Caroline selects her men carefully.
She looks for weaknesses, for big bad wolves with pure hearts just waiting, ready for her to unwrap.
(I love presents, she said to her daddy once, the birthday before there were no more birthdays anymore)
She feeds on them even before she is a bloodsucker; she grows from little complements handed out as crumbs, from gentle kisses dropped in the curve of her neck. She craves the breathy 'I love yous' whispered in the inky blackness when they think she is asleep. She saves her little projects from themselves: 1,2,3, easy as pie.
That's not how it ends up working out.
Everything collapses when she falls apart in a set of bone wrenching screams torn from her by her father, with the scent of singed flesh and scars that should never heal- but they do heal, and she's the china doll she was before after he finishes with her, and Caroline hates it. She starts to give away her own 'I love yous' as if they actually mean something, and she's wanted the ivory tower and the knight in shining tower for so long she starts to believe the stories crafted by her own hands.
Enter the big bad wolf. There is no heart of gold in this one, she tells herself firmly. This one is beyond saving.
(Her daddy was beyond saving; she learned that one the hard way)
She dazzles; she sparkles; she shines. It is exhausting. Underneath her gold wrapping, Caroline is just as world weary as Klaus.
"I will take you to see the world," he whispers like it's their little secret, like they can just fly away and leave everything and everyone behind. In her childhood bedroom, with her ten year old princess lamp casting yellow light onto him like he's drawn on parchment, Klaus looks nothing like a predator.
Be careful, she tells herself, or he'll eat you all up.
Klaus pushes his fingers into the spidery cracks in Mystic Falls and tugs, sending the entire town collapsing in a heap of wide eyed corpses and dead children.
(Because that's all they really are, isn't it? Little children and playing at adulthood, as if they will ever really grow up)
"You made Tyler leave!" She screams soundlessly into the night, the dark catching in her throat and clogging it up so she isn't brave enough to throw the words in his face like she wants to. Oh, but she will, there will come a time when the last worn thread holding together will snap, and she will unleash all her fury before the velvet curtain has fallen.
"Do not use me as your scapegoat," Klaus murmurs into her throat, fists curling in the length of her gold spun hair. "When this town falls apart- and it will- it always does, it will be through no fault of mine. When your little world collapses and you are looking for another, come to me."
He is gone in the next instant. Which is a good thing, Caroline tells herself, because she has too much to do right now; hunting for the missing puzzle pieces of her little town and trying to fit them together to create a full picture once more.
"We should stick together," Elena says seriously to them when it becomes obvious that they are not twenty-three as they claim. Damon raises an eyebrow; he is hoping for the chance to whisk her away and show her the world he wants her know, desperate to see her giddy on the laughter she has given to him and no one else. Stefan shifts uncomfortably beside her, the creak of aged wood as he exhales. Bonnie and Jeremy have been left out of this particular group meeting.
"No," Stefan says, and leaves.
Elena looks crestfallen, but Caroline waves her sadness away; ever the pacifier.
"Take a honeymoon," she suggests to the couple in a soft voice, one she used to use when she was talking to children at the kindergarten she volunteered at. "See the world."
(You were made for the finer things in life, she remembers, and wonders where she will go)
"We'll meet in the middle," Caroline promises, and leaves Elena with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to call.
Fifty years of loneliness have been put behind her when she finally sees Klaus again. She's seen the finer things; run her fingers over the Great Pyramids, sat in the cool marble of the Taj Mahal, even seen real Van Goghs. And she did it all without him, she thinks with a surge of pride when she catches sight of him at the end of the street.
Something makes her follow him, to the end of the next street where he disappears into thin air, wispy dreams of a ghost she never even knew. The world is at my fingertips, Caroline Forbes tells herself, lips thinning into a straight line of distaste, and I do not need him to tell me that.
"Looking for me?" Klaus whispers behind her, taking up his spot behind her ear as if there isn't fifty years behind them. As if she is the same Caroline Forbes, so tired she just wants to give up and let him have her.
"Yes," She says honestly, and turns to face him, noting the wicked sparkle in his blue eyes.
(Chicory eyes, eyes that suggest lazy blue skies and the world at your feet, darling, eyes that could show you the world)
"The years have treated you well, Caroline Forbes," Klaus runs his eyes along her frame, name spilling from his lips in the rough english accent as reverent as if she was a goddess made for him to worship.
She inclines her head and makes to step away from him, step back into the whirlwind of sightseeing and museums and paintings and the quiet click of her camera as she documents every single little thing, but his hand reaches for her wrist and pulls her to him.
"Have dinner with me," He says, and it's more of a statement that a question.
She should refuse.
She won't; she's weakweakweak and always interested in men that are interested in her.
"Maybe," She calls over her shoulders as she walks away, and it is a promise.
(She used to dream of ballrooms and a prince who wanted her and only her, now she dreams only in red)
Caroline crosses her legs and watches Klaus' gaze shift to the bare length of them, the skirt of her dress hitched up to mid thigh. She refuses to pull it down. Klaus looks at her as if he would like to eat her all up- that, at least, hasn't changed. The fire in his eyes burns bright, a prince in villain's clothing that wants Caroline all to himself-
as if.
He is a monster, she thinks, but so am I.
His hands steeple in front of his face and she watches the lights in the room dim as the music becomes a touch louder. This is her ballroom.
"Dance with me?" Caroline asks, before he has the chance to.
Klaus chuckles and the sound sends awareness skittering in her veins, the tiny suggestion of something more.
With the silver light slanting across his face, the lines melt away and he's left looking down at her with thinly veiled admiration in his glowing eyes. Caroline is aware of the length of him pressed against her front- aware of the fact that his dilated pupils mirror her own.
His hand moves from the curve of her waist to her hip, slender fingers trailing the bare skin of her collarbone and leaving a trail of blazing fire in their wake.
Klaus dips her in one seamless move; gently pulling the hairclip from her hair and sending the curls cascading down her bare back in the same instant.
"I love your hair," he whispers, leaning down and pressing his lips firmly beneath her ear.
Caroline relaxes into him for a full second, closes her eyes and lets herself get sucked into the glittering fantasy-
(Not today)
She pulls away with a sharp smile that doesn't reach her eyes and takes the slightest step back. It's enough to anchor her in her own world, and let her know she doesn't belong in this one of gleaming floors scrubbed clean of blood.
But doesn't she?
I am a monster, she thinks, running her hands through her hair and taking in the sight of Klaus. A monster that craves the warmth of blood sliding through her veins, the comfort of the heat as it settles low in her stomach. I should be ashamed.
"It's the natural order, darling," he says as his fingers loosely close around her wrist and tug her towards their table once more. "Don't beat yourself up."
Her voice is ready to burst through her throat, shrill and protesting because she can choose whether or not she is a monster, but she finds the words stay stuck in her throat as he leans towards her and brushes his lips against hers slightly.
Caroline's eyes flutter closed, and she registers the slight scratch of his stubble against her face, and the fact she is leaning into him, but when she opens them again, he is gone.
She meets Elena in Rome, literally bumps into her on the street and carries on walking, because she doesn't recognize this creature with cropped bronze hair and a free smile. The Elena she knew carried herself as if she was in the midst of a raincloud, always watching to see where she stepped to be certain the floor didn't fall through again.
"Have you spoken to Bonnie?" Elena asks when they're having dinner together, Damon left to deal with something in their hotel room.
"On and off," Caroline shrugs, thinking of the last visit she paid to Bonnie's house in London, and found the four bedroom suburban house with its off white exterior and crackling wood fires-everything she wanted. "Last time was when Lucy was born."
Bonnie has three children now- a twin girl and boy and a tiny one year old the very picture of herself. Caroline wants that so much she told herself last time she visited she couldn't go back for a while, because the sharp pain she carried in herself after seeing what she couldn't have was not healthy.
(I wanted three kids for myself, a little suburban house and a husband who loved me more than life)
Their conversation falls into the same comfortable territory as it used to, and Caroline wonders why a century hasn't changed their relationship at all. It was in danger of falling completely, she knows, and the separation was something they needed.
Elena leaves her with a light kiss on the cheek and a promise to meet before the decade is up, and when Caroline watches her return to Damon and give him a slight smile- the kind of smile couples only share when they know each other inside out, the I know what you're thinking because I'm thinking it too smile- and thinks with a pang that maybe she shouldn't visit Elena anymore either.
She leaves for Tokyo that night, snapped up by the bright lights and the fast paced life and the safety in the knowledge that whatever she does, she will be pulled in by the glow of the city and no one will ever know that she was there.
(It's not safety, it's loneliness)
Caroline doesn't last three hours in Tokyo, and books herself a plane back to America that night. Her whole family is dead- she had no siblings, everyone is gone. Mystic Falls isn't hers anymore.
"So much sadness," the man behind her whispers into her ears and her fingers clench into palms because she knows who it is. "You have the world at your feet, Caroline Forbes. Take it."
Caroline takes in the sight of Klaus, fresh in jeans and a thin shirt, and thinks about how she's just as lonely as he is.
Just as much of a monster, just as lonely, she thinks, leaning back into the butter soft leather of her first class chair and surveying him under her lashes. What's the difference between them?
"Don't flatter yourself," he says with a low chuckle, and she closes her eyes. "I'm much more powerful than you could ever be."
"I wouldn't count on it," Caroline leans in her chair to face him, taking in the sparkle of his blue eyes and the charmed silver resting at his throat.
He laughs.
"Let me take you to New York."
She shakes her head, but Klaus rests back in his seat with the smile of a man who has got what he always wanted and has no intention of ever letting it go again.
It takes her a decade to kiss him, because he refuses to kiss her when she's tipsy, the taste of expensive liquor coating her mouth, velvet soft and enticing.
She likes to think she mellows him out, but she admits that the world is much scarier than Klaus and he's seen things that would drive her to destruction.
The moon's low in the sky when she does kiss him; it's not a special day, they're at a nameless restaurant and she has a little smile on her lips from the moment they walk in so they don't get past the first course because he knows.
Caroline feels the rough texture of the wall through the thin fabric of her dress and presses her back more firmly into the brick, taking his face in his hands and claiming his lips for her own.
He mutters something that sounds suspiciously like- finally- and she laughs, because really, what else can she do?
a/n: don't ask I don't know what this is :(((