#also this is a KC fic but i haven't put any KC in this first draft snippet yet

[morningstargirl666]

hie!! obsessed with your fic and while (patiently) waiting for updates, i have THE biggest craving for fics with the same vibes as your fic & The Wolf by yokan. for instance, fics with caroline in NOLA with lots of mikaelson family dynamics and just her being around them or being considered as a part of their family. i'm lowkey a sucker for found-family kinda tropes if its not obvious lol.

i haven't read alot of kc fics yet so honestly just hit me with any fic!! popular or underrated everything works since i'm technically very new in the fandom! :D

thankyou for the recs in advance!!

Thanks so much! Specifically NOLA fics:

Blood and a Quick Murder (and isn't that how it always is) by KS_Caster

After a magical accident turns Caroline into a human, she discovers that her values don't match up with her friends' like she thought they did. She discovers that some choices are permanent - and some aren't. Oneshot - complete.

Whisper To Help Me Remeber by LaLainaJ

Put down by Tristan Klaus waits. And plans. Once awakened he's thrilled to set out and get revenge. A wrinkle forms when he hears news of Caroline, and is told that she's been working for his enemies. Klaus is determined to find out why, and soon learns that something is not quite right with her. He'll fix it, whatever it takes. Uses TO characters but ignores most TO canon.

Like The Sun Shines by LaLainaJ

"Klaus finds himself blinking down at his phone for an embarrassingly long length of time while he filters his brother's usual nonsense and the pertinent information sinks into his brain. Caroline is in New Orleans." It's an average Wednesday in NOLA until it isn't.

Fallen by klarolineepiclove

Caroline Forbes was a woman with a secret. Running from a shattered past, she settles in New Orleans, determined to disappear in the crowds and chaos. When her path continually crosses with the Mikaelson family, her plans go awry. When she finds herself drawn to the charasmatic Klaus, she begins to wonder: How far can you run before the past catches up with you? AU/AH Klaroline

Break Your Promise by Fearfrost

"What can I do?" He breathed. He knew in that moment listening to her fall apart hundreds of miles away he'd do anything she asked. "Break your promise."

Wicked Schemes by willowaus

Old family secrets lead Caroline on a journey of self-discovery and into the dark underbelly of New Orleans as Klaus works to reclaim his kingdom and rebuild the family he's slowly destroyed over the centuries. A TVD/The Originals crossover.

Someone's First Choice by unpublishednovelist

How many times can Tyler put their relationship on hold, ignoring her calls and hiding in the mountains of Appalachia, before Caroline finally snaps? He's pushing her away. Who could blame her for being pushed to something else? Someone else --- A rewrite of the TVD S5E1 scene where Tyler leaves Caroline yet another stupid message about how she's not the most important thing in his life.

throw roses into the abyss by marxandangels

Throw roses into the abyss and say: Here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive. Caroline goes to see Klaus in New Orleans after her mom's death, humanity free. That choice changes her life from the foundations, every single brick of it --- I think that the whole humanity switch thing is the dumbest plot device in TVD, but also the most interesting. What is humanity, really? What are the edges of it? What would it /actually/ mean to be able to turn that on and off?

Not NOLA, but the Mikaelson family dynamics are off the charts:

not for him a watery grave by MyLadyElise

He's saved her life, more than once. Doesn't she owe him the same? An alliance, a rescue, a race against time. A possibility. Hope. AU after Season 3: Before Sunset.

Persistence of Memory by perfectpro

Caroline comes to New Orleans, nervous to see Klaus after their last argument. As it turns out, she doesn't need to worry about him being angry. He doesn't remember the argument. After all, how can he when he doesn't even remember who she is?

a vampire, a brother, and a pack of wolves walk into a bar by banazie

In which Kol angers a pack of wolves with moonlight rings, his girls’ night out with Caroline is ruined, and Klaus feels particularly dagger-y.

where the heart moves stones by darkness_shows_the_stars

Caroline’s planned college experience in New York, so far away from her magic-infested hometown, keeps getting interruped because the Originals have apparently decided that her dorm room is free game. Getting away from supernatural drama was so much easier in theory.

the fate makes for a lousy poet by darknes_shows_the_stars

It is not unheard of. Soulmates born too far apart to ever meet. Caroline did her research thoroughly. It’s just rare. And for all that she’d known her entire life that her fated other half was dead long, long before she was even a gleam in her mother’s eye … it’s unfair. --- Everyone is born with a soulmate. It just so happens that a millennium divides Caroline from hers.

There's tons more. Search through my fic rec tag in my tumblr archive if you want more fic recs, or browse my AO3 bookmarks, I've answered a few asks like this one ✨

[bakerolivias-archived]

snippet from i feel alive when i’m close to the madness by davinasrebekah; 2k AU: set in s4. caroline and tyler have broken up on close to amicable terms (definitions of the word vary), silas kills caroline’s mother, bonnie doesn’t reach them in time, and caroline comes to a decision.

Flipping the switch is all too easy, descending into darkness and a void where emotions can no longer reach her, where they cannot follow. She’s not quite sure how she’s managed to prevent herself from doing so for so long, but it provides the momentary bliss she would have expected from such a drastic action. Yet it has not quelled the disquiet that sits low in her stomach, only the torrent of emotions that has, up until now, clouded her judgement in such a thick fog of pain and grief that it would have consumed her up to this point, had she not thankfully stopped it once and for all. The threat of Silas continues to loom over them all, the shapeshifter powerful enough to bring them all to their knees, and he circles ever closer around them like a pesky fly - except, well, far more deadly, a fact she’s obviously aware of. It wasn’t as if they could simply swat him out of the sky. (The way Damon still looked at her, even after so much had improved between them, suggested that he expected her to propose this preposterous idea or, even worse, have absolutely nothing to contribute altogether other than any inane or shallow thought process - but she’s accustomed to her value being unrecognized).

Contrary to popular belief, her capacity for intelligence is certainly far more expansive than anyone would ever give her credit for, and, if nothing else, she appreciates that Tyler and Stefan (even Klaus, though she’s not entirely ready to admit that) had reinforced this fact, not quite healing the ache of how little confidence she’d once had in herself and how much still she struggles with this, but soothing it instead. And, though she’s no longer a slave to these warm and fuzzy feelings that arose in her heart as she was reminded of them, if nothing Caroline can manage stoic acknowledgement of their awareness of her substance that Damon and Elena still failed to see.

She feels a vindictive satisfaction in this fact, that she has information her friends don’t, an upper hand against her enemies. While it’s amusing to watch this shoddy excuse for a scooby doo gang exhaust themselves with fret and plan painstakingly, running around like frightened chickens and assembling their best fighters, she doesn’t bother to tell them that it is of no use, sitting quietly in the Salvatore’s kitchen and sipping on the opening of a blood bag unassumingly, without bothering to contribute to the discussion.

Caroline already knows how this will end. In fact, it already has.

Her mother’s body decomposing, the last remaining shreds of her rotting away in a grave at the cemetery, are proof enough.

He cannot be stopped. Silas is the most powerful creature in the world, wearing any face he chooses except his own, refusing to reveal his true exterior beastly nature that apparently only Bonnie had seen (shrouded in darkness and shadows, Bonnie described, almost like that of his soul), fooling her and her friends with the temptation, the promise, of seeing loved ones again, preying on their weaknesses, the people who emotionally tethered them. The professor’s wife, Elena’s little brother, Matt, even Klaus (a fact that is far easier to admit to herself in this state, if only slightly troubling)... the list went on, and happened to include her own mother.

Which leads her to this moment, emotionless much like Elena was only hours ago, and waiting for her friends to catch on, waiting for the perfect moment to dramatically reveal her metamorphosis (she did, after all, enjoy attention in the way some might consider borderline narcissistic, a trait she now takes no shame in, only haughty pride).

Falling so easily to Silas’s tricks had made her what she’d never wanted to become again, the very thing about herself she had despised not long ago, only one year or so even if it felt like centuries - a vapid, shallow, useless wisp of a blonde who couldn’t even protect her own family, let alone herself herself (and her body, from the hands of others who wanted to take take take, consume her with their greed, and whom she would always give herself to because she was so desperate for an attentive, kind, gentle companion with a lover’s caress, which she had wanted so badly to be like that of a peaceful summer breeze but instead felt like the twist of a vervain soaked blade in her abdomen - Caroline never learned). Her mother had fallen victim to Silas’s whims because of her carelessness, just as she herself had been constantly victimized, to no one’s fault except her own - wasn’t that exactly what Elena said, the very implication she’d placed behind a not entirely subtle barb directed at her? Recklessly jumping into the bed of men with indiscernible intentions, men whom she barely knew who would only use and discard her, disappointing her mother with news of her true identity as a vampire - the very thing that generations of Forbes are taught to loathe, righteously so - and throwing her future, any major plans she would have had for after graduation, down the drain. It really is no wonder that she had become so easy to abandon. Her own mother, constantly throwing herself into work, Klaus disappearing to New Orleans to do god knows what, and Tyler having no choice but to leave her (entirely her own fault, in this case, but that hadn’t made it any easier).

(There was only one thing that could - and she had briefly considered it, before her mother’s death finalized this decision).

It was when she choked out sobs, kneeling over her mother’s unmoving body and clutching Elizabeth tightly to her own in her living room, that the solution came to her, so alluringly attainable. She knew that she had wanted all along, a desire that had been cloaked by her unyielding optimism, caged by love and faith in her now dismantled support system, a dark force waiting to be set free, clamoring against the facade of perfection she’s built for herself with so much care and effort. Clawing against her skin until she falls to its control.

Caroline lets it happen.

She feels like an entirely different person now, the person no longer buried beneath the plaid skirts and girly lace tops and tidy, clean blonde ringlets. That which had been locked inside of her was irrevocably released. Whoever, whatever she had become since that night in the hospital when a woman wearing her best friend’s face had smothered her with a pillow was to be revealed to all.

And the beauty of this transformation, is that she does not care what they would think or say once they absorbed this development into their undoubtedly thick skulls, only craves the outrage, their knowledge of her newfound apathy, but beyond that, could not care less about their opinions of her decision, of her. And isn’t that the entire point? Passivity, indifference, the numbness that wrapped around her heart and replaced all her unbound energy and love with cool precision, was true liberation.

Caroline’s relief at no longer being shackled to emotion, coupled with the bittersweet taste on her tongue as a part of her unconsciously enacts vengeance on them all - a group of powerful supernaturals (led by a sycophant who still could not bother to see her as anything more than an object to be utilized to the point of usefulness and then immediately discarded), who had neglected to save her mother, or save Bonnie from mind control (which she herself was also slightly complicit in, and she’s even happier to be in this state for it prevents the bitter wash of guilt from coating her tongue), who didn’t even bother to inform her about Mystic Falls being the world’s overpopulated supernatural gathering grounds and her new occupied role in it until she bled a man dry one night at a carnival.

(The night when she succumbed to her darkest impulses and untamed hunger and the scent of blood filled the night sky, a portrait of violence against the backdrop of the festivities at hand, against the laughter and sickly sweet cotton candy and bright neon lights surrounding her, these things avoiding her darkness and depravity altogether, unmarred and untouched. Unlike her.)

(And she cannot help it, the memory is still so stark and vivid and hurtful, when she remembers the shame and the looks of judgement from her friends, the way Damon wouldn’t have hesitated to murder her, and despite all attempts to remember advice Bonnie had once given her - bitterness provokes wrinkles bitternessprovokeswrinklesbitternessprovokeswrinkles - but then she remembers, she can’t even physiologically procure wrinkled skin even if she wanted to, a fact that by any conventional means should be a benefit but somehow manages to twist into something uglier, a reminder of what she lost against her will accompanied by and in contrast to how much she has gained from what was ultimately forced upon her. And to antagonize the Salvatore brothers, who had swept into her and Elena’s lives with handsome, charming smiles and rotting souls only waiting to consume them, to ruin them. She was only to be a prop, brutalized in order to assert Katherine’s dominance over them. That is to be her fate, she knows - she can only ever be used as a pawn in the mind games of others, a message, a warning, at the expense of her well being.)

(And for the freaking Salvatores of all people. If Caroline had any particular fondness for Katherine, she would have advised the girl to move on and find greener pastures.)

She reveals the news with sweeping dramatics as planned, and watches as Elena, having regained her humanity after Damon and Stefan used Matt as bait, seems to cave into herself, face falling and eyes crinkling with unshed tears and maybe pity, or shared grief. Caroline can’t quite differentiate between the two, but seeing her friend gaze at her so earnestly might have convinced her, if it had been enough.

But she won’t be the pitiable, the broken little girl, refuses to be girly Caroline Forbes anymore. Someone who is so easily malleable and used by people like Silas or Damon. Not ever again. Besides, she’s had enough of their losses, of every goddamn tragedy in their lives centered around people like Damon, or his and Elena’s tragic love affair.

She can see she’s being unfair. Her logic, her rational side, overrides the part of her that was guided and driven by emotion, by feeling, yet another benefit of being humanity-less, and Caroline’s susceptible to objective fact. She understands that perhaps her resentment is far too concentrated, too harsh - they’ve all loved someone and had to shoulder the unbearable loss, to feel their world crumble bit by bit as they came to realize what that loved one’s absence truly meant. She has suffered, yes, far too much for comfort - yet Caroline knows she is not solitary in her hurt, that maybe others deserve the vacation away from their pain more than she does. But she was the one who had been granted that gift, and it would be rather ill-advised not to use it during times like these. Besides, this gift had freed her, and she was now a true vampire in all her glory, unclean and vicious and decorated like a prize that she is, with no inner torments beyond the vague, distant desire for blood and to paint the entire town red in true Katherine fashion. Any kind of sympathy for Elena and her friends pales in comparison to this thirst.

So she quenches it. Werewolf venom (which was not as rare to procure as one might think, especially if one was as resourceful as she could be) crammed down Damon’s throat while he sleeps. A few slit throats here and there, fed on corpses now drained husks of their former selves littering the streets, a vervain laced kitchen knife in Stefan’s abdomen. Matt and Elena go untouched, as does Bonnie - she has little to no grievances to air with them. And, to simply be a petty, vindictive bitch and go after Rebekah - she entertains the thought, she truly does, but Caroline isn’t suicidal. Besides, she’s communicated all that she wanted to say.

She is to be the villain of their story and of her own, towering above them all with streaks of blood on her porcelain white skin, a thick layer covering her and managing to make her like the unhinged horror movie monster she is. Vengeance truly did taste sweet, and she can understand the delicious craving, the addictive manner in which it takes over her soul unapologetically and leaves little survivors in her wake.

And when she’s done, she drive drive drives, unsure and uncaring of her destination, only motivated by the recognition that there’s nothing left for her in Mystic Falls clicking into place. She stops at a gas station, for practical reasons, and is greeted by an endless parade of either concerned, mystified, or frightened faces, gazing at her blood soaked form warily with either caution or empathy or a mix of both in their eyes. Caroline is met with “are you okays” and “oh, honey, what happened to yous” that might have good intentions but only feel patronizing to her at this point.

And she’s once again hit with a wave of awe at the miracle that she. doesn’t. care.

No one at the gas station is left alive.