A/N: So, a couple of notes on this, because it contains some Silas speculation and involves headcannon and therefore may be confusing in some parts- I'm not precisely sure. I have really debated over posting this- I only wrote it because I just needed a good moment between them after everything that's happened within the last few episodes, and figured I didn't need to subject you guys to this fic. But then I thought, well, maybe someone will enjoy it, and I'm trying to be active in this fandom, and contributing fic is what we do around these parts, right?
So. 4x16. I didn't like 4x16 overall. I thought Klaus' first sex scene was really contrived and OOC to boot- shouldn't he have wanted to kill Hayley after her part in unsiring his hybrids? What happened with that? All of a sudden he's protecting her? Why? I would have liked to see some kind of explanation, instead of some unbelievable flirting and then wild sexytimes. (Although props to Joseph Morgan- your extra time in the gym certainly paid off.) Also, why was Silas stealing blood bags as opposed to just eating people? That was what the vampires imprisoned in the tomb did when they first escaped back in season one, and they were only trapped for a century or so, not two thousand years. So, in my twisted brain, Silas blew into town like a BAMF; there were no missing blood bags in 4x16. The sex scene is not actually mentioned in this fic, so let's just pretend Klaus tortured her instead of sexing her up; that fixes my two most prevalent issues with the episode, although I did have several others.
Also, we don't know precisely what Silas is- shapeshifter? Vampire? Witch? A combination of all three? Has he really taken on Shane's form, or is Bonnie hallucinating? I kept him in Shane's form here, because I do believe he is using Shane's likeness somehow (though obviously not his physical body), although the show will probably prove me wrong within the next few episodes. I also believe, due to some general spoilers and speculation I've read, that Klaus will have truly met his match in Silas and that Silas may have the power to actually kill him without a white oak stake. Obviously he will not actually be killed on TVD because he's moving on to his own show, but I think we might see our boy put in actual danger.
This would have been interesting to continue, but I'm going to leave it as a one-shot because I have other writing commitments that have to come first. I may do a follow-up, though probably not. The problem with writing for an ongoing television show is that future episodes tend to negate everything you have put into your fic, and so I usually just opt to come up with a new idea based off what's happened most recently instead of continuing something that has become wildly out of line with actual cannon.
This fic takes place a few days or so after 4x16, and the title is taken from a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: "How much of human life is lost in waiting."
Anyway. Enough jibber jabber.
The rushing of the wind, the flight, the brief suspension of your TreSemme curls-
And then the descent.
Macie Dole holds out her arms and you tuck yourself neatly into them, bounce down onto your sneakers, thrust out a handful of pom pom.
A hundred times, you have made this journey, because Caroline Forbes is a total slave driver and just once more is so totally a lie she tells you to keep your manicure out of her eyeballs, and seriously, practice has officially been over for forty minutes, and Jeff's probably waiting in his truck, making eyes at all those sluts in their postage stamp skirts, and you've got, like, a nail loose here, what more does she want-
"Let's try it again, girls!" she calls, and you roll your eyes, slip your sneaker into Macie's outstretched hand.
The shutting of the far door shakes the floors with its cannon report; the sound swings your head around, loosens your hold on one of your pom poms.
Old guy. Kinda' cute, curly hair, nice eyes, but old guy nonetheless, which means total perv alert because, hel-lo, minors in ass-length skirts, creep, get out.
You spring.
This is the best part of cheerleading, this flight, this freedom: the adrenaline, the ecstasy, the spiraling floor, the corkscrew ceiling, around, up, down you go-
The squad in a storming sea underneath you.
Wait- shit, girls, what the hell, could somebody, like, hello, please put their fucking arms out to break your fall-
The spine is such a delicate candy stick of a thing.
The impact, the twist, the peppermint snapping- oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God -breathe- slide your fingers along the waxed floor, pull your numb wooden legs along behind you, cry out, scream, fucking do something- is your voice as paralyzed as your frozen freak backbone in Quasimodo lumps beneath your skin-
The old guy eats Kayley Mars.
There is this absolutely fantabulously perfect shade of red called Clinique Black Honey, and you remember, in this moment, the gleaming of it on your lips, the vamp blood shine of its sticky chemical coating, and this is exactly the color the guy's lips wear now, and Kayley's neck-
Oh Christ, oh Christ what the fuck-
In history class, you sit before a textbook that tells you about the violence man makes upon one another, the thousands of wars, the millions of conflicts, and the pictures, ok, gross, totally barf-inducing, but they're representations, an artist's interpretation, a printer's vision, and they are just paper, little two-dimensional thumbnails, and this is ok, you can handle this.
Close the cover, flip the page.
But here there is only the steaming iron blood, the splintering spines, the screams, the throats with their shining lip gloss smiles, and you claw, you writhe, you fucking pull, harder, dammit, fucking crawl, and now your ankle is caught up, crushed, and please please please please don't -don't- you are seventeen goddammit, and you are not supposed to die please-
Caroline's face -what the hell- what the fuck is going on-
She sinks her teeth into the guy's jugular, holds on, rides him as he bucks, whips his head back, thrusts it forward, and your ankle, it slips, God thank you. You hear its impact on the floor but your dead-meat legs don't feel the ripple of this collision and your twisted peppermint spine lies in an awkward fold underneath you, above you, who the fucks knows anymore, but crawl anyway- dig in with the fingers, remember the bending of the knees, the movement of the toes, fucking kick bitch, please-
Caroline cries out.
The guy tosses her like she's a fucking doll or something, all the way across the room into the bleachers, and now the bottom bench gives way with a foundation groaning and the little clink clink clinking of the hailstone bolts against the floor, and Caroline, she just fucking lies there, the slick white finger of her shin bone poking up through her skin-
The floor vanishes beneath you.
Leak your warm ammonia piss down your legs, your hot liquid shit through the seat of the skirt- it doesn't matter, the predator, he still wants you- the stink, the sounds, the animal gurgling in your pinhole throat-
Chase him away, with your puny human defenses?
God, no.
He looks at you with his pleasant professor's smile, like he doesn't even care, and you can swing your arms, try with your seventeen years of stockpiled memories to twitch your legs, to plant a kick, but look at your friends, their glass eyes, their awkward puppet limbs in a pile all around you- did it work for any of them-
"Please," you whisper. Please, your mom -daddy just left and she needs you- she's going to wake up to a cold bed and an empty kitchen and no pounding bass life above her head, and please, don't do this to her-
You are seventeen, and you cannot die.
Teenage invincibility, that elastic stretching of a billion years still before you- old age, pfft, the hell is that? Some shuffling corpses with their prune fingers and their sour lemon mouths- you'll die when you're one of them, these zombie men and women with the sunken pit eyes.
But that is so unbelievably far away, until the day it is not, until the moment is here, until you look with your eyes that have not seen enough into the headlights of the oncoming car, the stare of the man with his flashing butcher's knife-
Seventeen, and it's gonna' have to be enough.
God, please, don't let it hurt-
In the 20s there was a man called Salvatore who with ringing laugh and cocked eyebrow showed him this enigma called 'friend', this mystery which is so accessible to man and yet is a puzzle box whose combination he has yet to decode.
This man called Salvatore did not love him, in this decade of forbidden liquor and loose women and throbbing jazz, he with his thrown switch and his buried soul, but the adventures they shared, the victims they passed in a tennis ricochet back and forth-
He has never forgotten.
He with his withered monster's heart and conscience slain long ago- he needed this man to call him brother, to stay as his family had not, to never choose another.
To just be wanted, my God, is that so bloody hard, mate-
How often humans take this for granted.
But this man called Salvatore- he did not judge, he understood.
The lowest depths: the mud that exists in every creature, this space where every man must belly-out sooner or later- Stefan saw, he knew, he accepted.
His mother and father judged him sinner, abomination, atrocity, and for nine hundred years, he fled these monikers, pushed them down, drowned them out.
And then this raucous decade with its chattering of the Tommy guns, its drunken roaring, its flair- it handed him something else, another designation, a different title.
Abomination? No.
King.
King.
And he with his withered monster's heart and conscience slain long ago-
He wanted this Salvatore man to feel.
Nine hundred years he spent puzzling this enigma called 'friend', and there it was, right before his fingertips, dangling so bloody close, and if this man could just let something in-
How utterly foolish, how like a boy, a simple stupid child.
He should have known.
Slip the knife there, between the shoulder blades, hammer it home, twist it sharply- this is all he has ever received, this wounding, this duplicity.
But his brother, Stefan, how could you- when you would not step up to fill that role-
He hears the distant humming of the elder Salvatore's voice in the front foyer, tracks his progress all the way up the stairs to his studio where he sits with legs stretched out before him across Louis XVII's antique settee.
"But she's not- she wasn't there, was she?"
He cocks his head.
He has a thousand swaggering threats stored up behind his tongue- the feel of a fingertip to the heart, a chair leg through each knee cap, a little Vervain water in the eyes- can you just imagine, Stefan, the brutalities a man picks up in a thousand years, how he collects them as a boy gathers his marbles?
But the voice, this disembodied hysteria on the other end-
"What's going on?" he snaps.
"Liz, is she-"
"She's- oh God, Stefan, I can't- I just -she's- Mike says he'll take care of it…make sure nobody notices she's- you know-"
"Stefan."
"I'll be there in a minute."
There is a kind of torture that is not an invention by man but a function of the body itself, and it is called waiting.
He stands up.
"Would you care to enlighten me?"
"That was Caroline's mother."
He knows that, mate, that's not what he bloody asked.
"It looks like Silas…cheerleading practice went late today, and the janitor…he went to check on them and the whole squad was there in the gym…somebody went through and…they're all dead, Klaus."
And she was not there.
She was not there.
This is what you say next, Stefan, if you fancy your head where it is.
"Liz is there now. They're bringing the bodies out."
Not worth the calories she burns talking to him, this newborn woman tells him, and still he saves her.
He wanted so badly to let her die.
You are given too much feeling, and you drown in it. A man cannot process it, but a monster like him- what is the slaughter of an entire village, the death of this one ant girl, who will be buried in her tiny insect hill among all his decades, his centuries, his millennia.
Save her?
No.
He knows what to do with this thing called feeling, how to suffocate it, to stomp it down. Man cannot shield himself from its toxin, but he has had a thousand years of practice, and it does not wound him anymore.
And so she slipped slowly away from him, and he let her go.
But he forgot her voice, and her bloody eyes, and the way they reach so deeply down inside of him, stir the silt, raise up the soul.
You spend a thousand years erecting your walls, and this…this little infant tears them all down in her tiny child hands.
Presumptuous little thing, though, the sweetheart- love, hmm? Because he thinks her ravishing, because she challenges him, because they take her away in her plastic bag with her coconut perfume and her painted red curls and he cannot watch-
He shuts his eyes.
His brother you see, what an ass- and still he loved him.
And his mother with her Judas hand stretched out to accept him, to hold him close, to bury the knife-
He loved her too.
He loves.
For a thousand years, he has tried to keep it out, this fatal emotion with its wedge pressed deep into your heart to open the cracks, to force them wider- it bloody hemorrhages you, this thing called love, and what need has he of it- why should he with his dead heart feel any of it- because it can save him, sweetheart- what a riot you are, you with your silly human dreams-
They take her away in her plastic bag with her coconut perfume and her painted red curls, and he cannot watch.
He cannot watch, and still it hurts.
It hurts so bloody much- she shooed him away like his mother, his father, his brothers, but he has never been wanted, and this he can survive, this he expects, but to be gone, to leave behind a void- what does he with his thousand years understand about that-
The Lockwood brat flees and for a week he halfheartedly pursues, lets him run ahead, never quite out of his reach, never quite within his grasp.
Yes, little wolf, he let Tyler Lockwood go.
For this woman in her bag, who has made him remember the hummingbird.
For this woman who like all the others was never going to want him, but hope is a weed just like that abominable emotion love, and never can you uproot it enough.
Caroline-
In a thousand years he has never needed to breathe, and yet his lungs struggle for it, cannot take in enough.
God, the way they constrict- how does a pathetic little human survive this sort of pain-
A thousand years.
A thousand years of disappointment, of desertion, and what is it that brings him to his knees- a baby, a small-town girl with her small-town love and her deathbed words-
Did she not understand how he feels about her, she with her presumptions and her bloody eyes- did she have to go and do a thing like this, so soon after his brother, really, Caroline, sweetheart, he does bend you know, he can be broken- he does feel-
He has put them all into his canvas and his oil, these thousand years of feelings, but no one has ever looked- perhaps if someone had just tried-
They shut her away in the ambulance.
The sheriff with her matching blonde hair is folded into Stefan's arms.
"What are you doing, Nik?"
"Packing," he says in his automated voice.
"What the bloody hell happened to your paintings?"
Well, let's see, Rebekah, love- that one he pulled to pieces with his fingernails, this one he kicked to shards with his boots, and the little portrait of Empress Eugenie de Montijo in the corner there- interesting story, that one. You see, what exquisite hair she had, an entire Rapunzel braid of it, and the color- such a rich Naples Yellow. Magnificent- precisely why he wanted to paint it in the first place.
He slammed it through that hole in the wall there, and then with a mighty discus heave he shattered it against his worktable, and all the little leftover bits of it- those he stomped to splinters.
The color, you see- he just watched it zipped away into a bag.
You understand.
"Nik- Nik look at me!"
He shoves his charcoal into his bag, thrusts his sketchbook roughly in on top.
"Where are you going? What happened? Nik."
"You're free to come or to stay, Rebekah."
"Where are you going- would you just bloody look at me?"
He sweeps in his oils, his pastels.
She follows him out the door all the way to the Navigator where he tosses his bag onto the front seat. "Nik-"
"Get in the car, Rebekah. Or don't."
She stands staring at him.
He slams the door behind him.
Has he completely lost it-
She fumbles for her cell phone where it buzzes in her pocket, watching the receding black speck of the Navigator make a left onto Oak Dr.
"Stefan, this isn't-"
"Is Klaus there?" he interrupts.
"No he isn't. He just took off like a bloody crazy person, and all his paintings-"
"He's not answering his phone- I need to talk to him right now, Rebekah."
"I don't know where he's going; he wouldn't tell me. Would someone please tell me what the bloody hell is going on?"
"Silas is in Mystic Falls. He just took out the entire cheerleading squad while they were practicing after school. Caroline's mother called me while I was over at your place earlier- they'd found Caroline and called her in. They misidentified the body, Rebekah- when Liz showed up at the morgue, it wasn't Caroline. The girl had similar hair, build- she was in bad shape, so they couldn't tell at first."
Oh good Lord- this is just bloody wonderful-
"And Nik thinks she's dead."
"Yes. Look, Rebekah, I need you to find him- I need his help."
"Well I don't know where he's gone."
"Caroline's missing, and Silas is loose somewhere- it looked like somebody put up a hell of a fight in there. Had to be her; Liz said she talked to her earlier, and she was definitely at practice. And now she's not picking up her phone. Look, Rebekah, Silas could be tracking her- I need to find her now."
She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I told you, he just tore out of here."
"Rebekah-"
Oh, hell- when will she stop being a sucker for this man? "Fine. I'll help. Where do you want me to start looking?"
Shit shit shit shit shit-
She barrels through the trees.
They reach out to gouge microscopic cuts in her arms that seal over in a second, little stinger prickles that tear her shoulders, her shins, and oh God oh God oh God oh God where is he-
The whispering of the breeze in the leaves is a hurricane gale in her supernatural ears, every step an explosion, a shot-
With the whole world around you, in your ears, your mouth, your nose, you have to push so hard every day to force out all the things you don't need- the tank rumbling of the cars in the streets and Kylie Denton's annoying nasal whine three classrooms down, and the smells, God- you're on a diet and the entire freaking planet is a 24/7 Cinnabon-
But she can do it- sober sponsor extraordinaire, former Miss Mystic Falls, head cheerleader, dance committee leader- she has fought her way to number one and she will not be toppled off the wagon by this rumbling reeking planet with its too-many temptations.
But still.
The sounds, the smells, the sights- you try and funnel them all out, to focus on just one whole moment, a single noise, a solitary scent.
Usually it's all, are you freaking kidding me -how many times do you really need to honk your horn- stop chewing your nails- nobody cares about how that one time in tenth grade Tyler touched your boob, slut-
But today- today she is only a footstep.
The strangled whistling of her breathing.
She doesn't need to breathe but the instinct is still there, and the animal panic, the asthma tightness of the throat, the burning chest, the rubber muscles- her body remembers all of this and she needs to stop, it tells her- take a breath, rub a calf, quit-
She runs on.
Stop following her please what does he want-
He's not even hurrying.
It's like he wants her just far enough ahead of him to draw out the chase, to extend the hunt and God please just leave her alone -let her go- she can't die she can't die she can't die you can't do this to her -she is already dead- she will never age, she will never watch her children grow old with their children beside them, and don't take away what little she has left-
She slaps aside the branches.
She kicks away the bushes.
She runs on.
He starts in the campground twenty miles outside the city limits.
These people with their sputtering fires and their melted sugar clumps they pop smiling into their mouths- the children, those chattering youth of humanity who excavate a bug, a tiny bit of pebble they hold up for the inspection of a proud mother, a glowing father-
How quaint.
Change is a phenomenon which is denied to those who walk the earth as men but feed upon it as monsters- a woman's womb will never stretch, a man's name will never be passed along to his children, and to their children after them; she will never birth a generation, he will never spawn a dynasty.
Vampirism is a paralysis: an entire species of stone creatures.
But for one such as him- for an abomination, a monstrosity, an atrocity- call him what you will, mates, but for him there is no solidification.
His skin is not dormant; his limbs are not frozen.
He unhooks his necklaces, slides off his shirt, kicks out of his pants.
His spine twists, and throws him to his knees. It humps up, breaks the skin, pokes the bristling knives of his vertebrae into the smoke-scented air.
His wrists shatter; he digs his fingers into the dirt, holds on, grips the earth beneath him until his thumb pops like a rivet coming loose and his pointer bends itself back to touch his wrist and the way this human husk just comes apart- how frail are these forms with their candy bones and their stretch taffy muscles.
He presses his cheek to the dirt and screams.
His feet twitch, kick, gouge furrows in the ground, and the people with their sputtering fires and their melted sugar clumps come running.
What a stupid race, these humans, always rushing to help a stranger, to save the unfamiliar.
"What the fuck-"
The simple creature lust of this form- how refreshing.
His personal favorite of this lupine existence is the hamstring- the act that is, the way it can be made into a verb, if you'll excuse his somewhat flippant dismissal of grammatical niceties.
The tough little wire of the tendon itself is bland, a piece to be left behind in the dirt.
But to let a human run on a ways ahead of you, to give him hope, let him flee- magnificent.
You don't go for the throat immediately; you do not face him head on, where he knows he has no chance. You pursue, let him nearly reach the safety of his vehicle, dart in, grasp the hamstring in your teeth, rip it loose. He collapses on one leg, scrambles with the other to hoist him into his lifted half-ton, and now you nip in to grab this other leg, taste it, toss it aside, pin him screaming against the door.
The stomach next, with its wriggling snake bowels.
Unraveled around the man, they stretch on nearly thirty feet, all together.
Fascinating, hmm, this human mystery of bones and blood and beating organs which take so long to understand their death.
He leaves the man in a gutted pile beside his truck.
"Oh my God oh my God-"
Bloody awful, the high-pitched acrobatics of the feminine vocal cords.
He crushes her windpipe.
He digs into her throat, pulls out her tonsils, her tongue.
Little rubbery for his personal taste; leave them for the crows, those garbage disposals of nature.
He sprints on.
Into the woods.
Dirt, rocks, the interlocking arms of the trees.
The sky with its bruise of approaching night.
Through the branches, the bramble.
Feel his pumping animal heart, his panting beast tongue.
Think?
No.
Not in this form.
He is only a craving in his belly, an itch in his paws, miles put away beneath his feet.
What is a little blonde girl to him, with the moon above him, the ground underneath him, a dozen sloshing copper meals inside him-
Caroline Forbes and her pretty curls all in a bag-
What a break, sweetheart.
He lengthens his strides.
She is not going to panic she is not going to panic she is not going to panic-
Deep breaths, Forbes, find your center, tap into some of Stefan's totally annoying Elena-and-me-are-done-I-am-zen bullshit-
Isn't there a deer, a bunny, something to distract him -oh God, she didn't mean that, bunnies- it's totally bad enough that she eats them- she makes it quick at least, but this freak, he'll probably like, go all cat on them, play with them a little, make them think they're getting away, chew off one of their poor little feet-
Think.
She can't double back into town, not with all those people there, her mother, but seriously, is she really going to outrun this two-thousand-year-old vampire, shape shifter, whatever the hell he is-
She's going to die.
Oh God she's going to die-
She never got to see her eighteenth birthday and now there will be no graduation, no unflattering polyester gowns or fluttering maroon rainfall, and why -what is so wrong with her- why does she deserve this-
Maybe…maybe hide, or something- oh, yeah, great idea, because he isn't a gajillion years old and he can't sniff out one sweaty little baby vampire with her cloud of Evodia coconut lime ten thousand freaking miles away- why did she have to put on so much damn perfume anyway-
Please please please God-
His nose is so full of these woods- the sharp pine needles crushed beneath him, the tiny squirrels with their thundering hearts and twitching noses- the deer in their frozen statue poses, watching him so cautiously- the musk, the shit, the steaming yellow puddles they empty into the leaves underfoot-
Nature.
What a thing to lose yourself in.
But with his oversensitive nostrils he smells still the intrusion of the human world, its fumes, its smoke, its unwashed armpits and pheromone stink, and he flies on, kicking up dust, stirring the leaves into cyclones around him.
Anything can be outrun, given the time, the speed, the distance, and he has an entire world, a whole other lifetime, a thousand other lifetimes, and he will run beyond this, he will escape its hold- he cannot be penned, not by man, not by time, not by an emotion-
One of the stupid creatures has wandered into the woods.
The smell of this idiot human's neck- the whiff of tender thigh meat and hot metal blood-
No.
Not a human.
There is a wrongness to the breathing, no rhyme to it, no regularity, and the hot metal blood- it moves so strangely about the veins-
Another monster like he, on two legs instead of four.
And his first instinct is to tear, to rip through this ancient enemy of the wolf with its inferior teeth and its substandard speed- watch it try to run, to reach for his heart, to struggle underneath him with his warm butcher's breath in their face and his fangs in their throat. The way they will scream, and struggle, twist their body- what a thrill, to be fought- go on, away with you, little vamp, run yourself from tree to tree, from clearing to clearing, give yourself a bit of that hope which is so triumphant over pragmatism-
But this little vamp smells of coconut, and lime, and perhaps these smells are only memories, but they are so strong, these chemical reminders, and there, through the trees- is that a flash of the Naples Yellow he painted so very long ago-
Caroline.
Caroline.
How can a flash, a scent send a creature stumbling in its tracks- how can he still feel inside this beast who knows only the woods, the chase, the hunger-
He falls.
He shudders from wolf to man, curls up in the leaves while his liquid bones re-link themselves in an evolutionary flurry, re-shaping him: his leg snaps, his shoulder tears, his toes curl under, break, and she runs on.
She slips away, this chance, this hope.
He returns to the Navigator in an eye blink, fumbles his arms into his sleeves, belts his jeans at the waist, wipes his mouth.
He plunges back into the woods.
There is something else among these trees, a rattling in the brush, a slow pulsing of blood in veins that are not human, but this tiny fading thread of coconut lime is all that matters, and he plunges after it, runs it down-
This is it.
She hears him behind her, no more of this stupid ridiculous cat-and-mouse crap, just him, coming for her with his bazillion extra years and his superior strength and his speed, and oh God-
The torn and muddy scraps in maroon and white banners on her legs, her arms-
The powdered yellow curls in a nest about her cheeks-
A thousand years of disappointments, and still he dares to hope.
She pauses with her back to him, one hand against the tree on her right, and the woods stop spinning and the ground halts its river rushing underneath him and if she doesn't turn around he will not see a different face, another pair of eyes, a girl whose back curves so similarly and whose scent is so bloody right-
If she would just not move, please-
"Caroline," he says, and listen to the way his voice cracks, like a boy's- when did he let his terror begin to leak its way out of the corner of himself where he keeps it so carefully stored-
She looks back over her shoulder. "Klaus?"
The eyes- this voice which reaches so deeply down inside of him-
He is on her in a moment.
His hands slide up over her cheeks and for just a moment he pauses, he does that let's-see-how-far-down-I-can-see-into-your-soul stare with his annoying not-hot baby blues, and then he pulls her roughly up against him and his lips find hers and they fall back against the tree, and she is not exactly sure if she kisses him back, there is so much hot hard pressure and instinctive groping of her fingernails along his shoulder muscles.
"Silas," she tries to say when he pulls away, but it's only so he can rest his forehead against her own, eyes shut, and there is no time to tell him before he kisses her again, her face cradled so gently in his rough, rough hands- why does he have to be like this when she needs so badly to hate him-
He loses himself in her.
He has experienced this all before, of course, through the mouth and the hands of Tyler Lockwood, but that is such a clumsy, inelegant way to go about it, with lips that are not your own, with fingers that cannot find their way.
He has never really felt her, not her soft cheeks beneath his palms or her even softer lips against his own, and just for a moment, love, let him have this.
This something else that is among the trees, rattling the brush- this thing with its strange inhuman veins and its odd unfamiliar smell-
It is getting closer.
Three miles, two, one.
He lifts his head, cocks it to one side.
"Klaus-"
He springs.
This strange inhuman something lunges.
The leap itself is merely a blur to the human senses, but he feels everything about it, the coiling of his muscles, the whipping of the wind, the soaring-
An impact to crush the bones, to split the head, and suddenly he is airborne once more, the trees, the ground, the bruised nighttime sky in a carousal all around him, the scraping of the bark in fingernail rakings down his back-
Caroline screams.
He slides down the trunk, finds his feet, grabs the throat of this man who stands so calmly before them, presses with all the strength in his fingers into the windpipe, through the larynx, and this man brings one hand calmly up, peels his grip finger by finger off the pale white throat, snaps his wrist with the greenstick crack of a breaking branch-
His fangs drop themselves down over his lips, and brush this aside so easily, mate, he dares you-
He lunges with his extended fangs for that pale white throat, fastens them deep, twists a hand into the man's jacket collar to keep him in place-
His jaw fractures, bulges out to one side; the man hits him again and his cheekbone shatters, breaks itself into shrapnel pieces, and now he is shoved back against that bloody tree again. The man kicks him, bends him retching at the waist, splinters his right kneecap with an afterthought of a stomp that grinds together the bone, the ligaments-
He spits blood, swipes out with his arm, feels it twisted behind him -his elbow- there it goes, like a bloody peppermint stick-
"Run, Caroline," he tells her.
A thousand years will not be bested by this thing with its strange scent and its abnormal veins and its cold black eyes, but he needs her to run, sweetheart, now- before this creature turns on her, before he loses her again, before it is too late.
He will not watch them take her away in her bag. Not again, love, do you understand?
"Run!" he roars, and whips his head forward to bite down into the man's soft human belly, angling for his liver.
Silas knees him twice in the jaw, sends him spinning back to slam his head into the tree behind him and she can only stand frozen, staring, all the human instincts she hasn't yet forgotten turning her knees and her bowels to water, her dead heart thumping its jackhammer rhythm, her harsh runner's pants straining her throat so hard-
Turn, and run.
Take the distraction.
Fly back to Stefan, to Bonnie, Elena, her mother.
Run and do not look back.
Brush aside the branches, the bushes; hurtle the boulders; leap the sagging trenches filled with rain and leaves and the small floating bodies of the animals who did not quite make it over.
He's had a thousand years to your puny little eighteen, and what the hell do you owe him anyway- an absentee boyfriend and a broken heart and some crummy drawing of a horse- leave him behind.
Silas has a millennium on him.
He'll tear Klaus in half.
He'll reach inside him and pull out his heart, rip off his head, break him down into so many pieces, disassemble him, leave him scattered across the ground- and Tyler- Tyler can come home.
He deserves this.
He deserves this.
For Tyler, his friends, his mother-
Aunt Jenna.
For all his many thousands upon millions of victims, do nothing.
Fold your hands.
Watch him crumble.
A thousand years is long enough.
So leave, sprint, get out- what is she waiting for-
Klaus reaches up to grope for one of the branches hanging above him, yanks it loose, slams it into Silas' head hard enough to split his borrowed scalp, and the freak rears back, kicks him in the nose, pitches him backward in an explosion of blood.
She surges forward, throws herself across Silas' back, buries her face in the slope of his shoulder.
A thousand years, a hundred wars.
Behind the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie with his musket across his knees and his cartridge in his teeth, he knew he would not die.
The grapeshot fell in a thundering hailstorm across his back and his comrades lay groaning in their small red puddles -fascinating, how little it all looks, spread out beneath a man like that- and the artillery opened its great dragon mouth before him, and still he knew he would not die.
He stood up to fire.
He took a ball smiling to the chest.
He walked among the men of Paris collecting their hearts, their throats, their livers, dropping them as he went, the gun smoke in a fog all about him, the dark houses with their windows blown to splinters watching him from cringing human eyes tucked behind chairs pounded to firewood fragments.
"Fire!" cried the Guard, and he smiled.
He walked on.
The streets trembled beneath him and the houses groaned to either side of him and the grapeshot- down, down it came in its little sleet pieces, and he put out his hands for it, he let it fill his palms like rainwater gathered to drink.
In a human war moves the blood and the bowels, but in a creature like him it stirs neither.
There is only the euphoria, the carnal tightening in the fangs, the thousand hummingbird beats of the hearts in their chests.
This is battle, to a man like him.
And now he sees; he understands the shaking hands of the man who loads his musket for one final volley, and the boy with eyes that go on forever, hefting his saber as the Guard breeches the wall- this too he recognizes at last, mate-
Mortality, that looming specter of battle- only in the final moments does it show its form, when there is no hope, when there is no place to run or last shot to fire.
This creature has no stake, but with his heart crushed to pulp in this thing's hand- with his head in a pile beside his body-
A thousand years- has it really been enough-
There is a flash.
Maroon, white, that lovely Naples Yellow he labored over for so many hours back in 1856, brush in his hand, furrow in his brow-
She is on him for only a moment.
The creature reaches back to peel Caroline off him by the curls, and this second she gives him, this infinitesimal sliver of time- this is a lifetime for him, and as she comes loose he thrusts forward with the branch, shoves it all the way in, pushes his hand in after.
He twists the branch, slants it up.
He lets go.
She is picking herself up out of the mud, shaking, her unsteady newborn limbs trembling underneath her, and he sweeps her along as he goes, half-carries her all the way back to the Navigator where he pushes her roughly into the passenger seat.
"Is he dead?"
"That would be convenient, wouldn't it?" he says, and guns the engine.
"Oh. You're still here."
She pauses at the top of the staircase, tightening her hand on the banister, her damp hair in ringlets over her shoulders.
He stands at the base of the stairs with both hands behind his back.
He gives her that little smile, the one that's all dimply and soft and doesn't make her even a little bit weak at the knees, and she'll just stay right here, thank you very much, because he just doesn't seem to get this whole personal bubble thing that's popular with the kids nowadays. She guesses the concept of excuse-you-stay-the-hell-out-of-my-space wasn't, like, sanctioned by Moses or whatever back in the day. Not that he would care.
He probably ate Moses.
"So it would seem, love."
"Where's Stefan?"
"Having a little chat with Rebekah. Seems we have a bit of a problem on our hands, thanks to you lot."
"Ok, well, excuse Jeremy for getting himself freaking killed because that bitch Katherine was lurking around just waiting for an opportunity. And pardon my friends because they wanted-"
"Let's not quarrel, love," he interrupts quietly.
"I'm not your 'love'," she snaps. "Stop calling me that."
"Ah, yes, I forget- Tyler Lockwood lives on in your heart, forever. Truly a romance for the ages, Caroline. A love so deep, so abiding that you followed little Tyler off into the sunset, to live for all eternity in his arms, the only place you have ever wanted to be."
"My friends needed me here," she replies stiffly.
He runs a hand down his face, tightens his jaw, flicks his eyes down toward the floor.
"Caroline," he says, and his voice is so raw, and why does she even have to care.
"Look, I'm just gonna' go."
"With Silas potentially still lurking in the shadows, sweetheart? Really?"
"I can't just leave my mom by herself- I only came back here to get cleaned up." She fists her hand on the banister, uncurls her fingers, stares down at her chipped blue manicure. "Thank you. For taking me to see her."
"My pleasure, sweetheart." She can tell he's doing that dimply thing again, but she's not looking, so there, see if she softens- see if she thinks about that stupid hummingbird, or his not-at-all-romantic pony sketches or how he captured her face, like, perfectly, drawing from memory.
"Ok. So. Leaving now."
She tries to make it down the stairs past him, which is seriously stupid, of course, but he doesn't even reach out to stop her- it's his voice that freezes her, that one particular way he says her name, so perfectly enunciated, and why doesn't she keep going, why does she halt with toiletry bag in hand, back to him, her dead heart in this jumbled little knot inside her throat-
She hears him step up behind her.
See, there's that whole invasion of the bubble thing again: he stands so close she can feel his chest against her shoulder blades, the butterfly skating of his finger along the hair curling into messy banana loops across her shoulder.
"Why didn't you leave, Caroline?"
If he could just shut his eyes, press his forehead to her shoulder, just for this one moment savor her-
"You could have left me to Silas. I would be dead, Tyler would be free- isn't that what you want, Caroline?"
For a moment, the Lockwood boy was not more important than him. Say this, Caroline, love- forever is a long time to wait, sweetheart, but if it's not in vain, if he has reason to hope and cause to believe-
"I don't know," she whispers.
"You don't know if that's what you want?" he breathes, and what a thing hope is- you are bled dry by it, filled to bursting, weakened by its brush, reinforced by its touch.
"I don't know why I didn't leave."
He reaches his hands up so tentatively, sets them on her shoulders, draws them lightly down her biceps to her elbows.
She tenses.
"Caroline-"
Today he watched a little mangled cheerleader with hair so like her own zipped away inside a bag, and do you know what this did to him, a man who has had a thousand years to be broken and put back together until he no longer shatters. His mother's betrayal, his father's hatred- these have armored him, built him up, and like a bloody hammer she crushed this armor in a blow.
He stands chest to shoulders; he presses his cheek to hers, carefully, just a little fractional inch of contact at a time, easy does it, mate, don't want to scare her-
What she said on that couch, with hands folded on bloodied stomach, with her steady eyes and her wavering voice-
Yes, sweetheart, he has fallen so very hard.
What more do you want him to say: here is his pride, which he could not choose over you; here is his power which has shifted so easily into your hands- take his conceit, his posturing- have his entire eternal existence, love.
But do not leave him wanting.
It is time -it is bloody time- for him to be wanted, for someone to care.
Nobody cares about you anymore, boy, Mikael told him, but in this he was wrong, Caroline, love, because this 'anymore'- this is wholly dependent on a 'once upon a time'.
A boy's mother does not turn him away, if once upon a time she loved him. His father does not hunt him to the ends of the earth, if once upon a time he adored his son.
His siblings do not desert him for something better, for a man, a girl, a separate path, a different choice.
And Stefan Salvatore, with his easy careless tossing about of that word 'brother', that title which is everything a man has ever needed to hear- well now, don't we know how that ended.
He tightens his fingers on her elbows.
He shuts his eyes.
It is not her job to fix him. It is not her job to make sure he is loved, that he is not alone, that someone asks about his day and cares about his answer.
But she stands, and she doesn't take away his hands or whip her head forward out of his reach, and why- this is the question she is always left with when it comes to him- how come-
Why can't she hate him; why does he pick her, when she has only ever been second best- this thousand-freaking-year-old-man who could choose anyone, who could compel himself his own freaking harem-
Just…just why?
Tell her, please. Make her understand.
The girl nobody wanted more than Elena. The man nobody chose over anyone.
And he wants them to, what, heal each other? Well, she has Tyler, thank you very much- except, oh, yeah, she doesn't, because of him, because he is a monster who hurts her friends, who murders innocents, who paints so beautifully and smiles so tenderly, and why does he make her feel-
She loves Tyler.
She was always going to love Tyler.
And then he waltzes in here with his pictures and his dimples and he opens up the whole freaking world for her, and what the hell does he mean, she is strong and beautiful and full of light -what crap- like she is special, like she is Elena- why does he have to look at her like there is no one else-
He takes his hands slowly from her elbows, moves them to her stomach, and all her muscles coil instinctively, fight or flight, except she does neither, she just stands here-
"Caroline," he whispers, right in her ear, and now his cheek lifts itself just slightly away from hers, and she feels his fingers reach in to take its place, and, God, how carefully he touches her- has she ever been touched like this before-
You wait, and you wait.
For a thousand years, you wait.
Someone please see.
Relate. Understand. Connect.
These paintings which store the soul- they cannot take the place of a friend, you see- this brush is no substitution for a brother, these oils no stand-in for a lover. These paintings- they stand waiting but they do not anticipate. They absorb, but they do not give back.
A man puts everything he is into them; he speaks so loudly- here is his heart, there are his dreams.
He bares himself between daubs of black and streaks of red.
But if he had someone to whom he could expose this heart and reveal these dreams, if he could only find someone to listen- if there existed on this earth just one soul who did not tell him away, you are not wanted, boy, we do not care-
Take the brush from his hand.
Tuck the oils away in their stand.
Here is someone who needs no canvas, who needs only his eyes, his voice, who reads in his gestures his triumphs and his disappointments and his grief. Tell him this- you comprehend; you have perused his daubs of black and his streaks of red and you know his heart, you accept his soul.
Canvas, this mediator of man -no, put it away- you want to hear it in his own words.
He holds her, and she doesn't push him away.
She stayed behind; she did not run.
How easily he hopes and how quickly he is crushed, but she does not move and she did not leave, and doesn't this mean something-
Love like this, sweetheart- it will endure. It has born so much and been battered so badly and still it does not give way: bruise it, stomp it, shred it to pieces between your fingers.
So many times, she has done this, and he collects the shards, he sweeps up the splinters, he puts them painstakingly back together with her laugh, her smile, her faith.
"Why are you so nice to me?" she asks. "I mean, I don't get it -you're horrible- you hurt people. You want them to suffer. You manipulate everyone to get what you want, but you have never, not once, tried to compel me, and when you bit me, I thought, here it is, finally, this is the way it's supposed to go with him- this is what he does, and all I could think was, God, how stupid I was for thinking maybe for some reason I was different. And then you couldn't let me die. And that has never mattered before- all anyone ever cares about is Elena, Elena's humanity and Elena's feelings and if some of her friends get hurt along the way, ok, that sucks, but Elena is safe, and that's what's important- who cares if Caroline sacrifices herself along the way, who cares if she loses her dad, if Elena tries to hurt her mom, and, God, what a shitty week I've had-" she blurts out, and starts to cry.
He holds her.
And she does not call for Tyler, she does not shrug away his arms or force his chin from her shoulder, and this- this is all he asks for, love.
A softening, a crack, a beginning.
Want to save him, love?
This is how you start, with not pushing him away.
See his other side.
Hear his cries which for so long have gone unheeded.
Take the brush from his hand.
Tuck the oils away in their stand.
Listen.
He will wait.
For a decade, a century, a millennium-
Forever will his door remain open.
A/N: Don't think I didn't consider having him confront Caroline naked. :p I just thought it might be a bit awkward for him to fight Silas in that state.
And, for the first time, I have finally tackled Caroline's perspective and...well, I'm nervous about this. (I'm always nervous when handling a new character.) If I've done badly, feel free to tell me. Rant, flame- get it off your chest however you need. Thank you for reading.