all you need to grow inside my spine

by but seriously

Klaus watches, satisfied, and in that moment she realizes something terrible: that she is grateful for the blood in her mouth. The sooner they break this bond the better. / or, Klaus and Caroline try to bargain their way out of their soulmate bond, but discover that dealing with magic isn't quite as easy or liberating as snapping a neck. ONESHOT.

i just posted a fic but WHAT THE HELL, LIFE IS SHORT AND SHIT.

written in one galloping breath for UppityBitch for the KC Valentine's Day fic exchange. this started out SO different and it ended on the same note. hope you enjoy.

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all you need to grow inside my spine

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or, a Soulmates AU or something like it or something not like it at all

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Rope fucking bites.

Her wrist, specifically: the swoon of vervain meeting its ole buddy vampire skin, the little column of sandpapered flesh tearing against coarse braided hemp. Her blood helps, she guesses, hiding the ill and pockmarked meat of her wrist with sticky, running red. It would be interesting to note that Caroline can imagine all of these things without actually seeing them, for her head has been covered by some kind of sack that smelled earthy, like dirt between fingernails.

"Jackass," she supplies to nobody in particular.

She tugs on the ropes again. Her wrist screams, or maybe she does, she can't tell, her breath is ragged and too loud in her ears. Torture is totally new. A bit further down in How to Survive Vampirism in Podunk Town: A Guide, a chapter she hadn't read yet. Maybe she should have listened to Stefan, stayed out of the woods—

But she'd been hungry.

"Fucking," she hisses, trying to wrestle her torso out of what feels like a mess of ropes binding her to the tree, holding her hands above her head, "bunnies."

Stupid bunny diet. Stupid pro-humanity rule. Stupid need to prove Damon wrong. She should've known it would get her killed in the end.

Save your energy, Stefan would have told her. Use your senses. Close your eyes, breathe, in and out, in and out, easy now, in and out—

Dry bracken snaps under the trod of quick feet, a harsh panting: she hears someone hiss, "She still alive?" and a bored reply, "Been wriggling like a fish since she came to."

Her own breath quickens at the thought that someone had been watching her without her knowing, someone not even she could have sensed, someone with an undead heart, stiller than her own.

She strains against the ropes, struggles to see through the hemp filtering out daylight against her eyes.

"Make yourself useful and get my brother, would you?"

Caroline gulps. She feels her blood rushing to her head, leaving a cold expanse in her chest. Dry twigs and dead roots snap and break, closer and closer to her, and the sack is ripped off her head. A boy looks down at her – or man, really, but he had such laughter in his pointed teeth that age didn't seem to have touched him at all. She listens attentively—no heartbeat.

"Why, hello there," he smiles. Her neck cricks in the effort to look up at him. "Try and calm your little heart, won't you darling? It's getting me all riled up."

She bares her teeth, gets ready to spit – Stefan would cringe, but whatevs – until another voice joins them.

"Unlike you to leave your food cold, Kol."

It's a voice she can't see, and she has to bite down on her tongue to stop the oncoming sob. More of them. Not human, from the smell. Cold, metallic. Like an iPod with teeth, the total opposite of sinewy flesh and warm blood. Her heart keeps rattling traitorously in her chest, especially as Kol half-turns to address him.

"Don't get me wrong, brother, I was going to kill her," Kol says conversationally, "until I noticed something interesting. And then I was even more tempted to kill her."

The footsteps stop somewhere behind her tree. "So why didn't you?"

Kol steps back, and Caroline can see they're in a sort of clearing. A man-made clearing, new, the trees still smelled like sap where they fell. Kol's leering at her with lazy intent, but begrudgingly he says, "Because I don't quite fancy another thirty years in a box."

"Out with it, Kol," comes a whine, and Caroline's surprised such a gruff voice could sound so child-like. It doesn't comfort her in the slightest. If anything, she thrashes more against her restraints. The smell of her blood pierces the morning air. The sun is just beginning to show itself; it glances off the leaves, dappling them in washes of yellow and green.

"She has the mark." The smugness in Kol's voice is evident. He'd been waiting, after all, for his brother to bite. "Specifically… your mark."

There is a silence. Not even the sound of breathing.

Caroline's own chest stutters and wheezes as she tries to control her own. It's a habit she'd never learned to break. Stefan had always taught her how to be human, after all, not monster.

Stefan would tell her to close her eyes now, to use her senses – if you can't use your hands, use your teeth. And if not your teeth, your eyes. What do you see?What can you use?

Kol steps away then: for a moment she sees bark, leaves, a glimpse of sky, and then — a man. He has a flush in his eyes, fever bright as he studies her with the slightest tilt of his head, his lips parting as if to take a bite. He looks alive— blue in his eyes, red on his lips, wind in his cheeks, so, so alive.

What do you hear?

Nothing, she realizes. This man has no heartbeat. This man so alive is dead like her too.

And this man crouches, slowly, like she's an animal he wants to tend to, not slaughter.

Panic bubbles in her, she bites back a hysterical giggle. Sure.

His eyes still on hers, he reaches out to trace the searing pain around her left wrist, the ropes biting, marring, the vervain sinking into her skin. The touch is unexpectedly gentle, and she reels away flinching. Bangs her scalp right against tree bark; she hears it crack from the force of it.

"Let's see it, then," he says softly. He's not looking at her anymore, at her inner left wrist. Leaning into her space, one arm resting on his knee, the other pressing into the rope, a whisper, really, but the erupting pain still causes her to grind her teeth. He gives her a smile that is almost reassuring as much as it is frightening as he tugs on the rope, pushing it aside with ease, like it's not encased in vampire repellent or anything.

"Ah."

"No," she breathes out before she can stop herself, because she's staring at her wrist too, at the little mark inked into her skin like a pulse point, a pulse point that jumped and soared into the shape of a bird. She feels exposed, her little secret spread out before him, she can't freaking move. "No, don't touch—"

She tries to jerk away, but it's too late—he's touched it, the point of his index finger to the center of the bird, the center of her pulse, the center of her.

And she sees—

She sees everything.

She's tugged forward, not by rope or force, but by some kind of pulsating energy hammering on her bones, something otherworldly shaking through her. It squeezes breath out of her, leaves junipers in her lungs, cathedrals in her belly, the hushed applause of fluttering wings, birds taking flight. And she feels whole – so, so whole, filled to the brim like jarred fireflies, quenched in her throat, sated to her bones. She feels him.

And then it ends.

Caroline chokes, tears collecting in her eyes, his finger curled away from her birthmark. He looks like the sea's just swept through him, his blue eyes a murky colour she can't measure, let alone look into.

But she can still hear him. He had sounded fascinated before, downright excited, it had rung off his voice like a mandolin. She dares peek at his mouth, the furthest she will allow, nothis eyes, nope. Just the unhappy downturn flick of his mouth.

"Well this is a bloody problem."

—

—

Caroline has her feet. They're itching to turn, to dig heel into dirt and scamper, dive into foxholes and leap over logs, bring her somewhere safe.

If you don't have your eyes you have your feet. Can you run, Caroline?

"Can you?"

An impatient tut and the blonde girl scoffs into her wine. "Figures you'd end up shacking up with someone utterly stupid, girl can't even speak."

"Don't count your chicks yet, Rebekah." Kol leans forward in his seat, waving a speared mushroom with his knife. "She has quite the colourful vernacular, we held witness to it when we had to heave her into the car—"

"Heave." Rebekah huffs out her indignation. Her dinner is long forgotten in place of her wine, which she hasn't put down since Caroline's sat at the table, watching closely how Caroline's eyes keep darting towards doors and windows. "She's like an animal."

Caroline nails scrape into the table, but she doesn't dare open her mouth.

All Kol does is offer up his easy smile, "So are we."

It's all so bizarre. She'd woken up in a room that dripped old money with no recollection of how she'd gotten there, and across from her in a couch much like the one she'd been lying in, sat—

"Klaus." It was an offering, she realized. He gave her a smile, one that brought out dimples in his cheeks, but his eyes remained unreadable. Carefully devoid of any emotion.

She had watched him as he watched her. They stayed that way for some time. She didn't know what to say, so she sat up, slowly, feeling bruised around her wrists.

Speaking of which.

Mouth like cotton she pulls her gaze away from him to the bird mark, and so does he, a traitorous prelude to his previously-blank stare. He'd looked as anxious as her.

When she finally looks back at him the expression is gone, but the realization isn't.

She is totally, totally fucked.

—

—

"Well." Rebekah chews on the inside of her mouth, sizing her up. Rebekah looks straight at her as she asks, "Does our little pet have a name?"

Unbeknownst to her, her fury had compounded itself into a box, a box that contained her name, and it would have burst forth with a spit of her lips, but Klaus beat her to it.

Klaus looks at Rebekah, and Klaus says, "Caroline."

His eyes are narrowed and his mouth is wet, red from wine. He's stuck a dagger into the polished table, his thumb circling the hilt of it. It looks old, spindly, dust falling from the blade and falling in tiny clumps onto the table. "Her name is Caroline, and you would do well to call her that."

Rebekah studies him. Her eyes slide to the dagger, then back to him. She's weighing her options. Caroline knows this because she's seen that look mirrored on her own face, that snap of a retort just itching to leap off her tongue, consequences be damned. Probably explained why she was grounded a lot as a kid, but that seems worlds away now.

Now, she's watching an exchange between a brother and a sister, a wrestle of power and words unsaid. It swells in the space between them, surges into corners and gathers in the rafters, impossibly stifling, like a kettle held at boiling point.

Across the table, Kol blows his nose.

"You get used to these bantam tiffs," he says. "Pass the salt?"

Caroline doesn't want to, but after a little staredown of her own with Kol she finds her hand moving of its own accord to pass him the salt shaker, returning a forced smile at his faultless grin. When she sits back in her seat she sees Klaus has gripped his dagger with whitened knuckles.

"Now, darling," Kol continues, oblivious to his brother's bottled rage, "tell me how handsome you think I am."

Automatically, she says, "I don't think much of it."

To her right Rebekah snorts into her cup, a smile breaking through the fierce scowl, and to her left Klaus visibly relaxes.

Caroline doesn't know what the fuckis going on, but feels that maybe it's a good thing when Rebekah says, "I guess she will do."

—

—

She will do, like she's some last minute salad dressing in a forgotten aisle at the K-Mart.

It rubs her the wrong way, and she doesn't know why. Like, she's trapped in a creepy old house with vampires older than Stefan and Damon and her combined—which, to be honest, isn't saying much since she's only like two months old—and she's offended over what a pasty girl had said.

Seriously.

She prowls the room restlessly, her hand gripped over the healed-flesh of her wrist. The lamps in the room were set to dim, and in that low light her soulmark carried a foreboding air. She tries to rub it away, then immediately feels naïve for it.

As a child she'd whispered secrets to it, secrets only the world could carry, because that's what Grams had told them when Bonnie had proudly shown her own mark: a lightning bolt on her delicate collarbones.

"What's yours, then?" Grams drops her gaze onto Caroline. She's almost too afraid to show it, but she shakes back her sleeve and thrusts it out for Grams to see. A bird, wings outstretched. It had been nothing more than a brown splotch growing up but it had intensified lately, lines growing sharper, melting into shape like jelly in a mould. Grams said that was to be expected – though what's expecting her she doesn't say, not even when Caroline presses on it.

Bonnie takes a long gulp of her tea, something sweet and heavy, the fumes of it compact in the little room. Grams has the fire blazing, it's barely sundown. The room is awash in orange. Caroline hardly moves.

"Whatever your soul is made of," Grams says then, finally, "you'll probably find that theirs is the same."

And Caroline had caught her breath at that, hardly believing that any soul in the world could feel exhilaration over a perfectly timed backhand-triple-flip-split as she did, feel satisfaction when dotting the last full stop on an extensively-researched five-page handwritten essay, feel outraged when picked second as date choice to homecoming, feel downright scaredat the prospect of her parents' divorce, feel lonely as she did, as forgotten, as cast aside, as wretchedly, miserably, alone.

She used to stroke the little mark at night, tell it as much as herself that it was going to be okay, wondering where her soulmate's mark was. On his stomach, maybe, covered by the splay of her fingers? On his ankle, pressed firm against her own?

Puerile thoughts, girly thoughts — and then came Katherine.

Katherine had come and killed her and gave her pointed teeth and a thirsty gut, and insecurity came back with an all new jig: what would her soulmate think of her ripping into necks like this, fangs caught in veins gushing blood and the messy pulp of chewed flesh stuck in the cracks of her razor-sharp teeth, a walking horror story, vampire, an abomination.

So Stefan suggested bunnies.

"Paints a cuter picture," he said. His own mark, a quill, on the side of his neck. Elena had the same one, but on her stomach. "You know, in case your soulmate is averse to the whole 'need human blood to continue existing' thing."

Caroline had made a face then but she'd also been relieved, and now it's biting her in the ass. To think she'd been so worried, so careful not to be a monster, and her soulmate, her supposed other half, of all the humans and creatures and other mythical beings she'd rather not think about in the entire damn world, happens to be Klaus.

Klaus, who doesn't even give a second thought to ordering someone to slit their own throat so he can drink from them.

And she'd been snacking on bunnies.

She's so affronted she finds herself slumping down into an armchair, arm thrown over her eyes. It's laughable, when you think about it, but Caroline feels exhausted. Night has settled around them, she hears crickets singing outside. She doesn't know where she is, where the night sky comes dusted with unfamiliar stars, where the woods don't shout back her friends' names when she calls for them.

Is she even in Mystic Falls anymore?

Why isn't she running?

She's afraid, yes, but she's also comfortable, as Kol had told her to be when he'd shown her the room, and she also has no desire to run at all even though she's already mapped out all the exits in the house. And then the thought comes to her, stupidly, belatedly:

"They freakin' compelled me."

Her senses catch onto a tiny stir behind her closed door, the one that had latched firmly closed an hour earlier. Suspicious, Caroline pushes herself out of the armchair and circles the door on light feet, hands clasping into tight fists.

Whoever's behind that door can't hide now, she's clearly alerted to their presence, like a set of lungs stealing air from a room.

She steps closer, presses her mouth right up to the smoothed-down wood, snarls:

"Are you listening behind the door?"

There is a silence.

She's beginning to think that maybe with him there will always be silences, until—

"Yes." Guilty.

It's him alright.

Even if he hadn't made known of his presence she would have smelled it in the air anyway: blood and whiskey and rich, peppery vetiver.

Klaus.

Caroline feels light-headed for a moment, but she sucks in air through her nose and closes her eyes. Finds her center, but the frustrating thing about your soulmark finding its twin is that your center is no longer within yourself. It pulls at her feet, something moving inexorably behind her ribs, instincts only heightened by her vampirism. The pause stretches on into something longer, a stillness that she doesn't know she could have allowed, not in the madness that's been pulling her under.

"Why?" she demands.

"I was waiting for an entrance."

Caroline scoffs. "Well, you've got it."

"Thought it would be rude to just barge in, I'm no Kol."

"Really? Ruder than tying me to a tree in vervain rope and compelling me to silence over world's weirdest rendition of a Brady Bunch dinner?"

The door chuckles. "Apologies, love, but this morning I didn't know you were my soulmate."

"Don't," it comes out harsher than expected. "Don't use that word."

"Soulmate?" It's a taunt now, and Caroline grits her teeth. The ridges of the door must leave marks in her forehead the way she's pressing against it and still she presses harder. "Are you afraid of words, Caroline? What little venom they carry we bite them between our teeth and suck all the putrid out, and our bodies are made stronger from it. Say it with me, sweetheart— soulmate. How nondescript it sounds, how unremarkable… and yet…"

Klaus grows quiet behind the door, caught in a muse it seems. Caroline remains wary, doesn't even jump when his voice reaches out again. "Won't you let me in, darling?"

"No."

"Yes, I expected that. Which is why I pulled up a chair."

Liar, Caroline thinks. She can hear his voice humming on the other side, his breath glancing off the carved wood. She imagines, quickly, his mouth. Red. Blood-smeared. And then she banishes it just as quickly. His mouth is inches away from her own, separated by alder and cherry wood and solid brass knob. Blood creeps up her cheeks, a poor man's chokehold, and she feels ashamed for it.

"I can't believe it's you." She knows her lines. She's practiced it over and over and over again in the mirror, she'd wanted it to be perfect, the day she finally got to meet her soulmate. Perfect pear-shaped tear in the corner of her eye, lips parting ever so slightly, lush and ready and inviting. I can't believe it's you, she'd trilled breathlessly into her comb. She had thought about this moment many, many, many times. How she would look, the things she would say. She never expected she'd be saying it to a door. Or that her soul mate would be a conscience-free, murder-happy hybrid-rearing nut.

"You're talking out loud, do you realize? How am I a nut?"

Caroline pushes her forehead so hard she smells blood – evidently Klaus smells it too because his next words have a note of urgency to them, suspicion. "Caroline? What's going on?"

"Whatever your soul is made of," Caroline utters flatly, "mine is probably made of the same. The massacres and village killings. I've heard stories of you, from Stefan and Damon and – and even Katherine. Forgive me if I need a moment to grasp the fact that the person I'm apparently destinedto be with is someone who's been terrorizing my town and my friends. Someone who's tried to kill me," she raises her voice over his weak protest, "however indirectly; someone who's idea of takeout is the delivery guy's carotid artery."

"We could have Chinese sometimes if you want," Klaus says. "I also know a great Thai place."

"I tried, so hard, to be good." Caroline closes her eyes to the blood dripping down her forehead. "So freakin' hard. I was on the bunny diet. I thought if I ever showed you who I was, my soulmate would run for the hills."

"Aren't you glad then that it's me?"

There has to be some kind of mistake, Caroline thinks desperately. She sniffs back a sob, but it's useless. "No," she says honestly, and something inside her breaks. "No, no, no. This is a mistake—I haven't even seen your mark—"

"Well, you won't let me in, love—"

"—has to be some messed up joke. Vampire hazing! Or something, right—?"

"Caroline, you're hyperventilating."

"This is a mistake, there is no way—" She sucks in a breath, she feels it slam into her lungs, slush together with the salty, unshed tears, "No way."

"Caroline."

"Look—"

"Damn it, Caroline!" There is the sound of glass breaking and her next breath goes straight to her head, pounding in with Klaus's voice.

"I felt you, Caroline," he hisses through the door, and she's thankful for that sturdy block of wood between them. "I touched your skin and I drowned, like the world split at the core and sucked me in – all that power. You felt it too, I saw it in your eyes. All the blood we've shed between us ceased to exist. You were confounded by it. By us. What we could be. It may not be tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after that, but you will let me in, Caroline. I don't need compulsion for that to happen."

He must have walked away then, because the space around her suddenly feels incredibly empty. Caroline has to catch herself on the brass knob before she slumps against the door – all the air has gone out of her and he feels like the last balloon at an eight-year-old's party. Floating along, awaiting her fate.

Her fate that was stomping away to the other end of the house – down the stairs, out the front door and into the night – her hand that wrapped tight around the doorknob, her feet that were ready to walk. To follow. In his direction, probably, all that want weighing down on her like an anchor.

Caroline forces herself to take a step backwards, then another, then another, then another, until she falls back against the ridiculously big bed, sinks heavily into goose-down pillows and luxuriously smooth sheets. She grabs a pillow, smothers her face and screams, long and hoarse and good.

Outside, a wolf howls. Everything green trembles.

—

—

When morning comes Caroline's surprised to find that she'd slept quite well… considering. There are no noises behind her door today, but it's still early. The sun's barely making it through the window.

She rolls out of the bed with a sigh to push the heavy curtains aside and midsummer sunlight bursts into the room. The window creaks a little when she nudges it open with her elbow. She wonders how old the house is. There's nothing really surrounding it – just the stretch of green lawn and the thick canopy of trees, brown and blue and green, smelling like pine and good, clean earth. Every so often she sees hybrids milling about the lawn, carrying obscure bits of furniture from the back of a truck parked in the circular driveway.

"Convenient that he found you just as we're getting settled."

"Jesus!" Caroline gasps, hand to her heart, and she whips around to see Rebekah standing in the middle of her room, a tray balanced in her hand. Teapot. Pastries. Jug of blood. Check, check, check.

"You still believe in that wish wash?" Rebekah sets down the tray on her end table and unearths a bell from a drawer in the dresser. She rings it once and two hybrids come in carrying two chairs and a table — bronze gilt-mounted, walnut and antique — and before Caroline is properly awake for this they have a nice little tea set-up.

Didn't even have to leave her room.

Rebekah's all dressed up in something silky and high-necked, hair swept in curls over her shoulder, lipstick matte and formidable. "Come," she says in her clipped tone. "Let's have breakfast."

Caroline, decked out in yesterday's shirt and her underwear – the navy silk robe with the Mikaelson family crest had been scandalously left in a heap in a corner of the room, Rebekah says nothing of it – sits across from Rebekah, hair half pulled from its bun, salty tears and deep sleep gummy in the back of her throat. There's an adjoining bathroom complete with hand-sculpted granite tub, heated limestone floors, a wide window that overlooks the tops of swaying trees, blue turrets, endless skies—

—but most importantly, there's a toothbrush in there somewhere. And soap too, her skin reminds her reproachfully, but she sits there, adamantly swallowing back the cup of hot tea and blood, sets it back in its saucer without as much as a clatter.

"Miss Mystic Falls," Rebekah smiles, slow like a cat, blinks her sharp blue eyes over Caroline's distressed state. "You look like shit."

"You barged into my room at 7:54am," Caroline reminds her, helping herself to a strawberry dipped in dark chocolate. It pools juicily in her mouth, and she has to remind herself that this is a hostage situation, and she isn't such a cheap ho that she can be won over by chocolate—but she can't help it. She moans.

Rebekah groans. "Where the hell did Nik even find you?"

"In the woods," she replies just as cattily, already reaching for another strawberry, "Minding my own business, looking for brunch, and suddenly I'm tied to a tree and Kol has my head covered, execution style."

"You stepped into their little ritual," Rebekah says. She sucks cream delicately off her thumb before biting into her Danish, peach and blueberries glistening with jam. "And what with all the nonsense going on with the Salvatore boys you would forgive my brothers for not thinking it was a trap." She chews thoughtfully, tilts her jaw in assent when Caroline gestures for more blood in her tea.

"Caroline Forbes, champion collateral damage," Caroline toasts, raising her teacup high in the air. Rebekah, to her credit, gives hers the tiniest of waves before they both drink together, and drink deeply.

"I considered making your life a living hell," Rebekah tells her as she butters scones. "But then Marcie – one of Klaus's older ones, actually helpful for a hybrid – came in with this black Russian tea, and I thought it would be a waste of cherry preserves if I'd drank it with Kol. He's boorish," she adds unnecessarily. "Klaus is too impatient for tea, he slugs down espresso shots like a nightmare, and Elijah is away, so…"

"In the split second of needing a breakfast companion, you decided to be nice to me."

"Right-o." Rebekah passes the buttered scone to her and in quick succession butters another one. "If we're to live together in the unforeseeable future I'd rather your presence not grate on my complexion. I still haven't properly recovered from having to go back to that town."

"Tell your brother to stop making hybrids, then," Caroline mutters. "Doesn't he have enough already? What does he even need an army for?"

"You tell me."

Caroline scrubs a hand down her face, fully awake now with blood tart on her tongue, and she'd be content to wallow in her thoughts if she didn't feel Rebekah's gaze on her, like warmed metal through soft butter. She lifts her head. "What?"

"There is another reason I don't like you." Without waiting for a response Rebekah unwraps the scarf tied around her neck, pulls down her collar, and Caroline sees it. An arrow in the dip between her collarbones.

"You're… jealous?" Caroline guesses, glad that Rebekah hadn't wanted to flash her her boobs or something. She needs more blood for that.

Rebekah casts her eyes downward as she pours more blood into their teacups, tea considerably less now, and she says through stiff lips, "Do you know how lonely it is to be alive a thousand years and still not find your other half?"

"It's a trip, I bet," Caroline snarks, back thrown against the back of her seat. "So great to be me right now, swaddled up in the murderous arms of my lover."

"Optimism dwindles after some time, but I still hope my soulmate isn't a hunter or something—that would be dreadful," Rebekah continues unperturbed, "seeing as how Nik ended up with you… but I've seen it happen, a few times. Two souls touching. It's …"

Otherworldly, Caroline wants to say, but her throat's gone dry. She remembers Klaus's finger on her soulmark, the bloodless rush, the sensation of drowning. Remembers the wet rasp of Klaus's voice against her door. She'd felt ageless.

"Powerful," Caroline finally says, quietly. Her gaze slides up to Rebekah's sharper now. "That warrants kidnapping, I guess."

"You aren't locked up, Caroline. You're free to roam the grounds wherever you please."

"I just can't leave." Caroline slams her hand down so hard the table rattles. "I mean, I can, but I don't want to. Genius compelling there."

Rebekah shrugs, pushing back her chair. Teatime must be over, with another ring of a bell. Before she leaves though, she does look back, a strange look on her face. "You could fight the compulsion, it's not unheard of. I've seen Stefan do it."

"Elena is Stefan's soulmate," Caroline whispers.

Rebekah tuts, hopeless. "Aren't you Nik's?"

—

—

True to his word, Klaus doesn't let himself in. He does come to her door at night, after dinner – which is always strained, her never really looking at him, Rebekah nattering on endlessly, Kol mysteriously gone – but he knocks this time, at least.

"Who is it?" she sings from the oversized tub. She's perched on the side, testing out the warmth, pride falling away fantastically when she'd seen the matted tangle of her hair. It was a wonder Klaus hadn't commented on it, but he's supposed to be her soulmate or whatever, so not commenting on your soulmate's shitty hair must be one of the rules in yet another handbook she hasn't gotten a copy of.

"Funny," Klaus says shortly. This time, she really does think he's pulled a chair with him, because she hears the heavy thud of heavy boots against something – a table? Another chair? – and the clink of a glass being set down. "Should I check for any other suitors lined up behind me? Oh, I forgot—I'm your soulmate, there will be no others."

"That went from zero to a thousand like, fast," Caroline says, surveying the array of bath goodies lined on the counter. She grabs the Epsom salts, the dried chamomile and lavender, and sprinkles them into the hot water. The window is closed against the night chill, not that she can feel it on her skin. She still likes to pretend, though.

Sometimes.

"You've seemed to come to terms with the idea, though." A swig of a drink. "Or are you going to stew some more in your flowered bath?"

"Perv," she offers in way of reply, sliding as soundlessly as she can into the tub.

"I can smell you from here." His voice is lower now, but even with water in her ears she's faintly surprised to find that there's nothing suggestive in his voice. It's a statement, a fact. They are close. They can be closer. She sinks down further into the scented water, bubbles erupting from her nostrils.

She can't hear him underwater, in a world that offers strange, stilled clarity, everything ghostly and pale blue. But she hears her heart, how it seems to drum a strange tune when he's around. When Klaus is around, her heart slows. Almost to a fault, almost as if to remind her that she is not human. Beating in tandem with his.

His heart, so old, it's almost stopped beating.

"You're so old," she says aloud in a gasp, breaking through the surface of the water.

"I am quite old, yes," Klaus concedes. She wonders if he's offended. "Usually a badge of honour among vampires. Is that what's bothering you?"

"No," she says. "It's the fact that not two months ago I was alive, and now I'm dead, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, and now I find out my soul is like, tethered to the oldest vampire on earth, who's probably way on the other end of the saviour spectrum—also, he kills people."

"And things," he adds.

"You're not even denying it."

"There's nothing to deny. I have done horrible things, all spurred by somewhat megalomaniacal desires I must admit, and I'm not very sorry about most of them. Some of them, maybe. Gene Simmon's hair catching on fire in '73—that one I'm sorry for."

Caroline grips the side of the tub, hoists herself up. "You knew Gene Simmons?"

"Knew him? He was a werewolf! Only vampire who wasn't afraid of him," Klaus says smugly. "I needed a large crowd to draw energy from, we had a blood moon – was for a spell my witch was helping me with… My poor friend here liked to breathe fire; it's a crowd pleaser in one of his songs. Firehouse. Do you remem—? Or are you too young for it? Anyway, his hair got caught in the crosshairs."

"A blood moon ritual at a KISS concert." Caroline blinks. "This is insane. One question: you didn't happen to be trying to activate your werewolf side, were you?"

There is a careful gulp of a drink. "I was."

"You were going to sacrifice Gene Simmons, weren't you."

"He was unscathed. Needed a new wig, is all."

"Were you?"

"I was."

"In the middle of his concert?"

"He would have died with great fanfare. Hollywood walk of fame, foundations in his name, the works. I'm quite generous to my friends."

"But the spell didn't work?"

"It didn't take, no. Doppelganger blood was a thing of myths then." A slosh of liquid in his heavy-bottomed glass. "And now the video of him falling off stage with his hair burning has half a million views on YouTube. It's always strange to look back at these things, videos, pictures… don't do half the justice memory does. But I suppose they will have to do."

"Not everybody has Original vampire memory," Caroline mumbles. She reaches for the loofah and scrubs her arms, the back of her knees. "How long am I stuck here for?"

"However long it takes."

"For what?"

Klaus hums. "You'll see."

—

—

Stefan had taught her how to be a vampire, but it was more a lesson in restraint. In humanity. Stefan reminded her how to act like a human again.

But she's not human, and he's not here. She's been gone for three weeks and there's been no offbeat hoots or caws in the forest, no messages buried in the ground. None of the urgency that comes with a missing Elena. She's a little put out, to be honest.

"Don't they miss me at all?" she grunts, hurling a dog-sized stone into the lake, because of course Klaus's estate would have its own lake.

Rebekah blows hair out of her eyes. "Do you know how to skip rocks even at all?" Her pebble skips twice before it sinks with a satisfying gurgle. She turns back to Caroline with her jaunty hands on her jaunty hips. "You fancied yourself Little Red Riding Hood and skipped off into the woods, conveniently right before summer break. Elena and Stefan are busy 69'ing somewhere – oh don't give me that look, you were thinking it too – and Damon, who gives a rats arse about Damon. Nobody, that's who. And he returns the favour."

So no, Caroline. Nobody's exactly out there looking for you.

Caroline sighs and toes the ground for something flatter, smaller, less likely to be able to bash someone's head in like she wants, but gives up after a while. She drops down onto a patch of grass, props her chin in her hands. "Got any mermaids in that lake?"

"Some. Can't be sure." Rebekah shrugs, looking out into the glittering expanse. Fall is coming soon and Rebekah dresses the part; her shirts are thicker, her jeans cuffing down to her ankles. "Sometimes they come out at sundown, but mostly to look for Kol. One of them is convinced he has her soulmark."

"How do you know your soulmate isn't dead?" Caroline has long learned that Rebekah's glare is easily ignored, her blows only extending to Kol and Klaus. Caroline, she just fixes with a withering glance. Whatever's left of summer wilts around her.

"Ha ha, go ahead and talk," Rebekah gathers up the remains of their makeshift picnic – an elk, Caroline had cajoled, and Rebekah had agreed despite herself. Reluctantly. And reluctance meant there was usually something in it for her later on.

The trek back is mostly silent, a pause every now and then for Rebekah to crouch down and follow a deer, another elk, tracking them silently, her feet expertly picking their way through the undergrowth. She becomes a predator entirely, in her loose little top and wooden earrings, her eyes almost black with how blown her pupils are. Rebekah never lunges. Just follows, and watches.

Maybe Caroline's been watching Rebekah a little too closely, because she finds herself walking through the house as silent as a fox, floor barely making a sound even with her shoes, rounding a hall with a swiftness that would impress even Kol. She knows her way around now, knows what times Klaus comes out of his room for a nightcap – and by nightcap she means fursploding on his porch and leaping off into the night, yowling at the moon.

She thinks of him with a determined detachedness when she isn't aching for him – and ache for him she does. In her bed at night, teeth worrying at her nails. It's a different sort of hunger. Her gums don't push out fangs and she doesn't seek the crunch of bone in her hands. Isn't plagued by visions of lapping up blood leaking from a broken neck.

(Guess who's got two pointed fangs and is failing Stefan's classes? This moi.)

But she wanted Klaus.

This knowledge, with little ceremony, had settled itself quite proudly right in her ticker. Which means she is all too aware of the sound of him moving in his room just a turn of the hall away.

Or how she knows he's listening in on her teatime conversations with Rebekah, that curve of his lips like he's itching to say something.

Or at night, when he pulls up his usual chair and leans against the door, she has to fight the urge to lean back, like some really angsty montage in teeny bopper flick.

He'd left his door open once, and she'd caught a glimpse of his room. It always smells like winter around him, and his room looked it too. Smoky-dark leather and violets. The velvety veil of ripe plums and frozen woods.

She lingers in the hallway sometimes, trapped between going to her room, or to his. But his door was never left open after that anymore.

—

—

"Shag him already," Kol whinges when he comes home a week later to find Caroline still there. "His music taste has hit an all time low—he's been listening to Nick Cave all weekend."

"Didn't know you were here," Caroline replies, passing him on the leather couch. Kol quickly catches her hand and she ends up in his lap, something he laughs and she gripes about.

"I was off running errands, meeting with soulwitches. Collecting favours." Seeing her curiosity piqued, Kol shifts in his seat, shoulders back, smirk in place. "Didn't you know my family was one of the oldest witch clans before that fateful day Esther decided to do us in and turn us into vampires?"

Moving off of him is no easy feat, she has to smack him a few times before she manages to roll to away. "Witches? God, is there a special snowflake award for you already? Is there anything you don't have up your arsenal?" She cocks an eyebrow and dramatically braces herself. "Go ahead, melt my brains out. Maybe it'll wear down the compulsion and I can leave."

Kol smiles at her like he wishes he could. "I don't quite have the touch I used to, but I do like to keep in practice. I'll tell you all about it if you do something about that," he points to the ceiling.

Thatturns out to be the weird distorto bass of Klaus' playlist thumping insistently, as it has been, for two days now—and do turns out to be getting him to shut it the hell up.

Rebekah had shook her head when she'd asked about it, and she lingers long enough to hear the hybrids' whispers of a spell gone wrong, and now everybody is quaking in their boots.

So Klaus is in a mood and she's the one who has to be getting him out of it, just because—

"You're his soulmate!" Marcie gestures, like it means something. What it means, of course, is that he's not likely to kill her on sight should they ask him to turn down his damn music.

"Just bloody go," Rebekah says, and looks very close to bringing up the elk thing.

As it turns out, a long-suffering sigh only ends up with you getting shoved out of the room, so with not much of a choice left Caroline trudges her way two floors up to where Klaus's man cave is.

The door's closed. The music's loud behind it.

Ridding any and all nervous twitches in her gestures she swings the door open to find Klaus hunched over his worktable. The book he's poring over looks like the ones Bonnie's always chanting from, but older. He snaps it shut the minute he hears her walk in, his hands folding behind his back, his head bowing, the picture of gallantry.

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Cool your jets, double oh seven. You know I can't read Futhark runes."

"Oh, I can't take any chances." Klaus crosses the room and tucks the grimoire into an empty slot in the supremely cramped bookshelf. Over his shoulder he says, "You're very clever."

Caroline isn't sure how to take the compliment. She bites her lip, tries to think of a witty comeback, but only manages a stiff, "This isn't the nineties anymore, Klaus. I'm here to bring you salvation."

Before she can even finish the four strides to his stereo Klaus is suddenly in her way. She steps back as though burned. Klaus isn't that much taller than her – if she wore heels they would match each other height for height – but she's barefoot, and Klaus cuts an imposing figure when he's looking down at her like that.

She thinks of him crouching down to meet her eye, somewhere in Mystic Falls.

She wonders if Klaus sees it too, what with their weird linked souls, because he laughs. It blows her hair away from her cheeks.

"Salvation." He plays with this word like a cat and its food. "Salvation comes barefoot and smelling of blood. What have I done to deserve this?"

Caroline lets out a yelp when Klaus runs his thumb over her lower lip, and very deliberately puts it in his mouth. Eyes still on hers he takes a step closer as she takes a step back, gulping quite audibly. Her heartbeat nowhere to be found, caught somewhere between his teeth, most probably.

"Messy eater," he murmurs. "Never would have pegged you for one."

She is all too cognizant to his presence, but of course she would be—he had touched her once, and she felt him in her undead heart. She had felt him tearing at her carefully sewn seams, he had been in the sinews of her, taking up her entirely too much space.

And she remembers.

Her soulmark throbs then, almost painfully, but instead of extending it to him like she knows she should she brings it to her chest firmly. Klaus is so near, so animal—she almost reaches out to touch him like one. Carefully. Fearfully. Afraid of jaws that might snap, nails that might tear.

Klaus stands stock-still, breath bated, and Caroline realizes why.

Her left hand is still safely tucked to her chest. The other – it splays across his chest, slowly, fingers unfurling like a morning bloom. This is the first time she's touched him, and he seems as transfixed as her.

What comes out next are words she's practiced in the mirror, words that usually sound angry: this time they're but a faint whisper, rising high in her throat like a secret she never meant to divulge. Her eyes widen and her lower lip trembles, and she asks, "You've gone this far, keeping me here. Why don't you compel me to love you back?"

Klaus blinks. It's like they're both underwater. Everything sounds garbled in her ears, muffled, spoken by someone who isn't her. Her limbs move as if caught in a dream, heavy once they've settled, her nails digging into his shirt, like a threat now rather than a lover's caress.

Because Klaus. Klaus gathers his wits, he blinks that dazed look off his face, he smiles at her. "Who said anything about love?"

"I—" The spell's broken. She drops her hand. Step back now, folks. "You're my…" The word dies on her tongue, weak, unconvincing. "You're not in love with me."

Why did it have to sound like a question?

Klaus raises an eyebrow. "Not in the slightest."

Caroline has to admit, she's a little taken aback. "We're soulmates," she says, like she hasn't been the one to put all these distance and bricks between them.

"Yes, and in the month you've been here you haven't fostered any sort of meaningful connections, nor have you tried to." He gives her a pointed look, but it must not be getting through to her from the music, because he mutes it finally. She can practically hear the collective sighs of every hybrid and original in the house, but she's also, well—

"You find me every night."

"And you keep the door shut. I don't know you, Caroline. I don't know what your favourite colour is, I don't know what type of blood you like. Or your birthday."

Caroline's mouth opens.

Evidently, Klaus isn't done. He presses even closer, like it's possible, his hand braced on the wall next to her head. "You push me away at every turn, you can't even look me in the eye; wonderful little exhibit going on right… here."

Caroline's mouth shuts.

She can't even breathe, the space does not allow it. All she can see is Klaus's mouth speaking words, and she can smell what he's had for his last meal. An intoxicating mix of a high school history teacher and an old war veteran. She traces her eyes upwards while Klaus traps her with his hips, her eyes pan across his cheekbones, to the way his hair curls behind his ears, and finally. His eyes. Blue, blue, blue.

Klaus looks back, and it's all a bit too much.

She turns away.

Which is her mistake, really.

"You don't even know where my mark is," he murmurs in her ear. Her eyes flutter shut. Impossibly close. Her hands fight to remain by her side, not to tangle with the hem of his shirt, to slip into skin and secret.

But, somehow – her voice betrays her. "Show me."

"Open your eyes first, Caroline."

She does, just a crack, but widen when she sees that Klaus is once again by his worktable, corner of his lips pulled up. Her hands tingle, static in her palms, and she tries to rub life back into them. It's a struggle, but she meets his eyes. Can't back down now.

"It's on my chest," Klaus tells her. Probably as a warning, so she doesn't end up throwing lamps at his head when he takes off his shirt, and – okay, yeah, buttons. His fingers are working at his buttons, slow, one at a time, but she can see the slight tremor there. The same way her hands are shaking, gripped around her upperarms.

It's unfortunate that he notices, because they both share a rueful smile.

"What is this?" she manages in a weak sort of laugh, Nervous? Me!? Ha! ha!. "My body keeps betraying me around you. I don't know if it's manufactured or if it's nature or if it's my body just – just knowing, but it's not me. I keep wondering if everything I'm feeling is real, or just –"

"A side effect of our connection?" Klaus is finished with his buttons now. He raises his eyebrows, daring her to come closer. And god damn her legs, she does, her hand already grasping him by the collar, pushing his shirt aside. Fingers meets shoulders, smooth stretch of skin over lean muscle. She tries not to notice the goosebumps that follow.

"Who knows," she says.

"Who knows," he echoes. The way they're standing, it would be so easy to just pull him in, to feel him curved around her, be swallowed by him.

She takes a deep breath. "Let's see it, then."

—

—

---

—

—

He wants to kiss her neck.

No real eloquence there, just the stark luminosity of truth. He wants to kiss her neck, he wants to taste the asylum of her rushing blood, trace his tongue down the paper-thin skin, stop somewhere on her sternum. Vampire heartbeats are hard to discern, but not if you're very close. And he intends to be very close.

Her voice is like a command, her chin raised high. "Let's see it, then."

Everything she says should come with a label. Warning: may impair the ability to think or operate machinery. He would have grit his teeth and rolled his eyes, the way it sounds like an order, what exactly have I been trying to do all this while, sweetheart?

But he acquiesces, submits himself to her study. She's circling him with light steps, her bare feet barely making a sound. It feels a little bit like an interrogation, the way she's frowning at him, and he finds himself amused by it. There's an easy charm that rolls off of her, sometimes he catches himself smiling when he hears Kol and her exchange quips in the other room.

Caroline takes her time. His shirt is parted and pulled one sleeve at a time, discarded carelessly into a chair. Klaus knows she's feigning indifference, but his ears find what they've been seeking: the skip in her pulse. He hears it in her throat, stuck.

"It's not on your chest," she says softly. "It's just under your collarbone."

"Touch it," he urges. Anticipation swells inside him, sharp points of it hacking at his ribs. "Go on, Caroline."

There's worry on her face. Something wet behind her eyes, but she wants this. He had seen into her mind that day in the woods, he'd crouched down as if afraid she would run, he'd touched a finger to her wrist and he had been cocooned by a need to be loved so fierce it had shook him.

He needs to see it again.

Slowly, his hand wraps around her wrist and he guides it to his chest, eyes never leaving hers. Right before her finger reaches his skin she blows out cool, sweet air between her lips, and then everything is gone.

This time it is not a drowning.

He is caught between arcs of yellow and brilliant gold, the sway and swoon of a thousand candle lights, flickering in and out. His bones do not feel so carved here, not so sharp. He feels like he can fall asleep here.

What's the opposite of drowning?

Through the darkness he sees her – the brilliant tendrils of her hair, he could catch it between his fingers if he wants. He follows after her, her locks like melted gold when he finally dares hold it in his palm, and she turns – she turns, the candles grow hushed. Somehow he knows that they will be lost in the black shroud of darkness soon, and a strange desperation rises in him. He has to tell her. He has to tell her now, while he still can still see her:

"You're mine," he says. Pulls her close, feels the curve of her spine pressed like flowers against his palm, his mouth against the insouciant spill of her hair. Her hands grip his shoulders and she turns her head, her neck open to him, so foolishly open—

He smiles with his teeth.

—

—

It is different, this time. They are not yanked back to the linear drone of time, but it's rather like the opening of one's eyes, a flutter, a light breeze – she's still blowing on his cheeks, he still has his hand wrapped around her wrist.

"Did you feel that?" Klaus asks immediately. He clears his throat sharply: his throat has gone dry.

"I saw it," she admits. "Everything was on fire. And you looked…" Caroline trails off, red colouring her cheeks. It's lovely on her, her skin aflush like she's just fed.

"And I looked?" he prompts, but one look from her provides him with just the answer. Something like shame skitters on the edge of her expression, but then she lifts her head and he sees a dark want there, a quick lick of her lips and he imagines hands grasped in hair, mouth on shoulder, hips against hips—

To be close. The curse of their marking.

He wonders what kind of power lies in the center of them, like planets tugged along their orbit, sucked in by gravity. He wonders, too, if one could harness that gravity. She touches him and he is affixed to the earth, unable to move.

She's so close he can smell her skin, something deliciously forbidden about it. His nose detects figs, mixed with something else. Blood, the smear of a vampire, to be sure… but warmer. She's not been dead long after all. The scents coalesce into something not entirely unpleasant, a strange gourmand; he leans forward so he may sample more of it.

"I'm not in love with you," he tells her, and is surprised to find a flavour of regret there, "but I could be. What interests me more is all this power between us. This magical force binding our fates together."

Clever Caroline, the girl who plots with doppelgangers and runs with Salvatores, she figures it out quite brilliantly. "That's why you're keeping me here. You want to find a way to harness it."

"A soul is immortal, Caroline. Our bodies are but vessels: indestructible, to be sure, but nothing more than vials to keep the spirit contained. Once discovered we're duty bound to protect it, and you'll find it will serve you well."

"Serve…?"

She's turned away from him, eyes closed, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. "God, you sound like you've joined a cult. You want to harness the power of our soul connection. Is this—is this actually a thing?"

Reading her over the rim of his glass he tries to gauge how much she knows, how much she should know. He never really has Elijah's patience for these kinds of deliberations. "Some believe it."

"Do you?"

"I believe you're detrimental to my sanity. These… soulmarks. Once they've found their partner it's vital they stay together, otherwise…"

He makes a sound akin to an anvil dropping.

"We have no sentimental attachments to one another, not really, other than the fact that I am positive I cannot live without you," he continues. "Not in the romantic sense, either. I would curl in on myself and cease to function should you leave. I've seen it happen, not a pretty sight."

She's a pacer. Fingers steepled under her chin she crosses the lengths several time, processing this newfound knowledge. And then Caroline folds herself into his sofa, looking very small somehow. "You mean I can't leave you even if I wanted to."

"No," he says. Sorry, he wants to add, but she won't want it from him, he knows. Courtesy, Niklaus, Elijah would have reminded him, but Elijah is still of the old ways. Klaus is more accustomed to take, not give.

But Caroline—

Klaus clears his throat, breaking the pitch silence of the room. Caroline comes back to him, eyes sliding back into focus, looking miserable. Miserable because she's stuck here, miserable because it's him? He wonders, too, sometimes. Why it had to be her.

"Would you like a drink?" he asks her, if only to have something to say. They are never in the same room together for long.

Caroline nods once, still forlorn. "I'd like to get drunk."

"Cheers." He hands her a crystal tumbler of whiskey and she accepts it wordlessly. They drink in continued silence. Perched against his worktable he watches the way her hair seeps with new colour in the light of the setting sun. Light filters through the stained glass accents of his window, the rich colours dance across her face. Her beautiful, miserable face.

He sighs a curse into his empty glass. "There is, of course, a spell."

Caroline stills. Reluctance takes hold for a moment, but what the hell. He's gone this far. "A separation spell."

There look to be about a hundred questions wrestling to get off her chest at the same time. Understandable. First Caroline is suspicious, then confused, then jubilant, then despaired, then she is back to being suspicious. And what comes out from her is: "Why?"

"Why what?"

"You sang a grand song about harnessing this – power. Thing. Between us, and then you tell me there's a way for us to be cut off like a Bluetooth connection." Caroline's eyes narrow. "I don't buy it. What's in it for you?"

"I figured you would be opposed to the idea of me making hybrids right underneath your nose, and will try to stop me at any cost, which would be really…" Klaus searches for a word. "Bothersome."

"You'd be right." Caroline chews on her bottom lip. "Let me guess. You want to imbue your next batch of oven-bake hybrids with cagey soulmate magic… and in return you'll have a witch perform a separation spell on us."

"I don't quite fancy the idea of chaining you up and forcing your hand in this. What we're dealing with isn't blood." He looks down, bashful suddenly. "The two souls have to be open to one another."

Caroline smirks. "You need me to not block you out, you mean?" She flicks her gaze away, suddenly uncertain. "I don't know, Klaus… These things are often way more complicated than they sound. Before I turned, I helped Bonnie out with a couple of her spells. Sometimes they go very, very wrong. I need your word that I won't come out harmed."

Emphasis on the I.

Klaus elects to ignore it.

"I've never actually witnessed it being done, but whispers through the witching grapevine tells me it can. According to the text I was reading, the basis of soulmates is something like split incarnation. One soul bound to two bodies."

"So if we do this it means we'll be splitting this one soul in two?" Caroline makes a face. "No thanks, I've seen what happens to Horcruxes."

Laughter is an automatic response – he doesn't even have time to mask it. "This is nothing like those books, love."

For the first time in a long time, he sees Caroline look hopeful. She tries to bite back the oncoming smile but it beams off her face. The room seems cheerier all of a sudden. "Alright. Study up and convince me, and you've got yourself a deal."

"So you can understand why I would like to use this to my advantage." He smiles at her, it's supposed to be comforting, but he's too much a wolf for that. "I have my ways. You will be convinced."

Caroline grins and extends her hand. "Shake on it?"

"Do you want to spit on your palm first?" Klaus asks, but it's light-hearted. He grasps her hands in hers.

—

—

Something breaks between them. The prospect of freedom, and being able to earn it, seems to have cheered Caroline up immensely. She doesn't tiptoe around the house anymore. She still goes barefoot, but he hears her bounding up the stairs. The hybrids leer privately, the idea of taking orders from anybody other than the Original siblings affronting, but then again everyone knows, everyone whispers it.

She is his.

It's absurd. He doesn't know why he's delighted by it.

A thousand years on this earth clearly has not prepared him for this moment. He has always read of souls meeting. Extrication, however, seems to not exist in any magical text, or if it once had all trace of it has been erased. Nevertheless he surrounds himself with spellbooks and grimoires, the difficult churn of symbols sliding in and out of focus as he deciphers as best as he can: some words too ancient to recognize, some a garbled mess of pidgins, half-drawn codes with their cyphers missing.

Begrudgingly he shows them to Kol, who not two hours later has a clean transcription of them and a gloating smile waiting for him.

He never did have the touch Kol did with the spells.

Growing up, it was Rebekah Esther poured most of her knowledge into – the men learned to fight and to hunt, to wield blades and skin animals. The women learned the slow burn of herbs, the turn of fumes in tarnished cauldrons, the secrets of the earth.

But Rebekah refuses to partake in their plight to separate their souls. It seemed to her something scandalizing, a spit in the face of nature. "This is sacrilege, Nik. You think just because there's no blood to be sacrificed that it will all end the way you want it to."

What Klaus hears is: You should be grateful. After all, her mark is nothing more than a blotch still taking shape.

"This is as boring as it is impossible," Kol tsks, but still he has not moved from the floor. Caroline has been invited as well, the unmentioned part of their bargain. She has to be convinced, after all. Her hair hangs over Kol's shoulder as she feigns understanding. Klaus wonders what she sees.

Rebekah peeks inside the room, a closed expression on her face. Klaus recognizes that look. With a sigh he pushes himself off his chair and follows her out, closing the door soundly behind them. Rebekah opens her mouth but he jerks his head at the door. They live in a houseful of supernatural beings with supernatural hearing for Chrissake.

"Outside," she mouths. He nods.

Once they're safe under the yawn of stars, the swaying wind that would surely carry their voice the other direction – into the woods – it's then that Rebekah fixes him with a look so severe he feels it cut into him.

"Some people spend entire lifetimes looking for their soulmates," Rebekah bristles, "and you decide to throw it away. For a couple of bloody lapdogs."

"Hybrids," he corrects with an eyeroll. "Imbued with the eternal strength of a soul connection. I'll excuse you on this particular topic, lack of experience sometimes impairs judgement."

"You're a dick. What I wouldn't give—"

"What would you give?" Klaus challenges. "Your blood? Your heart? You didn't feel it, Rebekah, you don't know. I touched her and I saw the universe turn—it was following the point of my finger. That kind of power." Klaus shuts his eyes, breathes out. "That kind of power that leaves your bones shaking for more."

Rebekah blinks rapidly, looks away. "You are so afraid to love. So insistent that it's nothing more than a means for power. So arrogant to think that you can break the world in half and still come out unmarked. Finn was right. You'll die hungry and alone."

"Mind your words, Bekah." He feels the maddening restraint flaring up again, the one only a thousand years on earth can teach you—the one only a thousand years can burn right out of you. He seizes her by the throat but doesn't squeeze, no: this is the meaning of restraint, the mercy he will allow. "Because I did break the world in half, and it did leave me marked. And it's not all carriages and diamond rings. It's suffocation, when you are without them. She leaves the room and I ache to follow; I feel her loneliness and how it wrecks, I can feel her wanting to curl in on herself at night. People think it's a miracle, to find your so-called other half. They sing sonnets about it, oh how grand love is, when all it does is—"

"Nik, what the fuck."

Klaus releases his grip. The world returns to him, the ink-black dreaminess of the night, the scald of Kol's glare matching the brunt of his kick: Kol had come just in time to witness Rebekah's face blotch into the colour of beets.

Rebekah sways into Kol, clutching her throat, wheezes something awful.

"I'm offended you two didn't think to invite me," Kol says, but there is a set to his shoulders. Like he is ready to lunge if needed. "What's a brawl without a captive audience?"

Pushing away from Kol Rebekah sends him a look that is equal parts betrayal and rage. There is wetness in her eyes, she bunches her hands into fists, ready to swing—but then they drop to her side, her fangs slide back into her gums. "You're fucking pathetic."

"If you're really that attached you can still see her after all this is over," Klaus calls to Rebekah's retreating back.

Kol snorts. "Really, Nik? Do you really think she would stay once she's free of you?"

—

—

Fall suits Caroline, but boredom does not. She quickly tires of picking through new clothes for the season with Rebekah, and in frustration he waves his hand and two hybrids wheel the rack of clothes out of the room. Rebekah protests, she's only half finished with the Lanvins and demands the entire wardrobe be brought to her bedroom.

Fall swaths Caroline in the warm spice of falling leaves, the snap of ginger in her hair. Sharp, like the autumnal breeze wafting through the open French windows. She likes to linger come nightfall, chin propped on her hand, a faraway look on her face. Her curls have been swept up for once, her neck unembellished and unhidden.

It's an effort not to stare.

Klaus can pace too, and he does, to where Caroline is lying on the couch with her head hanging off the arm rest.

"Clothes not to your taste?" They're very expensive, he almost points out, but that would probably lead to one of her rants complete with wild gesticulations and rising octaves on how she can't be bought.

"I'm bored," she says, petulant. "Bribe me all you want but it still doesn't change the fact that I haven't seen life outside these grounds for more than a month now. The monotony is draining me."

"Draining," he repeats distractedly. Probably not what she meant, but— "Caroline, when was the last time you drank from the vein?"

Caroline sits up, tucks her hands into the folds of her new skirt, tells him as patiently as she can muster (which isn't much at all), "I do not eat humans, Klaus."

His lip twitches. "Vegetarian?"

"The vampire equivalent of it," she mutters.

"But Caroline!" In a flash he's next to her, her feet scooped into his lap, arm stretched behind her: Caroline inches away pointedly but her feet remain in his lap, at least. "You need the thrill of the hunt. Fighting it is fruitless, love. Instinct always prevails."

"I don't eat humans," Caroline says again, stubbornly. "It's a principle. Instinct doesn't have much say there."

"Didn't you say the only reason you quote unquote tried to be good was becau—"

"So full of yourself," she snaps. She swings her feet off of him and stays firmly on her side of the couch. "I've had to revaluate a lot of things since I came here, and I haven't gotten around to that particular mess yet."

Klaus rolls his eyes. "I'll save you the existential crisis. You can tell yourself I made you do it; whatever helps you sleep better at night."

"Klaus—"

"I'll not have you bored and sullen and pulling faces when you think I can't see. It's very unbecoming."

When Caroline looks at him her eyes are as unimpeachable as a landscape. And why shouldn't they be? She hasn't been difficult, she hasn't caused a stir, hasn't made him want to grind his teeth the way she had seven weeks ago. She's been existing, rather plainly, nodding yesses and shaking nos, prim as a teacup.

Their unspoken agreement to repudiate any and all sentimentalities forming between them, Caroline had kept her distance. They still talk, of course. Friendly exchanges. How do you dos. How goes the spells.

Klaus hates it.

He taps her chin once and retreats before she can shake him away, her suspicion unmistakable. She used to wear her wrath like armour, he used to fend her off with ease. Now he comes for scraps.

It's very unbecoming.

"You don't have to humour me, you know." There's reproach in her voice, the Forbes girl has too much pride to allow herself any favours. "I'm not going anywhere. I am resigned to my fate."

"You're being silly." He stands, hands in his pockets, regarding her with a quizzical look that manages to keep his frustration at bay. "Come on, just let me—"

But whatever it is that Klaus would like Caroline let him do is swiftly interrupted by Kol's arrival into the room, his voice banging raucously against the walls. "Evening, sweet chap and handsome lady! Any plans for the night?"

"Nope," Caroline says, popping the P, and lands in a light skip next to him. She feasts proudly on bloodbags and any animals she finds in the woods, and yet she still has all this unrelenting energy.

"What do you want, Kol?" Klaus pours himself a drink, mentally bracing himself for the skirmish to come: Kol's smiles are always very telling. Maybe it's the chin, the way it points wickedly.

"Come now, Nik," Kol pouts. "I was under the impression you wanted my help for the separation spell?"

That quickly draws their attention. Caroline steps closer to him, whether subconsciously or not Klaus doesn't know, but suddenly her arm is barely an inch away and his skin prickles in restraint. He stays where he is.

"So." Kol grins. "For the spell to work you have to awaken your spiritual self and connect with your inner core. Helps with the pain of extricating two conjoined souls. If your heart weakens even at the thought of separation, then good luck in the ritual – your heart is going to break."

Caroline shifts uncomfortably. Her voice is uncertain, Klaus can hear some sort of sheepish admission in it. "Sometimes – on the two full moons we've had, actually – I get this weird… yearning inside me." She looks him in the eye determinedly, it's all science, isn't it? Nothing she can control, nothing to be ashamed of. "Like I need to be with you. Sometimes it gets to be too much that I can't sleep."

It is a strange occasion indeed for one to bare their heart to a roomful of strangers and not have them laugh. Klaus certainly doesn't feel like it. He knows the sensation of those nights all too well, of his hands fisted in his sheets, sweat on his brow, knowing she is a turn of the hall away.

But Kol doesn't laugh. Which must surprise Caroline, because she's been looking at him like she's daring him to. All his brother does is tilt his jaw and say, "Come with me, then."

—

—

---

—

—

A bath. Every night for a week preceding the full moon.

Caroline pokes at the flowers dubiously, then turns her attention to the vials lined on the limestone counter. The glass is rough, any trace of civilization lost in its sandblasted surface, but from their necks pour oils so perfumed they intoxicate her.

In the half-light Rebekah looks strangely grim, her fingers picking deftly through the bottles to find the ones she wants.

"Ylang ylang." The few drops permeate in the water before getting lost in the rising steam. "To balance your female energies."

Caroline has never been part of a ritual before. She's held witness to Bonnie lightning candles and chanting incessantly until blood leaks from her nose, she's there to catch Bonnie if she pitches sideways, but never has she been the eye of one, her heart pounds in her chest something fearful and exciting. The ends of her hair dip into the water and slap against her back as she lowers herself deeper into the water. Her lids feel heavy, her arm stretched uncomfortably over the lip of the tub. She isn't allowed to get her mark wet. Not yet.

Rebekah adds a claster of musks and several drops from bottles she says contains "planetary oils". This she swirls around with her hand, and Caroline watches with wonder as the water changes colour. When asked what they do, Rebekah says sombrely, "To help convey the power of deities represented by the planets. You're going to have to appeal a shiteload to the universe to perform such an act of betrayal."

Caroline shivers, with one hand she hugs her knees to her chest. "I never saw it as a betrayal."

"Of course you didn't."

"I just want to be free," Caroline says wretchedly, even as the new oils Rebekah adds evokes a sleepiness in her, something dreamy she can't shake off. The air smells heady, collecting in her throat, making it hard to breathe. "If you're so against it why are you doing this?"

"I'm not here for Nik." Rebekah doesn't smile, but there is a kindness in her eyes that Caroline swears must be a product of the fumes messing with her head. "My brother is selfish, Caroline. Brazen and arrogant and selfish. He sees this as a chance to create an army of super soldiers. He doesn't realize that to separate a soul that was once whole it would break a person—or maybe he does, but refuses to acknowledge it. He can take it, Caroline. He's ensured immortality." Rebekah's eyes beseech her in a way they never have, damp hands grip the edge of the carved tub.

Caroline slips lower into the water, pushed by Rebekah—the mark on her wrist the only thing breaking through the cloud of perfumed water, for an instance, and then it disappears. She struggles to keep her eyes open, Rebekah coaches her through it. "So you're saying there's a chance I'll die."

"When the soul leaves the body. Maybe you won't die. Maybe you'll come out changed. This is why the bath is important." Rebekah's hands are on her shoulders now, her head treading water, the original's voice echoing around the dark, candle-lit bathroom. "This is why I have to make sure—and to warn you. Because I'm pretty sure Nik didn't."

Caroline opens her mouth to say No, no he sure as fuck didn't didn't—but her mouth fills with water, she chokes and gurgles, she strats to thrash, but Rebekah holds her down, still. "Don't fight it, Caroline."

Water washes over her eyes: everything is purple, everything is blue, everything slides in and out of focus, everything looks the way it does when you are drowning. Her nose stings, her airway bloats.

Rebekah doesn't stop pushing until Caroline's back hits the bottom of the tub. And even then, she hears through the murky haze: "Your soul is being prepared for battle."

—

—

Seven baths. Seven drownings.

Caroline always comes up choking and sputtering, bathwater gone cold, large ugly sobs breaking through the urgent wheeze of air entering her lungs. She drowns, over and over again, every night, water pumped out of her by Rebekah's strong hands, a strange feeling of emptiness settling into her lungs.

"For a soul to be broken in two, you have to be at the height of intimacy," Rebekah whispers to the back of her neck one night, massaging lavender oil in slow circles down her spine. She's cryptic at best, good at lulling Caroline into a wary ease, to make the drowning easier. "something about coming together to come apart."

She wonders if Klaus fights it half as much as she does, but in the eerie stillness of the room all she hears are the lonely sounds of her dying, Rebekah watching. Klaus seems worlds away. This is the farthest she's ever felt him.

"Good," Rebekah says. She presses two thumbs on the pulse above Caroline's soulmark. "Your heart is racing."

"Pounding," Caroline agrees, exhausted, wrapped up in a wool blanket and left to dry on her bed. Rebekah combs through her matted curls, rubs cotton towels into her scalp.

She feels wrung out like an old sponge, her insides gleam like new metal. Rebekah had joked that she's born anew, no more gunmetal rust in her blood, something older, sager. It doesn't calm her heart, this newfound knowledge that she might die.

The draining water gurgles around her ankles, her shins covered in sodden flowers. Rebekah also told her that she doesn't have to go through with it; let Klaus's army rot. But this – Klaus leading her into the fray like a lamb for slaughter, this is all the more reason why she should. Klaus uncaring whether she lived or died, keeping her around only as the Other Secret Miracle Ingredient to his hybrid rituals. She wouldn't even be the secret miracle ingredient—he had Elena's blood for that. She had to at least try. She'll be manacled to him if she doesn't, she'll be latching on to him like a parasite forever, but if she tried—if she tried, there might be a chance.

She'd rather die than be his forever.

On the seventh night Rebekah prepares the bath again, looking worriedly out the window.

The moon.

Bands of silver streak into the room, illuminating the circles under Caroline's eyes. She hasn't slept properly, her bed is always a mess when she wakes up. The stillness is stifling, like the ghost memory of a cut-off limb. She used to be able to feel Klaus in the room, now she only hears the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears.

With Klaus it's easy to feign indifference. Under the weight of the sun she goes from room to room as she always does, flick through grimoires. She doesn't let Klaus see how her chest is black and blue from all of Rebekah's ministrations. Klaus meets her eyes in very much the same way. Everything feels off. She touches her wrist, his hand rests on his chest, an intimate gesture, a subconscious one, like the trapping of his fingers around her own.

They don't exchange bath time war stories. It seemed a bit ludicrous, but the subject was never broached. Something about it felt sacred, an understanding between them, but then again everything these days feel unspoken, understood.

He takes her to the woods, the evening of the fifth night. Caroline would say she was co-erced into following, but truth be told all the drownings had left her with a taste of something vile in the back of her throat, and cold blood bags weren't washing it out. He stands behind her, he whispers into her ear words that Stefan never asks.

He wraps his arms around her. He is all predator, he teaches her the way predators hunt.

There are no instructions, no rules. He murmurs like a kiss to her neck, "What do you feel?"

Because hunting is less about what you see, what you smell, what you chase or what yout outrun- Caroline learns that hunting is all about feeling, instinct, the burn of adrenaline; let your fangs guide you, let your feet take you, let your hands feed you. Her fingers dig into the back of someone's shirt, her teeth splits open a human neck in the most gruesome fashion, but she feeds until she is full.

Klaus watches, satisfied, and in that moment she realizes something terrible: that she is grateful for the blood in her mouth.

The sooner they break this bond the better.

—

—

Afterwards, Rebekah always lays her down in her bed. Caroline would usually never subject herself to such infantile treatment, but she lets Rebekah soothe the sting from her bones, spritz jasmine in the air, feed her warmed blood from a cup. There is something in her face that Caroline is troubled by; the original's eyes are usually far easier to read.

Tonight Rebekah dries her hair and does it up, elaborate braids, draws symbols on her arm with her finger – "I used to practice these with chalk on cave walls," Rebekah confides, – dresses her in the finest silk she's ever touched.

She hands Caroline a small satin pouch, gives her a final nod. Caroline nods back, her eyes are rimmed with kohl, her face is free of any other adornments. In this light her eyes seem bluer, her reflection gazing back at her with none of the immovable strength she feels.

"You know what to do."

She does.

She goes to the woods.

—

—

Winter is ways away, but at night the forest floor is transformed into something limpid, frozen sludge and torn up leaves, occasionally a branch breaks under her boots. She's practiced now, she knows these woods, she knows her way to the lake with her eyes closed. It's eerie this time of night, every so often she hears the whoop of a bird call, but the crickets do not touch this part of the forest. No woodland creature comes to greet her.

She looks to her hands.

Sea salt. That's what's in the pouch, and in the heart of the woods she draws a wide circle around herself with it, making sure she sees the moon through the cut of the canopy. She knows somewhere in the woods Klaus has wolves keeled before him with their throats torn open. This is her end of the bargain, the sink of her hands into the earth, feeling something stir beneath her, within her.

She closes her eyes and sings out the chant Rebekah had painstakingly taught her, it trips from her tongue, shakes out of her, she says it over and over again until she no longer has command of it, her nails grip into the earth, the salt around her alights with fire: the glare of it forces her eyes open and she is drawn to the moon, drawing its energy and light into her body, her spirit, her heart.

When she wakes from her open-eyed slumber the fire has gone out and she hears the cry of wolves, strangled howls, ringing in unison through the spaces between the trees. And through those spaces Klaus appears, blood on his shirt, his mouth.

He has a wildness in his eyes, his curls are silvered out by the moon, his eyes yellow, a wolf's. The night has cut a shape of him out of their shadowy recess, he approaches her like a man who's not seen the sea in a long time.

Klaus comes to her on his knees.

She asks— "Is it done?"

He responds by kissing her.

—

—

---

—

—

The story he'd heard as a boy was this: like split incarnation, one soul inhabits two bodies, and when those two bodies meet—

"It's like sunrise." He smiles wistfully to his writhing audience. They clutch at their teeth, at the fugs breaking through. In him he feels a bracken collapse, but that is to be expected. The spell – it's working.

At least, he tells them through the orchestra of howls, that's the story he'd heard as a boy. Back then everything was wine and flowers and rituals, then replaced by blades and brawls and rules, and then overnight he'd been ordered to drop that old gag and switch to blood.

And then the forest is engulfed in fire. He is knocked onto his back. He tastes blood in his mouth, he feels pain in his side, he feels Caroline like a missing rib – Caroline—

He stumbles through the woods, his body bent into a mockery of wolf bones, his spine bent the wrong way— he hears his new hybrids come alive, their throats stitching back together, their newfound teeth cutting their tongues.

He needs to find her.

That is all he knows, he drags his knees through the frozen muck of frozen ground, his nails push away bark from trees, he smells the sap thick like blood in the air, he follows in the direction only his body knows. He finds her in a clearing, in the throes of a spell, her head thrown back, her neck exposed, her robe slid down her shoulders, baring her ghostly moonlit skin.

His hybrids howl, it pierces his skull, his ears split open to a gush of blood, he drops to his knees—

"Is it done?" he hears her, she is awake, her eyes are bright like he's never seen them, she looks dipped in magic, she could charm snakes to life the way she looks at him then, seeing and unseeing, there and not there.

And she has—she has blood pouring down her face, from her mouth. Does she realize? Does she realize the power that's rendered her half-dead, half-alive? He reaches for her, she does not pull back. Scrabbles for her hair, a man thirsty for wine. He kisses the blood off her lips, he is lost and clumsy and afraid, but he kisses her, and she kisses him back.

He tastes her blood on his tongue, she swallows the moan dripped into her mouth. His hand on the back of her neck, his palm splayed on the small of her back, he pushes her down into the stiff grass and overgrown roots, he runs a hand down the soft folds of her, he rests his jagged pieces against her and does not come up for air until they are both sick from it.

"Klaus," she gasps, fingers tearing down his back, her lips clean, wet from his tongue. She has black tracking down her cheeks, she's crying – but so is he. He cries, the roots soak his tears greedily, the leaves turn green once more.

"I felt you leave." Into her shoulder he grovels, pleads for her to stay, he wraps his hands around her wrist, he pins her to the ground. "You dimmed out like a star, my hybrids came alive but I couldn't feel you anymore, so I came here—"

"I'm here," she pulls him closer. "I'm here, I'm here."

Coming together.

Coming apart.

The world turns in on itself – one minute he is breathing into the column of her neck, the next he is rolled onto his back, the wind pushed out of him, Caroline's knees locked around his torso.

She is above him. She is above him and speaking in hushed tones, like a murmuring sea. She is like the night sky. Shivering.

The stars punish him for the sin he almost committed, the sin he staunchly pulled her into. She pushes hair from his forehead, her soulmark brushes against his wet lashes. It presses against his chest, his skin burns from it. For the first time in a long time, he feels like he could die.

—

—

They stay that way for some time. The clouds collect above them, shrouding the moon—her arms hug his stomach, his own form a cradle around her. Maybe they fall asleep, but it is hard to tell, the swimming in his head hasn't stopped yet.

At first light he hears a cough. Caroline sits up looking dazed. There's blood on her shoulder he hadn't managed to lick off, blood in the shape of his palm print. She looks down at his fingers, woven through the silk of her robe. Her braids had come undone in the night.

"I don't know what happened," she croaked. "I feel like we just did something really, really, bad."

"We tried to unbalance the order of nature," Klaus responds sleepily.

"You mean we tried to play God."

"God doesn't exist," Klaus mumbles, turning his face into her lap. He breathes in deeply, adds mournfully: "And neither do I."

"What's going to happen, Klaus? We go through with the ritual, I die—or you die, or we both die, or would you like a recap of last night?" It's easy to pretend, but in the woods the veil of pretense is lifted, the incense of trees a gentle prod into unfamiliar territory: total, unbridled honesty. Caroline lowers her face to his hair, she rests delicate fingers on his nape, and they explore this embrace like lovers. "And if I stay… if I stay I'm afraid of what I could be, Klaus. You can't keep me caged up like this. I think I'm going crazy."

"A touch of madness would do you good," Klaus whispers, he feels her lips move against his cheeks, he shudders from it. "But you're right, of course."

"I'm—what?"

"You're right." He changes position so he might chance a look into her eyes: they are filled with a disbelief, the wretched glimmer of hope, the blue gloom of a farewell. "I can't keep you here. You're free to go."

Her pupils blow out, her eyes are black as they process the compulsion, and then her eyes are blue again. Everything about the world for her is changed now, yet the stay of her hands remains. "But what about… us?"

"You'll be back." He reaches out to tuck a curl behind her ear. "Soulmate, wasn't it? Time will take care of the rest."

He's sure of it. He's sure - of this. His heart is engorged, it slops around in his chest when he tries to sit up so he stays the way he is, back cushioned by blood-stained silk, the deep sillage of her musk a welcoming space for him to lay his head on.

Caroline smiles at him. She's beautiful. No real eloquence there, just the stark luminosity of truth. She's beautiful, she's beautiful, and she is being beautiful for him. Because of him.

"Or I could come with you."

"Urgh, I should have known." The faux disdain on her face doesn't mask the pure joy set in her pinked cheeks. "Where would we go?"

"Anywhere," he dismisses, feeling sleepy again. "I'm very rich, you know."

"You're also an ass." But she reaches for him, a sudden impulse, and she kisses him deeply. Not like last night, but a kiss that pours melted gold into him. She whispers against his lips, "Home, let's go home first."

He holds in place the hand held up to the side of his face, he traces his thumb along the back of her hand, then onto her soulmark.

And then a strange thing happens.

Love, of course.

Haven't you been paying attention at all?

—

—

fin

---

hi, thanks for making it to the end! i admit i started writing this the day before the deadline to submit our things, and i still haven't given this a proper read through. maybe i will once the adrenaline dies down. love to all, especially to UppityBitch, who i desperately hope will not murder me for the mess i made of her prompts.

in the original draft of this, we find out who kol's soulmate is. we hear from the salvatore boys. but by the time valentine's day loomed i was running out of hours and words, and had to put the story to rest. maybe i'll revisit this world one day when i've recovered. for now, do tell me what you think!