Title| Ink Through Water

Genre| hurt/comfort/angst

Rating| t

Fandom| the Vampire Diaries

Couple| jeremy/kol, caroline/klaus, damon/elena

N/A| not much, but we skip ahead a few hours after Kol freaks out and he talks to Caroline.


"Well make sure to build your house brick by boring brick

or the wolf's gonna blow it down—"

—"Bury the Castle" by Paramore


He's at a bar halfway out of town with three unconscious humans surrounding him and a compelled bartender sending drinks to the underage couple sitting down the bar from him—the two fifteen year olds winked with too much glitter make-up and Kol had already thrice sent them away. He didn't have any patience for humans tonight but he wanted to surround himself with heartbeats to drown out his thoughts. Hearts that beat and that pushed blood through veins and sung songs around him, all at once, but none of them match Jeremy's unique tempo.

He wouldn't let himself feel like this, but he hardly felt opt to going out slaughtering—yet. Maybe later. He had to be drunk enough to stand screaming pedestrians first. Otherwise it was just no fun.

Caroline appears behind him leaning against the bar, thin and waiflike, her blonde hair illuminated like a halo from the dim lights. She smells like his brother. It was as if the constant presence of the hybrid clung to her clothes and hair similar to a perfume. He could imagine them in his head, having a lovely quiet moment that belonged to them and them only; Klaus would press his face into her hair and inhale her smell like he could carry a part of her around with him all day and Caroline would make a comment, and they'd hold each other like lovers would and breathe as one.

Him and Jeremy were like that once, once upon a time.

Caroline glances at the unconscious humans, listening for their pulses and inaudibly sighs, thankful that they're alive, before she has the balls to wave away his drink and ask from something watered down and a glass for herself. He'd have to knock her down a peg . . . someday. She shifts her bag on her shoulder and remains standing as if she would stop him if he did try to run.

"Kol," Caroline says and her voice isn't right. She never sounded weak when she talked to him because Caroline is strength, resilience and iron-laced beauty. She's a queen who knows the importance of keeping a face, but not too much so that she can't lose herself to rage every now and again. Kol has, admittedly, always liked that about her. And even when she's being annoying and trying to make everything right, he vowed to give her his ear for a while.

She stepped closer and he caught a new scent—blood. Just beneath her fingernails.

He stares blankly at her with a bland expression. "What do you want Caroline?" he asks tartly and Caroline doesn't flinch. "Wait. Better question: what did you do?" He quirks a brow and a smile, eyes shifting over her bloody manicure and tries to categorize who it belongs to.

The bartender returns with their drinks and Kol sips at it, grudgingly, and Caroline doesn't touch hers. "Elena's lost it," she says quietly, her voice is mournful and dry, like she's eaten mouthful of cotton. "She's turned her humanity."

"Well, that's unfortunate. She might actually be sufferable now—shame she has to die." He swirls the glass in his hand, watching the ice make a ring around the glass, faster and faster. "You know, some people just shouldn't be vampires. They really do bring the rest of us down." He smiles cat-like, all teeth and gleaming eyes. "What did you do to her?"

Caroline shakes her head and the scent of blood and sweat and Klaus wafts through the air again and attacking his senses. She ignores his question, "I don't think being a neutral party in Mystic Falls will work anymore. Damon's being an ass, Stefan's not thinking and Bonnie's gone completely psycho." He can hear the stain in her voice, pulling taunt and thin like a rubber band, she's close to breaking or already has. Kol tenses. For the little love he offers his brother and his mate, he will not deal with a neurotic and broken Caroline.

Unless she wanted to drink away everything—then he would deal with her.

"You're point?" He says carefully, weighing whether it was time for flight or not. Caroline's eyes meet his. They're like ice slipping into his skin.

"I'm done here. I'm tired of everyone looking at me like I'm a time bomb because of how I feel about your brother and forgetting that I'm a person too," she hisses lowly. "I hate to be the bitch here, but if I have to be I will be."

"Did you kill Elena?" Kol asks and the silence between them is heavy.

"No, Kol. I didn't kill her and neither will you." Caroline says, composing herself and crossing her arms over her chest.

Kol raises a brow. "And why wouldn't I?"

"It's not her fault and Kol and you know that."

"How can you be so sure? Neither of us were on that island Caroline!"

"But you know that no one who loved Jeremy that much would be able to kill him." She snaps back and Kol is shocked into silence for a moment—contemplating on how angry his brother might be if he broke Caroline's neck. He deduced that Caroline might not even tell him, or he'd be daggered and awake in a time where things are more hellish than they are now. But Klaus wouldn't kill him—that he knew better than anyone. He cared too much and Caroline, oddly enough, would be upset.

He didn't want to hurt Caroline.

He just didn't want to feel this way anymore.

He didn't want to be in love with someone dead—the real kind of dead—and who was never coming back.

"Here, I got you these." Caroline says, her voice taking up a calm and nurturing tone, sort of like how his mother used to be. She rolls a backpack off her shoulder and presents it to him unceremoniously. The contents of the bag smell like gasoline and moleskin.

His eyes widen. "What?"

"Jeremy's other sketchbooks. I think these are the ones from Denver; he had them under his bed. Don't worry, I didn't look."

"I wouldn't have cared if you did." Kol says trying to sound blasé and uninterested, but Caroline raises a brow.

"They were under his bed."

"Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Riiight," Caroline rolls her eyes and kneels down to him, placing the bag at his feet. "I won't think any less of you for taking them. I know you want them and you can keep them. No one else could take better care of them," She pauses taking an unamused expression. "Jeremy knew you better than anyone didn't he?"

"Yes, he did,"

"And you won't talk to anyone but Jeremy?"

"Nope,"

"Then there's nothing left for us here," Caroline says, fixing her blouse and superior expression. "I'm taking your brother up on touring Europe—Rebekah might come along too." The invitation lays open in the air, and he bats it away with a wave of his glass.

"I do better on my own."

Caroline reaches for her glass and downs it in one throw.

"Suit yourself, stay in touch, kay?" She kisses his forehead and removes the glass tumbler from his grasp, much to his complaint, and sets it down at the edge of the table away from him. And he'll let her think she made a difference for now, he catches her sleeve.

"One last question—who's blood?"

Caroline holds up her hands to the lamp, inspecting her manicure sorrowfully and looks back to Kol and wiggles her fingers at him. "Damon's, I was just giving him what was coming to him." She takes a few dance-like steps backward and turns, calling over her shoulder. "If you want to know how, meet up with us in Paris."


This will be my story where I get all my anger on Elena out. Because I need to. Pent up rage, two jobs and fighting with friends is a very bad combination. In addition I have a caffine addiction and I just watched the final season of Sherlock. I love those writers so much. AMazing, beautiful, stunning. Every frame, everything.

More to come~

Two reviews and next update,

—QueenVamp