A/N: I wrote the first part of this for Klaroline AU Week over on Tumblr, and while I always intended for there to be a second part, inspiration and ideas were lacking until recently. But alas, I finally finished it after the darn thing hibernated on my computer for months, so here we are with the final product all together in one place.. *Yayyy*
First up, we have the Caroline POV. Enjoy!
xx Ashlee Bree
Long ago, back in the days when wolves still trotted and crouched low in her honeysuckle eyes, hungry for something with no name but afraid to prowl too close to the surface of desire, midnight rose like a chariot from a tomb to tickle the soles of Caroline's feet. It tilled the earth. Exposed her lampshaded dreams like cartilage. Snapped denial against her two bony kneecaps until she screamed out the letters of her own fate. The rattle roar of ghosts she'd long refused to know stepped out from graves beneath her skin. They zipped into her throat with ease because they were no longer shunned for their shouts which demanded wicked mercy; they were no longer lonely. Cracking open the dual riot in her heart.
Midnight vined her through with darkness pronged in hush. All of that guileless power licking love into old scars until they felt jagged and whole again instead of split open and dripping red with shame. It happened at a time when hunting for blood was deemed wrong for any spring darling, because 'sunlight should be enough to fill up anyone who's been blessed with a green raindrop touch'; but also in a moment when Caroline could no longer crush the wildness inside. That part of her desperate to grow thorns from her thumbs…that part dying to poison herself with the freedom to seethe.
She'd grown weary of lying. She'd grown so sick of pretending to flourish in a half-life where she spent all her time courted only by the warmth of the sun. For what of the moon? Or of the knifing feeling of night as it's swallowed like ice through the lungs of the guilty?
What about the withering of seeds after August's multitude of sins have sucked out all the colors except grey and black? How about the rickety quiet of branches swaying somberly because they've paid for their crimes in crumpled brown leaves? Why should it be so wrong, Caroline wondered, yet feel so right, to harness Nature's brutal tools? Why should it be so terrible to bury the weediest of weeds back beneath the dirt where they belonged?
What if—what if it wasn't?
Stunted, that's how she felt. Stuck.
Her head spun and spun in clouds too bright. Her chest heaved, gasping for a squall that tasted of swords and teeth and sweat instead of a rain scented in pinks.
Deep down, Caroline craved transformation and piquancy because she knew she needed more room to cultivate the dueling extremes the gods had planted inside of her. She needed a different kind of garden. One that'd accommodate her bloom-wilting, shiver-burning, rain-droughting ways because the pleasure to shine wasn't enough anymore.
The sun felt muted.
One-dimensional.
Uninspired.
Warmth was too tepid, too predictable…
It would never fill her up. It would never be enough.
Caroline needed nightfall, too. She needed fog and shadows and obscurity. She needed the enigma of the moon with its various phases and cratered multiplicity.
She required the chill of the wind's tendrils scraping through her bones with a whistle which wakened to widen the marrow, fattening her full of vigor and vice. She wanted the heaviness of souls to press down and burden her shoulders with questions. With emotion. With finality. She wanted penance for sins to blister across skin like ivy because sometimes suffering was payment, because sometimes suffering was the only justice.
She craved the flavor of revenge sliding through her teeth, along her gums, and she longed for it to boil and bake and brew in her blood without guilt before erupting to penalize the deserving with pain.
She wanted everything—she was over feeling half-enough.
Done.
Yes, the time had come to seek sanctuary for the defiant aconite seeds which were frozen in her gut. Caroline needed to nourish them in deeper soil where both she, and they, could come into their own and thrive. The time had come for her fear to fall. For her fists to rise. For the hollowed-out roots of her spring-stasis life to be pruned and snipped away for good so only her punishing purple petals survived.
And so, as a flock of bluebird-ravens wreathed 'round her head chirping a song about beautiful wraiths, the squishing grass between her toes sounding less and less like a place she yearned to call home, she approached the Forest of Forgotten Age with determined footsteps and ambition to claimed what she was owed.
"I know who I am," she said, "and I choose power. I choose instinct. I choose to chase after the missing pieces I still need."
Caroline followed the stars, the eerie wood before her sparkling with serendipity, with eventuality.
A horn sounded when she passed through a bouldered gate as if to confirm that she'd left spring behind for good and had finally found the leafless ground where she was meant to be. Lowering her head, kissing the bundled green stems she carried in her hands, she knelt before the enchanted Unseen Tree to plant her dandelion offering like a wish. She waited for Mr. Midnight himself to come. She waited for him to convey her over the threshold and into the undulating world below, sweeping her into the black magic of moonlight like a bride.
"Touch me, I am ready to burn," she recited in a whisper. "Take me, I am ready to turn. Teach me how to command my extremes, and I am yours to adore in the realm you rule beneath my earth-sodden feet."
"Like a Sun Queen who falls to kiss the horizon each and every night, I want both light and dark in my life," she went on. "I need a world where both blood and mercy collide, where love still wins but hate's a battlecry."
Her heartbeat was as percussive as a clang of bone on obsidian.
"It's why only a hybrid home like the Deadlands can shelter me. It's why only you can stop time to take me in—saving me, enriching me."
Her narcissus soul was ablaze with hope, with hunger. Veins pulsated, thick and green and bulbous, in the whites of her eyes until they looked almost black.
"I appeal to you, King Klaus, Kindred of the Damned. Save me with your killing breath; fill me with your kissing death," she said feelingly, her fingers clawing into the molten dirt like talons. "Please, free me from this half-lived hell!"
The ground cracked under Caroline's muddy palms as she spoke.
Blades of grass parted like a greasy cowlick to reveal a black mouth where a blanket of green used to be. Through the cracked lips, a whisper of smoke snaked left then right before reaching up and out to handcuff her wrists in silk; thumbing a path up her arms, along her ivory neck, across her apple'd cheeks. It caressed her sweetly, possessively, tickling her skin as it encircled her head like a crown.
The smoke feathered across her forehead, its edges thinning until they were no wider than an eyelash that could prick its way inside softly and open her mind to a land of bone and snow, of flame and ghosts, and of thorns which curled and swooped to form dead rose bush thrones. It wove white lily skulls under her skin. It galloped images of cobalt castles made of glass, fire-breathing horses, silver chariots, and scepters stained in ichor, through her thoughts. It rolled mint under her tongue to give her a taste of the Deadlands' crisp power.
Then slowly, smoothly, the smoke pulled back and let her go. Like a vanishing serpent, it sunk back beneath the chasmed ground from where it sprang, leaving her with nothing except memories of grandeur, yearning, and a small trifle which rested atop the dirt like a stone.
Round, thick, juicy, and rich with color, the object glistened at Caroline like a weeping ruby and hummed a kind of skeleton melody. The music called to her; it beckoned. And before she knew it, she'd plunged her arm into the center of the Unseen Tree's trunk and closed her hand around it, squeezing.
"I'm all yours now. And you…you are all mine. But the Deadlands?" she said as she plucked the item loose with a tug and raised it into the air. "I'm afraid that you'll have to learn how to share."
Lowering Death's forbidden fruit to her mouth then, she bit into it hard. Her canines pierced the frostbitten rind with a smile that sliced as she added, "Say hello to your new Queen of Midnight."
It was in that moment, and with that one bite where she was able to savor Free Will's taste as it spilled across the blade of her tongue, dripping endless Time down her chin, that Caroline not only swallowed an entire kingdom of riches and ruin, but also a destiny that'd open her pomegranate heart to the wonders of the dark. And to Klaus. For, in him, she found not a god, but a mate who filled her half-empty parts with a violent love that would never die.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
Comments are lovely. xx