A/N: This has been sitting on my computer since April and I only just got around to finishing it. It's a two-shot that takes place before both TO and TVD's season finales. The second part will be out before the end of the week. Forgive me if I didn't write Camille properly. I don't mind her, but I've not studied her character in depth.

Anyway, enjoy this bit of Klaroline.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything to do with The Vampire Diaries or The Originals.


When The Bleeding Stops Part 1: I Don't Miss You

"I think you're a little drunk, Caroline," Stefan said again, reaching for the beer bottle in the blonde's hand.

She reacted fast, pulling her arm away at lightning speed.

"I'm a vampire," she reminded him disdainfully. He shot his eyes around the Grill, praying to no one in particular that the ears' of the other patrons were too dull to hear her garbled words. "I don't stay drunk for long. Let me have my fun and I'll let you lecture me tomorrow."

Stefan frowned at the odd sight before him. Usually Caroline carried an impossibly bright light with her wherever she went, offering sage advice to the foolish and opening up the eyes of the blind like she was Jesus come to rescue them all.

But as he stared at her now, noticing the bleakness in her blue eyes and the drabness of her blonde hair, he knew something was amiss.

It couldn't be anything supernatural related. They'd been working their asses off as of late to make sure Mystic Falls was safe once again from the big, bad monsters. Everything was in its place. No more demons, no more crazy vampires, no more spooky witches out for revenge.

So what was bothering the abnormally glum vampire?

A tiff with Bonnie, perhaps? His own brother? Elena?

"You deserve happiness, Stefan," she slurred, her eyelids drooping dangerously over her eyes.

Stefan raised his eyebrows gradually.

This had something to do with happiness, then. Either her lack of it, or her desperate need for it.

"I do?" He questioned, her statement amusing him. He appreciated the friendship he and the blonde had formed recently. It kept him sane, kept him out of trouble. Hearing her tell him that he 'deserved happiness' made his insides go fuzzy because it meant that he had someone looking out for him, worrying about him.

Caroline nodded sadly, wrapping her lips around the bottle and sucking until it was empty. She shook it a few times, tapping the base as if she were willing the final drops of bitter liquid to splash on her wasted tongue.

"You do," she sighed. "Damon's stealing it from you. It's not fair."

The Mystic Grill was having a quiet, lazy afternoon. Two couples sat in booths, eating their burgers and fries while trying to find fun conversation topics. A group of women sipped cosmos at the end of the bar, shooting Stefan flirty smiles every now and then.

Why Caroline picked now as the opportune moment to discuss the many battles between the Salvatore brothers was beyond him, but he decided to humour her.

"How is Damon stealing my happiness, exactly?"

Caroline looked at him like he'd grown an extra set of canines.

"Elena," she whined, her voice squeaking like a mouse.

Stefan closed his eyes momentarily and smiled softly.

"It's been a while, Caroline. I'm not that upset about it," he told her, not sure if he trusted his own words.

His heart had been metaphorically ripped from his chest when Elena chose Damon over him. It was Katherine all over again, except maybe this time Damon would win the girl.

They were happy though, or so it seemed to him and most everyone else.

That was what kept him from banging on their door at night and demanding answers. That's why he refused to think about it too long. If Elena was happy, if Damon wasn't parading the streets at night and sucking perfect strangers dry, he could look past his brokenness in favour of their well-being.

Caroline scoffed at his apparent apathy on the subject.

"I don't believe you," she rushed enthusiastically. "You guys were like, the greatest thing ever. And now you're having to suffer."

She snapped her fingers at the bartender and was rewarded with another bottle of beer. She twisted the cap, sniffing the alcohol before taking a large gulp. Her face screwed sourly as the acrid taste slid down her throat and slammed into her stomach.

This was something he never thought he'd see. Caroline, torn and depressed, unable to be consoled. Not even by him. And was it him, or did the bartender look like he was under Caroline's spell?

"It's totally unfair," she said, finishing the drink with a loud gurgle.

"How is it unfair? Who's got the short straw here, Caroline?" He asked lowly, placing his chin in the palm of his hand and twisting in his seat so he was facing Caroline's profile.

Caroline's knuckles whitened, her grip tightening on the bottle in her hand.

"You. You got the fucking short straw. And it's sad. And I hate Damon and I kinda hate Elena. She only likes him because he's a wildcard. He's the bad boy and that's somehow attractive," she spat, heat rising in her cheeks. He assumed it had more to do with her impassioned speech than the alcohol. "But it isn't attractive. It's stupid. Why not go for the safe guy who you know will love you for the rest of time? Why bother breaking everyone's heart, including your own, just for a little more danger?" She slammed the beer down in triumph—or maybe in loss—her eyes dancing, flicking from one object to the next like a junky on edge.

A bubble of laughter pooled in Stefan's throat as the reason for Caroline's distress dawned on him.

He knew what was bothering Caroline, and it wasn't his slashed relationship with Elena Gilbert.

"Caroline," he said, gently pulling her fingers away from the bottle and taking her hand in his. "What's really on your mind?"

"What do you mean?" She asked defensively, pricking him with her icy glare.

He could see the thoughts shining behind her eyes. They were fearful and trepidatious.

"This isn't really about Elena and Damon, is it?" He spoke to her like one would speak to a fussy child, but what more could she expect when that's exactly how she was presenting herself.

"I'm still confused," she said, a shaky quality to her typically calm tone.

Stefan shook his head and pouted.

"Come on, Caroline. This is one hundred percent about Klaus. Admit it," he dared her.

Shock passed over her features, morphing her beautiful lips into an 'O' and bringing her eyebrows so close together he feared they'd never be able to part again.

"No," she said solidly, taking her hand away from his. "No, no, no, Stefan. Get your head out of your ass. That's totally not true. Seriously, it's not true," she denied with vehemence.

The laugh he'd been holding escaped his mouth, bouncing through his teeth and off his tongue. Caroline immediately took on an affronted stare, pinching her lips into a straight line.

Stefan smiled knowingly at her, refusing to be put off by her many uses of the word 'no.'

"When you're ready to admit it," he whispered, almost as if he were spilling a great secret. "I'll be here."

Sticking out her tongue, because she was nothing if not mature, Caroline hopped off the bar stool. She gathered her purse and keys, picking up her jacket and flinging it over her shoulder in a huff of anger.

"I'm leaving. Goodbye, Stefan," she seethed, turning away and bursting into a strut.

Stefan blinked as she walked her way to the front of the Grill, her hips shaking angrily.

The doors opened in front of her and Stefan watched her get swallowed up by the afternoon sun.

He'd caught her. It was about Klaus. Only Caroline would go so far as to abandon a whole situation when she was feeling guilty and trapped.

And what more was there to feel guilty about than missing the Original hybrid?


Bloodshed. Buckets and buckets of bloodshed. Thumbs bitten off, ropes of vervain tied around wrists, pregnant bellies swollen and kicking.

Life had taken an unexpected turn, a bad turn.

When would he learn that his world revolved around mischief and mayhem? There was never any good in it, no golden light encompassing the space above his head. He wore black because it told the people around him to fear him. And it brought out his mysterious eyes, but that was besides the point.

He was evil. He was evil. Evil was him, and he couldn't do anything about it except bask in its sinister glory.

"You seem sad, Klaus. What's the matter?" Camille walked behind him, setting her large university books on the countertop of the bar with a loud thump.

Looking at her incredulously, because how else was one to look at someone who seemed to know everything about you, Klaus—evil in vampire/werewolf form—shook his head with contempt.

The psychology major's hair was twisted into some sort of intricate bun on one side of her head, a few tendrils daring to frame her strong jawline. Pins and elastic and sweet-smelling hairspray kept the locks of blonde in place, and he wondered why humans were so obsessed with their looks that they would go to such lengths just to appease the opposite gender.

The hybrid didn't respond to her question. It was too personal.

Perhaps he was sad, but such emotions never truly appealed to him, so he could very well be wrong in his own assumption. But she was in his head, much the same way as Silas, and he should believe her when she told him things.

Camille sighed regretfully.

He'd been around long enough to know when someone was disappointed.

What did she have to disappoint her? Besides the fact that just recently her world came crashing down around her. But even then she showed nothing more than a few tears and a hell of a lot of courage. Yes, she'd begged him—begged almost too much of him—but who hadn't?

She spoke again, "You're remembering something."

A noise, something that sounded odd and pitched to his own ears, tumbled out his mouth. It was a laugh.

Was she really inside his head? Had some witch broken precious laws and allowed the human access to his innermost thoughts?

Taking a long gulp of his beer, he faced her and smiled ruefully, turning his lips up in a way he hoped would scare her. But she just continued staring at him, concern (for some ungodly reason) glistening in her eyes.

"Am I now?" He questioned, thinking and trying to recall if he had in fact been remembering something. His head was so full of jumbled words and images nowadays, he easily got lost in it. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that he forget such a simple thing; that he forgot he was remembering.

Camille nodded and smiled brightly, too brightly. So brightly he had to close his eyes for a brief moment to shield his poor, darkened mind from her perfectly white teeth.

Was she not just regretfully sighing to him?

He would never understand humans. Or women, for that matter.

"You're remembering something and it's making you sad," she concluded after looking him up and down.

The sudden urge to cover himself up, to protect himself from her prying eyes, almost became too much, but he held his ground. He would not show any emotion in front of this girl except apathy.

Today, he was evil. Tomorrow he could humour her with giggles and talks of his true self.

It was a game he found himself playing with this mortal more often than not. She was like a puppy dog, always so willing to conform to his needs. When he was sad, she would console. When he was bad, she would either cower alongside him or bark and growl angrily. When he was happy or flirtatious, she'd fall at his feet and lap at the attention.

He didn't mean to do it, not really. Long ago he would have gladly played with her because he could, and he would enjoy it because he was so incredibly messed up. But now it was an accident, something that occurred only as a result of his mind not yet being fully reformed.

He was better, but not the best. Good, but not great.

And she played so well. And he enjoyed her company. He did. There was no joke to be laughed at when it came to his personal feelings concerning the human. But it had been so long, or at least it felt like it had been so long, since he allowed himself the pleasure of friendship that he quickly got lost in sin when trying out virtue.

Camille tapped his shoulder as if to pull him away from his own thoughts. He'd been staring at her, but she didn't appear to mind. She'd been staring right back.

"You keep watching my hair," she told him, attempting to explain why she had broken their staring contest.

Had he been watching her hair?

He looked at it again, at the swirly bun. Focused now, he trailed his eyes along the gleaming strands. Her hair looked like silk, like something that wove dreams together. It glistened in the glare of lights, but didn't quite fit her.

Beautiful. The style itself was beautiful, but it looked awkward when placed on her. Uneasy and not right.

"Does it look stupid?" Camille asked, once again disturbing his focus.

He blinked at her, the muscles in his face not wanting to work properly for him.

"I tried this new tutorial. It's a prom hairstyle, so I understand if it looks kind of idiotic. I just wanted to see what it would look like. What I would look like. Apparently I graduated too long ago, though. I can't really pull something like this off anymore," she babbled, already reaching up to her hair and sliding the various clips and pins out, setting them one by one on the counter.

Camille continued talking, her soft voice barely penetrating his ears. He wasn't listening any longer, though.

He was too busy remembering.

Another night. Another lifetime it seemed sometimes. A girl demanding, begging like so many do, to be dressed like Princess Grace of Monaco. The crème fabric that hugged her hips and breasts and thighs, her hair twirled into a sleek bun as it shone with diamonds, him showing mercy towards the man—no, the boy—he hated for the woman who claimed knew his love for her.

"—and that's why I can't eat bananas anymore. Wine coolers and me, big no-no." Camille finished talking, still wearing her smile like armour, and ran a hand through her long hair, fiddling the knots out less than delicately.

Flitting back through their conversation, he gathered she must have been telling him some extravagant story about her own prom experience. Trivial and useless information. He was half-glad he'd stopped listening. The other half of him wished he'd never tuned her out.

"Hey, I've never seen you drink anything less than the most expensive bourbon here," she noticed, thumbing the rim of his beer bottle. An awfully strange urge to bite her finger washed over him. "What's with the ale all of a sudden?"

What Camille said was true, fact even. But he didn't have a better explanation other than, "I had a craving."

Which wasn't false. He'd come to the bar with the intention of getting as wasted as a vampire possibly could by using a much stronger drink, but before he could fathom his own words, a beer was sitting by his hand and his mouth was watering like it did in the seconds before he sank his aching fangs into the warm bloodstream of a victim.

"You pregnant?" Camille teased.

He chuckled cynically. "No, but with the apparent potency of my semen, I very well could be."

Camille's face soured immediately at his crude words. She looked as though she were about to slap him, hard, but the device in his jacket pocket rang out some silly tune and his gorgeous face was saved from the girl's outrage.

Klaus grabbed the phone and glanced at the screen, recognising the number immediately.

Stefan.

Why was Stefan Salvatore calling him? What did he want?

"Answer it," Camille ordered, her hand still poised to meet his stubbled cheek. Her face said 'answer it now, or I'll slap you.' And while she could not possibly hurt him, he was curious and angry and foolish and did not necessarily want Camille's slender hand marking his face. For who knew the consequences of such an action when he was this upset.

He obliged the blonde's wishes, clicking whichever button answered the call and brought the phone up to his ear.

"What?" He snapped, aware that Camille was staring dreamily at him. The woman must have bipolar disorder. She flew through emotions quicker than he could keep track.

Stefan's voice was quiet but strained when he answered. He was scared.

"It's Caroline," the young vampire rippled.

He remembered again. Matt, the insipid human, telling him—him! the scariest beast on the whole planet—how bad he was for forcing Tyler to bite his precious girlfriend; Tyler months and months later laying a weak and nimble vampire at his feet and telling him that if he wanted the girl dead, he'd be forced to watch.

He remembered how they sounded then: terrified, hurt, so utterly mortal. They sounded like Stefan did at this very moment.

He remembered picking her up both times, setting her head against his chest as her body shook with venom, offering his wrist to bring her some sick form of salvation. The sting of her fangs as they dipped in his skin, the pull of her mouth as she suckled on his blood.

The overwhelming satisfaction and equally terrifying guilt and grief that overcame him as he watched her wounds heal before his eyes, knowing he had lost it all, over some insignificant, baby vampire.

"What about our dear Caroline?" Damn, he said our. He didn't mean that. He wanted to take it back, but he couldn't now, that would be silly.

Camille watched him with fascination, her eyes narrowing at the mention of another female's name. Was the woman truly jealous? Of a name?

But maybe she felt the tremble in his voice as he said the name. He could feel it too, tumbling through his body and hitting his balls like a sledgehammer.

"She . . . she was in the woods, feeding on some animal and this beast came out of nowhere. She got bitten by a werewolf. She needs you, Klaus. Help her," the other vampire begged.

The blood in Klaus' face drained.

He had to remain indifferent. He could not let emotions overcrowd his senses. He would not be led to the guillotine by those tedious feelings humans were so fond of.

"Klaus, what's the matter?" Camille wrapped her fingers around his bicep, clinging to his body like a prickly, overbearing barnacle.

In a half-assed attempt to prove Stefan's words had no effect on him, he shook Camille's hand off his arm and waved his fingers at her dismissively, trying to ignore the thoughts buzzing through his veins.

Caroline. Werewolf. Help her.

"I don't believe you," he warned furiously, praying to the faceless men parading around in the clouds that this was all some horrible misunderstanding.

"Please," Stefan pleaded, sounding so much more than helpless.

Klaus glanced at Camille, at her blonde hair and strong presence.

She looked like her.

He'd never realised it before, but it was right in front of him now.

But they were too different. Camille appealed to him because she was human and therefore fed upon by her own mind. Caroline, she was an anomaly altogether. She made no sense. Bright, charming, but oh so very wicked.

Where Camille lacked charisma, Caroline breathed it.

The same; in looks and perhaps in the way they both wormed their way into his screwed up mind. But different. One was his psychologist, the other was his oxygen. And he was tired of suffocating.

"Klaus, seriously—" Camille started, but that word was the final push, the last call he required.

He stared at the bottle in the hand not currently holding the phone to his ear, debating the consequences of leaving. New Orleans would turn to chaos without him, Marcel would gain some form of upper hand.

But someone, his only weakness, needed him.

In a blink, he'd disappeared, knowing that seeing her, while utterly painful, would always outweigh the repercussions he faced.


A/N 2: Thoughts?