"Hello Caroline."
He always finds her at the worst time, she thinks. He stands there looking at her with an expression she can't seem to place- maybe it's nothing. She drops the body to the ground as she stands up, conscious of how bloody her mouth her, how stained her hands are. She isn't messy in life, but she is new to this, drinking straight from the vein.
"Klaus," she says, partly because it seems poetic in its symmetry with their last meeting and partly because she doesn't know what to say- ashamed at having been caught like this. Not that he has any right to judge her. Wait. Was that the expression? Was he judging her? She feels anger course through her veins and she speeds away. Let him take care of that lifeless body.
She is huddled in a corner seat at the bar. She serves her own drinks because the bartender is out of service. Mostly because she drained him dry. She'll bury him later, she tells herself moodily. She won't be careless like she was at that last town. Maybe that's how Klaus found her? But why was he even looking-
"I don't suppose this seat is taken."
"How did you find me?" she groans, not even bothering to look up from the glass she has been staring at for the past half hour.
"I never lost you, love. I was just giving you some time."
"Wow, 30 minutes, so much time. I haven't even cleaned myself up, you know," she whines, sounding like an angsty teenager even to herself. Well, she is stuck being seventeen forever. Still, she thinks, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth and then over her white summer dress, it sucks to be seen in such a graceless state. Maybe he would be glad he got over her so soon. Wait. Was that his expression? Relief? Was he relieved that he managed to avoid being with this train wreck?
"I must have misunderstood your question. I meant the last thirty years and 76 days."
Oh.
"Why are you here?"
"Stefan called me. He told me you were missing. He told me you had a-"
"Well, good to hear you guys are back to bonding. All it took was me going crazy. Good of him to keep everyone informed. Might as well have put up find the crazy vampire on a mental breakdown posters all over, huh?"
She is seething with bitterness. That's her go-to emotion these days. She figured she'd be sad or angry or just hungry but all she feels even gulping down the blood is bitterness. Must be a disease.
"He told me about your mom."
"Save it. I don't need your pity."
He doesn't say anything for a while and she is glad.
"I am not going back to Mystic Falls so whatever mission Stefan sent you here on-"
"I am not here to take you back."
"Then why are you here?"
"For you, Caroline. I thought you'd realize."
She laughs at that. She isn't gonna fall for this again. Once was painful enough.
"But why now? You got what you wanted that day, didn't you?" The memory of it still hurts. The memory of it still blinds.
"Is that what you believe? That that was all I wanted?"
"Well, you certainly kept your distance after it."
"You seem to forget you didn't want me around."
"I never wanted you around. But you still stuck around enough till you made me fall for you and then you left. You were gone. And you didn't even come back." The bitterness rolls off her lips. She wants to curl into a ball and sleep for a while. She wants to pretend she is a seventeen year old girl- a living, breathing, warm-blooded seventeen year-old girl. Instead all she does is get up and run away.
She is in a lavender field, sleeping on her stomach with her feet up in the air, and trying not to eat the small kid she can see playing around in the house nearby. She can smell the B positive but she tries to pretend she is just breathing in the lovely fragrance of the purple herbs.
"12 hours long enough, love?"
He grins at her before sitting crossed-leg in front of her.
"Why are you still here?"
"Well, for starters, someone has to make sure the little children of this lovely village don't get eaten up by the local beautiful monster."
Monster.
She mulls over that word. Strangely she isn't offended.
"I tried to forget you," he says, and suddenly she finds it painful to look at him.
She rolls over and lies on her back, staring at the sky. It's blue and cloudless and it reminds her of his eyes. She sighs deeply in annoyance and looks sideways at the lavenders instead.
"It was never my intention. But there were days when it got too dark and I had to try. I had lived for a thousand years and you were only part of a single year and it should have been easier. And I had to forget you. Not only so you could live your plans- the human plans you cherished so much, but also because you would be safer away from me. I didn't succeed though. You were always there, and I did have a promise to keep."
"That you'll walk away and never come back," she whispers, sitting up and facing him, once again trying to read his unfathomable expression. How she regrets those words. Those cursed words. They have played over in her head in a constant loop.
"No, the other promise, Caroline," he says and he looks at her with-no, it can't be- this is what that expression meant!
"I promised I'll be your last love. However long it takes." He smiles at her and she can feel another emotion- and no, it's not the sadness or anger or hunger she was praying for- it's warm and glow-y and she feels like a teenage girl again, but in a really good way.
"I think it has been long enough, don't you?"
He looks at her with love on his face and she can feel a peal of laughter fall from her own mouth before she pulls him closer.
"Too long," she whispers, as she kisses him, the morning sun bathing them in golden light.
A/N: I furiously scribbled this after coming across stills of Klaus and the redhead. Klaroline is endgame. Whatever happens in between is trivial. Review? :)