A/N: Sorry about the long wait again, guys. I was taking a summer class which just had its final, so hopefully I'll have more writing time now that it's done. Before I start, I'll say my usual thank you for the reviews, follows, favorites, etc. I want to give a particular shout out to Arabella, who always leaves such awesome reviews. Thank you so much! They always totally make my day.

Caroline awoke the next morning to the sound of rain pounding on the roof and Klaus's voice saying, "It's morning and you're still here. You do like to keep me guessing."

Her eyes still stubbornly shut, she said, "There wasn't any one-day deal this time."

"So how long are you staying?"

Good question. "Indefinitely?" she said. She didn't see him, but she knew that Klaus was smiling.

Still half asleep, she tried to gather memories of last night. She remembered the kiss, of course she remembered that. But everything afterwards had been sort of a blur. Every time she cried—really cried like that, she felt unbelievably tired afterwards. Last night had been no exception. She vaguely remembered asking Klaus if they could go home—his home—and he agreed, saying something about how he couldn't believe how careless he was, parading all over town like this with Marcel after her…

She remembered the walk home, and stepping inside again, but once she had stretched out on the bed, everything else faded to black. All black—no dreams.

Memories mixed together as she slipped back in to sleep again, and woke up after another half hour, alone in Klaus's room. It was hard to tell what time it was. Even when the sun did come up, it couldn't be seen through the haze of storm clouds overhead. The rain was still coming down in torrents, creating the kind of soothing sound that made her want to stay sleeping all day.

But part of the reason why she wanted to keep sleeping wasn't just the rain or the warm bed or the exhaustion after yesterday. Part of it was that she didn't know what she was supposed to do today, or how she was supposed to act. Caroline had always been so sure of what she was doing and how she felt. Or at least she had been able to smile and fake her way through it. But she couldn't begin to figure this one out.

At about ten thirty she finally decided that she couldn't hide under the covers all day, and got up.

At least this time she wouldn't have to steal Rebekah's clothes. She wore a dark blue dress that just brushed the carpet underneath her feet, the kind she might have worn to the beach, if there was one. It was her way of saying, "Look, world. I'm not up for more fighting today. Okay?"

Klaus wasn't in the front room when she came out. She heard a few faint noises coming from down the second hallway and followed them to a kitchen. It looked barely used—like every vampire's kitchen, it was a little bit too neat and clean to look normal—but Klaus stood in front of the microwave, lazily watching whatever was in it rotate on its little table.

"You know you're not supposed to do that, stand right in front of the microwave," she said as she came in.

Klaus turned around, a quizzical expression on his face.

"My mom told me when I was little that it gives you brain damage or something," said Caroline. The words sounded so stupid coming out, but she'd been trying to start off avoiding any…difficult topics.

"I think my brain's as damaged as it's going to be," said Klaus. The timer beeped, and he took out a coffee mug full of warm blood.

He set it in front of her on the counter, saying, "I heard you get up. I thought you might be hungry."

"Oh. That's really…sweet of you." She looped a finger around the handle. It was weird. She always imagined Klaus as being waited on, not the other way around. In fact, she didn't think she could ever remember him doing anything for anybody else—not the little things, anyway. Not things that he wouldn't get some kind of reward for. She felt like crying again suddenly and she wasn't completely sure why. She pressed her hand to her forehead. Get a hold of yourself.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked.

The crying feeling passed as quickly as it had arrived. She took a stabilizing sip from the mug, then said, "Yeah. Good. Fine."

He nodded. She took another drink.

God, this felt strange. She didn't know how to talk to him without exchanging jabs, and after last night even that didn't feel right anymore.

Quickly, Caroline said, "So, any more news on the Marcel front?"

Klaus shook his head. "No. He's keeping quiet, more or less. But I still think it's best if you lay low for the time being."

"What about you?"

"I'm considering killing him today," Klaus said calmly.

Caroline thought he was joking for a moment, but then remembered who she was talking to. "What?"

He was already heading out of the kitchen, as if saying it out loud had decided it. "Yesterday was the last straw. He can't be allowed to continue this way. I won't risk you. I'm going to find him and end it."

"Whoa, whoa. Wait," Caroline followed him part of the way, mug still in her hand. "Have you thought about this?"

"I don't need to think, Caroline. I need to act."

That had always been his problem. Kill now and consider later. Well, that wasn't her way. Usually.

"Just stop for a second," she said.

He reluctantly turned around.

"Marcel has this big following around here, right? That's what you said?"

"Yes…"

"Really loyal. He calls them a family. So what do you think they'll do once they find out you've killed Marcel? Just…side with you?"

"I don't need their allegiance," said Klaus.

"Right, but…what do you think they'll do to me, if I'm just sitting around here waiting for you? They'll probably come and find me. They'll want revenge. You of all people should understand…"

She knew Klaus was seeing the flaw in his plan, but he still stubbornly said, "I can protect you."

"No, you can't. Not all the time. And I'd rather not have a 24/7 bodyguard, thanks."

Klaus still stood by the kitchen door, pausing as he tried to think of a way around this.

"I don't mind laying low for a while," she said. It was an understatement. She'd give anything to lay low for a while. "But I have to, then so do you."

He considered this, tapping his fingers agitatedly on the kitchen counter. "Fine," he finally said.

"Good. Okay. We're staying in today," said Caroline. She jerked her head towards the window, which showed the rain coming down harder than ever outside. "Nice day for it."

Klaus gave her a smile that was more like a grimace. He was still trying to decide what to do about Marcel, but he stayed where he was, which meant he hadn't thought of anything.

Caroline felt a little bit glad about his preoccupation. At least it meant maybe she wouldn't have to talk about the kiss last night, that he would just write it off as a one-time, stress-induced mistake, like she was trying to do. But then—

"So, are we going to discuss the other part of last night?" Klaus asked, after a long, drawn-out pause.

Damn it.

"Oh. Um," said Caroline, unable to look him in the eye. "Which part was that?"

Klaus gave her a "don't be stupid" sort of look.

"Right, that," she said. She'd managed to avoid the subject for all of three minutes. "Look, I hope you didn't get the wrong impression…"

She trailed off, hoping that he would interrupt her before she'd have to say "when I kissed you." He didn't, so she just left the thought unfinished.

"Oh? What wrong impression is that?" he asked.

She sighed, rubbed her forehead. He was not going to make this easy. "That…when I…you know, that it meant…"

Klaus didn't seem too disappointed. For the moment, he seemed to have forgotten all about Marcel, and he had a vaguely amused expression as his face as Caroline struggled to explain.

"I know what you're trying to say, love," he said, finally giving her a reprieve. "I just happen to think that my impression is the right one and yours is the one that needs re-examining."

He stepped out of the room then, leaving Caroline as she was about to argue.

XXX

The rain didn't let up all day. The sky outside was dark and drab, and inside wasn't any better. The air was heavy, stifling. Maybe it wasn't such a good day for staying in after all.

It was hours later, somewhere in the afternoon. It had been a tense morning in the apartment. The two of them had been pointedly silent since the morning, especially Caroline. Klaus, meanwhile, had been pacing around the place like a caged tiger, clearly thinking about all the different slow and interesting ways he wasn't killing Marcel at the moment. He would sit across from the window in the front room for a while and start to sketch something, but every time he'd leave the drawing half finished and go off to some other room down the hall. Inevitably, in a few minutes, he would come back again and start the whole thing over.

Caroline was stretched out on the divan in the front room, staring in to space, picking up something to read, realizing she wasn't really seeing the words in front of her, setting it down, and then doing the same thing over again.

Every few minutes or so, when Klaus left the room, Caroline glanced at the sketchpad he let sit open on the floor. He hadn't been drawing her. Just still lifes. The angles of the window frames, the mist rising outside. But the inanimate world couldn't hold his interest long enough.

Slowly, his restlessness became so irritating that Caroline half wished he had gone out to kill somebody after all.

"Would you just stay put?" Caroline finally asked on possibly his eighth attempt at sitting down to draw something. He had just picked up his sketchbook again to start on a rendering of a pile of books in the corner. She set down the book she had been paging through— a paperback copy of A Streetcar Named Desire.

"Why? Am I making you nervous?"

"You're making me crazy, just watching you." Caroline said. She realized how that had sounded a few seconds too late, and wanted to kick herself.

Klaus smiled in a self-satisfied sort of way as he started on the new drawing. "Then stop watching me, Caroline."

Caroline let out an aggravated sigh and hid her face behind A Streetcar Named Desire again.

It was quiet for a few precious minutes while Klaus outlined the tower of books, started shading, and then got bored again and starting tapping his pencil on the chair in a distracted sort of way.

Caroline had thought Klaus might return to pacing, but he spoke up again, eyeing the book cover in front of her face. "Interesting choice. 'Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour—but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands—and who knows what to do with it?'"

"What?"

"Oh, haven't you gotten to that part yet?"

Caroline sat up straight on the divan, setting down her book again with a thwack, and snapped, "Can't you find something to do?"

"Do you have any ideas?" he asked.

She sighed, looked dully around the room for inspiration. The painting hanging on the wall, the one she'd noticed the first time in the apartment, caught her eye.

"I don't know…paint something," she said.

His head slumped back in his chair. "I've tried that."

"And…?"

Klaus flipped the cover on his sketchbook closed. Another drawing half-finished. "It's just not coming to me. Not still lifes, or abstract—of anything…the only subject I can work with lately is you."

He said it with such matter-of-factness that it caught her by surprise. Caroline was only recently starting to recognize those rare times when Klaus said something without any agenda or manipulation. But this was one of them, and she couldn't help but be reminded of the things he'd told her last night, because he had said them in the exact same tone of voice that he used now. And in spite of herself, she felt some of her irritation with him melt away. She wished he hadn't said that. It was easier to be annoyed with him.

The tense, heavy air that had been driving her crazy all morning now suddenly seemed even more strained, if that was possible.

"Well, why don't you…" she said, after a pause, "Why don't you paint me?"

Klaus, who had been staring out the window, turned his head. Caroline took a strange kind of pleasure in seeing him so taken aback. "Well I don't—" he began, but then stopped again. "Paint you?"

He sounded so serious that Caroline felt like she had to laugh, play it off lightly. "Yeah. I mean, if there's nothing else to do. It could be fun. Being a model."

Klaus set his sketchbook down on the floor—didn't throw it, like had the other times. He looked at her with his head tilted to the side, considering. Caroline could see something taking shape in his mind. But he seemed like he was waiting for a catch, like he was being handed something very fragile that he expected to break or blow away if he moved too quickly. "All right," he said finally.

"Where do you want to—" Caroline began tentatively.

"Here," said Klaus. "I like the light in here." He stood up, holding out a hand as if he were asking her to stay. "I'll be right back."

She stayed put, sitting up straighter than normal, already wondering what she had gotten herself in to. When he came back a minute later, his arms were full of oil paints in different bottles, as many as he could carry.

They both busy for a few minutes—minutes that were quiet except for the rain and their footsteps going back and forth from what Caroline realized, when he led her there, was a small art studio, still only half unpacked, further down the hallway. (How many rooms did this place have, anyway?)

Once everything they could think of was in the front room, they began moving the furniture back against the walls, leaving the middle empty. The polished wood floor, now bare, made everything they said echo against the ceiling.

When they were finally finished, Caroline stood, self-conscious, in the center of the room, feeling once again that uncertainty she'd been worried about this morning. This was definitely new territory, and she had no idea what to say or do, or whether she should just tell him to forget the whole thing.

Klaus was setting up the canvas, facing away from the windows. He seemed completely absorbed in what he was doing, which Caroline guessed was the point.

"So…" she said, in a voice that sounded like it was trying too hard to be careless, "now what?"

"I don't know…" said Klaus absently. He was turning the lights in the chandeliers overhead on and off, trying to decide which way looked better.

"I mean, how do you want me? I mean—" God. Maybe it would be easier if she just didn't speak.

Klaus smiled to himself as he went to open the curtains which weren't already. He had decided to leave the chandeliers unlit. "Just stay there for a moment, while I adjust the light."

When he was done, the room was flooded in weak grayish sunlight filtered through streams of rain. Klaus stepped back to take in the scene—take in her. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, blonde hair barely brushing her shoulders, eyes wide, unsure of what to do next.

Klaus stood with his arms folded, very still suddenly. He was giving her a look that she couldn't read. Sort of thoughtful, almost wistful. "Sometimes I forget how young you really are," he said, quietly enough that she wasn't sure whether she was supposed to have heard.

"What?"

He stepped a little closer. "You look like you're giving a speech to the class."

"Well, you're the artist, what do you want me to do?"

He considered for a moment, and then brought the divan back out in to the middle of the room, along with one of the small side tables. "Sit," he said.

She did, though it still felt a little strange letting Klaus tell her what to do—even tiny things like this. Her first instinct was still to contradict him at every turn. She told herself to let it go.

Klaus directed her in to a number of different positions before he picked one. Some sitting up, some lying down, some with her hands in her hair, some with them at her sides. She felt like a clay figurine, letting Klaus turn her head, guide her hands steadily with his own. After a while, she found that she didn't really care. There was something wonderfully mindless about it.

Caroline didn't know how long it had been going on—she'd stopped looking at the clock behind her some time ago—but they finally settled on a pose. He had her sitting on the divan, her legs curled underneath her, hidden by the ends of her dress. She was turned towards the window, gazing out in to the dark, misty air, one hand cupping her face.

"It's been a long time since I've done a portrait," he said thoughtfully. He was sketching her outline on the canvas in light pencil. "I mean, one that wasn't from memory."

Caroline wasn't sure how much she was supposed to move. She gave a slight nod to show she was listening.

"I used to be commissioned to do them all the time. Mostly Dukes and Lords, wanting to make their daughters seem more beautiful than they were. I did it more to pass the time than for anything else. I remember, while I was working, I used to ask them to tell me their life story."

"Really? Why?"

He paused, added a few more lines. "To make them sit still, I suppose. I wasn't going to tell them my life story," he said.

Another silence, filled in only by the rain on the roof and the scratching of the pencil on canvas. It was sort of nice.

"You pretty much already know mine," said Caroline. "Small town cheerleader, then vampire. Blah blah blah."

"I don't think you're giving yourself quite enough credit there," said Klaus.

"Oh, right, I forgot. Mass murderer." She'd meant it lightly, as a joke, but saying the words out loud she wondered how anybody, including herself, could think that was funny. She felt the need to apologize, not to him, and not to herself, but…to somebody. "I'm sorry. God, I don't know what's wrong with me."

Klaus didn't answer at first, and Caroline thought he wasn't going to. She wasn't looking at him, so there was only the sound of the pencil moving again.

It wasn't until he put it down that he finally said something. "You know, Caroline, if it's guilt you're after, I'm not exactly the person to talk to."

"No, no," she said quickly, though she didn't know what she felt or what she wanted, if it wasn't to feel guilty. She deserved to feel guilty. "That wasn't it. That's not it."

He was quiet again for what felt like a long time. He had finished sketching, and started laying down a base coat of colors. Caroline wished she could see what he was doing, but all she had was the back of the canvas.

She was watching him work, watching him as he applied paint with an ease that only experts can achieve. It was so strange to think that he—with the same hands, the same mind—could twist someone's head off, drive a stake through someone's heart, without a second thought. And those were the same hands that had gently guided her through town, held her as she cried. It made no sense. He made no sense.

But then again, she could say the same about herself. The same person who had ripped out hearts and cut off heads was also the person who hugged her mother the next day and stood like she was 'giving a speech to the class.' Maybe she didn't make any sense, either.

She had time to think about this, too much time, as Klaus was silently working. She lost track of the minutes or maybe hours going by, wondering how long it had been raining now. Forever, it felt like.

After a while, Klaus set down the brush he had been holding and stepped toward her again. "You've moved a little," he said as he knelt down beside her, guiding her arm back to where it had been in the first place. She sat up straighter, realizing she had started to slouch. A piece of hair fell over her face and Klaus brushed it away.

He had been about to step back, return to the painting. But he seemed held there, and Caroline didn't move.

"I expect you're tired of hearing it," he said softly, "but you are unbelievably beautiful."

She turned her face from the window, about to say something. What she wanted to tell him not to say things like that, because it only made everything harder. But it was difficult to talk suddenly. Klaus had been adjusting her other arm, but once it was back in place he didn't move his hand away. He seemed almost unaware that he was tracing patterns on her wrist.

"Why would you let me do this, Caroline?" he asked.

"I…I don't know." She really didn't. It seemed like the strangest idea in the world now. Maybe she hadn't realized it would feel this…intimate. Or maybe she had realized it, and she just didn't care. His light touch felt electric on her skin. "I don't really know what I'm doing lately," she said. She came out of her pose completely, turning away from the dark sky outside.

Klaus didn't say anything. He had forgotten, at least for the moment, what he was doing, too. He was looking at her in a way she hadn't seen before, and she didn't know what it meant. He traced the outline of her jaw, let a hand run through her hair.

"Shouldn't I…get back in place?" said Caroline. He was very close—so close that whispering felt like the only way to speak. She wasn't sure if her voice would allow for anything else, anyway.

"In a minute…" Klaus murmured. His eyes flickered to her lips. There was a moment—more than a moment, when Caroline could have pulled away, or said something to make him stop. As little as he understood humanity, he knew enough to give her that chance. But she didn't take it.

His kiss was soft, at first, as it had been last night. But once he realized she wasn't going to pull away, it became urgent, insistent. He kissed her as if he might never get the chance again—as if she might leave, change her mind, at any second. Caroline understood that, but she didn't think she was going to change her mind. She didn't feel like she had any mind left to change.

She was filled up with a sensation that she only had distant memories of. Memories of when she had been young, and human. It was the sort of feeling that you lost when you became a vampire—too hard, too strong, too fearless. She was remembering summer days when she and her friends would beg their parents to take them to an amusement park. It was the feeling that she got at the highest part of the roller coaster, as it waited for a few agonizing seconds before plummeting. It was part terror, part joy—all exhilaration.

True, she didn't technically need to breathe, but she still felt the need to catch her breath when he finally drew back, their foreheads still together. Her hands were clutching the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

"What about…the painting?" Caroline gasped.

"Oh, who cares?" he replied, as their lips crashed together again.

She pulled him up on to the divan with her, finding that she agreed with him, for once.

There was something she almost admired about Klaus, though on a normal day she would never have admitted it. It was that he was always so sure of what he wanted. He wanted power. He wanted family. He wanted her. Right or wrong—wrong more often than not—he always knew.

If Caroline had asked herself a day ago, or even an hour ago, about the two of them, she would have said that she'd never been less sure of anything in her life. When she was human, the right thing to do had always seemed so clear. Maybe Klaus was right, and losing that was part of being what she was. But in this moment, with Klaus pulling aside the strap of her dress to trail kisses down her neck, morality seemed like a side note. She'd passed the point of no return now, and she'd have to see this—whatever it was—through to the end.