i own nothing but my laptop.

res·ur·rect

ˌrezəˈrekt

verb: restore (a dead person) to life.

The dark circles beneath her eyes were as dark as the gloom in her chest. Her skin paled to the point that you wouldn't expect to find blood in her veins. She has exploited herself to the point of exhaustion that her body became as brittle as the impossibility of getting to her desired point.

They call it madness. She calls it ardent devotion. They call it inconceivable. She calls it achievable. They will say (she swears on the name of those before her that it will happen) that it is an act so foul, the seven pits of hell will be no place for someone like her. But could something be as delicate as giving something life be called heinous by those people who claim to be guardians of humanity and wisdom? Could something be as godly as breathing hope into an otherwise decayed being could be held against her on judgment day?

She brushes off these things from her shoulders as if they're nothing but unwanted lint on her not so pristine clothes. As if they were the grime accumulated on her scalp that she can wash off with her summer scented shampoo. She could lick the soot off her skin later when she's done. She could boil dirty water and slip something in to make it clean again if she has to. But right now, her senses are all zeroed in on one task. To play God.

She was seven. She wiped off the sweat off her brow and smoothed down her skirt as she checked it for dirt and paint. Her throat still parched from the way she shrieked as she was chased away by the boy who perpetually had color on his hands. She doesn't want to get red on her immaculate sun colored dress now does she? Daddy would be furious.

She bounced her way inside their house towards the kitchen where she knew she would find him, already setting up their dinner and she would help him prep the table, each piece on its appropriate place. "Daddy, paint boy was rude to me today, he chased me with his paint brush and he wanted to ruin my dress." Her pout made an appearance on her face, as she stepped into the room that smelled of home cooked spaghetti, garlic bread, and fresh sunflowers that her father never fails to get for her for when she arrives home.

But instead of the warm embrace and the pinch in the nose she usually gets when she trances towards him, she was rewarded with him lying on the floor, unconscious, 'and what was that again? How did my mom show me to know if someone's still breathing or not?'

Small, fumble hands shook dear Bill, his daughter's tears soaked on his shirt. If he was awake her sobs would twist his guts in agonizing ways. She shakily reached for the phone, repeating in her head the number he taught her at times like this.
'Hello? Help me please, help me... Daddy...'

Help arrived a little too late for seven year old Caroline's liking. She lost her hero, her best friend, her dinner date, her constant sunflower bearer. She looked at everyone with contempt, even her mother, for she never saw her drop a single tear as they carried her best friend away.

Does she feel? Or was it a facade she put up for anyone else to see? Because she swears she could hear her muffled cries into the night. She was unable to sleep that time.

She visited his grave a lot of times after that. Every day for the first three months. Weekly for the next. Until she went monthly when she was in high school.

The graveyard calmed her, soothed her fears, her insecurities, she felt more carefree than anywhere else in the small town where her entire world revolved. Funny how she feels such liberation in the presence of those confined in everlasting slumber, whose bones have decayed, whose souls have been robbed away by the earth's oldest friend, Death.

'I was sad that day, Daddy. I was hurrying home not because paint boy was running after me with his brush but because I knew that would be the last time I'd see him. They're going back home and their summer is over. I don't think they'll be back next year.'

Salty tears splattered on the ground beside the stone that held her hero's name. She deftly wiped off those that stilled on her cheeks, those same hands she used to shake him awake to no avail.

'No one warned me it'll be the last time I'll see you too.' Suddenly the graveyard wasn't too friendly anymore, it was all grey and the dullest shades of green she could find, interwoven together to paint her a picture of a somber truth. Somewhere out there, something akin to Fate or Tragedy, something will always pull people away from her, and no matter how much she'll encase them in her fragile, young hands, she won't be able to keep them for herself. Not ever.

The moment she stepped out of that field in her blood red gown and cap, she never looked back. She never saw the point in reminiscence, or wonder, or sentimentality. Her reign in that place was over. Her potentials lie outside the town that clung to its meticulous routine and traditions. She has done enough for them by rendering its life, colors. Colors that would have been otherwise still absent if not for Caroline Forbes. The girl who got her hands on every event, activity, and leadership spots as much as she can.

But if ever you can't find her, try the cemetery.

If you ask her, she wouldn't be able to tell you where or how exactly it started. Or what sparked that sudden burst of inspiration. There is that moment in someone's life when a purpose is driven into your soul either like a bullet train, like a dagger hidden in the shadows, or like mildew drops that precipitate in your skin slowly but quickly gone altogether. She had that, she grabbed it, she's still holding onto it until now.

Caroline was about to get home after two years of being away in college. It had been everything she thought it would be, a plethora of new and old knowledge, endless accounts of truth, requirements and papers dumping on her like a blizzard, but she's anything but a sore loser and she pranced her way through it like she was made for these kinds of things. Well of course she is, and so much more.

"Ah, but the world simply poses more questions for us, doesn't it. It's like a never ending ride, once you arrive at a station, you simply hitch for another ride and it goes on and on." Thick eyes looked at her through thick spectacles, his back eternally bent through time but his words came to her swift and effective.

"As long as the thirst never wanes, isn't it?" She eyed the volumes mounted on the shelves, dusted day and night, pages and pages of questions, never answers. A throaty chuckle accompanied by a phlegmatic cough sounded from the man in front of her, grayed and frail, she wondered how many more before, sat in her place, contemplating with him about purpose and reason.

"But you won't ever allow that to happen to you, would you?" The spark in his eyes would haunt her forever, it was part of the smallest of stones that rolled off the bare mountains in her head that launched the avalanche of her doom. She would never forget those eyes.

She didn't like it. It was shabby, and contained, the air was stuffy she should train herself not to breathe, the bathroom sink was clogged when she arrived, the tables creaked on their legs, the windows didn't approve much of the sun. It was like she sent herself to a place to wither like a dying flower void of nutrition. But it was to be her home.

A place where she can plant the seeds of her ever growing desire to reanimate those that have pelted away. A place where she can gather her darkness and bottle them up, to create a formula that will change the course of her search for truth.

People back home have always attributed her to sunshine personified, 'you're like a living light bulb' paint boy once said before he threw a handful of sticky mud on her face. She wiped it off like how she had always shrugged off her self doubt. 'Why does Elena always have the nicer dress? Or why do kids flock to her tea party? Why does Matty always pull on her pigtails?'

She procured for herself tools, materials, and equipments which she will exhaust to the point of insanity, some she bought with what little allowance and savings she had, some she got by charming her way through lab rats around her campus, most of it though were provided by her humble professor who couldn't even lift a test tube if he wants to. Blame it on arthritis.

And so begins the tale.

Caroline started with flowers. Tiny lilies of the valley, aromatic lavenders, blood red roses. She ended up frustratingly tearing at her hair out every night. Or at dawn. But she placed a mantra in her head that she will not stray from. Reboot, Reconstitute, Revive.

So she picks herself up every time she feels her shoulders slump, or when her eyes turn downcast, or when she feels crushed and exhausted beyond relief. It was no soothing game, no absolute reward at the end, but she persevered anyway.

Rinse. Repeat.

The first time she observed the tiniest amount of improvement on a withered lily, she jotted it down immediately on her notes.

January 12, 20-, 0311 hours.

She was stunned. Caroline looked at it with disbelief, could her eyes be mocking her? Because that would be a cruel deceit. She repeated the mantra in her head furiously as she endeavored to work on it in a more rigorous pace, if there were any chances of her getting the right equation at last then she'd be damned before she'll let it pass.

Her work table was a disaster. Notes cluttered everywhere, together with her colored sharpies, which are probably the only things that give off some sort of delight in her desolate course, equipments of different shapes and sizes, some even rusty and jagged at the edges, but what stood out the most as she admired the chaos were the tiny pots of resuscitated blossoms.

She gave herself a chance to smile and feel the victory seep into her skin before she transformed back to work mode and apply her new found knowledge onto more…locomotive beings.

First was a hamster she took from a sobbing freshman when she passed by him from her quick trip to the grocery, it was his pet but for some unfortunate event, lost its life before breakfast.

Next was a white mice she knew was scampering around her unit for a few weeks now but has regrettably met its fate. How? Well God bless her if she knew.

It was followed by a guinea pig she asked from a nearby veterinary clinic whose owner was experiencing some strange sickness that was growing highly infectious among the animals that were under his care. Poor thing didn't survive the night.

Caroline felt as if she had started from scrap all over again, she knew she should have taken notes on the differences between flora and fauna.

Reboot. Reconstitute. Revive.

It was finally a pretty little hummingbird that did its most humble part. Caroline was the one who stopped breathing as the tiny creature heaved a long deep breath and she could hear the soft pitter patter of its small heart over the monitor she attached to it.

She looked and she looked for as long as her eyes can. She knew it longed to flutter its wings back to flight, she knew it wanted to peel open its eyes to gaze upon the sky again, she knew it wanted to give his resurrected being a whole new shove at this… life.

And when it did all these things, Caroline was once again the little girl with her sun colored dress, dancing around with her blonde ponytails whipping with each of her turn as she danced on their lawn, oblivious to the world. And what darkness awaited her at the end. Or beginning. However you see it.

She was sipping on her coffee. Black. Almost certainly like how a part of her heart has been castwith a shadow as she pursued playing a supernatural being of inhumane capabilities. It was raining hard and she kept her windows closed as the heavens pounded on it, probably to knock her back into her senses.

A sharp rapping on her front door made her frown and her eyes trained immediately on the clock she kept close to her working table. 1:08 am.

Common sense prevented her from allowing anyone to interrupt her reverie, she had scarcely a time for that anyways. She watched her hummingbird flit its wings silently in the cage as if it held answers for her. The knocking increased and she grumbled under her breath as she placed her large tumbler on the table and stood to answer it.

She twisted the overused door knob, fighting a little with its lock before she slowly opened it, revealing a man she knew once a long time ago, in a summer of her childhood she bid she could forget.

A pair of eyes that were made of steel and ice pinned her to the spot, he was drenched in the rain, his clothes clung haplessly on his frame, with dirt and tears on his shirt and pants, his boots were covered in mud, but if you looked closely on his face, there were tiny splatters of 'was that blood?'

"Can I help you?" Caroline squeaked and she wished desperately her voice didn't quiver one bit. Of course you can't say it didn't.

"Miss Forbes" the man said in the same deep voice she knew she ran away from when she was younger. She knows that that still applied to her anyhow. "I heard you were looking for a corpse to work on your… experiment."

She furrowed her brows in distrust. "How'd you know that? That was a covert request."

"Well, you don't seem to be so covert, darling" he smirked in an intimidating manner, "I had connections and I'm here to offer you a deal."

"I'm not inviting you inside." She crossed her arms in front of her and stood more confidently than she was a few seconds ago. "So you can state your deal right where you're standing."

He laughed with an obvious hint of menace as he shook his head. "Not a little girl anymore, are we? Of course, I didn't expect that, we both know I can never be trusted." He made a dramatic way of pulling a handkerchief from inside his pocket and wiped off his face before he swept his eyes behind her. She rubbed her palms over her arms consciously but she never took her eyes away from him.

"I don't intend to stay long so I might as well be done with what I came here for. I have a body for you, I hope it will suffice for whatever purpose you have for it. I don't really care to be quite honest."

She opened her mouth to say something but he stopped her with a wave of his hand. "If you're wondering what I want in return, I ask only one thing." He fixed his eyes on her with a fierce and coldstare. She kept her mouth close as she waited for him to continue, heart hammering on her chest. "Never breathe a word about this to anyone. Not to your closest confidante, not your most trusted comrade, not even to your professor who seem keen to tolerate you with your hideous activites…"

She opened her mouth again to protest but he stopped her with a murderous glare, "I assure you I don't know the extent of your private research, I just don't get the allure of working on something that's dead. Your secret is yours and I trust that you could do the same to mine."

She tried not to falter on the obvious threat so she kept her bitch face on, "How do you know about my professor?"

"You should really stop with the questions, Ms. Forbes. So, do we have a deal?" his hand shot towards her, waiting to seal their deal.

"The body?"

He laughed the same laugh that shot shivers on her back before he bent down and in a swift manner dragged a body bag right in front of her. He straightened up and held up his hand again while his eyebrows shot in a challenging way.

Uncrossing her arms, Caroline stared at the bag that was now residing on her threshold, she pressed her lips together in consideration before she placed her hand on his. He gripped it tight causing her to wince slightly and he bent down to her ear, "Say a word and you'll end up like him." He pulled his face away from her but still clutched her hand tight in his, "Oh, he was going to find you by the way, I believe he finally did." He released her hand and turned away but not before leaving her with one last nasty grin.

The last time she felt like this was when she went home running for her father, so hyped up to tell him all about her afternoon but instead she found him sprawled on the floor and little Caroline Forbes shook him back to consciousness but all she got was the tiniest tremor from the fingers in his right hand and then nothing more.

She remained unmoving by the body on the floor, which she has managed to drag inside, for the past ten minutes now. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't find the means to take her eyes off the face of the man that Mikael brought to her doorstep. Dead.

She always knew he hid something cruel in his smiles, she used to see him peering through the window when he lets his children play outside, almost every child in their town were reluctant to play with his kids when they came because of this. Even his own seemed to fear him in ways Caroline never understood until now.

And as she looked at him, cold, lifeless, soulless, the answer to her questions came to her in a body bag. Personally delivered to her by the devil himself. But damn it, how different is she from the devil when she herself have been concocting elements to defy the supreme being. Not that she was religious in any way.

She lifted her hand to trace her finger over the edge of his jaw, it was covered in a stubble and she observed that even bereft with life his lips were mocking her with the slightest tinge of red. Like the red he used to chase her with on the tip of his brush, across the playground. His eyes were closed but she could still see in her head how blue they were the first time she saw them, it reminded her of clear summer skies, cloudless and warm.

He was looking for her, Mikael had said, 'why?'

She shook her head as she tried to rid herself from the horrible image that is the man who minutes ago was standing outside her apartment, right after he killed his son. She couldn't decide whether it was more appalling to find a murderer visiting you at such an ungodly hour or was it the fact that he brought his victim right to her for her perusal, and did she mention said body used to be the little kid she called 'paint boy'?

Her eyes watered for the first time in months. Even on the brink of bailing out of the trap she encased herself in, never had she cried, she didn't waste a single tear over her failures, not once. But now, looking at him, she was transported back to her childhood kitchen, once again she felt small and she was so much tempted to shake him awake.

"Klaus." It was a broken sound, something she swore right then and there, will never befall her lips ever again.

tbc

i haven't written (or published) a klaroline story for a while but i hope this makes up for it. I have a few pages written already as continuation of this piece but I'm not sure if I'm going to continue this or not (or where to take it for that matter). Inspiration has been lacking lately and I know a lot of us feel the same way but, I STILL DO SHIP KLAROLINE. and i don't think i'm ever gonna stop.

For those who love the original Frankenstein novel or any other stories that came after that one, my apologies if i messed it up, and I'm probably still gonna mess it up soon especially with the details and some parts that has something to do with greek myth. I'm not an expert on those but i hope you like this one.

Unbeta'ed, so forgive the errors, please but feel free to drop me a review if you wish! Love you beautiful people and KC on!

find me on tumblr: silenceofthequeen