A/N: Ok, so I feel like this one needs a few warnings. Bear with me.
It has character death (as evidenced by the summary), but it's complicated. However, there is character death, so proceed at your own peril. You've been warned.
There are also minor references to abusive relationships and suicide. If those things are triggers for you, PLEASE be careful. It's minor, but it's there (and it also involves some really brief Damon-bashing. If you're a Damon lover, here's your warning).
About the massive number of pairings: this story is set over a VERY LONG PERIOD OF TIME, hence the amount of relationships. I promise it makes sense. Rest assured that this is absolutely a Klaroline story from start to finish. So even though there are mentions of different pairings, none of them are major.
As always, I remind you that English is not my first language and that the story has not been beta'ed. I apologize for any mistakes you might find. Really sorry! :( There are more notes at the bottom I encourage you to read, but enough for now!
We were worlds apart
So I fell from the stars
I travelled long and I travelled far
Then deep in the dark
I followed a spark
And it led straight to your heart
There'll be so many years to pass
There'll be others with greener grass
But I'll stick through it
Oh, I swear
There'll be exits along the road
There'll be so many ways to go
But I'll stick to it
Oh, I swear
It's 9:47 in the morning when Caroline boards the train.
From his seat, Klaus smiles. By now he knows that the reason behind Caroline's panting and slightly disheveled appearance - flushed cheeks, wet clothes, messy hair - is that there are exactly two minutes and 26 seconds before the train departures. She was running late. She is always late. That is one of the things that never change.
So many things have been different for Klaus in the past… Well, honestly, he's lost track of time. It's useless to count in as small a scale as days and months and years. Months and years get lost and mixed up very easily in his memory. He prefers to count in lifetimes. It's easier.
It's been now fifteen lifetimes since he last watched this scene unfold before him, but the details of it have remained as clear as daylight in his mind. He remembers that twitch of irritation on Caroline's lips, the pinch between her eyebrows, the way she mutters a curse under her breath as she finally makes it to the train. As in every lifetime before, nothing disturbs Caroline more than being made to lose her poise. Personally, Klaus thinks she still looks as graceful as ever, even in a rare moment of disarray, but he's never mentioned it to her before, and he certainly won't start doing it now for a lot of reasons, most of which are just horrible, but the main one being that Klaus finds it fascinating to watch her like this - untidy, not completely put-together, unaware that she's being watched. He wouldn't want to change a thing about it.
It's a lot like watching a movie he's already seen a thousand times, but not in a while, and yet somehow can still recall every scene, every line of dialogue, every tiny little detail. Klaus can narrate exactly what Caroline will do even before she decides to do it.
She will comb her wet hair with her fingers a little, then fish the train ticket out of the pocket on the right side of her coat, read the number on it, lift her head to look around the car and situate herself. Once she confirms she's in the correct car, she will take a step forward, lips slightly parted as her eyes roam around the rows of seats, reading the numbers written on the panel above to search for hers.
She'll take about ten seconds to locate it, which gives Klaus just enough time to turn his face towards the window and pretend he hadn't been paying rapt attention, dying a little bit on the inside as the woman of his life - of all his lives - walks down the train corridor to occupy the spot exactly in front of him. A small, narrow table is the only thing separating the two of them, but the gap feels impossibly larger. A gap the size of the world, of 15 lifetimes, standing as a wall between them.
Klaus sucks the air in through his nose in a failed attempt to hide his displeasure and stop his heart from beating so fast, punching violently against his ribcage.
When their eyes meet - casually for Caroline, anything but for Klaus - she forces a small smile to the stranger in front of her in spite of her glaring irritation. She is nothing if not polite. Miss Mystic Falls through and through.
Klaus smiles back, soft and warmly. There's a possibility his knowing grin will seem strange to her - maybe too familiar, maybe too creepy - but it doesn't matter. Not this time, anyway. Not anymore. Klaus won't be sticking around, so it won't make a difference. This time, he'll be just another face on the train, just another stranger to cross Caroline's path. In a few days or maybe even hours this random encounter will be completely forgotten, obliterated from her mind like it never even happened.
It he says the cold truth of that doesn't make him feel a bit of a pang somewhere, he'll be lying. But things are what they are, and he's had several lifetimes to get used to their Shakespearean tragedy, to the bittersweetness of this casual meeting on the 9:50 train to Cardiff that always changes everything.
He's been through all the existing steps of grief, and then some. There's been anger, disappointment, denial, revolt, indignation, even depression. He's worked through it all because he didn't have a choice, because the alternative was much worse. Now he is ok with it. As ok as he could ever hope to be. He's learned the hardest possible way to accept the things that he cannot change. There are forces in this universe that are stronger than even the love he has for that woman, although it certainly doesn't feel like it's possible. Life - or rather, death - have proved him wrong.
He just had to see Caroline again. One last time.
Klaus is here to say goodbye. This time, for good.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
He met Caroline in his fourth life.
The 21st of April of 2018 is always a rainy and cold Tuesday. The date hadn't particularly stood out in any of Klaus' previous three lives, but he did recall that it was meant to be a wet week. That is relevant because it means he remembered to take an umbrella before he left his flat, so he didn't have to run the last few hundred meters to the train station when it started pouring.
Caroline wasn't so lucky.
From this point on, until the very last second of his very last life, the 21st of April of 2018 of his fourth life becomes the most memorable day of all of Klaus' lives.
He bought a second class ticket for the 9:50am train to Cardiff. That's where Klaus was born, 28 or 202 years before at that point, depending on how you're counting. Klaus' fourth life was when he decided to go back to his origins in search of an explanation for his quaint... condition.
There are certain stages a person like him goes through, especially in the first few restarts. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of pain, a lot of loneliness. It takes a while for a reborn to get back to his best senses and learn how to cope with feelings and sensations and memories that are not actually from the current life he's living, but pieces that linger from the ones he had before. It's hard to figure out how to get a grip on that, how to differentiate the now from the before. Everything feels like a déjà vu, like his going mad, like there are different people living inside of him. It's especially hard when you're alone, with no one to guide you through it, like he was. It can drive the sanest of men out of his mind, literally.
It happened to him on his second life.
By his fourth, already in control of his faculties and clear of the paralyzing fear caused by incomprehension, Klaus decided to go back to the start. There were no guarantees that he'd find answers there, but it seemed like as good a place to start as any. There was something pulling him towards Cardiff. Some strange drive telling him he'd find what he was looking for there.
He didn't understand it then, wouldn't for several lifetimes yet, that the force was Caroline.
Researching the nature of reborns is tricky. There isn't much to start from and it's not like you can find more than a few records of ancient legends from the XV or XVI centuries in the depths of the internet. In spite of how big the libraries in London are, there was also nothing in any of the ones he'd gone to in his previous three lives. Back then Klaus didn't know, but he gets it now that the vagueness and the secrecy are all part of minute security measures. The harder to find the reborns, the safer they are.
He never found anything in Cardiff to answer his questions - much, much later, Klaus would come to realize that his condition has nothing to do with genetics or birthplace or magnetic fields, star alignments or anything of the sort. It's more like... Luck. Random luck. Or bad luck, depending on who you ask. Some reborns think it's a gift, and it surely feels like it is in many occasions. Other times, however...
Personally, Klaus thinks of it as much more of a curse.
However useless for research purposes Cardiff turned out to be, the decision to go there on that particular day was by far one of the best he ever made, in all of his lives.
He boarded the train, put his wet umbrella aside and took his seat by the window. He was thinking of the possible connections between quantum physics and ancient magic when a woman got on in a hurry, some ten minutes later. She was wet and miserable, but Klaus was too distracted by his own musings to offer more than two seconds of his attention to her.
Then she took the spot right across from him, offered him a quick smile as though saying I really don't want to be rude but I'm having a terrible day and cannot be arsed to be any nicer than this at the moment so here, have a smile, sir and proceeded to remove her sodden coat. There were a few grunts as the woman assessed the state of her mobile, which had been on the inside pocket of her coat.
"Shit," came the loud expletive when she realized her battery was dead. She's an American, Klaus realized, which kind of made her a little more interesting than a second before. She touched the screen, pressed all buttons in a vain attempt to bring the phone back to life. When none of it worked, she left the thing on the table and slumped back against her seat, eyes closed, letting out a heavy, tired gust of air in a clear sign of dejection. Klaus remembers that was the point when he started feeling sympathetic; it was easy to see things weren't exactly stellar for that woman, whatever the reason.
"Here," he said. The woman opened her eyes and gave him a surprised look, almost as though she'd forgotten there was a person sitting across from her. "Use mine."
She glanced from the phone in Klaus' hands, back to his face. Maybe because he'd been around or maybe because it was just too obvious, Klaus could see the inner battle going on in her head between the side that was distrustful of strange men offering her things, wanting to turn down his offer politely and go back to pretending he was not there, and the side that just wanted to snatch the phone away and start dialing.
As a form of incentive, he smiled and put the phone down on the table, pushing it towards her so she wouldn't have to take it directly from his hand. "It's all right, love," he said. "Go ahead."
She bit on the corner of her lip and, with a slight shake of her head, finally took the mobile. "Thank you," she said around a sigh of pure relief. "It won't take long, I promise."
"Take as long as you need."
As the woman talked rapidly on the phone, Klaus took a moment to actually look at her for the first of many, many times. It had somehow escaped him as she came in and sat down, but she was stunning. Blue eyes, perfect lips painted on a light shade of pink, cheeks red from all the exertion, blond locks framing her beautiful face. She was gorgeous. Still is. A classic and timeless sort of beauty that has inspired many things in Klaus, including some of the best paintings he's ever done.
He self-consciously touched his own face. The first time he ever met Caroline, he felt so below par for the occasion – a mistake he made sure not to repeat from then on. He hadn't shaved out of sheer laziness, grabbed the first thing he found in the closet, didn't even fuss with his hair too much. After three lifetimes of getting used to your own face, you kind of stop paying that much attention to your looks. Besides, he had no idea he'd be running into the love of his life on that nondescript trip to Wales.
Truth be told, Klaus knows he's not hard on the eye. He's been told so, several times, by several different people, under the most varied circumstances. In front of Caroline, however, he was always made to feel like he should up his game. Whatever she wears, whatever she does with her hair, whether she puts make up on or not, she always seems so perfectly put together. Then again, it doesn't just put Klaus to shame, it puts most people as well.
Her phone call lasted for almost five minutes - Klaus tried not to pay too much attention, but it was impossible. He turned his face away so she wouldn't feel pressured to end the call fast and also to give her some modicum of privacy, however flimsy, but his ears were all hers. She was explaining to someone that she got delayed on an early morning meeting and would be a little late for a conference she was supposed to be attending in Cardiff. Klaus' face remained perfectly blank while he stared out the window, but he was bewildered by the enticing combination of different accent and attractive face. It made him want to take her words into his mouth - with his tongue.
"Thank you so much," she said, giving his phone back with a much bigger, honest smile now, obviously more relaxed. Sometimes all a person needs to have a bad day improved is a simple and unexpected act of kindness. That's perhaps the most important trick Klaus has come to learn in his hundreds of years of living the same life over and over again. It's not something that comes easily to him - Klaus is known to have a short temper and a bit of a mean streak, which is perfectly natural for someone in his condition; the first thing to go when you're made to relive the same things time and time again is patience - but some people, more especial and rare, just awaken this side of his. Caroline has always made him want to do better, to be better, just to be worthy of her. And it started on the very first time they met, when she was still just a random person on a train.
"No problem," he replied. "It looked important."
"Yeah, it was. But that was very nice of you anyway."
Klaus smiled. "You're welcome, then," he said, and then put one hand out for her to shake. "Klaus."
"Caroline," she offered, taking his hand with a firm grip.
"Caroline," he repeated, tasting the way her name rolled off his tongue like a song. It suited her so perfectly he felt he could've guessed it on his own. "That's a beautiful name."
She chuckled. "Thank you. It's my mother's middle name. And my middle name is my mother's first name. We're not a very creative bunch in Virginia, I guess – and I have no idea why I just told you all that, you didn't even ask. God, I can't stop talking. I'm so sorry. It's this thing I do when I feel anxious – I open my mouth and things just come out, I don't even know – you know what, I'm just gonna shut up now." She snaps her mouth shut for a second, biting on her lower lip, and then, "But thanks. For the phone. And also the compliment."
And just like that, Klaus was hooked.
They didn't stop talking for the next two hours. Caroline told him about his job as the manager of an art gallery, about the exhibition she was helping to put together in Cardiff, about how much she loved the bay area and the Millennium Center - which Klaus admitted, not without some embarrassment, he had never seen in person, or at least didn't remember seeing it, in spite of having been born there. Caroline told him about Mystic Falls, the tiny little Virginia town where she was born, and how she'd ended up crossing the Atlantic in pursuit of a degree in arts.
Klaus didn't say much in return; the truth is his life was not that interesting, if you disconsider the part about living in a perpetual loop through the same course of time. Which - well, it would easily be the prime topic of conversation ever, if only he could mention it and not sound like a lunatic. He tried it in his second life, to his parents. It got him admitted to a mental institution from where he did not come out alive. Needless to say, he was never keen on repeating the experience.
Instead, he talked to her about their common interest in art, about the amateur landscapes and portraits he likes to paint to pass the time - and work out the stress and the incessant rage inside of him, but he left out that part for obvious reasons. He talked about how he was going back to Cardiff for the first time since he was three, when his father took a job in London, not leaving a lot behind to remember. He didn't mention why or what he expected to find - only that he thought it was ridiculous to call himself Welsh, support Wales in the European championship, and not know the country at all. Caroline laughed and admitted she wasn't into soccer, Klaus grimaced at the word, and then they launched into a lively argument about how American football makes no sense and how wrong it is to call the sport you actually play with your foot soccer. "It's not even a word! What the hell does it mean?"
It was silly, but it got Caroline laughing and talking, passionately. She was a fierce defender of her mother land, and Klaus realized he could just sit back and watch her go on for hours and hours and never get tired of the sound of her voice or the sparkle in her eyes or the way she gesticulated and scoffed whenever he said something particularly insulting to her American pride.
There was an awkward moment on the platform, when they finally got off the train. After two hours of uninterrupted conversation, they ran out of words. Or rather, they knew what they were supposed to say - "It was a pleasure to meet you, have a nice day, goodbye" -, they just weren't sure they wanted to.
It's not always Klaus meets someone with whom conversations flow so easily, so effortlessly. It's only ever happened a handful of time. After a while, he developed quite the skill of conversing with even the flattest, most uninteresting people in the world. A friend once said Klaus could talk his way out of hell - and it's probably true. Conversation is information and information is power. Still, feeling comfortable around unfamiliar people is a rarity no matter how many lives he lives.
Reborns are probably the loneliest creatures on earth. There's a barrier between them and everyone else, something that sets them apart in the most fundamental ways. Most people just bore the hell out of him. It's inevitable to want to stick around the rare exciting few.
At that point, however, Klaus didn't understand all that very well yet. There was still a lot of hesitancy on his part, a lot of trust issues he couldn't overcome. So it was Caroline who broke the deadlock.
"Can I have your phone again, please?" she asked.
"Sure." Klaus shrugged and passed her the mobile.
She typed in a number, took the phone to her ear and said, "Hi! It's Caroline. Remember to call me later."
"Here," she said, grinning as she gave him the phone back, their fingers brushing together for just a second, enough to send jolts up Klaus' arm. "Thank you again."
Klaus blinked, a little dazed, a lot upset about the fact she was about to walk away. "You're welcome."
"I really have to go now. I'd offer to buy you some gratitude coffee, but..." she trails off, pursing her lips apologetically.
Klaus nodded, a wan smile on the corner of his lips. "It's all right, love."
"Thank you, Klaus," she continued, shaking his hand and holding on to it for just a little longer than necessary. "That was a very pleasant train ride. I wish they were always like this."
"Well, I hope you meet another fine gentleman on your ride back, then," he said, good-heartedly, although his wish wasn't all that honest.
They bid farewell and went each their own way.
Klaus stopped to grab some lunch in a restaurant by the bay and spent the rest of the day getting acquainted with Caroline's favorite spot. It didn't take long for it to become one of Klaus' favorite places in the world. It was beautiful, just as she said it would be. Not in an obvious manner, like Paris or Rome. Cardiff has a different sort of charm, its buildings and little streets oozing personality. It's a proud and strong city, much like its children - even the ones that are raised miles and miles away, Klaus realized with amusement. He saw much of himself in those dark bricks and muddy bay waters, so much more than he ever saw in London, a city he knew like the back of his hand but that never felt quite his.
Later in the day, his mobile rang and it was Caroline, sheepishly admitting that the last number she'd called was her own.
Sometimes they agree to have lunch the next day. Sometimes it's a bar for a couple of drinks (which sometimes ends up in breakfast). Sometimes it's an old pub with warm beer and cold food, and it's still somehow perfect.
This time, however, the first time, in Klaus' fourth life, they had dinner that same night.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
What Klaus knows is this: he is always born on the 30th of May of 1991. He never gets to see much more beyond 2071, the same way he doesn't know anything of what went on before the 90s other than through history books. The historical events through which he lives from his birth to his death are always the same, generally speaking, and, from the moment he leaves his mother's womb to the moment his body takes its last shuddering breath, his life is pretty much the same as everyone else's. The difference lies in what happens after that.
Death isn't the end for Klaus' kind - he now knows he isn't alone, that there are others with his same condition. There isn't a name for what they are, but Klaus tried calling themselves The Originals. It was meant as a joke but the older members of his little club of extraordinary people made sure to point out their displeasure. They pretend it's for ideological reasons that they refute nicknames or distinctions that might identify them as a unity or a species. "It could be dangerous," they say. "Can you imagine what they'd do to us if they knew there are people living out there carrying knowledge of the future?" And, well. They have a point. It is potentially problematic to get uncovered. But they're just lacking in sense of humor. Klaus likes the idea of them as a secret society dating almost as far back as the human race itself. They're the real masters of earth, the first of their kind, controlling the paths of humanity.
And, anyway, no one knows for sure what they are, how they came to be, so his is as good a guess as any.
From time to time, one of them decides to go rogue and revolt against the Complexity Is Your Excuse For Inaction rule. Because it's too hard to predict what will happen if they interfere too much with the course of events, they simply don't do anything. Changing election results, stopping great catastrophes, building technology way before its time, killing someone who's supposed to do something important before they do it... It can get hard to explain why you're not supposed to kill Hitler or alert someone of the terrorists waiting to board airplanes across America on 9/11. Some people have tried it before, of course they have. But the consequences are always cataclysmic. Certain things are like fixed points in time; they're there for a reason. Not all of them are good, but it is what it is. Mess with it and you risk starting something much, much worse, totally unpredictable, out of anyone's control and with possible long lasting repercussions.
Time is such a fragile and volatile thing; hassle too much with it and it will certainly come back to bite you in the ass. And if you stop an original from being born before he comes to the world, like say killing the mother before the baby is born, that original will never be born again. That's how you finish them, for good - you stop them from being reborn before they are, in any given life. And if there's one thing reborns do is look out for each other. If you change the timeline, you might prevent the birth of other originals, and that, simply putting it, is murdering your own kind, which is an absolutely unacceptable offense. They're free to do almost whatever they want with their lives - want to be a pimp? a criminal? sell drugs? go to war? steal a bank? All fine. Kill as many common people as you want, they'll always be back where they started when you revive anyway. But do not mess with the Special Ones. That is the one back-off point, period.
Still, no amount of warnings is enough to stop all of them from taking their chances to interfere directly with the future every now and again, either intentionally or by accident, for noble purposes or complete dire ones. Killing Hitler before the war doesn't stop the mass deportation of Jews, it only makes the Nazi believe they have an honorable reason to keep going, thus making death camps more violent and even faster in the elimination of its prisoners. Kill baby Hitler and an even worse monster will rise to take his place. That's how it goes. Even the best of intentions can go wrong when you bend the rules. Interference can only happen in small scales - save lives close to you, find a way of helping those in need, by all means, get rid of that knobhead of a neighbor you can't stand to look at. But do not try to simply change the entire course of history.
In the end, as long as nothing too extreme happens, it doesn't matter much. The so called cataclysms that alter the future in drastic manners, preventing the birth of hundreds of reborns, have only happened twice, as far as the knowledge of the reborns go, and both many, many centuries before Klaus' time. Being things as they are now, as soon as Klaus dies that timeline immediately ceases to exist to him and, when he comes back, everything will be exactly as it was before. It's like being resurrected in a new alternate universe that starts out exactly like the one before, and only the future decisions he and other reborns make on that particular timeline will change what comes after.
The science of it all is a little hard to grasp because it's not based on any sort of logic, but then again, mother nature has secrets and reasons human's ignore. Some things just are. That is what Klaus has come to accept as the truth about what he is.
Klaus' life changes from loop to loop because he doesn't always do the same things, doesn't always meet the same people or go to the same places. His first three lives were sheer madness.
The first one remains as the most unique out of them all. It was the only life Klaus got to spend in its entirety as an ordinary person, sharing all of the same fears and insecurities and frustrations of the average mortal human being. It was completely undistinguished. Nothing remarkable about it, at all. But Klaus keeps the memories close to his heart. Those days were far easier and more innocent.
There's a certain beauty in experiencing life with that sort of fresh eyes, not knowing what lies ahead every step of the way. First day of school, learning how to write and read, his first trip to the beach, his first kiss... Klaus got to live through these things at least 25 times, but it was never the same as the first. Reborns are incredibly frustrated ancient souls trapped in infants' bodies, desperately waiting for the day when they won't need the help of their parents to get by anymore. No one can imagine how hard it is to spend years every single time trying not to act like a prodigy with skills way ahead of his age. That is usually how you attract unwanted attention, and it can sometimes freak people out. Klaus has heard countless stories of people who had to spend entire lifetimes as lab monkeys, being studied, dissected and explored 'till the day they died. Humans are the cruelest of beings when they feel threatened and usually what threatens them is the possibility of having anything out there that might be stronger or more evolved than they are. The whole thing about love and happiness being the main goals in anyone's lives is bollocks told to satisfy the needs of common people; put power in front of a man and you'll see his true form.
For all the direction Klaus' first life lacked, there was also a kind of happiness he never managed to replicate. Oblivion is much underestimated, in his opinion.
On his original life, his first kiss happened at the age of 12. Her name was Tatia and she was beautiful, but, nice though she was, she was never his first kiss again. He just couldn't be arsed to go through that phase of his life, especially with 12 year-olds. It only ever makes sense when you don't know what you're doing and a pretty enough girl comes along and you think 'Yeah, ok, it could happen'. Once your standards become way higher, that sort of time-wasting thing loses all of its sparkle. But Tatia still gets to be the first of his firsts. Klaus doesn't remember all his first kisses, but he does remember her.
His first girlfriend, however, is frequently still the same. Genevieve is stunning and totally mad about him, which makes it easy to get to her. They meet through a common friend when he's 18 and, in his first life, they stuck together for a few years. After that first life, however, they only ever got together because he was bored waiting for the train trip where he'd meet the only girl he really wanted to kiss. He couldn't sit around for almost three decades doing nothing every time. He might not be entirely human in certain aspects, but he still goes through very hormonal phases in puberty and his physical needs are the same as anyone else's. Remaining celibate for 27 years is just not an option.
He met the woman with whom he spent most of his first life with at a Christmas party in 2019. Back then, Klaus genuinely thought what he felt for Hayley was love. Of course he had no idea of what he was yet, was only as old as his birth certificate stated, and an easily impressionable young man.
They got married three years later and stayed that way for 15 years, when Hayley met a much younger lad by the inspiring name of Jackson and got on a place to live in a swamp in Louisiana. Klaus got a letter from her two years later with a lame apology that did nothing but infuriate him all over again.
That was Klaus' first ever heartbreak. It was bad and made him grumpy and disenchanted with life, but, in hindsight, it wasn't all that terrible. He's had much worse since. It was, however, enough to guarantee that he never, ever wanted to see Hayley's face again. He's over all that now, but Hayley was a dark stain in his only normal, completely human life, so he does hold a bit of a grudge, maybe.
Klaus wonders how different things might have been on his following lives if Hayley had never left him. Maybe the one event he'd keep going back to would be that Christmas party instead of the 9:50 train to Cardiff. He should probably thank her one day. Just track her down, shake her hand on the street and say 'Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy your swamp' and walk away.
Then came his second life and everything he went through with Hayley was put under perspective. Klaus would rather go through a 1000 Hayleys than anything like his second life gain. It still haunts him, 20 lifetimes later. To this day, it is, by some distance, the most harrowing of them all. It changed him, forever. Shaped who he is, made him more aggressive, distrustful, paranoid even. It also holds the record for his youngest death: only 15.
The first rebirth is the hardest one. The memories start coming back around the age of three. By the time he's five, he can already remember everything. Imagine being a five year-old with perfect recollection of pain, agony, fear - and death. He remembered being stuck in a hospital bed for weeks, going in and out of surgeries, before his heart finally gave in, at the age of 80.
Imagine remembering being 80 when you're only five.
Needless to say, it wasn't a happy childhood.
Klaus suffered with horrible migraines that would last for days and leave him completely incapacitated, cried all the time, woke up shaking and screaming almost every night because of the nightmares that weren't really nightmares at all, but memories coming back to him, loud and clear as though it had all happened yesterday. He was afraid of everything, even his own shadow made him jumpy.
The first ten years of his second existence were spent cruising from clinic to clinic and doctor to doctor and no one could tell what was wrong with him, no one could understand. From a medical point of view, he was perfectly healthy. Even the heaviest doses of medication didn't seem to erase all traces of the mysterious disease that afflicted him.
His father became more and more impatient, yelling that his son was a weakling and a freak. He'd sometimes leave and stay away for weeks. Klaus could hear his mother crying in her room, in the middle of the night, asking herself where she'd gone wrong. So on top of his personal hell, there was also the guilt for ruining his family, driving his father away, making his mother cry. It was too much. Klaus committed to curing himself whichever way he could, by whatever means - but absolutely nothing worked.
When he was twelve, a psychiatrist finally recommended that he was admitted into a facility for people with severe cases of mental disorder. They couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with him, but the most commonly accepted theory was that his was an early and very rare development of acute schizophrenia.
He didn't fight it when his parents signed the papers. And he never came home from the facility.
His memories from that time are both terrible and hazy. They kept him heavily sedated and tied down to a bed for the largest part of the first few years due to 'aggressive behavior'. In a way, it was best that they did that. Klaus' days were hell, but at least it's hard to remember anything with clarity, with so many drugs clouding his thoughts.
One day, three years after his admission, when they were convinced Klaus was making progress and did not pose as a threat to his fellow crazy inmates or himself, he managed to steal a knife from the kitchen. He went for the femoral artery and bled out before anyone knew what was happening. Dying never felt quite as much as a relief as it did that second time. He was finally free.
And then he came back, again.
His third life was calmer. It wasn't such a terrible shock when the memories started to come back, but the trauma of his second life was much harder to process than his harmless original life. Klaus still had no idea what was happening to him, what all that meant, but at least he already knew what to expect, enough to avoid the outbursts that could lead to false schizophrenia diagnosis.
The result was that in his third life, Klaus was a much quieter boy. He was smart, of course, because he could do things no other kid his age could, and he was as lovely to his parents as he could muster without throwing up, tried not to give them a single day of trouble. But he spent most of his time alone, secluded, in silent meditation. Before the internet became a useful tool, Klaus would stay for hours and hours hidden in the depths of libraries all over London, researching. He found some evidence that he wasn't alone, that there were more people like him - it wasn't anything documented, but signs and messages that only knowing eyes could understand and identify. It was barely anything, not much at all in terms of clarification, but it made Klaus hopeful.
In his third life, he became a professor. Never married, never had any long lasting partners, stirred clear off relationships deeper than work colleagues. There were some affairs here and there, but nothing meaningful, nothing that stood out or left a mark in him. All his time was dedicated to research and teaching, which he found incredibly therapeutic. Discussing the problems of paradoxes and time travel with people who could only conceive the idea in theory was a wonderful way to pass the time and also to try and theorize what the hell was going on.
The quietness of his third life meant that Klaus could finally come to terms with what he was in spite of his lack of comprehension and, by the time he felt his last days were approaching, he started making plans for his next life, assuming that it would happen again. What he'd do, where he'd go.
The first thing he decided was that he'd spend some time in Cardiff, the one place he hadn't dared to touch so far.
x-x-x-x-x-x
Caroline died on a Wednesday in September.
Three and a half years after the journey on the 9:50 train to Cardiff, Klaus was waiting for her at home with dinner when he got the call from the hospital. The food had grown cold already and Caroline wasn't answering her phone, but Klaus wasn't too worried. She frequently had to work overhours at the gallery and, regardless of how many lives of attempts you give Apple, iPhones always have shitty batteries. It wouldn't be the first time Caroline missed dinner because of a last minute piece that had to be catalogued or something of the sort.
Only this time it was nothing like that.
Klaus never found out who the person on the other end was - if it was a police officer, or a doctor, or a social worker - but the exact words spoken to him are still vivid on his mind. "Miss Forbes has been in an accident. We understand you are the only person listed as her emergency contact in the country, Mr. Mikaelson, so we need you to come to the hospital as soon as possible, please." There was a pause, the longest one in Klaus' life, during which everything felt suspended and his heart stopped beating and the world stopped spinning. "I'm afraid it's terrible news."
Klaus thought he knew heartbreak from Hayley in his first life. He thought he knew pain from all the years of incarceration and medical torture in his second life. He thought he knew loneliness from spending an entire lifetime alone in his third life. In his fourth, Klaus came to realize he didn't really know any of that.
Caroline's death devastated him like nothing else ever had. Yes, his second life was absolute horror, but it was a different sort of situation. Trust isn't something that comes easily for people like Klaus, and he reckons it's not a walk in the park for other people to accept him with his weirdnesses and short temper either. With Caroline, everything just... Clicked. It felt right, right from the start. They had an instant chemistry that turned into a bond that turned into trust that turned into love. A love Klaus had never known before, didn't even think was possible.
Eternity gives you new perspectives. As soon as Klaus realized what he was, this constant in a world of variables, absolutely everything shrunk into insignificance. When you have literally forever to go through the same places, the same people, the same events, over and over and over, it just stops being that important. But not Caroline. Never Caroline.
Caroline made life more bearable. She made Klaus laugh and loosen up, cracked his hard shell of suspicions and fear. She made Klaus forget he was meant to wander about life with a frown on his face, not caring about anything or anyone because it was all flitting. Caroline was the one thing that brought some color back into a meager existence, made Klaus finally see the beauty in living, rather than just passing by an entire lifetime as though he were on a mission. It's like before her, he'd been seeing everything through a blurry, black-and-white glass.
She made him happy in a time when he'd completely forgotten what that was supposed to feel like, when he'd stopped thinking of life as something you should enjoy, but rather endure. Caroline brought him back from what would likely turn out to be an irreversible path towards complete indifference towards everything and everyone.
Klaus' soul was slowly dying, and Caroline saved him.
And then he lost her.
Klaus remembers the scene as though he'd watched it from above, from outside of his body.
She died before she even made it to the hospital. A car crash, they said. It wasn't even that bad, but Caroline wasn't wearing her seatbelt, the airbag malfunctioned and she hit her head hard against the wheel. The only indication of a trauma was a tiny little cut on her forehead.
Caroline looked so peaceful with her eyes closed Klaus could've believed she was only sleeping. So beautiful, so still, so pale... So lifeless. Not a breath left in her. Her lips felt cold to the touch when they had been warm and smiling just that morning.
What Klaus remembers the most from that moment is the emptiness. This massive, Caroline-shaped space that was left inside of him. The world suddenly felt too big and he felt too small. He knew he'd be able to go back to the 9:50 train on the 21st of April of 2018, but he also knew that that Caroline, rushing into the train just two minutes before departure, would not be his Caroline. Not yet, anyway. That Caroline wouldn't know him, wouldn't miss him, wouldn't love him. They'd have to start from scratch, and Klaus knew, he just knew, that the minute he locked eyes with Caroline on that train and didn't find even the smallest hint of recognition there, his heart would break all over again.
The comprehension that not all the love in the world can reduce the abysm of difference that exists between Klaus and almost every other person in the universe killed him. When the world simply stops being, Klaus keeps moving, always moving, never stopping.
Even surrounded by people, even in Caroline's arms, even with others like him going through similar things - Klaus is, at all times, the loneliest man in the world.
At that point, Klaus considered suicide. Not for relief, as it had been in his second life, but because he didn't want to keep going without Caroline. That life no longer made sense without her. Going back to his research felt idiotic, pointless. He just wanted to be over with it and find her again. But as tempting as the idea was, he didn't go through with it. There would be a 27 years wait before he could be reunited with Caroline in the next life, and it was best that he learned how to cope with that pain and the loss before he went into his next loop. It was hard enough to be a child. He didn't want to be a grieving one too.
The sadness that took shelter in his chest and never really dissolved finally took him back to 1991 at the age of 71, under the form of a massive heart attack.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
When Caroline boarded the train in Klaus' fifth life, all wet and annoyed and alive, it took every ounce of self-control in his body not to wrap his arms around her and never let her go again. He prepared for the moment as best as he could in order to not seem like a maniac and scare Caroline away. In the end, he resorted to simply staring while he waited for his cue - "Here. Use mine." - and was lucky enough that Caroline was so distracted by her misfortunes that she didn't notice the creeper oggling her from his seat.
That time, Klaus decided not to take things so slowly. They moved in together little over a year after they started dating and the next two years were absolute bliss. Klaus started working as an illustrator, which didn't pay that well, but money ceased to be a problem pretty soon into his rebirths. There are dozens of ways of making it, either in small amounts or a fortune at once, if necessity arises. A few lucky bets here and there usually do the trick. Most reborns like spending their time collecting riches, becoming wealthier and wealthier by the lifetime. Klaus, he thinks it's boring always being a millionaire. He's done it, of course, in various different ways, but he actually appreciates having to work for a living every now and again. It gives him something to do to pass the time, and he appreciates learning new crafts.
Between a job he liked and the woman he loved, Klaus would say his fifth life was going wonderfully well - until that fateful Wednesday in September emerged on the horizon.
Weeks before the accident, Klaus felt like a zombie. He barely slept at night and spent the whole day lost in deviations. He stopped eating, stopped leaving the apartment, became extremely overprotective and paranoid. He'd call Caroline ten times a day, send her dozens of texts, to the point she stopped answering.
She would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find him watching her, his mind reeling back to all those years ago, before those versions of him and her were even born.
"What's going on with you?" she asked one morning, during breakfast, eight days before the accident.
"What?"
"You've been acting weird for weeks and I'm getting a little freaked out here, Klaus. You have to tell me what's happening."
There were tiny creases on her brow as her brain worked to try and figure out the puzzle, understand what was going through Klaus' mind. Caroline was like that; it frustrated her to feel like she was missing out on something, if there was anything happening around her that she couldn't fully grasp. Caroline liked being in control, almost as much as Klaus, only in perhaps a slightly healthier manner.
Klaus, he was a constant challenge to her. That was probably one of the things Klaus found most extraordinary about her. In spite of all his efforts to be as normal as possible, Caroline knew there was something he wasn't telling her. Something shining from within Klaus, a darkness that escaped through the little cracks on his well-practiced façade as an indication that there was more beneath all those carefully constructed layers. Caroline looked at him like she could read his soul - like she loved what she saw there as much as she loved the rest of him, only she didn't quite know how to interpret it, not in any ways that made sense to her mere mortal head. Klaus never felt like he had to pretend around her. It was useless. She would always see right through him.
He wanted to tell her what was going on, more than anything. But he didn't have a good explanation to go along with it, anything even remotely plausible to justify his growing despair. Instead, he went with "Nonsense".
It obviously didn't convince her, not in the least.
"Well, do you want to explain to me what that crying after sex was all about, then?" she casually retorted and, well. Touché.
Klaus hid his face behind the hem of his coffee mug because, in fact, it happened. Stress was leaving him on edge all the time. But it was barely crying, just a few silent tears that escaped his control. He buried his face in her hair and pulled himself together immediately. She wasn't meant to have noticed.
He wanted to justify himself by saying it was just a coincidence that the crying happened during sex because, in fact, it had been happening all the time, everywhere, especially when Caroline wasn't around to see it and he would be reminded of the emptiness he was left with after she died. But, well. That line of defense probably wouldn't have helped his case much.
"It was nothing. Just an allergy," he shrugged.
"An allergy?" she said, verging on indignation. "Are you allergic to me now?"
"That's not what I meant."
Caroline stopped then, searching his face. "Have I done something to upset you?"
Oh, it would've been so much easier if he could just tell the truth... "Listen to me, love. Listen very carefully. You're supposed to die in a car crash in eight days. Don't ask me how I know, just trust me on this one, ok? So do me a favor and stay the fuck away from cars for the next three weeks, yes? Just to make sure. Better yet - don't touch a car for a month. I'll give you an Oyster card."
Klaus trusted her in a way he never trusted anyone before, not since becoming aware of his condition, but he still held vivid memories of what he was treated like when he told his parents of the things he knew from the future - how scared of him they became when some of the things he said turned out to be true. They accepted an obviously misguided schizophrenia diagnosis so they wouldn't have to deal with their freakshow of a child anymore - so they wouldn't have to believe what he was saying was real, that their son wasn't like everyone else's children. It's too much for a normal person to handle. If not even his parents, who were meant to love him unconditionally, could accept a child with a twisted and inexplicable condition, why would Caroline?
He couldn't stand the thought of having her being afraid of him. It would change everything between them, forever. He'd never see her the same way again, and Klaus needed what they had much more than he needed her to understand his secret.
"Don't be daft, Caroline," he said, not meeting his girlfriend's eyes. "It's nothing to do with you, it's just - nothing. I'm feeling a little sick, it's all."
Klaus hated himself for being so dismissive, for underestimating her intelligence like that. He knew he angered her. She dropped the subject and left for work with no more than a dry Bye. Having her mad at him obviously wasn't helpful, so, for the next few days, he had to work double hard on concealing his anxiety and keeping the turbulence firmly on the inside.
He was moderately successful for a while. Then the day finally came, and it was impossible not to panic.
His head was flooding with ideas. Klaus considered tying her to a chair or locking her in the bathroom. He considered kidnapping her, dragging her to a different city, slipping something into her coffee and keeping her drugged for the whole day. If he thought he could get away with it, he would've done it. But Caroline would never forgive him.
He was so nervous that he spent the entire night either bent over the toilet, throwing up things he'd eaten two lifetimes ago, or pacing around the apartment. His body was burning with a fever, but it had nothing to do with a virus, as he allowed Caroline to believe.
She found over him doubled over on the bathroom floor with an acute pain in his stomach, trying to catch his breath after yet another round of retching. After a futile attempt to convince Klaus to see a doctor, they went back to bed together. Klaus held on to her with such a desperation Caroline thought he was delirious.
"Please, don't leave me," he muttered, abandoning all shreds of digniity.
"It's all right, Klaus. I'm right here," she whispered, combing her fingers through his head. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Don't leave," he repeated.
Of course what he meant was 'Please, don't die', but what Caroline understood was, 'I'm such a baby when I get sick'. His reaction was so miserable and convincing that Caroline called the gallery in the morning and asked to take the day off - 'Family emergency'.
Klaus felt like he was breathing again for the first time in weeks.
There were probably hundreds of less humiliating ways he could've kept Caroline away from the car on that Wednesday, but he was so broken by anxiety and fear - a condition he believes he was made prone to by all the trauma of his second life, and that would walk with him forever - that he was simply incapable of acting logically.
But all that was secondary, because it worked. Caroline didn't leave the apartment and did not die. Klaus was lulled into sleep by the sound of her strong, steady heartbeat. She was alive. To hell with his dignity.
Four months later, however, he couldn't stop it again.
Caroline said, "I'm going to the store. Do you want anything?" while Klaus was in the shower. He thought for a moment and said, "Beer".
That was the last thing he said to her in that life. Beer. The next time he saw Caroline, it was again in a hospital stretcher, again with a sheet covering her body, again pale and cold and lifeless.
"The car did not stop on the red light," a doctor informed him. "The hit was too violent. We tried reviving her three times, but..."
Klaus stopped listening.
Caroline was dead again.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
In his sixth life, Klaus stopped the car accident, stopped the hit-and-run and got another full year with Caroline. He was almost allowing himself to quit the paranoia and believe that they'd finally make it unscathed through an entire lifetime when the phone rang on a Thursday night and he already knew what it was before the man on the other end even told him.
There's a pattern to how people deliver bad news, particularly for professionals. No one really notices that sort of thing because no one's ever expecting to receive a phone call from a stranger saying that a loved one has died. Most people never get that type of phone call, or only get it once. Once you grow accustomed to it, you can pick up on the tells. And it is definitely not something anyone forgets easily. The somber tone of voice, the slow, measured enunciation, the small break before the use of certain key words that will denounce the matter of the call - accident, crash, hospital.
"Mr. Mikaelson," the first pause. "I'm afraid there's been an incident involving a Miss Caroline Forbes." Another pause. "We need you to come down to the hospital."
She was shot.
She was bloody shot.
Caroline was out having a pint with colleagues after work and went out - apparently - to call her boyfriend and let him know she'd be late, that he shouldn't wait up. A man showed up and tried to take her mobile. Caroline reacted out of instinct and, as it turned out, the man was armed. He shot her twice, once in the arm, the second in the chest. The people at the pub heard the gunshots and rushed to help, but it was too late. The bullet pierced right through her heart.
"She probably didn't feel anything," the doctor said, as if that information could offer some kind of solace. She wasn't in pain.. Fuck that. Caroline died in pain before, she'd died instantly, she'd died and died and died. It didn't matter if it was fast or not - what mattered was that she kept dying.
It didn't matter how hard Klaus tried, Caroline kept on slipping through his fingers way too soon. Every time he managed to stop a death, Klaus would get a few months here, another year there, like a small reward for his efforts. But then something else would come out of nowhere and there would be nothing he could do.
Why couldn't he save her? Why couldn't Caroline live?
x-x-x-x-x-x
The answer to his woes came in the form of an epiphany.
Klaus went back to his third life, to all those physics classes and discussions about timelines and how to bend them at your will. Having a time-traveling police box would help speed up the process, of course, but in the absence of that, he'd have to use his knowledge of future events as a tool in his own advantage.
If he couldn't keep Caroline alive long enough, he'd have to go the other way and compensate for the time they could never get in the future by finding her sooner. It was a simple matter of logic.
If Caroline was going to keep dying no matter what he did, Klaus had to get to her before the 9:50 train to Cardiff and try and change the progression of events from then on, creating an alternative timeline by modifying the starting point and maybe, just maybe, preventing Caroline from having an encounter with death every time she turned a corner.
It's also entirely possible that he spent way too much time watching Back To The Future - that was such a great movie - but, in the grand scheme of things, considering the situation, it doesn't sound crazy at all. A DeLorean that goes back and forward in time isn't as improbable or as insane as a man who keeps getting reborn.
Of course, back then, he didn't know about the consequences for messing with the natural progression of time. Mother Nature has no sympathy for people trying to cheat her. Theoretically speaking and in light of his ignorance, however, his plan was flawless.
The only problem was finding her. Three lifetimes with a person, you'd expect him to know everything there was to know about Caroline, and he thought he did. But when he stopped to consider the details, he realized there was so much about her life before the 21st of April of 2018 that he didn't know.
For starters, he didn't know for sure when she arrived in the country. He knew it would happen in 2013, but in what month? He didn't know where she would take up residence upon arrival, only roughly the neighborhood, but what street? What building? What flat number? She mentioned places she used to go to and some of her favorite cafés and restaurants, so that was something. But it only offered Klaus a perimeter, not a pinpoint location.
It would be harder than he'd originally thought, but he was willing to do whatever it took.
So what Klaus did was, on January of 2013, he rented a flat in the neighborhood he believed his chances of randomly bumping into Caroline tended to be fatter and started hanging out at her favorite spots.
He began with Rousseau's.
Rousseau's was a quirky little pub that served almost anything you could want. Food, coffee, tea, alcohol. Mostly alcohol. You name it, they had it. It was a really old place that changed hands and business a few times over 200 odd years, but that remained open thanks to an fiercely loyal clientele. The current owner was a former corporate wolf who'd abandoned a life of wealth and devouring smaller businesses after a life-changing epiphany and decided to embrace the simple side of life by financing the type of place he would've previously ran out of operation. A really nice background story for such an old pub, but the kind of thing that Klaus tended to raise an eyebrow at. The end of the whole one-life-to-live situation made him a cynical.
That's not saying he didn't appreciate the guy's new venture, because it was a rather nice pub, and it deserved to stay open. Klaus could see how Caroline would like the place. The food was good, the atmosphere was great and even the regulars were oddly pleasant, even if just to look at. Caroline would love it there; she'd order herself a drink, sit at one of the tables and make up stories for everyone who came in.
But perhaps the reason why Klaus became so fond of Rousseau's was Cami.
Cami was... Well, many things.
For starters, she was a bartender with a reputation. Her TripAdvisor reviews were insane. Her nametag said Camille but Klaus noticed pretty quickly that nobody ever called her that. Everyone who went to Rousseau's either knew the place for so long that they were used to the bartender's nickname, or they ventured a trip there precisely because of her. Best mixed drinks in East London, some would say. Klaus, he'd always been very skeptical about mixed drinks. It was a quick way to ruin perfectly good booze. He liked his bourbon and the odd pint, that was it. But Cami really did have a gift. She'd talk to someone for two seconds, figure out something they would like and go to work. She converted Klaus into a passionate defender of the fine art of mixology.
Cami was also a Psychology student who worked afternoons while she studied to get her degree. And she was just as passionate about psychology as she was about proving mixology haters wrong. She liked to talk to people, to listen to their burdens, offer her two cents. And there was nothing Cami didn't have an opinion on, didn't matter if she'd only just met you or if she'd known you for years. It was a little annoying, to be perfectly honest, but Klaus grew fond of her nosiness over time. She meant well, and she was actually pretty good at it. People would go there just to talk to her, and they'd leave her pretty fat tips as well. She was smart, that girl.
More importantly, Cami was a breath of fresh air in Klaus' otherwise sad and lonely Carolineless life.
At that point in his everlasting existence, Klaus was already so corrupted by pain and loss, so cynical in the face of how ugly and lonely the world can be, that Cami bothered him. It was just not possible for someone to be so nice. With time, though, Klaus realized that what he'd initially perceived as an effort to be liked was, in fact, just a natural mindset towards kindness. Cami was an all-around good person, the type that is so hard to find, no matter how many lifetimes you have. She was just there, making coffee, pouring drinks, smiling at people, remembering their names and wishing them a good day, and for some reason that seemed to brighten up the mood of everyone who came in through the door.
There was a feel-good bubble inside Rousseau's, and the name of that bubble was Camille O'Connell. "Please, call me Cami."
Klaus obviously wasn't the only one who felt oddly drawn to her. Everyone liked her: the regulars, the newcomers, the tourists, the neighbors, the bosses. And Klaus had a feeling Caroline would like her, too. They had different personalities, but there were certain similarities that went beyond the blond curls. How infectious and easy their smiles were. How they could light up a room with the sound of their laughter. Their honesty and kindness. Klaus couldn't help but see a little bit of Caroline in her. And it tugged at something deep inside his chest.
Camille had her bad days, same as everyone else, but she was just... Happy. She wasn't rich, she had to bust her ass off behind that counter, she'd lost a brother and an uncle recently in freaky accidents, not everything in her life was perfect, but she was just happy. It was a state of mind. And in a world of indifference and bleakness, happy people can be addictive.
Klaus was the complete opposite on that scale. He was never happy, even when he was. Happiness was something he had to wait 27 years to come around, only to live every day terrified of having it taken away from him. Loving something as much as he loved Caroline was destructive. At the same time it made him whole and gave him purpose, it ruined him for absolutely everything else. Caroline was his all and all; without her, nothing had meaning, nothing had life. His whole world felt off-color and dreary. So what Cami represented to him was... The unattainable. What he couldn't have. She had a freedom in her he could never experience. Klaus was chained to tragedy, and so he was attracted to Cami's happiness like a moth is drawn to a flame.
If there was one thing Klaus needed after lifetimes of loss, it was to rest his mind and his heart, give it time to heal.
Which is why Cami is the reason Klaus' plans for his seventh life changed so drastically.
It didn't take long after Klaus started hanging out at Caroline's future favorite places for Rousseau's to stand out, not only because it did really look like a place where she could spend hours at, reading a book, calmly sipping from a mug, or having a drink or two at night, but also - and mostly - because Klaus quickly became friends with the bartender. Or rather, the bartender seemed to take a liking to him, which is an entirely different thing.
Usually, Klaus' reserve, which often translates as indifference and standofishness, sends enormous back off signals. So great in fact that most people simply don't bother trying to approach - which, well, is sort of the point. Klaus doesn't want to drag anyone into his life if he can avoid it. Too complicated, too hard to handle. Cami, however, never seemed discouraged or frightened by the nonchalance of the new regular client. Before he noticed, Klaus was stopping by nearly every day, taking the same spot by the counter and talking away entire afternoons while Cami worked.
In hindsight it seems only too obvious, but it took him a long time to realize what was happening there was more than just friendship. Well, it certainly started like that, but it didn't stay that way for much longer. Perhaps because he got so used to the unique idea of Caroline as a romantic interest, it never crossed his mind that what he and Cami had been doing for eight months was, in fact, a very slow-cooking version of flirting. And the perception was forced onto him when, one day, as they walked side by side to the nearest tube station after Cami's shift was over, she kissed him.
Klaus was in the middle of saying something when he noticed Cami had stopped. He turned around to find her a few steps back, jaw set into determination, a strange fire in her eyes as she stared at him as though she was trying to read his mind. Klaus blinked at her. "What?"
Cami didn't say anything, she simply cut the distance between them with two purposeful steps, took Klaus' face in her hands and crushed their lips together.
Klaus... Well, he froze. Thinking back, it was probably an awful experience for Cami, poor thing. There she was, making the bold decision of finally making a move on a weird bloke who had been sending out very mixed signals, and the bloke wasn't even kissing her back. In fact, Klaus wasn't doing much of anything. He didn't part his lips to allow her to deepen the kiss, didn't put his hands anywhere, didn't even close his eyes. He was just... Petrified.
It was probably the worst first kiss he ever had, in all his lives, truth be told. The worst first kiss anyone's ever had.
The first time Klaus saw anything resembling sadness on that girl's eyes, it was right after she pulled away from that kiss. "Oh, God," Cami muttered, shaking her head and looking away. "I'm so sorry. I don't - I don't know what I was thinking, that was just... I'm sorry. I have to... I should go."
She didn't give Klaus a chance to react or say anything before dashing off down the station.
Kissing Camille felt a lot like cheating on Caroline - which, objectively, was ridiculous. The Caroline who existed in his seventh life at that point didn't even know who he was. And there were no guarantees that he'd find her before the 21st of April of 2018, so possibly he still had years before they'd even meet. Besides, Klaus had kissed dozens of other people, before and after Caroline, in every life since they met. It was not like he'd become celibate in the absence of the love of his life. Quite the opposite, in fact. The first time Caroline died, Klaus went through so many people, trying to numb out the pain or tell himself that he could move forward without her, that he can't even remember half their faces. It was different with Caroline, it was always different, but good sex was still good sex, whether it meant something or not. So figuring out why the thing with Cami bothered him so much, why it felt so wrong, was tricky. But, eventually, after much consideration, he did.
The truth was that Camille wasn't like all the other people in Klaus' lives. Kissing her felt like a betrayal because he liked her. Actually, truly cared for her. Unbeknownst to him, Klaus developed certain feelings for someone who wasn't Caroline, and that was... Frankly, it scared him. Made him terribly confused. The way he felt for Caroline was absolute, unchangeable, the one constant thing in all his lives. It was as certain as the sun would rise and the world would spin. So to catch himself feeling for someone who wasn't her was... Strange. Different. And worrisome.
Cami caught him with his guard down with that kiss, and when his heart started racing and that little flurry of excitement started coursing through him, Klaus' reaction had been to freeze instead of following his instincts and taking action. He didn't realize how much he wanted to kiss her until right the second she kissed him, and then, after it happened, he simply couldn't think about anything else. The interest wasn't born out of simple need or physical attraction, as it usually went with him - it flourished, growing out of deep-rooted affection and a huge sense of mutual respect.
And it changed everything.
It had been eight months since Klaus moved into Caroline's alleged neighborhood and still there was no sign of her. He knew for a fact that the woman he loved would walk through the doors of Rousseau's at some point, but he had no way to precise when. And as he waited, he happened to meet someone who caught his attention in complicated ways.
What to do, then?
Well, first, he had to apologize. He felt bad for how he reacted. Mostly because he knew he'd made her feel bad, and the feeling was only aggravated when she didn't show up for work the next day. Instead, Klaus found Marcel, the guy from the night shift he sometimes hung out with and who he was certain had a thing for Cami.
"Hey, Mikaelson!" Marcel greeted him with his characteristic charm and big, toothy smile. Klaus liked Marcel just fine, but the sight of him then was deeply disturbing. It must've shown on his face, because Marcel's smile faltered for a second as he spoke, lowly, just to Klaus' ears, "She asked me to cover for her today."
"Oh," was all Klaus managed to reply. He wasn't sure how much Marcel knew, or how much he should let transpire.
"She said she was feeling a little under the weather. She works too much, that girl," Marcel continued. "I offered to stop by after work to check on her, but - here's your coffee, darling. Have a good day," he said, handing a cup to a woman who was waiting by the counter, quite obviously smitten, before turning back to Klaus. "Maybe you should go. I think she'd like that."
"Me?" Klaus asked, a little taken aback. "Why do you say that?"
"Come on," Marcel said, smirking in a soft manner, if that was possible, and left it at that.
He should go and talk to Cami, if anything because he knew for a fact that she wasn't sick, just trying to avoid him, and that was... Well. Cami never missed a day at the pub. Enough said. But the mere fact she'd play the sick card meant to Klaus that she didn't want to see him and, after what he did, he should probably respect her wishes and not try to force his presence upon her. Especially because he didn't know what to say - for some reason, he had the impression that 'I'm really sorry I didn't kiss you back, I really wanted to, but I'm in love with this other woman I haven't technically met yet and I'm very confused about how you make me feel' was not going to cut it.
So Klaus decided to give Cami - and himself - a few days to sort things out. No pressure. When he did stop by again, it was a few minutes before her shift was over, as she was getting ready to leave. She was smiling as always as she chatted with Marcel, and he waited until she grabbed her things and went for the door to make himself noticed.
"Klaus," she said, stopping dead on her tracks.
He ventured a smile, pressing his lips tightly together. "Hi." There was a pause, a long one, and then, "If you want me to go..." he started, but didn't finish.
Cami studied him for a moment and Klaus almost expected her to say that yes, she'd prefer if Klaus didn't stop by anymore while she was working, and the idea scared him for a second, more than he thought it would. She wasn't Caroline, but she had somehow gotten under his skin and when something like that happens to someone like him, it's ten times worse than when it happens to normal people. It doesn't just run out. Klaus' skin is thick. It's not easy getting under it. He just knew he wouldn't be able to clear Cami off his mind for a while, and it freaked him out a little. It was enough to be miserable about one woman. Two was a bit too much.
But when Cami finally spoke, what she said was, "I'm sorry. You don't have to go just because I - I know what I did was pretty stupid. I misread the signs and got it all wrong. It's my fault. And this isn't my bar anyway, so... I couldn't tell you to go even if I wanted. Which I don't. I mean, right now I'm leaving, but -"
"Camille," Klaus cut her off. "We need to talk."
And they did. He left with her and they walked for about twenty minutes in silence, neither of them able to start the conversation. Klaus had no idea what to say to her. For someone with his eloquence, he was quite terrible when it came to these things, mostly because he'd never had to work on that specific set of skills before. So he decided to do the only thing he could think of instead. The only thing he'd been thinking of for days.
He kissed Camille.
He saw Caroline for the first time maybe a year and a half after he hooked up with Cami. She looked so much younger, wearing her hair longer and braided, short flowy skirt, sneakers and a simple backpack where Klaus got used to seeing fancy bags and briefcases.
God, he missed her so much. It took everything he had not to go to her and strike up conversation just to listen to the sound of her voice. But Cami was standing right there, behind the counter, smiling at the girl who owned her boyfriend's heart. Klaus knew it was likely that he'd see Caroline more often after that, and it was bound to become harder and harder to resist going to her - every single cell in Klaus' body was pulled towards Caroline. She was the sun and Klaus was this tiny little planet that couldn't help but gravitate around her and bathe in the warmth of her light.
He knew, in that moment, that he had a decision to make.
He looked at Cami, this amazing girl with whom he was having a good, easy time, who hadn't had to escape death a single time since they got together, and then at the person he'd loved for more than two hundred years. And Klaus decided to let Caroline go. At least once. Maybe that would save her - maybe Caroline would live a happy and long life without him. Not that it made anything easier; it was a noble thought, but he used it as a selfish belief merely to placate the turmoil in his chest.
It did get easier, after a while. Mainly because Camille was the sort of person with whom it's worth it to spend a lifetime with. But his breath never quite stopped catching each time Caroline walked in, his heart never stopped breaking a little bit more every time he saw her.
Klaus never said a single word to her in his seventh life, only watched from afar as she came into the pub, ordered coffee or something to eat or a drink, exchanged a few words and a smile with Cami, and then left. She wasn't always alone. Sometimes she'd come in with some girls, some of which he knew would be her friends for the rest of her usually short life, and sometimes - much to Klaus' chagrin - she'd come in with a handsome brunette in tow. Klaus wondered if that was the person Caroline was meant to end up with, why she kept on dying over and over again. He wondered if he had been disrupting her timeline by keeping her away from Handsome Brunette.
In spite of all the unanswered questions that would gnaw on him forever, Klaus lived a happy life with Cami. She quit the pub after she graduated and opened a practice. Her reputation made sure that she had a good clientele to start with and soon enough she became a successful therapist while Klaus worked on his art.
Cami died at the age of 73. Klaus woke up one morning to the sound of her ragged breath next to him and found his wife sitting in bed with her back against the headboard, eyes shut tightly as though she were in pain. She said her chest was hurting a little and Klaus grabbed the phone to call an ambulance, but Cami asked for a glass water. It didn't take him more than a minute to rush to the kitchen, but when he came back, Cami was no longer there.
Klaus held her body, caressing her snow-flake white hair as he waited for the ambulance to arrive. It was sad to see her go, but there was no sorrow, no regrets whatsoever. Came next life, Cami would be young and beautiful and smiling like sunshine again, so this wasn't really the end. They had a good life, and that was all that mattered. Cami was a good friend and a good companion. Taught him an infinite number of things, of which how to appreciate a good drink was the least important one.
He also knew he'd let her follow a different path from then on - maybe with Marcel, maybe with someone else. But, no matter what, Klaus would always have a special place for her in his heart and on his infinite treasure of memories.
Klaus died his usual death after several surgeries and a heart failure, seven years after Cami's passing.
Seventh life done, it was time to find his way back to Caroline.
x-x-x-x-x-x
In his eighth life, Klaus was smarter locating Caroline.
He was waiting at Rousseau's at the exact day and the exact time he remembered seeing her there for the first time in his previous life. When she walked out, Klaus followed her back to a building four blocks away. Then he rented a flat on the same building.
Klaus had everything mapped out - how to approach Caroline, how to kickstart a friendly neighboring relationship and then swiftly move on to an actual friendship until she inevitably fell in love with him, as it always happened. It shouldn't be too hard, considering they got pulled to one another so fast each time they met on the train. Except Klaus had no idea Caroline was living with someone else at that time. The handsome brunette bloke he saw her with at the pub wasn't just a random lover; they were sharing the same flat.
His name was Tyler.
Klaus wasn't sure what to do. Tyler's existence changed things, but he knew absolutely nothing about the guy, except that, by the 21st of April of 2018, Caroline wouldn't be with him anymore. And that was three years away. She never mentioned living with another boyfriend, certainly never mentioned a Tyler. Klaus would definitely remember that crucial piece of information.
Caroline had always seemed very open about her past. He knew where she went to school, who had been her best friends, her first boyfriend (Matt, blond, quarterback). He knew her father left her mom when she was a child, how that screwed her up for a while, turned her into an unpleasant rebellious teenager with an attitude. He knew she'd been in a abusive relationship with an older man named Damon, who'd taken advantage of her insecurities and left her deeply wounded, a guy Klaus considered tracking down and murdering in very slow, very painful ways every life time.
Klaus knew everything. But he didn't know about Tyler.
The fact Caroline had omitted his existence could only mean one of two things: either Tyler was too insignificant, which Klaus doubted to a certain extent, because nobody you come to live with can become so meaningless to the point of not being worthy of a single mention (not to normal people, anyway), or, and that was the most likely option, Tyler was too important.
That fact in itself was enough to leave Klaus riled up. But it got worse.
Klaus didn't want to act like a jerk right off the bat. Not out of some sense of respect for Caroline's relationship, because he couldn't care less about this Tyler lad. But he knew Caroline well enough to understand that acting aggressive or dismissively towards him would be extremely counter-productive to his goal. The idea was to win her over, not to make her think he was a knobhead. But the inclination to do it was certainly there. He worked way too hard to get to her. How many people could honestly claim to have waited literal lifetimes to find someone? Certainly not Tyler.
There wasn't much to do other than try to push his initial plan forward the best way he could, now that the 9:50 train to Cardiff wasn't even an option anymore. Now that they already knew each other, that train trip would be an altogether different one. He'd have to make Caroline fall for her neighbor in spite of the guy currently sharing her bed.
Klaus was moderately confident he could still make it happen, but things did not run as smoothly as he'd planned. Caroline was nice enough, but kept a cool distance from him. Not in any of their previous lives had Klaus felt like his presence was so unwelcome to her. The train ride only ever lasted for little less than three hours and by the time it was over, they would always be talking as freely as long time acquaintances. Now, it didn't matter how many elevator rides, or how many casual hallway small-talks Klaus tried to pull, Caroline treated him like just a familiar face that meant nothing and deserved no more than the standard politeness she would reserve for a supermarket cashier.
For the longest of times, Klaus' greatest sadness had been the tiny little moment when Caroline looked at him on the rain and didn't recognize him, didn't feel anything in particular while he'd have electricity jolts shooting up his spine. In his eighth life, that little moment was stretching wider than ever.
Klaus started going back to Rousseau's more often, which he'd sworn to himself he wouldn't do. But soon he found that drowning his frustrations in the familiar company of Cami was very helpful. He did make sure not to send mixed signals this time, though, made it clear that there was someone - there was no accidental flirting, only innocent conversing, which Cami was ace at. Klaus could use a friend, but he had no friends, and Cami was easy. She didn't have to recognize him to treat him affectionately. The fact she did that to basically everyone was beside the point.
The hardest part was watching Caroline and Tyler together. Klaus had never had to do it in any of his previous lives, stand back and watch her parading about with someone else. He didn't know how much that would drive him crazy. He had anger and jealousy and chagrin permeating every inch of his body, all at once, all the time. It seemed like an impossible thing when he was right there, but Caroline fancied Tyler quite a lot. Klaus could see things in her he only ever saw addressed to him - the guarded, knowing smile, the sparkly eyes, the small touches that happened for no reason other than an intrinsic need to be in contact with the other person.
It took him a whole year to move from that slightly inconvenient neighbor to Klaus from 4B. It wasn't a friendship per se, but it was close enough and after rounds and rounds of defeat, Klaus considered it a great victory. The only problem was, getting closer to Caroline meant, by association, getting closer to her boyfriend. In fact, it turned out to be a lot easier to charm Tyler than it was to charm Caroline. It was almost as though there was an invisible wall cloaking Klaus in that life, keeping him from coming into her radar. Everyone else noticed him, but not her. Nothing he did mattered. So Klaus decided that attacking from the opposite direction was his best shot. He swallowed down his pride and all his resentment towards the man who currently occupied his place next to the love of his life in order to approach the object of his affection.
And what he found was that Tyler was, in fact, a lad in desperate need of some male friends in England. He and Klaus started trading small favors, gossiping about the other neighbors, hitting the pub for a pint or two every now and then. Klaus introduced him into the world of actual football and he was a surprisingly nice company - which obviously only made Klaus hate him more. But becoming a part of Tyler's life meant becoming a part of Caroline's life - Tyler's friends were her friends as well.
There's an irony there somewhere to be talked about. Klaus tried not to think too much. If he did, he'd just want to punch Tyler in the face. The fact he was acting like a desperate stalker was enough to dent his dignity.
He would sometimes pretend he needed an opinion on something or can I borrow a cup of sugar, please? whenever he knew Tyler wouldn't be home, just so he could get some alone time with Caroline and do a bit of mindless flirting to see where it would take him. But Caroline was all polite deference and if she ever understood what Klaus was doing, she didn't act like it.
As the time passed, Klaus grew more and more impatient, became grumpy and short-tempered and recluse. He'd go on for days without setting foot outside his flat, just so he wouldn't have the displeasure of seeing Tyler's hand casually placed on the small of Caroline's back as though he had any right to do that. He moved his sulking hours from Rousseau's to a different pub because the merry-uplifting atmosphere of the place just wasn't cutting it for him anymore. Klaus couldn't deal with the growing anxiety, couldn't handle not having the only thing he'd prepared himself for in his entire eighth life. He could already feel the aggravation building up inside of him as it used to happen before Caroline's known deaths, that overwhelming sense of inevitability, setting him on edge. The disease he carried with him since his second life was hitting an all-time low.
When the 21st of April of 2018 came and went and Caroline still wasn't his, Klaus knew that there was something definitely wrong. Could it be that he'd altered the events of her life by moving into the building? Had his proximity stopped whatever it was that was meant to happen to break her and Tyler apart? Klaus asked himself those questions a billion times over lonely glasses of bourbon, retraced all his steps to try and figure out where he'd gotten it all wrong. Nothing made sense.
After a particularly bad night, one where he had more to drink than usual, he marched over to Caroline and Tyler's door and spanked it until someone showed up. He didn't give a flying shit that it was the wee hours and that he was making a complete fool of himself. Klaus needed answers and it seemed to him like the only person who could provide those was Caroline herself.
Luckily, it was her at the door.
"Klaus?" she asked, rubbing her sleepy eyes.
"Is Tyler home?" Klaus demanded in his slurred, drunken speech.
Caroline stopped, gave him a good once over, tried to connect the dots on what was happening. "Yes," she said. "He's sleeping. Do you need to talk to him?"
"No," Klaus replied. "I need to talk to you."
"Ok." Caroline crossed her arms over her chest. "But you seem like you had a bit of a rough night. Don't you think it's best if we talk tomorrow?"
"I need to know now, Caroline! I can't take this anymore!"
Caroline frowned, confused and taken aback by his sudden outburst. "What do you need to know?"
Klaus paused for a second, his eyes burning with angry tears he refused to shed, his dry lips opening and closing a few times before the words finally came out, almost as a plea. "Why aren't you in love with me?"
Only the smallest hint of surprise registered on Caroline's features, in the shape of arched eyebrows. If she felt anything like pity, she didn't show, which, in hindsight, was probably very considerate of her.
"Klaus..." she started, studying her words. "I think you should go home. Have some rest."
"No, no. You don't understand," Klaus said, shaking his head vehemently, fighting to keep his balance. "It's been one month since we were supposed to meet on the train. One month! That's long enough! I did everything I could, everything. Why are you still not in love with me?"
"Meet at the what?" Caroline sighed. "Look... I had no idea you felt that way about me. If I ever did anything to suggest that I was interested... I'm sorry, Klaus. I didn't mean to lead you on. I don't think that I did, but if you do, I apologize anyway."
"You haven't led me on, that's the whole problem! Don't you see?"
Caroline was getting more confused by the second.
"I... No. I don't, actually. I have no idea what you're talking about. But... What I can tell you, regardless, is that I love my boyfriend. I love Tyler. So... I'm sorry? I guess?"
Caroline's words slashed through Klaus like a sword, cutting him open and leaving him out to bleed. She was in love with someone else. He was right there, begging her to love him, and still she loved another. Was that the universe's way to punish him for having given up on her for one life? Did he somehow break the spell or whatever it was that existed between them by being with Camille? Who could give him these answers? Was there even anyone out there who could?
Klaus felt as lonely as he did the first time Caroline died, only she wasn't being taken away from him by force this time, she was making the active choice of being with another person. Of loving another person.
"Will there ever be a life in which you won't break my heart?" he asked. Caroline stared at him with dark, questioning blue eyes, too tired to argue and too baffled to answer.
Klaus turned around and walked back to the elevator. Caroline stepped outside, said "Wait," but didn't follow up with anything, just watched as the doors slid close and Klaus was gone.
He moved out of the building the next morning. Partly because he could not stand to stick around any longer, partly because he didn't trust himself not to retaliate. He never closer to doing something that would earn him a lifetime in prison than in his eighth life. Tyler would not be safe with the amount of hatred Klaus had harbored in his chest.
He rented a small and quite unimpressive flat on the other side of the city and made sure not to set foot anywhere near Caroline again. Klaus did not want to know whether she had gone on to live a happy and long life with Tyler. He'd never be able to rest again if that was the case. What he couldn't see, couldn't hurt him (much, or at least no more than it already had).
In his eighth life, Klaus met Aurora.
Aurora was young, devilishly pretty, Italian and just as furious at the world as Klaus was. So, perfect for the occasion. They met at a pub, because where else would two people with such terrible attitudes meet? Aurora was a force of nature. When she was excited about something, it was impossible not to get trapped in her bubble of euphoria and exhilaration. But when she was upset... Jesus Christ. Her temper was one to rival Klaus'. The smallest things infuriated her, more easily than Klaus could care to fix her mood, which meant that they were constantly getting into fights. Aurora was one of those people who couldn't find where she fit in the grand scheme of things, couldn't find herself a purpose, so she became frustrated, angry and dominated by a sense of injustice, as though the whole universe and their brother aligned just to foul her.
Klaus was never really sure what they were doing. They'd stay together for a while and then Aurora would flip at something and leave. Or Klaus would snap at her and walk out. He's never been an easy fellow to deal with, but in his eighth life, after everything that went on with Caroline, he was more surly than ever, so he didn't even have it in him to soothe Aurora when she had one of her outbursts because all he wanted to do, more or less the whole time, was lash out himself.
He suspects Aurora's might've been an actual medical case, even suggested that she should see a therapist. But every single one of his good-natured suggestions kickstarted epic fights that would begin with Aurora laughing sardonically and saying, "Right, because I'm crazy" and escalate from there.
Theirs was a poisonous and hurtful relationship, but it was somehow exactly what they needed. Either that, or what they thought they deserved to have. Aurora would disappear, Klaus would hook up with random people, then she would return, totally unapologetic, sometimes with an interesting story to share, and they'd dive right back into their insanity. It made no sense whatsoever, but it worked. And in between arguments and offensive accusations, they had their moments as well. It was nice, when it wasn't burning.
After three years of that, Klaus decided he'd had enough and left the country. He spent five years travelling around the world - mostly through small countries in Asia. It was quieter there, and between Caroline's disregard and Aurora's explosions, Klaus found that he needed some dear rest before he lost his mind for good.
When he finally returned to England, he found Aurora exactly where he left her and really hurt that she'd been abandoned.
"Don't be so sentimental, sweetheart. You left me first, as you always did. You got mad and you walked away to do whatever it is that you do when you leave, and I figured it was about time I did the same. I needed a break," Klaus explained.
Aurora nodded, somehow calmer than Klaus remembered her to be, and said, "I know." And then, "I just really missed you."
They got back together after that and stayed more or less that way for another five years. Klaus took her to Asia with him, where they lived in small tents and wooden huts and Buddhist temples on the top of mountains. They still fought, because it was sort of inevitable, but Aurora stopped leaving and Klaus stopped letting her.
Eventually, though, she did go again, because it was, after all, her thing. She could never stand still for too long. But it wasn't after a brawl, not to disappear into a storm. It was quiet and sweet, with a kiss and everything. That's how Klaus knew she wasn't coming back. He missed her, if he was being completely honest, but he understood why she had to do it. God knows how much he wished he could walk away from his life as well sometimes. Only his was a little harder to shake than Aurora's, for obvious reasons.
In the end, Aurora helped Klaus to heal. For that, he'd be forever grateful. His eighth life would've been a lot harder to navigate if it hadn't been for her keeping him distracted, even if through the sheer anger at times.
Klaus died at the age of 59 in a motorcycle accident.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
In his ninth life, Klaus decided not to take chances anymore.
Attempting to find a short-cut to Caroline failed miserably, twice. He learned his lesson.
This time, Klaus did not try to tinker with the course of events. Instead, he patiently waited for the 21st of April of 2018 and bought his ticket to the 9:50 train to Cardiff. One can never go wrong with a classic.
Just like magic, everything was right with the world once more. Caroline was there, wet and miffed and in need of a borrowed phone, and from there on it was a piece of cake. They talked, casually flirted, she registered Klaus' number on her own mobile and called back at the end of the day. They met for drinks that same night and did not leave each other's side anymore.
All was well.
It was a bit like the first time, in that life. Maybe because they hadn't been together for so long, or maybe because Klaus had somehow become aware of the fact that Caroline should not be taken for granted. Their love, great though it was, was not the stuff of fairy tales, as Klaus had previously assumed. They could end. Caroline could still meet other people and fall in love again.
And as matter of fact, Klaus was so bugged by Tyler that he started throwing offhand questions about Caroline's past lovers, something he'd never done before, not with such specificity anyway. He offered something of his own life to make her more relaxed about opening up - stirring up details a bit to add Hayley and Cami and Aurora into the mix without really saying who they were or how Klaus met them, because it would be too hard to fit all of them into just 27 years. Besides, Caroline would probably get curious about at least Camille, who she knew from Rousseau's, and, well. Too complicated. So he changed names and dates and lengths of relationships and added a bit of fiction, but was as honest as he could be.
It wasn't easy to soften her up, and the longer it took him to break through her wall, the more certain Klaus was that Tyler had been a rather special case. Eventually, though, she did trust him with the truth.
Caroline and Tyler had known each other almost their whole lives, grew up together in Mystic Falls, but they got together on her senior year of high school, right after her involvement with that arsehole Damon Klaus already knew of. Tyler helped her through the worst time of her life, held her hand as she woke up crying in despair from the nightmares, mended her heart and her soul. It was his idea that they should seek different airs, leave Virginia and the US altogether, put as much distance between Caroline and that old life that haunted her. Tyler was an illustrator and got accepted into a university in London, so she moved with him to pursue her degree in England as well.
Caroline loved him to bits and became incredibly attached, to the point it nearly destroyed her to find out he was having an affair with his mentor at the university, some American lady called Jules. They broke up just one year before the 9:50 train ride.
Caroline swore by all things holy and good that she was completely over Tyler, but she still did not like to talk about him, hated to think of how fragile his betrayal made her, the old nightmares from the Damon times coming back to torment her all over again. She thought she was healed, but losing Tyler made her feel alone and vulnerable again, weak, unable to care for herself. It took her a while to get back on her feet.
"It makes me insecure to talk about him," she admitted. "I'm afraid if I think about it too much I might become hesitant. I never thought things would go sour with Tyler and they did, so... I can't let my past experiences dictate how I live my life. I don't want to be forever on the defensive, afraid of getting involved again. I can't let that fear take over me again. You know."
Yes, he did know. He really, really did.
What Klaus wanted to do right there and then was hunt down Tyler and beat the crap out of him for hurting Caroline. How could he do that, knowing what she'd been through before? Yes, he'd been there for her when she needed him the most, and Klaus guessed he should be thankful for that, that Caroline had someone to help her pull herself together after that knobhead Damon bloke, but still. It just made him more angry that Tyler would throw something so precious out - something Klaus fought so bloody hard for, only to lose every time, in spite of his best efforts.
If he didn't know better now about the woes of messing with the timelines, how much worse it could turn out to be, he'd go to Caroline while she was still in Virginia, before she met Damon, to save her from that monster and from the heartbreak that would come later on with Tyler.
It got him thinking... Was Tyler seeing that Jules woman before, in his last life, or did Klaus' presence somehow influence that? Could it be that Caroline was being cheated on the whole time, and he chose to walk away instead of sticking around and fighting for her? Then he was just angry, but now he feels bad. She was so genuinely in love with Tyler that he couldn't even look at her, and all the while, as he pined for her and wallowed in self-pity, her boyfriend was going behind her back. What a fucking arse. Maybe Klaus could've done something if he hadn't moved out immediately after getting rejected. Maybe he could've still been with her.
Shit.
Sod it. Sod it all. It was a different lifetime, there was no way he could've known then what he knew now. What mattered was that Caroline was his and he would never let her go. Tyler wasn't his problem anymore.
His ninth life was also the life where Klaus decided to go a little more traditional.
Marriage had never been his thing. Between Hayley in his first life, his parents' toxic relationship becoming so evident in his second, and the neverending loop of loss that followed, Klaus just stopped seeing any sense in tying the knot. He and Camille called each other husband and wife anyway because it made no sense to call someone you'd been with for 50 years your girlfriend. But he knew Caroline had always wanted to be a bride. She never said it with so many words, but he'd picked up on the tiny hints over their lifetimes together. And if there was anyone he'd ever want to make his wife, officially, it was her. They never had enough time to get there before. Now, he was decided to change that.
After avoiding Death #1, Klaus took her to Cardiff, had the rooftop restaurant overlooking the bay where they'd had their first ever date, on Klaus' fourth life, reserved just for them. Caroline had no recollection whatsoever of that place, they hadn't been there together in that life, but Klaus had privileged information that not only she would love it, but that the restaurant's chef would become one of her favorites ever. They had a fantastic dinner, drank superb wine and danced together to a slow song under the moonlight. Then Klaus pulled out the ring and asked her to marry him.
Caroline cried a little, wrapped her arms around his neck and said, "Yes. Yes, yes, yes. A million times, yes."
They tied the knots a few months later. The moment he saw her, the sunbeam smile she had on her face, the glint in her eyes, the glow of happiness all around her, Klaus knew that it was all worth it. All the pain and the suffering, all the loss and the emptiness he had to endure to learn how to get to this point. He'd do it all again, a thousand lifetimes over. Caroline was worth anything.
It was probably the happiest Klaus had ever felt until that point, in all his 500 odd years of existence. The only thing tempering with his constant state of contentment was the fact he knew he was running against time to save Caroline before Deaths #2 and #3 came to sweep her away.
He was more determined than ever, ready to do whatever he had to to defeat fate, but death always won. And this time, it wasn't a car accident, or a hit-and-run, or a gunshot. It was something much viler, something he could not stop.
The brain tumor took her so fast there was nothing anyone could do. It was massive, inoperable and deadly. It was their longest run together, but she was still gone by the age of 32, and Klaus had never been angrier before.
How the fuck was he supposed to beat cancer? He could avoid a car crash or a robbery, but he couldn't stop Caroline's body from creating a bloody time-bomb from within. There were ways to try and slow it down; he could make sure she'd find out sooner about the disease, or he could try and gather knowledge from the future, become a researcher and develop the cure for that particular type of tumor way before its time. But then what?
The universe was trying to send him a message, written in cancer: You cannot win. Stop trying.
It was so fucking unfair. Fighting a disease was too much. Watching Caroline wither away right before his eyes, lose herself, everything she was, all the beautiful, perfect bits of her personality, was... Harrowing. Torturous. See the light behind her eyes slowly dim away was so, so much worse than enduring the sight of her pale, cold body on a stretcher.
It took him time to quit being angry and start doing something else. Klaus felt helpless and wronged and he wanted to see blood. He'd never thought of himself as a bad guy – short-fused, unpleasant at times, sure, but not evil. But in his ninth life after Caroline's death, that's exactly what he became.
He saw her at every corner, judging him after every wrongdoing, shaking her head the way she did when she was disappointed, saying, "You're not like that, Klaus. This is not the man I fell in love with."
"It's your fault," he'd yell at her – at nothing. "If you wanted me to stay that man, then you shouldn't have bloody died."
"Is that how you want to come and find me again? Is that the person you want to be?"
"What good has being decent done? You still die. You always leave me. Maybe I should be bad. Maybe I can save you by being evil."
"No. You'll only lose me faster that way. Stop ruining your life and start doing something, Klaus. Before it's too late."
It was ten years before he heeded her advice.
Lashing out didn't bring her back, and it didn't make him feel any better either. So if it was all he could do to try and save her next time, then Klaus would study as much as he could about tumors and develop a way to treat her in his next life, or in the next two lives, or three, or five hundred. He didn't care how long it would take, but he would find a cure and he could save Caroline. He would always choose to save her, even if it killed him a little bit more each time. As his previous two lives had evidenced, losing her was bad, but not having her was almost unbearable.
He spent the next forty years dedicated towards his task, and made considerable progress. He had a plan all outlined for his tenth life. What he didn't know yet was that everything he thought he knew about himself, about who he was and even about Caroline, would be turned upside down by the appearance of Elijah.
TBC
Lyrics at the beginning are from Bridges by Aisha Badru.
This story was originally written for a different fandom, several years ago, and I really, really, liked how it turned out, but I wanted to rework certain parts and rewrite a few things, except I didn't feel like writing for that old fandom anymore and suddenly it made a lot of sense to adapt the story into a Klaroline one. I feel like it fit really well, it's almost freaky. It had pretty good response when it was originally posted and it remains of my favorite fanfictions that I ever wrote. I don't often say that about stuff that I write myself, but I remain a little proud of this one.
The original story was inspired by a book I read years ago and that I loved very much called The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North. If you have read this book, then you will know exactly what I'm talking about because it's quite obvious.
I really wanted it to be set in the US, but I just couldn't make it work. I tried several alternatives, but it didn't fit (and, because this is an AU/AH-of-sorts, I needed to justify Klaus' accent somehow). So I decided to set it in England and voilà.
I'm really excited about posting this and looking forward to seeing how you guys feel. I'm anxious because this is very, very different from the other story I'm posting. And since it has this long series of warnings and tags and possibly controversial stuff that I know are not generally well received in this fandom.
Just know that your feedback is more than welcome and the support I got prior to posting this on tumblr was amazing. That's what keeps me motivated to keep writing. Thank you very much if you made it this far and finished reading this giant chapter!