AN: Okay folks, so this is not only my first Klaroline fic, but also my first fanfic ever. Just a random drabble, with more to come later. I'm very excited, and nervous and I just want to say, please be kind :)

Caroline wasn't sure why she's decided to go. It was a stupid decision and she knew it, but still, she got in her car drove to the Grill, and sat down at the table across from Klaus, who was finally back in his own body.

"Good evening, Caroline." She stared at him for a moment then she scoffed and rolled her eyes,

"I need a drink." She got up and found Matt working behind the bar, staring at her. She walked over to him and sat down.

"Care, you do know you just sat down at the same table as Klaus right?" He asked. Caroline sighed and rested her head in her hands.

"Yes, Matt, I know." She said, "Can I have my usual please?"

"You know if people see me serving you a drink, I could lose my job." He said, handing her the drink all the same.

"Don't make me compel you." She joked taking a sip from her glass.

"So why are you meeting with him?" He asked, they both turned to look at Klaus who was sitting alone in a back booth, holding his drink his hand and watching them carefully. Caroline kept her eyes hooked on him while she answered,

"He keeps bothering me, won't leave me along, so I finally agreed to hear him out." She said.

"What's there to hear out?" He asked. Caroling shrugged,

"Nothing, but I'm hoping it'll at least get him off my back." She said,

"Not a chance," She heard Klaus whisper across the room. She could practically picture the smirk on his face.

Caroline downed her drink and returned to the table and the fresh drink Klaus had ordered her.

"So what did you want to talk about?" She said, pushing it away.

She'd expected him to talk about what had happened with them, how he'd used Tyler's body to survive their attacks, how he's pretended to be Tyler, how he'd kissed her and comforted her, and laughed with her for weeks before telling her the truth. She expected him to be angry, or frustrated or try to use his stupid accent to charm her again. She'd even thought he might be apologizing, though that was a long shot, if not an impossibility. She didn't expect what she heard next.

"I heard about you and Damon." He said, staring down in to his almost empty glass.

"What do you mean me and Damon?" She asked, honestly confused about what he meant.

When he spoke, he could only stare down in his drink, like he couldn't looked her in the eyes yet.

"I know that you and him... that he... that you two were..." He couldn't even finish the sentence. I would've made her laugh, big bad Klaus who'd killed countless people carelessly, getting mad at Damon for what he did to her. But when she saw his white knuckles clenched around the glass and the small cracks in it thought it better to stay quiet.

"We were together. It was a long time ago, back when I was a human for crying out loud! It doesn't matter." She said, brushing it off.

Klaus slammed his glass down on the table and it shattered, causing people's heads to turn towards them. Matt shot Caroline a look from across the restaurant and she shook her head, she could handle this.

She grabbed Klaus' wrist and dragged him out of the Grill, across the street to the bench they'd sat on so long, when she'd taken a chance and talked to him. And what a mistake that had been.

"How can you say it doesn't matter?" He asked. Carling rubbed her eyes, hoping to open them and be somewhere else. But she remained alone in the town square with Klaus.

"You're right, I misspoke. I did matter, to me, and only me. And it's in the past. It happened," She looked at Klaus as he stood, his hands stuffed in his pockets, he eyes staring at the sidewalk in front of his shoes, she noticed him flinch as she continued to speak,

"He used me, and fed from me and slept with me and compelled me and then I turned and I remember and I got my just desserts okay? I got mine in the end and now I've put it behind me because unlike some people, I don't plan on holding thousand year old grudges, so, yeah. Besides how does any of this concern you? As if you haven't done worse." He stared up at her now, his eyes turning amber with rage. He opened his mouth to speak but Caroline, in true Caroline fashion, kept ranting.

"No don't pretend like you know me. What because you had to save me once or twice you think that I can't save myself. Because you read one newspaper article about how I won some stupid small town pageant you think you know me and just because you lied to me and pretended to be my boyfriend you think you get to care about me?" She ran a hand though her hair, thoroughly frustrated, and tired, with images of the past few weeks running though he head.

The worst of it all was that while they were together, she kept thinking how much better he was, how he was more thoughtful, kinder, more carefree and interesting. How much more in love with him she was. She'd thought it was the effect of Klaus' death, that the sire bond was truly, finally broken. Now she knew the truth.

"Out of all of them, Damon, Katherine, Jules and Tyler, my da- out of all of them, you were the worst." And for a moment she softened, tears welling up in her eyes, thinking about how through all the pain she'd been put through in the last year nothing hurt worse than the moment when she'd realized she'd hadn't been lying in Tyler's arms, except the moment when she realized those false moments were the happiest of her life.

He moved forward, just wishing to offer her some kind of comfort, although a part of him knew he didn't deserve the chance, a bigger part of him just wanted to be there for like he had been when he'd been stuck inside that stupid boy's body. But she stepped away, her eyes lit up with something fierce, that light he always saw inside her was like a fire right now.

"Stay away from me." She growled, before running away. He didn't follow her.

She went home, but her mother wasn't there, it was dark and empty as per usual. That had been her whole summer though.

The Salvatores had whisked Elena away to help he with her transition over the summer, and although Caroline had offered to come along and helped she'd been turned down, and she suspected it had something to do with the ever present, ever annoying love triangle that was her friend's life. Bonnie had conveniently left town to visit her family after the truth about Klaus had come out, and her mom and Matt were always busy with work.

She'd expected to spend the summer with Tyler. She'd thought he was dead, and when he came back they'd agreed to spend the rest of the summer together. And she'd liked how different he was with her now, he listened when she talked and had interesting things to say in return. They spent time not together but with each, actually enjoying each other's company instead of being the only people left for each other. And now she realized it was all for nothing because it was the wrong guy, the guy she couldn't fall for because she wouldn't let herself.

Caroline went out for a walk, but her mind just returned to Tyler. After he'd been returned to his own body, his mother had been shocked to learn the truth of who she'd been calling her son for the last few weeks. That combined with the rising paranoia about the council was enough to send him out of town for his own safety, no goodbyes, no calls. It would've been harder to believe he'd taken off just like that if he hadn't done it before. It also would've been easier to forgive.

She found her route taking her to the Salvatore boarding house and sighed, taking in how dark it was, and it looked so much scarier after midnight. She kept walking, through the forests, past the falls, the Lockwood cellars, the church ruins, until well past one in the morning she returned home, still dark and empty, and lonely, but now there was a lone figure sitting on her porch steps.

"Seriously?" She said, Klaus' eyes looked up to hers, "Take a hint. I don't want to see you." She said, walking passed him up the steps. She felt his hand grab her wrist and against her better judgement she turned around.

"You were turned by Katerina." He said. It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact.

"Yeah I was." She said. She sighed and took a seat next to him. "Who told you that?"

"I might not be able to find information like that in a newspaper article but I'm not completely without resources." He said. "What happened?"

"I was in the hospital, Matt and Tyler and I were in a car crash and I was in really bad shape, so Damon fed me his blood and I got better. I went to sleep and when I woke up Elena was standing there, but it wasn't Elena, and she told me to give the Salvatore's a message, and then she killed me." He sat there in silence and absorbed this information, but once again Caroline felt an anxious need to keep rambling.

"I mean, it wasn't so bad I guess, I remember all that stuff with Damon and kicked his ass around the block for a while. And I'm stronger now, I'm a better person, I actually like myself for the most part. I'm not some whiney annoying brat anymore, I'm a good and strong person. It's not exactly genuine beauty but it's not bad. Of course, it has it's downsides," She said.

"You mentioned," Klaus said before hesitating a moment. "You mentioned Jules and Tyler." Caroline nodded,

"You might remember her as the werewolf you sacrificed, you know, instead of Tyler," He tensed. "Figured you didn't know her name. They were trying to get Tyler to join them and they used me to get to him. They locked me a cage and sprayed me with vervain, shot me with wooden bullets. I was fine. Tyler and Stefan and Damon helped me out." Her words just fizzled to an end, leaving an awkwardness hanging between them. Finally he spoke up again,

"And your father?" he asked.

"We're not talking about that." She said.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because I ended things with my father on good terms, after everything he and I went through I said my goodbyes, I cried for weeks afterwards and I let him pass with no regrets. And I'm not bringing all that up again with you of all people."

"You would've brought it up if I was Tyler." He mumbled.

"I couldn't bring it up with Tyler, he wasn't here when it happened. He was off dealing with a special sire problem, as you may remember." Klaus growled and stood up, making her jump.

"God Caroline." He began pacing back and forth, "I am trying love, although you'd refuse to believe it. This is me, attempting an apology and trying to move on. I'm trying to show you, to show you,"

"What?" Caroline asked. She was blown away by how stir crazy she seemed to have driven him. Here he was mumbling responses and shouting passive-aggressive nonsense in her walkway. This was not the cool, calm, collected Klaus she thought she knew. This man was verging on unhinged, all because of her... it was wrong, but she couldn't help but smile at that.

"What are you smiling at?" He asked, stopping in his tracks to stare at her.

"You, you know you sound crazy right now, right?" She asked.

"Well, I blame you. This is the affect you've had on me, Caroline, are you happy now?" She moved to speak again but he cut her off. "You've turned me from the most feared man this town has ever seen, people have spent years running from me, and now I'm here in this ridiculous town, waiting for you to talk to me. Does that sound remotely like the man who tried to sacrifice Tyler or his werewolf friend?" He asked.

"Her name was Jules and no it doesn't sound like that guy. But guess what? I hated that guy. I hate the Klaus who tried to sacrifice not just me but all of my friends, I hate the guy who turned my boyfriend into some fanboy hybrid, he tried to ruin my life and didn't even know or care that he was doing it. The guy who fed me his blood, and cured me, and told me to live for all the great genuine beauty the world has to offer, the guy who saved me from Alaric at the school and then went on to try and save my friend, the guy I was with this summer," She whispered thinking about all the times Tyler would just look at her and smile, say she was beautiful and kiss her sweetly. "I don't completely hate that guy."

She looked up at him. He was standing right in front of her with that idiotic look on his face, like she was beautiful, and he wanted her, not just for a night, or the summer and not just as an infatuation. He was ready and listening, he who bragged about all the beauty the world could offer them was here in Mystic Falls, waiting for her.

She smiled back at him for a moment then went to her front door.

"Come on," She said, unlocking the door and stepping inside, she waved him in and he cautiously walked up her porch steps.

"What're you doing?" He asked.

"If you come in, we can keep talking, I'm promising anything else, no genuine beauty, no great adventures, I'm not even promising to be nice to you, but we can keep talking. So do you want to come in?" He was still staring at her. Then he chuckled quietly and put his hands in his pockets.

"Yes." He stepped forward, "May I come in, Caroline?" She smiled, despite her best attempts not too.

"You may." She hoped this wouldn't be something she'd regret. She knew she wouldn't.