Drabble #1: For Willowaus

Prompt word: Unbidden.

Title: Crown of thorns, life of no roses.

Rating: T

Status: Complete.

Summary: Experiencing their unbidden desire for each other was the ending of a love story that never was. He once promised her the world, but the crown he offered had many thorns.

Many thanks to my lovely beta Klovec

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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It was as if her "confession" turned into rejection for both of them. It was an emotion that seemed to cripple her resolve but the silence around them was louder than the tempting voices inside her mind.

Her body thrummed with life. She felt whole and content and… lost. However that was it. The sex was amazing but that was what it was and it was over.

Because the man getting dressed in front of her in the middle of the woods, the man who ravished her for endless hours and now knew each and every contour and curve of her body, was still…Klaus.

He was still the same monster of a man that manipulated and pushed and spread terror to people. To people she loved.

The same nightmare was still hidden underneath the surface. Klaus would not change. He would still kill, savage and destroy everything in his passage. Each kind word would always invite a threat from him and that scared her. She was not afraid to admit that she was afraid of him and of what she would become by his side.

She was not like him. She could never be like him and if she were to give in to him, her soul aside from her body, she would then forever fear her reflection in the mirror.

Giving in to their attraction was the one and only thing that would take him out of her mind and her life. And now it was over.

It was then that Klaus turned around. The satisfaction they both felt was now dimmed by the impending farewell. She somehow trusted him to keep his promise to never return and she could not understand why her heart complained in grieving whispers.

He approached her with a gaze that she could not translate. She could not understand if the shine in his eyes was satisfaction for a challenge conquered, or if it was a thin disguise for the desire that still lingered and invited her to join him.

His hands grasped her shoulders and she raised her gaze to him. The uninvited desire she always felt for him was still there. It was not diminished; it was not at all extinguished. It was still demanding and painful and heartbreaking.

It was still so confusing.

"You said you will leave. You promised," she reminded him as the sun began to set casting its fading glow all around them.

"And never to return," he promised her again and she gulped before she nodded.

His smile made her heart beat faster. It was bitter and sweet at the same time.

"You want a simple life Caroline. I understand this. You want to live your human dreams. You want something easy, normal; plain even…but alas…this is not who you are," he said with conviction.

"Klaus-"

His finger touched her lips and silenced her objection.

"Your perfect life will turn its colors to grey shades after a century or two, sweetheart. And then you will crave everything you now fear. You will desire a different taste of life. More thrilling ventures. Mark my words, the day will come that you'll want whatever now feels painful, devastating and difficult," he vowed with a knowing look because he had once been where she was now and he knew what was in store for her in the future.

She could not know it yet but, when the boundaries of her human life would crumble and fall, she would crave for all the shuttering and passionate and life changing moments she was now terrified of.

"You are compromising Caroline when you are…extraordinary," he admired and pitied her with his words and he gently kissed her forehead.

He then let her go and took a step back.

"Time, sweetheart. I won't come to you but in time you will come to me… and I will be there waiting for you…however long it does take," he simply said to her again and she didn't know why but unbidden tears came to her eyes.

"You can be a queen Caroline," his voice rose like a shroud of smoke all around her. A tone so soft like silk and so hard like a thorn.

"You can have it all."

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A long time ago she had been too young to understand. She thought his words to be perfect delivered lines that held no truth or honesty. Just one more temptation for her in order to end their pull and push game; empty words to make her fall for him and to give in to everything he offered.

However, he was right when he told her that vampires needed to adjust their perception of time.

She had lived her human life. She had gone to college; she had learned and studied and made a life for herself. She was indeed an overachiever and she had managed to combine her human dreams with her vampire nature. She might had fallen and hurt herself once or twice but she would continuously put herself back on her feet and she would move on. In the end she had been proud for everything she achieved and she had been happy; Klaus's words faded and didn't matter.

And then that life ended and a new one followed and then another and another and another. The pattern remained the shame.

Her eyes, once thirsty to see the world, were now full of isolation and loneliness. She travelled the world and saw its wonders. Truth to be told her eyes still sparkled with the genuine beauty she encountered through the ages, but the lack of companionship was taking its toll. She had no one to share her adventures, her hopes and dreams. Faces from the past and present resurfaced in her life but they never stayed.

She memorialized her greatest moments and she hoped for new ones to come. However, she could count only a few times she was truly happy, content and complete. Those briefest moments belonged to the past and shone to memory. They were a reminder of who she was not anymore and of who she used to be. Those moments of reminiscing swirled and flared like a flame and filled the air with deafening reverberations of echoes from the past. Echoes that were still hiding in their depths all of that forbidden and unbidden desire she had for life, for love; the need to explore and to escape from her infinite and utter loneliness.

Echoes that seemed to be a reminder of what he once told her.

It has been too long and now whenever she looked in the mirror she felt haunted. She could see him in there. It was as if his image had become her reflection.

Once upon a time he had told her that she could be a Queen.

"You can be a queen Caroline. You can have it all."

She didn't know if she could have it all but she knew that right now she felt as if she had nothing.

He was right. Time. Time changed everything. What once mattered now mattered no more. What once felt important now held no value.

She had lived her human dreams until she realized that she didn't belong to that world and that her dreams reached much higher. Now she wanted everything. She didn't want to compromise. She had the scars but she now wanted the bleeding wounds too. She wanted the light, the dark, the day, the night. She wanted the sun and the blue but she longed for the moon and the black. And now Klaus's promise was not an unbidden desire anymore. It was her first thought in the morning and her last thought at night. It had taken possession of her mind; of each waking thought. It had found refuge deep inside in the place that yearned for blood and acceptance and it was consuming her whole.

Once she was afraid of what she would become by Klaus' side but she had never imagined back then that by staying away from him she would eventually become more and more like him and she would eventually be ready to go to him and to see the world through his eyes.

She knew he was still waiting for her and he knew she would one day go to him. And the day finally arrived.

The golden crown he once had offered still had many thorns but the alternative had no roses.