Author's Note – Another person on Tumblr sent me a prompt – Klaus sees Caroline singing in a bar in NOLA. Expect another one-shot coming your way soon. This person sent me another interesting prompt too. This story will be divided into THREE/FOUR PARTS. This is the first part, the second part will be uploaded soon.
This WAS NOT DECIDED. I am riddled with the guilt of not updating Paradise Regained! Ugh, I plan to do it ASAP. I'm working on it and it's going to be a nice chapter. I hope you guys like it. I'm so sorry for being an asshole and working on other one-shots. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, lovelies.
Of Sirens and Songs
The first time he had seen her it had been during the celebration of the Casket Girls day. A flash of blonde hair transforming into mist before he could attach a face to it, she had run past him – the scent of her he remembered clearly because this was not a scent he was familiar with. And as the King of New Orleans, Klaus prided in being familiar with every Vampire who stepped into New Orleans. It was customary of everyone to present themselves in Court, to pay respect to the King. But it seemed like somebody had skipped their duties.
Klaus had been engaged in other matters and could not find out for himself why a vampire roamed around his streets without introduction. He didn't worry about it though. He knew she'd come. Every new vampire had to present himself/herself in his court and state the reason of their visit, and acquire permission for residence if the visit was permanent.
He knew she'd come.
He was wrong.
He had all but forgotten about her when one day she struck again. This time Klaus really saw her – not as a golden blurred streak, but as an entire person. And he was startled. She had been laughing and giggling – all by herself, curiously – when she collided into Klaus, who seemed startled by the familiar scent, he somehow couldn't place. It was her, Klaus realized.
"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry – are you okay?" The vampire looked apologetically to see if she'd hurt him. Perhaps, she thought him human – which meant, she wasn't old enough to tell if a person was a vampire or a human and also that she didn't know him. The latter part irritated and angered Klaus to no end. How could one live in his city and not know him? He was the King!
Before a stunned Klaus could answer they were interrupted by another unfamiliar scent.
"Caught you, gorgeous" this person said and Klaus could see how the girl's mouth shrunk to a pout and her forehead wrinkled.
"Hey, that is not fair," the girl said to the considerably older Vampire. Klaus watched their exchange curiously and little irately as he waited for them to acknowledge his presence and, well, bow down. "I had accidentally run into," the girl gestured towards Klaus, "this man here, and like a good person I was apologizing."
Her companion rolled his eyes. "Doesn't matter, darling," the man said as he moved to face Klaus who hadn't moved in quite a while, "Rules are rules. Well, what do we have here?"
Klaus could see the man recognizing the vampire in Klaus but his instincts were struggling to identify the wolf in him. Klaus smirked. "Niklaus Mikaelson," Klaus said extending his hand, his trademark smirk in place. The girl's eyebrows furrowed. "Vampire?" She whispered, her eyes widening with awe and fear. The older vampire came to stand between the girl and Klaus. Klaus raised an eyebrow and smirked at the protective gesture. The dark haired vampire felt threatened. Good.
"You're the King," the vampire sneered. So the man knew him. The scorn in his voice irked Klaus.
"I am," Klaus said with a menacing smile. "Niklaus Mikaelson, at your service," No, not really, Klaus added mentally. Well, maybe, for the girl. "How is it that you lovely people –"Klaus winked at the girl who seemed unmoved surprisingly, "have found your way into my city and we haven't been introduced yet?"
"We have a permit," the dark haired man replied curtly. "You were absent from court, so we sought an audience with Marcel."
"Ah," Klaus said nodding. Of course, Klaus thought. "How unfortunate," Klaus said with a seemingly pleasant smile directed at the girl.
"Yes, it isn't," the older vampire replied quite drily. "Well, as lovely as this chat has been, we have things to do. Games to finish," the man said whisking the girl away from Klaus before he could inquire further. Klaus wanted to chase them down and punish them for their impudence but he allowed them this one last reprieve. He had things to tend to at the moment.
Later, he sent out his soldiers to comb through the French Quarter and report to him of any new vampires found in the Quarter – a dark haired vampire and a blonde one. Klaus was more than pleasantly surprised to be informed of a certain blonde vampire who had been found employed in Rousseau's. Things were going to get interesting.
So as he walked into Rousseau's he couldn't help the smile that came over his face as he approached her.
"What are you doing here?" She said, her hands on her hips, eyes sparkling with fury. Klaus couldn't help smirk proudly. "Are you following me?"
"It's my kingdom, love, I can be wherever I want," Klaus said as he leaned back in his chair and assessed her coolly. She shrugged and went back to bussing tables. Klaus was irritated with the lack of response on her part. She should at least be intrigued enough about him to want to speak to him. He was the King! But it seemed like the blonde had no intention of interacting with him so Klaus took it on himself to push for it again.
"I see your boyfriend –"Klaus began but was interrupted by her.
"Companion," she corrected him with a roll of her eyes.
"– is not with you?"Klaus asked feeling glad that her companion had not been her boyfriend.
"He –," she began as she collected the some plates and put it in her tray, "left. I suggest you do the same," she said walking towards the kitchen. He followed her, nodding at Camille in greeting as she did the same.
"You can't come in here, its staff only," she said, seeming considerably irritated. Klaus was not used to the ladies getting irritated by his presence. Well, not the ones he was interested in for sexual gratification.
"Again," Klaus said sighing exasperatedly, "I'm the King." Why didn't she understand what a big deal he was?
"Okay, King," she said as she took out plates of food from the bustling kitchen and went to serve it to a family of four with a smile. He didn't know how she did it – smile like that. Like she had nothing to lose. And a smile to be wasted on a pathetic scenic family, Klaus detested it.
"I never did catch your name," Klaus said as he stepped in front of the girl to get her attention. She looked him in the eye and smirked, "That's because I never gave it to you."
Klaus rolled his eyes but couldn't help the smile that appeared on his face. "Now, I'm busy, as you see. State your purpose and leave," the girl said as she pushed open the door with her back and went into the kitchens again.
"Come to dinner with me," Klaus said, catching her by her upper arms so she takes a moment and breathes, takes a moment and looks at him – takes a moment and understands what he's just offered. A smile tugs at the edges of Klaus's mouth ready to come forth when it withers upon hearing the girl's response.
"No," she says softly but firmly.
His mouth hardens. "Why not?" he almost barks, Caroline flinched and raised an eyebrow.
"Well, apart from that very rude display of behaviour, also the fact that I don't know you and more importantly," she walked up to him, making sure they were eye-to-eye, "I don't want to."
Klaus raised an eyebrow. He didn't do very well with rejection but he was a gentleman and gentlemen did not coerce ladies into courting them. They cajoled.
"It seems we have gotten off the wrong foot –," Klaus said trying to make amends but the girl was having none of it.
"We got on the foot you seem to love putting in your mouth," she said as she cleaned a table. Klaus couldn't help but smile. That was a nice way to put what he had done. He opened his mouth to say something but she beat him to it with a sigh.
"Listen," she said, her forehead compressing into folds, "I'm busy right now. I don't have time for chit-chat. So could you please leave me alone?"
She'd asked it so politely and so genuinely that Klaus felt something inside him lurch. He was hurt, he realized, by this girl's desperate need to get away from him. Even those he hadn't hurt didn't want to spend time with him.
He nodded and tried not to let the girl know how much her request had hurt him, "of course," he said and made his way outside.
Caroline felt a pang of guilt go through her at the man's defeated face but she knew there was nothing to be done. She was glad he had left. Caroline didn't have any more thoughts to spare on the strange man who called himself King for she had work to do.
They don't see each other until after an entire month when Klaus chances upon her again – accidentally.
He finds her admiring one of his paintings from outside of the shop he'd set up which sold some of his paintings anonymously while others with his signature. She's glaring at one of his anonymous ones. It was a painting of the city of New Orleans overlooked by a wolf. It's considerably dark and Klaus can feel the anger emanating from the painting.
"Hello," he murmurs at the sight of her. She jumps at his proximity. She always thinks he's out to hurt her. He finds it curious. Suspicious.
"Why are you always so skittish at the sight of me?" he asks, allowing a menacing smile to take over his face. "Have you been bad?" his voice drops to a husky whisper and Caroline fights to keep the blush off her face.
"No," she forces out realizing the real threat lurking beneath his ostentatious flirtations, "I've been told, however, to be wary of you, by more than one person and I intend to take that advice."
"Well, that was not a very nice piece of information to be relayed to you," Klaus said with a mock-frown on his face.
"But accurate?" she asks, cocking her head to the side. Klaus doesn't answer. He looks at what she'd been gazing at for such a long time.
"Do you like art?" Klaus asks. She glares at him, perhaps thinking him to be following her (?). The glare loses its edge slowly when she gives a curt nod.
"I don't know much about it...," she relents. "I was just exploring the city and came upon this."
He nods understandably.
"What do you think about this?" he asks, clutching his hands behind his back, feeling a little nervous.
"It's like a bruise," she answers immediately. He cocks his head to the side as he regards her.
"Bruise?"
She blushes as she purses her lips. "Well, the colours," she nods at the angry cluster of blistered blue, black and red on the canvas. "It looks like a giant bruise."
"I don't know what the wolf is for, though," she muses and it is almost as if they are friends. The way she doesn't shy away from him, the way her body leans into his' as she tries to understand the meaning of the painting. "Well, wolves always have seen to be a cliché to depict loneliness. I guess it's the same here. Oh, also, wolves are considered sexy – teen wolf, and all," she shrugs.
Klaus lets out a bark of laughter at her last remark. "That's – that's one way to put it, I guess," he says trying to remember the last time had laughed like this. She blushes and he cannot help but think it to be...adorable.
"So, what are you doing here?" she asks almost accusatorily.
"It's nice to see you too, love," Klaus said smirking, "And, to answer your quite ineffable question, believe it or not, I sell my work here. Just came to see how everything was working out," he pushes through the door and walks in. "Fancy running into you though," he calls out. Curiously, she follows him inside. Anna, the manager greets them.
"Really?" she asks, looking, dare he say – impressed?
"The sales are great," Anna began with a smile but Klaus cut her off, "We can discuss business later, Anna. I'm entertaining a friend at the moment."
She nodded understandably as she looked at Caroline appraisingly before retiring into a room adjacent to the door, her office.
"Friend, huh?" Caroline said looking around the shop warily. "Bit early for that word to apply to us, don't you think?"
"Forgive me, love, what would you have me call you?"
"Caroline," she said sharply, disliking his use of endearments. They were not friends. "And we're not friends...we're nothing."
Klaus ignored her jibe as he cheerfully looked around the shop. Nothing could dim his high spirits.
"Well, which ones are yours?" Caroline asked examining each closely.
"Which ones do you reckon?"
"I don't know...I would have to know you to guess," Caroline said quietly but effectively breaking any illusions of friendship or intimacy Klaus was entertaining in his head. He tried not to let her see how much her comment had hurt him.
"I don't know if this one's yours but I like this one," Caroline said nodding at a painting. It wasn't his.
"Enzo took me to Rome once," she said softly. Klaus raised his eyebrow questioningly.
"My...companion," she explained. Oh, Klaus thought and wondered why she looked so sad at his mention. "It was full of art, and culture."
"But?"
She smiled in a soft sad kind of a way. "We couldn't stay long enough to see anything. We just accidentally saw the Colosseum...we were in a hurry, actually. Oh, well," she said snapping out of her stupor, as if she had just realized she had confided in someone and it had been Klaus Mikaelson, "I should – I should get going," she said with an awkward smile as she made her way to the door.
"Of course, I'll see you around, Caroline," he calls out but she's already lost to the wind.
Marcel promised him it would be a night to remember as he takes him to Rousseau's. Klaus didn't understand why but everything made sense when he saw Caroline get up on the stage to perform. It was the first time that he heard her sing and it seemed to him that a voice like that could make the world better somehow. Her voice was the sweetest thing and he wanted to possess and revere. She hadn't spotted him yet and doesn't until her performance is over. When he greeted her, it was the first time she hadn't flinched or cringed. She smiled a small hesitant smile.
"That was quite lovely, love," he said as he approached her.
"Thank you," she said offering him a polite smile and moving away from him. She seemed determined to avoid him.
The whole night she had evaded him like a moth running away from light. And that was the thing: moths couldn't run away from light. It was not in their nature to. It was quite comical in the way she tried to escape him, only to be drawn back to him again, and again, and again through people trying to introduce them, to people talking about them.
"Are you done running or can I expect to see you flitting around the place for another half hour?" Klaus asked with an amused smile. Caroline blushed.
"I wasn't –," she began but Klaus waved her off.
"No need to lie now, love."
"Caroline," someone – Camille, interrupted them, "are you leaving for home?"
Klaus had never really liked Camille. She was annoying and interfering. She waved her psychology degree as a pathetic weapon to try and 'unlock' the mysteries inside people. Klaus was sick of her and if it wasn't for the fact that she was Marcel's girl, he would've snapped the annoying creature's neck and be done with it. And here she was again interrupting the little time with Caroline he had managed to acquire with great difficulty and patience. Damn, he hated her.
"Uh, yes, I am," Caroline glanced at Klaus before replying. She nervously tucking a strand of stray hair behind her ear and Klaus marveled at the smallness of her ears. He had to go home and draw them, he decided.
"Oh, okay, I'll see you tomorrow then. I'll ask Sophie to lock the place up before she leaves," Camille said as she left.
"Would you like me to drive you home?" he asked, putting on his most innocent face.
"I was going to walk," Caroline said.
"Caroline," Klaus called out one last time, "would you mind if I walked with you?"
This was different and they both knew it. He was letting her decide. She chewed on her bottom lip for an entire half a minute and Klaus hadn't felt the passage of time as strongly ever except for in this moment.
"Sure, let me just grab my stuff," she said going into the staff room to get her bag. Klaus smiled to himself. Perhaps, all was not lost.
Fifteen minutes later they found themselves walking down the streets of New Orleans with Caroline wondering how Klaus knew where she lived.
"You know where I live?" Caroline raised an eyebrow when Klaus took it upon himself to lead Caroline to her home.
"I know where everyone lives," he shrugged. Well, that didn't make him seem that creepy anymore. He wasn't creepy only with her – he was just creepy in general. The thought somehow disturbed and comforted Caroline.
"So, how old are you?" Caroline asked with an eyebrow raised and her eyes sparkling with incredulity. Klaus shrugged self-consciously.
"Time is but a human construct," Klaus said instead as he look at the street bustling with musicians and tourists.
"That old, huh?" Caroline said nodding. Klaus rolled his eyes but refused to answer.
"So creepy," Caroline muttered.
"What is?"
"This," she gestured to the space between them. "Us. If you weren't a vampire, if we weren't vampires – this could be construed as pedophilia, you know," Caroline said, her forehead wrinkling. Klaus face twitched.
"What?"
"Well, I'm twenty three," Caroline explained, her hands drawing things out of the air, "and you're like, I don't know, a bazillion years old with the way you're acting so self-conscious. Are you a paedophile or something?"
Klaus's eyes widened and he took a step back from Caroline. "N-No," he sputtered furiously. Caroline burst into laughter.
"I was just kidding," she said between laughter. "You should've seen your face though. The way it was switching between purple and red – I thought you were going to explode."
"Klaus," she said suddenly turning to him with a serious expression. "Why are you doing all this?" she sounded tired. "What do you – what do you want from me?"
Klaus was taken aback by her directness, by the exhaustion in her posture. "I –," he began but failed to complete it because he didn't know what he wanted from her.
"Whatever you think I can give you – I can't," she said wrapping her arms across her chest protectively. "Your attention is suspicious."
Klaus smirked. "I fancy you. Is that so hard for you to believe?"
"Yes!" she said, her eyes wide and posture defensive.
"Why? You're strong, you're beautiful and you're full of light."
Klaus waited with bated breath as he let Caroline process what he had just said. Her eyes widened and her eyebrows rose in astonishment. "I –," she seemed to be at a loss for words.
"I don't get to meet people like you, Caroline," Klaus said simply as he started walking ahead.
"I – I saw you," she said hesitantly, "a fortnight ago in the Pier of Punishment."
"Oh," Klaus said, not knowing what else to say. He hadn't seen her.
"I saw what you did to the witch who broke your law," she spat, "You killed her family right in front of her before killing her too."
"How could you do that?"
Klaus couldn't understand what had offended her so much. "She broke my law," Klaus said simply.
"Nobody cares about your stupid laws, Klaus," Caroline said bitterly through gritted teeth, "you took lives without remorse, without worrying about consequence."
"I am the King, love. What consequence am I supposed to fear? What God?" he sneered, unwilling to take her crass judgement on his person.
"I don't understand you," she murmured. "You disgust me," she said as she walked off. "You have no respect for human life, so you can do us both a favour by leaving me alone."
He grabbed her by her upper arm and shoved her against the wall. "You might want to watch your tongue, love," Klaus hissed angrily, "you wouldn't want an up-close and personal experience of the punishment, now would you?"
Caroline pushed him away angrily. "You're despicable. You know what? I was beginning to delude myself into thinking that you're actually not that bad. Thank you for reminding me what an asshole you are!" she fumed.
"Of my stay in New Orleans I've seen the kind of power hungry psycho you are! You keep everybody on a tight leash and if it weren't for Marcel, you wouldn't be king of anything! He realizes coercion is not the answer to forge relationships and command loyalty. You don't. You're not the real king," she says before running off into nothingness.
Klaus chased her down and pressed her against the wall. "Take your words back," he growled.
"Never," she hissed. The veins underneath her face appearing and Klaus resisted the urge to bite her and then kiss her.
"Look at you! You're proving everything I said correct! Now, let me go," she struggled against his hold.
"Is this what you were talking about? It is in our nature, is it not? How dare you judge me, when you feed from the vein every day bleeding humans dry?
"I do not bleed any human dry!" Caroline huffed managing to get out of Klaus's hold. He looked surprised.
"You don't drink from the vein?"
"No," she bit out angrily.
"Blood bags?" he whispered, looking disgusted and taken aback. Klaus took a step back to look at her.
Who was she? A vampire who didn't drink from the vein, someone who was kind and compassionate and so full of light – who was she? It was in this moment that Klaus realized Caroline was not the moth, he was. She was the light and no matter how much he wanted to escape it, he would always find himself with her.
"You're so strange and different, I can't understand you," he muttered as he moved away from her further. Caroline slumped against the wall surprised by his bipolar self.
"You remind me of a friend I used to have," Klaus said softly looking at her. "He used to be a great vampire, and a great companion. He used to rip villages and towns and cities apart. But apparently, the greatness was a product of his emotions turned off. He was called The Ripper. But then circumstance forced him to switch his humanity back on and all the fun went out of him. He was so kind and compassionate and lived on a bunny diet," Klaus spat the last part.
Caroline had turned as white as a sheet her face frozen in horror as she realized Klaus was talking about Stefan.
"You know him?" Klaus asked, his eyes snapping hers'. Caroline realized she had said the name allowed. Stefan had always talked about a dark period in his life when he had gone down the bender and destroyed cities. He was called The Ripper. But he never spoke of having a friend, and definitely not a friend like Klaus.
"I - I might have heard of him," her voice shook and Caroline hated herself for it. She didn't want Klaus to know she knew about Stefan. Somehow her instincts told her Stefan was better off alone. Klaus gazed at her curiously.
"Where did you say you came from, Caroline?"
"I didn't."
"I think we both need to have that dinner sooner than later, don't you think?" he smirked, she gulped.
A/N- Did ANYBODY see that ending like that? Because I sure as hell didn't, I swear I have no fucking idea as to where I'm going with this story. Hopefully it's going to be a short one. HOPEFULLY. Initially I wanted it to be a TWO part thing, and then I THOUGHT let's make it A THREE part thing and now I don't know where the hell I'm going with this. TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS CHAPTER, THOUGH?