This is a love story, unapologetically so. I've always wanted to write one, and I did this time, with abandon. You have no idea how many times this story was written and re-written. Nine, last time I counted. This makes ten.
This is a love story, and it may not seem that way, at first – but when is it ever that way with love? I thrive in subtlety and well-timed touches, the mad temptation of feeling, of Klaus and Caroline circa season 3. This is a love story and it's for Taylor (candicemorgan on tumblr), because I'm nuts about her and for some reason she is nuts about me too. Thank you for your prompt! Here's what became of it.
As always, this story wouldn't have gone the direction it did without my main ho in everything DJ (fleshandbonetelephone) holding my hand through it cause I'm a baby and sometimes my writing is crappy but it's better to try and write something terrible than not writing at all, right? And Melissa (goldaught on tumblr), the ringleader of this circus of feels. Inspired by one of her favourite KC quotes of all time (written by Clamentine von Radics: The Poet Drunk Dials), which is now one of mine as well.
TAYLOR'S PROMPT: "talkative man" by r. k. narayan + she declined at first, but had to pretend to drink in order to please him
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THIS IS A HARVEST
.
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Earlier I thought of you, how you were far away—
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The thing about Klaus, she sometimes reminisces, is that she will never stop feeling him in her skin. Like a bullet lodged deep in her chest, somewhere, waiting to find its end through mush, marrow and bone—like the sting of cold water against fever flush skin. Like a bad, bad dream.
She has never wanted anyone more in her life.
—
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How fucking unfortunate.
—
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It's a party, it's a ball.
Her hair is done up, big exultant curls that remind her of Katherine and a time long ago, and there's champagne being offered in her direction. She's already forgotten his name.
She'd declined the drink at first, but he had insisted, and she's sure he's the type to make total ass out of it judging from the way his lips were making a U-turn into a pout, and had to pretend to drink in order to please him.
Back then, in a different ballroom in a different city she had enjoyed these sorts of occasions. But then again, back then—and she thinks this with a silly sort of heat creeping in her cheeks—back then her dress hadn't even been her own.
She doesn't even know why she humours him; feigns a hurt ankle if only to escape the stifling poise of the crowd.
"I'm not surprised your feet hurt, Clara," he laughs. It sounds vacant even in the bursting room. "You're quite the dancer."
It takes her a second to respond. She parts her lips to sip champagne from her flute—has the sudden, tempting urge to force it down his throat—Says primly: "I know."
—
—
She takes him to bed, hates every single minute of it, hates how eager his tongue is, stops him with a forceful clench of her fists when he tries to roll her onto her back. There is a jump in her pulse as she toys with the idea of drinking him through a straw, and he must have seen something in her eyes change, because he leaves as soon as he's had a cigarette on her balcony.
But before that:
"I'll call you," he says, his hand on her bare shoulder, twirling a piece of her hair with a baby-smooth finger. The picture of chivalry, even with bruised lips and torn bowtie.
"No, you won't," she replies, tapping her cigarette into her gilded silver ashtray, and she doesn't even have to compel him.
—
—
Kol is ever-approving, his raucous laughter banging into her eardrums, and she smiles despite herself and waves the man who'd been trailing her with shopping bags back to her hotel room.
"Let me guess." He has his eyes closed in mock concentration as he presses a finger pressed to his brow. "You've adopted a new name. It has to be glamourous, but understated, because that's the look you're going for, yes? What is it, pray tell? Ooh, tell me it isn't Amelie."
Caroline scowls, doesn't tell him that that was one of the names she'd considered; he couldn't possibly know what was in her Netflix queue. Not even Kol was that good. "Audrey."
"Audrey!" Kol cackles with glee, how he loves that. "Hepburn?"
"Tatou. You wouldn't know her."
But Kol's smile widens, slow, anything but friendly, and Caroline realizes with an inward groan that Kol – he is indeed that good.
And god, is she that starved for some semblance of her old life? is what she wonders when he envelopes her in a bear hug that nothing of his lanky frame suggests he is capable of, and she doesn't push him away. His coat smells of rain and something metallic she can taste in the back of her tongue, and a wave of – something – crashes through her, something far removed than what she's been living the last ten years or so, something old and ageless.
"How's my girl been?"
Caroline pulls away, not skipping a beat.
"Surviving," she says with unaffectedly, coolly-masked boredom, all the airs and graces of an heiress she'd befriended during her time as Clara. She makes a show of fixing her earrings, hoping the sway and clatter of the golden strings would distract Kol from the punishing drum of her heart. "There's a darling pastry shop a few minutes' walk away, won't you join me for some tea?"
Her smile twitches with irritation when Kol's booming laughter returns. "Darling pastry shop? I'm sorry, but you sounded so much like Bekah, little side activities and all." He steps back with eyebrows raised to consider her, and then grins. "London suits you, my sweet."
"Urgh, whatevs," she grouses, dragging her sunglasses down over her eyes, eyelids snapping shut as she counts silently to ten.
Old habits, she supposes, when Kol offers her his arm and she rolls her eyes before taking it, and even older habits when, halfway through tea, she starts burning with curiosity.
Kol pops a cherry into his mouth. "Wait any longer and your ears might start steaming and whistling, Audrey. Cough it out."
Caroline swallows down a long-suffering sigh. "How did you know where—"
Several scrutinizing eyes zero in on their table when Kol makes a sound akin to a game show buzzer, crude and loud and annoying, "That's a boring one. Next!"
God. Ten years is not nearly enough time away from this total prat. But she pastes a smile on her face, charming as much as it is menacing, and the stares eventually stray.
"Am I being followed?" she stirs her tea without as much as a clatter, she closes her mouth around strawberry Pavlova delicately, not a trace of a crumb on her pink-painted lips.
"You mean, is Nik keeping tabs on you?" Kol grins.
She glares.
It's even more infuriating when he sings, "I won't answer unless you ask very specifically."
"What if I asked you very specifically to leave?"
"Darling," he says, and promptly snickers. "It's terrible manners for a man to leave a lady deathly bored and alone in a city where nobody knows her."
When he stirs his tea his spoon scrapes noisily against the delicate china, hitting every single nerve he knew would hit.
—
—
Kol wouldn't let her let him leave until they'd eaten at least one human together, and she grumbles her assent if only to get him to fuck off, and it's while they're licking their fingertips clean that Kol says, "How thrilling. Nik would be absolutely thrilled to hear."
"Go on, then. Go tell him about the shenanigans you and I have been up to. The feeding and the drinking, and—oh, here. Why don't you give him a little souvenir? Help him sleep at night?" she can't help how bitter she sounds, but thinks she covers it just fine: in any case, Kol ignores the blood-speckled scarf she'd unwound from her neck, the one she's thrusting to him now, in favour of fixing her a sordid, sharp look.
"Caroline Forbes, you are in far too deep."
"You're not telling him anything," she says flatly.
Kol worries a bit of blood on his palm with his tongue. "Or you'll kill me?"
"Yes."
There is a beat. Kol gives her a sidelong glance, still sucking on his thumb, perhaps wondering if she meant it. She did.
"Oh, darling," he says, and she's surprised to find that this time it's not a mockery, even while his teeth shine sharp as ever.
—
—
Kol hops a plane out of there, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake – should she really be surprised by now? At the very least he had cleaned himself up properly before pecking her with the most magnanimous of farewell kisses, something she's sure Elijah must have taught him some time in their vampy immortality.
Out of habit more than anything, she sends Stefan a quick text, filled with word of the world, smiley faces, lots of exclamation points. His reply is short, but warm. She asks about Elena, and her phone beeps soon after.
Still sleeping.
Stefan, she wants to sigh, the only person not to knock her on the head, to ask the ever obvious question, What the hell did you expect?
—
—
Everything, Klaus had said.
The center of the universe, Klaus had said. The center of the universe right in this polished mahogany coffin with its hand-painted accents, with the keyhole Bonnie had spelled just so, the keyhole that only ever fit one key.
Everything, right here, locked away.
His eyes catch hers running. She's standing on the edge of town, just a little way behind the looming Welcome to Mystic Falls sign. He's standing on the other side, car engine started, door open, hazard lights blinking out its urgency.
"What a pity," Klaus says, and leaves.
—
—
And it's silly to want, even sillier to pray, even worse to remember: a press of the forehead, tarnished golden curls catching Virginia sunlight, the whitened lines of old scars on a hand placed very deliberately on her thigh.
The thing about Klaus, she furiously ruminates, is that she will never stop feeling him in her skin. She'd thought that her emotions would mellow over the years, but all they did was age and blister.
She had loved and she had been silly with it, forgotten that some used it as a weapon, while she—she used it as an anchor for everything she knew in life. Her mother, Elena, Bonnie. Some nights she thinks of her father, too. It's only fair.
Klaus used to laugh at that. In his kitchen where everything gleamed silver and new, bought for show rather than use, not anything at all like the clutter of her own kitchen where in the summer it smelled like peach cobbler and in the winter of slightly-burnt roast.
She'd scowled then, angry that he'd made fun of a secret she'd carried with her for so long – angrier still that she had even told him to begin with. It must have been the blood. Sticky like tar, straight from the vein of some flushed-cheeked boy she vaguely remembered seeing at the Grill once. Going straight to her head.
"Caroline, Caroline." The slow lick of his smile; hearty, indulgent. Klaus only ever smiles like that when he's just fed. "I never knew you to be so vulnerable."
"Don't make fun of me," she sulks, glaring harder, but all he does is chuckle.
"Be positive, sweetheart," he says, another jab at her, and so what if she likes to put a cheesy spin to her meals? She's already doomed to an existence of damnation, a little cute won't hurt.
And just to spite him send the bitten boy off with a little bit of her blood in him, leans in close and tells him he'd been studying at the library until he got a migraine and had to go home.
"Now why'd you do that for?" It's Klaus's turn to scowl.
"If you and I are going to keep on these little… trysts," she says with her face pulled, for lack of a better word. Klaus, for some reason, pauses— "don't you think it's best we get rid of any and all evidence?" The bite mark in her wrist is already healing, just like the boy as he clambers out the back door. "And besides, we just fed on them—a little courtesy wouldn't hurt."
It's only fair, she wants to add, but she senses another tease coming so she bites her tongue.
"Courtesy," Klaus repeats. He looks baffled. "You think a thank you and a proper send off makes up for luring unsuspecting, beguiled, clueless men home for supper."
"Hah!" Caroline leans across the island and pokes him hard in the chest. "I knew you had a problem with tonight's chosen one—"
"You know the proper term is victim, right?"
"—like you don't cheat, don't give me that crap – you just compel these chosen few to follow—"
"Victims."
"I prefer a bit of a challenge."
"You mean flirting."
"Okay, Google Autocorrect, forgive me." She starts to roll her eyes – changes her mind to nod instead when Klaus gestures at the whiskey, readily catches the glass he slides towards her, takes a nice gulp before asking, "Do you have a point?"
"Getting there. It's fascinating, is all. The way you reeled him in – you laugh. Louder than you usually do, and clearly you're well aware of the effect your hair has on people because you make a point to tilt your head so it spills down your shoulder." There's a disconnect with Klaus's lips and his eyes as he talks – he's still smiling, but the look in his eyes is anything but friendly. Caroline's throat goes dry even after all that blood. She's about to protest, maybe call him out, stalker much?, yeah, that sounds about right—but Klaus continues: "And I just wonder… if that's your variety of flirting, I wonder what you would call… this."
Caroline blinks. "This?"
Klaus smirks, then flicks his eyes to the side – her eyes follow.
From their reflection in the shiny chrome fridge she sees her body slumped comfortably against the island, propped by one elbow, her cheeks red from blood and whiskey. Her hair's a mess but not deliberately so, — it had gotten that way in the struggle to push Klaus off the boy before he hogged all the blood.
And without her realizing, Klaus's hand had somehow met hers in the middle of the polished marble island, his thumb rubbing her knuckles softly, so soft she had hardly noticed.
"This—" she clears her throat, already pulling her hand away. Her mouth is still dry, so dry. "This is—"
"Bloody untimely."
She wishes she were kidding when she feels her heart drop straight to the pit of her stomach, and then there's the rush of blood leaving her head, her hands, when the relief kicks in: Klaus isn't looking at her, Klaus is looking at the window, and it's Damon and Stefan looking grim, grim, grim.
—
—
"Really, Blondie? You seriously expect me to believe that that vindictive bastard coming back after Elena's trapped in a sleeping beauty spell is pure coincidence; he's not here to get his heart-grabby hybrid hands on Elena's blood to resurrect his totally original hybrid army plans?"
Damon's rage is purple and blue, which Caroline didn't think was possible, but here was the proof of it. He's chugging down bourbon like it's water, scoffed in her face three point five times already, and literally dismisses her with a wave, "Stefan, your turn. I can't deal with the amount of crap that's spewing out of her Miss Bubblegum right now."
She'd cracked her own glass at the back of his head for that, and Stefan had thankfully whisked her out of there before Damon could decapitate her like she knows his hands are itching to.
Stefan isn't as much of a dick as Damon, but even she senses scepticism from him. Honestly, if the situations were reverse she would be too, but she couldn't possibly tell him that she's not lying, Klaus really is just visiting – the way he's had every so often the last year. But to tell them would mean revealing the whole god awful ugly truth, the truth that not even she could understand—
"You're not suspicious at all?" Stefan squints, hero hair flapping in the night breeze. "Not even in the slightest?"
"No." And she sighs, and she squeezes her eyes shut, and she allows one tiny confession: not a lie, but not entirely the truth, "He's here because I asked him to come."
He's here because they have an arrangement.
"We're friends?" she tries again, but even that sounds supremely lame, considering… everything that's happened before. Realizing defeat, she adds, rather sheepishly, "He got me a mini fridge for graduation."
Stefan steps back, regarding her impassively. She knows this look. She gulps, tries to take it back but can't – the cogs in Stefan's mind are turning, turning, turning.
"I can hear you thinking."
"Wanna know what I'm thinking?"
Not really. "Sure, Stefan."
Stefan looks at her long and hard, and Stefan says: "I think you're lying, and I think I really don't want to know the reason why—but I know you've got a good head on your shoulders. I know you'd do anything for your friends, anything to keep them safe. I know how much you want to keep that head on your shoulders. And I know if Klaus tries anything, I know you won't stand in our way when we rip his fucking heart out and scatter it in the gutters of Mystic Falls."
He's still watching her closely when her mouth opens and closes wordlessly.
"Caroline?" Stefan prompts.
Damon's got all the bark, but Stefan's the one with the teeth, really.
At long last, her voice comes returns. Looking back, it should have been a sign then, her reluctance to look into Stefan's eyes.
"It's only fair," she says, but faintly.
Stefan seems satisfied at that.
—
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Klaus [11:49PM]: Sorry we had to cut our little tryst short. Oh, and for future reference – you might want to Google what that means.
—
—
In the end it's all a bit anticlimactic, because Klaus leaves without wreaking any sort of havoc, unless you count the noticeable decline of whiskey at the Grill as disaster.
In the end— and she really should have known by then—when you try so hard to avoid certain ruin you end up in the debris.
The day the Salvatore brothers hid Elena away was the day she left, too tired to fight against the current of possessiveness that always hovered around Elena.
Stefan tried to make her understand, but she understood perfectly. It was bad enough having to share with Damon, but to have to share her with the entire population of the underworld who wanted a taste of her, like she was a wild animal to be skinned alive, slaughtered and drawn, served fresh on a platter—
Stefan winces.
"Sorry. Too detailed?" she smiles. Stefan hadn't even let her say goodbye, she was allowed her pettiness.
"No," Stefan says quietly. "Too –"
He averts his eyes. She wills him to say it.
"Too Klaus."
—
—
And it's not like she hadn't tried finding Elena: she's spent years looking, years shadowing, but maybe there's a reason Stefan and Damon survived so long in Mystic Falls: old, unyielding, better at secrets than she was at ushering Klaus into her bedroom window.
Klaus takes a slow turn in her bedroom and studies the new wallpaper, the bed she'd pushed to the opposite wall, the new dresser she'd gotten to replace the corner where all her stuffed animals and battered fairy tales and spine-cracked textbooks used to be.
"Took you long enough to redecorate," Klaus comments, but she senses in him a longing when he pauses in the space where her armchair used to be, his designated spot. It's his first time here in a few years – three years, four months, twenty-two days, no she hasn't been counting, she's just very good at keeping track of things, alright? –
"Took you long enough to show up." In no way at all is she resentful. Do not cross your arms, Caroline.
"New Orleans. It's a bloodbath." He says in way of an explanation, sinks down into her bed instead, toying with her ratty old bear she hadn't the heart to throw out. "I won't bore you with the politics of it."
"I don't mind," Caroline says absently, a bit unsettled at the ease in which Klaus had moved around her bedroom even in the unfamiliarity of it all. "Tell me all about dirty, beautiful New Orleans."
"Sweetheart, any other day I would indulge you, but…" he puts her bear aside with a short tap to its head and turns his eyes on her, "This is a visit of pleasantries, so let's talk pleasantries, shall we?"
She wants to ask what exactly pleasantries consist of, but she is more concerned with how subdued Klaus seems. It's been years but he still looks the same. Maybe his hair is longer and his cheekbones more pronounced, but it's still that avidity in his eyes when she says his name, in tune to her presence like a soldier snapping to attention, the loaded question in his single stare.
"Yes, Caroline?"
Caroline stops at the foot of her bed, her hands running along the carved wood of her footboard. "I want you to tell me anyway."
Klaus doesn't say anything as he mulls this over, and she wants to ask What's the problem? Not like she's going to tell anyone—not like she's going to go anywhere, feed his sensitive information to figures in the dark, divulge all his secrets to faceless enemies.
Deep in her resentment she almost misses it when Klaus says, "Say that again."
"Um?" Caroline's eyebrows furrow. Klaus raises his own, and she recognizes a challenge. Especially when it's coming from him.
Okay, then.
"I want you—"
Klaus pulls her down into the bed with him.
She grunts when her face hits faded wool fur, and she emerges from Mr Bear spluttering. "What the hell—"
"Right, story time. Don't give me that look, love – you're in for a quite a tale; might as well get comfortable." Klaus is trying his best not to smirk down at her and failing, and his amusement only feeds her ire. Caroline tries to sit up, but Klaus gently pushes her back against her pillows, so they're lying on their sides facing one another.
"Remind me again why I even let you in?"
It's meant to be rhetorical, but something flashes in his eyes, and – yeah, walked right into that herself. It had been a bit of a surprise to Klaus when he couldn't just waltz in like he used to, when the house no longer smelled like cinnamon and peaches even in the heat of July, but he's a thousand years old and ever perceptive, knowing her like knowing where exactly her fangs liked to puncture in the frenzy of feeding.
"I didn't realize my coming would bring unwanted memories," Klaus says, rueful now, all pretence of laughter dropped. He looks a bit like the way he did when she had to explain why the lease of the house was now in her name, why Matt is well on becoming the new sheriff in town.
"Not all unwanted," is her reply. "It's always nice to think of Mom. Keeps me anchored."
"Is that why you're still here, then?"
"Excuse me?"
Klaus doesn't even skip a beat. "I mean – Elena's gone. Hidden away, as you say. I'd assumed you'd stayed so long because you wanted to keep your mother safe, but circumstances being what they are…"
Caroline stares coldly. "You're wondering why I haven't skipped town the minute my mother kicked the bucket."
And because he's Klaus and because he's never been one to pretend around her, he says, "Well, yes. And don't tell me it's guilt, because then it's the same old song and dance—if you're guilty it's because you're attached to judgement –" and here is where Klaus raises his voice slightly, to combat Caroline's sounds of protest, "—and judgem—hear me out, love – judgement usually comes from external standpoints, which begs the question: who exactly would be judging you if you left?"
Caroline props herself up on her elbow and fixes him with a withering look. "Write a book, Dr. Phil."
"I have, in fact." Klaus grins, indulgent. "Several texts, most of which I'm sure you've studied; I prefer to write under a pseudonym." He studies her. "But you're stalling. Why are you still here?"
She hears it, his loaded question.
Small town life, hadn't he once said?
"Nobody's judging me," she says slowly. At least, she doesn't think so. "But I am guilty."
Klaus tilts his head curiously. "Why?"
"My mother, when she died…" Caroline sighs and turns to lie at her back, to stare at her ceiling. "I wasn't there. She was dying, probably wondering where I was, but I was fixing up our cabin." She screws her eyes shut, briefly, surrendering. "With Stefan."
If Klaus goes still she will not ask why – and if he asks about it she would have told him the truth, that Elena was gone and everyone was miserable and Stefan was there and Klaus – she hadn't heard from him in so long, texts unanswered and birthdays passing without as much as a call; she'd stopped waiting for him, she'd begun to think that maybe however long it takes had an expiration date, she'd begun to think—
"Anyway. I was with her when she died, but not… not the way I would have wanted. Not the way she deserved. This is my punishment."
To stay here, confined in this town like her mother in her last moments, they could have left – she could have easily taken her mother away, things would have ended differently—her mother could have died in the sweet relief of sleep somewhere in Venice, in a room nice and airy with bright white drapes, her grasping mom's hand right there, but she'd chosen to stay, and the chance is gone, and since she'd wanted to stay and save this wretched town so much, well, have the fuck at it, Caroline—
She is determined not to look at Klaus, but he's hooking a finger around her chin and turning her head, so she had to. He's gazing at her gently, fixedly, his finger is stroking her jaw, and he says, with so much tenderness in his voice: "Caroline, that is the biggest crock of bull I've ever heard you say. And I've sat through a number of your ramblings."
"Oh my God!" The laughter that bursts from her is unexpected and she leans forward to shove his chest. "You're an ass. Have I ever told you that? I thought we were having a moment."
"We were," Klaus insists, easily deflecting her blows, dimples deep in his cheeks, "doesn't mean I can't call you out when you're being ridiculous, love. As always, I have your best interests at heart."
Caroline pushes at him one last time before retreating to her side of the bed, only slightly reproached now. "Okay, shoot. Tell me why I'm being ridiculous."
"Because it all always has to lead back to guilt, doesn't it?" Klaus says, like it's supposed to be obvious. "Guilt is an admission of defeat. It's a wasted emotion. Caroline, you're intelligent as well as beautiful, you of all people know how to discern right and wrong, good from bad, sensible from stupid—"
"Exactly. Which is why I'm lying in bed with you, very sensible—"
"Rude to interrupt a man about to drop some alarming truth bombs, darling, but I'll allow it – where was I?" He gives her a look when she rolls her eyes, "if you feel like you shouldn't be doing something, you probably shouldn't. But if something feels good, by all means, love—"
"Spoken like a true thousand-year-old hybrid with no moral conscience."
"—again with the interrupting!" And he rolls on top of her without preamble, his weight heavy but not exactly unwelcome on top of her, his hands wrapped around her wrists that are trying to beat him off, and if this is his idea of shutting her up it's certainly working. Her carefully slowed breaths blow into his parted lips; his thumb pushes a lock of her hair away from her forehead. His voice is lower now, she feels it rumble behind his chest.
"My point is," he says, eyes following the trace of his thumb, down the side of her face now — all while still keeping her wrist in place, "guilt only stops you from addressing the authenticity of a moment. Sometimes, it is what it is: no use breaking yourself in pieces over it." His thumb sweeps lower, caressing her lips. "If it feels good…"
"Do it?" she chances. Her breath all but taken from her.
"Exactly," he says, and if he's looking at her that way he might as well be kissing her.
—
—
What a terrifying, dizzying thought.
—
—
So why does she still stay? is a question she doesn't know how to answer even in Elena's gifted journal, and she taps her pencil against the page, against her temple, against the stutter of her heart, her heart that keeps trying to recall the taste of his tongue, his skin, his temper.
They're standing on opposite sides of the world, separated by a goddamn signboard, and Klaus, for all his words and worlds and promises, gives her an ultimatum:
"Leave with me," he says, grandly, pleadingly—
But then comes the other part, the one unspoken.
Or we'll never see each other again.
Not so grand, that one.
She is quiet for a long time. Maybe a bit too long, because Klaus swallows and looks, for the most fleeting of moments, anxious – the hope disappearing quickly in his eyes.
"And go where?" she asks finally.
"New Orleans."
The disappointment must have shown on her face, because his becomes a hard mask, his fisted hands slipping into his pockets.
"And what would I do there?"
Klaus, to his credit, tries: but it's hard not to look surprised when you're caught off guard. As if an invitation extended from his hand is all it would ever chalk up to be. Caroline knows him, knows him in his gore and in his bones. Knows that he would want more than he could give, and knows that she – she would want too.
Just not this.
"You would." A pause, a furrowed brow, a coat flapping in the breeze. "You would be with me. Be my consort, my queen. I'll show you the art, the old history, the magic—"
"And after that?"
Klaus stares at her, not understanding. Doesn't bother to point out the obvious.
And she has to add, "I thought it was a bloodbath? I thought it was a kingdom in shambles, I thought everyone was after your head, I thought you wanted to show me the world, I thought you said you could have the world, easy as pie—"
His eyes, where earlier they had been closed against the coil of her hair, bears a resemblance to mountains. Distant. Cold.
"I'd explain, but you couldn't possibly understand, could you? How could you, when you insist on being trapped here—"
"And what about you, parading around with your fangs and fists pretending like you aren't?" She steps closer to the border, so close there was a risk she might cross it. For all the years Mystic Falls has chipped away at her kindness, it has also sharpened her edges. "Sometimes it is what it is," she says in a butchering of his accent, "except at least I dug my own grave. I'm well aware of the authenticity of my situation—you're still fooling yourself into thinking you have anything of worth left there."
And Klaus too, skirts dangerously close to the line separating Mystic Falls and the rest of the world, he leans in close and he makes sure every word is articulated with derision, "Are you asking me to choose you?"
"I'm not—" Caroline stammers, flustered, God how she hates him, "that wasn't the point—"
"Ask me to choose you, Caroline," Klaus continues heatedly, "go ahead, and I will, with everything that I have. But in return, you're going to have to do the one thing you've been fighting since the night I sat on your bedside and fed you my blood. You're going to have to choose me back. It's only fair," and he spits these last words out.
Caroline flinches, but she stands her ground.
And it would be easy – it would be so easy to give into that anger, the grabbing and the screaming and the damning and the feeling— she hears it thundering in her ears, sparks collecting in the fissures of her. But Caroline also feels in herself the promise of the world, a peculiar call she can't shake, a fickle burgeoning.
The hands that reaches out to stroke the stubble of his cheek doesn't feel like hers. But they are. Her nails scrape through the grain, skirt his nape. Her thumb caresses his pulse. She takes a deep breath, tests the weight of it in her lungs, falls forward to press her forehead into his.
And Klaus just stands there.
Anger melted off his face, in its place utter shock. Paralyzed, she thinks—but then he wraps his hands around her wrists, as though anchoring her there.
"Klaus," she says softly. She wants to shut her eyes. She doesn't want to know how heartbreak looks like, to see it mirrored in the glass room behind his lashes. "You need to stop telling me how to feel."
"Caroli—"
"Because I feel it, alright?" she continues, and she's sorry she keeps cutting him off, but she has to get it out, pressing it onto him like a burden he's now responsible for, "I feel it, I feel everything."
Klaus leans forward, they are toe to toe on that goddamned line, he crushes into her, but still she holds on, still she follows the dart of his eyes, willing him to look, to listen. "I know what I have to do."
"All you have to do is ask." Klaus sounds choked – strangled. Is she the one who strangled him? Her hands are still around his neck.
"And I will," she insists weakly. Her lids are heavy but she can't look away. She needs to say this. "In a year, maybe a century, who knows? But I will, and we both know that. We both know I can't escape you."
"I'm not here to trap you, Caroline. I'm not this town." Klaus's thumbs circle her knuckles. "You aren't as perspicacious about my emotions for you as you'd like to believe. What I want from you isn't to keep you by my side, or to wrap you up in promises or gold, tempting though that might be. You underestimate how I feel. I want your marrow, your muscles, your trembling heart; these things that are yours, which I can readily take with a plunge of my hand, but I won't. I want your elements with mine. Everything that exists about you and I, existing together. Not in a glass jar, not to be studied at my disposal, not to pin you down in my sketches. I want…"
Klaus blinks, regains his breath. He seems to remember himself.
"I want you to choose me – or rather, I think I want you to love me, not in despite of, but for all the bloodshed. But," he says, and she can taste the regret in the space between their tongues, "that would be a cruel mutation of your rudiments. The barest of your bones ground to fine powder in my hands. And we can't have that, can we?" Klaus takes a step back. He looks at her wistfully. "What a pity."
When had he taken his hands off of her? As easily, as quietly and as secretly as he touched her he leaves her the same way, and she's caught in that dizzying notion again. That she should kiss him. That's what lovers do when wars tear them apart.
But they aren't lovers, and this isn't a war. It used to be, but she's zoomed right past those exits, hadn't she?
One last hungry sweep of her and then: "Good bye, Caroline."
"Good bye, Klaus."
She doesn't know what to do.
She waves.
Like Grace of Monaco— like a goddamn princess.
—
—
Caroline [7:43PM]: i can't love you for the blood. i can't love you despite of it either. i can't change who i am, i can't turn it all off again. i can't stay here. i can't leave. i can't forget y
Do you want to exit without sending this message?
Yes.
—
—
On her birthday, she gets three things: a present from Stefan, wrapped in pink and gold – a new journal, smelling like the aged leather and ink of his library, and the Stefanness of it all pulls from her an old nostalgia that she almost forgets he'd locked Elena away.
The other is a card from Bonnie, pictures of her daughter. When are you coming to visit? Yulia misses you and your stories.
The third one she takes her time with. She showers, slowly, languorously, tells herself she isn't stalling, before wrapping herself in a towel and bending over it with a steeled resolve. There's no card, but something hard and cold wrapped in tissue paper that smelled of palmarosa and rose.
It's a bottle of champagne, expensive, snug in its little basket.
—
—
Two things she is certain, even as she dials a long-lost number, wheedled out of a disapproving Stefan—
(He would understand, she knows, if she had just explained, but she hadn't. She'd been too scared, still seventeen despite the years, the music, the food, the blood, the sex—she'd been afraid of what he would say, or what he wouldn't say. But then he wouldn't blame her, and she desperately wanted him to.
It takes a full hour, but he relinquishes the number at long last, along with an unnecessary reminder to stay out of trouble when he knows full well she wouldn't.)
Two things. The first—
"Audrey!" Kol crows immediately after the second ring. "How nice of you to call."
"How did you know it w—" She shook her head. It doesn't matter. "Where is he?"
"Where is who?"
"Don't play coy."
Through the distance and the static, she can already see the sly curve of his lips, the ancestral smirk. "My, my, how the mighty have fallen."
"Kol."
"Audrey," he admonishes in very much the same tone, and then comes the sound of a drink being swallowed. "He's made himself known, I gather?"
Caroline moves from her dresser to the window, the electric buzz of the city seeping into the night sky, draping over the forest of skyscrapers around her. "The champagne was a dead giveaway."
"Ever so Nik of him."
She hums a response, eyes transfixed on network of streets far beneath her feet.
She looks down far beneath her feet at the heartlines of the city and the way it lit up like a festival.
She waits.
On the other end of the line, static whirrs.
"What do you want me to say, Caroline?" Kol's dropped pretense now. He is not Elijah, he could never sit well in silences. It's in anger that he thrives, the unhappy downturn of mouths, the tight clench of teeth. Kol is only happy when he knows you aren't, when you are unsettled by him. Caroline knows this. "I don't bloody know where he is. We don't exchange postcards or anything, and you well know that."
"He knew where I was," Caroline says a little accusingly. "And the last person I saw was you."
"You're not exactly the most unfathomable of creatures. Weren't you still playing at princesses when I found you? Rebekah's the same, I wonder what it is with blondes and wish fulfilment—"
"Fuck off, Kol." The press of cool window against her forehead calms her down a touch, but she's still frazzled. Maybe it's the nerves that makes her voice drop, that makes her ask, "He reached out, and I don't know why. It's been years. Your brother should have forgotten about me."
This time, it is Kol who's silent. Caroline worries on her bottom lip as the static grows. She wonders where he is that makes his voice sound so faint. At long last, there's the crackle of his voice, a sudden coldness: "We've never really been the type of friends to trade advice, Caroline. Whatever makes you think we should start now?"
She's a little stung, but she can't help the smile that slips through. "But we are friends?"
"Got me there."
Caroline grins now, and imagines him grinning back. There's another pause, longer this time, and then he says, "Rebekah might have mentioned something about some unfinished business in Rome. That's all I know."
—
—
Truth be told, she toys with the idea of going to Rome. Seeing him again. She imagines: she in a dress, lingering golds and enchanting ivory, adds little details to the hem, a floral applique train, a sweeping neckline—
—and realizes with a start that she'd pretty much reimagined the dress from that one prom night, where Klaus had pulled her hair away from her shoulder and stepped back and just looked. She had no words to describe what she saw in his eyes.
"You're in for a night," he said. She had thought it wishful thinking that his voice sounded a little hoarse.
"Maybe," she said hesitantly, "maybe you'd like to go with me?"
Klaus must have been surprised, but he hid it well with a well-timed smirk. "And what, pray tell, would I do at a high school prom?"
"You could dance. I could dance." Caroline had slipped her fingers into the folds of her train so Klaus may not see them twist and clench. "We could dance… together."
"And after that?" Klaus was looking at her with hooded eyes now, and still she didn't know what that meant.
—
—
But two things she does know— one, she's going to Rome.
Maybe.
Probably.
Bonnie sends her a text, well? are you or aren't you?
She texts back, Guess who got a window seat.
—
—
tbc
Part two will be up tomorrow! I've got a bit of editing left, sorry to keep you all waiting. In the meantime do leave a review, it would mean the world to me.
