Author's Note: One minor detail- in this universe, April is NOT wearing a vervain bracelet (unlike in the actual episode) therefore she is able to be compelled.

Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own The Vampire Diaries or any of these wonderful characters.

Klaus came back to the table with two glasses of champagne, only to find Caroline gone. He looked around, but failed to see her blonde curls anywhere amidst the sea of people in the Grill. By now he had gotten used to their push and pull, but didn't think that this disappearing act was entirely in her character, unless something was up.

Was this another one of her distraction tricks? He didn't think so. The minutes passed and that usual feeling of protectiveness over her began to creep in. A petite, raven haired girl walked in front of him, and he reached out to grab her arm and spin her around, looking in to her eyes as his own dilated, demanding to know if she'd seen Caroline Forbes.

"I saw her head to the ladies room with that Hayley girl a few minutes ago."

Klaus hissed at the mention of her name and focused his gaze one more: "Go in there now and check to see if she's still there. Report back to me immediately."

Could he really have gotten this worked up about a simple bathroom break? But he couldn't shake the feeling the something was amiss.. Nevertheless, he followed behind her closely as she made her way to the restrooms. He waited outside the door as she passed through the threshold. With his super hearing on full alert, he heard the girl gasp and the thickening thud of a body hitting the cold tile of the bathroom floor. Klaus slammed open the door, nearly knocking it off its hinges, and the sight of a lifeless Caroline with her glorious curls sprawled across the tacky tiles, nearly stopped his blood cold.

Pure rage flared through him and he fought every possible urge to leave immediately and hunt down the wolf girl he assumed was to blame. Instead, he flashed down to kneel beside her. There was no visible blood anywhere on her, and going off intuition, he placed a hand behind her delicate head, carefully feeling the vertebrae of her slender neck. Broken. Just as he'd thought.

He regrettably left Caroline's side for a moment to handle the annoyingly hysterical girl next to him. He grabbed her shoulder roughly and compelled her to forget everything she had just witnessed and leave, which she promptly did.

With a fire in his eyes and worry in his heart, Klaus bent down and lifted the lifeless Caroline into his arms, flashing his way out of the Grill and towards the Forbes family home. Silently thanking Liz Forbes for inviting him into their home many moons ago, Klaus forcefully opened the locked door with a single shoulder heave, stepping through the doorway to carry Caroline to her room. When he reached the familiar setting, he gently laid her down on her bed, pausing for the briefest of moments to glide his thumb across her pale cheek. He took one last look at her before flashing out of the house and into the dark night, out for blood.

Several hours later Caroline awoke with a start in her bed, trying to make sense of her surroundings. It was dark except for the pale moonlight seeping through her windows. Hayley. The night's past events finally came to her and she cursed, running a hand along the back of her neck. As she propped herself up on her elbows, she was suddenly aware of another presence in the room.

By now, she'd spent enough time around him to recognize his musky scent.

"Klaus", she whispered.

He was eerily quiet and deathly still, standing in the shadowed corner beside her windows. And yet, as usual, she knew that he would not hurt her, for whatever reason he was there.

"What are you doing here? Are you the one that brought-" her sentence was cut short and her breath caught. The slightest of movements by Klaus had brought her attention to the dark stains splattering his face and dress shirt, now illuminated by the moonlight.

Blood. She knew she had smelled the faintest traces of it when she woke up! And yet, again, she was not afraid of him. His haggard appearance had admittedly startled her, but there was something else accompanying her feelings now. A new sensation began to overcome her, one that she had so desperately tried to repress in the past few months: concern.

She thought back to her conversation with Tyler and Hayley in the bathroom. She hadn't meant what she said about putting Klaus in Rebekah's body. She was just so desperate to stop Tyler's plan that she concocted that crazy idea, and Tyler bought it. Had he found out about that? Or did he finally get wise to the hybrid rebellion?

She slowly stood up and made her way over to him. Stopping a foot away from where he stood, she whispered a single word as a question: "Hybrids?"

He merely nodded in response. And there was something so sad and so lonely about that nod and the vacant look in his eyes that Caroline felt all her defenses, those walls she had worked so hard to build against him- simply vanish, and she wanted nothing more in that moment than to comfort him.

"Let's get you cleaned up" she said, reaching for his forearm and finding surprisingly no resistance from him as she directed him towards her bathroom. She flipped on the switch and guided him to her vanity stool, where he now sat wordlessly. In the full light of her bathroom the blood splatters were even more horrific looking, but Caroline collected herself, running her washcloth under the warm water.

Now came the tricky part. Sure they had danced a couple times, but she had never voluntarily tried to touch him, let alone his face! Shakily she moved the washcloth in her hand towards his stubbled cheek, ever so slowly making contact. He didn't move, only lifted his sad eyes up to meet hers. Caroline began to go to work on his face and Klaus kept his eyes on hers the whole time. She continued to move the cloth down his neck, trying to ignore the intimacy of her actions and how damn beautiful he was up close. At last, his face was back to its original state and the only traces of blood left where the ones on his shirt and jacket. She considered this for a moment, before tentatively reaching out to take off his jacket, which he obliged. A blush filled her cheeks as she began unbuttoning his dress shirt, but when she glanced up at him expecting a smirk, there was nothing but that same sad, look on his face.

Now blood free, Klaus sat in his undershirt and dress pants, and Caroline reached for his arm again to lead him back into her bedroom. His silence was really beginning to scare her, but she was not scared of him, but for him. She sat him down on the edge of her bed and when she turned to switch off the light in the bathroom, her breath hitched at the sudden feeling of arms around her waist. Klaus, still sitting, had snaked his arms around her and his head was now resting on her back. Caroline turned around, Klaus shifted his position slightly to grab her waist tighter and rest his cheek on her stomach. And it was this childlike action that both broke Caroline's heart and elevated it at the same time. She began to run her hands through his hair, a mutual touch that secured the connection between them she had fought so hard to deny. There was something heavy between them now. She closed her eyes and sighed, knowing there was no going back from here.