This chapter sucked. And I hit a major wall. And I didn't know where to go for a while there. And I think you guys have too high of expectations for this. And I feel like I've failed you. And I'm sorry it's been over an entire month since I updated. And I feel terrible.
And if you're still here, reading this, you're absolutely amazing. And I love you.
"Figure anything out yet, Ken?" Caroline asked. She was lying down on the floor, staring at the red infinity of the ceiling. Nearly two hours had passed, and if he'd discovered anything, he hadn't announced it.
"Is everything still red?" he asked, giving her her answer.
Caroline groaned and stretched her arm over her eyes, blinding everything to her. "Get it done, for God's sake," she coached.
Klaus looked over at her from his computer. "I'm sorry," he started to say, "who was it that was claiming they came here for a reason and that they didn't want to go home?" he questioned.
Caroline flew her arm back down to her side in frustration. "That was before I got bored!"
Klaus chuckled in disbelief. "Your ability to hold your ground is impressive, love," he said sarcastically while turning back to click on buttons.
"Yeah, well so is your ass," she retorted. She then immediately slapped her hands over her eyes as Klaus smirked over his bare shoulder at her. "Dammit!" she yelled at herself.
Klaus smiled to himself. "I love the truth…" he commented to himself.
"Don't talk to me," Caroline instructed.
"Then I suggest you stop starting conversations with me," he countered back at her. Before Caroline had the chance to snap a sassy comment back at him, he changed topics. "You know, darling, if you were to come assist me, this might not take as long."
Caroline snorted. "Yeah right. Like I'm going anywhere near you looking like that," she dissed.
"No one said you had to look at me, love."
She frowned. "There's no way in hell I could just 'not look at you.' Your abs are like a cheese grater," she said with her last ounce of breath. But then as she inhaled, she moaned at her slip of opinion yet again.
Klaus looked down at his abs, trying to piece together how she made that connection. But Caroline just assumed he was smirking at her. "Don't talk to me!" she yelled again.
.
Jade knocked on the door of the enormous house in front of him. He'd knocked four times and was now waiting patiently behind the closed wooden door, with a blonde at his side.
A second later, the door opened to reveal Stefan standing with his 'acting casual' face on. Jade raised an eyebrow and lifted his hand, showing off the bottle he'd been carrying. "We brought champagne," he announced.
Stefan's eyes flickered to the girl beside Jade, and he frowned. That was Caroline. She had no expression on her face, and her eyes were guarded by a dark pair of sunglasses. What was she doing with him? Jade followed Stefan's now brooding look and nodded when he realized it was Caroline they were staring at. "Oh, yeah, don't mind her. She's with me." He moved to step into the house, side stepping Stefan. "Hope that's not a problem…"
Caroline followed Jade into the house obediently. Jade whistled as he looked around. "Nice pad," he complimented as Stefan closed the door, keeping an eye on the two new guests. Jade gave him a cute, overly excited smile. "It's so big and fancy," he said in a quiet, almost gay sounding voice.
Then he turned from Stefan and continued into the living room. "So where's the heart of the party?" he asked as he set down the bottle in his hands and looked around.
Stefan carefully walked closer. "They'll be here soon," he reassured. A complete lie. The rest of the 'party' was hiding in scattered places, ready to attack.
"Am I to take 'soon' as they're already here?" Jade questioned.
Stefan merely tilted his head, acting dumb. Jade chuckled. "Of course. Elijah had to mix actors into the group…" Then his eyes fell on the accessories and antiques placed around the room. "Ah! This is very impressive." He approached a sword hanging on the wall. "This is dated clear back to the 1800s…" He turned to Stefan. "Any particular reason you have it?"
"I killed my uncle with that sword," Stefan answered with a straight, emotionless face.
Jade dropped the corners of his lips in amusement. "I'm going to just guess you're the other Salvatore," he said while folding his hands in front of him like this was an exciting meeting. "So where's Damon?"
Stefan held his strong, undividing expression. "Who?"
Jade tilted his head in disappointment at Stefan. "Come on, kid. Let's not play games." He inhaled sharply and walked towards Caroline, who was standing still next to the couch. He put his arm around her waist as he frowned in thought. "Let me guess...Damon's also here, and everyone is having a very secret meeting about last minute detail to the plan of killing me," he summed up.
Stefan shook his head a bit in "confusion."
But before Jade could complete his 'you're so pathetic' look, an arrow came flying out of nowhere and flew straight at him. He was able to sidestep it before it made contact with his shoulder. He frowned in offence and looked in the direction it came from. Damon slowly emerged from the shadows with a frown on his face. "You know, you really shouldn't act so sure of yourself all the time," Damon said with a crossbow in his arms. "Because most of the time - you're wrong."
Jade sighed with a "happy" smile as he saw Damon. "Fabulous. It's a family reunion."
Stefan frowned. "What?"
But Damon was too busy making an annoyed-beyond-belief face and shooting another stake at Jade without even aiming. But this one did hit him. Straight through his hand. "Would you drop that?" he kinda whined. He turned to Stefan in a 'Get a load of this guy' way. "This moron claims he's our father from way down the family tree."
Stefan frowned at Jade. "How?"
Jade smiled as he pulled the stake painfully from his palm, trying to muffle his groan behind his shining teeth. "Well, you see, kid, a long time ago-"
"No." Damon stopped him. "We're not going through that again."
Jade frowned in disappointment. "But it's such a good story!"
"Yeah right!" came a voice from somewhere above them. Damon rolled his eyes while both Stefan and Jade looked up to see Kol leaning over the upstairs railing. "That story was boring when it was going on, and there's no way in hell it's going to be entertaining now," he called, resting his chest on the bar and leaning over as far as possible without falling.
Jade rolled his eyes. "You're just jealous," he waved off the Original.
But the conversation was soon cut short when Damon realized who else was in the room and became incredibly defensive in less than a second. "Caroline!? What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, holding up the crossbow.
Everyone else jumped to attention. Jade didn't want them to kill his minion, Kol was starting to remember the familiar patterns of the past, and Stefan just wanted to know what was going on.
Kol groaned in regret and frustration. "Come on, Hark. Really?" he whined.
Jade inhaled audibly. "Sorry, buddy. I had to," he said as if it was a bad thing to him too.
Kol grumbled to himself a bit before standing up straight and throwing himself over the ledge, landing like a cat next to Damon. He brought his hand up and started moving the crossbow down. "You can't shoot him," he said with annoyance.
Damon frowned and tried to fight Kol. "What are you talking about? We're just going defenseless to this guy now?"
"We have to. He's got Caroline."
"Yes," Stefan agreed, "we can see that. So why can't we fix it?"
Kol sighed. "Because Caroline isn't here!" he exclaimed, walking over to Caroline's body and taking the sunglasses off her face, revealing the pure white orbs that took the place of her usual blue eyes. "He took her soul. And we can't get it back if we kill him."
Jade nodded like it was all just the tragic truth. "He's right, men," he sighed. "You can't kill me for a number of reasons. That being one."
"What happened to Caroline?" Stefan asked, stepping forward as if they would listen to him if he was closer.
"And what other reasons wouldn't we kill you?" Kol asked with his head cocked and his hands in his pockets.
Jade folded his hands in front of him. "Well, for one, do you have a dagger? And you're all vampires so someone would have to go down with me. And two, you kill me, others will die with me because of a certain 'tie' I did a few days ago. Oh! And three, you guys just aren't good enough to touch this," he said with a 'tough luck' look on his face.
"What tie?" Damon questioned.
Jade nodded at his great grandson. "Let me explain. I have the ability to connect my life with whomever I choose. I die, they die. They die, and I'm just fine." He looked back to Kol with a very serious look on his face. "So you risk killing anyone on this earth by killing me."
"A chance I'm willing to take," he retorted.
"What if the beings involves your dear Rebekah, as well?" he tried.
"She's an Original; you can't hurt her."
"I've done it before," Jade said with a smirk.
Kol took his hands out of his pockets and squared his shoulders. "Keep talking, I dare you."
Rebekah walked into the room, not being able to stop herself. "Kol, don't!" she warned.
Jade looked towards her, not being able to stop himself. He hadn't seen her for nearly a thousand years. And the last time he had, she'd told him she loved him. He'd been waiting to see her again, to return the sentence he never had the chance to say.
But he didn't have the chance to say it then, either, because Damon shot the crossbow, sending a stake flying straight into Jade's chest.
"Damon!" Rebekah exclaimed as she watched Jade slowly drop to the floor.
Kol turned and glared at the guilty. "Are you insane?" he sneered. "You just killed him!"
Damon threw the crossbow to the side. "He can only be killed with the dagger. He's just temporarily dead right now. What's the big deal?"
Kol took a step closer, almost growling. "If you're staked, you die. If his life was tied to yours, what happens to him happens to you. You'd be dead. You just killed God only knows how many people!"
Damon shrugged. "We're still standing, so I don't see any real damage."
"As of right now. Give it twenty minutes. We'll see if we're all standing by that time."
.
"Read me the digits," Klaus instructed Caroline. He still sat at the computer, but now with Caroline sitting next to it, finally giving in and coming over to help.
She sighed and looked at the screen of her phone. "Two-five-three-U-I-six-nine…" she trailed off, holding onto the last sound. She couldn't lie (obviously), the numbers had instantly translated in her head to what she'd grown up joking about with her friends. 69. Her eyes slowly wandered over to Klaus' arms that flexed as he punched in the code. Something didn't go right, and Klaus huffed his annoyance and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his face with his hands. That opened up his chest for Caroline to gawk at for a quick second.
Well, she'd intended for it to be a quick second, but she slightly became transfixed as she tried to imagine how hard his abs were. Klaus dropped his hands and narrowed his eyes at the computer, thinking. "Any suggestions?" he asked, looking for her ideas. He gave her nearly six seconds before he noted her unusual quietness. He looked up at her and smirked. "My eyes are up here, sweetheart," he boasted.
Caroline snapped herself out her fantasies and glared at him. "It's not my fault you're not wea–"
Klaus nodded once. "Yes it is. You're the one that felt it necessary to shrink it."
"I was getting back at you for being a prick!"
"And you clearly hadn't thought your plan out well," he said smugly and stood up from his chair. He went to turn the monitor of the computer, and managed to graze Caroline's shoulder with his bicep in the process.
Caroline felt the tingling in her skin and leaned away, not liking her immediate reaction to being touched by him. She knew he was enjoying himself, so she changed the topic. "How do you know this much about techy crap, anyway?" she asked.
Klaus worked on taking off the cover on the back of the computer as he answered her, "There are a lot of things you don't know about me."
"Like what?" she asked back.
He turned to give her a smirk. "Figure that out for yourself."
Caroline sighed at him, allowing the air to puff up her lips before exiting her mouth. "Fine," she finished with the last bit of breath she had left. "You know all this crap because…I don't know…you went to school for it?" she tried. Then it hit her that she had finished the sentence. "Why?" she demanded. That was honestly the craziest thing she'd heard.
Klaus finally got the back off and tossed it aside, looking over the new puzzle uncovered. "So that I could save our lives in situations like this," he answered. His tongue pressed down on his tucked in bottom lip as he carefully studied everything.
Caroline's gaze instantly went to his mouth, being sucked into a trance again. But she did have a clear enough head to respond to him. "You don't know if that's the problem."
"No," Klaus agreed, turning to look at her. "But you do."
Caroline knew what he was doing. He was hoping to trick him into revealing if he was just wasting his time or not. She smirked. "Now, why would I tell you so?"
"Because it effects how long you're trapped here with me," he pointed out.
Caroline drew her lips into a straight line as she grew annoyed with his smartass responses. "No, Klaus, that's not the problem. You've been doing all of that for no reason," she informed him smugly.
Klaus sighed, having feared that was what she was going to say. He stood up straight and tossed down a wire he'd taken off of the back. "Well at least we know that plan failed," he said, forcing himself not to become angry. He turned and walked away from the problem, trying to clear his head.
Caroline hopped down from the desk as well. She looked over all the wires and switches Klaus had taken apart in hopes of figuring it all out. That was crazy. How would these fake computers help him at all? They were made to destroy things, not fix them. In fact, that entire world had been made as a hellhole for people to screw things up in. If Klaus hadn't showed up, she probably would have already destroyed the world.
That had been the plan to Jade – allow Caroline to mess things up on her own. But he hadn't known Klaus would be there to stop her. Klaus wasn't supposed to be there. Maybe that had something to do with it all.
"Hey," Caroline said aloud, getting Klaus' attention. "What if it's something we have to do?"
Klaus' hand had been rubbing the back of his head, but now it rested still as he raised his eyebrows at her. "Well I wasn't expecting on just suddenly being snapped back to earth by doing nothing," he said obviously.
"You're such an ass," she said before she could stop the insult from slipping out. She quickly covered her words by continuing over his slightly angered face. "I mean…You weren't supposed to show up here with me."
Klaus dropped his hand, waiting for the rest of her theory.
"I was supposed to be here alone as I suffered. So you being here was against Jade's plan for some reason. He doesn't want you here or he'd have put you here in the first place. This place was designed to be hell," she explained.
Klaus took a step towards her. "What are you implying?" he asked in a low voice.
Caroline's breath stopped as she saw how he was slowly swaying towards her. He knew where he thoughts were heading, and she immediately regretted bringing it up. "Never mind. I changed my mi–"
Klaus smirked as he came within five feet of her. "You were going to suggest that to prove Jade wrong, we should enjoy one another," he drawled out, continuing to lean in.
Caroline took a step to the side. "Yes, and then I realized how ridiculous it was."
She made to take another step away, but Klaus reached out and took her arm. "No, no. That actually might work." He stopped moving towards her, finally, but his hand did remain around her wrist. "We need to turn this place into heaven."
Caroline narrowed her eyes at his cheesiness. "Easier said than done," she sneered at him.
Klaus slowly smiled at her. "Funner done than said."
Caroline's stomach jumped at that, but she quickly forced a disgusted look onto her face. "You're old."
"But still your pulse picks up."
"My pulse didn't– Never mind. Just leave me alone," she said.
She turned and tried to pull away from him, but he just yanked her hand back, forcing her to spin around into his chest. "Not a chance," he murmured down to her, feeling her hand on his chest as she braced herself against the compact. "That's our ticket out of here."
Caroline narrowed her eyes up at him. "You don't know that."
"No," Klaus agreed. He brought a hand up slowly. He ran his fingers down the side of her face. "But you do," he said tenderly.
Caroline looked down at their touching chests. She closed her eyes as she tried to concentrate on something other than the tingling of her cheek following Klaus' hand. She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "Us bonding is not what's going to get us–"
Her eyes snapped up to Klaus' just in time to see him start to smirk. She pursed her lips at him in anger and ripped her wrist from his grip, turning on her heel and walking away from him. "Looks like things play out to my advantage yet again," he smiled at her.
Caroline stopped in her tracks and groaned in irritation. "So then, what now Klaus?" She turned around to look at him. "Hm? We just sit here holding hands, waiting to be taken back to earth?" she questioned. "Maybe share some issues we've been having with our lives? Have a heart to heart?"
Klaus raised his eyebrows at her in a knowing way. "I already know everything about you, love. Remember?"
That ticked Caroline off even more. She sneered at him. "How could I forget?"
Klaus took a step forward. "So what really needs to happen here if you falling for me."
"Not the other way around?" she inquired, wanting to know why it was her that it depended on.
Klaus frowned as if it were obvious. "We both know I already fell for you," he explained, "so it's your turn now."
Caroline blinked at his words, feeling a tad touched. "I don't have to fall for you," she declared, shocking herself that that was an option.
Klaus was still walking towards her slowly. "No, but you will." He stopped walking, finally giving her a bit of space. "Ten days, remember? That's the lucky date you wrote out for us a while back."
"Yeah, but we're not going to be in here for ten days."
"Well then consider this our foundation," he suggested with a hand gesture. "This is where it all starts."
.
Damon sat on the couch next to Kol and Elijah. They were watching the corpse at their feet, wondering what to do now. Rebekah was pacing around Jade's body, watching him carefully. Stefan was enjoying himself on the sidelines, not caring what happened any more. He's asked question after question and was just being ignored so he didn't really care as of right then. But Caroline's body still stood next to him, not speaking, reacting, or even moving in any way. She was almost like a pillar.
Kol had his head in his hand, trying to think. "Okay, I am so confused right now, it's not even amusing," he declared.
Elijah sighed. He seemed to be the only one that had the slightest clue what was going on. He seemed to be the only one that cared. He sat back, leaning completely into the couch. "Jade is dead; staked with wood. His life is connected to others that we don't know about. So anyone could die within the next hour. Also, he's taken Caroline's soul, so we need to get her back before we can completely kill him with the dagger that has to be used by a human."
Kol started laughing. He couldn't take it. This was all just repeating the past, only they had more idiots on their hands now. "So what do we do?" he asked in a whisper.
"You tell me, brother," Elijah said with a bit of aggression. "Lock him up? Hold him captive? He has more out there like Caroline. They're his shells right now. His puppets, if you will. He can control their every move, and there's no way we can win."
Stefan was watching Caroline's blank face closely. "We could always just catch them as they come and lock them up with him. We've got plenty of cells downstairs..."
Rebekah nodded. "That's probably the only thing we can do. We just have to hope that he doesn't have too many vampires out there."
"Or incredibly strong ones..." Elijah added on top of that.
Kol stopped rubbing his temples at Elijah's words. Strong vampires.
He had sensed Klaus' presence that night when Caroline was taken over. There was no way Klaus let Jade go without getting his love back. And there was no way Jade would have agreed to anything except for...
Kol growled and stomped his foot once. "Shit!" he exclaimed loudly. He looked at Elijah. "We may or may not have a slight problem on our hands..."
Elijah gave him a stern look that clearly said no games. "What."
"Well," Kol dragged out. "Caroline was taken by Jade, and we all know how Klaus feels about her. And there's only one thing Jade wants out of us all. And that kind of is-"
"Our power," Rebekah answered like it was obvious. "Okay, so what are you implying?"
"I'm implying, sister, that Jade took Klaus, too."
Rebekah frowned. "Why would Klaus do that? He's smarter than that."
"But there's nothing stronger than love," Damon mumbled. He looked up at Rebekah with a disapproving look on his face. "Klaus went after Caroline. Without knowing how to get back." He sighed and rubbed his hands together. "So, either he'll figure it out soon enough and get his hybrid ass back to earth...Or we might be doomed."
I know I don't deserve this because I'm a terrible writer, but feedback would be a HUGE help for me to get back on the roll with this story!
