This takes place following the events of 3.15 and before 3.16, so no spoilers for any upcoming episodes unless I'm being unintentionally prophetic...which I doubt.

Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries characters et al are obviously not mine. This is based solely on the TV-verse.

A Battle of Wills

"You can't blame me for trying."

"No?"

"Fine," Caroline tossed her hair over her shoulder as she spoke and leaned against the bar of the Mystic Grill hoping to look far more casual than she actually felt. "Blame me if you like, but I won't be apologising for it."

Loosening the death grip she had on the handles of her purse, she set it down on the stool in front of her. It served as an utterly pointless barrier between her and a vampire who could easily disembowel her in less than the time it would take him to down the scotch he was currently nursing. Caroline figured she'd escaped that particular fate when he continued swirling the amber liquid around, his gaze fixed on the miniature vortex in his glass.

She hadn't gone looking for him. In fact, if asked at a later date what exactly had been going through her mind when she'd decided to skip her last class of the day, finding Klaus at Mystic Falls' only worthwhile restaurant and bar and talking to him would have been somewhere behind soaking her head in kerosene and lighting it on fire. Yet she currently stood no more than a foot away from the exact Klaus she hadn't been planning on seeing let alone talking to as he drank what was probably not his first alcoholic beverage of the day.

Thankful that her non-plans hadn't resulted in an uncomfortable exploration of her insides, Caroline figured one word out of him was about all she was going to get. Ignoring the faintest twinge of disappointment, she discreetly rolled her eyes and decided she could probably make it back to school before either Bonnie or Elena noticed she'd been gone.

"After four hundred years of being hunted by Mikael," The hard rumble of his voice stopped her cold as if he'd reached out a hand and grabbed the back of her neck to hold her in place. She fought away the shiver that tried to race its way down her spine. "I stopped just long enough in an English village near the northern wall for a short respite - to refresh my horse and sate my hunger."

He didn't turn to look at her. He had his eyes fixed on the swirling amber in his glass and when he brought it to his lips he only closed his eyes to savour the taste of the fiery liquid, remembering the warm rush of blood in his mouth from centuries ago as if it had been just that morning.

"The village had been in the throes of the black death. Bodies lay heaped in mounds, too many dying too quickly for the few remaining to bury. Animals lay dead where they'd been left to graze. Crops withered in the fields." As Klaus spoke, his index finger drew her gaze as he slowly began to trace around the rim of his glass. His richly accented voice only seemed to transfix her further as he continued his tale. She didn't notice when he turned his head slightly and fixed his eyes on her instead of the scotch rippling in his glass.

"In the few weeks I spent partaking myself of their hospitality -" Caroline really couldn't stop the eye-roll from happening at that. Her eyes locked with Klaus' after they'd centered and she couldn't stop the heavy swallow at his intense stare. "- I'd become a name they whispered behind closed doors and under the cover of darkness, too terrified to speak it aloud lest they lure out the monster in the shadows."

He leaned across the bar to close the small gap between them. If he'd still needed to breathe, she probably would have felt it fan across her face as he whispered the rest for her ears only, "And when I had had my fill, all that was left of that dying village was decaying flesh and crumbling rock."

Somewhere between the moment she'd walked into the Grill and the one where Klaus had moved close enough to her that she could make out each different strand of blond in his hair, Caroline had forgotten that she still liked to maintain the pretence of breathing. She forced herself to inhale and watched as his curls fluttered ever so slightly when she forced herself to slowly blow the useless air back out; it still worked to calm the nerves threatening to burn through her skin and the boiling in her stomach.

"I'm not afraid of you." Somehow her voice sounded only half as intimidated as she felt.

Klaus' lip twitched and he fought to hide a smirk as he straightened. He was convinced even the lowliest of lap dogs could smell the fear in the air between them. His eyes never left hers as he raised his glass to his lips and slowly drained it of its contents.

"I think you are, love," he replied, his voice low and dark. "I think you're terrified that one day I'll just get bored of you all. Raze this entire town. Burn it to the ground – to ash." His voice was barely above a whisper now, "I've done it before."

"You're wrong," Caroline replied, her voice quiet. The after school crowd was starting to trickle in, but she knew he could hear her. It was probably best if no one else did anyway. "I don't think you'll get bored. I think you are bored. You ran from your father for a thousand years, hunted down the doppelganger trying to make yourself as powerful as you possibly could, and now you're the biggest bad ass in the history of the world." She leaned forward ever so slightly, swallowing the knot in her throat as she watched his eyes darken to cobalt at her words, "Only now I don't think you know what to do with all the free time."

As close as she was to him now, he could kill her more easily than she could possibly imagine and only half of the ways to do it would get him noticed. Instead, Klaus signalled to the bartender for another drink with a nod of his head. He watched with growing amusement the struggle in her eyes as she tamped down on the fear his very nature inspired in any sensible creature and replaced it with something he couldn't quite identify.

"You can't destroy Mystic Falls." Caroline's voice, stronger now, pushed through the tension between them.

Thoroughly amused, Klaus raised his newly filled glass to his lips but didn't drink.

"Can't I?" He couldn't quite hide the challenge in his voice. Maybe he would have tried harder if he weren't quite so tempted to see that little spark of that unidentifiable something ignite just a little bit in her eyes.

Emboldened further by her as-yet-not-decapitated state, Caroline carelessly pushed the bar stool aside and stepped directly in front of the seated hybrid bringing them eye to eye.

"No," she replied, her voice hardening but not rising. "There's too much history for you here. You carried around the coffins of your brothers and sister after you'd daggered them. You even dragged around the coffin of your dead mother because you wanted to be reunited as one big psychotically murderous family someday."

His eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction, darkening to just shades away from midnight, but Caroline either didn't notice or chose not to care as she continued with her hands balled into fists at her side, her eyes flashing as she spat out the rest, "You carried them around with you because you were lonely and now they've left you and this town's all you've got."

Caroline reached over and plucked the scotch from his unresisting fingers. She downed it in one mad gulp. The burning in her throat forced her eyes shut for the briefest of seconds as she forced herself not to gasp. She hated scotch, but anything was better than watching him smugly sip at the thing. When she opened her eyes that infuriating smirk was back.

"And I wouldn't let you destroy it even if you could." Caroline was pleased to watch that smirk fall just a fraction at her words.

Delicately, she placed the empty tumbler on the bar. Proud of herself for maintaining at least an outward showing of composure as her insides roiled with a dozen different emotions, she calmly pushed herself a step back away from him. Away from the maddening smirk that belied exactly how quickly his initial amusement was fading.

"I definitely won't let you hurt my friends." Reaching into her jean's pocket, she pulled a bill out and slapped in onto the bar. The last thing she needed was for him to think she owed him any more favours and she found herself taking some perverse pleasure in the way his eyes followed her hand and at the surprise he was a touch too slow to hide.

"And, again, that's something I'm never apologising for." Satisfied she'd made her point, Caroline spun around on her heeled boots and forced herself to walk, not run, away from him.

Klaus watched her disappear through the front doors of the Grill with something akin to appreciation. He'd admired her spirit before, to be sure, but this last failed attempt at his life had him expecting to find the blonde baby vampire cowering at his feet in fear – or at the very least, not seeking him out barely a week after the fact. In his thousand year old existence, he'd grown to expect fewer and fewer surprises as the decades wore on. This actually stood the chance of being interesting.

His gaze dropped to the purse she'd forgotten in the stool at his side in her desire to make the perfect exit. A slow smile replaced the smirk on his lips and he signalled to the bartender for another drink. This provided him with the perfect excuse to show up unannounced on her doorstep.

Not that he needed one.

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