A/N: This story is going up very early and it might be quite a bit of time between updates. Please note that there will be things that don't exist or are incongruent with Pokémon canon (starting the journey at 17 rather than 10, for instance), and I'd like you to do your best to suspend your disbelief. Unlike most of my other stories, this one will be heavily Klaroline-centric with little or no interaction with other characters except in passing (much like in the pokemon show).
I hope you enjoy this.
Thank you to D and Sophie for beta-work.
-Angie


"Caroline? Aren't you tired?"

Caroline looked up from her Pokémon textbook to see her mom standing in the doorway.

"I don't think I can sleep. I'm too excited for tomorrow."

Liz came in and sat on the end of her bed, gently taking the textbook away and setting it on Caroline's desk. "When I went on my Pokémon journey, it was a lot of walking. If you're going to head out tomorrow, you should probably savor the last time you'll sleep in an actual bed for quite a while."

"I guess so."

"Have you thought about if you're going to go with anyone?"

"Not Elena," Caroline said decisively, making her mother smile.

"I thought not. You've never gotten along. Maybe Bonnie or Katherine, though?"

Caroline shrugged. "I might just go alone."

"It would be good to have someone around to help you. I know you can take care of yourself, but it's always good to have an extra hand."

"I guess."

"Well, we'll see in the morning when you get your Pokémon. Did you pack already?"

Caroline nodded. "And triple checked everything."

Liz smiled softly. "Of course you did. Well, make sure to set your alarm just in case you do end up sleeping."

"I know."

Caroline watched her mother leave and turned over slightly in her bed. She was honestly both excited for the next day and positively dreading it. It was the beginning of summer, which was the ideal time to start traveling because they could get pretty far on the road before winter came.

Usually friends traveled together, and she had been looking forward to traveling with Bonnie and Katherine for a while, but she felt like they were drifting apart as they got closer to their journeys starting, especially after Caroline and Matt had broken up. She didn't want to travel alone, but at the same time she didn't want to ask for someone to come with her either.

She couldn't show weakness.

Caroline tossed and turned for a while before finally falling into an uneasy sleep.

XXX

Caroline tied her hair up carefully and took a deep breath, checking her bag of supplies for the last time before mounting her bike and heading to the local professor's lab, where she'd get her first Pokémon.

She arrived about half an hour early, just to be sure that she'd be able to get her first choice (no matter how well that Ash kid turned out, she wasn't about to leave it up to chance).

"Caroline," she heard the bane of her existence greet from behind her.

"Klaus," she said turning to him.

"Are you excited to leave town?"

"Yes."

"Do you have anyone to travel with?"

"It doesn't matter, since I'm not going with you."

"Funny, I didn't even offer and that's where your mind automatically went," he said lightly, giving her a dimpled smile.

She huffed, turning back to the front entrance to wait for the professor to open the doors, but realized that her compulsive need to be early had made her vulnerable to a conversation with Klaus (since she couldn't exactly leave). He always seemed to pop up at the times when she most needed to calm down and then give her the wide smile and witty comments and irritate her on purpose (which, granted, was better than the nervousness she'd been feeling).

"What are your plans?"

"To leave," she said shortly.

"Oh, I know that, love. I meant to ask where you're headed."

"Why, so you can stalk me?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of traveling together for a bit until we're both more comfortable on our own."

"Yeah, no. No way."

He shrugged. "Can't blame a bloke for trying, love."

"Oh, I so can."

He was an arrogant ass, though he had shown the potential to be a decent human being before (at least in her presence; everyone else seemed to loathe him). She could see his dimpled smile in her mind's eye despite the fact that she wasn't looking at him, and she wished, not for the first time, that he wasn't so damn attractive.

That way she wouldn't be so tempted to take him up on his offer.

They stood in awkward silence for a moment before he spoke again. "Do you know which Pokémon you're going to choose?"

"Yeah. I've been thinking about it a lot."

"I'm sure. I don't think I can imagine you not thinking something through as thoroughly as possible if you have to make a decision, especially something as life changing as this."

She didn't know whether that was a compliment, but she decided to take it that way. "Have you chosen?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"I'll tell if you do."

She laughed, shaking her head. "Why do you want to know?"

"Why do you?"

She shrugged. "Just curious."

"So I'm not allowed to be curious about you, but it's perfectly fine for you to ask me questions? Seems like a double-standard to me."

"Maybe."

Their conversation was cut off by the arrival of Matt, Elena, Bonnie, and Katherine, who were all talking and joking together. Klaus just stood off to the side and nodded stiffly to them (he'd never gotten along with any of them), and Caroline gave them a half-hearted awkward wave, which only Bonnie and Katherine returned, while Matt looked away uncomfortably and Elena completely ignored.

"Good, you're all here."

Caroline looked up to see the professor in the doorway to the lab. They all murmured greetings, and the professor stood aside to let them in before leading the group of seventeen-year-olds to the lab.

"Caroline, you were here first, right?"

Caroline nodded, and the professor gestured toward the table of Pokéballs, which held two each for Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur.

She let her hand hover over her choice for a moment, feeling slightly anxious all of a sudden, but decided it was too late to back out now. After making her selection, she walked back to the rest of the group, who all were called up one by one.

After they'd all chosen, the professor gave them each a Pokédex and a trainer's handbook before sending them on their way.

Caroline walked out of the lab, clutching the Pokéball, and took a deep breath.

She was so ready.

She grabbed her bike, which she'd ridden to the lab, and was about to mount it when Klaus called her name. She turned around, trying to keep the small smile off her face. "I told you, I don't need an escort"

He smiled slightly. "Not even just to the next town? We're all practically going to be on the same path anyway until Pewter City."

She nodded, acknowledging his point and biting her lip. "Fine. I'll meet you at the edge of the town on the path to Pewter in half an hour. If you're not there, I'll leave without you."

He gave her a wide dimpled smile, and she glared at him. "But no weird flirting or compliments, you keep your hands completely to yourself, and you help out with the camp stuff."

"Of course, love. Wouldn't dream of accompanying you without pulling my weight."

"And no nicknames."

He just smirked, and she waited until she was pedaling off towards her house to smile.

XXX

"Do you know where we're going?"

"Of course. I have a map," Caroline said irritably, stopping her bike to wave it in Klaus's face before starting to pedal again.

He sighed and followed her (which really wasn't all that unexpected, as pretty much everyone, including her, knew that he'd follow her almost anywhere). Of course, the fact that he was sure he was about seventy percent in love with her did not stop him from grumbling about her choice of route under his breath.

It was all his fault, really.

Caroline not liking him, not the route (that was all on her horrid sense of direction).

Your first words to the girl you end up falling for should never run even close to, "You're rather confident to wear that dress in public."

Yeah, not his best move.

He hadn't meant it as an insult (though he also hadn't meant it as a compliment). He was just stating a fact. Straight and male as he may be, he did recognize what Rebekah called a "hot mess of a dress" when he saw one (perils of being the brother closest to Rebekah's age, other than her twin Kol who managed to avoid older brother duties such as "tea parties" by being annoying enough that Rebekah didn't want anything to do with him).

She'd warmed up to him slowly over the time they'd known each other (about four years), but that was all ruined about six months before when his brain had, again, not quite caught up to his mouth in time.

They had formed a tentative sort of friendship, and then she'd started dating Matt Donovan, and Klaus had made the mistake of saying something along the lines of, "He's not very bright, is he?"

He'd meant it in a 'he's not good enough for you' sort of way, but she'd taken it in the '...if he's dating you' sort of way.

Ever since then, she'd been giving him a rather well-deserved cold shoulder, and he was surprised that she'd even agreed to go on the trip with him (unless she was more receptive to his advances after all?).

Once she'd broken up with Matt (or, rather, he dumped her for the more boring of the Petrova twins), she'd been colder to him than usual, though he wasn't sure whether it was because he'd been right in the beginning or because she blamed him for the breakup.

Really though, it wasn't his fault that Elena had implied to Matt that Caroline might prefer his company (especially since Caroline had made a point of avoiding being alone with him).

Elena managed to spin that as her 'avoiding the prominent sexual tension' (the only thing the girl had ever been right about in her life), rather than adding the other half of the information, which was that Caroline was loyal to a fault, and she didn't want to risk her relationship.

Elijah had once asked him rather frustratedly why he cared for Caroline at all if she just rebuffed him, and it was a series of rather simple reasons. She intellectually challenged him, gave him the benefit of the doubt when he was a prick (which happened far more often than he'd like to admit), and always had a comeback to his comments.

He loved the way she smiled when she knew she had won (and he might have let her win a few times just so that he could see it).

He did also appreciate the way her tight shorts hugged her arse as her legs moved, as well as the spring of her blonde curls in the wind. They'd been traveling for over three hours now, and it was almost dusk. They had arrived at Viridian City briefly to stock up on supplies, neither bothering to stop to catch any Pokémon on the way (there would always be more, and it was more important to have the supplies needed so that they wouldn't have to return to the city too quickly), and Caroline had insisted that they camp a bit off the path in the Viridian Forest.

So, here they were biking through the forest to find a suitable campsite, both of them exhausted. Caroline stopped abruptly, and Klaus barely stopped in time to prevent himself from barreling into her.

She hopped off her bike and gestured for him to follow her, which he did, both of them wheeling their bikes to a small clearing. "This looks good."

He shrugged, willing to go along with her plan, and grabbed the zipped cylindrical bag that carried his tent. "Shall I set this up, then?"

"Sure. I'll get some wood for a fire."

"Are you sure you want to go out alone?"

He regretted his question when he saw the venomous look on her face, and put his hands up in the air to show surrender. "Sorry, love."

She rolled her eyes, not bothering to correct him, and walked a ways away, starting to grab sticks.

He pulled out his Pokéball and let out his new Squirtle, which looked at him questioningly. "We're camping here for the night," he explained. "I'm going to set up the tent."

Squirtle nodded and sat down next to him, looking at the tent as though expecting it to just assemble itself before cocking its head to the side as he looked at Klaus, clearly asking why he'd let it out if there wasn't a battle happening.
"I thought you might want to stretch your legs."

Squirtle nodded before pointing at Caroline.

"That's Caroline. She's my...well, we went to school together. I convinced her to travel to Pewter City with me, and hopefully by then she'll want to stay."

Squirtle let out a bubble of sound that Klaus could only assume was a laugh, and Klaus rolled his eyes before gesturing to the ground. "Would you mind digging a hole and then perhaps grabbing a few rocks to make a fire pit?"

Squirtle nodded and toddled a few feet away before sitting down and beginning to dig.

By the time Caroline came back, her Charmander on her heels, both with bundles of sticks in their arms, Klaus had the tent set up and the fire pit ready.

Caroline dumped the sticks in the pit and grabbed a small portable pot from her bag, which Squirtle filled with water while Charmander started a fire with its tail and then sat down next to Caroline.

While they waited for the water to boil, Caroline and Klaus debated their options for heading to Pewter City while Charmander and Squirtle watched, their heads moving back and forth between the two teens as though watching a tennis match.

"I think it would be good to stay in the forest for a while and build up our Pokémon teams. Brock uses rock type Pokémon, and your Charmander is weak against that."

Charmander bristled, but Caroline rubbed its back consolingly. "I know, but there really aren't very many Pokémon I can catch that will be good for it. Except maybe if I caught a Caterpie and trained it to evolve into Butterfree."

"Exactly, which would take some time."

"Yeah, but we don't necessarily have to stay in the forest for that once I catch a Caterpie or a Metapod."

He shrugged. "I suppose not."

It would be easier though, and Caroline knew it. He suspected that she was very aware that there was only one tent. They had two sleeping bags, and there was no way that she wouldn't build a nearly impenetrable pillow barrier between them, but there was still only one.

To be fair, Caroline technically also had a tent, but it was small and made of a cheaper material, which meant that if it rained (something that was common in the forest) she would be much more comfortable in Klaus's tent, which was a bit roomier with better shelter.

When he had first suggested this to her, she'd scoffed and glared, but she did eventually concede the point. He hoped that she knew him well enough to know that he'd never take advantage of her (not that excitement of having her in close quarters with him hadn't crossed his mind a time or ten), but he couldn't blame her for being nervous after Damon Salvatore had kissed her without any warning two years before (and swiftly earned himself a bruised shin).

He wouldn't be surprised if she kept Charmander out in the tent with them that night using some sort of excuse about needing light, and if she did he would make sure to keep Squirtle in its Pokéball. He didn't want her to feel threatened.

He offered to wash up if Caroline cooked, and she didn't seem to mind (though she did enlist him to help chop up vegetables). Once they'd finished the soup and he and Squirtle had cleaned up, they put out the fire and moved inside the tent. As Klaus had suspected, Caroline asked Charmander to stay out to keep them warm, and Klaus recalled Squirtle. They both settled down in their sleeping bags, and Caroline turned to him, lying down, her hair fanned out over her travel pillow.

"Remember. Hands to yourself."

"I know, love."

"Good."

XXX

Caroline was incredibly relieved when she woke up not cuddled into Klaus's chest. She tended to take over whatever area was available when she slept, and she knew that he would take it as a hint.

Which it wouldn't be.

Obviously.

She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes and turning to see Klaus shifting in his sleep. She smiled slightly and pulled a light sweatshirt on along with some sandals before moving out of the tent slowly, trying not to wake him. She took out one of the containers of cereal she'd stashed in her bag and munched on it lazily, enjoying the morning air around her. It was only another fifteen minutes before Klaus woke up, and he emerged from the tent, mumbling a greeting to her and grabbing an apple, taking a large bite. "I'm going to walk around a bit and see if I can find a river or something to take a quick bath."

"Squirtle could help out."

She wrinkled her nose. "Your Pokémon seeing me naked is almost equivalent to you seeing me naked, so no thank you."

"Who said anything about you being naked?" he asked, his lips twitching, and she rolled her eyes, deciding not to respond.

He just gave her a dimpled smile. "All right. I'll stay here and watch the camp then. Do call if you change your mind."

Caroline gave her obligatory scoff and woke up Charmander, recalling him to the Pokéball and grabbing a small plastic bag of bath things, a towel, and some extra clothes before walking down the path toward where she was sure she'd heard the rush of water. She discovered a small river and stripped to her underwear, easing herself in, her teeth chattering at how cold the water was.

As she washed herself, she tried to reinforce the concept in her mind that Klaus was supposed to stay a friend (if he even was one). She knew he liked her, but up until recently she'd been dating Matt, who broke her heart. She wasn't sure she was ready for a relationship yet, or even a friend with benefits.

She didn't know how long she'd be able to hold out though.

Klaus was just as attractive as he was annoying (so very), and he had a way of bringing out the best and worst in her simultaneously. It was flattering to have someone whose interest stayed steady in her. Definitely an ego boost. And it wasn't like she was giving him false hope. She wasn't sending mixed signals, and she certainly wasn't taking advantage of him.

That didn't mean that a small part of her wasn't attracted to him, especially since he really was nice when he wasn't being a total douche. To be fair, he hadn't been rude to her since his comment about Matt, but Katherine and Bonnie hadn't been all that fond of him, and when your friends don't like someone, that's usually a warning sign. Then again, Katherine and Bonnie had picked Matt and Elena over her, so their judgment was questionable anyway.

A part of her wanted to see where it would go, and she knew that she was often colder than she meant to be, but she was sure Klaus knew that she was at least a bit fond of him, or he wouldn't stick around.

Okay, fine, she wasn't exactly stringing him on, and she didn't like thinking about it as keeping her options open, but she'd sort of accepted that at some point they were going to be a thing. Whether it would be soon? Or even last once they tried? Those were the more important questions.

She just needed to hold off until they got to Pewter City, and then they'd both battle Brock and win, and then part ways.

It would only be a week or so, so nothing too hard to handle.

She dunked her head underwater, rinsing out the shampoo, before stepping out of the water and wrapping a towel around herself, humming.

She dressed quickly and gathered her things, making sure that Charmander's Pokéball was strapped firmly to her belt.

When she returned to camp, she found Klaus in the middle of packing up. "Where are you going?"

"We are going to try to catch some Pokémon."

"Do I not get a say in this?" she asked, trying to sound annoyed, but cursing herself when her tone came out more as amused.

He seemed to notice and gave her a smug smile. "Of course. My apologies. Would you like to go catch some Pokémon?"

She rolled her eyes. "I guess."

"As the lady wishes."

She huffed and whacked him lightly in the arm before helping him finish packing up and mounting their bikes.

She biked behind him for a while before he stopped abruptly, covering her mouth with his hand when she started to yell at him for stopping, giving her an annoyed look before gesturing towards the small bird that was wandering in the grass.

"I saw it first love, apologies," he mumbled, and she shrugged, waving a hand for him to catch it.

He sent out Squirtle, and after a quick battle, he caught the Pidgey, beaming at his first catch.

"Congratulations," she said, a bit shyly.

"Thanks," he said, clearly unable to wipe the smile from his face.

XXX

After about a half hour more of exploring, Caroline spotted a Caterpie hiding behind a nearby bush. She waved for Klaus to stop and held a finger to her lips before sending out Charmander. "Charmander, use Tackle."

Charmander obediently ran at the Caterpie, who looked up in surprise before it was tackled to the ground. It shot up and shot a stream of white sticky webbing at Charmander, who dodged and scratched at Caterpie with its claws.

Caterpie was moving a bit more slowly, and Caroline saw this as her chance, pulling out a Pokéball and throwing it.

The Caterpie was pulled into the ball, which swayed on the ground a few times before chiming to indicate that the catch had been successful.

She felt a bubble of happiness and excitement burst in her chest.

She'd caught her first Pokémon.


A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you liked this first part. Do you like the Klaroline interactions so far? How do we feel about the starters they chose? Any predictions on when/how they'll get together? Let me know!
Also, please do tell me if there's anything you'd especially like to see. No promises, but I only have this story about half-outlined, so there's definitely some wiggle room in terms of plot.
Hugs!
-Angie