Title: The Thanks We Get
Author: fadingtales
Fandom: Vampire Diaries
Pairing: Klaus/Caroline
Rating: T
Summary: She's caught in between her loyalty towards her friends and the beast she's grown strangely attached to.
Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Diaries or any of their characters.
She stares down at his bloody, broken body and then back up to meet Bonnie's livid eyes. Indecision wars inside of her as she finds herself caught in between her loyalty towards her friends and the beast she's grown strangely attached to.
As a human, whenever she was indecisive or nervous she had the bad habit of chewing her fingernails. Luckily now that she was a vampire she healed rather quickly, otherwise presently her fingers would be down to bloody stubs.
She continues to glance back and forth between her group of friends and Klaus's prone body on the floor, unable to make another step in either direction.
Bonnie sends another hail of power that makes his body twists and bends grotesquely, making her wince.
He makes an agonized groan that sounds oddly like her name. She throws her hands up in the air and lets out an anguished whine as she runs towards his side, decision finally made.
She mutters a stream of curses under her breath as she swings his arms over her shoulders and pulls him up, his body a dead weight.
"Caroline! What are you doing? Get back here!" Bonnie screams above the roar of the thunder and lightning.
She won't be forgetting Elena's horrified face or the Salvatores' accusatory glares soon.
She mutters a sorry that probably got lost in the wind before running as fast as she possibly could while carrying a bleeding unconscious werepire.
xxx
She managed to get most of the blood off of him and was in the middle of washing his hair when he began to stir.
She releases him as he struggles to sit up, her hands soapy and upraised.
"What are you doing?"
"I was washing your hair. You were lying on the ground and there was stuff in it and it just didn't seem all that hygienic-"
"That's not what I meant," he interrupts. He stands up and examines himself, finding his skin smooth and freshly healed. He looks up at her and smirks. "I'm naked."
She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms defensively across her chest. "Well how else was I supposed to wash the blood off of you?"
He cocks an eyebrow at her, his smirk ever present. She stands up with a sigh and turns around to wash the soap off her hands at the sink.
"Don't worry. I didn't take advantage of you and it's not like it's anything I haven't seen before."
"I wasn't aware that you've been peeking at me when I changed," he drawls.
"I do not!" She protests turning back to face him. "It's just not the first time I've taken care of a werewolf after a transformation."
"Do you usually make it a habit to bathe them, too?" He retorts, the cool tone only barely concealing his unwarranted animosity.
The idea of her being so intimate with that weremutt of hers makes his stomach roil.
Fury bubbles inside of her and she throws down the bar of soap with a violent smack, sending water everywhere. She's just about had it with his lack of gratitude.
"How about a thank you instead of an attitude, huh? I just saved your life!"
His smugness immediately disappears.
"Why?"
"Because I'm insane, that's why! God!" She turns her back on him once again and starts to march out the door only to stop centimeters from crashing face first into his bare chest.
If those wet, unmarked ripples of muscles were of any indication, now that he's had time to heal he seems to be back to his tip top hybrid shape.
Not that she was looking.
In fact, she was determinedly looking anywhere but him.
"Why did you save me, Caroline?"
"Because you looked pathetic and needed some rescuing," she snaps.
"Your friends must be angry. They probably didn't take well to failing to assassinate me twice."
"Yeah, well… life is always full of disappointments."
"You can't go back to them now," he points out.
She crosses her arms angrily, staring daggers at him. "No, I probably can't."
"I guess you'll just have to stay in your room here for now then."
Something about the tinge of satisfaction in his tone irks her. She scoffs and shakes her head crossly. She has given up hope for the rest of the day to turn out any better.
He grabs her wrist before she can walk away again.
"…Thank you, Caroline."
He looks and sounds sincere. Somehow that only seems to make her more frustrated, although she'll soon realize that it's more frustration with herself than at him.
"Yeah, whatever."
When he releases her, she marches straight to her room and slams the door behind her.
He watches the closed door for a long while, using his enhanced hearing to listen in to what she was doing on the other side. Only once he's deducted that she had plopped herself onto her bed, resigned to her fate, does he move to get himself a towel.
Getting almost killed somehow seems to have worked out perfectly.