AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is for Day 3 Because Magic. I don't know how to preface this other than to say magical hijinks ensued and now Klaus is fairy-sized and hanging around Caroline's head in angel/devil fashion (on her shoulders). And she's anxious to get rid of him. But he won't leave.
Enjoy.
xx Ashlee Bree
Caroline swatted fiercely (grumpily) at the two talking mosquitoes currently loitering above her right and left shoulders buzz-buzzing in figure-eights, to no avail. They bobbed and ducked and somersaulted around her hand-whopping assaults like a couple of gymnastic buzzards. Splits and flips for days—the elusive bastards!
"Listen Tinksquitoes," she grumbled, collapsing back against her dorm room door. Slamming it shut with a huff. "I don't know what fairy tale book from Disney hell you two buzzed out of recently, but you need to locate an open page and buzz back in…like now."
Adorned in an off-white Henley and a brown leather jacket, a blond man, who was no larger than an action figure, landed on her right shoulder with expert one-footed flair. A translucent orb bathed him in light the color of cumulus clouds and indigo sky. And poking out through two large slits in his jacket flapped two sunset-tinted harpwings that were symmetrical in size and shape.
"Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but we're neither book-borne nor page-squashable. Think again," he said.
"Oh, for the love of—" Caroline wrung her hands in the air, "you have to be imaginary! This is ridiculous!"
"Ridiculously enchanting perhaps," drawled the one on the left.
"They're not real! Not real, not real, not real! Imaginary, they're just imaginary pests," she professed more to herself than anyone, "they have to be."
They snickered.
"Hardly, love."
Closing her eyes, she banged the back of her skull against the door again and again. Taking deep, measured breaths. Willing her brain to control-freak herself out of this mess.
"If you aren't figments of my overactive (obviously infected) imagination, then what the hell are you?"
Irritation and accusation mounted as hands flew to her hips.
"I'm clearly too annoyed to study right now," she declared, "so I'm all ears, boys… enlighten me." Patience evaporated with the narrowing of her eyes. "I dare you!"
"Why don't you tell us, sweetheart?" they purred.
Riddles and rhetoric. Rhetoric and riddles. That's all this was, that's all it had been—torture never-ending.
"You two suck," she pouted. "Suck, suck, suck!"
"Guess, guess, guess," they encouraged in that trademark lilt. Still present. Still prying and persistent. Still pains in the not-freaking-possible ass! "Guess quick before the days all tick away…"
Caroline groaned.
Dropping her books to the floor, she threw her hands over her eyes and massaged one annoying, festering question free from her mind: WHY?
Was she hexed? Under a spell? Hallucinating? Trapped in some kind of dream purgatory? Dead? In fairy tale hell? What.
Why, why, why had Naughty Nuisance Nik and Charming Chump Klaus spent the last week wreathing around her head like twin Caroline-nectar'd mosquitoes? They, Klaus Mikaelson x2 (as if one of him in this world wasn't enough of a pain already—seriously), swarmed about her in close circumference all hours of the damn day jabbering and drawling with commentary in that grating Klaus-only way. As they descended from the air to perch on either one of her shoulders, they prattled teasing, challenging nuggets of dialogue into her ear. Disrupting not only her concentration, but her anti-Original mind.
Magnetism and mischievousness rippled off their flapping little wings as they ensnared her attention; monopolized her focus. Never leaving her sight. Or side. Or freaking life.
It was a goddamn nightmare!
The worst part? The fairy-sized little shits had tapped into some kind of Caroline AM frequency, meaning they were invisible to everyone except her. Of course. As if undergraduate studies weren't demanding enough as it was already!
Bonnie and Elena had attributed Caroline's recent air-swatting-and-swearing episodes to demanding junior year classes and finals week stress. But only because she'd offered up no other explanation. She couldn't. What on earth could she possibly say?
"No worries, guys. I'm just being stalked by two shrunken Klaus Looney Tunes."
"I know you can't see them. Only I can, apparently."
"WHY ON EARTH WOULD I HAVE IMAGINARY KLAUS FRIENDS?"
"This is a serious problem!"
"Are you…laughing? You are—you're laughing!"
"I can't believe you actually think that—"
"IT'S NOT FUNNY."
"What they want? Oh, who the hell knows…(probably to flirt me to death.)"
"He probably thinks double the Klaus plus double the charm equals double the chances of my hostility cracking."
"Like cloning himself would work. As if!"
"Pfft, intrigued? Flattered? Definitely NOT."
"No—of course I want them to leave! I just don't know how to—"
"Hey, it's not my fault they refuse to fly back into their Peter Pan horizon, okay?"
"I've tried batting, backhanding, swatting, swiping, swearing…any other ideas? I'm open for suggestions."
"I've tried to send them away, dammit."
"They refuse to leaveeee!"
"Who the hell do you think I am, the Klaus Whisperer?"
Best friends or not, they'd think she'd lost her mind! (And to be perfectly honest, Caroline wasn't entirely sure she hadn't.) This entire situation was crazy and impractical—totally unbelievable, nothing but a fairy tale delusion or a witchy trick of the…oh God, what if Klaus had somehow inserted himself like a parasite into her own mind? What if he—they—were here to drain her of something? What if this insanity was all for real?
"Are you…rebellious fairies?" she asked, gulping back that strangling lump of absurdity. And impossibility.
"No."
"Hybrid bees?"
"No."
"Wasps?"
"No."
"Transfigured butterflies?"
"No."
"Fallen Angel Birds?"
"Your answers continue to dazzle," said Naughty Nuisance Nik, "but nope."
Hovering over her left shoulder, untroubled, he slid his hands into the pockets of his black jeans and used the air like a giant couch. Fluttering his black-diamond-boned wings at her flirtatiously, their popcorn-popping sound erratic. Turbulent.
"Flying leech demons here to drain me of vampire blood, then?"
Two twitching lips followed by the same droll response: "Afraid not," they said in unison.
She could feel amusement ruffling the edges of their wings. She could taste poise, so patient and undisturbed, with every flap of invisible wind the two of them tickled against her skin and wafted into her nostrils. Suspense corkscrewed in the pit of her stomach. Knowledge fizzed higher and higher in champagne bubbles, but never spilled over onto her tongue. Or out. It stalled.
And it was the preserved mystery, those particular ingredients of what and why that still remained unspecified about their presence here, that drove her absolutely…freaking…insane!
"We'd never dare lovebite you without proper invitation, of course," said Charming Chump Klaus. "That wouldn't be gentlemanly, would it?"
"Oh, how kind," Caroline replied acidly, stomping toward her side of the room and throwing her tote into the small gap between the desk and wall. "I must be the luckiest gal in the entire world to avoid unwanted lovebites from a duo of talking mosquitoes!"
He bowed his head all honor and dignity.
"Tell me," she pressed, "have I been unfortunate enough to win some kind of twisted Cupid lottery I didn't know about or something?"
Orbed in purple-green flame that smelled seductively of lavender, Naughty Nuisance Nik chuckled from the left. He raked over her intensely as an endearment uncoiled against his teeth with a snake's lilt to strike her, "You'd like that wouldn't you, princess?" he crooned in a hiss.
"Excuse me!?"
"There's no need to be offended by the truth now, sweetheart."
Oh, no he didn't! Scowling, Caroline backhanded violently at the air near his body, which he skillfully avoided with a few easy, aerodynamic flips.
"I'm not. I'm never offended by real things," she argued.
"You are, I'm afraid," Charming Chump Klaus intervened.
She scoffed. Rolled her eyes.
"What the hell do you know?"
"To be frank?" grinned Naughty Nuisance Nik. "Everything, princess—" he shot her a wink, "we know everything."
Rubbing a finger across his lips in thought, Charming Chump Klaus chanced a look at his simpering companion. The latter offered him a cocky nod of encouragement (an invitation to proceed) which he accepted by fluttering before Caroline's right eye and clearing his throat to speak.
"There is still a small, innocent place deep inside of you that hopes mythical beings do exist," he began. "You like the idea of Tinksquitoes, as you so poetically termed us, guiding (or in this case, biting) you with little puttering heart-arrows that point you toward the kind of man and relationship that will fulfill you."
"You secretly crave to be polluted, you see," he explained, his voice low and dripping with honey assurance. "To be infected with what you truly deserve."
"Oh?" Caroline challenged, biting back a sneer. "And what exactly do I desire, Mr. Oracle?"
Charm oozed from him in cologne, drawing her in. Arresting her senses. Silence sprinkled over her like fairy dust and compelled her to listen.
"You dream of attaining that unpredictable yet unconditional package of reciprocation, don't you, love? You crawl toward it on hands and knees," he said, "bowed in prayer as you mutter be mine someday, please—your fingers reaching for it. Aching for it. Yearning to claim it as your own."
Charming Chump Klaus' harpwings strummed a classical serenade into her ear as he moved closer and peered up. Into her eyes. His gaze burned tender, steady, in indigo cloud light; his beating wing-tune soothing the air around him in lullaby.
"You know you desire all of those mismatched colors and uneven pieces of tape wrapping you up in crumpled, flexible lovefolds, Caroline. You want the package that's all askew with bows and strings, not because it's perfect," he licked his lips, "but because it's beautifully raw and natural. Whole."
Breath deflated in her lungs at his words, shriveling all of those secret heart cells no longer safe. No longer private. Now only starving, starving, starving. As lips parted just a crack, her heart ignited. Marveling, marveling, marveling.
"You sense the damage. You've seen it, haven't you?" he baited, an index finger tapping on his chin. "Felt it? Traced the history of someone else's scarred life with your own curious, trembling fingertips?"
"The imperfect perfection whistles at you from the darkness." Voice husky, Charming Chump Klaus cocked his head to the side and paved his tongue across his bottom lip all slow and sly and sumptuous; considering her with deep, flickering ocean eyes. "It calls for you to embrace all of its dangerous gapes and divots; to let them all in as only you can. Should."
"You know you should," he drawled. "You know you should because somewhere…somewhere deep-down inside of your bones, you know you deserve a relationship that's constructed from a box of honesty. Truth. The realest of realities."
"I—" she faltered, falling quiet.
"Yes," he nodded, confidence uplifting his lips, "you want the whole damn dented package, Caroline. Everything that real love offers."
Evening sunlight streamed in through the paned window as she stood before it, motionless. Vibrancy refracted and illuminated the planes of his face in sunset silhouette, sculpting him into a work of talking art: poetry immortalized in kinetic gobs of sky paint. While she baulked, gaped, and hesitated, Charming Chump Klaus gravitated nearer. His tone still soft; entrancing.
"You do…" he purred, "don't you?"
Caroline licked her lips once, then twice. Retaliatory words tumbleweeding along the desert of her tongue and rolling, rolling, rolling. They rolled away. Poof! Gone.
Suddenly feeling more than a little unnerved and invaded, she retreated backward; her butt crashing against the edge of the windowsill as she pointed a stern finger at the two buzzing Klauses. Alarm and suspicion paling her face, croaking her voice.
"What…what are you? Tell me, tell me right now!" she demanded.
He cocked one eyebrow. A smile followed. It spread slowly from mouth to dimples to two eyes twinkling with insight.
"Magical Mobile Manifestations, my beloved," Charming Chump Klaus offered with a gallant bow.
"M3 if you prefer," Naughty Nuisance Nik added. He buzzed before her nose, shooting her a wicked grin, "And at your delivery service from dusk 'til dawn and into the midnight beyond."
"I'm sorry," her laugh came out screechy, like scratching fingernails, "but do I sound like I'm in the mood to decipher word equations right now?" she asked, her voice raising. "DO I?"
The two Klauses shared a long look, took two deep sighs, flew before her together and said, "We're messengers, sweetheart."
Caroline blanched. Froze. Body and mind shutting down, down, down.
After a week of toiling and wondering, this was so not the answer she had expected. Or imagined. Then again, leave it to Klaus to commission himself magical carrier pigeon to harass her. The ass!
"Doesn't that mean you're required to—oh, I don't know—" she simpered ferociously; clenching her fists, grinding her teeth, "deliver a message?"
"Actually, yes."
"Then get on with it already!" she exclaimed.
As she stomped her foot in wait, some repressed instinct barked that this was no coincidence—that the presence of these mini-Mikaelson clones somehow correlated to that event from last week. Had she known the hybrid was going to dispatch an army of Klaus insects after her because of it, however, she never would have done it in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
If curiosity could kill the cat, then it could definitely curse Caroline…
Rumors of an impending Reign of Mikaelson Demise licked through the small college town of Whitmore in October flames. They ignited Elena and Bonnie in doubt, Stefan in gravity, Alaric in complacency, and Damon and Enzo (the latter knowing of the family in name and reputation only) in apathy. None of them believed the stories.
"It's gossip," they said, "nothing more than gossip."
But as Caroline corralled bars and concerts and study events, immersing herself fully in the university experience, her ears perked with every mention of the Originals. She couldn't help it. Curiosity always prevailed and she wanted to hear. Know. She wanted to know it all.
Tales of Aurora the VendettaBringer, a corpse bride with clawed fingernails made of red steel, traveled more loosely from lips as the months passed from fall and into spring. And like the excellent student she was, Caroline paid attention. She made mental notes, trolling for whisperings and murmurings of news; she researched incidents in Louisiana that the media deemed 'strange' or 'peculiar'; she kept a weary eye out for unexpected visitors. Always looking. Cataloguing. Listening for something sinister…like truth.
For weeks now, as the spring semester winded down, supernatural birdies who passed through campus for an undergraduate "refreshment" chirped to Caroline—some with fear, others with fascination—about a Letter of Doom that branded the sky above the French Quarter. Blood red, it apparently stained the Louisiana clouds day and night in ominous warning. The giant "M" slumbered, gathering strength until it grew teeth powerful enough to devour its one and only prey from the inside-out: Mikaelsons.
According to Caroline's accumulating sources, Aurora vowed to rue over the Originals' immortal lives like a plague. Raining disease and corruption. Robbing trust. Upending sibling loyalty. Sacrificing relationships, guillotining affection. She was the Apocalyptic Bitch in a Red Dress, and she either would triumph…or would never rest.
Truly gripping, prophetic stuff.
The problem with the information she'd acquired, however, was that none of Caroline's little chirping informants knew for sure whether Aurora was just a phantom hyperbole or if she was an actual flesh-and-blood monster intent on eviscerating the Mikaelsons. 'They are dead' vs. 'they are alive' contradictions confronted her every day. It was all speculation. And danger, danger, danger.
One night, two weeks before the end of the semester, Caroline snapped. She couldn't bear the through-the-grapevine suspense any longer—she needed something concrete. A voice.
Using library research as a pretense, therefore, she fled the dorm lounge where her friends were discussing some new threat and scurried to her favorite on-campus retreat: a wooden bench canopied beneath shrubbery and a large maple tree. She plopped down. Pulled out her cell phone from her purse. Keyed in a block code to keep herself unknown. Dialed the familiar number…and waited.
RING, RING.
Caroline just needed to hear his voice. To (anonymously) make sure he wasn't dead or desiccating behind a brick wall somewhere. You know, in case she or one of her friends needed another hybrid blood cure in the future—that's all.
RING, RING, RING.
This was just a necessary precaution. Safe-guarding. It was self-preservation and OCD survival tactics 101.
RING.
Mikaelsons had fended for themselves in strife and in war for over a millennia now, and hell would hurricane from him before he allowed some red-nailed trollop to scratch his family off the face of the earth. It couldn't happen. Wouldn't. Never, never, never.
RING.
The deafening blare of another unanswered ring. How its hollowed-out sound echoed in her ear like a broken seashell, whining, the ocean waves whirlpooling her eardrums in silence.
Where was he? What was he doing? Painting? Punishing? Sipping on a cocktail of bourbon and blood? Dying? Why hadn't he answered?
Why?
RING.
Breath tied into a knot at the base of Caroline's throat while her tongue licked the back of her clenched teeth, eyes stinging with pain because she dared not blink. Or flinch.
Fists curled into strangled clumps. Two. First the right, then the left.
Hands became scrunched white fingers and veins pounding, pounding, pounding from lack of circulation; intestines coiled in her belly, nausea rippling waves against her abdomen; lungs became prunes too shriveled to function…
…But she was fine. Perfectly fine.
RING.
This was not panic.
This was not worry.
This was not dread.
This was nothing, nothing but a missed call.
NOTHING.
RING, RI—
"Friend or foe?" Klaus answered, his voice dipping low in half-snarl. It vibrated through the phone with severity and command. "State your business, please."
Her palms became slick with sweat. A loud heartbeat blasted in her ears, percussing HE'S ALIVE! HE'S ALIVE! throughout her body in operatic symphony. But no words came.
"Hello?"
She was mute. Unable to speak.
"Hello?"
Silence, silence, silence.
Klaus growled, an impatient roar building deep inside his chest. The sound of shattering, crunching glass filled the background. "Answer me!"
She could not.
"Know this listener: the VendettaBringer's days are numbered—they dwindle away like tiny droplets of sand. I am close. Aurora's head I soon will possess…on a SPIKE! Do not make me come for you," he warned, "for I promise you, too, will regret it."
And then, with a click, he was gone.
Caroline glanced between her two aloft buzzards, addressing them both with crossed arms.
"Say what you need to say."
"Are you suuure?" Naughty Nuisance Nik crooned.
Zipping in upside-down, he descended onto her left shoulder with his hands cupped behind his head and his black dragon wings cocooning him in a deceptive kind of flying relaxation.
"Yes!" she exclaimed.
"Positive?"
"For crying out loud! Just—"
"Okay, okay." He raised his hands in surrender. "This is extremely important, so listen closely…" he suggested.
As Caroline gulped and leaned forward on her knees to see him more clearly, rock music filled the air. It started quiet, then thrummed louder and louder. Vibrating from his tiny little body all pulsation and back-beats.
"…We're the man haunting your shouuuulders," he sang in a low baritone, music humming from his vocal cords. "You sass, and we sneer. You hold up a hand, we offer a mirror. Heart-messages of yours are buried in fear. We pucker and smooch until you hear…so open your ears because the message is here."
As Naughty Nuisance Nik finished his tune, he strummed the fingers of his right hand across the middle of his chest like it were a guitar.
Caroline shook her head in disbelief. Backed away and croaked, "No."
"Yes."
Finals long forgotten now, her legs quivered beneath her as she slid down the windowsill to the floor, a loud pounding pounding pounding drumming in her head while the dorm room spun and spun and spun. Her pulse accelerated. Hands tore through hair to form nest of wild, untidy curls atop her head. Eyes bled into the hardwood floor, glossy and gleaming bright; hunger trumpeting not from the stomach, but from the soul.
Emotions surged and swirled in combustive chaos as astonishment tripped into acknowledgement and obliterated logic, denial, and disapproval. Epiphany drenched her in fire and ice, fervor and bewilderment, all of that sticky sweat prickling her spine in a trail of gliding droplets. It goosebumped five letters—a name—just one—across the tissue beneath her skin.
"Are you—are you telling me you're heart messengers?" she stammered. "From…" she compressed her lips together, reigning in her puzzlement, "from my heart?"
"So much more than a pretty face," Charming Chump Klaus applauded, notably pleased.
"Ding-dong, the message has been read: Your heart's true mate now lives in halves on either side of your beautiful, swirling head!" added Naughty Nuisance Nik as he crossed an X over his heart in confirmation. "And guess what? He's calling out to you."
This was not happening, this could not be happening!
"I don't…I don't know what I'm supposed to say?" Caroline blanched. An invisible bat blundered her head again and again and again. "Or do?"
"We're only here for you to listen, princess. The rest is up to you."
This wasn't…it wasn't possible. If it was, then that meant Klaus was her…that she ultimately wanted…that her heart belonged to…was she reaching out for him, too?
Crawling onto her bed, she collapsed back against her pillows and closed her eyes; opening her ears—fully and without restraint—to the buzz-buzzing Klaus-messages still playing in her heart on replay:
You wear his name
dabbed
in tattoo stains and paint,
calligraphied
within songs stuck on refrain,
seeded
across plains of grain—
all of your denial
dipped
in love's bane.
xx
There's no magic laser,
no eraser.
He, you will not escape.
xx
He's the voice
whip-cracking
through the silence
amid all your sassy
defiance,
that forever kind
of siren—
a love tyrant
not always near,
but dear.
xx
A fool perhaps,
but only a fool
for you.
xx
He's your moon,
your North Star
guiding you
home
back to love in the
afternoon,
your revolving planet—
forever yours
in hate
or in swoon.
xx
You taste his kindred soul
in sunbeams
spilled from a teaspoon.
xx
You + Him + Infinity
xx
This is how it never ends—
because again
and again
and again
your two lasso'd hearts
will begin.
xx
Eternity's sweetest sin.
Caroline heard her little prattling heart insects loud and clear, felt every letter they whispered as it crossed the threshold of fear and tumbled into her listening ear, spelling his name in bold cursive: K-L-A-U-S.
Klaus was the man. The hybrid legend. The reciprocated package. Bone to bone and blood to blood, they were the same; perfectly matched as the elusive One. His soul howled for hers in the darkness from far or near, and when New Orleans had whistled in the wind at her with dangerous prophecy, she packed her queenly bags and sauntered into his city primed to love, protect, and attack. Never once looking back.
Klaus, she'd save. Aurora, they'd fool. The world, they'd revere and conquer. And shoulder-to-shoulder, heart-to-heart, they'd rule.
My brain is a strange animal. I have no other excuses to offer haha. Thoughts? Thanks for reading and for the continued support. Ya'll rock! xx