A/N: It's 3:30AM and I told myself I wouldn't go to sleep until I uploaded this. There's bound to be mistakes and I apologize.
I can't believe this took me more than half a year to write and it's not the greatest but I need motivation to finish my other stories.
Disclaimer: I do not own TVD/TO or The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner. The latter two were inspiration.
Caroline and Elena stand, hands clasped between them, soaked to the core before the crowd that manages to stop just a few inches from the edge of the platform they're on.
The crowd is pleased, smiling at the Convicts standing before them. There are only six of them remaining and in two night's time there will only be one whose crimes will be pardoned and allowed to live.
Caroline can feel the shiver that vibrates down Elena's spine, whether from the cold or from the eyes of the crowd she's not sure, but she squeezes her hand tighter and reminds her softly, "We made it, only one more Trial to go." Her eyes automatically glance to the figure standing with his siblings whose responsible for both incriminating them and aiding them in the second trial. His gaze meets hers and Caroline immediately averts her gaze to the edge of the platform, not daring to look any one else in the eyes lest they realize she and Elena were not supposed to have made it this far.
"The last trial will begin in two night's time," Elijah announces from his position next to Klaus.
The tension in the crowd immediately rises and Caroline can feel Elena stiffen next to her. They all keep close track of the lunar cycle and the full moon is in two nights.
"Convicts, follow me," Marcel calls out and the line shifts as each vampiric Convict turns to their left to face Marcel, forming a queue. Caroline is forced to drop Elena's hand and she resists the urge to look back and check on her as the line begins to move, processing off the platform. She keeps her eyes fixed on the short dark hair of the vampire in front of her as they pass the Originals, though she can feel his eyes on her.
Once she passes through the open doors of the estate house she feels like she can breathe and she lets her shoulders relax as the Marcel leads them through the corridors and hallways. As they get closer to the basement stairs, the tantalizing smell of fresh blood wafts through the air and Caroline, along with the other Convicts, break from their rigid line to rush to their quarters in the basement where there are jugs and goblets full of dark, warm blood waiting for them. Caroline manages to snatch two large cups and beckons for Elena to follow her. They crawl onto Caroline's bed which is set a bit further back from everyone else's allowing them some semblance of privacy.
"Drink up and rest. You'll need it," Marcel warns them white teeth flashing in the darkness of the basement as he closes the door to the Convicts' Quarters and locks them inside.
The quarters are eerily silent as Caroline stares at the small stream of sunlight that slips through the sunken and barred basement window. Her fellow Convict sare all asleep, exhausted by the grueling trial, their bodies healing themselves as they sleep.
She turns on her side away from the door. He's not coming.
She fooled herself thinking, having hope that he would, that Klaus with all his years and power would care enough for her to help her win the Trials and her freedom. She was silly to think that there was any chance both she and Elena would survive the trials with their lives. Caroline volunteered to rescue Elena knowing she would be caught and killed in the trials, yet she had allowed herself to foolishly believe that he might allow both of them to live when he spoke of beautiful places and experiences she had yet to experience.
She can pick out Elena's steady breath from the rest of the vampires easily, her breath barely disturbing the stale air in the room. Elena has no idea that she's only sleeping soundly tonight by the grace of Klaus and his clever clues for her. She was naïve to think that she could be the heroine and free Elena...now both of them are to die in less than 48 hours.
Caroline extends her hearing, pushing past the sounds of her fellow Convicts shifting and murmuring in their sleep. She can only hear the faint clunking of dishes and utensils being moved about, not even a snippet of gossip from the staff manages to reach her ears.
She closes her eyes and chases away the thoughts of Klaus, choosing to ignore the tears that leak from her eyes as she falls asleep.
The remaining Convicts spend their last night differently. One rants angrily in the corner, two pick a fight with each other every hour, another scratches their nails against the wall as if he's trying to dig their way out of the quarters, and the last is desperately hunting for something in their rooms, tearing through their few possessions causing all of them to fight.
Caroline and Elena are quiet, sides pressed together on Caroline's bed, ignoring the rest and whispering happy memories to each other whenever they think of one.
Caroline bites her tongue when Klaus flits across her mind.
The sound of a key sliding into a lock is enough to interrupt Caroline's dreams of bright green hills and jeweled-colored flowers, her body stills as the reinforced door groans and opens. The other vampires begin to rouse at the sound as well and begin emerging from their sleeping places.
The heavy, sure steps of Marcel echo in their quarters as he waltzes inside. His presence makes Caroline uneasy, with his sickening grin of delight at their misery. "You know what night it is," Marcel's voice seems to be louder than usual in the empty space of their quarters, "I would say it's been a pleasure but…" he shrugs. "Line up," he commands.
Caroline manages to give Elena's hand a quick squeeze and before falling into place before her in the lineup.
"Remember, stay together or Bonnie or I will ensure you will not be the winner of the last trial," Marcel announces as he turns and begins to lead the small line out of the Convicts' Quarters. Caroline glances at Bonnie as she passes by the girl posted just outside the door. For such a young girl-witch-she was capable of inflicting so much pain.
Caroline follows the Convicts in front of her as Marcel leads them through the estate house and outside to where the platform is raised higher than before and is illuminated by the bright full moon. The crowd, bigger than the previous crowds, yell and cheer as they catch their first glimpse of the remaining Convicts. Caroline's eyes scan the platform, noting Klaus standing off-center with Rebekah, Kol, and Elijah. Klaus was gazing out above the crowd, and does not even glance in her direction. Marcel leads them onto the platform, with the Original Family on one side of them and Marcel and Bonnie on the other. They are silent, not a single one of them moving a finger. They are trapped, simply awaiting instructions...and their inevitable fate.
Elijah steps forward, and Klaus a few paces behind him, and the crowd immediately falls silent before him. "Welcome, and thank you all for attending," Elijah begins, his voice strong and smooth. "Today marks the last day of the Three Trials."
The crowd begins to cheer and yell. Without moving her head, Caroline glances at Klaus who stands tall and imposing just far enough back from Elijah for her to see a smirk spread across his face. How could she have thought she had feelings for him?
Elijah raises his hands before him and the crowd settles down, though the tension is thick with anticipation.
"Let us not delay with the main event any longer, the moon is the backdrop for last Trial tonight," Elijah states, pausing to glance up at the pale white moon with a thousand pair of eyes following him. "You are all aware of the dangers of the full moon, tonight the Convicted will enter the forest and spend the night defending themselves against the creatures that rule nights such as these. Whoever survives the night shall receive a pardon from our family for their crimes."
Klaus nods his head and Caroline can see the crowd begin to glance at one another. No vampire would survive a night in a forest full of werewolves on a full moon. No convict was meant to survive the night.
"I believe there are a few safe places to hid in the forest, if you can find them before the wolves find you," Klaus tosses back to convicts, with the closest thing to a smile that she's ever seen on his face in public. "Oh, and the wolves will stop their transition, in ten...nine…"
As soon as the convicts realize that Klaus has given them a head-start, no matter how small, the movement is immediate, with all of them speeding for the dark woods behind the platform. Caroline tugs on Elena's hand hard and the two blur off in a different path from the other Convicts.
They're only a few hundred yards into the woods when the air around them changes and Caroline freezes, extending her hearing to their surroundings. There, to their left Caroline can hear the sound of cold ground crunching under paws, and the breathing of wolves.
"RUN!" Caroline yells as she takes off at vampire speed, running through the thick woods, her boots hitting the ground hard as she pushes off, desperate to create some distance in between herself and the wolves. The trees scratch and pull at her arms and legs but she ignores them, focusing instead on where she's headed because all she can see in front of her are trees.
There's a snap of a branch right behind her and before Caroline can move, can even think about spinning to face the monster behind her, she's falling and crashing hard into the ground from the weight of the werewolf on her back. She feels her forehead split on the moment of impact, and for half a second afterwards the werewolf sinks its fangs into the back of her shoulder, tearing apart the muscles of her deltoids and injecting its venom into her blood stream. The pain is instantaneous and she lets out a cry, muffled by the damp ground. A claw digs into her shoulder and she's sure she is going to die as its wet nose moves along the base of her neck. She's pinned to the ground and there is nothing she can do, the venom already coursing through her veins and making her weak. The wounds on her back are bleeding and running over her body in rivers.
Then, the weight is lifted off of her back and she can feel her lungs expand properly as she takes a wheezing breath and lifts her head up only high enough to see the wolf fly through the air and land with a deadly crunch on the forest floor.
Caroline pushes herself up from the ground, the muscles in her arms, shoulders, and back tearing and screaming in pain at the movement. The world tilts back into place, edges slightly fuzzy thanks to the werewolf venom and she thinks she must have started hallucinating already because she sees Elijah a few feet next to her as she looks up, his hand covered in blood.
Her eyes move past Elijah to see Elena leaning against a tree, arms crossed, hair tangled, and decidedly more pale but alive. When she realizes that Elena's unhurt, she realizes how much effort she's exerting to keep her torso up off the ground and lets it fall back to the ground, closing her eyes as she does so. She hears Elena's startled gasp then her body is being rolled over on the ground, large hands on the curve of her waist.
"Caroline, open your eyes," Elijah's voice calls. She doesn't want to but he's flipped her so she is sitting with her back resting against his arm. It hurts so she opens her eyes only to show him how annoyed she is. "Good. We need to get you to Niklaus."
"No," Caroline cries out weakly, shaking her head from side to side as best as she can.
"He can help you," Elijah replies as he moves his other arm underneath to the back of her knees. He picks her up as if she weighs nothing and Caroline tries to protest by pushing her palms against his chest trying to push herself out of his arms but it's of no use, he only tightens his hold on her. "Let me go," Caroline grunts as she knocks her head against his shoulder. "I don't want to see him."
"He will want to see you," Elijah informs her, and with that he runs through the trees and Caroline can only rest her head against his shoulder and close her eyes because moving so fast is suddenly making her dizzy, a feeling she hasn't felt since she was human.
It's two minutes of trying to imagine what Klaus will say before Elijah stops and calls out, "Niklaus."
Caroline opens her eyes, still resting in Elijah's arms.
She watches as the lone figure by a far pair of trees and a few shrubs outside of the forest suddenly moves towards them at the sound of Elijah's voice and Caroline shakes in his arms when Klaus appears in front of them, on the other side of the barrier Caroline guesses by the tree line.
His eyes widen imperceptibly at the sight of them, "Caroline," he says his voice soft and low.
Just the sound of his voice sends shivers down her spine, but she disguises them as she pushes herself away from Elijah once more and this time he obliges her and she lands on her feet with a slight sway, ignoring Elijah's steadying hand on her unbitten shoulder and the flash of concern that crosses Klaus' face. "Don't Caroline me," she warns Klaus, her eyes fixed on his as best she can manage. "You did this to me."
"Caroline," her name comes out lower now, a warning this time.
"You branded Elena and I as Convicts and put us in these sick, twisted Trials of yours, it's your fault that we…" Caroline's line of thought breaks off. Where is Elena? She looks around them, looking for Elena, but she's not with them. "Elijah, where's Elena?"
"I am unsure where Elena is," Elijah answers. "You were alone when I found you and I brought you straight here." Tears start to spring to her eyes at the thought of Elena still running from the werewolves alone out there, but she doesn't miss the hard look that passes between the brothers.
"No," Caroline shakes her head even though it blurs the world more with the tears in her eyes. "Elena was with you I saw her, she was okay."
"The hallucinations must have started," Elijah says although he isn't looking at her, his gaze is fixed steadily on Klaus whose on gaze is fixed off on the distance, his jaw clenched. "It must have been the alpha."
She can see Klaus' temper flare by the way his jaw ticks and the rest of his body stills, waiting, calculating its next fatal strike.
Nothing is getting solved and Caroline can feel herself growing warmer. She tries to recall what little she knows about werewolf bites and knows that if she has already started hallucinating she must be pretty bad off. She turns to Elijah and asks, "Please go get Elena...before" her voice cracks ever so slightly and she find that she can't finish her sentence before I die.
Elijah nods at her then sends a look at Klaus that Caroline can't begin to read because her head hurts too much already. Then Elijah is gone, it's just her and Klaus and she realizes how utterly exhausted she is. She lets her knees give out and sits down on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chest because her body is freezing even though her head feels like an oven.
"Caroline, I'm going to fix this," Klaus says and she moves her head so it's tilted sideways, still leaning on her knees, but her eyes are fixed on him.
"You can't Klaus, this isn't like the other Trials, you can't control the outcome," Caroline admonishes him.
Klaus flashes away and in a second he's back again, but he has his arm around Bonnie's neck and she's struggling to get away, eyes wide with fear and nails scratching at his arm.
"No," Caroline protests as she pushes herself up off the ground as best as she can. "What are you doing."
Klaus releases his hold on Bonnie and she stumbles as her hands fly up to her neck to sooth the skin as she tries to catch her breath.
"Bonnie created the barrier spell, she can reverse it," Klaus replies, though his eyes are fixed on Bonnie his voice low and threatening, an order if Caroline's ever heard one.
"I can't," Bonnie chokes out as best as she can between shaky breathes. "I don't have the power."
"Really, love? You put the barrier up, I expect you to be able to reverse it," Klaus says lowly, taking a step closer to Bonnie.
"My coven helped me, but they won't come here, especially not tonight," Bonnie cries as tears start to fill her eyes.
"Not even," Klaus moves so his hand is around Bonnie's neck, lifting her feet off the ground, leaving her kicking uselessly in the air, "if you life depends on it?"
"No," Bonnie chokes out quietly as tears well in her eyes.
Caroline feels awful for the witch being tortured at Klaus' hands. "Klaus stop!" Caroline calls out as she tries to drag herself forward on the ground, "It's not her fault."
"She can reverse it!" Klaus roars as he tightens his grip on Bonnie's neck." It's a full moon, little witch. Has my brother taught you nothing?" Bonnie's eyes widen and Klaus' smirk widens. "Oh you didn't think I knew about your little lessons with Kol? If you're going to have witch lessons under my roof I will find out…though they will not be continuing. Maybe Kol isn't as well-versed as we thought? Or maybe you were too preoccupied learning another subject to actually learn your craft."
Tears spill out of Bonnies eyes and Caroline can barely hear the breathes coming from the girl, she has to intervene. She turns her focus towards him, "This is your fault Klaus, not hers."
Klaus' eyes immediately snap to hers, his eyes flashing a golden yellow. "What did you say love?"
"You created the Trials, did you not?" Caroline accuses, eyes as full of malice as she can manage.
Klaus drops Bonnie and instead moves to the barrier, towering over Caroline in her current position. "I did. Seven hundred and forty three years ago, to teach the world that the Original Family is not to be crossed," he boasts.
She closes her eyes because the world has become too blurry and hard to distinguish around her. "Then this is the seventh hundred and forty third time every Convict will die in your Trials, just as you planned," Caroline responds, closing her eyes. Klaus curses and there's a sharp crack, but Caroline doesn't bother herself with it.
Then, she hears Bonnie start to chant, along with Klaus' footsteps. She pays them no mind as she wonders whether or not Elijah has found Elena.
The ground beneath her shakes and she grasps at the ground only to have the dead blades of grass fall through her fingers.
"Caroline," his voice is close, his breath warm on her pale cheek.
She cracks open her eyes to see Klaus' face next to hers. His eyes are wide and he pulls her body up. She's too weak to support herself so she leans her side on his chest.
He puts his wrist to his mouth and tears into it, rich, warm blood spilling down his forearm. The smell of his blood is overwhelming and she can feel her vampiric features threatening to take over.
She's so thirsty.
"Love, my blood is the cure. Drink," he orders as he shoves his wrist in front of her.
There's nothing she wants more than to sink her fangs deep into Klaus' flesh and drink, but she can't cross this line. Klaus is part of the Original Family and to owe him a blood debt such as this? She'd rather die.
She forces her features to return to normal and turns her head so he cannot see her face.
"Caroline, you will die. Is that what you want?" he shakes his arm and little droplets of blood fall onto Caroline's hands and she resists the urge to lick them. "Is that what you wish? To die in these woods?" he asks sharply, lowering his already-healed arm.
Caroline snaps her head and locks her eyes on his. "I cannot owe you a blood debt. I will never be able to repay it and I will end up here next year."
"You think you would owe me a debt? After this week?"
Her body is barely her own and so Caroline only feels the slightest shame when she sags and is supported only by his arm around her back. "You put me in the Trials. Every Convict dies in the final trial, it is the cost of betraying the Original Family."
Klaus tightens his grip on her, "Everyone must enter the final Trial. Elijah was supposed to slip away much sooner than he managed to and protect you for the duration of the night. Kol," Klaus growls and she can feel his chest vibrate, "kept Elijah disposed just long enough for you to be attacked."
"Elijah was meant to find me?" Caroline asks, her voice quiet and raspy.
"Yes," Klaus answers immediately. Then softly he adds, "Caroline."
Her stomach seizes and she coughs harshly, bending herself in half as she expels a deep crimson stain upon her hands and lips.
He meant to find me, protect me. Maybe she hadn't been wrong to accept his help during the previous trials. There might yet be something worth finding out about the great Klaus of the Originals. "Okay," Caroline agrees with a tiny nod of her head.
At once, Klaus re-opens his wrist and presents it to her, "Drink love."
Caroline obliges and Klaus' warm copper blood slides down her throat. She feels the pain leave and her fever vanish when she feel Klaus stroke her tangled hair. She releases his wrist from her fangs and she can tell he would like to protest, so she interrupts him before he can start, "I feel better, I'm just tired." She touches his healed arm where there's a tiny drop of blood and looks him in the eye, "Thank you Klaus."
His eyes widen imperceptibly and he nods his head without a word. Caroline rests her head against his chest again. "Can we just stay here a moment?"
"We should get back to the house. You need to rest and I need to take care of a few things."
"Because of me."
"Because I refuse to let you go before I have the chance to know all your hopes and dreams, Caroline."
Caroline rolls her eyes but there's a smile on her face as she pushes herself up from the cold ground. Klaus is next to her, holding out his arm before she can even begin to brush the dirt off her clothing. "Is there any way you could get to know me tomorrow? Maybe after I shower?" Caroline asks as she pushes back a strand of greasy hair.
Klaus smiles at her, "That can be arranged."
Elena.
"Wait," Caroline stops. "What about Elena? She needs to be protected. Whatever this is, she lives or I'll run off into the forest again, I swear."
"I'm quite sure Elijah has found Elena by now and has already escorted her back to the house with the removal of the barrier. Elena will be officially pardoned."
"And I will be…?"
"Officially pardoned as well. Although, I would like to lift the banishment from our properties," Klaus queries as he stands to face her.
"Yes, I would like that," Caroline answers with a smile. "Could we visit another house? I think I've had enough of this one."
"That can be arranged."