notily notes: for theviolonist (aka the disgusting mathilde), who asked for a noir au. yeah whatever i'm only filling now a prompt you gave me way back in FEBRUARY, but in my defense you did leave a shitload, so… *trails off vaguely while attempting to look cool*. consider this your welcome back gift! AND WHAT UP WHAT UP MATHILDE GOT ACCEPTED INTO CAMBRIDGE, HUZZAAAHHH.

notes, and then some: like all the while i was writing this my train of throught was pretty much WHAT THE HELL IS A NOIR AU and wow okay humphrey bogart can get it (because it turns out i cannot write fic without studious research - in this case, clogging up my torrents with all those movies). i had a lot of fun writing this even though i'm terrified of what all of you will think. MAKE ME FEEL BETTER WITH A REVIEW PLEASE, I DESERVE IT FOR GIVING YOU CAROLINE RUNNING AMOK WITH GUNS, AT LEAST.

shut the hell up with these notes: thanks always to dj for kicking my ass til i published this; three weeks working on a 3k oneshot? where is my game? unbeta'd because mathilde was back and i couldn't wait a moment longer, so... *sucks on candy cigarette and looks off into the distance*

here ya go.

this town is colder now, i think it's sick of us

part i

—

Her smile is a little cruel, a little erotic, a little strange. She's pointing a gun at the back of his head and he can see the curve of her lips through the mirror she's made him kneel before.

And he thinks:

When I was seven years old I beat my brother until I almost killed him. He was clever and funnier and nicer and everyone wanted to be surrounded by his warmth like donning cloaks of a vibrant gold; everyone liked him and everyone listened to him. When I was seven years old I beat my brother until I almost killed him, because nobody liked me.

He's killed. It doesn't matter who, it didn't matter when. The point is, he's killed, flicked cigarette butts at the sight of soul leaving mangled skin, blood clotting under his shoes. He knows she'd asked him once, Are you sorry? because he'd been frowning then, hadn't he? No, he says, I'm not sorry. My shoes are goddamn dirty.

He'd been turned with his brother, his brother, his brother, from the blood of a woman they both loved. And then their father had killed them, or tried to, or succeeded, or something. This he cannot remember because of the incapacitating hunger rotting his insides, sharpening his teeth. Blood—that he remembers. He remembers running. He remembers pinning a girl to a wall and kissing her. He remembers coming away from the kiss with his fangs coloured red, and he remembers dreaming a world in which nothing else mattered but this moment right here, teeth and tongue and veins and skin, blood turning in the mouth. And this moment right here, with him on his knees.

In the reflection of the mirror she could be made of moon slivers, and were he not tied he would have floated right up to her, to her smile that was a little cruel, a little erotic, a little strange.

And he thinks:

Cruel, the way the muzzle rustles against his hair, tender as a lover's caress.

Erotic, her grip on the pearl-handled gun—tightening ever so slightly when she sees him staring.

Strange, how she's not pulling the trigger.

—

Stefan has his top buttons popped and booze brimming in his eyes, toting a smile like a bomb about to go off. The war is over, people tell him, but he's not convinced.

You see, his teeth—they're always aching for something to sink into. His tongue, always thirsting for a drink. He's always hungry.

As he is now, but he keeps his eyes on the old clock propped up on the shelf in the corner.

He's counting the seconds. Tick, tock.

The door swings open and Tyler Lockwood saunters in, slaps a hand down on the bar, lifts it in time to catch the glass sliding across the varnished wood. He's counting heads. One, two.

Someone's missing.

"Where's Klaus?"

Tick.

Stefan lifts his head. "You talking to me?"

Tyler sneers. "I see no one else here."

"You've got your answer."

Tock.

—

Caroline bought a gun.

Elena tells Bonnie this as she's brushing red over her lips, smiles to see how it looks in the dim lighting; doesn't know why she bothers to paint it on so perfect when it's going to be kissed off later. But she likes this, this science—yes, this is a science, no, do not convince her otherwise. The science of a steady hand painting a new face, every single time: anyone you wanted to be.

Tonight she is someone who is going to be pushed into a wall and kissed senseless. Something brushes down her spine, the ghost of a lingering hand. She shivers and caps her lipstick.

Caroline's gone doll dizzy, she thinks.

What she says is: "She's getting brave."

"Is that what it takes to wield a gun, then?" Bonnie asks lounged in a corner of the room, careless and graceful, her eyes painted to look like a cat's. "Bravery? I always thought you hid behind one."

Bonnie is a quiet storm. The air crackles with lightning unstruck when she speaks.

Elena thinks of Stefan, of his whiskey breath and hair slicked back like all the dangerous men do their hair. He used to look dangerous too, but he's tired, isn't he? She can see it now, the way he reaches for his gun before his teeth. "Stefan carries a gun. He's the one who taught Caroline how to shoot."

She doesn't expect Bonnie to laugh, but Bonnie does: short and quick, like coughing out smoke. "He taught her how to hunt, how to control her urges, and now he's putting a gun in her hand. Does he know what he's getting himself into?"

"Oh, Bon." Elena turns around, runs her hands down her pencil skirt. "Give him a little credit."

.

.

.

part ii

—

"Go ahead, love," Klaus urges quietly. His eyes don't look so blue with the way they glow, watching so reverently. Like he's just found religion.

Like she's his new religion.

It's a lie, of course—because dangerous men with their hair slicked back, with guns hidden in their coats? They are beautiful, they are like Gods. Her father had been killed by one of them, so had her best friend, and it is almost ridiculous how she used to think it something beautiful, something divine to be killed by them. Like the stained glass that colours the bellies of once-great cathedrals. Like expiring in the arms of God.

She knows better now.

These men who smile like their teeth are made of bullets, they make all the rules. It's a point-shoot view from where they are, and immortal or no, they relish in the thought of being Godless. Being bound to nothing.

Listen to her now. Does she look nervous to you? Her grip is not sweaty, her hands do not tremble. Don't rush her.

Listen to her now. Do you feel bound?

He nods once. He listens never.

But he looks at her. Carefully, reverently. Hands clasped around his back, and if eyes could talk his would always be hushed, like he's afraid she will run, like he is tending a herd. Sheep flocking at his feet, oh the irony; and how bright his eyes look, like there is light in him still.

"You can do this," he says.

"Like you've always talked about," he says.

"Pull the trigger," he says.

He's not on his knees, but he might as well be praying.

—

With his trench coat wet from the rain, Tyler saunters over to Stefan in this dim, smoky room and asks, "Any clue where Caroline is?"

Stefan gestures for another drink. "None."

"Heard you've been giving her shooting lessons." Tyler leans in close, fixing him with a gaze so piercing that if he weren't anything but human he would be bleeding. "Now why would she need a gun when she has her teeth?"

Stefan gives a noncommittal grunt before downing his drink.

"Don't you think you've had enough?"

"Look at you, playing the role you've been given." Stefan grins. He looks like he would drip gin if you wring him out. "How's the shiny new badge?"

"You mean the one you used to have? The one I took from you?" Tyler grins back. He looks like gin would turn to blood in his mouth. Stefan isn't surprised, considering his former protégé.

It's a full moon. He thinks he was once one of those people who assigned meanings to these things. Something about the position of it against the sun, something about the way it illuminates, making him believe that a full moon was somehow more than what it was.

"Look at us," Stefan sighs mockingly, pushing his stool back to stand. He grabs his coat, grabs his hat. He leaves the bartender's head. "Monsters playing at men."

Men, a rung below half-gods, immortals. And where do the monsters lay? They both require blood, so tell me—what is the difference, really?

A shadow passes over Tyler's face. See, Tyler doesn't like to be reminded. Tyler still thinks in the end, there will be comeuppance. That the blood in his mouth will turn to ash.

He swallows as if he might already be tasting it. Buttons his coat all the way to his neck. "You tell me, Ripper."

—

It's too quiet a night for a girl to be walking home alone. Elena knows this, but still her shoes trail the sidewalk and her fingers wrap around nothing in her pocket.

Doll dizzy, she thinks again, and is almost sorry.

Because when she is pushed against the side of a stinking, crumbling building, when her head tilts back to allow a hot kiss, when a sigh escapes her teeth, when her lips part into a silent scream, when her legs kick uselessly in the air, when her nails bleed but do not puncture, when her neck breaks with a sickening crack—

—he says, "Damn. Sorry about that."

.

.

.

part iii

—

Caroline wears black for a month. She keeps the gun in her purse for longer.

She loads it up, counts her bullets at night, and when Klaus shows up by her window sill as she knew he would, she says very steadily, "These bullets are laced with wolfsbane."

"Very good." He lifts his eyes. She has a black veil pulled down over her face and she has her gun pointing at him, hovering just between his head and his chest, like she's not sure which to blow apart. There would be poetic justice in a bullet in his heart, wouldn't it? He likes to think, he likes to think.

He steps closer, bares his chest, presses it against the barrel of the gun. "But you know I can't die."

"But you can hurt," she says, and that's maybe the third time she's ever seen his smile drop.

She pulls the trigger.

—

The funeral had been a quiet affair. Stefan had stank of booze.

Bonnie chants something under her breath. Caroline thinks it's some witchy incantation, something to fill up the void left in her chest. Something for the chill in Stefan's bones. Something for the shake in her fingers.

She remembers with a start that Bonnie doesn't have her magic anymore.

—

For a man with so much red on his hands, Klaus sure knows how to touch a girl.

Tenderly, the back of his forefinger brushing against her cheek. He touches with the utmost care, afraid to bruise, when she knows he's shredded bones fleshless with much less flair than that. Every move is staged, every whisper of his lips down her neck calculated. Never clumsy. I know you, he seems to say. I know what you like.

She feels the cold steel of his gaze the minute she steps into the room.

"You came," he says, and he sounds so relieved she almost falls for it. That this man would have any iota of belief in his body that she could ever deny him.

When he kisses her it's with a hunger she is not unfamiliar to, because it's inside her too. It's what keeps him finding her at night; it's what makes her leave her window open. It's what makes him bare his wrist to her; it's what makes her leave a perfect set of purpling teethmarks bruising his skin, lingering like an invisible scar long after it's healed. In the morning Caroline wakes to him tracing patterns down her spine, the feeling of his arm wrapped around her waist, the hot press of his lips against her naked shoulder.

He will smile and say, "Good morning."

She'll turn away.

She won't see his smile drop, the first time.

But she doesn't miss the second.

The second is when she tells him she's leaving with Elena, for good.

—

At night, when she hears tell of the Monterrey Ripper, when she closes her curtains to the sight of shivering towers and howling wolves, when she does not miss her father so much, she thinks:

She used to be a girl once. She used to be Miss Mystic Falls. Caroline the always smiling. Caroline the always crowned.

She used to be a girl who believed in the silly notion that love and guns went hand in hand, that you did not truly love if it does not break you, make you bend over from grief, the way her mother cried when her father left, the way Bonnie traces symbols in a grimoire she no longer has use of, the way Elena would come to her with her lips bleeding and her cheeks burning.

The way Stefan writes names on a crumbling wall. The way he can't look her in the eye anymore.

The way Klaus comes, the way he always comes: at night, when she is in bed, when she is trembling from missing her father so much that her walls shudder around her. He does not touch her (he has not touched her since), but he sits there on the edge of her bed, and he watches her. Watches her as he always does. Watches her breath quiver around tears unshed, watches the ripple of her sheets in the clench of her fingers. He is not an angel watching over her, no; he is something more deific, something even the stars would not dare collide against.

She looks into his face, expects to see something divine, but all she sees are her own eyes staring back.

—

Nobody ever tells you this in Sunday school. Not really.

—

Stefan teaches her how to hold a gun. He does not teach her how to shoot it. She learns, one day, accidentally – but that's a story for another day.

The story today—

A ripper and a baby vampire walk into a bar. Her hand is wrapped around the gun in her pocket, and she's counting the tin cans lining the counter.

Stefan's hand is high on her back as he guides her through the motions and his eyes are red – he has been drinking too much, anything he can get his hands on. He says:

"It all tastes the same to me."

He asks:

"What do you need the gun for?"

And she will answer, "What do you take their heads off for?"

"I don't do that anymore," he says. He might be laughing. She's not really sure; she's forgotten he could even smile. "I'm reformed," he says, if only he didn't sound so taunting.

But you're always hungry, she doesn't say. She can smell it on him, in the way his mouth waters. She wants to say, Remember Mystic Falls? Remember growing up with blossoms tucked behind your ears, remember your collars stained with sweat, remember the game sophomore year that you won for us, remember when we were anything but fallen kings?

This time Stefan asks, "Who do you need the gun for?"

And she will not answer, because he should know.

—

She tells Elena she bought a gun the same night Damon bursts into their dressing room. He looks desperate and he looks blue. He looks crippled the way old trees have no choice but to bend in the winter.

Later, when she's finished applying her lipstick she will look into her mirror not to admire how marvelously concealer hid the telltale signs of her insomnia, but to see Damon with his hands trembling against mahogany, shaking the table, the room. "But Elena, didn't you hear me? We can go. I have the car waiting; we can be together. Elena, I love you."

"Damn," Elena says glibly. "Sorry about that."

.

.

.

part iv

—

"Come on, love. Like we practiced." Klaus grins. He sits in a corner, feet propped up on the bartop, carelessly-mixed drink in hand, looking like gin would turn to blood in his mouth.

She knows, she's tasted it.

"I said don't rush me," she snaps.

"Yeah, Klaus." Even on his knees Damon manages to sound like a jackass. "Don't rush her. Let her savour the view of my back before she sticks a knife in it, since she's clearly forgotten how to use a gun."

His eyes flick up to hers. He isn't pleading; he's past that. All he does is watch the way her fingers tighten around the dully gleaming pearls. "You know, Blondie," he muses, "I wish you had it in you."

—

That day in the cemetery, so long ago—

Stefan leaves his footprints in the mud. They nudge it away with their knees, keeled over a freshly dug plot. Caroline holds Bonnie in her arms, but Bonnie is not crying. Bonnie whispers, over and over:

"Come back, Elena. Come back. Come back, come back, come back."

—

Tyler comes knocking on her door the next day.

His badge glints at her from where it's pinned to his lapel. His shoulders never used to hunch like this. He never used to look so old, for a man so immortal.

"Look at you," she says quietly.

"Look at me," he says from her doorway. He doesn't ask to be let in. She's not sure if she would have let him. You see, sometimes she leaves her window unlocked at night. Tonight's one of those nights.

"Caroline," he starts.

She waits.

She wonders what he's going to say.

You look like an animal, maybe. Scared and cornered.

You look like you need sleep, maybe. Tired, like the undead should be.

You look like you should let me in, maybe. You look like you need to rest your head on my shoulders and tell you everything is going to be alright.

You look like you're about to do something reckless, maybe. Don't.

His mouth is a grim line. He says, "I'm sorry for your loss."

—

"I can't die, Caroline," he snarls. He has his hand fisted in her hair, he has her pushed against a wall. There are shrapnel shells in his chest, it gurgles up his throat when he speaks, it speckles her cheeks with blood like quaint freckles. "You could spend a hundred lifetimes trying to figure it out, how to stop my heart, how to break me, chain me up and throw me in the Atlantic, and I will still be. That is it for me, love. I will always just be."

Here is the proof of it. She'd watch her gun go bang, watched him clutch at his chest and knock over a side table, watched blood leak from his heart, watched him pitch sideways. Counted his every eyelash as he lay in the middle of her room, counted the seconds until his chest would start rising and falling again, until he'd wake up. Furious, slighted, alive.

"It's not fair," she breaks in a ragged whisper. Tear tracks break through the bloody imprint of his hands on her cheeks.

"I know, sweetheart." He presses his forehead to hers, shuts his eyes. "I know."

—

"These bullets are laced with werewolf venom," she says calmly. "You're going to die, Damon Salvatore."

She isn't afraid. Her hand is not shaking. The gun won't go off like an accident, like the first time. It will go off when she wants it to. When she says so. It fills her with a perverse sense of gratification, and suddenly she knows why Stefan always puts the heads of his victims back on their bodies after he's done with them. Losing control, that's something she never hopes to feel again.

Her eyes meet Klaus' in the mirror.

She has never seen him look so alive. It's moments like these that remind him how it is to feel human, when your heart races when press your fingers down on carotid arteries, when your teeth finds the jugular vein and rips. When your heart bursts as a body goes limp right in your hands.

How else do you make a dead heart pound?

She wonders if he sees the same thing in her. He must. She has a gun in her hand. She's pointing it at the back of Damon's head. But her heart isn't pounding. Isn't even beating. It pounded the night Klaus pushed her to the wall and kissed her until she couldn't stand. It pounded the morning she woke up with his arms around her, pounded the same way his had that morning, his chest against her back. It pounded when she told him she was leaving.

Her eyes meet Klaus' in the mirror, and suddenly he's right behind her, nose buried in her hair, forehead pressed against her crown. The hard lines of his suit meet the soft curves of her dress. Her body fits against his in ways it only has in her bed. His hands travel from waist to shoulder to elbows, holding her steady, holding her there. They wrap around her wrist; his thumb grazes her knuckles. Soothing her. Preparing her. She tries not to lean into him, stops her head from falling back against his shoulder just in time. With his arms around her she can't tell where she ends and he begins.

Damon watches with ardent disgust, his lip curls, and he'd make a joke about just killing him already, but she knows he's not entirely sure she won't call his bluff.

"You can do this," Klaus whispers. He presses his lips to the back of her neck as he whispers her name. It resounds down her spine, warms her up, shocks her heart awake.

She nods. Cocks her gun and smiles when Damon tenses visibly. "You're wrong, you know. I do have it in me. I had it in me long before you killed Elena. I had it in me long before you raped me and left me bleeding in your bed. I had it in me the day you told me I was a shallow, useless waste of space."

Klaus has gone very still against her. He can probably hear her heart now, how it goes. She can hear his too. She wonders how he is still on his feet with the way it sounds, like the wild claps of thunder, just like hers. She knows If she doesn't kill Damon he'd do it himself. But he won't. Damon is hers. The thought fills her with something strange and vindictive; she is full from it. She is fearless, she is immortal, she is Godless.

"Does my brother know you're here?" Damon's grasping at straws, reaching for names. Stefan, Stefan his brother, Stefan her best friend, Stefan who's forgotten how to smile. "What would he think, Caroline?"

"Your brother got me this gun."

He chuckles, rueful. It sounds like he's choking. "Shoulda known."

"Damn," she says, before pulling the trigger.

fin