Klaus:
"Would you ever take it?" Caroline asks me. Would I ever take the cure?
"Now, why would I want to cure myself of being the most powerful creature on the planet, hmm?" I answer her. What I say is what I believe to be the truth, but there's a part of me in the deepest recesses of my heart that is saying that my answer is only a partial truth. Thoughts that I never thought I would think bubble up to the surface for the first time in a long time.
"So there's not one single moment in your whole life that you wanted to be human?"
"How about you? Life used to be a lot easier," I say, trying to rationalize my way out of this. "Don't you miss the days of being… 'Chair of the Mystic Falls beautification committee' and the 'director of the policemen's yearly raffle'?"
She laughs. "Is that my Miss Mystic application? Where did you get that?"
"'When I am chosen, I intend to redefine excellence'… Now, I'm really enjoying your use of 'when' here. It's very confident," I tease her.
"Mm-hmm." She swipes at the paper, but I jerk it away from her.
"'And above all, I promise to aspire, inspire, and perspire.' Obviously, we found a shortage of words ending in 'spire,'" I continue, grinning at her.
"Yeah. It's very funny. It's hilarious. Just…"
My grin fades. No amount of humor can get me out of answering her question.
"I never answered your question, if I'd ever thought about being human. Once. I was on a trek in the Andes, and a hummingbird flew up to me and just hovered there staring at me. Its tiny heart was pattering like a machine gun… And I thought, what a thing, you know, to have to work that hard every day just to stay alive, to be constantly on the verge of death, and how satisfying every day must be that it survived… And that was the only time I thought about being human." Until now, I think.