Richard takes more of an interest. Carol starts seeing shades of Robert in Richard, and pieces of Richard that she doesn’t like in Tyler, and she doesn’t know how to stop it. They both try to find ways to guide him—Richard with his hands and Carol with her words, and in the end, neither of them are right, but Tyler is always a good son.
She should probably thank Matt for that, because she’s fairly certain that if they weren’t friends, Tyler could have become much worse.
***
When she finds out about Caroline, she calls Bill first, not Liz. Liz is the sheriff, and if she finds out about Caroline then she’ll be forced to do something about it, publically, but if Carol calls Bill first, Bill might be able to do something about it. She knows that he knows far more about vampires than she does and, well—they call him to do the vampire wetwork for a reason.
The next time she sees him after that, however, she slaps him across the face. Carol’s never really been one with a temper, but she doesn’t like being lied to, and she knows now what Bill didn’t tell her then.
“You lied to me.” Bill takes the slap and barely flinches, which is frustrating and only makes her angrier. “And don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know about what?”
“That Tyler is a werewolf.”
That manages to break through the constant mask that the other man wears day in and day out, turning it to one of horror. “Tyler turned?”
She swallows taking a step away from him and moving to sit on the couch. “He showed me, before he went to get Caroline with Liz.” The pictures of Tyler turning play over and over again in her mind, the pain he was in and the way he screamed. “What happened? How did this happen? Did he get bitten by something?”
Bill is quiet for a long time, before moving to the couch to sit next to her. “Lycanthropy is the dark secret in the Lockwood family. It’s in their genes, a inclination for anger and aggression until the day it culminates with the death of a person. It doesn’t have to be intentional—most are accidental—but some manage to get through life without even knowing they are one or triggering the curse.”
“I’m the monster, Mom.”
It takes all of a second for her to put two and two together—Sarah, that night at the masquerade. Caroline said it was an accident, that she slipped, but Caroline could have just been protecting Tyler.
“Did Richard know?”
“No. But Mason did, and so did Robert.”
She closes her eyes and something inside her deflates, letting go of the anger and frustration she had been trying to hold on to.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“The only thing you can do.” Bill looks down at his hands and says the words that she knows he’s struggling with as well. “You know that this isn’t his fault. You need to figure out how to live with the fact that your son is … ”
“Stop.”
She pushes to her feet and makes her way over to the table to get herself a drink. She’s already heard Tyler call himself a monster once, she’s not sure she could bear to hear it again. She pours herself a glass of scotch, and frowns.
“I don’t think I’m the only one who has to live with this.”
Bill doesn’t say anything, only gets to his feet. “Is there anything else?”
“No.” The word is quick and clipped. “Tell Steve I said hello.”
***
Carol Lockwood is not a perfect parent.
She’s not even a very good parent. She knows her shortcomings when it comes to her son, but she doesn’t really know how to fix them. Add to the fact that when she’s negotiating about Tyler’s future, she isn’t fighting with college admissions officers or athletic scouts, she’s negotiating with thousand year-old creatures who could just as easily snap her neck as give her what she wants, and all she wants is her son’s life. She’s already lost her husband, she won’t lose the one person she still genuinely loves in the process.
So she navigates the Mikaelson family like she would a formal event. She gives in order to receive, trades complacency and turning a blind eye for the life of her son, a life that Klaus so clearly holds in the palm of his hand. Tyler barely even has the power to say no to him and while she knows that’s wrong, she won’t risk the life of her son. Even sire bound, Tyler is alive. He lives at home and she says goodnight to him every night, and he’s real, tangible.
Richard’s ghost still sits in every corner of that old house. She doesn’t want to be haunted by two.
Tyler, however, is not content with complacency. He fights for every inch of what he gets, despite Carol’s efforts to keep him safe and he turns into a man right in front of her eyes. It’s not something she can take credit for—she won’t take credit for—but she finally understands that tired old cliché where your child is the only good thing you’ve ever done. For all their faults, Carol and Richard brought Tyler into the world, and as far as she could see, the world is going to be better for it.
She hears his plan to help take care of the hybrids (his pack, he calls them), and she knows it.
“You’re going to miss graduation.”
It’s a stupid thing to worry about, but she isn’t sure what else she can say. She sees in him parts of Richard that she fell in love with, long ago, and she hopes that Tyler won’t make the same mistakes his father did, that she did. He can be better than both of them.
(Not that it is hard.)
The problem is, everything always has ways of going wrong. Klaus comes looking for Tyler, covered in blood, and she knows what it means. She knows what he intends to do, and she can’t let him. Only problem is, she’s out of cards to play. There’s only one thing left that’s of any value, and Carol Lockwood is not a stupid woman.
Inattentive, a bit of a lush, and a bad parent, but not stupid.
“Please. He’s all I have.”
There’s an odd sort of symmetry in that.
It all happens too quickly for her to process, which is probably for the better. Her face hits the cold surface of the water, Klaus’s disproportionately strong hand holding her under the water as her survival instincts make her struggle against the pressure. As much as she knows that she needs to die for Tyler to live, she doesn’t want to die.
Water fills her lungs, and everything starts to haze. She wishes that the last time had been a better goodbye. She wishes she had said so many things she needed to say. In the end, all that she can do is send this into the silence and hopes that somewhere, Tyler can hear it.
Forgive me.
Title: If the Fates Allow
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Carol Lockwood, Richard Lockwood, Bill Forbes, Liz Forbes, Gracin Gilbert, former Mystic Falls council members, Tyler Lockwood, Klaus Mikaelson
Warnings: SPOILERS through 409: O Come All Ye Faithful and big honking chunk of headcanon.
Word Count: 3235 words
Summary: They both try to find ways to guide him—Richard with his hands and Carol with her words, and in the end, neither of them are right, but Tyler is always a good son.
Author’s Notes: So she rose out of my headvoices like some kind of vengeful spirit and slammed me with this while I was at church last night. If I write it down, maybe she’ll go away.
Disclaimer: I do not own. I’m just borrowing and will put everything back where I found it.
Richard’s father never likes her.
She doesn’t understand why at the time. As far as the rules are concerned, she’s a catch. Breeding is everything in the South and she had it in spades. Her mother had prepared her for the role of a debutant from the time she was two. She was a history major, but she went to college for a husband, and she found that in Richard Lockwood. He is everything her upbringing demanded. He tells her he’s going to be mayor of his hometown one day, and she imagines herself as the next Jackie Kennedy—minus Richard’s tragic death, of course.
(Funny how that works out.)
He is everything she knows she’s supposed to have, and she loves him, despite his father, despite the fact that his hometown is much smaller than she originally envisioned, she loves him. She is groomed to be the perfect mayor’s wife, and she’s not going to let some grouchy old man ruin that for her. If anything, Carol is stubborn, and when she knows what she wants, she’ll play whatever game she has to, to keep it.
Still, Robert Lockwood won’t look at her twice and she has no idea why. Then, out of nowhere, he offers to take her on a tour of the old Lockwood property, and (stupidly) she jumps at the chance. History was a little more to her than just a major—not that she would tell her mother that.
It isn’t until he forcibly drags her down into one of the old cellars that she realizes something is wrong. Two of Richard’s friends are there—Bill Forbes and Gracin Gilbert—along with Sheriff Forbes and his deputy, Liz. They have a man she doesn’t recognize chained to the iron bars on the door. He’s covered in blood, almost as though he was being tortured, but she doesn’t see any wounds.
“What are you doing?” The words, shocked and horrified, fall out of her mouth before she can stop them. All the faces in the room turn on her in surprised, but Sheriff Forbes is the one to speak.
“Robert, what is she doing here?”
“If she’s going to be a Lockwood, she needs to see for herself.”
“See what?” Carol is many things, but she’s not a bad person. (Not yet.) “You can’t do this. People have rights.” As she’s speaking, she’s pushing past them all to cross the room, trying to find a way to get this man out of his chains, and Gracin shoves an arm out in front of her before she could get too close.
“Carol, don’t—”
He doesn’t need to finish. The minute she’s within arm’s reach, the man comes to life, snapping and tugging on the chains that hold him in place. His eyes turn blood red, and dark veins extend below his eyes. His teeth—she doesn’t think teeth like that are possible. Gracin drags her away from the man, and she lets him, holding tight to his sweater as her eyes continue to look on in horror.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Carol, meet your first vampire.” Robert’s voice is smug and knowing at her back. “Welcome to Mystic Falls.”
Bill Forbes shoves a stake into the vampire’s heart, and she can’t take it anymore. She runs. Up the stairs and past the car they had driven in, and while she can hear Gracin on her heels behind her, she doesn’t stop. She makes it about twenty yards into the woods before doubling over and vomiting next to one of the nearby trees. Gracin, the well meaning doctor that he is, puts his hand on her back as he tries to get her attention.
“Carol—”
“Don’t!” She snaps, jerking away from him as her hand comes up to wipe at her mouth. She can feel the salty slick wet tears sliding down her face, and she knows there’s probably mascara everywhere, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she just edges her way around him, heading back to Robert’s car for her purse. “Just take me back to the house.”
He does. As he does, he talks—about the history of the town, their history of vampires, the Founder’s Council—and while Carol never says a word, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t listen.
***
She leaves Mystic Falls that night. She tells Richard that she needs time to think, but in her mind, she knows she has no intention of coming back. She did not sign up for vampires. It hurts because she loves Richard, but at the same time, she won’t subject herself to that. Constant paranoia did not help you age well.
She goes back to her apartment, and she tries to figure out how to tell him. He calls every day but she doesn’t answer. It’s not fair, she knows that, but what his father did to her wasn’t fair either. She knows that he knew that this is what would happen, that she’s simply giving him what she wants, but she also isn’t going to put her life in danger, either. Especially not with what she learns shortly after.
Bill Forbes shows up a few days later, and she can tell by the look on his face that this isn’t going to be something as simple as him lobbying in his best friend’s favor. Still, she lets him in. There’s a part of her that wants to hear what he has to say, wants to know if Richard sent him (even if Richard should have come himself).
“You need to come back, Carol.”
“Is that the best you’ve got?” She pours them both a glass of water as they stand in her kitchen, and she eyes him skeptically. “Because I have to say, in comparison to ‘vampire’ that’s a little weak.”
Bill Forbes has this intensity to him that she doesn’t quite understand. She knows that he’s married to Liz, the deputy that is in the tunnels with them, but there’s something … off about the whole thing. It isn’t enough to draw attention, however—Bill does that all on his own.
“Do you really think that just by not being in Mystic Falls, you’ll be safe? Vampires are everywhere, Carol.”
She hasn’t considered that. Her mind has been preoccupied with too many things, and she should have drawn that conclusion herself. For all her flaws, Carol isn’t a stupid woman. She can put two and two together and still get four.
She looks down at the glass of water in front of her, and drums her fingers against the table. This should be wine. This should be a giant glass of scotch. They shouldn’t be having this conversation sober, but Carol is not a stupid woman, and there’s some things even she won’t risk.
“I’m pregnant, Bill.”
The worlds fall off her lips before she could stop them. Bill should not have been the first person he told. It should have been Richard. Richard should have been the one to know.
The look that crosses his face is something she hadn’t anticipated. Bill is hard to read on a good day, and this certainly isn’t one, but whatever it is that he’s thinking, it’s enough to drive him around the counter that had been sitting between them and gripping her arms tightly.
“You need to go back.”
“No.” She pushes away from him, holding up a hand to maintain the space between them. “No, are you insane? Vampires may be everywhere, but I’m not going to go and raise a child somewhere where they decide to congregate for their summer vacation!”
(She wasn’t always a terrible parent.)
“Listen to me, Carol.” He doesn’t need to say it. She’s already listening—Bill commands that kind of respect. Still, she turns to face him anyway. “We can protect you. We know about the threat and we can protect both you and your child.”
“Until the moment when you can’t.”
“Where else are you going to go? Back to your parents?”
No. No, that wouldn’t work. Her parents would disown her the second she found out she was pregnant. It is incredibly unclassy to be an unwed mother, and Carol would be on her own.
“I’m not helpless.”
“What about Richard? Doesn’t he deserve to know his child?” He plays the cards in his hand, driving each one home like he did the stake in that vampire’s heart, and she so desperately wants to hate him for it. If only he were wrong. “Like it or not, that child is going to be a Lockwood. If you come back to Mystic Falls, they’ll have a legacy to grow up in. They’ll have family, friends, comfort. What quality of life can you offer them now?”
She turns away from him, hands resting against the counter as she thinks. This isn’t a situation she wanted to be in. This isn’t something she asked for. But when weighing the options, she doesn’t see how she has any other choice.
“If I go back you tell me everything you know.” Her voice is cold and determined, unwavering. She won’t lose her child, or herself to one of those monsters. “Everything, Bill.”
“You have my word.” His voice is calm and reasonable, and later she’ll come to recognize that as being happy he got his way. “When would you like to leave?”
***
She returns to Mystic Falls, and she and Richard are married by the end of the month. That’s the lovely thing about a small town—you don’t have to pick a reception hall and most estates are large enough to hold all the people you need to invite. Six months later, Tyler is born, and people have the decorum not to mention how short a pregnancy it was.
Even her parents.
After that, things are different. Things have been different since she came back to Mystic Falls, but after Tyler is born is the first time she could feel it. Richard is different, treating her with a coldness that she expects from his father, not from him. His temper gets sharper, which in return sharpens her. They pull themselves together for public appearances, act like the loving couple with a newborn that they’re supposed to be, but once they came back to the mansion, they were on opposite ends of the spectrum—Richard in his office and Carol with Tyler.
Not that she really knows what to do with Tyler. Her mother taught her to navigate social politics, encouraged children, so long as they were attached to the right man, but never really taught her how to be a mother. She’s awkward with anyone under the age of ten, and her own son is no different, but there are moments where she gets it. She can read him a story, listen to him create one of his own with his toys on the floor, and she feels like she’s doing something right. Those moments are few, and far between, but she tries.
When Tyler starts to get into art, she keeps everything, from finger paintings to old sketchbooks to crumpled drawings she finds in the trash, locked in a drawer in her closet. She feels like she should display them like a normal mother, let Tyler plaster them all over the walls of his room, or hang them on the refrigerator as a gaudy representation of her pride, but Richard will have none of it, and his temper isn’t something she’s about to risk. Richard thinks that Tyler should be into practical things, like sports. Something that “builds character” and “keeps him active” and for the most part she agrees. Tyler likes sports. They keep him out of trouble. At the same time, she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with finding ways to express yourself when words can’t, something with truth in it.
Words don’t really hold a lot of truth in the Lockwood house. They’re usually targeted to hurt.
As Tyler gets older he gets caught in the crossfire of his parent’s unhappiness. He excels at sports, starts to grow into a young man that Carol has always been proud of, and Richard takes more of an interest. Carol starts seeing shades of Robert in Richard, and pieces of Richard that she doesn’t like in Tyler, and she doesn’t know how to stop it. They both try to find ways to guide him—Richard with his hands and Carol with her words, and in the end, neither of them are right, but Tyler is always a good son.
She should probably thank Matt for that, because she’s fairly certain that if they weren’t friends, Tyler could have become much worse.
***
When she finds out about Caroline, she calls Bill first, not Liz. Liz is the sheriff, and if she finds out about Caroline then she’ll be forced to do something about it, publically, but if Carol calls Bill first, Bill might be able to do something about it. She knows that he knows far more about vampires than she does and, well—they call him to do the vampire wetwork for a reason.
The next time she sees him after that, however, she slaps him across the face. Carol’s never really been one with a temper, but she doesn’t like being lied to, and she knows now what Bill didn’t tell her then.
“You lied to me.” Bill takes the slap and barely flinches, which is frustrating and only makes her angrier. “And don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know about what?”
“That Tyler is a werewolf.”
That manages to break through the constant mask that the other man wears day in and day out, turning it to one of horror. “Tyler turned?”
She swallows taking a step away from him and moving to sit on the couch. “He showed me, before he went to get Caroline with Liz.” The pictures of Tyler turning play over and over again in her mind, the pain he was in and the way he screamed. “What happened? How did this happen? Did he get bitten by something?”
Bill is quiet for a long time, before moving to the couch to sit next to her. “Lycanthropy is the dark secret in the Lockwood family. It’s in their genes, a inclination for anger and aggression until the day it culminates with the death of a person. It doesn’t have to be intentional—most are accidental—but some manage to get through life without even knowing they are one or triggering the curse.”
“I’m the monster, Mom.”
It takes all of a second for her to put two and two together—Sarah, that night at the masquerade. Caroline said it was an accident, that she slipped, but Caroline could have just been protecting Tyler.
“Did Richard know?”
“No. But Mason did, and so did Robert.”
She closes her eyes and something inside her deflates, letting go of the anger and frustration she had been trying to hold on to.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“The only thing you can do.” Bill looks down at his hands and says the words that she knows he’s struggling with as well. “You know that this isn’t his fault. You need to figure out how to live with the fact that your son is … ”
“Stop.”
She pushes to her feet and makes her way over to the table to get herself a drink. She’s already heard Tyler call himself a monster once, she’s not sure she could bear to hear it again. She pours herself a glass of scotch, and frowns.
“I don’t think I’m the only one who has to live with this.”
Bill doesn’t say anything, only gets to his feet. “Is there anything else?”
“No.” The word is quick and clipped. “Tell Steve I said hello.”
***
Carol Lockwood is not a perfect parent.
She’s not even a very good parent. She knows her shortcomings when it comes to her son, but she doesn’t really know how to fix them. Add to the fact that when she’s negotiating about Tyler’s future, she isn’t fighting with college admissions officers or athletic scouts, she’s negotiating with thousand year-old creatures who could just as easily snap her neck as give her what she wants, and all she wants is her son’s life. She’s already lost her husband, she won’t lose the one person she still genuinely loves in the process.
So she navigates the Mikaelson family like she would a formal event. She gives in order to receive, trades complacency and turning a blind eye for the life of her son, a life that Klaus so clearly holds in the palm of his hand. Tyler barely even has the power to say no to him and while she knows that’s wrong, she won’t risk the life of her son. Even sire bound, Tyler is alive. He lives at home and she says goodnight to him every night, and he’s real, tangible.
Richard’s ghost still sits in every corner of that old house. She doesn’t want to be haunted by two.
Tyler, however, is not content with complacency. He fights for every inch of what he gets, despite Carol’s efforts to keep him safe and he turns into a man right in front of her eyes. It’s not something she can take credit for—she won’t take credit for—but she finally understands that tired old cliché where your child is the only good thing you’ve ever done. For all their faults, Carol and Richard brought Tyler into the world, and as far as she could see, the world is going to be better for it.
She hears his plan to help take care of the hybrids (his pack, he calls them), and she knows it.
“You’re going to miss graduation.”
It’s a stupid thing to worry about, but she isn’t sure what else she can say. She sees in him parts of Richard that she fell in love with, long ago, and she hopes that Tyler won’t make the same mistakes his father did, that she did. He can be better than both of them.
(Not that it is hard.)
The problem is, everything always has ways of going wrong. Klaus comes looking for Tyler, covered in blood, and she knows what it means. She knows what he intends to do, and she can’t let him. Only problem is, she’s out of cards to play. There’s only one thing left that’s of any value, and Carol Lockwood is not a stupid woman.
Inattentive, a bit of a lush, and a bad parent, but not stupid.
“Please. He’s all I have.”
There’s an odd sort of symmetry in that.
It all happens too quickly for her to process, which is probably for the better. Her face hits the cold surface of the water, Klaus’s disproportionately strong hand holding her under the water as her survival instincts make her struggle against the pressure. As much as she knows that she needs to die for Tyler to live, she doesn’t want to die.
Water fills her lungs, and everything starts to haze. She wishes that the last time had been a better goodbye. She wishes she had said so many things she needed to say. In the end, all that she can do is send this into the silence and hopes that somewhere, Tyler can hear it.
Forgive me.