"It's Caroline. Her mom died and something's happened to her, something's wrong. She won't talk and she won't eat and she hasn't cried at all." Klaus could hear the pain and desperation in Stefan's voice over the phone, worried for a girl he considered his little sister and best friend.
"Did she flip the switch?", this time the desperation was heard in his own voice as his mind jumped to the worst possible conclusions.
"No, but it's bad Klaus. We locked her up in a room in your mansion, the art preservation one. We think she might kill herself." Stefan added, as if it hurt him just to utter those 6 words.
As Klaus tried to wrap his evil and twisted mind around the possibility that the golden haired angel he fell in love with could soon be lifeless and grey, he quickly made his way back to Mystic Falls.
Xxx
She could hear everything. The walls may be thick but they were nothing compared to her vampire hearing. She heard the door open and Stefan greet him with a sigh, either relieved or exhausted, she couldn't tell. She heard his footsteps coming closer and closer to the door that locked her inside the windowless room. And as she heard him open the door, she didn't bother to turn around and greet him. She heard the click of the door being shut and slowly the footsteps making their way over to her.
"What do you see when you look at it?" he asked the lifeless Caroline, pointing at the painting she was staring at. Not one of his best pieces he'll admit, what, with all the blacks and reds and gloom.
"Death." She replied as she turned around, her tone flat and uncaring. She walked over the four poster bed and sat down, facing the door.
Cutting to the chase, he decided being blunt would have more of an effect on this lifeless form of a girl he once knew.
"I'm sorry about your mother".
Caroline recalled him saying the exact same thing about her father, and how she had automatically told him to stop. Now, everything was different. Because this lifestyle she had, this horrible hell she was living in, everyone she knew was destined for death. She really shouldn't have been surprised when she came back from college to find her mom's throat ripped to shreds, obvious work of a vampire. She couldn't bring herself to feel for it, scared she would lose everything.
So as she listened to his pointless condolence, she dreamed of a life where she wasn't a monster, where she could be happy and no longer forced to ruin everyone that she had ever loved.
Seeing her blank face, Klaus turned from his painting and strolled over to her. When he was a few feet in front of her, he saw her look around the room and finally her mouth opened.
"They think I'm going to kill myself".
"Are you?"
"Maybe".
Finally realising the point of her despair and loss, he knelt in front of her and cradled her face in his hands, forcing her to look him in the eye.
"Listen to me Caroline. I know you feel like absolute shit right now and I'm not going to tell you everything will be fine tomorrow, because it probably won't. Time won't heal what you're feeling now, but it will fade. There are things that we don't want to happen, but have to accept, and people we can't live without, but have to let go. Your mother loved you, I saw it the night she let me into her house to save her dying daughter,"
By this point Caroline had begun to cry. She wanted to hide her face, hide the tears streaming down her face but she felt the need to keep listening, to be strong enough to hear this.
"I know she loved you, and she would have done anything to protect you. Never regret anything about your mother because I am sure she died loving you, and that is all anyone can ask for."
Finally, Caroline felt the pain lessen. She had kept the burden of losing her mother inside of her, wanting to die than rather feel this pain but she knew her mother loved her and her mother would want her to be happy. Caroline knew that she would still be grieving, for a long time to come, but she knew that she wasn't alone.
As she pressed her lips to Klaus's, she knew that in that moment, she would be strong enough to go on living. She knew she was loved.
