In Obsession
She had buried the knife from the butcher's block up to the hilt within his chest. Silently watching as the bright light in his brown eyes dimmed, along with the shock of what she had just done to him; her treachery hurting more, most likely, than the deed.
A stray tear escaped from her, sad in the knowledge, that this sin she had just committed, would haunt her for as long as her immortal existence continued.
Yet, she alone had made the choice, hadn't she. And however hard and final the conclusion had been, once she'd made up her mind; there had been no going back.
Tyler's grey, lifeless, and muscular form slid unceremoniously down from the granite countertop he'd been leaning against, now slumped, a heap upon the wood plank floor of the Gilbert kitchen; his blood coating her hand and wrist as she held fast to her weapon of impulse. It no longer being sheathed by the heart she had impaled. The heart she had forsaken in selfishness, all with the naïve delusion that it had been in mercy instead.
All strength drained from her as she continued to stare down at him- dead.
How strange and how significant a singular moment and act can change everything, she thought to herself in growing detachment, as if nothing more than a spectator; stark cold memories flashing a movie reel from her human life up until this moment, of all her and Tyler had shared.
Caroline probably would have stood like that for hours, becoming a statue in the abstract thought, along the lines of a philosophical quandary, were it not for his interruption.
"You continue to surprise me…"
Her honey blonde curls bounced as she spun around to face the captive hybrid, her usual baby blues more watered down and glassy, and her adrenaline at the sound of his casual observation, flooding her entire system with a new sensation. "I continue to surprise myself," she stated quietly, taking small steps in his direction, stopping a sheer hair's breadth away from the barrier of the living room that contained him, still holding the dripping knife in a vice grip.
Klaus cocked up an eyebrow, motioning a finger at the bloody instrument, amused, "Still planning to use that love?"
Caroline snapped out of whatever internal spell she was under, and shook her head curtly, letting it fall from her hand with a thunk.
"How amazing you are," he said in soft undertones of awe, "to think in all the centuries I have walked this earth, a mere slip of a girl, a baby vamp no less, could bring me nothing but intrigue and mystery, as I fumble trying to figure out her motivations…her contradictions." His grin was unsettling, "I believe an explanation is in order, don't you?"
When Caroline didn't speak, looking increasingly uncomfortable, Klaus seized the opportunity to point out what he had already figured out, so as to save her that trouble of boring him with obvious details. "I understand you killing Tyler," he shrugged, "was out of some humane notion that it would save him from my eventual torture. But, that does not account for the manner in which this outcome was played out."
He made a steeple with his hands, lightly resting his chin upon the points of his fingers, looking ever more the part of a man in love with a puzzle. "You wanted me to see for myself, because most likely I would not have believed you otherwise."
She nodded, swallowing back the lump in her throat, threatening to bring on a full blown crying jag, as reality backhanded her into submission. Tyler was gone forever.
"There were other options though," Klaus took delight in pointing out, "Options that may have involved years on the run, in constant paranoia no doubt- but, options just the same." He paused, becoming truly sincere in his confusion. "Ones certainly not involving the demise of your beloved boyfriend by your own hand, so again I wonder...why?"
"I- I- ," Caroline couldn't finish.
"Oh sweetheart," Klaus mocked darkly, "is that regret I detect in your voice?"
He dropped his arms back down to his sides, as his expression hardening into a grim scowl of loathing towards the fallen quarterback (having many reasons to hate his former lackey).
For one, he had incited a mutiny among his progenies, resulting in Klaus having no choice but to annihilate all of his hybrids. For two, the boy had been in his way from the very start in the pursuit of the only girl to capture his attention in decades; the very girl that was standing before him now.
She had cheated him by doing this. Cheated his revenge; his retribution for what had been taken from him; his own brother a charred semblance of his former self, mere inches away from the traitorous Lockwood boy's carcass.
Kol had deserved better than that. Tyler had deserved so much worse.
So, why wasn't he angry with her? Why, of all the things to feel in the world, was he yearning to comfort, to touch, to smooth away every worry line of her face?
Even now in his conflicted emotions, Caroline was the epitome of light and beauty. The golden egg of conquest that he would forever be denied. And for that he despised himself as much as he revered her, because at the end of the day, he would never measure up enough to be worthy of her love. His heart was too dark, his soul too blemished and ugly.
"That was cheap of me Caroline, I'm sorry."
She raked a hand through her hair and fought to speak without choking, "No, I deserve it."
"You deserve many things," Klaus admitted wistfully, thinking of daydreams he'd indulged many times involving the two of them, mostly at night while alone in his study; a decanter of brandy as his only companion. Daydreams of exotic locales, fairytale romances, grand gestures, and carnal pleasures. "Not my scorn however. That would be hypocritical, all things considered. After all, who am I to judge you?" His gaze lowered to the floor, "I am the monster, remember."
"No," Caroline sharply spat, shocking him to look up once more, disbelieving of what his ears were hearing. "You… you're- you're…" she stammered, tears freely flowing now, as she confessed her darkest secret, "everything to me."
For once the Original hybrid was speechless, thinking he'd finally cracked his nut- having gone completely crazy; this being nothing short of a delusion.
"I did kill Tyler," Caroline turned her head quickly to look at her late boyfriend and then back again to purge her feelings, "as kindly as I could manage, because I do- I did," she corrected, "love him, but it wasn't just to save him from you. It was to free myself too. I have been denying the truth for so long. And I can't fight this- this- obsession any longer."
Dare he hope or even ask? Dare he even breathe? "What truth have you denied?"
Caroline swiped at her cheeks and gifted him with one of her famous award winning smiles. The kind she reserved for pageants, parental manipulation, and dangerously good looking men. It was a hundred watts. And all for him now. "The more important question should be what's next?"
She sobered on a dime, finally taking that one step. The step past the invisible force field he himself couldn't cross.
The scruff of his chin rested atop the crown of her head as she embraced him. Klaus found he was unable to move. "I will get you out of here, I promise," Caroline continued in a childlike voice that he found both haunting and troubled. "After I kill Bonnie that is…fucking bitch."
Her face tilted up, and she went to work placing frenzied kisses upon his neck, jaw, and frozen lips. "I'll kill them all, you'll see, and then nothing will stop us from being together."
"You want to be with me?"
"Of course I do," she said as if it should be obvious by now, "you are the only one who really cares about me. You never use me like they do. You always try to protect me. And let's face it," Caroline traced her tongue over his earlobe seductively with a moan, "we have incredible chemistry."
Klaus balked, having serious reservations about who he thought the blonde cheerleader was. This couldn't be right. She must be under some sort of curse or compulsion. This was not his Caroline. This particular angel had unsightly horns instead of a halo. Had the entire universe gone mad?
"We'll bathe in their blood and then travel to all those places you promised," She sighed, hugging him tighter, "it will be perfect."
Klaus stood in stunned silence, slowly inching his arms around her waist to return the hug, her beautiful face so close to his own, incredibly moved and stoic all at the same time.
"Nothing will ever tear us apart, it will be you and me against the world, I'll love you until the end of days, no-one is going to stop us, I'll never leave you, you are mine and I am yours, what do you think about turning a couple of children and starting a family of our own, we could build a home in England, Rome, or even Australia, oh my God the possibilities, isn't it just…"
His hands carefully traveled upwards, tickling her ribs, teasing the sides of her breasts, finally finding a resting place around her neck. Caroline failed to notice and continued to babble happily.
"We should plan a big ceremony, as of course we'll get married. I was thinking Nepal or maybe Maui; your sister could be my bridesmaid, Elijah your groomsman. Big flowers and white sand…"
Klaus applied a certain degree of pressure, gently, but enough to do the job.
"You will never have to stand alone again. I will be there, your devoted soul mate and best friend. Just imagine all the things we can accomplish united as one. I just can't wait to go shopping for new clothes for you," she squealed, "This look is all wrong. Believe me when I tell you ascots and Dockers are making a fashion rebound…"
There was a pop and then a blessed silence as he detached her skull from her spine.
His actions may have only stalled the present dilemma for a few hours, but thankfully Caroline's incessant ramblings had ceased.
The phrase be careful what you wish for came to mind.
Klaus carried her body over to the couch and sat with her in his lap.
The chime of a cuckoo bird went off over the fireplace in the tasteful living area of Elena's home. A distraction, for once a welcome relief, as he decided to logically disassemble this turn of events, as Klaus was a planner, not a believer of fate.
He absentmindedly combed his fingers over Caroline's brow, her hair serving the use of a worry stone, as he tried to make peace with what he had learned.
There was much to consider…much to navigate through. All of which, at the moment, he was only certain of one thing and one thing only.
He was not, ever, in a million years, going to wear an ascot.
In Betrayal
The precarious crack of the whip sounded off like an invisible lightning bolt in the air, barely making contact with her skin- this time.
She tensed up anyway, bracing herself and every muscle fiber of her back: expecting the blow, the shock and split, the blood and burn… relief or disappointment, she was so confused.
What was she feeling right now?
It had been hours.
Moonlight, in what felt like the blink of an eye, had quickly replaced the sun's vibrant rays through the black crushed velvet drapes; peeking shyly as a voyeur would, from the corners of the grand windows of the mansion's study. A room she had become more intimate with- more than, in her short years, she had ever wanted to.
Klaus chuckled, echoing a bird's song of insult, low and raspy, all around her.
Caroline choked in frustration; her sob just like the shadows- lost, the ball gag in her mouth muffling and distorting the sound; making all desperateness of her humiliation almost appear nothing more than a sigh of encouragement.
She was quivering, wet with tears and sweat. All hope, like Tyler, having fled.
"That's it love," Klaus purred, sobering his mood from amusement to desire, as evident by the baritone honey of his voice, "come undone for me."
He strode from behind her naked form, the chains and shackles holding her in place swaying from the sudden movement, his steps a floating silence upon the marble tiles.
Dancing candle flames, their tall wooden perches all around the room, and a dying fire receding to burning cinders in its hearth, made a mockery of what Hell would be like, were she to ever venture that deep into the Earth.
Although to her, many times over- she had already arrived.
Caroline startled; finding his glacier blue eyes directly piercing into her own darker hue affectionately.
"My sweet angel…" He whispered raggedly, leaning in to touch her forehead with his own, panting this declaration lovingly; the worn brown leather tool of her torture dropping suddenly with a thud to the floor.
She did then, in a hungry moment of desperation, let herself go; allowing for one small respite against fighting him, while betraying her crumbling pride, so starved for comfort, even if it was being offered by the very one abusing her.
Caroline strained, molding her body against him urgently, begging with all her heart and soul for some (any) kind of resolution to this madness.
The olive branch moment however, shared in demented sickness, was fleeting.
Klaus straightened himself once more and took a step back, just as spontaneously; removing direct contact from her skin as if burned, disgust making his face ugly again and twisted in hate, or despised weakness, she couldn't be sure. He back handed her cheek; a rattling of teeth and stars behind her eyes distracting Caroline momentarily, from the shock of impact and direct contradiction for what she'd mistaken as kindness in him.
"Fucking harlot!"
She frantically tried to regain her senses enough to shake her head back and forth in denial. Her peaches and cream complexion awash in fresh goose bumps. Her spirit on the verge of no return.
"You pretend to want me, you endeavor to deceive my heart; all the while plotting my defeat with my enemies."
Caroline attempted to scream behind the offensive mouth harness. A broken plea swallowed up by futile physical limitations. Her vocal chords being bruised from previous exercise.
"Yet…" Klaus faltered, his own heartbreak shattering all pretense.
He looked forlorn- a petulant child, hurt that the fantasies of spoon-fed dreams, such as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus weren't real. His lips trembled. His hands reached just a hair's breadth away from her heaving breasts. His pupils dilated in the suspension of perpetual wanting.
"I cannot completely forsake you."
Even being strung up like a side of meat hanging in the air, her tippy toes barely holding a ballerina's balance and the strained ball joints of her shoulders resisting dislocation; his tall menacing frame bore down upon hers with malevolence. She admired and despised his beauty. Respected and feared his dominance of power.
The golden hue of his unkempt crop of curls, matched the buttery scruff of his beard. And the expensive white dress shirt he wore was rolled up at the sleeves and unbuttoned, open completely, revealing a marvelous 'happy trail' (also blond) that disappeared beneath the waist of his navy blue trousers.
What a thing to observe, she practically laughed in her mind with newfound insanity.
But, Caroline knew deep down, by the blood shot appearance of his gaze, and the fatigue he was trying so hard to conceal, that she had not been alone in her torture. This particular pound of flesh had inflicted its toll on them both.
Klaus looked just as ragged and beaten as she was (minus the lashes).
And, she wasn't proud of that fact surprisingly, just sorry…so, so, sorry.
"To love you or even care, is to exist in torment," he pleaded, trying to rationalize his stance, "don't you see…I should have killed you."
He grabbed and clutched at his head, and then changed tactics, placing those long tapered fingers (ones that she had admired so much, once upon a time) at her and her throat instead. Fingers that had once caressed her, played piano for her, and teased her, were now choking her carotid and windpipe. Caroline felt the dark abyss beckoning.
Klaus's grip lessened and then finally went slack.
He embraced her, placing anxious kisses along her collarbone and jaw; pulling away only to mutter a pathetic "forgive me", before striking her again. She wept for both of them now, her dignity gone feral to the truth of her heart.
She loved him. She had betrayed him. She deserved to be punished.
Her body stopped resisting, instead going limp with resignation and martyrdom.
Caroline was ready to accept whatever cruel hand of fate she had been assigned. For the first time in a long time, her will was not her own. She was blank. Completely at peace with herself and with her nature. A pirouette whose circle had lost life or purpose.
"Why," he screamed, "why am I not enough for you!"
Blow for blow, she no longer felt the pain.
He descended even further into the dark demons of his past.
The compulsion and drive for someone else to revere his existence as glory, to know he wasn't solitary and omnipresent in his own world of immortality, and feel the softness of a lover's devotion, creating light in his forever…
Klaus was, ironically, at her mercy.
"I- love- you…" he cursed brokenly, dutifully picking up the fallen whip and swinging it now with renewed determination, "I- love- you…" the first and second slash lay damage to her abdomen, "I- love- you," his wrist rebounded back and then forward, blood now flowing down her sternum, coating her center with warmth, "I love you…"
There was a wetness and shine to his cheeks as well, of over a thousand years' worth of hurt and cruel rejection. Yet, even in his weeping, he didn't stop; making her a new promise with each and every strike against her tender flesh.
"…and so help me God, Caroline… you will love me too."
In Destruction
They had failed. This was really happening. The veil between that other place and their own world had been obliterated.
Caroline forced herself up, nursing a broken arm, while half-heartedly searching behind the bar for a blood bag to heal her injuries. Her feet stumbled over a few corpses of the fallen and rubble from the explosives Damon had tried to use, in hopes of stalling Silas.
She coughed and hacked, still trying to adjust to the overpowering acrid smell of torched ozone and sulfur; limping with a bruised foot too it seemed.
The whole of her efforts felt pointless. They were done for anyway.
The quaint and picturesque town of Mystic Falls, from what she could see, looked post-apocalyptic. It was all perpetual darkness from the formation of heavy dust clouds overhead. There were crumbling buildings and whole trees completely uprooted from the ground and on their sides. With various annoying sounds seeming to come from all directions; shrill bells and alarms that no-one would be responding to, completely contradicting the utter silence of all human life having ceased to exist.
Anything, it appeared, not supernatural was dead.
She didn't know where everyone else had gone to. Her quick scan around the room proved fruitless. Elena, Stefan, Damon, and Rebekah weren't there. Bonnie of course was a total lost cause, having started this whole mess, so her absence was welcome. She could only hope there was still a chance somehow to fix it.
"You and your awesome ideas." Caroline gruffly muttered aloud, thinking about the eldest Salvatore's failed plan, while images of Klaus came to focus within her mind's eye.
She should've listened to him. He'd begged her to flee, but oh no, she was too devoted to her friends to do anything that sensible. "Idiot…" Speaking of friends; where the hell were they?
One minute they were all huddled behind overturned tables at the grill, defending the door. The next, boom, she'd been thrown into the air and knocked out. Now all alone.
Caroline fought the pain, finally reaching the stash of blood. She bit off the port and drank greedily while making it over to the large broken front window of the restaurant; instinctually knowing she hadn't much time if she was to survive much longer.
Part of her wanted to cry, thinking about her poor mother, Matt, and all her high school friends being among the casualties, but she was powerless.
So, she did the only thing she could do in that moment. Caroline pushed all the despair and tragic loss as far back as it would go into the recesses of her mind to be dealt with later- if there even was a later.
"Big girl panties bitch, get it together."
Thank the good lord, whoever that may be, she was a vampire. Because the blood she'd ingested had already started to work and she was healing at a much more accelerated rate, already regaining the use of her arm and walking with more ease. Now, if only she had some sort of sixth sense of where to go first, she might just actually start to feel better about her situation.
The hospital might be a good place to start. Plenty of supplies to aid in injuries, assuming any of her friends had ones that would require extreme attention. Or maybe the town hall. With all its secret passages and panic rooms having been built back in the 50's, that might be the perfect base of operations. They could regroup there, you know, figure shit out. No, no, no…that didn't seem right either.
She doubted they'd go back to the boy's mansion- too obvious. And Elena had torched the Gilbert home. So, that only left one place she could think of; the Originals estate. But, with Klaus long gone, she doubted they would have any safe harbor there. Perhaps Rebekah had convinced them otherwise, hoping to contact her brother for help. Or, what if Mr. big bad hybrid wasn't really gone?
Hope at the thought almost made her smile. Yet, the fact they had just up and left her behind stung. What were they thinking, that she was dead or something?
Caroline realized suddenly, that she had already started to head in that direction; her legs power walking up the sidewalk in a blur of super speed. Never mind she was on the verge of panic. It was one thing for them to think she was dead, but what if…
Oh Klaus, please still be here
It was like being the only person left in the whole known world. Everywhere she looked there was vacancy.
This didn't make a whole lot of sense to her, considering she'd half expected the place to be flooded with all sorts of long dead Supes having crossed back over, and not in the John Edwards type of way either.
And where was this all powerful freak Silas hiding out anyway? Wouldn't he be partying it up, out in the open by now, celebrating his victory?
The Mikaelson mansion came up within view and any and all silly wayward thoughts were swiftly forgotten. Caroline picked up speed, charging through the front door with a side wind kick, while wasting no more precious time, "Elena! Damon! Stefan!" Her stomach bottomed out in dread when there was silence. "HELLO! Can anyone hear me! It's Caroline…" Still nothing.
Her desperation was causing even the deepest of her desires to rear up its ugly head and come crashing to the surface.
"Klaus!" she screamed, turning full circle in the empty foyer, her voice hoarse, echoing and bouncing off the walls. "Klaus! I'm sorry! I want to go away with you. Klaus! Please…"
Caroline dropped down to her knees and hugged herself, starting to rock back and forth on her heels; mumbling over and over again that she was sorry.
There was only one problem though…no-one was around anymore for it to matter.
Somehow, someway, her body had been thrown into reverse past the veil; sending her to be trapped within the very limbo all the others had been freed from. So, it would stand to reason that there wouldn't be any wild white knight rescues. Not this time.
And in the greyness of this place, this destruction…she now knew, too little, too late. That she loved him.
Caroline clawed at her face, whipping back her head to let loose a strangled scream; spiraling on the very edge of her wits, her greatest fear now her harshest reality.
And as her screams drowned out all else in her broken heart, the laughter of imaginary phantoms, watching her suffer (cheering it on even), became the music of nightmares to her very soul.
She was alone…alone…alone.
"KLAUS…!"
Forevermore.