AU/AH Klaroline Drabble
WARNINGS: Character death, Physical Illness (please excuse my ill knowledge and some details that I myself have fabricated for the purposes of this drabble). Mentions of child abuse.
Klaus Mikaelson. Semi-renowned artist, entrepreneur, but the only title he cared for was husband. To the girl of his dreams really. Caroline.
They met in college, and he fell head over heels in love with her. Of course, given his personal background, a horrible family life, he couldn't quite let his armor down or admit the feelings he harbored for her. Even to himself. If he was being honest, he would have to admit that he was rather horrible to her and her friends. Protective instinct did not always make his life easier, like he wanted it to. He couldn't really blame her for hating him. He pursued her, amidst sleeping through her group of friends. The Gilbert triplets, Bonnie Bennett, and, an especially low moment for him, sleeping with the girl he knew Caroline had caught her ex-boyfriend with.
After that, after a screaming match that left her in tears and him thinking there would never be a chance for them, now that he wanted it, now that he was willing to admit that he really, really liked this girl, he tried better. Bought her jewelry (that he really couldn't afford and that she didn't want), flowers, tickets to movies and shows. Nothing seemed to work with her though, none of his usual tricks. But she wasn't like any other girl he had ever been with, was she? And he didn't just want a one night stand with her. He wanted long term. Maybe the best way to do that was to get to know her.
So he did. He talked to her in class, got to know her hopes (she wanted to be a news journalist or a news anchor, but she'd always had a soft spot for art) and her dreams (she wanted to see the world, get married, have kids). And little by little, she managed to remove the armor he had so carefully surrounded himself with. An abusive step father. Three dead siblings. A mother who didn't want him because he was a reminder of the affair that she wanted to forget. Not one but two finances that slept with his brother Elijah. All those things, while still hurting him, didn't seem to rule his life as much with her. And she understood in part what it felt like to be abandoned my parents; her father left when she was four, and even though she loved him, they rarely talked, and her mother immersed herself in work after their divorce, both because of the separation itself and from finding out the man she had been with for ten years had been living a double life.
In the end, she was the one to ask him out. And for the first time in a long time, Klaus found himself in an actual relationship. And miracle of miracles he enjoyed it. Before either of them really knew what was going on, they had moved in together. Oh they fought, they fought all the time. About important things ("Nik, you need to open the cards your sister sends you!"; "Caroline, you need to go to the doctor's when you're sick!"), and less important things ("Do you have to use your computer in bed?"; "Could you not leave your shoes all over the apartment?"). But neither of them would have said that they were unhappy in that time period.
He bought a ring exactly six months after they started dating.
He waited though, bided his time, half expecting her to give up on him. To wake up one day and find her stuff packed and gone. Yet, two years later when they both graduated, he had to admit that she was probably around to stay. He proposed, and was nearly tackled to the ground, a flurry of kisses assaulting his cheeks as she murmured over and over again "yes" and "took you long enough you scruffy British idi-", before he finally captured her lips with his own.
They were married by a judge not two weeks later. They were together and they both wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, so why should they wait?
She was beautiful that day, not that she wasn't beautiful everyday. Not that he didn't appreciate seeing her sleep mussed hair every morning. Not that he didn't think she was beautiful when she was dressed in sweats, or dresses, or jeans and a top. He always thought she was beautiful. But there was something about seeing her in that knee length white dress that made him certain that she had never been more beautiful. Maybe it was the smile on her face, knowing that it was all for him.
Only her friends were there to witness the ceremony, somehow able to forgive what he had done, and all for the love of Caroline. He was surprised though, Stefan and Damon, whom he had never met before that day, and who were Katherine and Elena Gilbert respectively, were, well, surprisingly nice to him. The surprise lasted until later that day at their reception, located at their favorite little Italian restaurant, when Stefan thanked him for giving him and his brother the necessarily jealous push to go after the girls that they had been pining over since high school.
They honeymooned in their new home, courtesy of a decent commission Klaus had received and a trust fund from a long dead relative that Caroline had been able to claim when she turned twenty one.
Caroline's mother Liz came to visit them a month after their wedding, smiles and happiness that her only child had gotten married, but Klaus could see the disappointment lurking there. Disappointment that she hadn't been invited. His own issues aside, he couldn't help feeling a little insulted for his new wife. From what he understood, she had had to take care of herself. Her mother a background character in her life who rarely returned phone calls. Still, he found himself enjoying his mother-in-law's company. She was so different from his own mother, and her failings aside, he could see the love she held for her daughter.
With her departure, Caroline again brought up the subject of his own ill-communication with any member of his family. "Do they even know we're married Klaus?" They didn't, but not for the reasons Caroline assumed. Not because he was ashamed of her. She was the best thing in his life, the best thing that had ever happened to him. How could she even think that he would ever be ashamed of her? No, he was ashamed of his family. Dysfunctional to an extreme. Bickering, angry, unable to have a single conversation without things turning to yelling and punching and blaming. And a part of him feared that Mikael's words of contention against him would drive Caroline away as it had driven Celeste and Camille away. Into the arms of his brother.
And then other things started to concern the both of them.
Caroline began to lose weight, for seemingly no reason. Her eating habits stayed the same, so he ruled out an eating disorder, but he still worried. She brushed him off though.
"I'm not going to go to the doctor's just because I've lost a little weight, Klaus." She would say every time he brought up that option.
Then her father called, for the first time since she had gone to college, with news. He was sick, dying. Kidney cancer. He had been given six months at the most. It was too late to treat. Stage III. Didn't respond to chemo or radiation therapy. Snippets were what Klaus caught amidst Caroline's sobs. For all her father's abandonment for his new husband and his new daughter and his new life, Caroline hadn't really tried all that much to reach out to her father either. And she regretted it now.
For three months, she spent her time going back and forth between their home in upstate New York and her father's home in Northern Virginia. Klaus understood. Missed her dearly, he hadn't understood until then how much she had become ingrained into his life, but he understood. She needed this time with her dying father.
He called his sister for the first time since he had left their childhood home in London five years before to strike out on his own in America. He had missed Rebekah; she had been his best friend. And it wasn't until he was missing the presence of another blond that he realized how much he missed his sister. They talked for hours, sharing their lives with each other until the early hours of the morning. Rebekah cried when he told her he was married, and he did the typical "protective older brother" act when she told him she was seeing someone and things were getting pretty serious.
When he called Caroline that night, a nightly ritual, she cried when he told her of his reconciliation with his sister. And he longed to be there with her when she said, tears evident in her voice still, that her father didn't have very long left.
Two weeks later, he was flying out to join his wife. Suit packed and ready for the next day, along with a black dress for Caroline. He finally held her in his arms again and comforted her as best he could when she cried herself to sleep that night.
She didn't eat the next day, but he chalked it up to grief. As well as her headaches, her continued weight loss, and her extreme fatigue. He couldn't consider any other possibility.
Until, late one night as she finally slept, he looked up the type of cancer Bill had had. Horror growing as the symptoms listed fit her symptoms exactly. And though he felt foolish at trusting the search results. Still, he felt it was far past time that she go to a doctor.
And for once, she agreed easily enough. Dr. Fell suggested they see a genetic counselor to rule out hereditary papillary renal carcinoma, one of the few Kidney related hereditary cancers.
They both felt hopeful though. Bill had probably just had a kidney cancer. Caroline was just grieving. They would live long lives together. They would go to Europe and get a bigger house and have kids and get a dog. There wasn't anything else that could possibly happen with them, right?
Wrong, so, so wrong.
Not only did Caroline have the mutated gene required for the disease, ultrasound revealed that she already had a growth forming.
Stage III. Six months to live. Early onset. No way to predict the age in which the cancer appears. Chemotherapy and radioactive treatment has no effect on kidney cancers. Any attempt to remove the growth won't necessarily remove the cancer at this stage. We can give quality of life not quantity at this point.
He remembers nothing later but the feeling of rage. He'd find someone to fix this. He'd call Mikael, Ester, Elijah, if he had to. He'd face down his family if it meant getting the inheritance he was entitled to. The inheritance that could pay for her to have the best medical care possible.
Until she stopped him, calm in the face of everything. "I just watched my dad die from this Klaus. Nothing you can do is going to stop it, and even if you could do anything, you heard the doctor."
Oh, he'd heard the doctor all right, but he couldn't- he wouldn't- give up on her life. He wasn't going to go through life without her.
His life was spinning out of control. The only thing that had ever kept him sane was his ability to maintain a semblance of control over situations, decisions. But this? He couldn't control the disease that was slowly, that had been for god knows how long, taking his Caroline from him. Klaus hadn't had enough time with her, no amount of time would ever be enough with her. And she was slipping through his fingertips, so calm in the face of her inevitable demise.
So he did the reasonable thing. He threw himself into his art. But her, only her. Hundreds of sketches, enough to last a lifetime- but only his- of her in every position imaginable. Sitting on the couch, huddled under a blanket. Rereading her favorite book. On a horse for the first time. And for the first time in his life, he found that picture images were better than drawings, going so far as to buy himself a state of the art camera to capture her. And she endured it all, for him he knew. He needed this though, he needed to document their last months together. It felt like the only thing he could control. A medium to have his control back.
She admitted to him one night that really she was afraid of death, and he held her, murmuring that it would be alright, even though it wouldn't.
Her friends and relatives poured in to say goodbye, and he couldn't stand it. His matra had become that a miracle would happen. She was too good to be removed from the world. People like him, they deserved to die. She didn't. She was so full of life and love. She deserved to have it. To have it all. She would not die.
And yet he could not deny that she was deteriorating right in front of him.
They moved into her childhood home. Liz wanted to help take care of her daughter, and Caroline missed home.
She took him to pick out a funeral plot with her. He bought two with the last of his savings. He might not be able to leave the world with her, but he would be damned if he wasn't buried next to her in death. One day.
Caroline Forbes Mikalson. Aspiring journalist. Former Miss Mystic Falls. Niklaus Mikaelson's wife. Titles she loved. She was proud to die with them.
His beautiful young wife left the world one night, peacefully in her sleep. He was almost glad. Simple tasks had become painful for her. Eating, sitting, lying down, going to the bathroom. All of it had hurt her by those last few weeks. At least, at least she wasn't in pain anymore. But he was.
He was in so much pain. A part of him died with her that day. A part of him would never recover from this loss. The loss of her. The loss of her smile and her beauty lighting up his dark life. She was gone from him.
The funeral was small. Family and friends only.
He tried to maintain an air of being strong. But he couldn't. He just couldn't do it, and he broke down in tears when Elena got up to speak and started crying herself, Damon having to eventually go up and escort his finance back to their seats.
None of it mattered though. Nothing would ever matter again, the most important person in his life was gone. And all that remained of her was her corpse, buried in the earth.
"Nik," a voice said, tears evident, but he would recognize that voice anywhere.
"Bekah," he murmured, turning around to find his sister, dressed in black, a hesitant look on her face. He ignored it, almost rushing to her in his attempt to wrap her in his arms.
He cried into her shoulder, the first time he could remember crying in front of her since he was five and she was three and she broke his favorite toy. "She's gone, Bekah."
Her hands squeezed him to her harder. "I know Nik. I came as soon as I heard."
"Niklaus." Another recognizable voice, followed by yet another, "Nik." Sympathy clear in both their voices as he raised his head to face down both of his living brothers.
"Elijah, Kol, what are you-"
"Rebekah told us. And regardless of the bad blood between us, we were going to be here for our brother. Always and forever, remember?"
He did remember. But as much as he still loved him siblings, as much as he felt a small surge of happiness that they cared enough about him to come and try to give him comfrot, it didn't change a thing. The only person he had really wanted to spend eternity with was gone. Dead- and oh how that pained him to admit it. And the only way he could follow was if he died himself. But he couldn't do that, he had to live for her at least.
But he would never get over her. And there would never be another for him. She was it for him, and he would not betray her.