Hello Klaraholics! I'm so sorry for the wait for this chapter! I had a lot of work to do for university and a few rehearsals to attend for my theatre production and was going through a bit of writers block. On the plus side, I felt creative enough to develop this story's plot a bit more to add in a few more chapter to this story before the sequel, so this one is going to go on a little longer than I originally had planned! *cue confetti and streamers* I've come up with most of the plot of the sequel, but I am yet to think of a title for it (I shall let you know when I think of one!).
Also, on that note, I have a little request for you creative, artistic, computer savvy fans out there! I would really like this story and the sequel to have their own unique cover pictures, and I would make the edits myself, but I don't have all those cool programs to do so. So I thought "Hey, maybe one of my lovely followers that I couldn't have written this story without would want to make a few?" If any of you are interested, please don't hesitate to PM me! I love hearing from you guys and I will of course credit you for the cover picture! (I believe all artists of any kind should be recognised for their work. I know this as a performer myself). So if you're interested, send me a PM and I'll let you know the details and such! :)
Without any further a-do, here is chapter 12: She's A Lover And A Fighter
Caroline's eyes fluttered open wearily as she woke up the next morning and let them slowly adjust to the light of the room. She shuffled in the chair slightly, trying to get more comfortable. Her back hurt from sleeping upright, but the chair was the only option she had. She had already pushed the limit as far as possible by making the hospital staff let her stay overnight in the ward. She had to show them her badge and tell them she was an officer and that she refused to leave whether they liked it or not. They eventually let her stay once she made a point of parents being allowed to stay with their children, but an officer couldn't stay with someone she cared about? Yes, she had to pull the 'we're lovers' excuse out, which she guessed was in some sorts true.
Once she was fully awake, she rubbed her eyes and saw that the kitchen staff had already put the menu list on the table next to Klaus' bed, and next to it was a cup of coffee with a sticky note stuck on the paper cup. The sticky note read: 'Thought you might need a hot coffee after a sleepless night. For you, Miss Forbes – The kitchen staff.'
Caroline smiled at the kind gesture and picked up the coffee. The cup was still warm when she touched it, they must have just placed it there only a few minutes ago. She sipped on her coffee with one hand and held Klaus' hand with her other one as she waited for him to wake up.
After she had finished her coffee, she found herself just sitting in her chair tracing lines with her fingers along the palm of Klaus' hand, not sure what else to do with herself while she waited for him to wake. She knew she had to leave for work in an hour, but she didn't want to go. She wanted to be there when he woke up so she could go to work later on knowing that he was alright. She knew the doctors had told her he was going to be fine, but she needed to see it for herself.
Once again, she found herself doing things she never thought she would for this man; squeezing his hand gently, tenderly brushing his hair off of his forehead with her fingers, kissing his fingertips, before she sighed and leaned back in her chair, still holding his hand with one of hers.
"What am I doing? I don't even know what I'm doing. Do you know what I'm doing? Because I have no clue." She said looking over at Klaus, who she obviously didn't get an answer from. It didn't stop her from talking, though. "I mean, seriously. If it wasn't for that mistletoe, I probably wouldn't be here right now. I would come and visit you of course, because I like to think I'm a decent person, but I wouldn't have forced the hospital staff to let me stay by your bedside overnight. That's crazy." She said and rested her forehead on the mattress. "Hell, I'm crazy."
"You just realised you're crazy? I knew that a long time ago, sweetheart."
Her head shot up and she stared at him with wide eyes before an overly happy smile plastered itself on her face. "You're awake!" she said, completely ignoring the insult and instead grabbing his face in her hands and kissing him. He kissed her back for a moment before tensing up and groaning. Caroline pulled back and put a hand over her mouth.
"Oh, shit. Sorry. I forgot about your shoulder."
"It's fine, love." He said and tried to sit up, Caroline helping him the best she could without hurting him any further. "I just need to keep from using it for a few days."
Caroline shook her head. "Oh no. More than a few days. Doctor Fell said you need take it easy for a while now. Just rest up and get better. And you aren't allowed to do anything vigorous for a while or else you'll strain your shoulder. Doctor's orders."
"Well that sucks for us." He said and Caroline raised a brow until she finally understood what he meant. She rolled her eyes at him.
"Nuh-uh. No way. There will be no such 'vigorous activities' between us while you're in this state. You can wait."
"I guess that means I'm going to have to change tonight's dinner reservations." He said and frowned. Caroline chewed on her bottom lip, but shook it off and shrugged her shoulders.
"We can go another day. I don't mind." She said with a sweet smile and squeezed his hand lightly. He smirked at her but then his face contorted in confusion.
"How did you convince them to let you stay here last night?"
Caroline pressed her lips together at the question and bit down on her bottom lip. She felt her cheeks start to burn red. "Well I told them I was an officer and showed them my badge so I could convince them to let me stay, but they asked why, so I sort of lied to them and said I was your girlfriend…"
The smirk reappeared on his face; that smirk that originally had pissed Caroline off in the beginning but she had come to love. It made him look devious, but she loved it.
"And they bought it?"
"Obviously. I even got a free coffee out of it. I get freebies, which reminds me," she said and grabbed the menu from the table and passed it to him, giving him the pen that was stuck in her ponytail from last night when she was doing a crossword puzzle in an old magazine, "Fill out what you want for your meals for today and I'll give it to the kitchen staff."
"I know how it works, love. I've been in a hospital before."
She looked at him curiously. "Really? When?"
He pressed his lips into a thin line and Caroline saw him swallow. There was something haunting in his eyes. "It was a long time ago." He said with a tone that said he wasn't going to say anymore. At least not now anyway.
Once he filled it out, she took it from him and looked at her watch. "I've got to go to the department. I need to supervise the interrogations today. I'll be back later."
"Do me a favour and let them know why you don't mess with Caroline Forbes, okay?" he said with a smirk and she chuckled.
"I think they already know why, but I'll remind them." She reached over and they kissed for a long moment before she pulled back and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and walking out.
Caroline stopped by the kitchen and dropped off the paper to the staff who gave her a kind smile as they took it from her.
"You didn't need to drop it off, honey. We go around and collect them ourselves."
"I know. I was just going to come by and say thanks for the coffee, so I thought I might as well bring it with me."
She watched as the lady put the sheet down on one of the benches. "You're more than welcome, honey. You looked like you'd need it since you stayed up all night. So how long have you two been together?"
Caroline's jaw dropped again from the question, still not used to the staff asking about her and Klaus, but she had to keep going with what she told them to let her stay last night. Caroline wasn't even sure what they were yet. They hadn't discussed it before, but they were both interested in each other, so…
"Not that long. We've been interested in each other for a while, but I kept denying it and rejecting him until about a week ago." Caroline said and felt herself blush. "If it wasn't for me constantly rejecting him, we would have been together right from the get go."
"Don't blame yourself, darling," one of the other kitchen staff said from the sink across the kitchen, "I kept turning down my husband for about a year before I finally let him take me on a date, then I said no the first time he asked to marry me because it felt too soon, and now six years later we're happily married and have a gorgeous little girl. If anyone was bad, it's me, not you."
Caroline laughed along with the kitchen staff. "I haven't really thought that far ahead, but…"
"But what?" the woman at the sink prompted, noticing Caroline trail off.
"…I would like to make it work; to have a future with him." She said and felt a goofy smile cross her face. "I mean, he's a pain in the ass at the best of times. Like, he will come into my office at work and one minute I'm doing paperwork and then next we're kissing. He's a total distraction, but he's my distraction. He's my pain in the ass." She said with a laugh.
The kitchen staff laughed too and the lady at the sink pointed at herself. "That's my husband to me as well, darling. Sometimes I can't stand him, but I love him to bits."
Caroline smiled then cursed when she saw the time on the clock. "I've got to go to work. I'll be back tonight for a visit. I'll stop by and have a chat."
"Alright, darling. See you later."
Caroline waved goodbye and said thank you for the coffee again before heading down the hall to find Rebekah walking towards the ward she just left from. Rebekah rushed over to her when she saw her.
"Caroline, were you able to see Nik? They didn't let anyone in last night."
Caroline felt a rush of guilt that she had convinced the staff to let her in when his own sister wasn't allowed to visit him.
"Yeah, I saw him. He's awake now. He's getting better. His shoulder just hurts a lot."
Rebekah's face contorted in confusion. "Wait, how did you get in? Visiting hours don't happen for another half hour." She said and eyed Caroline. "And did you even do your hair today? Because it's a serious mess."
Caroline instinctively rushed to fix her hair, feeling her cheeks go bright red. "Well, in all honesty, Bekah… they let me see him last night and I convinced them to let me stayed." She admitted. "I haven't left since I got here yesterday."
Rebekah looked hurt. "So you could see him, but his own sister couldn't?"
Caroline shook her head. "It's not like that, Bekah. I had to persuade them in every possible way to let me stay. I even pulled the whole 'I enforce the law' speech as well, and I even said that I was his girlfriend, then –"
"You two are dating?" Rebekah cut in. "Why didn't you tell me? Why hasn't anyone told me?"
"No one knows because we aren't… maybe… I don't know, but it hasn't even been clarified between Klaus and I."
"Still!" Rebekah cut her off again, then a look of realisation took over her face before she pointed a finger at her. "Wait a second… did you two sleep together?"
Caroline threw her head back and groaned. "Why does everyone keep asking that?"
"Oh, come on. You can tell me. Besides, he kept talking about you on Christmas, and he was late to our family lunch, and I heard about the whole thing that happened at the work function the night before." She said and the grin on her face grew even bigger. "You totally slept with Nik. It makes so much sense. And he's always in such a good mood lately and even Katherine told me that ever since work went back after Christmas, you've been overly cheerful."
Caroline looked around the room for an escape before sighing. "Fine, alright. You got me. I slept with your brother. Happy?"
"Definitely. I just got my daily dose of gossip."
"You can't tell anyone, Rebekah. Please. We were just going to keep it between us." Caroline said desperately. She wouldn't hear the end of it from Katherine if she found out, and she already knew that Rebekah wasn't going to stop hassling her about it now.
"Why not? Why don't you two just start the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing already?"
Caroline frowned. "I think that's what tonight was for." She said quietly.
Rebekah raised a brow. "What? You two were planning on screwing again or something?"
"What? No!" Caroline said defensively. "He was going to take me out for dinner. We were going to go on a date."
"And then you were going to go back to his place and screw." Rebekah added. Caroline rolled her eyes and looked over at the door.
"Look, we can talk later. I've seriously got to go home and get ready for work. You don't need to wait out here either. Just go in there and say that Lieutenant Forbes said you have permission to go in. They know who I am, I'm sure they'll let his sister in ten minutes early."
Rebekah beamed and threw her arms around her. "Thank you, Caroline!" she said before taking off down to the ward.
Caroline rushed home from the hospital and quickly got ready before heading down to the department. She walked through the foyer only to stop and have her attention taken by a girl sitting behind the front desk where Elena used to be positioned for her office work. The girl had brown hair that was styled in waves. Her eyes were a chocolate brown and her skin was of an olive tone.
"You must be the new secretary… Hayley." Caroline said as she got close enough to read her name tag. Caroline leaned across the front desk with her hand extended, a welcoming smile on her face. "I'm Lieutenant Forbes, but you can call me Caroline."
Hayley took Caroline's hand and shook it briefly. "Nice to meet you, Caroline. I know that Tyler said that you were beautiful, but I didn't think you'd be this pretty."
Caroline frowned at the comment. She knew it was a compliment, but the fact that Tyler had that said made her feel guilty. After a moment, she forced her frown into a genuine smile.
"Thank you. You're seriously pretty, too. I wish I had a tan like you. I'm so pale." Caroline said with a laugh.
"It suits you, though." Hayley said and gestured down the hall, realising that she should get back to work. "Tyler and Jeremy are already down the hall in two separate interrogation rooms each with Damon and Enzo. Jeremy and Damon are in room 3.2, and Tyler and Enzo are in room 3.3."
Caroline smiled and nodded. "Thanks for that. We can have a chat later." She received a smile back from Hayley before heading down the hall towards room 3.2. Once she opened the door to the room, her eyes fell on Damon Salvatore who was eyeing her with a smirk on his face. Caroline kept a straight face as she felt his insanely blue eyes follow her as she walked over to the corner of the room and leaned against the wall with her arms folded over her chest.
"Hey there, Blondie." Damon sneered.
Caroline turned her focus towards Jeremy, ignoring Damon completely as if he wasn't there. "Has he spilled anything yet?"
"No. He's just been talking a lot of shit that I don't particularly care about."
"Let's face it, Barbie, I'm not going to spill my deepest, darkest secrets to this chipmunk." Damon said with a hand-cuffed gesture to Jeremy.
Caroline made a show of putting her hand on the handle of her gun and glared at Damon. "Let's face it, Damon, you have no choice." She replied.
"Oh please. Even I know that there are certain restrictions against you officers using abuse to get answers out of criminals like me."
Caroline narrowed her eyes at Damon and he smirked when her expression showed that he was right.
"You look like you would like to say a few things to me, Blondie." He said with a smirk.
"I can't because calling you Satan would be an insult to Satan himself." She dead panned. "I have a lot of reasons to dislike you. I have a lot of reasons to want you dead. And I sure as Hell have plenty of reasons to kill you myself." She stepped closer to the table and pressed her palms down on the surface, leaning across the table towards him with a cruel look in her eyes. "You have been selling illicit drugs and unauthorised weaponry, have been involved in murders, broken into family homes, broke into my house, tried to kill me, and you shot my boy– one of my sergeants." She said, quickly correcting herself.
"You mean your boyfriend." Damon corrected her.
Caroline grabbed the front of his shirt and pushed him back into his chair angrily, pulling her gun out and pressing it to his chest right over his heart. "Don't back-chat an officer, especially a lieutenant, you egotistical, selfish, cocky son of a bitch!"
"Whoa, Care, stop it!" Jeremy put a hand around her arm but she shrugged it off.
"Don't Jeremy." Caroline snapped at him until he backed off. "He needs to learn a lesson about respect."
"And you need to learn a lesson about control, Blondie."
She pressed her gun harder into his chest. "I'd shut up if I were you." She hissed venomously.
"Care, seriously. Just leave him with me and I'll handle it. Go check how Tyler's going with interrogating Enzo."
Caroline glared at Damon, making sure to make him feel like her eyes were burning into him. She wanted him to feel uncomfortable, exposed, weak, but from the look on his face, he wasn't the least bit scared of her. Aggravated by this, she shoved him against the back of his chair as hard as she could and stormed out of the room, knowing that he was right about one thing: There were restrictions against her abusing him, no matter how much he deserved it.
She stormed into the next interrogation room where Hayley said Tyler and Enzo would be and walked straight up to Enzo and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. Tyler tried to separate the two of them but she shoved him away, her attention fully on Enzo whose face she was glaring at only centimetres away from her own.
"I'm not in the mood for games or beating around the bush, so let's make this quick. Are you working for anyone?"
"Well hello to you too, gorgeous."
"Answer the damn question!" She snapped.
"Now why would I answer your questions when you talk to me like that, love?"
She dropped him back in his chair and pushed him back against the back of it. No one, and she meant no one, called her 'love' apart from Klaus. She wasn't in the mood to tolerate it. "Do not call me 'love.'" She said calmly, but venomous enough to let Enzo know that she wouldn't tolerate it.
"Why not?" Enzo sneered, "I hear you have a thing for accents."
Not able to take it anymore, she narrowed her eyes and wrapped her hand around his throat, cutting off his airway.
"I asked you a question. Are you working for someone?"
Enzo held his breath, preserving what oxygen he already had, but it only made Caroline squeeze his throat harder.
"Are you working for someone?" She demanded harsher.
Enzo made a wheezing sound and choked out "No," before Caroline released his throat, giving him time to take another breath before cutting off his airway again.
"You better be telling the truth, because God forbid, if you're lying to me, then you're going to be a dead man."
"It's… the truth." He choked out, trying to suck in oxygen.
"Caroline!" Tyler said loud enough to get her attention. She looked over at Tyler, then released Enzo before walking over to Tyler. "Lock him up until the car gets down here to take the two of them to prison. We're done here."
Caroline walked out before Tyler could protest.
Caroline made her way to the ward Klaus was in at the hospital and knocked on the door of his assigned room before opening it and walking in. When she saw the bed was empty and made neatly, she immediately thought the worst.
"Klaus? Klaus?"
"Relax, love. I'm not dead."
She spun around to find him in the doorway and hit his undamaged arm. "You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you were dead."
"Then explain why I have a bag of clothes that Rebekah brought next to the bed and why the hospital staff wouldn't have called you or my family."
She pressed her lips into a thin line. "Fine. Alright. I wasn't thinking. Happy?"
"No." he dead panned. "Because it's not like you to not think logically. Something's bothering you. Spill."
What bothered her even more in that moment was that he could read her so easily. It wasn't something that people could work out straight away about her, but Klaus has been able to read her like an open book from the get-go.
"It's a bit of a long story." She muttered.
"Well then," he said and took a seat on the bed, leaning back and patting the spot next to him, "Take a seat and tell me, sweetheart. I've got all day."
She thought about it for a moment before she decided she needed to rant. She climbed onto the bed next to him and leaned her head against the bedhead and sighed. She felt somewhat like she was at a counselling session with a psychologist.
"Well I was having a good day and all – a little tired obviously from stressing about you being stupid enough to let yourself get shot –"
"It was never my intention to be a red target, love."
"I know. Anyway, I left the ward this morning and ran into your sister. She sort of worked it out that we slept together on Christmas Eve –"
"Wait," he cut her off again, "Rebekah knows?"
Caroline saw his expression waver, as if he was trying to determine whether that was either a minor problem or a serious issue. Caroline bit her lip.
"Let's just say that she put two and two together and worked it out."
He stayed quiet for a long moment before nodding. "Continue, love. As you were saying?"
Caroline knew she wouldn't have his full attention now after telling him that, but she continued anyway. "So I had to deal with that conversation with Rebekah, then I went to work – we have a really nice new secretary now named Hayley – and I went to go see how Jeremy's interrogation of Damon Salvatore was going, but he said some stuff to really piss me off, so I got my gun out and was ready to kill him but I knew I couldn't, so I left and went to see how Tyler was going with Enzo and it wasn't any better. He aggravated me as well and started going 'I hear you have a thing for accents' blah, blah, blah and all this crap just to drive me up the wall. So then I threatened him and left and now I'm here."
"He was right, you know? Enzo." Klaus said and Caroline shot him an aggressive look. "You do have a thing for accents."
A smirk appeared on his face and she rolled her eyes. "Well of course you would say that. You're British." She said and elbowed him in the side, which only gave him a reason to chuckle at her reaction.
"But in all seriousness, love, I wish I was there to witness this aggression you possess. It would have been quite a thing to watch."
"Let me guess, because you 'like a bit of aggression in a woman?'" she mimicked him, remembering that was exactly what he had said to her in their first meeting the day after they'd met each other.
He smirked and Caroline could tell he was thinking about the same conversation as her. It wasn't a pleasant one at the time, but now it was almost funny. "Yes, but it's even better coming from you. I always knew you had that power within you, Caroline. It's one of the reasons I like you. You certainly rule the department like you're a queen. It's quite fitting for you, love. It suits you well."
"Well if I'm queen, what does that make you?"
He smirked. "Even you have called me the alpha male, sweetheart, and everyone at the department knows it. Even Alaric knows it. He just doesn't want to say it."
"Uh huh, sure." She said sarcastically with a nod.
He chuckled for a moment before going silent. "You should go home and rest, Caroline. You've had a long few days, and quite frankly, I don't want to be the reason you run yourself to exhaustion."
"Well technically we were supposed to go on a dinner date tonight, remember?" she pointed out and he frowned.
"Yes, and unfortunately I had the privilege of being shot."
She nodded. "Exactly, so I'm not going to go home and spend the night by myself while you're in hospital when we were supposed to be going out for dinner together. If we can't go anywhere, then I'm staying here." She said in a tone that meant she wasn't leaving no matter what he said.
The corners of his red lips lifted into a smile. "Sometimes I really like your stubbornness, love."
She felt a smile appear on her face. Not just one for the sake of it, but a real genuine smile, knowing that he appreciated parts of her that no one else thought was important. People usually saw her stubbornness as her acting like a child, but Klaus saw it as a sign of determination, a strong will to prove herself. That was one of the things she liked about him – that he was able to appreciate small things like that which no one else did.
"Good, because you're going to have to deal with it." She said as she leaned in to kiss him.
Klaus ignored the pain in his shoulder as they kissed, focussing on the softness of Caroline's pink lips, the taste of her mouth, the sweet berry scent of her perfume, and the feeling of her silky blonde curls between his fingers. She was the definition of perfection to him, even though she couldn't see it. He would make her see it someday, though. Maybe not today, but someday, she would see herself just like how he saw her.
"Okay, Niklaus Mika– Oh, sorry. I'm interrupting something."
They broke apart at the sound of Doctor Fell's voice and looked over at her as she stood their awkwardly. Caroline felt her cheeks go bright red. Klaus however, looked at Meredith with a smirk and put his good arm around Caroline's shoulders.
"Good evening, Meredith."
"Yes, well it's certainly a good evening for you, isn't it?" she said and looked over her papers on her clip board as Caroline's face turned even redder than she thought possible.
"I just came to let you know that you can leave tomorrow morning. These are your release forms. I'll need you to sign it and then I'll come by tomorrow morning to sign you out. I'll leave them here in the file holder at the foot of the bed." She said and did so before looking back at the two of them with an amused smile. "Don't have too much fun. This is a hospital after all." She said and left them alone once again.
"Well that wasn't awkward or embarrassing at all." Caroline said as Klaus put a finger under her chin and made her look at him.
"I wouldn't worry about it, love. Now, where were we?"
She smiled and pressed her lips to his once again and rested a hand on his cheek. She didn't care that their dinner date hadn't been able to happen. It wasn't the dinner that she was looking forward to. She just wanted to spend time with him as he did with her, and he was alive, and to Caroline, that's all that mattered.
So what did you guys think? I know it ended on a bit of a sappy, fluffy note, but I couldn't help it haha. Let me know your thoughts in reviews, and don't forget to PM me if you are interested in making a cover picture for Charge and the Charge Sequel! (the sequel is yet to have a title! Haha).
Celeste xoxo
