Author's Note: So this is all Caroline, just wanted to get this scene down. Next chapter will be a time jump, just giving fair warning, because things need to move along. Also, the last bits are a little...mushy perhaps, so I apologize if it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the plot.
Thanks are in order to my new reviewers! I love all my readers, but you guys are the best- especially because you help me write better, and give me good ideas! Also, because of one of you, I decided to clear up what happened to Bonnie. It's a little ambiguous, but you'll get the point.
Anyways, best to you all and enjoy!
Caroline dragged a finger slowly around the rim of her empty glass as she half-heartedly listened to Klaus ripping Evan a new one for not watching Kyle closely. She tried to tune into another conversation, anything besides this, really, but there were so many people and so much noise that even her vampire hearing didn't let her hear much. At the table to her left, a couple was kissing in the shadows, and to her right, a couple of drunk guys were saying disgusting things about the women at the table next to them.
She was concentrating so hard on hearing something interesting or useful that she almost didn't notice Klaus stand up, stalking off towards the exit without saying a word. Well that was it, then, was it? Clearly Klaus was done here, which meant she should be too.
Sighing, she patted Evan's arm and stood, straightening her sweater and buttoning up her trench coat before making her way through the crowds to where Dean was drinking beer at the bar.
"Come on, Winchester. We're leaving. This was a bust." Caroline braced her left side against the bar in a lazy position while talking at Dean.
He had been facing the other way, talking to the tall man Klaus had been yelling at earlier, but turned at her voice. "Yeah, it was a bust for me too."
Caroline poked a droplet of water on the counter with her finger. "How do you mean?"
"Well, dead man's blood doesn't work on hybrids. I spiked Jason's drink-nothing."
Caroline's head snapped up as she processed what he was saying. "You spiked his drink?"
Dean shrugged nonchalantly. "Yeah. Didn't work."
"Dean Winchester. How could you do something like that?" Caroline's curls bounced as she shook her head and stood straighter, taking a step back from him in disgust.
"What?" Dean looked at her skeptically. "It didn't work. No harm done here."
"You don't get it do you?" Caroline laughed, a laugh that was more an expression on anger and frustration than anything else. "Do you even care about anyone besides yourself? Are you doing what you do because it's what you learned, and not because it's what is right?"
"Well, yeah. It's pretty black and white. Something is supernatural, you generally kill it. That's how it works." Dean shrugged, and Caroline was so angry with his reaction that she couldn't speak for a few moments.
"You do realize they are human in some way, right? Lots of the things you've probably hunted have been human at some point. They have feelings, Dean. They didn't choose to be this way. You can't just so blindly treat them like evil lab rats." She had to stop for a moment to prevent her voice from getting too loud. "And I swear, if Klaus finds that you've hurt any of his hybrids, he will not hesitate to kill you. He cares for his hybrids in a strange way, Dean, and that is the real reason why you're here."
As soon as Caroline said that, she wanted to take it back. She could see it hurt him. Klaus had said that before and she had disagreed, and now saying herself hurt Dean too much. But the sad expression rolled off his face in moments.
"King Asshole-doesn't-like-to-get-his-hands-dirty would kill me? I don't think so." Dean snorted. And although his expression was one of mockery, Caroline could still see the hurt in his eyes.
"Dean, I would be careful if I was you. There is a lot about Klaus that you don't know, and you should keep it that way. You should also try to stay alive." She ground her teeth together, angry at Dean but still managing to pity him at the same time.
They stared at each other for a few minutes, Caroline's eyes searching every bit of him to see what he was thinking, Dean only blankly staring back. Finally, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to standing. "Come on. We're done here. Let's go, Winchester."
Caroline half-dragged Dean out into the parking lot, where Klaus was angrily pacing around the Impala, making wide circles. His head snapped up as soon as Caroline stepped one black-boot clad foot into the gravel of the lot, the expression on his face one Caroline hadn't seen since he had first arrived in Mystic Falls.
Caroline braced herself for harsh words from Klaus, but he said nothing, only sliding into the back seat when Dean opened the car.
The ride was tense. Caroline could practically feel the solid anger rolling of Klaus, and the equally solid hurt from Dean. She may have not been good at hiding her own emotions, but as bad as she was at hiding things, she was twice as good at picking up on things.
Uncharacteristically, Dean slammed the door to the Impala, something Caroline knew he didn't do often because of how much he loved his car.
Klaus, on the other hand, walked slowly to the front door, hands behind his back, almost invisible in the darkness of midnight.
It was Elijah who answered the door, with his usual high and mighty expression. "Evening, brother. You do not look as though your trip was successful."
Dean shoved past Elijah, and stomped up the stairs to the room he was staying in, leaving Klaus and Caroline in to entry way with the perhaps most moral of vampires. When Klaus didn't answer, Caroline gave Elijah a glance that told him everything.
"I see. Try again another time, perhaps?"
Before Elijah had even finished, Klaus had closed the door and spun and pushed his brother against it. "There is no next time, brother. If Kyle goes on a killing spree, that is the end of my hybrids." He released Elijah, who had made no move to free himself, before turning to Caroline. "And that will be the end of little hunter as well." With that, Klaus was gone, vamped away into his luxurious bedroom, no doubt.
"Goodnight, Elijah." Was all Caroline said, before wiping her boots on the entry mat and slowly making her way upstairs as well. She had no energy left to vamp anywhere, much less hold a conversation with the distinguished Original.
Caroline, in this moment, could best be described as frustrated. She was frustrated with Klaus for caring so much about his hybrids as hybrids rather than as friends or people, something that she was slowly sympathizing with Rebekah for. She was frustrated with herself, for allowing those two people and the crazy woman to die the week before. She was frustrated with her efforts, for not being able to find any mention of the angels. She was maybe most frustrated with Dean, who she thought would understand her supernatural secret.
But no. To him, everything was black and white. Should he learn her secret, he would try to kill her. And she couldn't let that happen. She couldn't put herself and her friends in danger. So she'd have to kill him or wait for the vervain to leave his system and compel him, two options she didn't want to resort to. She had thought, that maybe, this once, there was someone who would understand her.
And the way Dean saw supernatural beings. He saw them as garbage that needed to be taken out. A puzzle that needed to be solved, a game that needed to be finished. To him, they were no longer human. And his complete lack of sympathy for the plight of supernatural creatures made her incredibly angry.
Caroline stopped at the mirror in her room of Klaus' mansion. Believing she would be here awhile, she had brought pictures, so many that they created a border around the mirror frame.
And she still looked the same. Tired of her lifestyle. Tired of what she went through. Tired of being a vampire. She had come to New Orleans to try and change things up, but instead, she felt even more tired.
Sighing, she flopped onto the bed, resting on her back a moment before sitting up to unzip her boots. She stood and placed them in the closet, hanging up her sweater, jeans, and pea coat as well. She walked over to the vanity, dropping her extra rings and jewelry into an ornate box, stroking the lid as she did so.
After brushing her teeth and putting on her favorite ivory satin night gown, she pulled her diary from beneath the pillow and flipped to the next clean page. None of her friends knew that she kept this diary. But while Stefan and Elena had eventually ceased to write their pains in pages, she had continued. She wanted to remember every day, and every feeling she felt. In one hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred years she wanted to look through her old journals and read the entries like they were yesterday. She wanted to look at her old entries and feel exactly what she felt on the day that she wrote them. And so she wrote.
A knock on the door concluded her entry, and she signed it with a flourish. Glancing at the clock, she wondered who was trying to talk to her at one in the morning.
"Caroline?" The whisper was soft, low, and gentle, but Caroline immediately recognized the voice. Dean. She closed her journal and put it on the nightstand before turning off the only light in the room, a bedside lamp, and drawing the covers up to her chin.
"Come on, Forbes. I know you're awake. You just turned the light off." Dean rattled the door, to him probably not loudly, but Caroline knew all the vampires could hear him. She ignored him, rolling onto her left side and facing away from the door.
"Please, Caroline. I just want to say I'm sorry." Dean stopped rattling the door and whispered softly again.
Caroline twisted her daylight ring, eyes staring at nothing in the dark. She was stubborn, yes, but she didn't want things with Dean to end badly. She owed him an apology too.
Groaning inaudibly, she swung herself out of bed, pulling a navy plush robe over her indecently short nightgown. Unfortunately, her robe wasn't much longer, but at least it was warm.
"Well?" Caroline opened the door a fraction, only enough for her body to be visible, but not enough so that Dean could shove past her. It took him a moment to respond, as his eyes were busy admiring what cleavage he could see, and her long, long, bare legs.
"Uh, can I come in?" Caroline didn't blame him for looking, because she was staring too. Although he was wearing jeans and she had seen him briefly shirtless, he should have been arrested for indecent exposure.
He was wearing nothing more than an undershirt on top, and it was completely useless, as it clung like a second skin to his torso, making every sinew and line of his chest visible. It was also short, so she could see a bit of his tight abs and the hints of his sex lines before they disappeared into his boxers and very, very, low slung jeans.
She had to shake her head and remind herself that she was mad at him before speaking. "No." She started to close the door, but Dean stopped her. "Please, Care."
That gave her pause. He had never called her that before. Always 'Princess' and 'Forbes'. Although her friends had called her by that nickname before, with Dean it felt different, intimate somehow.
"Fine." She opened the door wider and let him in, before gently shutting it behind him.
"So." Dean looked uncomfortable, pacing around the room, glancing at the ceiling and sticking his hands into his pockets, an action that only made his sex lines more visible. Caroline had to remind herself to keep her eyes at his face.
Neither of them said a word for a moment, Caroline standing awkwardly by the door while Dean continued to look around the room. He stopped in front of the mirror, leaning forwards to look closer at a photo.
"Who's that?" Dean pointed to a person in a group photo, and Caroline had to get closer to see who it was.
"Matt Donovan."
"Where is he? Seems like he was part of your group of friends. Shouldn't he be around?" Dean stuck his hand back into his pocket, and Caroline couldn't help but admire his backside in the very low jeans.
"He was." Caroline remembered that group photo. Taken on graduation. "He moved on. Went to college, got a job, got a life." She shrugged. She missed Matt, but he was better where ever he was, away from his friends who were no longer human.
"What about her?" Caroline sucked in a deep breath at the dark-skinned and dark-haired girl her was pointing at, but she answered him anyways. "That's Bonnie. Bonnie Bennett. She was a good friend," Caroline paused. "But we don't talk about her anymore." Dean turned around at her tone of voice, and even though it was almost dark except for the light glow of the electric fireplace, and he was several feet away, his face showed sympathy that Caroline didn't want. Because she didn't want to talk about Bonnie. How expression had changed her. How when she had started expression, she hadn't been Bonnie anymore. How she had to die, or so many other people would have.
"You have a boyfriend?" Dean was back to looking at her photos, and she knew who it was without looking. She knew that picture by heart, she had traced it many times. She and Tyler, just their faces, Tyler smiling his beautiful smile and she making a crazy face.
"Look, I thought you wanted to say sorry? Why do you ask so many questions?" Caroline folded her arms, and Dean turned around looking sheepish. But she went on anyways. "You can't do this, Dean. You have to face your problems. And you can't distract me. My old friends and dead boyfriend aren't going to cut it."
Her voice had risen, higher than she would have liked at this hour in a house of vampires, and what made it worse was his silence. A silence that stretched on and on before he finally spoke.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. He died two years ago." Caroline's voice was harsher than she intended.
"No," Dean let out a nervous sound. "I mean, I am sorry about him, but I'm sorry for acting the way I did. You were right. Everything is black and white to me, and I don't treat these people like real people. I treat them like chores that have to be done. And I'm sorry that I do that. But I can't allow myself to care. Caring is not an advantage. And alone is what I have. Alone protects me."
Caroline watched him for a moment, noting the sincerity in his voice. He was genuinely sorry, and so was she. "I'm sorry too, Dean. You aren't useless, or worthless, and you aren't just here for Klaus. You're here for me, too. Because I believe in you. And I believe you are a good person, and you do good things. And you don't have to be alone, because," She sat down on the bed, throwing her hands up into the air. "Because I want to be there for you. I want you to trust me, and I want to trust you."
Dean moved around the bed and came to sit next to her on the edge, the two of them staring silently at the electric fireplace. "Do you trust me, Caroline?"
"Yes." She said, not looking at him, because she did. She knew it when she saved him in the parking lot that day.
"Then tell me what really happened when you found me last week." His tone of voice had completely changed, hardened into something fierce. When she finally brought herself to meet his eyes, she could see the same hardness there.
"And no bullshit about being beat up. The bartender told me that I was with Rebekah. An event I strangely don't remember." Caroline froze up, and he saw it, and she knew he did. She had to take deep breaths, figure out a way to work Rebekah into the story.
As nonchalantly as she could, she shrugged. "I only found you into the parking lot being beat up. You might have seen Rebekah beforehand, inside. In fact, it's altogether likely, because we were going to the club to meet up with her in the first place."
"You're lying." Dean's gaze on her didn't break, his eyes unflinching. She looked at him, trying to erase the guilt from her expression, but to no avail. Which was why she was so surprised when his intensity lessened.
He looked to the fireplace, and then back at her. "But that's okay. I know you're hiding something, but I'm going to trust you, Caroline. I want you to know you can trust me, so I'm going to trust that in time you'll tell me the truth. It's a two way street remember?" He grinned, the first real grin of his she had seen in a while.
She grinned back, an equally real grin, before echoing his movements and gazing at the electric flames. When she finally looked back at him, he seemed much closer. What she said only came out in a breath. "One day, I will trust you with the truth, Dean Winchester. Today is just not that day."
"I know." Dean was so close now that she could smell his aftershave, that she could almost taste his breath. And simultaneously the two of them bridged the small divide between them, lips melting together, slow and gentle and sweet. But the kiss meant nothing. What meant so much more to Caroline were his words. Perhaps hope was not lost. Perhaps she could make him see that supernatural creatures were not all bad. And a million other thoughts of Dean flew through her mind in that briefest of kisses, that briefest of melding of two people's flesh that was really the beginning of the melding of two kindred souls.
When they pulled away, it was in unison, neither wanting to take the passion further, to push what would naturally come in time. And so Caroline made herself content with staring at his lovely face, with his beautiful ocean eyes, before standing up. "Goodnight, Dean." Her words were no more than a breath.
"Goodnight, Princess." Dean said as he gently eased open the door and hauled his fine ass out into the hallway with a beautiful smile and a snarky eyebrow. And somehow those words were the most beautiful and perfect words he could have ever said to Caroline.
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