Caroline pushed send and leaned back in her chair. She was seated in the outdoor section of what she had guessed was one of Klaus's favorite cafe's. Her phone screen was dark and she expected it to stay that way. He'd come before he sent her a message. She guessed she had maybe five minutes before he descended on her and she still didn't have any idea what she was going to say to him. Fourteen hours in her car and she hadn't come up with anything she liked. It hadn't helped that she'd received at least one phone call on the hour every hour of her drive. Elena more than once, Damon a couple of times, probably at Elena's urging and even Stefan but she hadn't turned around like all of them expected her to. Tyler hadn't sent her so much as a text message. One of them had to have told him what she was doing. Either he didn't care or he was too mad to talk to her. Probably both.

She'd been an hour from New Orleans before she remembered she had no idea where to even start looking for Klaus when she got there. His sudden urgency to keep her from the city discouraged her from simply asking the locals where she could find him. Now that she was here, she was glad she had thought of a different plan. New Orleans was beautiful but there was some sort of…weird vibe about the place. It went beyond the usual myths attached to the city or the blatant presence of vampires she was still adjusting to. Something was off, something she couldn't put her finger on, but she could sense it all around her. Eventually she'd pulled over, searched through the pictures he'd sent her(tried not to get mad all over again that there hadn't been so much of a whisper about his baby or its mother), and decided on going to a café that had popped up in several of them. She'd had to ask if it was the right place though. From a local who looked at her like she had two heads but answered pleasantly enough when it became clear Caroline wasn't looking for an afternoon snack. She'd never been anywhere where there seemed to be a giant invisible beacon flashing "vampire" over her head like there was here. She didn't like it.

Caroline's fingers twitched for her phone but she resisted, sipping from the drink she'd felt obligated to buy in order to sit at one of the outdoor tables. She really should just let herself compel people into doing what she wanted, but it still all seemed wrong somehow. A shadow fell over her table and she stilled, her drink frozen in place in her straw. Five minutes. Tops. Her lips left the straw and she let herself look up.

Klaus stood on the opposite side of her table, barely suppressed rage radiating out from him so strongly he was practically shaking with it. It wasn't the maddest she'd ever seen him—but it was close. He looked the same—he was wearing his usual t-shirt and jacket, his beaded necklace and his facial hair was still in that odd combination of full-grown stubble he had perfected. He was the same and yet somehow different, like New Orleans was different, in ways she couldn't describe. Maybe it was his impending fatherhood(she didn't want it to be), maybe it was something else, but he was different. Altered subtly but enough that anyone who hadn't seen him in awhile would note the difference. He hadn't said a word yet. He just stood there staring—no—glowering at her and yet…despite her suspicion that a part of him wanted nothing more than to reach across the table, snap her neck, and drag her unconscious body back to Mystic Falls, there was the faintest flicker of happiness in his eyes at the sight of her. It was that flicker she started to smile back at before anger descended over his features like a curtain and he said,

"What part of 'don't come to New Orleans' didn't you understand?"

Caroline blinked and the moment vanished.

"All of it apparently."

Being flippant with Klaus was seldom a good idea. It was especially a bad idea when he was this angry but she had never been able to resist testing her limits with him. She saw no reason to start now.

"This is me asking nicely, Caroline. Why are you here?" He gripped the top of the chair across from her, his knuckles a blazing white. A self-controlled Klaus? She hadn't thought it was possible. She blinked again to stop herself from staring stupidly at his hands and answered,

"If you really want to know why I'm here, Klaus, you should just ask the wereslut."

All the color drained from his features and Caroline forever marveled that he didn't snap the chair in two.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The words escaped her in a whisper and she found she couldn't look at him directly anymore. He inhaled loudly and the chair wobbled as he released it and crossed over to stand beside her.

"Not here," he whispered in her ear, his gaze scanning their surroundings. Several of the café patrons looked away as his gaze hit them and his brows drew together. Caroline could feel every tiny metal circle of the café chair pressing against her skin through her clothes—she wasn't certain she was going to be able to move again. "Do exactly as I say," he whispered and straightened so his lips were no longer against her ear. She would have nodded except there was that whole not being able to move thing.

"I appreciate your coming all this way, Caroline, but next time a phone call really would suffice," Klaus said in a voice loud enough to be heard across the street.

"There won't be a next time." Something like hurt flickered in his eyes and then vanished.

"Then we have nothing left to say to each other, have we?"

He had hidden a baby from her. A baby. And now he was playing the victim?! He really was unbelievable.

"No, I guess not."

She rose, remembering to swipe her phone from the table at the last moment before shoving it into her purse. Klaus stood in front of her, deliberately blocking her exit. There was a sense of veiled amusement about him—at her expense she guessed—underneath his outward show of anger. If there hadn't been so many people pretending not to watch them—was there really such a lack for entertainment in New Orleans that she and Klaus were the most interesting thing to watch?!—she would have given in to the temptation to shove him or stomp on his foot, anything to stop his mouth from twitching at the corners. She settled for pushing past him as roughly as he could—it didn't matter that he let her do it, it was still satisfying to see him stagger backwards with the force of it, even if it was only a step.

He followed her to her car, presumably to make certain she was really leaving and she got in reluctantly. After fourteen hours, she was sick of even the sight of her car. Klaus tapped on her window, polite as can be, and she started the ignition and rolled it down.

"What?"

He said nothing, his lips curving into his trademark insufferable smirk as he leaned over her and punched coordinates into her gps. As he finished, he turned on the radio and cranked the volume to an almost unbearable level.

"I'll be there in an hour. Maybe longer. There's something that requires my immediate attention."

Klaus leaned back out of the car and Caroline nodded, staring straight ahead. She didn't drive off. He stayed outside her car, studying her.

"I didn't know how to tell you, Caroline. So I opted not to." Caroline nodded, not certain she could speak even if she knew what to say to him.

"I'm sorry." She turned to look at him but he was gone, vanished with his vamp speed and she was left, staring into nothingness. Across the street she was aware of the continued interest of some of the café patrons and she drove off faster than was necessary, almost taking out a pedestrian as she did. This was by far the stupidest thing she had ever done. She should go home right now and forget she ever came here.

"Turn right at…." Her gps interrupted her thoughts and she obeyed it blindly. Stupid or not, she was here now and she wasn't leaving until she got some sort of explanation from him. Even though he'd already said the one thing she never expected to hear from him, of all people. He was sorry. She didn't think Klaus had ever been sorry for any of the millions of horrible things he had done over the centuries he'd been alive. But he was sorry he hadn't told her about Hayley? She wasn't certain what scared her more, that it actually was true, or how much she wanted it to be.

Klaus wove his way through the streets of New Orleans without seeing them, his feet taking him through the city he knew like the back of his hand while his mind worked furiously. He'd thought he'd recognized at least one of Marcel's lackeys in the café. Whenever he set foot outside his door, he was inevitably followed by one of them. His favorite spots in the city had long since been noted and someone was always in place in case he showed up. Marcel would know about Caroline's visit within the hour, if not sooner. Caroline. In New Orleans.

A small part of him was elated she was here, despite his forbidding her not to come. The air seemed fresher somehow, the sun brighter, and all those other ridiculously sappy things people claimed were altered when someone special was nearby. He felt it all. But he couldn't allow himself to feel it. So he buried it deep, so deep he shouldn't have been able to even remember its existence, and yet he still felt it. He tried and tried to shut away everything Caroline made him feel but he never succeeded. If only she'd come to him for a reason that wasn't Hayley.

His hands twitched at his sides with the desire to kill something—anything—but he kept walking, ducking into another side street in the attempt to lose the tail he was certain he had. Thinking Caroline would never find out had been foolish. Not planning for the eventuality that she would even more so. He'd wanted to keep Caroline separate from everything that was happening in New Orleans, Marcel, Hayley, the damn baby, until he had it under control. That plan had been Salvatorish in its conception and its execution and rightfully doomed for failure. He had no remaining option but to tell her as much of the truth as he dared and hope she was still speaking to him afterward.

Klaus turned onto one of the more busy streets, his eyes lighting up as he spotted what he was in search of: a busy sports bar. Ducking into the noisy restaurant, he positioned himself at the bar and scanned the room. Some of Marcel's spies were good at not being spotted, most of them were easy to pick out in a crowd. He saw neither, but was still glad for the protection of the noise at the bar as he pulled out his phone and dialed.

"Elijah? We have a problem."

Caroline sat on the steps of the deserted plantation manor, kicking at one of the cracks with her shoe. It was coming up on an hour and still no sign of Klaus. Her phone lay beside her but he hadn't sent her anything. She'd given in and texted Elena so someone knew she had at least made it to New Orleans. The plantation Klaus had sent her to was about thirty minutes outside of the city limits and as deserted as it could get. There was a for sale sign at the end of the drive, but it looked almost as ancient as the house itself and she wouldn't have been surprised if no one answered the phone number listed. The house was a faded white with ivy creeping all over its walls and shutters. She'd tried the door out of boredom but it was locked and Caroline drew the line at breaking and entering. One of the first floor windows had almost no glass left in it anyway so if she had really wanted to go inside, she could have. But vampire or no vampire, she still wasn't keen on exploring what could be a haunted manor by herself. With her luck, the ghosts would be the vampire hating kind and she would be in an even bigger mess than she already was. She should just go home and be done with it.

Air gusted next to her and not even the faintest bit of surprise trickled through her as Klaus sat down beside her on the stairs.

"How was I supposed to tell you, Caroline?" He clasped his hands together across his knees and stared out at the weed overridden lawn. All the anger seemed to have drained out of him and now he was simply weary. She opened her mouth but no words came out. "Was I to ruin my hero moment by confessing my dirty little secret? Would you have remembered that I saved Damon, without asking for anything in return, mind you, or allowed Tyler to come back to you if I had also mentioned the nasty joke nature played on me by making me a father? I think not." Her mouth continued opening and closing silently. She had no words for him.

"I don't want it." She couldn't help looking at him then and even if she had been able to speak, the mixture of agony and self-loathing in his expression would have stopped the words.

"Do you think less of me for it?" Caroline might as well have been a fish in an aquarium, she was so incapable of doing anything other than staring at him.

"I don't remember much about being human anymore. What I do recall…being a father was never among my life's ambitions. My own father treated me like the abomination he thought I was and I hated him for it."

"You're not your father." Words. She could still speak them. He almost—almost—laughed.

"Aren't I? I don't want this baby anymore than he wanted me. We either repeat the same mistakes our parents made in raising us, Caroline, or we rise above them and do better. I'll be no better than he was."

"You don't know that for certain."

"I do. I don't want to try not to." He sprang from the steps and walked away from her, his back completely rigid through the lines of his jacket. Caroline chewed on her lower lip.

"If you really feel this way about it, why didn't you just…kill Hayley or compel her into having an abortion?"

"Because bloody Elijah wouldn't let me." He whirled to face her, desperation and anger in his features and some part of her was strangely relieved. She didn't know what to think of a Klaus whose first reaction wasn't to kill or dagger someone who had displeased him. Killing would always be his first impulse, even if he learned to repress it. It was who he was. "Bekah wouldn't even be speaking to me if she hadn't latched onto this baby as her way to live out her twisted fantasy of having a real family. And then there's the witches and the balance of nature. I can't kill that baby or Hayley. No matter how much I want to."

He was saying horrible things. Horrible, horrible things. And yet Caroline actually felt bad for him. Klaus wasn't some stupid teenager who'd gotten caught in a bad situation because he didn't care about the consequences. He hadn't thought there would be consequences. Nature had never been fair to Klaus, from the moment he was born. For the first time since she had known him, she tried to imagine what it must be like for him, to be the only one of his kind. Tyler didn't entirely count—he was a manufactured hybrid, not a natural born one. Even as a vampire, she wasn't as alone as Klaus was. Was she actually trying to understand him? This could not be happening.

"So what are you doing about it?" Her voice still sounded strange to her ears, as if it belonged to another person.

"I was keeping Hayley hidden away for her own protection. But in a moment of weakness, I let her have a reprieve and now the entire Mystic Falls contingent knows about my predicament.

"Why is it so important it stays a secret? It's not just that you're embarrassed."

"Did I say I was embarrassed?"

"Fine. Ashamed then.

"Perhaps I was trying to be a gentleman."

"A gentleman? You?" She laughed. Klaus arched his brows and returned to sit next to her on the stairs.

"What do I have to be ashamed of?"

"Klaus. You slept with Hayley. Hayley."

"Is that the only part that's bothering you?"

He hid it swiftly but she saw the hope flicker in his eyes before he banished it and she stared down at the crumbling steps. She still couldn't bring herself to tell him to give up his quest for her heart. Couldn't tell him there was no chance she would ever return his affections and he should just give up now and save them both the trouble. Because part of her didn't want him to stop trying. As annoying as his feelings were sometimes, she didn't want them to go away. He was permanently lodged in her consciousness, offering her something she couldn't completely say no to. Because someday...she wanted a reason to say yes. She couldn't say it to him. She couldn't even let him suspect it.

"Would you prefer I lived a monk-like existence, pining away for you the rest of my days?"

"No, you shouldn't. It's just...Hayley? Seriously?!" She looked at him and arched her brows with perfect indignation. Klaus stared at her and then the dangerous smile came out, the slow spreading one that frightened her more than his smirk.

"It was more about...opportunity."

"And that's supposed to make it all better? Please tell me alcohol was involved. And that it was dark." His smile only deepened.

"It meant nothing." Caroline arched her brows a second time and twisted her fingers together in her lap. "She means nothing to me."

"I know that."

"Then what are you doing here, Caroline? You could have yelled at me over the phone."

"You think this could have been anything other than a face to face conversation?" He'd gotten her to say she missed him once, over the safety of the phone, she wasn't going to say it when he was barely two feet away from her.

"I suppose not." He pressed his fingers together and let out a long breath. "If there was a way to undo it or change who it is...I would do it, without hesitation. But I can't. And now you have to live with it. As do I."

Part of her wanted to insist that it didn't matter to her–but she wouldn't have been sitting here next to him if it didn't. An insane, insane desire to touch his arm seized her and her fingers actually twitched before she suppressed it.

"I keep trying to picture you holding a baby and I can't." He almost laughed again. The sound caught in his throat and his lips twisted into one of his smiles that wasn't quite a smile.

"Neither can I."

"You have to send me pictures. Otherwise I'll never really believe it."

"You're all right with me still sending them then?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" She turned and looked at him as surprise flickered and then vanished in his eyes. Klaus shrugged and spread his hands to the side. "So you had something crappy happen to you. It is something crappy right? Friends don't stop talking to each other when something crappy happens. They talk more."

"So we are friends then?"

Crap. He was grinning at her. She'd forgotten about that little victory point. Stupid Hayley and her stupid baby for creating this whole mess.

"No." He arched his brows at her. "Maybe." He grinned down at his knees and she forgot herself and shoved him. Actual genuine laughter escaped him and she was reminded of the time he mocked her Miss Mystic application.

"Stop it. You drive for fourteen hours straight and see how much sense you make." She shoved him a second time as he continued to laugh at his knees.

"Caroline, as lovely as this has been, I need you to leave. Now."

"Did you not hear the fourteen hour straight part?" He nodded, his hands once again clasped together.

"I heard. But your appearance at the café did not go unnoticed and the...complications I spoke of can't know you're still here."

"Why? What's so complicated that I can't stay for one night?" He looked at her for several moments and sprang up from the stairs, striding several feet away and staring off into the distance. The rigid lines returned to his shoulders and Caroline fiddled with her fingers.

"Just tonight, I promise. Tomorrow morning I'll leave as early as you want, but I can't face another fourteen hours in that car. And no buying me a plane ticket and having one of your lackeys drive my car back for me. I'm not traveling again until tomorrow morning."

His back seemed more rigid with every passing second and then he pivoted on his heel to face her, one hand raised.

"Fine. One night." She clapped her hands together before she could stop herself. "If anyone asks, you're Elijah's clingy obsessed ex-girlfriend."

"I'm what?!" She leapt to her feet and crossed the distance between them before he could even blink. One of the many advantages to vamp speed.

"No one can know you're connected to me, love. You came to me first to test the waters with Elijah and I arranged a meeting between the two of them."

"Klaus, no one is going to believe I dated Elijah." She made a face. So Elijah wasn't exactly hard on the eyes, but he was Elena's Original to have a weird sort of vibe with, not hers. Elena would deny it of course, but he was. Caroline had barely ever been in the same room with Elijah and she was supposed to pretend to be his crazy ex girlfriend?!

"Then you'll just have to convince them." Klaus smiled the smile that was supposed to be charming at her and she glared at him. "Keys?" He extended his hand and she dazedly handed them over. Striding toward her car with entirely too much ownership, Klaus unlocked it and settled himself in the driver's seat. Caroline couldn't remember ever seeing him behind the wheel before. She hadn't even been certain he could drive. It was something she could have easily seen him as thinking beneath him. He wasn't supposed to surprise her.

"Are you coming, love?" He started the engine and grinned at her again. For one moment Caroline actually considered hitchhiking. But the plantation was on a deserted road and the chances of her ever seeing another car were pretty much slim to none and while vamp speed was good over short distances, it wasn't worth trying to get to the nearest town. This was never going to stop being the stupidest thing she had ever done.

Getting into the car, she buckled her seat belt–something told her she was going to need it more than usual. Klaus said nothing, his hands on the steering wheel.

"I broke up with him."

He nodded, his lips twitching.

"Whatever makes you feel better, Caroline."

"Just...shut up and drive."

Klaus grinned and complied.