A vampire's heart slows with age, but Klaus's still beats once in a while.
Sometimes it wakes him in the middle of the night, blessedly disrupting some cruel nightmare of his father or of Tatia or Caroline, sometimes all of them at once. He'll sit up in bed gasping for breath he doesn't need, looking down in distress at his sweaty chest.
Once in a while, when he's draining the life out of his evening meal, the heaving in his chest disrupts the flow of blood and he sputters and makes more of a mess than he intends. He growls and latches back on with renewed fury, unwilling to be deterred by what might be described as an attack of conscience.
Sometimes all it takes is someone who resembles her - a girlish laugh, or the sight of blonde waves disappearing around a corner. Of course, the pesky mass of tissue has taken to exercising itself on those occasions when checks up on her. She always rolls her eyes and huffs exasperatedly and sends him away, but she never forbids him from returning. One day, he tells her, she'll be ready for him.
Tonight, he sits alone in a smoky bar in Baton Rouge and nurses a scotch, his heart uncharacteristically quiet. She's tending the bar tonight, flirting unabashedly for tips she doesn't need, ignoring him except to refill his drink from time to time. He sees the predatory glow in her eyes as she crooks a finger at an unsuspecting patron and leads him into the storeroom for a snack, as he, Klaus, looks on proudly. The night wears on and slowly everyone walks or stumbles out until they are the only two left.
"You don't give up, do you?" she asks, no malice left after all these years.
"You know me better than that, love."
"Whatever," she huffs, and turns her attention to wiping down the bar with a damp cloth. He looks on as she methodically scrubs sticky rings off the varnished mahogany.
Suddenly she pauses and gives a little gasp, one hand clutching her chest. He stands so suddenly he almost tips over his barstool.
"I thought it had stopped," she says, sounding dazed, her eyes wide and locked to his.
"No, my darling," he tells her, "This is only the beginning."
He reaches out and intertwines his fingers with the hand she has braced on the countertop. For once, she doesn't pull away. He knows she feels it too when his own heart jubilantly turns over in his chest, first once, then again, then in a steady beat as it roars back to life.