A/N – Sorry for the delay, but I spent the whole of yesterday planning and writing out this story on the memopad on my phone, and then I stupidly didn't save it, which I am absolutely KICKING myself about :(
Don't expect another update until at least the 20th. I have exams for the next two weeks, and much as I'd love to skip school completely to write more chapters, I can't. The last sentence of this chapter is so true.
Just please take this as an apology chapter until I've earned my freedom :)
Disclaimer – If I had the good fortune of owning any of these amazing characters or the plot of this story, I wouldn't be writing a note entitled 'disclaimer', would I? Although a girl can dream...
Caroline opened her eyes and groaned, not wanting to pull the covers from over her head. Her bed was so soft, and her head throbbed like hell, and she couldn't face school, not in this state. But Bonnie was coming to pick her up, and she knew she couldn't leave them waiting, so she forced herself to get out of bed and head towards the door, one hand navigating her way, the other holding her head up.
Once in the hallway, Caroline stopped to examine her surroundings. The corridor was elaborately decorated, and she assumed she must be in a hotel, and a posh one at that. She must find out who'd recommended this one and compliment them on their taste.
She started to make her way towards the light coming from one end, but due to her still-dazed mind, didn't notice the person coming the other way until she'd almost crashed into them.
"Woah, Nik!" the other person exclaimed, but Caroline had neither the energy nor the persistence to try to identify them right now. "Be careful!"
"Meh," Caroline replied, looking the guy in front of her over, from his chestnut hair, down to his bare chest and grey pyjama pants. His voice seemed familiar, but his face was too blurred for Caroline to make out.
Whoever it was chuckled. "If only your little blonde vampire could see you now." And he walked past him into another room down the corridor.
(And of course Kol knew full well that the guy that he'd just spoken to wasn't actually his brother, which was why he was going to make a point of winding up Nik/Caroline as much as he possibly could for the next three months. It was only fair, after what Nik had done to him.)
Caroline fisted her hair with her hands, and unsteadily made her way down a sweeping staircase (wow, this place really was fancy) and across a hallway that was more than twice the size of her bedroom at home through a doorway that led to a kitchen straight out of a fairytale, or a country farmhouse, or perhaps both mixed together. There were cabinets above all the kitchen counters, and a hanging rack holding pots and pans of every size hung above a large wooden kitchen table in the centre of the room. At the head of the table a newspaper was held in front of the reader's face, obscuring him from Caroline's view.
She clumsily made her way to the fridge, hoping to finding a blood bag or two to clear her head, but when she opened it, she found it stocked nearly everything but. There were large red tomatoes, pints of milk, foil containers holding fish and sausages and meats of every kind, bags of salad, boxes of cheeses and yoghurts with fancy labels in a language she couldn't understand. She growled in anger, and shut the fridge, glaring at it, hoping that if she looked ferocious enough, it would start magically stocking blood bags.
"Good morning, Niklaus," the man sitting at the table greeted, folding up his newspaper and picking up the mug of coffee that was set on the table in front of him. "Rough night?"
"You have no idea," Caroline huffed, wondering why Elijah was staying in the same hotel as her, and why he was calling her by his brother's name.
Maybe he's had a bit too much to drink as well, she thought, staring into the depths of the coffee that the oldest Original brother was bringing to his lips.
Elijah set his coffee down, and chuckled. "I'll ask Mother to prepare a remedy to cure your headache," he said nonchalantly, and Caroline blinked.
"Umm, thank you," she said, surprised. Why was Elijah offering to help her? Her and her friends had done nothing but betray him, dagger him and try to kill his brother.
"'Lijah, I think I going into shock," came a voice from the doorway, and Caroline looked up to see Kol, who she instantly recognised as the guy she'd bumped into upstairs. Why was he here?
"I think I just heard Nik being thankful," Kol mock-gasped, and drew his hand over his forehead as he slid into a seat at the table and pretended to faint on the tabletop. Elijah gave a small smile, and went back to his newspaper, leaving Caroline standing there, wondering where she could get a blood bag at such short notice.
"I want real food," she moaned, and both Elijah and Kol looked up with amused looks on their faces.
Caroline resisted the urge to smile; she'd never noticed how similar Elijah and Kol looked before. Then again, she had spent most of her time either trying to avoid, kill or plot against this family; she hadn't exactly had a chance to examine their genetics past the point that all of them were extremely attractive, and very well-mannered and dignified.
Oh no, she thought to herself. She had not just called Klaus attractive. And anyway, he totally wasn't her type. She didn't go for deep blue eyes, and deep pasts, and heartfelt stories about the world and the wonders it held. Not at all. The fact that Matt had blue eyes and blond-brown hair had nothing to do with this. That was a fluke. Tyler had dark hair and eyes, and that was what she was interested in. She loved Tyler, no matter how appealing Klaus had looked when he was leaning over her in her bedroom, talking about how beautiful the world was- shut up, brain.
Her brain was waffling because she was still hung-over, she assured herself. That was why she was thinking about Klaus. Once she could think straight, all those thoughts would be gone.
Wouldn't they?
Right, that was it. She wasn't going to push anymore on the subject.
She broke out of her thoughts to see that Kol and Elijah were still staring at her, although Elijah's expression had turned to one of confusion.
"If by 'real food' you mean blood, it's in the other fridge," Kol supplied, pointing at a fridge at the other side of the room. "You know Mother doesn't like the blood anyway near the rest of the food. She says it makes it smell and taste rancid, if you can imagine that."
"Personally, I agree," Elijah said, and Kol turned to look at him. " I prefer to keep proper food separate from blood. You may not care Kol, but I like my food to taste how it is supposed to."
Caroline looked between the brothers in surprise. She'd never taken them for the type to share their opinions and banter, but found herself enjoying it. Seeing them like this made them seem a bit more human, and a little less ruthless-thousand-year-old-murderers.
She shook her head, and wandered over to the fridge at the far end of the room. She opened it, and almost laughed at the setup. The top shelf had blood bags stacked neatly in alphabetical order by blood type, and she didn't even need to look at the plastic plaque at one end of the shelf to know that this was Elijah's. The next one was almost as neat, except that the bags were slotted on their sides, so they almost looked like books on a shelf. This one belonged to Finn, she read. The next wasn't as organised, the bags slotted in any how; sideways, vertical, diagonal, some were even standing on one edge, looking like they could fall at any minute. Kol's was just downright messy, and a few half-drained bags were stuffed among the already crowded shelf, and Rebekah's was so typical that Caroline had to laugh. The bags were stacked neatly, like Elijah's but without the neat ordering, and each pile had a post-it on saying things such as 'Rebekah's stash', and 'Nik, go and find your own food. If you touch this, I will cut your tongue out and make you eat it'.
Caroline had to say, that was a pretty impressive punishment.
Grabbing a bag from Klaus' shelf to spite him, she turned to go back to Elijah and Kol when she spotted another doorway leading to a grand dining room with an actual candelabra on the table.
Seriously, she was very lucky that she was a vampire and could compel herself out of paying. If she were still human, she would be completely screwed by this point.
"Must you make so much noise in this morning, Kol?" came a female voice, and Esther Mikaelson glided through the door, her sleepy voice completely contradicting her appearance. She wore a tan-coloured dressing gown which was belted, covering most of her nightgown, and matching fluffy slippers on her feet. And of course her hair was perfect, even at this hour. Caroline had to admit, she looked pretty fabulous for someone who'd been in a coffin for a thousand years.
"Sorry, Mother," Kol said sheepishly, who'd grabbed his own blood bag, and was now slurping noisily, his eyes scanning the front of Elijah's newspaper with interest.
"Honestly, Kol, I don't know what Bonnie sees in you," Caroline commented, taking a mug from a rack by the sink and pouring the contents of her blood bag into it.
"Oh, she's with me for a lot of reasons, Nik. She's experiencing the wonder that is Kol Mikaelson. Every. Single. Night," Kol smirked.
Caroline cringed, but looked around for Elijah and Esther's reactions. Elijah, unsurprisingly, just carried on reading, pretending that he hadn't heard Kol's words. Esther just carried on walking over to the fridge.
Then again, Caroline thought, she probably didn't understand what Kol was implying. You know, being in a coffin for a millennium and all.
"Why don't I make breakfast for you?" Caroline offered, suddenly realising that Esther was of course a witch, and didn't drink blood.
Kol almost dropped his blood bag onto the table. "That's twice now, Nik. I'm beginning to think that you may be the sick one."
"Be quiet, Kol," Esther scolded. Then she turned back to Caroline. "That would be lovely, Niklaus."
"Can you even cook?" asked Rebekah, pulling out the chair next to Kol and sitting down. "Because I haven't seen you even try to make anything for at least three centuries."
"I thought you had servants for that kind of thing," Kol interjected.
"I made Finn compel them to leave, and to forget they were ever here. It's wrong, Niklaus. They are people, not puppets for you to manipulate whenever you please."
Even though Caroline completely agreed, she put on a guilty face. "I'm sorry, Mother. I won't do it again."
"Make sure you don't," she replied sternly. "Now, I believe that you were about to make me breakfast?"
Caroline had never been the best at cooking. There were many a time in her early teenage years when she had tried to make breakfast for her own mom, and had set the smoke alarm off by burning the toast, but one thing she did pride herself on was her home-made omelettes. Now there was something she could cook. And since the fridge seemed to stock absolutely everything, she was pretty sure she could cook a perfect one, even one worthy of the scariest witch mother of the scariest group of vampires she had ever come across and probably ever would.
She actually ended up cooking for everyone. Soon enough, all the Original siblings, minus Klaus, and their mother were sitting around the table with napkins over their laps, eating omelettes. If she wasn't so confused and didn't know that each of them could easily kill whole towns in a heartbeat, she would've loved to see them looking so much like a real family.
"Who knew that you were such a good cook, Niklaus?" Finn remarked, wiping his mouth with his napkin and putting his knife and fork carefully parallel on the plate.
"That was lovely, Niklaus. Thank you," Esther said, smiling. Caroline nearly gasped; she had never seen Esther smile as genuinely as that. "Now, Rebekah, don't you have school?"
Caroline nearly dropped the plate she was holding. Crap, school. She'd completely forgotten about it. Bonnie was so going to kill her.
"I need to go," she said hurriedly, piling the plates into the sink.
"Wait," Esther told her. "Could you drop Rebekah off at school?"
Caroline didn't dare disagree with the Original witch. "Of course. But my car..."
"Take mine," Elijah offered, pulling a set of car keys out of his jacket pocket and throwing them to Caroline, who barely managed to catch them.
"Thank you, Elijah," Esther smiled at her oldest son. "Both of you need to get ready."
Caroline left the kitchen, following Rebekah up the stairs. That was when she noticed the familiar-looking entrance, with its staircases and marble flooring.
Well, that explained why all the Mikaelsons were doing here.
What was she doing here, though?
"Hurry up, Nik!" Rebekah called from a room a few doors down from the room Caroline had emerged from. "I need to be there early. I'm on the committee for the decade dance, and we have a meeting this morning before lessons start."
Caroline jumped into action; she was on the committee as well. "We need to go, then! I have some ideas I need to tell everyone, and-"
Rebekah emerged from her room, wearing a loose tank-top and a pair of skinny jeans, and laughed. "Are you serious? Nik, I think you're still a bit drunk. How much did you drink last night?"
"Why do you keep calling me that?" Caroline burst out. "You, your brothers, your mother, everyone's calling me Niklaus. Do I have to spell it out to you? I'm not Nik. I never have been, and I never will be. How can you even confuse me with your brother; do I look like your brother?"
Rebekah put on a face that clearly showed that she was putting on a sympathetic mask to cover up her laughter. She took Caroline by the shoulders, and manoeuvred him into her room, which was every girl's dream bedroom; straight from a fairytale with its soft pink four-poster bed and large cream dressing table. She brought her over to a full-length mirror in the corner, and angled it to show all of Caroline's body.
"See, Nik? That's you," she gestured to the reflection. "That's my big brother, who is clearly still pissed. I think I'll ask Elijah to give me a lift." She grabbed her bag from the bed and stalked out of the room, leaving Caroline still staring speechlessly at the mirror.
It wasn't that she looked like Klaus; she was Klaus. Literally. From the curly blond hair that was still mussed from sleep to the light-blue pyjama bottoms (she'd never actually seen Klaus in his pyjamas before, but she could imagine). She allowed herself a few more moments to take in the great view that a shirtless-Klaus provided (not that she would ever admit that), and then she gasped, and burst into sobs.
How was this even possible? Why? Why her? Why, out of all the bodies she could have woken up in, did she have to be in his (even if he did have a fit body)? She didn't want to be Klaus. She wanted to be her, Caroline Forbes, the girl who went to school, hung out with her friends, fought bad guys and just generally had a good life. She couldn't be a big bad hybrid even if she wanted to, and she didn't want to. At all.
"Why? Why is this happening to me?" she sobbed, hugging her knees and breaking down in front of Rebekah's mirror, spinning the mirror upside-down so she wouldn't have to look at herself – Klaus – anymore.
"Nik?" came a voice, and she heard two sets of footsteps enter the room, as Elijah came over and took her shoulders, kneeling down carefully so his suit wouldn't get creased, and Kol sat next to her on the floor.
"What is it, Niklaus?" Elijah asked gently. "What's wrong?"
"I...I don't know what's happening..." Caroline cried. "It's like...he-he's in me, or I'm in him..."
Kol made a suggestive noise from beside him. "Are you sure that's what you meant to say, Nik? I didn't know you were into that."
Elijah shot his younger brother a disapproving glare. "It's okay, Niklaus," he comforted as best as he could. "This may just be an affect of all the alcohol you had last night. I'll ask Mother to fix something right now." He gave Caroline a small smile. "It will all be okay, Brother."
Elijah left the room to go and find Esther, and Kol took Elijah's place. "You know, if you are looking that way, I passed a club when I went to Philadelphia last weekend, we could go back and find you someone...although I always thought you liked that blonde one, Bonnie's friend. What's her name again...Carissa?"
"Caroline," Caroline corrected. "It's okay, Kol, I'm not...I like girls," she said awkwardly. "But thanks."
"Anytime," Kol replied. "Why were you in such a state? I don't think I've seen you like that since the 1600s."
"I'm probably not sober yet," Caroline lied. "I'll be fine."
"Okay," Kol shrugged. "I'm going to Bonnie's house."
"Why?" Caroline asked. "She's at school with El-the Doppelganger and...Caroline."
"Yes, but I'm still allowed. She's given me permission to go to her house even if she's not in," Kol explained. "I could lie on her bed, look through her things, cook her dinner, read her post, things like that."
Caroline wasn't sure which of those things he was serious about and which he wasn't, so she kept her mouth shut. "Well, right, you go and do that then. We should get...drinks. At the Grill, maybe later." She faltered, knowing it was something Klaus and Kol liked to do often, but not knowing how to ask. She had to keep up appearances, right?
Kol looked surprised. "That sounds good," he admitted. "I'll come back at four, and we could go then?"
"Okay," Caroline said. "I'll see you later then."
Kol flashed off, and Caroline sighed, and slowly turned the mirror around, hoping that her body had miraculously switched in the five-ten minutes she'd been talking to Kol and Elijah.
It hadn't, obviously.
She headed back into the room she'd come from, which she assumed was Klaus'. There was a desk near the wall that was littered with drawings and notes, and Caroline cringed. She'd have to tidy that up if she was going to be stuck in this room all day.
Seeing Klaus' phone on the bedside table, Caroline picked it up, and typed in Elena's number from memory, pressing the phone button and holding it to her ear.
"Hello?" hearing Elena's voice made her want to cry all over again, but she knew she had to pull off being Klaus until she could fix whatever this was.
"Hello, love," Caroline answered, cringing at her words, but knowing that it was what Klaus would say.
"Klaus?" Elena sounded scared and confused. "Why are you calling me?"
"I was just wondering if Caroline was with you," Caroline asked, holding her breath.
"Yeah, of course she is. Why?" Elena asked.
"Is it possible that I could speak to her?" Caroline asked. If she was in Klaus' body, then the odds were that Klaus was running around in hers. The thought of Klaus as a girl would have made her laugh, if this wasn't such a horrible and awkward situation.
There was a pause, and a shuffle, and then-
"Hello, Klaus."
"Caroline," Caroline hissed, thankful that her two friends didn't have vampire hearing, and couldn't hear her end of the conversation. "How are you?"
"I'm sure I feel similar to how you do right now," her own voice told her from the other end of the line.
"We need to talk." Caroline told him (her?) urgently.
"I figured that out for myself, thanks. After school?"
"No, I'm going to the Grill to have drinks with your brother." Caroline told him.
It was odd, hearing her laugh and knowing it wasn't her doing it. "Oh, don't mind him. I'll set up something with his other half. Somehow I doubt I prioritise in that decision. "
"No, just...I'll come to my house, okay? During cheerleading. Somehow, I doubt you'll be up for that, and I don't have anything to do today, so...just ask Bonnie to lead practise today. Tell her I have to...meet Tyler. She won't argue with that."
"Great. Won't your mother be there, though?"
Caroline sighed. "No. She always works late during the week. It'll be fine.
"Okay. Remember, I've been invited in."
"Don't do anything that makes me look stupid!" She yelled at him.
"You know I wouldn't," he replied, although she could hear the smile in her voice (his voice?). "Bye."
Caroline ended the call, huffing. So Klaus was in her body. Who knows that he'd do? He'd probably picked out something totally clashing to wear, wouldn't write any of her homework down and would completely ignore Tyler. Tyler! Now that was a meeting she'd love to see.
Smiling wickedly at the thought of Tyler trying to move in on Klaus, she then thought of something. He'd had to get changed to go to school. That pervert! He'd probably had a good grope while he'd been at it. She was so going to kill him. How dare he? She wasn't dating him; he had no right at all to even look at her body.
But he did. As far as everyone else knew, it was his body. He was Caroline Forbes, and if he wanted to take full advantage of the fact that he had her body, there was no way she could stop him.
She fell onto his bed with a groan. Life was so cruel.
Thank you to all the brilliant people who reviewed this chapter:
Anna the Vampire Princess, black-sky06, Guest and Ouat-in-vampirediaries.
I'm so happy that you enjoyed it! I'm better at writing funny stories than sad, depressing ones for some reason, not that I'm complaining! I'll keep it up :)
And those 47 people who are either following or have favourite this story! I can't believe it's that popular, and I'm so happy! Seriously. I just gave up half an hour's revision time to dance around the kitchen in happiness. I'm a weird child :/
