Here I am, dying.
Summary: Seeking a legendary stone, Klaus crosses the wrong witch. Thankfully, Caroline's recruited on his road to recovery.
Rating: M (Sexual situations, bad language and violence/death)
Pairing: Klaus and Caroline (Klaroline because they are so damn cute, right?)
Warning: Klaus is emotionally abusive to Caroline at times.
Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own any rights to the characters or televisions shows. I am playing with borrowed characters and make no profit from the work but smiles.
Note: I have penned this entire story in 10 chapters (the plot ran away with me, I only intended a short 3 chapter thing when I started) but they all need proofing and checking for plot holes. So, it will be a slow upload, like one per month kind of thing. But it is all done. Mostly.
Chapter One: Heartbeat
The trunk of the car lifted, the blonde inside was offered a hand. Said hand received a burning glare than ran along its length and back to the sympathetic smile on its owner.
"My apologies for the travel arrangements." Elijah greeted her.
Caroline ignored the assistance and pulled herself out of the trunk. She straightened out to stand on the gravel driveway, clocking the start of a sunrise in the dark sky and placing her travel time at just a little under four hours. Not that she had been conscious for the first hour, thanks to the broken neck that was now just an irritating tickle along her spine.
"Oh please." Both eyes turned to the speaker. "She knew the score." Rebekah stepped from the driver's side and met Caroline's piercing stare. Without recognition or even a dash of fear, Rebekah stood up toe to toe with Caroline. "Besides, I offered for her to ride up front like a civilised person."
"You snapped my neck." Caroline hissed when Rebekah dismissingly walked past her, Caroline followed at her heels.
"Not instantly." Rebekah offered as a fleeting defence, not even paying attention as she grabbed her handbag from the passenger seat, where Caroline should have been sat.
"You knocked on my door, shot out some ridiculously confusing and extremely ambiguous statement about god knows what and then killed me when I didn't instantly start packing to join you."
"Like I said." Rebekah turned to the kidnapped vampire with a fake smile. "I offered." Rebekah grabbed the suitcase Caroline recognised as her own and held it out.
Elijah took it from her, ever the gentleman, even in criminal pursuits.
"Please come inside, Caroline." he spoke calmly, like he was greeting an invited guest, not one shoved in the back of a car by his crazy sister.
Rebekah was already walking from sight, into the grand standing compound that bore the all too familiar badge of Michaelson honour and twisted family values.
Caroline mentally bet herself it was about Klaus.
There was a giddy feeling that bubbled inside her, one she instantly killed with her anger.
"One of you better start talking, or I am, absolutely out of here." Caroline ran her fingers through her hair only to get stuck in tangles. She added it to the ever-growing list of reasons she hated travelling in the trunk of a car.
"Please," Elijah encouraged, extending his hand towards the building.
Caroline followed his courtesy, if only because he hadn't had a hand in her kidnapping, and… curiosity.
Caroline couldn't help but be in awe of the tall gates, the heavy set stones and creepy ivy as she walked her way in, following her ears to where Rebekah was flipping the pages of something.
Sure enough, Caroline found her in the lounge (probably one of many considering the side of the place), stretched out on the sofa, turning the pages on a gossip magazine.
Elijah walked past her, unbuttoning his suit jacket with one hand before seating himself on a chair with much more elegance and dignity than his sibling. He wordlessly offered her to do the same.
Numbly, she did, but the original brother and sister seemed reluctant to offer the first words. The silence offset Caroline and she filled it.
"Okay, look, I get it." she began, her fingers mindlessly massaging the back of her neck. "Something happened with Klaus. I'm not stupid, and this is so obviously not a social call, so you need me for something. And since I'm not dead, bleeding or sitting with witches I think I can say it's not a magic thing, so… it's a Klaus thing." Nobody offered any corrections and Caroline chalked up a point of her intelligence. Now, where was the man in question?
Surely if he had been in the mansion upon her arrival, he would have made himself known.
Her insecurities faltered her ego for a second but it only made her more secure in her assumptions. Klaus would never let her come to him and then avoid her arrival; he'd want to be the first spectacle she saw. Probably be the one to pop the trunk and meet the end of her fist. "It's a Klaus thing." she confirmed softly to herself.
Caroline watched Elijah pass a glance to Rebekah and Bekah shoot him a disgruntled one back. "Okay, enough with the silence. I haven't gotten angry that you broke my neck." She threw her glance to Rebekah though she didn't seem bothered enough to do anything but raise an eyebrow back. "Or that you barged into my dorm at 2am. Or that you, most probably, compelled Elena to believe I was visiting my mother."
"Family out of state." Rebekah corrected.
"Or! That you shoved me in the trunk of your car without my mobile phone, or even a blood bag."
Caroline flinched, but caught the object- her mobile phone- that Rebekah tossed to her a millisecond later.
"There's blood in the fridge." Elijah offered with a smile. "Help yourself."
"Oh… thank you." His kind words had thrown her off her tirade. "I just wanted answers." she voiced, dejected.
"I can understand why you are upset." Elijah began once more. "And I can only apologise for how my sister chose to approach this situation." There he went again, smoothing over his families transgressions, perfectly calm and controlled in his voice and posture; like a god amongst men. But his calm approach worked, the lack of urgency reassured her that whatever she was needed for, it wasn't life or death serious. Whether that was true or not, she couldn't say, but for the moment, she felt her anxiety slip away. "However, this is, what you may call a delicate situation," So much for no anxiety, those words alone set her worry alive again. "We sadly could not risk that you would not assist us." Anxiety was rising still.
"With… what?" Caroline asked, apprehension in her words.
Elijah leant forward, hands templed as he rested his elbows on his knees.
"Just agree, you don't have any other ch-." Rebekah advised harshly as she flipped another page.
"I apologise for my sister once again." Elijah interjected. "Obviously, we would have preferred you come of your own volition, yet, it appears you are imperative as a remedy to our current situation. I fear we do not have the luxury of accepting your disagreement to provide support."
A lot of big words to justify her kidnapping.
"So you just abducted me?" Caroline asked, a little surprised Elijah would have had a hand in this plan.
"That was not the origin-"
"You didn't have your happy to help face on." Rebekah explained in deadpan, cutting off her brother's rational approach in payback.
"Who does at 2 a-fucking-m?" Caroline snapped at her.
"Caroline, please." Elijah's soft voice lulled her temper once more.
"What situation?" she asked, containing her temper. "What support am I providing?" repeated exasperated, sinking into acceptance.
What had begun as a confused conversation over the pretence of civility had turned into a whirlwind of potential dangers. All she knew was that it related to Klaus, who, for all she could tell, was absent from the mansion. "I'm tired, I'm hungry and I'm highly aware of the fact I'm sat here in Minnie Mouse pyjamas which although are comfy, they aren't exactly what I had planned for seeing Klaus again." Caroline caught herself, "Not that I planned on any other… you know-"
"Hungry?" Rebekah repeated to herself, setting the magazine on her lap with an amused smile playing on her lips.
"Rebekah, please be civilised. The aim is not to annoy him to death." Elijah chastised.
"I'm guessing the 'him' is Klaus, right?" Caroline muttered to herself, fully expecting the siblings to argue over her.
They did.
"Com'on Elijah, centuries of being his toy and you won't even consider this?" Rebekah protested.
"And pray tell sister, how do you believe he will react to your behaviour when he returns to his usual state? Are you wishing to spend another one of these many centuries in a shipping container with a dagger through your chest?" The reminder put a dark shadow on Rebekah.
"What happened?!" Caroline snapped, breaking up the disagreement and physically standing between the Mikaelsons. "Either he's dying, or he's gone crazy mad and on a murderous rampage. So please, tell me what the hell you expect me to do to whatever the hell situation you won't tell me the hell about!" Honestly, she was tired. She had been looking forward to a shopping spree and a movie marathon today, instead, she was surrounded by a thousand questions spiralling out of control in a very active imagination.
"Caroline, please, take a seat." Elijah's answer to stress was a controlled order, but right now, it was rubbing her the wrong way.
"No, I'm good standing, all I want ar-"
"Answers." he finished for her, extending a hand back to the seat she had previously claimed. She accepted with a sigh and sunk back to the black fabric. "And you shall receive them, however, please understand they are of a rather sensitive nature and obviously there are certain people we are hoping to keep such information away from."
"It's super-secret." she reiterated with a roll of her eyes. But only quite understood the extent of such when Rebekah darted out only to return a few seconds later with mud caked up her new season's designer boots.
"Clear." Rebekah reported, taking a seat and tilting her head slightly. Caroline recognised the gesture as seriously concentrated vampire hearing. She tuned in herself, listening to the sounds of the mansion. It all came with a rush; the running water of the heating system, the ticking clocks in various rooms, the useless breathing of the vampire siblings and one strong heartbeat thudding away upstairs. Probably the help… maybe a snack for Klaus.
Unless, maybe it was a new human fascination for him…
She swallowed hard. The siblings hadn't mentioned another woman.
"It appears our brother had a deal with a witch… which, it didn't end well, as you may be able to imagine with his tendency to approach disappointment with violence." Elijah began and Caroline tuned back into his voice.
"So Klaus pissed off a witch." Caroline summed all too easily, a laugh bubbling in her voice.
"Not just a witch." Rebekah added, her attention still far away, focussed on her hearing. "A whole ancestral line."
"I'd like to say I'm shocked, but… I was taught not to lie." Caroline quipped, finding it easier to relax in the chair now answers were coming her way. "So what, he went on a rampage, killed all the witches and… he can't calm back down?" she guessed. "He's got every witch in the city after him?" she continued when she didn't meet any response. "They kidnapped him and are holding him for some witchy ransom?" Her imagination was running away with her.
"Not quite." Elijah spoke, putting her back at ease from the nervous quiet. "It appears through channelling ancestral power, the witches were able to place a curse on our brother."
"Klaus is cursed?" She half wanted to laugh, the other half; the half that won, was concern. "With what? How is he?" Then panic. "Where is he?"
"He's safe." Elijah was quick to comfort, but the sentiment was ruined by the uneasy way he pulled to neaten the sleeves of his crisp white shirt. "However, as Klaus took the life of the witch's human husband, the ancestors thought it fitting he become that of which he discarded so easily."
"Woah." Caroline felt the realisation run through her like a lightning bolt. "Klaus is human?!" suddenly things were falling into the jigsaw of sense, making a shocking picture. Klaus. Human.
"It appears." Elijah summed, offering a partial smile to soothe her surprise.
"I can't believe this." She didn't even know how to begin processing that. "Like, completely human?" she probed.
"No vampire, no werewolf." Rebekah informed, dropping the intense hearing and lounging back. The danger had passed now the truth had been spilled and talk could be coded. "He wasn't above trying to reactivate his wolf curse." Not at all, Rebekah had stood by him when Klaus had taken a stranger's life in a back alley with a blade. Anything to break the curse.
It hadn't worked. He was human through and through.
"So what, you two are permanent guard duty against the horde out of Klaus' blood?" It was evident from the way they held themselves, ready for a fight. Even now as she looked around the room, she found several weapons all ready for action. "But, that still doesn't explain why I got the special invite to the party…"
"All magic has an escape clause." Elijah reminded her. "Niklaus was cursed because of his blatant disregard for human life. If there is a loophole, it would revolve around that."
"I'm still lost." Caroline admitted.
"You were the only human Klaus has ever respected."
"I'm not exactly human anymore." Caroline offered, feeling deflated.
"That being said, Niklaus responds well to you, despite having very little respect for anyone at all. However, you managed to earn some of that, even when possessed by the very human qualities that he despises."
"He… no. I mean… no." Caroline stumbled over a thousand memories trying to find evidence, but all her brain could stumble back to was one very memorable event in the woods, where he responded very well to her. A memory she was trying to avoid.
"Niklaus surrenders his darker desires to be with you. Humanity will pose a dark threat to him, and he will pose a greater threat to himself. His feelings for you are likely to hold the solution." Elijah narrated, still unmoved from his chair, the teacup stationary in his hand.
"Klaus doesn't listen to anyone, least of all me." But all the statement earned was a raised eyebrow from the elder Mikaelson.
"He relented his centuries' long emotional torture of Katerina to be with you for a night." The sentence slipped from Elijah's lips like it was the weather update. It threw Caroline completely.
"What, woah, ummm, personal." Her surprise fled and challenge seeped in. "How the hell did you even know about that?" Defence. "And it wasn't like it was all night or anything, it was one mistake... I was vulnerable and he was…" she stopped herself. "How did you know?! If he said an-"
"Oh please, Nik returned without a torture story to gloat about but a giant smile." Rebekah grinned. "Add a few sketches of a certain blonde and the maths added up." Rebekah had not been, and still was not, above snooping through Klaus' possessions while he was out. Apparently her brother was not above reliving his memories in pictorial form. In great detail.
Klaus might like to believe his sister didn't know his hiding places, but that just wasn't true. Besides, it was a sister's duty.
"Are you kidding?" Caroline groaned, dropping her head to her hands. "So what, I'm like his humanity guide?" she guessed through her hands. "I don't even know how. I mean, where do I start?" Klaus prided himself on being the monster that grown men feared, the myth of a man that distorted their nightmares. He had no respect for humanity and liked it perfectly well that way.
Rebekah offered an unhelpful shrug. "So you kidnapped me to play Klaus' human instructor?"
"Unless you have a better idea?" Rebekah snapped, annoyed with the constant battery of questions. "I kidnapped you to fix my brother, I don't care how you do it. I don't care if you want to admit you fucked him or not." A chiding came from Elijah but Rebekah rolled on without listening to it. "I just need him back to himself so I don't have to spend the rest of his life standing outside his door stopping a very long list of enemies from slaughtering him. At the moment, the list of people who know his condition is limited to those standing in this room. We intend to keep it that way." With a short breath, she carried on. "The cure for this curse is buried between layers of double meaning in witchy code in centuries old spell books that Nik spends all his time yelling at. We don't have the years needed to translate it, and I refuse to sit by and wait it out, so since you are our best chance at him accepting any human feelings, you're staying here until you fix him." Rebekah's eyes pinned Caroline.
"Caroline." Elijah stepped in the sudden quiet. "We would appreciate your assistance with this. I understand you have had your differences with Niklaus, whatever they may be, surely you understand the gravity of the situation. Niklaus is vulnerable for the first time in a long long time. It is not a position he is familiar with and as you can imagine it is not one he enjoys being in. There are a numerous amount of people who wish him ill. With the curse, there is a chance one may succeed."
Caroline would deny it if asked, but something about Klaus's death did not sit well with her. She hadn't even thought it possible.
"Where is he?" she asked, still held heavily under Rebekah's gaze. The words seemed to soften her though, she stepped back and nodded to the stairs.
"Come meet the new Nik." Rebekah offered firmly, it didn't allow for any objection, just obedience.
Caroline stood numbly, her eyes rolling up the stairs. Her feet started walking and her vampire hearing shoved one last piece in the growing jigsaw.
The human heartbeat upstairs…
It was Klaus.