Christina, thank you for your support! Of course I didn't feel mad or simply bad! Actually I'm quite confuse myself why I couldn't write the chapters longer. XD But guess this update will cheer you up, as it's twice the length of the previous ones. lol
Cassie, thank you girl! It's never too late to discover a fic, cause now you can read nine chapters at a time! XD I'm sorry they had to lose the baby too, basically because I don't know anything about babies or being a parent. :/ Guess you'll have me to blame for that. ;)
Okay, so much for the reviews! Enjoy this loooooooonger chapter! :D
Caroline woke up to a dark, misty, gloomy day. She pulled the curtain aside and looked out of the large french window, unable to see distant objects clearly. It was not dawn yet, everything seemed to be enveloped in a layer of mist. Just when the weather started to make her more depressed, the sun scattered the clouds, shining down on her face through the large window. But it couldn't be of any help to make her feel better.
She took a seat in the bay window, still dressed in her loose pajamas. She felt angry and bewildered at the same time. Why was that girl here? Why did she and Tatia look exactly alike? Why haven't any of them told her anything?
She knew she had to get the answer from him when Klaus entered her room. But he just ambled around, wasn't sure how to break the ice under her baleful stare.
"Don't you have some explaining to do?" Caroline heckled, eyeing every slight change in his face.
"Why are you up so early, love?" Klaus asked with a friendly smile. "Didn't sleep well last night?"
His flippant immediately irked her. How could he act like everything's normal? Wasn't he there with her last night? Hadn't he seen the look on her face?
"What's that girl doing here? When will she leave?"
Klaus reached out to touch her face, she grumbled and moved away, but his steady gaze did not waver. "Not yet, Caroline. I have a big plan for her."
Caroline uttered a deep sigh when she was all alone in her room again. Klaus still wouldn't tell her what his plan for Katherine was. Yes, Katherine, that girl's name. Last night, she was stupid enough to think she was Tatia, who had died long before this girl was born. She should have noticed the difference between them.
But when she was staring at them from the stairs, watching Klaus walking towards the human girl, all she could see was Klaus and Tatia. The smile on their faces, the intense eye contact between them, all seemed like yesterday once more to her.
Caroline walked down the stairs, casually made an appearance. The girl's gaze immediately fell upon her. She kept her head held high, showed the girl a sweet smile.
"I'm Caroline." She offered her right hand. "And you're?"
"Katerina." The girl took her hand, answered with a charming smile. "Katerina Petrova."
Petrova. Caroline hadn't heard that name for quite some time. Did that mean she was Tatia's descendant? And what was she doing here with Klaus? He hadn't gotten over his first love yet?
Caroline greeted her with a nod, quickly drew her hand back. "Pleasure. So you're just here to attend the banquet right?"
"Don't spoil the moment, my love." Klaus placed his hand on Caroline's waist, turned his gaze from Katherine to her. "Katerina is staying here with us for a while, you two might need to find a way to get along." Then he saw someone waving at him, calling him to come over, he bent a little and whispered in Caroline's ear. "Don't worry, dear. She's not Tatia."
The two girls stood silently watching him walk away. For a moment, Caroline wondered if her rivalry with Katherine could remain friendly. But she soon realized when it came to man, women never fought fair.
"Klaus can't like her better than me! He just can't! He has known her for what? For like two minutes? And now she's staying with us?" Caroline was pacing back and forth in Rebekah's room, yelling about the ridiculous fact she just found out. "Did you see how that bitch always following him? She just wouldn't let me be anywhere near him!"
"Keep your voice down, Care." Rebekah dropped her voice to a whisper. "You want everyone to know how much you care about that stupid human? We're vampires, we have sensitive ears! And stop calling him Klaus! That's the name for acquaintances."
Caroline rolled her eyes at Rebekah. "Maybe I'm not even an acquaintance to him."
"You're just saying that because you didn't see how much he missed you all these years." Rebekah grasped both of her friend's hands. "But I was there when he drew hundreds of your portraits or murmured your name in his sleep." She said, firmly nodding her head. "He loves you, Care."
A frustrated sigh escaped Caroline's lips. She had sworn to herself that she wouldn't fall for Klaus again, but her heart wasn't something that could be easily controlled by mind. She thought she had already given up on him for good, but when they were all alone in the study, she just wanted him to drop everything at his hand and kiss her. And when she saw him with that human girl, blood all flushed into her face, she had to try really hard not to tear that girl apart.
But why was she even here? Why wouldn't they just tell her the truth? They didn't think she could handle it?
Maybe it's time to pay that girl a visit.
It didn't take long for Katherine to realize, Klaus didn't like her as much as he said he was. He could say all the sweetest things in the world to her, made her feel like she was one of her kind, but he never looked at her the way he looked at Caroline.
She could tell how much they loved each other, but didn't understand why they wouldn't be together, and why he courted her instead. Sometimes she thought he wanted something from her, but no one ever told her what it was, until the day Trevor found her wandering in the garden.
He wanted to sacrifice her. Use her death to break the curse the original witch had put on him, just because she was the Petrova doppelganger. The amazed look on his face when they first met, it wasn't for her, it was for another girl who shared the same face with her. He never loved her, not even for a second.
Katherine's eyes were red with weeping. For the first time in her life, she completely gave her heart to the man she thought was worth it, but he just ripped it out and left her there to bleed without a blinking. She had to run away, no matter how much she thought she loved him, it wasn't worth dying for.
But she still needed a good plan and someone reliable to help her.
Caroline tried to think of a reason for dropping in on Katherine unannounced. Clearly she couldn't just go there and say 'Fuck off, you patronizing bitch!'. But lucky for her, Katherine didn't need any reasonable excuse, because she was actually expecting to see Caroline again.
"Hi, Katerina." Caroline said with an awkward smile. "I'm just here to… um…" Damn! She totally forgot the perfect reason she had come up with earlier!
"I suppose you've been wondering why I look like an old friend of yours." Katherine kindly saved her from embarrassing herself to death. "Tatia, I suppose."
Caroline gave an audible sigh of relief, sitting down on the couch with Katherine. "Technically, she wasn't my friend. More like someone who never noticed my existence."
"I assume you hated to see this face again, right?" Katherine put her hand on Caroline's, pondered how to work the things she planned to say into the conversation smoothly. "Maybe it's better for me to leave, leaving you two love birds all to yourselves."
Caroline's green eyes widened, completely appalled at her words. She wanted to leave? Why would she want to leave Klaus? Wasn't she in love with him? "Well, you can't." Caroline recalled her conversation with Klaus a few days ago. "Klaus said he had a big plan for you. Aren't you curious about what it is?"
"You'd rather have me stay here just because that's what he wants? Don't you just love always being the second choice?" Katherine felt badly about saying those harsh words to a nice girl like Caroline, but she had no choice, she needed her help to escape from the man who would use her as a blood bag. "Lucky for you, he's not in love with me. He just wants my blood to break his hybrid curse. So you want to be with him, I want to live, we can work together for the greater good."
Hybrid curse? What was that? Why are they always keeping things from her? She could ask Rebekah about that later, right now, there was a decision for her to make. After a deep thought, she looked at Katherine squarely in the eye. "Well, you said he didn't love you at all, so your stay won't be a problem for me right?"
It didn't take long for Katherine to see through Caroline's innocent face. She might have lived for centuries, but it wouldn't change the fact that she was still a horrible liar. "I just said he didn't love me FOR NOW. But with my doppelganger face and my irresistible charm, are you really willing to risk that?"
Caroline almost regretted doing this the moment she helped Trevor and Katherine fled the mansion. Naturally she should feel relieved, that girl with the same face as Tatia wouldn't be in their life anymore. But the thought of how furious Klaus would be if he knew they had run away, made her wish she had had a second thought earlier. Caroline slowly sat down on the floor, leaned her back against the wall, a dark void found its way into her heart and began to eat away at all her happiness.
With a sound of footsteps coming towards her, someone opened the door. Caroline looked up from the ground, saw Klaus fixing her with a baleful stare. He knew.
"Why did you do this? Why did you help them get away?" He seized her by the arm, shaking her body in an aggressive way. "I told you I needed that stupid girl!"
"I'm sorry." Tears of regret immediately streamed down her face. Caroline didn't know what else to say, nothing was good enough compared to she had done, she could just kept saying it repeatedly. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
Klaus was touched when tears started welling up her eyes. This girl was so strong that he had never seen her crying before, not even in her darkest days after she became a vampire. But now, her tears kept coming out of her beautiful green eyes, just because she accidentally blew up his plan.
Klaus softly rubbed out her tears, gave her an affectionate hug. He was willing to lose every single chance of breaking the curse just to cheer this girl up again. But he didn't say anything out loud.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Caroline was still sobbing soundlessly in his arms. "Why didn't you tell me that Esther had done such a horrible thing to you? If I had known, I would never let her run away!"
Klaus patted the back of her head to help her calm down. "It's my fault. I never wanted you to be burdened with this."
Caroline left his arms to look up at him. She smiled a grin, reaching out to cup his face. "It's never a burden when it comes to you."
What do you guys think? Is it worth reading? XD
Leave me reviews and please follow me on Tumblr at candice-ariel-martin! :)
