She woke up in a plush white bed, the curtained windows streaming in light to her right and the door before her to the left. She sat up and stretched her arms out before her. Then remembered her stomach wouldn't allow her to sit up at this angle any longer, and looked down at it. It looked as though it'd gotten bigger overnight, but maybe the pink over her stomach just gave it that effect. She heard footsteps and looked up, taking her hand away from her belly. It was Klaus, walking like a man on a mission. She just stared back at him and he stopped just a few feet from her bed.
"Do you like your accommodations?" He asked, his hands now behind his back. Caroline looked down at her bed and around the room.
"Yeah." She replied. "I guess I didn't have much time to look at it." She'd fallen asleep on the couch talking to Freya, and knew that Klaus probably had carried her into here. She tried not to smile and looked back at him, finding as usual, that he'd already been watching her. "Is there breakfast? I'm starving." She asked with a slight laugh. He smiled back and gestured to the door.
"There's plenty of cereal, milk, blood. Whatever food it is that you want." Klaus replied. Caroline held his eyes with gratitude and became aware of their strong connection again, as Klaus's eyes stayed on hers. It was like that for a moment until she broke her gaze and moved to get out of the bed. Klaus stepped over to the side she was getting out of, watching in case she needed help, and her eyes went back to his. An annoyed look passed over her face but she didn't say anything, and got out quite easily, much better than Hayley had done with Hope. Both women were able to do all they had before they'd been pregnant.
Caroline passed him and gave him a friendly look, he soon followed her and he guided her to the kitchen, past the stares of Elijah and Freya sitting on the chairs and reading books. Hayley was in the fridge and looked at them both of them, not saying anything while Caroline searched through the grocery bags that Klaus had bought and had one of his hybrids put on the counter, minutes before she woke up. She chose a package of large blueberry muffins and popped it open on the counter, looking at Klaus as he stood in the kitchen door. She guessed she didn't mind that he was hovering; at least somebody knew how she felt and wasn't criticizing her. But it was like he thought she'd pop at any second or something.
"Um, where are the plates?" She asked in a small voice, looking at him.
"Oh, I'll get it for you." Hayley said, Klaus finding he had to remain where he stood. She got out of the fridge and opening the cabinet next to it, handing a green plate to her and looking at Caroline. She didn't need to like her, but being at odds with anyone in this house didn't really work for long. Caroline gave her a distrustful look for a moment and took the plate, setting it down on the counter and putting two muffins on it. Then she put the package aside and looked through the other bags, finding a loaf of sliced bread. She turned around again.
"Do you guys have a toaster?" She asked Klaus with a smile. He looked off to another counter with a smile and gestured to the white toaster in the corner of the counter. Caroline opened the bread package and got two slices out, travelling to the toaster to put them in. She looked at Klaus again, who remained at the door.
"As much as I appreciate your concern, I don't think I'm going to have the twins this minute." She replied. Klaus smiled and laughed at himself.
"Well, my concern is not because of when you will deliver those children, love. It's more in case someone has learned of your state and wants to hurt you, thereby hurting me as well." He replied. She stared at him. Of all the things she could do right now, one of them wasn't to just go to Klaus and kiss him. Yet that's what she wanted to do, more than anything. Her want clouded her mind, but she pushed it down; Hayley was watching, these kids probably felt everything she was feeling. Loving more than one set of parents would be too confusing for even her mind to comprehend for them, much less these children. Her train of thought was broken by the toast popping up, making her jump. Klaus looked away, his eyebrows raised. She went back to the plate and put them down, then looked to Hayley.
"Hey, could you get me the butter?" She asked. Hayley quickly got it out and handed it to her, then she spread it lightly and noticed some of it had gotten on her finger, licking it and then putting the butter back.
She got the plate and passed Klaus, picking a seat somewhat close to Freya to eat. Klaus sat by Elijah and Hayley sat on the other side.
They sat in silence; Freya and Elijah reading, Hayley reading over Elijah's shoulder, and Caroline eating. Klaus was the only one who was restless, moving around the room but trying not to make Caroline worry. When Caroline was finally finished, she put the plate on the table and Freya closed her book, putting it on the table beside the book and looking at Caroline.
"Niklaus informed me of what you want to do to free yourself from the pregnancy." Freya said. Caroline looked at Klaus and he glanced at her, then looked back at Freya.
"Do you know something you could do?" She asked. Freya pursed her lips and looked up at Klaus.
"Indeed I can. It will take some time, but I can manage it." Freya replied. She nodded and looked back at Klaus, who glanced at her and then at Hayley.
"Hayley, might I talk to you for a moment?" Klaus asked. She looked back at him with untrusting eyes, Caroline knew why now, and got up reluctantly, following Klaus from the room. Caroline leaned back against the couch, finding the fact she didn't need to switch positions comforting while she sat here, and stared ahead. But Elijah knew, and Freya suspected, that Caroline used her vampire hearing to eavesdrop.
"Hayley, could you go and check in on Camille for me?"
"Why?"
"Because I am not entirely sure she's free from danger."
"Why don't you just go check on her yourself?" She asked, Caroline could hear her arms folding.
"Look, I cannot leave Caroline's side to do it myself but I will not forgive myself if staying by her side meant not keeping Camille from any danger. She nearly died the last time someone got to her, and I was lying right beside her. If you won't do it out of loyalty to this family, do it out of loyalty for your friendship with her." Hayley sighed. "please."
"Fine. But I'll also keep an ear out and find out if Caroline's pregnancy got out in the Quarter. Then when she's not as important to you, you can go and follow your woman and not force me to do it."
As Hayley's footsteps echoed, the words made Caroline flinch, although she tried to hide it as best she could. Klaus's footsteps came and she looked up into his eyes again. Freya moved from the couch and Klaus replaced her, Caroline had watched Freya as she went to sit perched on Elijah's armchair. She looked back at Klaus and found she wanted to have something in her hands, to keep her occupied. Her mind was filled with questions, mostly tinged with emotion which were not things to bring up while perfectly innocent people would have to listen.
"Caroline." Freya said. She looked at her immediately. "I will have to have help in working to speed up your pregnancy, one with your immortality."
"I do not think Caroline will be able to assist you in your spell, sister." Klaus replied. Caroline looked at him. Since when did he get to make decisions for her?
"Why is it important, that you carry out this pregnancy at such a fast pace?" Elijah asked her.
"I want to have control over my own body again." She replied. "I don't like how things have turned out at home. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why I shouldn't try everything to regain control." She added. Elijah looked away and put his book to the side.
"I shall assist you, Freya." Elijah replied, looking at his older sister. Caroline looked at him.
"Why?" She asked. Elijah looked at her.
"Because I remember your friend, miss Forbes. The doppelganger. Any way to repay the debt I have to her, somehow help her without being able to do so, I shall do it." He replied. Caroline studied Elijah's face and gave an appreciative smile.
"Thank you." She replied. Elijah nodded with a returned smile and looked at Freya. She got up and he followed her out of the room.
Caroline turned to Klaus and he to her. He saw the emotions she'd covered before now flittering across her face like light across a window when it rained. He searched her eyes and turned to face her.
"I heard your conversation, Klaus." Caroline said. Klaus closed his eyes and looked away. "You should've taken Hayley farther away to talk or something if you didn't expect me to listen in."
"Actually I didn't expect you to. I would've thought you'd respect my privacy." He replied. Caroline grinned at him sarcastically.
"Respect your privacy?" She asked. "You should've just had the conversation in the room, I'm sure Elijah would've still listened in like he was no doubt doing."
"Were you going to add Freya in with your excuse? You must've remembered that she is not a vampire, and so she can't eavesdrop impolitely as you've just done. And Elijah? He respects Hayley's privacy as well as my own."
"You promised me, Klaus!" Caroline yelled, getting up from the couch. Klaus was up with her in a flash. "You promised me, that you would wait. You promised however long it took to be with me for eternity you would wait for me." She felt as if she were falling apart. She lifted her arms and let them fall by her sides. "If you don't want to be with me anymore, just say so and I'll leave. I won't be an inconvenience to you anymore." She snarled, getting in his face. Klaus stared her down in return. But as she turned to leave the room, Klaus caught her arm. She whirled back around to face him but he stunned her into silence.
His look wasn't of malice or anger, or resentment anymore. He looked genuinely concerned. As vulnerable as Tyler or Stefan. Even more than they were.
"I'm sorry that you heard my conversation with Hayley, Caroline." Klaus said, and kept his grip on her arm as she tried to yank it out of his hand. "If I wanted to hurt you with my feelings for her, I wouldn't have left the room." He added. Then Caroline softened, trying to read his face. But he turned away before she could do so, and left the room out of the door they'd entered.
It took a while for the two to talk again; mostly Freya or Hayley would come to Caroline's room and ask her if she'd like to come down for food. If Caroline had a question or anything to talk about it was usually to Freya, if not Freya would relay the message to Klaus, her annoyance at being the messenger growing with each passing day. Luckily she had Elijah's help in speeding up the two fetuses' growth.
As Hayley watched them from their rooms, she saw they were both doing the same things, mostly. Caroline ignored calls from Stefan, Klaus talked to Camille, promising he'd come see her soon but never saying when. They both busied themselves and looked to the opposite walls, thinking about things they weren't allowing themselves to. She relayed her opinion of them to Jackson over the dinner table and he chuckled saying, they definitely were trying to hide 'their feelings for eachother.' She guessed that was sort of a family trait. No doubt Caroline would be welcomed with open arms, if Klaus decided to choose her.
Caroline finally went to Klaus's room almost a week into not directly speaking to him and found him busying himself with studying books, pacing around the place. He looked up at her and closed the book, but didn't say anything.
"So, look..." Caroline began, taking her own hands and holding them in front of her, Klaus's eyes widened just a little bit and the book fell to his side in one hand. "I get that there's things we can't talk about. And since we can't talk about those things, maybe we should just, catch up?" She asked, slightly worried he would send her out of the room. He looked away. "But if you just don't want to ever speak to me again, that's fine." Klaus's eyes went back up to hers as if those last words pushed a button. "I mean, it's not fine, but...I get it." She started taking steps back. "I will, leave you alone." She said. Caroline turned to go.
"Wait" He called to her. This time, freezing at the sound of his voice was like a godsend, in a matter of speaking. She didn't look behind her, but very nearly. "I apologize for my reaction, love." He said. She gripped her arm and waited for more. "You came for my help, and I am a man of my word. I do not wish to put you at arm's length." Klaus added. Caroline turned around and looked in his eyes, slightly pleading, though hard.
"If I bring things up you don't want to talk about, are we going to end up right here again?" She asked. Klaus looked away with eyebrows raised.
"I certainly hope you don't find out," He began. Caroline's face twisted from appreciative sympathy to pain again, he held a hand up "but I will try my best, not to put us in this situation again." He added quickly. She nodded, the hurt fading from her eyes, and rubbed her arm, looking away. She didn't know how to ask him what she wanted him to do, but she took a few steps towards him, and he understood. Klaus always, understood. He put his arms around her, and embraced her tightly, his hand going up to cup the back of her head, his other one in the small of her back. She put her arms around him after a minute, and buried her face in his shoulder. He closed his eyes for a minute and just let knowing that he was able to comfort her be a consolation.
When he let her go, he saw the light come back into her eyes as she looked up at him. A slight smile played on her lips and he couldn't help himself from looking down at them, and remembering how they felt on his mouth. He blinked and brought his head back up, patting the side of her body where his hand still was, then withdrawing it. Caroline let her hands drop from him, a few moments later, reluctantly doing so. It was the closest she'd been to him since that day in the woods. And she couldn't help but miss the closeness. She put one hand, hesitantly, up to his face. Klaus searched her eyes for a moment, not sure of what she was doing.
"Thank you." She said genuinely, and pulled away. At once, the cold air came to meet the places their bodies had touched, and Caroline's stomach looked even larger in the daylight coming in from his balcony. She looked out at it, and Klaus's eyes followed her as she started walking towards it. He fell into step with her as she passed him, and they went out to the balcony together, leaning on the handrail, looking out over the New Orleans street below them.
"So," Klaus began, looking at Caroline. She looked down at the streets in fondness, smiling a little. Even with no parties or dancing going on below, the streets were still lined with the artwork of the houses below, the colors of them and the people standing against the walls, waiting for someone to buy their artwork or just talk to them. Caroline looked at him. "It's been two years now, right? Since I left."
"Almost to the day." She agreed with a small voice. Klaus looked down despite himself and played with his fingers.
"There must've been a lot that transpired, during that time?" He asked. Caroline looked at him and smiled. He did the same and she recounted what had happened in Mystic Falls.
"With Damon stuck in a prison world for the summer, although none of us thought he was in said prison world, we all thought he was dead, so..."
"Elena was in pieces." Klaus finished.
"Yeah. Turned out Bonnie was too, but when he came back, he thought he couldn't get her out of there. That prison world was there for a reason."
"So he deceived you into believing Bonnie wasn't in that place, so that Elena wouldn't be trying to get to a best friend that was no longer reachable." Klaus replied. Caroline looked at him. He gave her a smirk.
"Despite Damon and I doing things for different reasons, we are very much alike." He said. "I would've done the same, if someone I loved as much as Damon loves the doppelganger would be hurt by the truth." He looked down. "Especially when I knew I could keep them from their pain." He added.
"You mean Camille." Caroline stated. Klaus's jaw hardened and he bowed his head, still gripping the hand rail. "Right, sorry." She said quickly. "Not a good topic."
"It's alright, love." Klaus replied, looking at her. "You're right. If I could keep Camille from being in pain, that's exactly what I would do." He told her. Caroline's heart felt like it was being squeezed again and she looked away. Klaus felt like he was hurt by her reaction suddenly, surprised at himself. Despite his heart possibly belonging completely to another now, he did not wish Caroline harm, ever.
"Let's talk about you now." Caroline said with a smile, laughing at the awkwardness that topic brought. Klaus chuckled as well and shrugged.
"Well, when I came here to New Orleans, I remembered how it had been the last time I was here. It was when my father had found us, my siblings and me. We were at a play, and he wanted to draw us out. So he used one of our own, Marcellus, as bait."
"You said something about a Marcel before. What happened with him?" Caroline asked.
"It depends on what you mean, love. How we met was quite a tale, along with how we met again when I came back." He replied. She leaned on the handrail with her elbows.
"Well, start from the beginning." She said. Klaus watched her and turned around, leaning off the rails, forward toward his room.
"Marcel was a slave on the current governor's grounds. The same governor that owned this mansion, back in the 1800s. I met him while he was being beaten by a slaver, I suppose for eating the food that was being produced by the trees. Marcel caught my eye, by turning around while he was being beaten, and throwing his food at the abuser. The man would've killed Marcellus, if it hadn't been for me." Caroline looked back at him with an eyebrow raised.
"You saved him." She said. He nodded. His eyes glinted with happiness for a moment and she searched them from the side.
"What?" Caroline asked. Klaus smiled and looked at her.
"When I had saved Marcellus, I gave him his name. He didn't have one, because his mother had wanted to wait until he was safe from the diseases that had killed his siblings. But she died before she could give him a name. So I named him, 'little warrior'." Klaus smirked. "He's certainly lived up to the name. Even if he was a pain in my arse in doing so." Caroline laughed as well. "I raised him. Elijah and myself. Kol didn't see the point in keeping him alive, but I daggered him before he could try to."
"So Marcel saw the dagger and how it worked when he was a kid? He got introduced into the family drama?" She asked. Klaus shrugged.
"It couldn't be helped, really. Kol was not one for niceties towards humans, and he'd been frustrated before, which hadn't alleviated the situation." he replied. Caroline looked on for a moment and Klaus searched her face in wonder, suddenly wondering what she was thinking.
"Didn't you say that he'd taken over your rule when you first came back?" Caroline asked. He nodded again. "If he was one of your enemies, then...how did it come to that?"
"It starts with Mikael. When he drew us out with Marcellus as the bait, we believed he was dead. With him dead, we didn't go back for his body, we merely fled from Mikael. It turned out Marcel was in fact, not dead, and he became resentful that we left him behind. So he took over what we built, and won the loyalty of men he would use to rule New Orleans effectively." Klaus stood up straight with his eyebrows raised. "Despite my anger over what he stole from us, our home, my rule, our security...he was an excellent ruler. I actually learned from his rules, and his secrets." Klaus pushed off the handrail and walked to his room, Caroline turning around to face him.
"So it was a good thing that he was left here to take your place, right?" Caroline replied. Klaus looked at her, trying to decide how to process her words. "I mean, if he had come with you, it probably would've been harder to get your home back." She said. He shrugged.
"If we had known Marcellus was alive, we would've taken him with us. But I expect he would've wanted to hold Mikael off, or he would've wanted to hide Rebekah, and she had been injured. We would've been together, during the run. And I would've enjoyed it, even through the fear and..." He chuckled and looked down "paranoia, as many people have jumped at the opportunity to inform me of it." Caroline scoffed and continued to smile at him. He held her eyes again.
"This place I call my home, could've only been taken over by lesser men. I have not met a ruler like Marcel for a long time." Klaus told her.
"You don't know that." Caroline replied, pushing off the handrail as well and coming towards him. She folded her arms above her stomach and he watched her. "I mean, when I was in Mystic Falls, we underestimated so many people. Including you." She said, coming to a stop a few inches from him. Klaus smiled at her. "But it's lucky that your family was ruling your home." Caroline said.
"Why is that?" Klaus asked, amused.
"Because you didn't have to lose him after all." Caroline replied. Klaus searched her eyes and smiled. She smiled in return and his faded, as he took her face in. Caroline studied him, wondering what just happened. Then without a word, he ducked in, took her arms, and kissed her. Caroline kissed him back in surprise, her eyes closing as well. She savored the kiss, and let her hand land on his shoulder.
But just as quickly as the kiss began, it ended. Klaus's eyes widened on her face, seeing her eyes closed. She was dazed, and would be questioning him at any moment. And he could not take inquiries at the moment. As soon as Caroline's gentle eyes opened to him, he left the room, turning quickly. If anyone had been there, he surely would've knocked them over.
Caroline stared after him, and smiled, biting her lower lip. She wasn't going to forget that kiss for years.