So, I have been re-writing this, it sort of got away from me. So I've had to rework and fix a few things. SO here is the first, new and improved chapter! Thanks so much for sticking with me, and thanks to every person who has left me a review, I love you all so much xx
When she wakes up, it's in a very different place than she had fallen asleep in. she had been in a semi nice hotel room in India, with Bonnie in the bed next to her, grimoires and papers showing family trees spread across the beds and the desk in the corner.
The Indian air is warm, and smells of the spices the locals cook with. She loves the heat as a vampire, although Bonnie complains constantly that she feels like she is about to melt, and refuses to let Caroline sleep with the hotel windows open, says she doesn't want to drink the air.
They've been in India for a few weeks, and she's come to enjoy the way the air almost seems to flow around her legs, the vibrancy of the hot days, and the friendly way the locals treat her and Bonnie.
But, it's not stifling hot in this room, and she's no longer sleeping alone. The bed is far more comfortable than the one she had been staying in, in the hotel, and that's saying something. That bed had felt like a cloud.
The first thing she notices is the warm hand resting on her rib cage, the fingers spread over her bed warm skin, the thumb resting against the underside of her boob. The hand, is of course, attached to an arm, resting across her stomach, and it's pushed the shirt she was sleeping in, following the arm, she tries to make out the face in the dim light, but she can't see much. It must be really dark she realises, if even her enhanced vision can't make out the man's face.
Instead, she squeezes her eyes shut, tries to listen further than the room, but all she can hear is her thundering heartbeat, and the breathing of the person behind her, which is concerning, usually, she can hear everything.
All she remembers from last night is her and Bonnie ordering some room service and planning their next move, they'd been tracking a coven who had a Bennett grimoire, but it looked like they had moved on from the area at least three decades ago. They'd been planning about the next location, there were some rumours that the coven might be in Egypt, though Caroline had felt the rumours were lacking in truth, and a little too far-fetched. She thought it was more likely that they had moved onto Turkey, it had seemed more plausible, fitting their nomad patterned lifestyle a little more.
Her brain is fuzzy beyond that conversation, and she doesn't even remember going to bed the night before, and trying to force herself to think just hurts.
She slowly attempts to open her eyes, trying not to move too much, lest she wake up whoever is insanely close to her shoulder. She freezes as she sees a smaller body, a very small body, with pointy knees that are digging into her left hip.
It's a child, like a small real life child, curled into her, and a strange man curled behind her.
It's enough to make any girl loose her mind a little.
She shifts in the bed, trying to get away from either, but her movement causes the arm across her to pull her back, into a warm chest, and a sleepy murmur, and the fingers across her ribs are sleepily caressing.
It's the murmur that has her relaxing into the 'strangers' arms, even as her heart speeds up,
"Klaus?" she whispers into the darkness, unsure if she's pleased or terrified.
The hand freezes its slow caress, confirming her suspicions, though, she notes he doesn't remove his hand from where it is.
"Caroline?" his voice is sleepy, and gravelly and she has to stop herself from swooning, because he sounds as confused as she feels.
"What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here? What are YOU doing here?" she counters, still whispering on account of the unidentified child in the bed they're clearly sharing.
"Caroline, you're not making any sen-" he cuts off, frowning, staring at the other side of the bed,
"Is that a child?" He's scrambling backward out of the bed at that, half dragging her with him, until she pulls herself free, and pushes him into the hallway, closing the bedroom door behind her.
"What the fuck did you do?" She hurls at him, confused and not entirely sure she wants to know what is going on.
"What did I do?" His voice is still coated in sleep, and she's half wishing he would stop speaking all together.
In the hallway, its dimly lit, there are small lights running the length of the hall, and he paces up and down, while she crosses her arms and watches him.
He looks as good as she remembers, only, a little older. Different. And he's without a shirt, so she lets her eyes wander the lines of his body.
It's been a long time since she's seen him in person, not since the day in the woods. So seeing him now is a bit of a shock, she's not sure where to land her eyes, so she settles for the wall just behind him, watching the wall as he paces and tries to think through what's going on.
And Caroline, while many things, isn't a liar. She's more than kind of glad to see him.
He whirls around to face her, his face a mix of emotions she can't quite read, and she's glad that she has more clothes on than the last time they saw each other, a girl only has so much self-control.
"Where are we? I thought you were in India?" He's looking at her, frowning still. She frowns back, trying to pretend she isn't memorising his face all over again.
"I was," she responds slowly, trying to decide if this is a manipulated dream, though it lacks the shimmer around the edges of her vision, and she is far too aware of her own limbs, which weirdly enough is a pretty telling factor for differentiation. Or, if they've been dropped into some kind of prison world, or maybe they'd died and this was some sick version of heaven, or hell.
She hasn't decided yet.
"Where were you?" She asks tiredly, sliding down the wall to sit on the carpet, suddenly exhausted, watching as he repeats the motion across from her
"At the house is New Orleans, Kol and Rebekah are in residence at current, so we've been mostly avoiding each other" he admits with an awkward half shrug.
She tries to break the tension,
"Who have you pissed off recently?" She asks with a small grin as he shrugs,
"No one new in the last couple of weeks, anyway" she scoffs disbelievingly.
"That's not like you, you must be losing your touch", she teases gently, shoving his leg with her toes. He grins at her, but says nothing.
"Can you hear anything?" She pipes up after a moment of silence, and he shakes his head, confirming her suspicions.
"I don't like it," she continues, feeling as though there was someone behind her, watching.
"I don't think it's just the not hearing, notice your heart beating louder and harder than it usually does?" he asks, and she nods slowly.
Vampires still had heart beats, weirdly enough, considering they were for all intents and purposes dead, but their heart beats were usually a little slower than humans, fainter. Enough for them to blend in with humans, but not enough to overpower their enhanced senses. She hadn't even been aware of Klaus's heartbeat until she had her ear resting on his chest.
She's still not ready to say it aloud, so he does.
"We're human, and here, where ever that is. It's not a manipulated dream, so my first thought is a spell. A slim possibility that it may be a prison world, but that would require a coven, and the only one I know of strong enough to do this is currently in a truce with my siblings and I, after we helped them out of a spot of trouble a few years ago."
He chuckles softly at her surprised look, disbelieving that the originals could be friends with an entire coven of witches.
"It pays to have some powerful friends , love"
"Ok, so somehow, we're both human, and here, where ever here is, and" she flashes her left hand at him
"looks like we've got something in common?" He looks at her hand, there's a wedding band there, and one on his hand as well.
"So, we do love." he holds his hand up, confirming. She takes a deep breath, and is lost for what to say next. Eyes focused on the ring on her left hand, she can't tell if its white gold or platinum, but the band is simple, curved to make room for its match, and Caroline silently gulps as she thinks about that, that there is an engagement ring that goes along with this band. Pushes down her curiosity about how it looks on her hand, and the man who gave it to her.
Waking up next to him is definitely not the worst thing she'd ever done, and given different circumstances, she imagines she would even be pleased about it, before the panic had set in, she was very comfortable, pressed against him, curled around him.
But, waking up apparently married, with a small child in what was obviously their bed, is an entirely different story.
She's been silent enough that Klaus worries, gently nudging her leg and teasing her,
"Who have you pissed off recently?" a small smile that was meant to be calming, but wasn't fooling anyone, and she's shaking her head before he's even finished talking.
She's twisting her fingers nervously. She's trying not to look at him too closely. It throws her heart out of its steady rhythm, and makes her breath catch in her throat. She can't focus on what they're talking about when she looks too closely. He's still shirtless, and she doesn't want to be distracted from the real issue.
"Bonnie got an email a couple of weeks ago, from a witch who wanted to take you down. She's been emailing back and forth with her for a while about magic, nothing to do with you, and then out of the blue she asked Bonnie for help.
"She got a bit shirty with Bonnie when we offered to get her out of New Orleans until you'd moved on. Told Bonnie she was betraying her true self by working with me, and not working against you. She seemed to know a lot about what had happened in Mystic Falls."
She says the last bit hesitantly, knowing he wasn't going to like that. He and his siblings had managed to quash whatever stories had come out of Mystic Falls, had even come to a deal with Elena and Damon and Stefan. She wasn't sure what was involved, but she didn't hear from Elena anymore.
They weren't too keen on the general population learning of their weakness for white oak, or that there was a cure, living inside the doppelgänger and her protectors, that Kol had died and been brought back to life wasn't something they wanted to get out, half of their reputation was that they couldn't be killed. Klaus especially wanted to protect Caroline's identity until she decided if she wanted him or not. Her being killed in retaliation, or as some sort of revenge plot really ruined that.
"Someone talked then" he said grimly, and she could tell he was mentally running through a list of people to eliminate.
"No one would have done that," she countered quietly, knowing that there was a very, very short list of people that would have spread anything around.
"Katherine knows better, she got what she wanted already, that and if she betrays me, she betrays Elijah, and she won't do that again" he says, and she wonders what the story is there.
She knew that Elijah had had a small thing for the doppelgänger way back, before she had been turned, but wasn't sure it was real, or just Katherine being her usual manipulative self, and she wasn't exactly close with Elijah, so wasn't likely to ask him for his relationship drama. And given what she did know of Elijah, he wasn't likely to volunteer the information himself.
"I haven't heard from Tyler for a few years" she volunteers awkwardly, twisting the hem of her shirt in her fingers, avoiding his eyes.
Although she and Klaus have kept in touch over the years, not closely by any means, but the gaps between their phone calls were in weeks more than the months they had started at, they had never once talked about Tyler. She sometimes though Klaus was avoiding asking in case he heard something he didn't want to.
There's an awkward silence in the hallway, she can tell he doesn't want to ask about it, but at the same time he does.
"So," he says eventually, clearing his throat, "the short list is Tyler or the Salvatore brothers." She grimaces, feels guilty at hoping its Tyler and not Stefan or Damon. They'd both taken the cure and were currently living very normal, very human lives. She's already shaking her head.
"I don't think it was Stefan or Damon, they just want to live their lives and not ever think of the supernatural again. I know they're not the brightest, but they won't even take Bonnie's calls. There is no way they'd embroil themselves in a battle with your family again" she feels bad, but Tyler has done this to himself, there is no helping him now. Especially not if he has been talking to people about what had happened in Mystic Falls, they'd all been sworn to secrecy and compelled not to reveal Klaus's attachment to her, not to reveal any of the things that had happened in the town, Tyler had only escaped it because he was already gone, had somehow evaded magical means of tracking.
Before they can continue their conversation though, the bedroom door is opened by the child in the bed.
"Auntie Care?" he sounds upset, close to tears, and Caroline tenses, watches the small child carefully.
He's got a tumble of blond curls, not unlike Klaus's, although the colour is much lighter, sleepy blue eyes and little footie pyjamas with batman on them.
If she squints he sort of looks a little bit like Matt when he was little, though his face isn't quite right, the resemblance is enough for her to have no doubt that this is Matt's child.
He looks confused about why they are sitting on the ground, and wipes at his eyes tiredly.
"I had another bad dream" Caroline lets out a breath she didn't realise she had been holding, and she can hear Klaus's noisy exhalation of breath. A deep, bone relief they share at the boy calling her aunt.
Thank god he wasn't calling her Mommy, that would have been a special kind of nightmare.
He just nods, and holds his arms up for her to pick him up, so she climbs up from the ground (much harder than it usually is in her vampire body).
She hadn't really thought of kids before she had been turned into a vampire, not further than the general. She thought that she would maybe one day have kids, once she had had her career and life and was married etc. Once she had turned into a vampire, and the option was taken from her, she hadn't really minded, mostly because she hadn't really thought about it in real terms, still hasn't fully thought through the repercussions if she's being honest.
She lifts him a little awkwardly, and he immediately settles into her shoulder, sleepily rubbing his face against her shirt, sniffling quietly. Caroline melts just a little inside at how cute this is, at how warm and cuddly the small child is.
"Shall we get you back into bed then?" she asks, moving back into the room he had come out of, and he nods,
"Is Unca Nik come too?" he reaches his hand out, and Klaus rises from the ground, and follows behind them, his hand low on Caroline's back.
She can feel the heat of his hand through her shirt, and she's glad that he no longer has the hybrid senses, otherwise he would be able to hear her heart as it stutters in her chest, she vaguely wonders if he can feel the flush of heat over her body as she remembers the last time he had his hands on her.
Caroline tucks the boy back into the middle the large bed, watching as he wiggles back into the pillow and lets her pull the blanket up to his chin.
"Will you sleep too? He asks, pouting. Caroline exchanges another look with Klaus -Nik- and shrugs.
"I can't sleep without you," he pouts, his bottom lip jutting out, giving her a feeling of déjà vu, she swears she has seen that pout before, not on Matt, but on Kol.
"Alright," Klaus agrees before she can, he's looking just as intently at the child, an odd note of recognition in his eyes, Caroline wonders what he is seeing, if he has made the same connection as she has.
Without confirming anything, she thinks this kid might be Matt and Rebekah's. It would explain a lot.
She returns to the side of the bed she woke up on, climbing under the covers, waiting for Klaus to do the same on his side.
"That's what mommy and daddy do" he informs them in his little sleepy voice. She figures it might be weird if they asked exactly who mommy and daddy were. Assuming they really were his Aunt and Uncle, they should probably know something like that. And he might be young enough that he might only know his parents as mommy and daddy, not actual people.
Caroline pulls the fluffy white blanket further up, and tucks it under his chin. Thankfully, she feels as awkward as Klaus looks.
"You have to stay here until morning time now" he bossily told her, and turning his face to Klaus as well. She snorted a small laugh, making Klaus smile in response.
Now there was really no doubt in her mind as to who his parents were.
"Alright, we're not going anywhere. Go to sleep" she shoots a bemused look at Klaus over the small boy.
…..
After making sure he was asleep, Caroline looked over at Klaus, and silently mouthed to the hallway. He nodded and gently eased his way out of the bed, her following his lead and easing her limbs out from under the child's.
"We need to figure out what's going on. Want to explore first?" she asked once they had reached the hallway