Disclamer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries, nor do I make any profit from this story.
Summary: Post 4x09. An insight on Klaus' thoughts as he walks away from Carol's dead body.
Warning: Angst.
True Colors
"Nature always wears the color of the spirit"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Klaus walked away from the fountain and Carol's body, the fingers of his left hand gripping the bottle of alcohol he insisted on finishing. His lower limbs felt so heavy that he was almost dragging his feet, causing them to scrape loudly against the gravel.
The sound of the cool breeze soothed his ears, rendered oversensitive by the deluge of cries for mercy, agonizing screams and sounds of torn flesh. It had been an agitated evening, to say the least. Lowering his eyes to his right sleeve for a second, Klaus winced. The feeling of the dampened fabric against his skin was unpleasant, but something else caught his attention.
The sleeve of his jacket was grey.
He blinked, faintly wondering if the day had taken such a toll on him that his eyes were getting tired. He was absolutely certain that he'd picked a black suit, because he had a good chance of running into Caroline, and she'd called him "perfect" in his black suit. Yes, he was definitely wearing black. His sleeve should have gone even darker, because of the water. How come it looked grey, then?
In the darkness of that night, he lowered his gaze to the ground and to the artificial snow that had been blown in his face all day long. It was intolerably, unnaturally bright. Blinding, even. He looked back at Carol's body that was floating in the fountain. Her dress seemed plum, rather than the rich Byzantium it had been moments prior.
Klaus froze.
Here we go again, he thought bitterly. White.
Because he could manipulate colors and mix them until they looked the exact shade he had in mind, he'd started associating them with emotions and moods. Whatever state he was in, there was a color for it. A color that he could throw on canvas and alter until it became more satisfying – a better state. He was that much of a control freak.
Black was usually associated to his happy, human days – when he didn't have a care in the world other than being wittier than Elijah and cheekier than Kol, all the while making Finn smile and bickering with Rebekah. Black was the color of innocence; a time when he was still afraid of the dark, when ignorance defined him. He'd learned the hard way that ignorance was bliss, and that he'd have been better off not knowing about the creatures that dwelled on the darkness.
Satisfaction was mostly red. Some said it was the color of love; he said that was nonsense. Some others said it symbolized aggression – with that, he couldn't argue. The most obvious explanation was that he fed profusely, never waiting for hunger to torment him before he sank his fangs into a pulsating vein or, at worst, in a stolen blood bag. Red was his most profound urges and impulses. It was also the closest he got to happiness.
Brown was the color of his anger. It was said to be the symbol of earth, and home. The soil he so often felt against his face when Mikael lost his temper, and the home he was never really part of. Brown made sure he never forgot how many times he'd thought he had found a home, only to find himself betrayed. Brown sang in his ear: "always homeless at heart, and just as angry".
Klaus stopped abruptly, dropping the bottle of alcohol, and soon enough, dropping to his knees. Everywhere he was looking, all color seemed to have been drained, leaving only a vivid, aggressive white behind. For a second, he wondered if this was a medical condition that could have been cured, were he still human.
It took a second for him to realize that even if this was actually a condition, there would be no cure, because he would be the only one to suffer from it. Because at the end of the day, human or not, he was the only one of his kind. An Original vampire and a wolf.
Klaus sighed.
For a long time, he had persuaded himself that breeding hybrids would vanquish his loneliness. Considering the dysfunctional relationship he had with his biological siblings, creating a new family seemed to be his best chance. But even though they were both werewolves and vampires, the hybrids he sired weren't anything like him. They weren't born this way, and even the artificial connection he shared with them had been severed.
Following the lead of Tyler Lockwood, they had found a way to untangle themselves from the supernatural knot that linked them to him. He knew enough about sire bonds to guess how they had done it. They had gone through the werewolf transformation time and time again, breaking each and every bone in their body until the pain was so overwhelming that it became numb and disappeared. It was very likely that it had taken days, weeks even. Endless moments of cracking noises, broken bones, tears, sweat, screams of agony and sore throats.
Klaus reminisced about their faces, the terrified look in their eyes a split second before he took their lives, earlier that night. He would have been damned if he had let them survive this betrayal. But now that they were dead, he was back to asking himself the same old questions. Why were people so intent on breaking away from him? What was it about him that made them run?
He inhaled sharply in the cold night air, closing his eyes only to be attacked by more whiteness behind his eyelids.
People said that black was the negation of color, but in Klaus' opinion, it was quite the opposite. White was the infuriating absence of everything, and everyone. It was impossible to escape, with its brightness. To most beings, it was the color of clouds, snow and angels. How ridiculous. White was pure, yes, because it annihilated everything else around. It was unsafe, and unpredictable, and scary , and painful.
It kept Red, Black and even Brown at a distance, constantly threatening to stain them with an unexpected splash, to dilute them and lessen their intensity. Like it had, in his donation to the Winter Wonderland Charity event. The painting was mostly dark: black with a few hints of brown, and, in the middle, what Stefan and Caroline had so elegantly called a "snow flake".
A snowflake had several ramifications, each of which could be seen as the symbol of something Klaus had tried to do, someone he had tried to be. No matter how numerous the ramifications, a snowflake never stretched out towards fulfillment. If anything, its size narrowed until it melted, and nobody cared.
"There's something…lonely about it," Caroline had said, watching his work. Klaus remembered perfectly how his heart had briefly ached at her words. The snowflake was lonely. And it was white. And it was him.
"In the end, we're left infinitely and utterly alone," Klaus had told Stefan earlier that night. It was nothing but the naked truth, and he could testify about it once more, as he stood up and put one foot in front the other without knowing how. The property was empty of any guest, and the hostess was dead. That left only him and his bottle of booze.
And White.
He'd felt it the moment he killed that last hybrid girl. It had knocked him down a bit, made him trip over his own feet. The usual premise; that horrifying sensation of being unable to breathe. That's when he had known that he needed to kill again, to ease the ache.
He was looking for Tyler, obviously, but Carol was there, alone and defenseless. His mind hadn't even had time to comprehend what we was doing that she had already stopped struggling. Her lungs had been filled with water, and when she'd become motionless, Klaus had genuinely believed that he had won. He made as if to caress her wet hair in gratitude, but abruptly let go of her.
Because what was there to be grateful for, when he still felt like he couldn't breathe?
How had he been foolish enough to think for a second that the night wouldn't end like this, with him on his knees in the middle of nowhere, agonizing as an imaginary wave of white lava rushed over him? Hundreds of imaginary white daggers pierced his skin and ripped through his muscles, creating hundreds of imaginary white holes through which the White Liquid of Pain flowed towards his heart.
Klaus coughed, desperate to fight back. But the banging of his heart against his ribcage had begun to soften, and the rush of adrenaline from his latest killings was also coming down. Steady tremor was gripping his limbs, and he gave in with a sigh. White was going to win, once again tonight.
White was the color of ghosts, and that was probably the only symbolism that Klaus and his mortal counterparts could agree on. As he felt himself whiten dramatically, he embraced the idea that until another color took over, he would be a ghost. Watching the world go on from the sidelines, unable to grasp anything, expecting a salvation that would never come.
There wasn't going to be a helping hand to pull him on his feet. He'd have to struggle, as usual. There was nowhere to run, no one to call for help. And not even the thought of Gold could ease anything inside of him. Especially not the thought of Gold, he thought.
Gold was the color he associated with Caroline. It was the color of warmth, and she was like the sun.
Caroline was not the first woman who had him infatuated; over the centuries, he had had his fair share of love affairs. With older and younger women, with witches and queens, even. Some of them had offered themselves to him, and for others he had to earn it. Sometimes, they rejected him; and he lived through it. But this particular case of (allegedly) unreciprocated feelings didn't sit well with him.
Because she was optimistic in any situation, sophisticated and elegant despite what one might hear about small-town girls. Because there was the distinctive sound of her heart skipping a beat every time they met. Because she knew who he was, but she didn't know him – and because, at times, she didn't seem completely appalled at the idea of finding out. But mostly, Klaus was attracted to every quality she possessed that he was virtually deprived of. Caroline Forbes was giving and compassionate.
But Caroline Forbes' golden halo was not going to be enough, this time. Because they didn't have "a thing" and she had been lovely all day simply to distract him.
As he fought to hold on to the hints of gold that struggled to prevail in his mind, Klaus realized that he was standing on the porch of her house, still bloody, with a bottle of alcohol in hand. Puzzled by his own actions, he closed his eyes and tried to see the color that was hiding behind his eyelids to determine his course of action.
Was he going to yell at her? Was he going to feel better around her? Would she make it out alive?
Caroline opened the door, and Klaus' eyes immediately locked with hers. The blue of her pupils was particularly intense tonight, he noticed. Something stirred inside him. They stayed silent, leaving it to the breeze to fill the space between their bodies.
Klaus stood there, barely surprised that fear didn't paralyze her. He had not been invited in: there was nothing he could do to hurt her from the threshold. Plus, did he want to hurt her?
She breathed his name, giving him a shock.
It sounded as though it had rolled off her tongue a thousand times, with the special intimacy that Klaus desperately longed for. When Caroline shifted her weight on her left leg, Klaus' eyes had to adjust to the light. She was impossibly beautiful, he mused, even without makeup and her hair tied in a messy bun.
Her pajamas were blue. He blinked a few times. Blue wasn't one of his Colors. What to do, now?
Caroline's lips twitched into the hint of a smile. She didn't know yet. It was the only explanation.
"Klaus," she called softly.
He squeezed his eyes shut, committing the delicate sound of her voice to memory. In a few hours, she'd hear he had drowned Carol Lockwood and her lips would never twitch into a smile to him, and she would never talk softly to him, ever again.
"You will be fine," she continued, as if answering his inner interrogations.
He nodded stupidly.
As he walked back to his mansion, he wondered about the consensual meaning of blue. It was said to slow the body's metabolism, and make for calmness. It was the color of the truth, intelligence and faith.
Klaus smiled to himself as he pushed his front door open.
From then on, Blue would be the light at the end of the tunnel. A semblance of relief, a hint of hope.
fin
A/N : Hello, wonderful people of FFN and Happy New Year. I began 2013 with a less that joyful fic but I was so obsessed with this idea that I had to share it with you. What do you think? Please don't hesitate to criticize, as long as you keep it constructive, it'll help me improve. Thanks :) Maggie.