A/N:
I like writing multiple stories at once, so there I go with another story idea.
I can totally see upset Caroline being so pissed off that she decides to do the one thing no one expected her to do – join Klaus. Well, she doesn't join him – she just takes his offer, but this is a good start already, don't you think?
For those of you who don't watch The Originals (but you totally should even though it almost physically hurts me to see Klaus flirting with Cami and, well, not being with Caroline), majority of the first episode was in season 4 of TVD (ep 19ish) & here are key things from second episode – and I hope it makes sense:
Hayley is now kept under Klaus and Rebekah's protection (in New Orleans, obvs)
Elijah is semi-dead & kept by Marcel (Klaus turned him and he is like son to him) and Davina (a powerful 16yrs old that helps Marcel)
Hayley tried to kill the baby but didn't succeed and then decides to keep it
Rebekah and Marcel had a thing in the past that Klaus didn't like
Elijah is super protective over Hayley because he wants family
Marcel likes Cami (a human barthender w/ knowledge in psychology)
Hayley and Rebekah are, like, BFF & Hayley gave Rebekah the daggers that would help her save Elijah cause... Haylijah!
Now, I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 1
She was breaking down – that much she could tell.
Second by second, her insides were burning with agony, pain far more worse than the one she felt during her multiple tortures.
It wasn't only the pain of being dumped.
Yes, she loved Tyler like she never loved anyone before, but she would be strong, right? She would deal with heartbreak and move on with her life because she is Caroline Forbes, and Caroline Forbes can deal with anything! She survived so much pain after turning into vampire; she went to hell and back, changed and sacrificed so much for the sake of people. She can get over a simple heartbreak.
At least that's what she kept telling herself for the last hour before finally giving up and bursting into tears.
She had no one.
Not literally, seeing as Elena was with her for the bigger part of her days in college, but she felt like there was no one out there for her. Her friends had bigger problems than Poor Dumped Caroline and she accepted it long time ago.
Now the burning question was: what was her next move?
Staying in college wouldn't do – she had to get away from this place, to rethink her life choices and, maybe, figure out what does she actually want from future.
Ever since she was a little girl, Caroline believed that finishing college, getting a good job and marrying someone she was madly in love with was all she wanted in life. However, now her priorities shifted.
Tyler went after Klaus – and dumped her for the solemn reason of hurting the Original. So what if she left as well?
See the world around her – she had all the time in the world, didn't she?
All I can think about is how much I want to show it to you. Maybe one day you'll let me.
Didn't Klaus promised to show her everything there was in the world? Seeing as Tyler left because of him it was ironic that she was even considering paying a visit to Klaus.
Still...
He was the only one to choose her over others and fait was playing with her, because he was the person she felt the safest with –the killer of thousands, the Original, the one who ruined her and Tyler's future.
But it wouldn't hurt to try, will it?
Wiping off her tears, she gave the last sob and took a deep deliberate breath before reaching for her phone. After a moment of consideration, she though Screw everything, I deserve to be selfish for once, and dialled Klaus' number, throwing the cap over the mill.
After about thirty seconds or so of Klaus not answering, the answering machine turned on. For once, she was happy he didn't pick up his phone immediately as it would be so much easier to leave a message without a need of explanation.
Smiling a little, she said, "Hello, Klaus. It's Caroline. Is your proposal about New Orleans still valid? Either way, I'm packing my stuff soon and setting off to New Orleans, so if you still there, send me your address or whereabouts – this way I don't need to question half of the city in order to find you." She smirked. "I might see you soon."
With that, she turned off her phone and, letting out a ragged breath, closed her eyes for a second, as she just made a vital decision.
There was no going back.
Niklaus has just finished explaining to Rebekah that his plan of talking Marcel into giving him his older brother back didn't work and proceeded to teaching a newborn vampire how to torture one of Marcel's devoted men. Things were going fairly quickly, and he had no doubt the vampire will lose blood, along with vervain, in maximum an hour.
Soon, he received another call from his little sister that told him something that made his day oh so much brighter: 'Jardin Gris's worked – a witch named Katie – was in love with Thierry – Marcel's right hand. A love between a witch and a vampire reminded him of 'Romeo and Juliet', and he smirked – how wonderful! It suited his plan just perfectly.
Excited, he completely forgot about his phone that started ringing mere minutes after he left. The newly turned vampire could only pick up the phone and, making sure one of Marcel's followers couldn't get out of the trap and his blood was seeping through his deep wounds, falling to the floor, left looking for Klaus.
Caroline knew that her decision was rushed – and that's why she loved it.
Every decision she made in life had a purpose and was made deliberately to bring her to 'the top'. What was that 'top' she always dreamed of she never got to find out, but ever since she turned a vampire, she made lots of things that were spontaneous and so unlike human-Caroline.
And she knew that moving to New Orleans while there was so much stuff going on – practically abandoning her friends – was an example of being a crap friend, but she was certain it was right.
Thinking about it a few times, she packed her things fairly quickly; locking her door, she jogged towards her car and, opening the back door, threw in her luggage which consisted of four big bags.
It was indeed a rushed decision, therefore waiting until Elena was back from whatever it was that occupied her (she dearly hoped it wasn't Damon) because her friend will surely try to make her think over it, and Caroline will realise just how stupid she was.
No, it was time for rushed decisions, and so she closed the back door of her car, sat in the front seat and, clothing the door and checking everything, drove off Mystic Falls, leaving all her fears behind.
Twelve hours later she finally reached her destination, not without a couple of stops for a lunch or what not.
Klaus still didn't answer her – which Caroline found a bit rude, and she decided to head off to where she was likely to meet him – to the loudest and biggest party that night everyone was talking about.
It was coming closer to midnight but Caroline decided to have a look around because wasn't it the solemn purpose of her travel to NOLA? Just have some fun and forget her worries.
The city was beautiful at night. Night lights were bright but not bright enough to make one feel uncomfortable. A sweet smell of fast-food, alcohol and... blood. Yeah, definitely blood which meant she was coming closer to her destination.
Months ago Stefan taught her how to figure out if a person was some supernatural creature or a human being. The trick was simple – all she had to do was listen, and listen intensely. It was hard to do so in such a crowded area with everyone screaming and laughing, and Caroline stopped dead track on a spot, closing her eyes for better concentration.
After a few moments she opened her eyes once again, and started moving towards the busiest and loudest edifice in the whole, as she presumed, New Orleans. She tried not to show her fear and uncertainty, though it was fruitless: no one was giving her a second glance, every single one of them enjoying their time in NOLA, humans not realising how many vampirese were in a radius of fifty meters alone – how many were across the whole city? Klaus surely chose a good place if he decided to go into his 'I need an army for protection' mode again.
The building where the party took place was, indeed, enormous and the type of place Caroline would like to take a hold on as, back in Mystic Falls, the most she ever got was only one floor.
Now, looking around, she breathed in a smell of fresh blood, squinting her eyes and trying to make out what was happening. It was past midnight now, and it seemed that now vampires were able to do what their nature urged them to do – drink blood from humans' veins without stopping.
In any other situation Caroline would have stood up against vampires who didn't give a damn about human lives, but she knew that the number of 'bad guys' outnumbered her greatly, never mind the fact that half of them were probably much older than her, which meant more powerful. Also, she didn't need to attract an unnecessary attention, so she decided to do what she did best – flirt.
Coming near a seemingly young vampire that just finished drinking from some girl and dropped her body on the floor, she made sure he was watching her, making her walk as smooth as possible.
Sitting on a chair next to him, she looked him in the eyes with a predatory grin on her face. As he smiled back at her, locking their eyes, she stretched her arm and wiped off a stain of someone's blood from his cheek as slowly and seductively as she could, then licking the blood off her index finger, all while holding an eye contact with this stranger. A wolfish smirk appeared on the man's face as he placed a hand on her leg just above her ankle.
"Someone seems a bit too bored," he murmured, his voice a nice deep baritone, though Caroline couldn't appreciate it – all she could think of was how cruel and uncaring he was to that woman.
"I am new here, so I hope you can show me around," she purred, leaning towards and putting her own hand over his. "But before that I've gotta make sure Klaus knows where I go."
"You are here with the Original?" the man asked without enthusiasm, a pleasant smirk coming off his face in a beat, though he still held his hand on her ankle.
"Yeah, but don't worry – he won't find out about you doing something his companion doesn't like," Forbes said confidently with a smile, all the while glancing around. "So if you tell me where he is, he won't hear a word about you, and I might influence him to do something for all of you."
"You mean, for Marcel?" the man quipped, seeming pissed off as he realised that he was just used; taking his hand off her ankle, her turned around to call another girl towards him that was already 'brainwashed' so much her eyes were complete dizzy and movements sluggish. Caroline felt a pang of guilt in her chest but she knew that she had to keep the cover up, and it meant letting this bastard drink from poor girl's vein in rich gulps.
"Yeah, Marcel," she said, not having a slightest idea who was this Marcel, but she presumed he was their leader or some sort.
"I believe he and Klaus are discussing some business upstairs," he answered after few minutes, separating from girl's neck and motioning somewhere up and behind Caroline. "I'd advise you not to talk to them while they're doing business, but I guess I can't tell anyone who is travelling with Klaus what to do."
"That you got right," she answered bitterly, her facade falling as she gazed at him with open disgust. "I'll see you around," and she stood up, looking to where the brat was motioning, catching her breath for a millisecond.
There, on the balcony, were Klaus and some guy having a seemingly positive conversation. In a while the guy Klaus seemed to have slapped him on the back and, smiling left. When the man was far gone, he allowed himself to smile and look down. That's when multiple things happened at once.
He saw her the second he looked down and, judging by disbelieving and wary look at his face, he didn't get her messages and was shocked to see her there in flesh.
Caroline only had a time to blink, and when she opened her eyes Niklaus was already in front of her - it seemed that he jumped from the balcony not to waste time.
"Caroline?" he asked, his voice unsure and his posture stiff, a small frown on his pale face.
"Well, definitely not Miss Mystic Falls, as it is now April," she chided, tilting her head to the right and looking at him with amusement clear in her baby blue eyes; they were met with a pair of Klaus' eyes, a tone a bit darker than Caroline's, emotions sweeping in them like a tornado.
With mirth, Forbes squirmed her eyes, not understanding why Klaus didn't react in the way she expected him to: immediately start flirting with her, tease how she couldn't seem to keep away from him for a long time, along with thousand other silly things she expected him to do or to say.
However, as she saw the understanding in his eyes and hoped that it meant Klaus believed it was really her – and not just some sick fantasy, not that she wanted to know how many of them he had, involving her – only to be met with a sigh of sheer confusion, horror and sadness in his eyes.
"You should go."
She gaped at him. Did she just hear him right?
Maybe music was the reason she misheard his words, though who was she kidding – the music couldn't possibly make her superior hearing worse.
Okay, maybe she was drunk – or he was; or they both were, so the words didn't actually belong to him, and in reality it was her brain not working properly.
Yeah, a twelve-hours travel did this to people. She was a vampire with perfect senses, but she can imagine being tired so much so that she-
"Can you repeat the last part, please?" she asked, her voice suddenly feeling weak and unstable, as if she was on the edge of crying.
What a piece of nonsense, she was perfectly collected!
But he couldn't just leave her, could he? He was the only person that didn't take her for granted and cherished her like a queen; truth to be told, deep down she enjoyed it much more than she should have.
"Caroline," he sighed with a determined face, looking around. Then, he leaned down and whispered, "meet me outside in a minute."
Klaus disappeared in the crowd, leaving Caroline alone once again. She huffed, bit on her lower lip and clenched her tiny hands into fists. Did she really expect him to stop conspiring and plotting? She always knew that it was a part of him no one would ever be able to change but, somehow, she completely overlooked this huge shortcoming of his. Okay, so maybe he wasn't as excited as she expected him to be because there we vampires watching them?
She slowly turned around and stretched, her vampire vision catching on every detail, yes she couldn't see anyone particularly interested in her. Waiting for a few seconds, she moved towards the main doors, pushing drunk with power vampire out of the way.
As Klaus reached exit, he started pacing around, hand covering his mouth with a forbid expression on his face. He picked up a chair that laid nearby and threw it into the wall with hybrid's force that caused a piece of furniture to smash into smithereens. The Original, however, didn't calm down at that; in one swift move he was near the wall, leaning into it and looking around with murderous look at his face. Everyone passing by tried to stay away from him, but it didn't matter – if he wanted to kill all of them, he would do just that. He had a more important business on his hands at the moment.
Caroline came to New Orleans. To him.
Whatever reasons she will come up with, she was here, clearly relieved to see him in a crowd of thousand strangers. She came here willingly.
Or-
"Why the hell did you disappear on me so suddenly?" Caroline loudly asked, her tone annoyed and a tad bit angry. However, the next second she was pressed into the wall with Klaus' hand squeezing her throat so much that it physically hurt her. "What- let go of me!"
"Silas," he barked, squeezing her throat even more so, barely keeping his raging emotions in check. How dare he take her form again and try to hurt him once again.
"Klaus- I'm not Silas- Let go of my throat right now or help me lord-!" she shouted but it didn't seem to believe her.
"What was the first drawing that I sent you?" he shouted right back at her, his vampire fangs clenching and unclenching, sea-blue eyes turning to yellowish-green.
"It was a picture of me and a horse and you thanked me for my honesty!"
Immediately, he let go of her throat; Caroline didn't expect that so she started falling, yet her superior senses didn't allow that, and soon she was standing a few meters away from him, her own fangs showing. "Are you completely out of your mind?! Why would Silas want anything from you anymore, for once, and don't say it because you didn't expect to see me in New Orleans and your paranoid senses kicked in!"
"Caroline," he whispered, still as uncertain as he appeared when he first saw her mere seconds ago. He was still questioning the possibility; sure, here she was, standing in front of him with a bitter expression on her face, but was it possible?
He hoped for her to come to New Orleans, but for her to come here so soon? She probably wanted something from him, he sadly smirked – they all came to him only when they needed something from the powerful hybrid.
"Stop repeating my name like a broken toy, I know that my name is Caroline," she retorted, rubbing her neck. "Jee, Klaus, could have asked me a question before trying to strangle."
"Sorry," he sincerely apologised, making a few deliberate steps towards her. "I just didn't think they will go as far as sending you here."
"What?" she frowned and was met with a tired groan of his own.
"Your friends. They mistakably think that if it's you who is asking me, I will become soft and whatever you ask me of. And I am sorry to disappoint you, love, but I have a lot on my plate even without your little friends, so you can run off and tell them what I said word by word. However, if it's my blood you want, I might reconsider and give it to you if you will do me a favour." Honestly, Klaus didn't want to be bitter towards Caroline – she didn't do a thing to piss him off; if anything, he was feeling pleased at Marcel's generous offer of giving his brother back and seeing Caroline for the first time in months – or was it weeks?
Caroline simply rolled her eyes, clicking her tongue and clasping hands to keep herself calm. "Look, me coming to New Orleans has got nothing to do with my friends and I didn't come here to ask you for a favour. I just... felt like taking a break from the whole Silas and his ex's thing, and there wasn't a possibility to do so by staying in Mystic Falls. I decided to visit some new places and then I remembered your offer." She smoothly lied, not going into details of her true reasoning. "Besided, I left you like a billion messages, to none of which you answered – and, I guess, you didn't even have any idea of." She huffed. "Either way, I decided to stay here for awhile."
That didn't seem to soften him as she thought it would. Instead, he seemed to become even more bothered.
"Well, then you should know that I do, indeed, have a lot of things to do, so I won't be able to be by your side 24/7," he said in a calm voice, a barely there smirk on his face. "When I made the offer I didn't think there would possibly be as many problems as there are, so if you are staying, you agree to deal with them, along with the obvious majority of constantly bloodthirsty vampires in this town."
She hummed, looking at him with sparks in her eyes. "Is this a challenge?"
He smiled right back at her, "It might be one. But I still have to warn you so that you don't go off telling everyone how horribly impolite I am."
"I wouldn't dream of it," she answered cheekily. "Does it mean I can stay at your place?"
"Well, I wouldn't really call it 'my place', seeming as my siblings are staying there as well, but we can always share a room if you would want to fell as if we lived in an apartment," he goaded her, chuckling when he saw her pissed off face.
"And here I thought we were having a serious conversation."
There was a short pause, both of them curiously glancing at each other, Caroline's cautious eyes looking him over and Klaus' eyes roaming all over her body, noticing a detail that made him a lot more confident.
"I see it you are wearing my bracelet," he said, motioning to the very bracelet he gave her along with a long blue dress that she wore for the ball which seemed to happen only minutes ago; flashbacks of it flooded his mind, remembering the time he was simply interested in her and didn't have a clue about a real her – the knowledge came with time.
"There was only one way to make sure you remembered what an amazing person I am," she said, smiling and glancing down at the bracelet. If only he knew she did it in order for him to ignore the lack of the other bracelet – the one she received from Tyler on her seventeenth birthday. The lack of it would surely make Klaus aware that things weren't working out between the two of them and it would cause a whole variety of witty comments that she wasn't ready to hear just yet.
"Sweetheart, there isn't a moment I forget about you stunning personality," he threw back at her.
They talked-slash-flirted for bit longer when Klaus announced that he had to attend someone, but he couldn't take her with him, so he told her the address of his family's house and, nodding, left.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, trying hard not to smile.
Klaus didn't abandon her, he still cared about her, the mere thought making her insides clench with giddiness she was feeling.
There was plenty of time to look around tomorrow, and she decided that it would be much better to go check up on Mickaelsons' house that was probably just as magnificent as the one they occupied in Mystic Falls.
Retreating back to her car that was previously left in one of the silent corners of New Orleans, she took off.
It didn't take her too long to get to the mansion – if anything, it couldn't possibly be called 'house', the word sounding offensive to such fine example of architecture.
She let herself in as she didn't expect anyone to be there at this hour, Rebekah probably trying to seduce yet another guy and Elijah – well, doing whatever gentleman-y stuff he was always doing during nights.
She went to the second floor, taking in how elegant, yet simple this place was. Looking into each room and admitting how breathtakingly beautiful each one of them was; however, she soon stopped dead on her tracks, her eyes suddenly widening and jaw visibly clenching. "Oh no he didn't."
There, in the middle of the room, was Hayley – the same Hayley that caused her so many troubles – racking through CDs and a variety of books, looking relaxed. However, her uninhibited posture wasn't the cause of Caroline's sudden anger: the werewolf girl had her left hand on her belly, and not in a 'I feel like I shouldn't have eaten that burrito' but in a rather motherly way. As she quietened down the thoughts swirling through her head, she listened, and listened carefully, only to realise that there were indeed two hearts beating in Hayley's body. The girl was definitely pregnant, and Caroline suspected whose baby it was.
"You bitch!" she said loud enough for everyone in the house to hear. At that, Hayley turned to face her, rather confused about her sudden appearance and words.
"Caroline? What the hell are you doing here?"
"I advise you you mind your own business," she hissed, her eyes narrowing. "I wouldn't dare of hitting a pregnant woman, but what were you thinking about? Having unprotected sex with him? Having a baby? I hope it fulfils your self-fulfilling nature of proving how much better you are than me. Or did you decide to have a baby so that you can control him? Huh, Hayley?"
Said female looked at her with anger sweeping in her dark brown eyes. "I will not allow you to tell me how to live my life, Caroline, and you better back off right now."
A/N:
OHH BITCHFIGHT
But yeah, here's the first chapter, and hope she was to your liking!
Also, don't suspect Klaus and Caroline will continue being softies like they were in this chapter – it was shock for both of them that caught these two off-guard, causing them to act like they did, okay?
