Title: Chance
Summary: Klaus reflects on the price you pay for Hope.
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to their respective owners. This story is produced without profit.
Characters: Caroline/Kol/Klaus. The Original crew.
Genre: Angst/Hurt/Family/Romance/Loss
Rating: Older teen- Adult
Warnings: None
Status: One shot/ Complete.
Archiving: Please PM me
Inspirations/Dedications: I don't like TO Klaus. Hope ruins everything.
Notes: Klaroline is still my TVD forever otp, but I can't deal with TO Klaus. However, I do plan on writing some Klaus/Caroline endgame stories in future so consider this me working through my rage at the hybrid :-) Based on a premise in which Caroline is unstable after her humanity switch is flipped back on and is sent to New Orleans while she tries to get her shit together.
Chance
She doesn't speak to him anymore.
When her eyes do find his, which is rarely these days, she eyes him as most others do. With a certain level of wariness and caution. Like he is the bastard hybrid she has heard all those stories about. Like he has never saved her life, or raised his wrist to her mouth, or lowered his mouth to her body.
He is Klaus; the big bad.
It hurts.
...
"Can I help you?" He asks, finding her curled up and reading a book which might finally be the one who holds the key to stopping his long lost aunt from unleashing hell on earth.
She shrugs and he is not sure which hurts more. Her apathy or her bitterness.
Three times he has tried talking to her, tried offering explanations that she has no right to. She was with Tyler, Klaus was with no one...but he knows it's not that simple. That the issue is bigger than petty jealousies or ambiguous entitlement.
Caroline has never been first. Has never been the chosen one.
Klaus has created the one thing in his life that will ensure that he can never truly make her his first priority. If he was kind enough, if he was strong enough...he would let her go. Let her keep her silence. Accept the weight of her disregard and let her young emotions burn and fade out.
But he's not strong enough. Because even though he loves his daughter, Caroline was the first one to shine a light through the darkness of his world. She was the sunrise after a thousand years of night. His love for Hope has grown from seeds that Caroline planted. She taught him not the concept of mercy but the value of it. The sheer, terrifying joy that came from placing somebody else's happiness and safety above your own.
He loves her in a way that is singular and uniquely her own. But he is a father now, and a father has responsibilities and duties.
For Hope, Klaus would die. Right here, right now but Caroline makes him want to live, makes him want to enjoy life, makes him want to enjoy love. She makes him want to build castles, save lives, leave something behind apart from blood and misery and violence. He wants to live the art that he creates.
But Caroline doesn't speak to him anymore. Even when their paths cross, even when she is sent to them under the guise of helping with their latest mission. In truth, she is the baby vampire; broken under the weight of grief and death and reckless murder, entrusted into his care as she tries to recover from her bout with bloody, soulless abandon without losing it completely.
She looks at him strangely, in a way that cuts him up inside. That makes him wonder, if not wish, what would have happened if he had turfed Hayley out of his home before he invited her into his bed.
Where would they be now? How would she be looking at him right now?
"You're the last person who deserves Hope," she tells him one day, and he isn't sure if she's talking about his daughter or something else entirely.
...
Caroline talks to Elijah. She takes particular pleasure in making sure Elijah knows all about Hayley's part in the débâcle with Silas. How Hayley betrayed her last pack, how she offered them up to be slaughtered under Klaus's hands, how she manipulated and hurt everybody around her.
Elijah pretends not to care, pretends to be annoyed and offended by Caroline's gossiping but it's clear as day that he looks at Hayley a little differently after that.
"Did you tell him about the twelve witches you killed?" Hayley snarls back as Elijah's adoration wilts and withers by the second.
Klaus wonders how Caroline is going to get herself out of this one. He has never been a fan of hypocrisy. He is almost offended when Caroline's back straightens.
"Yeah, it wasn't my shining moment but I killed them to save Bonnie's life and I would do it again in a heartbeat. What I didn't and wouldn't do was befriend them," Caroline steps forward. "Convince them to break every bone in their bodies," Another step. "Stroke their hair," Hayley stands her ground. "Ask about their families," Caroline gets closer. "Make them open up about their dreams and hopes for the future," Hayley remains steady and firm. Her eyes flicker to Klaus, almost asking for approval to attack, to defend herself if need be. Caroline stops, nose to nose, "All the while knowing that you had traded their futures in for a flash drive."
She is the epitome of empowering spite in that moment; still raw and unbalanced in her emotions.
Hayley's jaw clenches but her eyes are shiny and full. As her resolve falters, Klaus can almost see Elijah removing the pedestal that he had placed the young wolf on the second he discovered his daughter's presence in her womb.
Caroline's smile is creamy and preening, her newly discovered humanity teetering on a rope.
"I think we may have a fox in our coop," Kol says with only a hint of begrudging respect.
...
Caroline starts to talk to Kol. She begins to talk to Kol more than she talks to anyone. Only Stefan can claim to be as close a confidant to her as Klaus's little brother soon comes to be.
He enjoys it, enjoys lauding it over Klaus's head like a prize. "We have a lot in common," he tells him. "We both know what it's like to be lied to by the big, bad hybrid."
"I never lied to her!" Klaus says, defiantly. He's quite sure he never lied to her. There is probably no one but Rebekah and Elijah who has seen him so stripped down to the root of who he is than Caroline Forbes.
"Of course you did!" Kol says, good naturedly but Klaus knows him better than that. "Don't get me wrong, Nik. I'm not blaming you, I mean it's not like you could help it. But you promised to show her the world and then tied yourself to New Orleans with that...child."
Kol had made the mistake of calling his daughter an abomination only once. He got a three month stay in a coffin and missed Hope's first steps. Not like he cared. Kol takes his responsibilities as an uncle about as seriously as he takes anything; which is not at all.
Kol claps an arm around his shoulders and smiles that predatory, sick grin that is so familiar. "But don't worry, brother. Caroline will see the world. I'll make sure of that. After all, what are family for if not to share each others burdens and responsibilities?"
"Why?" Klaus asks, painfully. So full of threat and violence but Kol has seen and experienced both that it takes a while for the effect to set in.
"Because," Kol replies with a full toothed smile. "You're the last person who deserves happiness."
He doesn't deserve hope. He doesn't deserve happiness. What is left for him?
...
The war is won. The army disperses. Caroline is stable enough to go home.
Kol waits three weeks before he leaves.
"I'm going to Vienna," he says, but Klaus knows a liar when he sees one.
"If you hurt her, in any way, I'll kill you. No coffins. Just death." Klaus says, jealous and bitter and feeling the weight of royalty and fatherhood and responsibility.
He doesn't think he's ever seen Kol so serious when he says, "I'm going to Vienna, Nik...but don't worry. I'll protect her because I can. No exceptions." And then his eyes flicker to Hope's crib as though his words didn't quite punctuate his intention enough.
"If I don't deserve happiness, then neither do you," Klaus says bitterly.
Kol's smile is back on his face. "I know, but I have something left to give. Something that she wants. Something you don't have anymore." He takes a step closer, another glance at Hope's crib. He smiles before it twists into a sneer. "Freedom."
Klaus loves his daughter more than anything in the world. He really does. He always thought it would be a little easier though.
...
"Everybody around you dies," Hope tells him one day, teenage eyes aflame.
She's in love. She just wants to be loved. It is Rebekah all over again.
"You don't know the first thing about love," She spits and Klaus realises that she is half right.
Loving Hope has made his life worth living but the thing about being a parent is that while you become a God in your child's eyes, they will never love you as much as you love them. They are simply not capable of it. One day, Hope will outgrow him. It's already beginning. One day, Hope will leave and Klaus will be alone again. It's the natural order of things after all.
He misses Caroline. He misses that potential.
That hope, a cruel voice whispers inside his head.
"You don't deserve love," his daughter snarls and Klaus is finally let in on the joke that was played on him nineteen years ago.
Klaus doesn't deserve happiness or hope or love. Not for himself.
Instead he will spend his life giving all three to a girl who will never fully comprehend just how much her father does love her. He never had a chance.
Or maybe that's a lie.
His chance is lounging on a boat in the Riviera with his brother.
fin