AUTHOR'S NOTE: My idea is to comprise a limited-ish multi-chapter drabble series where we see snippets of letters ("valentines") that Klaus has written for/about Caroline over the years. It'll flit back-and-forth between past canon and present/future AU situations.

Big thanks to the-doctor-in-a-deerstalker on Tumblr for my fic cover!

HAPPY KCVDAY, lovelies. Enjoy! :)

xx Ashlee Bree

"I will slice off his bloody hands at the wrist for this!" Klaus growled, his vise-like grip bruising the neck poised between his quivering fingers. "Where are they?"

He sounded dangerous. Collected and detached in tone, perhaps, but savage in demeanor. Eyebrows, scrunched and distorted, cut across his forehead as sharply and as jaggedly as freshly-carved scars and hollowed out his eyes in the unlighted black of a Jack-o'-lantern, shucking his face free of warmth to leave hunks of discarded humanity looped around his ankles like apple-peel shards. Jaw flexed, teeth gnashed and grated in his mouth like metal claws screeching with the threat to devour—snap, snap. Snap, snap, snap!

"Where are they?" he repeated.

Restrained, his blue eyes never blinked in moments like this, but brewed. Black to yellow to red. Dead, dead, dead.

"Tell me where they've gone, sister—" he demanded as he slammed her hard against the bookcases, her feet writhing and kicking as Klaus raised her to eye-level and then pinned her like a tack with his hand. He leaned in all scowls, his hot, salty breath puffing with exertion against her face. "—tell me what he's done with them."

"Nik, p-please. I can't—I c-can't bre—" Rebekah choked.

Swatting at his hand desperately, unable to breathe, gargle noises filled the air as she coughed for oxygen that wouldn't come, for air that her brother wouldn't provide, her eyes growing heavier and heavier with pleading…and pain. Dear, sweet, deadly pain.

Stony and heartless, Klaus left her there—dangling in distress, lung cells starving—dying—popping like bubbles, one after the other, each subsequent second of suspension smothering more of them with carbon dioxide—his iron hold never once slackening. Never once relenting. Not. One. Goddamn. Inch.

"I don't know what—"

Rebekah's voice sounded weak; her expression bewildered.

"—ANSWER ME!" he roared, fire spewing from his eyes.

October 2010: Mystic Falls, Virginia

Not-So-Collateral-Caroline,

That's your name. It's what I shall call you.

Not to your face, mind you—no—never to your face. I am not an expressive man; I never was. I never shall be. I tuck away emotions—those nasty, tingling twitches of nagging that rush like streams beneath the skin, coldness and heat bubbling, forever bubbling, in contradictory currents that slish and slosh on the inside, eroding away everything—I tuck them far away. Far, far away in the art that I create…and devastate…with my own rotten fingers that bleed with exertion.

I cannot stop. I will not try.

I am a builder; I am a breaker. I am an anomaly with two strangling, dead hands and a heart that still beats. And tonight, it beats for you—loud and fast, with the fervency of a sonic blast.

"Come," I encourage with eyes, somehow bewitched, and no longer mine, "lend me your ear. Press it to my breast and hear—"

—Your three-syllable name and how it purrs against my chest like feathers: CAR-O-LINE. How it breathes against my skin like the fizzling tide: CAR-O-LINE. How it glosses across my mind, the darkest of skies: CAR-O-LINE. The shivers it elicits with every utterance, how each alteration or inflection unwraps new meaning, new reverence, to behold within its sparkling letters.

It has wings, your name. It flaps and flutters and flips. All soft and sensual, it is, with just enough scratch to pluck against my tongue when I speak it to remind me of its sturdy spine, to remind me of the fierce warrior who not only wears it in word, but owns it in skin. In name and woman, you ARE Caroline. You are her, and she is you.

Together, you don beauty and grace; you wield a sword, but hide in its sheath. Half of it—half of you—remains collected in disguise by amnesia that keeps you from perceiving the shuddering prowess you possess in blades, not just in fangs; but since I am old, I am not readily fooled. And where I see you…I see me, too.

Opposite fragments of the same mirror, we are.

Power reflects at me from the sword in your back pocket, drowning in darkness you can't yet taste in the blood you suck from veins, but it wants air. It craves it. And if you only let me, I can nurture it with wind that unsettles…but never stifles.

"Come out if you dare, sweetheart," I whisper softly. Welcomingly. "Come and step into the eternal sunlight with me, for magnificence is meant to shine."

You lift your chin. Bold and brazen, you scoff at Eternal Death, at he who threatens to mistake you for another ordinary victim.

"I already do," you challenge, "and it will never be because of you."

You're right. I know you're right.

"This is why I prefer for you not to die," I think with a smile.

After a poetic soliloquy where I speak to you of worldly possibility but never once reveal my secret wish, I offer you my wrist—and its fountain of agelessness. It's yours to drink, to deny. And I can sense that you don't understand why.

To you, I am nothing more than monstrous scum to be scraped from your infected neck, the real venom responsible for your labored breaths, enslaved boyfriend, and disrupted small town life. You despise me for my ruthlessness; you expect my retribution, but you never once permit fear to break free enough for me to see. You meet me eye-to-eye, word-for-word—a girl hell-bent on deconstructing this pretentious beast with your last breaths.

I admire that; I admire you.

"I don't want to die," you admit at last.

Secretly, I'm proud. Exultant. Because now I know I wasn't wrong.

"Have at it, sweetheart," I reply as I unroll my sleeve for you. "It's all yours."

You cup your mouth around my wrist gingerly and pierce your fangs into it tentatively at first, then greedily, all the time watching—waiting—for the betrayal of the monster that never comes. The venom in my lips disappears as I hold you. I pet your head as you lean back against my chest and I smile roses—pink, plush, and pure—for I am something now which I have never been before…surprised but satisfied.

Tonight, my blood gives you new life; and your thirst gives me fresh pleasure. Enriched is what we both now are…in death. Cheers to us! Cheers to our interminable forever!

Newly yours,

—Haughty But Hardly Heartless

Present Day: New Orleans

"I don't know!" his sister cried.

"LIAR!"

Klaus' nostrils flared as he pressed her more firmly against the books, her back scraping against the shelves' edges, her hair raining with falling volumes and toppling pages, long-forgotten histories cracking against her skull.

"N-Nik, please," Rebekah begged, her voice still thick and suffocated by hands not her own. "Let me go!"

Deranged. Rebekah had never seen her brother like this before—stooped, with mania combusting at the seams—completely unhinged—intolerant, irrational, inconsolable—his soul howling with an emptiness she didn't understand—wailing injustice at the sun, the moon, and the stars; a mourner dressed not in black, but red—his fists thirsting for spilled blood—his growling, collapsing heart calling out for a bypass no surgeon could perform—not once in a thousand years. Those endless centuries full of Mikael's hunting, all of that fear and horror and loathing, appeared to be nothing compared to this torment. Nothing.

"I need them," his voice cracked. "I can't go on without them." His voice dropped and he became more subdued, his last words coming out in whispered anguish, "I can't, I can't, I can't!"

"Need what? I don't—I don't know what you mean—"

"—they're all I have LEFT, Rebekah!" Klaus bellowed.

A knock sounded from somewhere behind them, followed by the creaking of an opening door.

"Oh, goodie! Looks like I'm just in time for Mikaelson Family Feud," a chirpy voice quipped. "What did I miss? Shall I fetch you some daggers or will the White Oak stake suffice?"

Klaus whirled to the left, snarling, still pinning Rebekah in place with his arm, and glared at the smirking form in the doorway.

"You!"

Kol yawned and plopped onto the nearest sofa with a bag of Doritos.

"Cool your murdery jets for 2 seconds and release our sister, will you? She knows nothing. This is our fight, O'Angry One," he taunted, chewing, "just you and me…so be sure to put up those daisy dukes of yours—I mean fists," he winked.

Dropping Rebekah like luggage, Klaus snatched a poker from the fireplace and plunged it into the depths of the crackling flames, scalding its spokes before flashing across the room, arm swinging, and stabbing his brother straight through the torso. Branding him physically with the miserable heat Klaus felt gnarling apart his insides like cyanide. Pain, pain, pain. Poison, poison, poison.

"I will end you!" Klaus threatened.

He narrowed his eyes and dropped his fangs like daggers.

"You will do nothing of the sort."

Elijah suddenly appeared beside him with fingers entrenched around his wrist and a stern, yet, stoic expression on his face.

"This is uncivilized and unnecessary. Let us be rational—facts first," he said.

"If you kill me—" As his flesh continued to sear, Kol yelped in pain. In surprise. "—you'll never know where to find what you're looking for," he gasped as the poker punctured a rib.

The pressure from Elijah's hand increased in restraint as Klaus' arm quivered with rage.

"This feels like an episode of Jerry bloody Springer," Rebekah grumbled, regaining her feet with a huff and a hair flip, "so either murder the wretch or listen to him, but just do something already. I'm over the suspense."

"I'm only trying to help you, you blasted beast! Why won't you let me?" Kol groaned.

At these words, Klaus, still white-knuckled and fuming, peered hard into his brother's face searching for the lingering irony that always flickered back from his dark eyes; but when he found none, he collapsed onto his knees and threw the poker behind him with one quick jerk. It shattered the window with a harsh crack. Splitting glass in the same way it splits hope—openly.

Licking his lips, he grabbed Kol roughly by the shirtfront, shook him hard, and said, "Tell me where?"

"Where?" he repeated more gruffly. "I've never had patience for bread crumbs or treasure maps. You have two seconds—" anger contorted his features; apprehension clouded his tone "—you have exactly two seconds to tell me where you hid my things, Kol—my private, protected possessions."

"Oh, don't be silly." He waved his hand nonchalantly and reached for another Dorito. " I didn't hide them," he crunched. "That would have been pointless—spoiled the fun," he said.

"Then, who did?" Klaus growled, his nostrils flaring.

Quirking his head, squinting at his brother, Kol laughed.

"No one," he shrugged, "they're not here anymore."

Thunder stormed in Klaus' eyes—boom, boom, BOOM! Lightning streaked across his face and electrified worry into the wrinkles that sprouted across his face, on his forehead, around his lips. The clouds opened their swirling mouths and pelted his chest with hail. Frigid and stinging and relentless. Breaking windshields. Fracturing bones. Rupturing aortas. He was an uncategorized storm—Hurricane Hybrid—his emotions churning and compounding in directions unknowable…

"They're gone."

"No, no, no, NO!" Klaus rumbled, this one sentence flattening him into roadkill, tires compressing him into particles of gravel.

GONE.

One word, four letters. It was emotion—perpetual mourning—nothing more than a void hollowed-out by an "o" that never stopped spinning, never stopped digging deeper and deeper into a grave searching for the rich soil that's no longer there. It echoed with dirt and not daisies; distraction and not delivery; and Klaus was the shovel. His lost Caroline, the expanding hole.

Gone was the last thing Kol felt as hands snapped his neck, cracking his laugh into silence like a whip.

Thanks for reading! Reviews are wonderful. xx