Caroline, Stefan and Lexi made their way to class. They had British Lit this morning and 20th century American history in the afternoon. When Stefan couldn't get off campus because of the boundary spell, he decided the best thing to do would be to pretend to be a student himself. He was sleeping in Al's room at the frat house, as a way to guard him just in case Klaus struck again, and he was taking classes with Lexi and Caroline.

They made their way into the building just in time to find one of their classmates sprinting out of the room British Lit was held in.

"Whoa, is class canceled?" Lexi asked.

"No, even better." The girl grinned. "Professor Williams had some kind of family emergency, they found someone to take over his classes until he gets back."

"Uh, and you're running out of the room because?" Caroline asked.

"Because he's totally hot! I need to fix my makeup now!"

"A hot professor?" Lexi said, raising an eyebrow at Caroline. "I'll believe this when I see it. Everyone who teaches our classes looks like my grandfather."

They walked into the room and all three of them immediately turned on their heels to walk right back out the door. No fucking way were they sitting through this.

Someone stepped in front of the door, and the yellow glint in their eye was a tell that they were a hybrid.

"I wouldn't." He said quietly.

The three of them exchanged nervous glances and took the seats all the way in the back. It wasn't hard to find empty seats there. All the girls had suddenly decided they wanted to be in the front row.

"Miss. Forbes, Miss Branson, and Mr. Salvatore. How nice of you to join us. You were aware that class started exactly two minutes ago?" Klaus said, turning around from the board he was scribbling an outline on.

"What are you doing?" Caroline demanded.

"Oh, allow me to introduce myself. You see, Miss Forbes, the students that arrived on time have already heard this, but I am Professor Mikaelson, filling in for Professor Williams."

"Why are you doing this?" She asked, causing some raised eyebrows among the class. No one understood why she seemed so mad at their new professor.

"Well that's a long story, and we already have a lot to discuss today. Great Expectations."

"More like, I should have expected a stunt like this." She muttered, only loud enough for the vampires in the room to hear.

He pretended to rifle through a stack of papers for his notes, but she caught him smiling. He thought he was getting to her, forcing her to have to deal with an hour and a half of being in the same room as him.

"Who wants to start with Pip? Can anyone explain how his character changes over the course of the novel?" He asked the class.

Every hand in the first three rows went up.

Caroline slouched in her chair, boiling with rage. God, he was annoying. He looked so smug in his stupid little outfit, all dressed up like a real professor. She hated the way he leaned on the desk as he spoke, she hated how he knew every line from the book by heart. She hated how his face lit up when someone offered some decent insight into the characters, and how he would end up jumping in and adding his own thoughts, trying to provoke a more complex discussion.

Of course he would be good at this. He was a natural leader, and he had centuries of knowledge stacked up in that stupid brain of his. She rolled her eyes every time he spoke or glanced over at her.

He circled the room as the discussion veered off in different directions, occasionally stopping and looking over at one the books every student had open in front of them.

"A truly excellent character, everyone turn to page 83 so we can get a closer look at how the scenery around Miss Havisham works as characterization. Mr. Salvatore, won't you read starting with the second paragraph?"

Caroline glanced at Stefan, who was tensed up with Klaus standing so close. He was ticked off with the little power trip Klaus was having, playing teacher.

"And what does the existence of a character like Miss Havisham say about the concept of love in this story?" Klaus said.

Most of the students in the room raised their hands. Caroline just looked down at her desk, waiting for class to be over.

"Miss Forbes?"

He was leaning in front of her desk, looking right into her eyes, a smile playing at one side of his mouth. She could tell he really thought it would be this easy, that he would parade around in front of her and she would beg him to take her back.

"That it causes nothing but pain and it's not worth it."

"Really? That's what you saw? What about the decades Havisham spent trapped in the moment of her doomed wedding? The symbolism of the dress and the one shoe? The way she raises Estella to defend herself against falling into the same trappings?"

"Maybe Havisham wouldn't have turned out so wretched if her fiance wasn't such a monumental dick." Caroline retorted.

"Language, Miss Forbes. But I do agree, Havisham's fiance leaving her was an impossibly cruel act."

"Insight, Professor Mikaelson." She said, mocking his accent and the intonation of his words to her, causing a few horrified looks from her fellow students. "Maybe if you weren't so caught up in romantic notions of love you would see Havisham for the monster she is. And you would see that Havisham knows nothing about love. You can't blame the person who left for the horrible things she did after."

"And her love for Estella? The way she repents to Pip, begging his forgiveness? Does that show nothing of her capacity to love?"

"She manipulated Estella. She was horrible to Pip. They were relationships built on lies and selfishness. No repenting can change that."

"So you don't believe in forgiveness? In people learning from their mistakes? In second chances?"

"Havisham hasn't changed, she never learned from her mistakes." She challenged.

"I think she did." He argued. "I think it nearly killed her, knowing what she did to them. I think the guilt consumes her and she desperately needed them to forgive her."

"Some things are beyond forgiving."

"And some things are worth fighting for." He retorted.

Every eye in the classroom was on the two of them and the heated discussion they were having, completely blocking out the room full of people watching them. It seemed like they were talking about something other than the book.

He cleared his throat and looked at his watch.

"Well, that's all the time we have for now. See you Thursday, I expect the response papers in my inbox by midnight."

Caroline bolted for the door.

"And Miss Forbes, I need to speak to you for a moment. About your most recent assignment."

"I have another class." She said, holding on to Lexi, watching the other students file out, all giving her jealous or incredulous looks.

"I'm aware of your schedule."

"I don't want to be late." She said, watching the rest of the students except Stefan and Lexi disappear.

"You won't be."

"It's in ten minutes."

"I know."

"I need to leave now."

"You won't be late for class, Caroline, because you're going to skip it."

"Don't you think you've had enough fun for one day?" Stefan challenged.

"You two can leave." Klaus said, waving at Stefan and Lexi.

"Like hell we are." Stefan challenged.

"Ripper, when I tear your arms off and Damon's, would you prefer me to beat you over the head with your own arm, or his?"

"So much for learning from mistakes" Caroline grumbled.

"Now, love, Rome wasn't built in a day."

Lexi glanced nervously to Stefan and back to Klaus.

"Miss Branson, remove him and yourself before I do something rash."

"It's fine." Caroline said to her. "Just go. I can handle him."

The door shut and they were alone.

"Why do you have to do that?" She challenged.

"Do what?"

"Prove you're the alpha?"

"I don't have to prove anything, love. I am the alpha."

"Hmmpft."

"Why did you run?" He said, glaring right through her.

She froze. He had cut right to the center of it. She wasn't ready to have the conversation, but he wouldn't let her dodge it any longer.

"Honestly... I thought you didn't love me anymore. I couldn't bear another day of it, being the only one who was still in our relationship."

"How could you think that?" He said, his eyes softening. He didn't understand.

"You were always gone. I couldn't get through to you. Even when you were home it was always about hybrids."

"I wanted to keep you safe, build an army."

"And how much do you need to build? Don't you have enough?"

"I don't know what's enough, better more to be safe."

"We are safe! You can't seriously think you need more."

"If anything happened to you..."

"If anything happened to me, my last thought would be that I wished I had more time with you, that I wished you were there next to me every day instead of going off making hybrids."

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked.

"I was afraid. And I've brought up the hybrids before. You made it clear you wouldn't budge on that. You care about them more than me."

"How can you say that? I've never given you a reason to be afraid."

"It's true, isn't it."

"No, Caroline. You're always the most important. I don't know how we got so lost. I never knew you felt this way."

"No point in talking about it now. Just let me go." She said quietly.

"Let you go?" He asked. "Is that what you want?"

"You tortured my friend. You called me a lot of things I'm not. What am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to be with me!" He shouted. "How can you not see that?"

"I don't know how to be with you after this."

"We can make it work, we always make it work." He pleaded.

"Maybe that's the problem! We always make it work, when sane people would know when to move on. After how it all started? You tricked me into falling in love with you."

"I don't regret that. You never would have given me a chance otherwise."

"And maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe this was all a huge mistake."

"No." he said. "I've lived a thousand years, and I've made a lot of mistakes, but us being together was not one. However, losing you, letting this slip though my fingers, that would be the greatest mistake of my life."

"Lift the boundary spell." She challenged. "Let me leave."

"No boundary spell can keep me from finding you. This just cuts down on the time wasted running."

"You can't force this. Maybe this is a sign that we shouldn't be together anymore." She said.

"I don't believe that." He said.

She looked at him, aching to be in his arms, but trying to stand strong, refuse to let him see how easy it was to sway her to come back. She couldn't. Not like this.

"I love you." He said quietly. "Do you still love me?"

"Yes. That's what makes this so difficult." She said.

"No, it makes this something worth fighting for."

"Klaus, I can't do this." She said, wiping away tears.

He watched her waver where she stood, exhausted from crying. She was falling apart and he felt guilt for it all. He wanted to fix it, but he didn't know where to begin.

"You have to." He begged. "You have to try, because I can't survive without you. I can't go back to what life was like before."

She smiled through her tears, looking up at him. It was getting harder and harder to keep away.

"Did you miss me that much?" She said softly.

"You have no idea." He responded.

She dropped the arms that had been folded across her chest, and he took it as a signal that she wasn't trying to guard herself from him anymore.

He moved across the room and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close against him. She flinched, and yelled for him to let go, not to touch her, she pounded on his chest with her fists, but he only held on tighter.

"You can't do this to me. You're breaking my heart." She sobbed, giving up on fighting him and instead crying into his chest. The familiar smell and feel of him only made her hurt more. She missed him so much it made her ache. But she was afraid of letting him back in. He would only hurt her more.

His hands smoothed her hair as he held her firmly against him.

"Please, let me fix it." He asked once more.

She didn't say anything in response. She didn't have the will in her to tell him no again. She just wanted what they used to have.

They stood there for hours, just holding each other. She couldn't say anything at all, he would occasionally repeat his promises to fix things. It had all been said, it was all laid bare. She didn't have anything else to say, and she was afraid to hope. But she couldn't just let go.

Eventually she broke away, and left. He tried to follow her, but she said she needed time alone to think. He respected it and stayed behind.

When she made it back to the dorms, Lexi and Stefan were waiting with ice cream, boxes of tissues, and shoulders to cry on. They listened to everything without judgement or advice. They just let her sort through her feelings out loud and promised to be there for her, whatever she chose.

Another drawing slipped under her door that night. It was her, sitting on that bed upstairs at the house Bonnie found all those years ago. It was the night he had gotten his body back. She was so confused by everything she felt that night. She wondered why he picked that image of her to draw, what the significance of it was.

There was an inscription on the bottom.

If you give me a chance, I promise I can make it right.

Tomorrow, 8 pm, the main library.

Klaus.

She showed the note to Stefan who sighed and handed it to Lexi.

"You're going, aren't you?" Stefan concluded.

She nodded.

He took a moment to let it sink in. She wouldn't admit it just yet, but she had made her decision. It wasn't one he particularly liked, but it was her choice to make.

"Alright." Stefan sighed. "It's your call."

"Stefan, just because I'm going to meet with him doesn't mean we're getting back together."

"Sure it doesn't." He conceded, pretending to believe her.

She nodded and reached for the ice cream Lexi was holding out sympathetically.

"Do you hate me?" She asked Lexi.

Lexi gave Stefan a knowing look and tousled his hair.

"I've learned to take the good with the bad when it comes to my friends. I'll never hate you. Just don't expect Al and I to double date with you and him."

Caroline laughed for the first time in what felt like forever.

Lexi smiled and hugged her.

Stefan join in the hug.

"You're going to be ok, Care." he said reassuringly.

For the first time in weeks, she believed it.