She's here because she has to know, has to know if she's right. If seeing him can really give her the answers she's desperately looking for.

"Well, well, well" He leans over the balustrade of the top level of his mansion's courtyard and greets her with a smugness that is just pleased enough to be endearing. "What brings you to fair New Orleans then love?"

He vamps to her so fast she's not sure if he took the stairs or leapt the balustrade, either way he's right in front of her looking up at her through his lashes and smiling mischievously.

She smiles, back she never could resist him when he's impish like this. "I came to see you actually" she says it as haughtily as she can to compensate for the admission of surrender he might take it as.

"Well then sweetheart" he throws an arm presumptuously around her shoulder, making it just casual enough, leaving just enough distance between them that she can't protest without seeming petty. "We better get some champagne"

"Not our thing Klaus" she snarks half-heartedly as she goes willingly with him up the stairs.

He hands her a glass and she walks around the elegant room to look out of the window at the bustling city below.

"So" he comes to stand beside her and admire the view. "Why are you here then love?"

"My mom died," she says simply and turns her head a little to look at him.

His eyes close, briefly shutting out the city. "I'm sorry to hear that sweetheart. Are you alright?"

"I turned it off," she tells him. "My humanity," she explains, as if it needed clarification. "I couldn't take it, it hurt too much, and I thought I would still be in control you know?"

"But you weren't" he says still looking out of the window. It's not a question.

She turns to fully face him. "No, I wasn't, I really wasn't." she scrubs her face, fights to control her voice, the ever present press of tears, the tremble in her lip. "I did some terrible things."

"Ah love" his hand twitches like he's considering touching her but he doesn't, he opts instead for rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers and thumb. "We've all done terrible things"

She nods, how true that is. "I know. But I can't stop thinking about it. About how I was so calculating and dark, I feel like I'm still dark"

He cocks his head in a vaguely lupine way, inquisitive and watchful. "And so you come to me, because?"

"Because you were wrong. In the forest" she feels her self blush even to mention it, loses the thread of her sentence to the flushed flustered feeling burning her cheeks and quickening her pulse.

"How's that then?" he prompts letting her blushes pass without comment.

"When you said it was the darkest parts of me cared for you, you were so wrong"

He waits as she picks at her nails and tries to get her thoughts straight

"It was the brightest. That girl who could see the good in everyone, God, even in you" she shakes her head almost in disbelief that she could ever have been that way. "That was the best person I've ever been"

He does touch her now as her voice chokes up with strangled emotion. Places his hand rigidly on her back in a gesture of comfort that is too awkward to offer anything like solace and yet the warmth of him, burning through her blouse, relaxes her tangled mind and she can force out her deepest fear. "I don't think I'll ever be that girl again"

"Sweetheart" he whispers without pause. "You'll always be that girl, a light like yours isn't so easily extinguished"

Her face tightens and she shakes her head, she can't bring herself to believe him not when she feels so lost and empty.

"Listen" he says when it's clear she has no response. "Life is pain and our lives are long and beset with loss. Most vampires will do it, every now and then"

"Most?" she hears what he does not say. "But not you?"

"Well" he breezes and makes a dismissive gesture with his empty glass. "It's not for all of us"

"So you've thought about suicide but not flipping the switch?" she asks a little baffled and when he narrows his eyes in surprise, she scoffs. "You think I forgot anything from the night of my boyfriend's bite almost killed me? You said you'd thought about it?"

"Well the two aren't exactly alike now are they?" he moves away from her to retrieve the champagne and she feels a frigid loss spreading out from the point where his hand had lain. So she follows those few short steps and stands close to him in the too big space of the room.

He fills her glass and when he turns away a little to set the bottle down her eyes linger on the lines of his neck. Her breath catches and when he turns to find her staring she looks awkwardly away.

"Not the same?" she prompts once she's swallowed hard enough to trust her voice.

"If you flip the switch there will eventually be consequences, actions that must be lived with, losses that must be borne," he sips his drink and she drops her eyes rather than allow herself to watch this lips touch the glass or the movement of his throat as he swallows, she knows how easily he distracts her physically and she wants a clear mind to hear what he has to say. "Death on the other hand is release, it ends your pain, your doubts, your obligations."

"Obligations?" she takes a second to work him out. "Your family?" they are, after all, the only thing over the years to which he has held allegiance.

He shrugs, clearly not comfortable with the turn the conversation has taken. He is so screwed up, desperately looking for understanding but pathologically incapable of opening himself up to anyone.

"If you flipped it you might have hurt them or not protected them, Rebekah or Elijah, you might have lost them." Her heart folds in on itself painfully, she couldn't bear her mother's loss for an hour after they buried her and he has suffered for a thousand years without respite because he would do nothing less for his family.

Her body moves with the flow of compassion and her fingers come to his cheek to trace that sharp bone structure and drop through his stubble and tenderly across his lips. She's losing control, all she has is her control and it's slipping from her.

She told Stefan no, told him there could be nothing between them while she held fast to her self. And here she is spiraling away from herself into the draw of his face, his eyes, his ever-tempting lips. He kisses her fingertips lightly and watches her with clear knowing eyes.

"What?" she asks when his lips twitch beneath her fingers into the barest hint of a smile.

He laughs, it's a rich soothing sound that makes her tilt her head and frown, what can be so smoothly, gently funny. "Well love" his fingers take their turn to reach across the distance between them and catch a glistening curl in a miniature tango swirling in the corner of her eye. "There's your answer then isn't it"

A/N there are things a bear likes you know. This particular bear likes cake, cake and feedback. Both of those things. Feel free to feed the bear