So I have wanting to write a Klaroline story for quite a while and for the first time, I have time, means and inspiration. Let me know if you enjoy it.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately I don't own The Vampire Diaries or Klaus, sigh.
The guilt of the situation seemed to claw at him from all sides. The walls of the waiting room boxing him in as the voices inside his head shouted that it was all his fault. Why does bad things keep happening to those that he loved? Why did he leave the party so early? Why didn't he let Hendrik gets a lift with Elijah? Each one of these questions jarring at him as he dropped his head into his hands.
It was Rebekah's Sweet Sixteenth birthday party and of course his parents, Mikhael and Esther, gave her a bash that rivaled anything that MTV would dare to broadcast. With the 1920s as her theme, Rebekah was in her element with 100 of her closest friends dressed up as Daisy Buchanan's and Jay Gatsby's. Klaus always admired her class and her ability to demand attention that was why she was his favourite sibling. Klaus sat with his brothers – Elijah, Kol and Hendrik in one of the private rooms in the warehouse-turned-club that Rebekah had selected for this auspicious occasion. Finn, their oldest brother, was already married and having wished Rebekah happy birthday and bought her a gift saw no interest in staying around a teenage birthday party.
"So Niklaus how are the studies going?" Elijah attempted to make conversation.
"I suppose they're going well, I'm passing, that's important."
"I would hope so, I'd hate to think that Kol was starting to rub off on you"
"Ouch," Kol interjected, "I do pass! I'm going to graduate at the end of the semester"
"In what, skipping class?" Klaus responded.
"You should talk Nik," Kol retorted, "I know all you do is shag Tatia. I suppose your degree is going to be Masters in The Curve of Tatia's –"
"That's enough Kol!" Elijah exclaimed as he saw Klaus' face begin to contort in anger, "Do you constantly have to be so uncouth?"
"So my brothers have become bores, I'm going to find me some entertainment," Kol said whilst gesturing to the many flapper girls dancing suggestively, obviously not accustomed to the Charleston.
"I swear he gets worse everyday," Klaus complained as Kol left the room.
"He isn't so bad," Hendrik said softly, 'He just feels he needs to prove himself when you guys are around."
"Aah Hendrik, so much wiser then the rest of us," Klaus said as he poured himself another glass of wine, "We sometimes forget that you still have to live with the pain that is Kol, don't worry when he's off at college, you'll be the man of the house. I don't count Mikhael."
"So how is the lovely Tatia?" said Elijah swiftly trying to change the subject.
"She's good, still busy with her philosophy degree, claims she's going to be the next Plato."
"I'm so glad to see you happy and settled, Niklaus"
"Now all we need to do is find a good shag for you before you complete your business degree."
"Just because I do not brag about the women that I have been with, like yourself and Kol, does not mean it doesn't happen."
"Elijah, you dog, Hendrik are you listening to this? Do you have a recording device on you that we can keep this as proof?"
"And I think that is my cue to leave, it has been fun catching up with you Niklaus," Elijah said as he got up and put on his overcoat, "Hendrik, would you like a lift home?"
"No, I'll take Hendrik home, I need someone to stay with me in case Rebekah wonders where her beloved brothers are," Klaus answered, "Have fun picking up women with your impeccable table manners and fountain of knowledge about the stock market."
Elijah gave a non-committal wave as he left the club.
"It's just you and me now, mate," Klaus said to Hendrik as he sipped on his glass of wine, "So are there any girls that you fancy now that you're almost in high school?"
"Uh I suppose there's this one girl, April Young, in my class, she's pretty but I don't think she'll ever notice me, lots of boys like her," Hendrik confessed shyly.
"Well lots of boys aren't Mikhaelson men, we were born with a woman-charming gene in our bodies. Look, even Finn, dullard that he is managed to find a ready and willing wife. Women are just waiting to be charmed by us. Stick with me, we'll have this April girl by the end of the month."
Hendrik just laughed and shook his head.
Klaus' phone buzzed in his pocket with a message from Tatia.
"Come on Hendrik, let's go find Rebekah so we can leave before Tatia gets bored waiting for me and starts studying again."
The night keeps replaying in his head. The deafening sound of the car that came out of nowhere and smashed into the passenger side of Klaus' vehicle. The memory of Hendrik's screams tormenting him. He knew that he only had a couple of minutes before the rest of his family arrived and the blame game started. He couldn't help feeling responsible, even though the police officer on the scene said the driver in the other vehicle was drunk. He knew this day would haunt him for the rest of his life, he just prayed to some unknown god that Hendrik would survive this ordeal, he wouldn't know how to live with himself if he didn't. He couldn't imagine a world without his younger brother. Tears he didn't know he was holding back started pouring down.
He sat down on the nearest chair, suddenly exhausted from all the emotions fighting for dominance when he noticed he had sat on something square and hard. He pulled the book from under him, it was a paperback called 'Dear John' by Nicholas Sparks. With a picture of a generic young couple on the cover, he figured it was a trivial romance book that some women had forgotten at the hospital but he cracked open the cover to provide some form of distraction.
When he opened the book, a page fell onto the sparkly clean floor of the waiting room. Klaus could see it was a letter, evidently written by a teenage girl with the loopy handwriting and the 'i's doted with hearts. As the owner and letter was not around, Klaus began to read the letter:
Hey Dad,
So sorry to hear about Steven's accident. I wish I could come up and visit him in hospital but it's slap bang in the middle of senior year and I'm really busy organizing Prom, studying for finals and with cheerleading practice (see the picture of Mystic Falls High's Head Cheerleader, yours truly). But I'm sure his leg will get better real soon. Tell him I send my love and I say he needs to make sure the ladder is stable next time he climbs on to the roof.
I figured you'd be pretty bored waiting for Steven to get out of hospital so I sent you my new favorite book, Dear John. It is very girly and romantic, like you know I like it, but if it doesn't make you cry our next lunch is on me. So Dad, I've been chatting to Steven about some of your 'issues' regarding our relationship and I know how you tend to read too much into things, so I would just like to tell you that I did not send you this book because John has a tumultuous relationship with his dad! I sent it because I like the book, ok? And because I thought it would provide a nice distraction for you before your mind starts working overtime thinking about how Steven's accident was your fault. That you should have checked the ladder, or hired to someone to fix the roof etc. You have to stop doing this! Not everything is your fault. Some things happen in life which we have no control over whatsoever. Life throws us curveballs, we make mistakes, tragedies happen and many times we are the consequences of other people's choices. So stop wallowing and start showing that beautiful smile. You are an amazing Dad and through everything that has happened, my respect for you will never change and I would never blame you for the hectic shift in our family life because I love you and your happiness is just as important to me as all the prom dresses in the world. Haha. I had to lighten up the end of this letter.
I love you always
Stay strong!
Love your favorite/only daughter,
Caroline
P.S. If you want to know how I became so wise, it is a combination of having two amazing parents and copious amounts of Dr. Phil and Oprah.
Klaus tucked the letter back inside the cover of the book and pulled out the photograph of the author of the letter. It was a teenage girl around about seventeen or eighteen. Long tumbling blonde hair shaped her strikingly beautiful face. She had a captivating smile that seemed to emanate a form of inner happiness and light that Klaus was not familiar with. Even though her perfect body was draped in a short and tight cheerleading uniform, he could not stop looking at her eyes in the image. Eyes that revealed someone who has seen more than their fair share of sadness and heartbreak but still she did not lose hope. Klaus could shrug it off as naivety but there were unspoken truths in this girl's eyes as if the gods had let her in on some ancient secret that no matter how unbearable life is that the bad times will end and it is worth sticking it through.
Klaus shook at his head at the sentimentality he was drawing from one letter and picture of a teenage girl that he did not know. But he still pocketed them; he had a feeling things were going to get a lot worse.
5 years later
He woke up with a jolt. The night of Hendrik's death revisited him in a nightmare again. He looked over at his bedside clock, 8am. Sleep had become a luxury. He usually worked overtime until early hours of the morning, which meant that he was overtired, and the nightmares weren't as frequent. This was the rare Saturday in which he did not need to work and he had allowed himself to sleep longer than usual.
"Babe, where are you? Is it the door at the end of the passage?" a loud voice outside his apartment interrupted his musings.
A muffled voice responded to the dulcet-toned, heavy-footed male outside of his door.
Klaus knew that the apartment down the hall from his was empty after the couple that lived there got married and moved to the suburbs. He assumed that the shuffling outside was due to the new tenants moving in.
"Why do you have so much stuff?" the voice once again exclaimed, "You should've hired a moving company."
Klaus figured as he was already awake he might as well help out the disembodied voice before he wakes up the rest of the building. He took a quick shower and pulled on a T-shirt, sweat pants and shoes and left his apartment. A broad-shouldered brunette man was heaving a large box into the formerly vacant apartment down the hall. Klaus figured he must be the owner of the voice that had echoed through this room.
"Hey mate, I'm Klaus, I live at number 107. Are you moving in here?"
"Hey. Tyler. No, I'm just helping my fiancé move in. She wants to be all independent before we tie the knot. She's just in the shower at the moment. The one box that she carried apparently made too sweaty to carry on without a shower."
"I wanted to ask do you need some help carrying the stuff up?"
"Ya thanks man. I shudder to think how long it would take me to get all her stuff up. I still have an appointment to get to."
Between Tyler and Klaus they managed to get the reminder of the boxes up in half the time it would have taken one man. Once the last box hauled up in the apartment, Tyler remarked, "Seriously man, I can't thank you enough. You saved me time and probably a future of back problems."
"Haha don't mention it, mate. I'm happy to help."
"Well I need to be on my way. Let me just call the future Mrs out and then you can meet her. Hey Care. I'm going to be on my way. Come say goodbye and let me introduce me to your new neighbor who helped me carry all your unnecessary junk up."
"I'll have you know, that the only junk I have is what you gave me," a melodic voice said as she came out of the bedroom, a cheeky smile on her face.
"Ouch! Anyway this is Klaus, he lives at number 107. Klaus, this is my fiancé, Caroline."
Klaus was speechless. The girl that haunted his dreams, whose photograph and letter was stuck up on his fridge, whose hopeful eyes had gotten him through the horror of the past five years was standing in front of him. She was more beautiful in person, no replicate image could do her justice. She smiled and extended her hand to him, "So nice to meet you."
So that is Chapter 1, please review or send me a message on Tumblr at mytraitorousheart if I should continue with this.
Also while you are on Tumblr join the-klaroline-campaign to make our ship happen!