It's baaack! I know, million apologies for the long wait. If you follow my tumblr you probably know why if you don't...in short it was a mix of finishing up my other fic + work craziness + the entire month of May being hella busy. But here we are again and back to regular updates. A few of you have mentioned putting a sort of "last time on..." type thing at the beginning when updates take a while sooooo...

LAST TIME ON The Madness Underneath...

-Caroline and Klaus have finally done the deed...and now are in a relationship. Of sorts.

-Marcel, Klaus's computer hacking colleague/friend, has come for a visit. He perhaps had some involvement with Klaus's revenge on Alexander after Rebekah's death.

-Jenna provided Klaus with some interesting info on Expression and the symbol they been chasing since the beginning of the story. She's seen it before in an old FBI case file and as it turns out...it's entirely made up.

-Shane is in the hospital after the Blackwood incidents. April seems content to hang out by his bedside for now. But Klaus has struck a deal with her for a to-be-determined favor in exchange for some research files that belonged to his deceased parents.

-After a nice dinner with Marcel and a few touching moments between Klaus and Caroline, Alaric comes in a ruins it all by arresting Klaus for the murder of Galen Vaughn.

Did Klaus do it?

We shall find out.

Enjoy!

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The gray summer light coming through the window reflected Caroline's mood. She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, still unable to get the image of seeing Klaus cuffed and shoved into a cop car out of her head. The restlessness of the night consumed her, and after tossing and turning for a few hours she threw back her sheets, jumped from her bed, and stormed downtown to the precinct to barge her way into Alaric's office.

"This is ridiculous," she screamed at him, her voice reaching an octave only animals could hear. "You know Klaus didn't kill Vaughn!"

"All evidence points to the contrary," Alaric insisted. "He was the only person to see Vaughn yesterday. He came in the morning when I wasn't around and they had a conversation. I have the security tapes if you want to see them."

Caroline wanted to protest. She didn't need to see the tapes. Her mind was made up. But Alaric had them pulled up on his computer before she could say otherwise. Klaus sat across from Vaughn in the interrogation room. There was no sound on the recordings but she could see the two of them talking.

Vaughn's posture was laid back, unaffected. Klaus had leaned forward, folding his hands over the table as his lips moved. He looked calm and confident as ever. At one point he left the room and when he came back he had a yellow mug in his hand. He passed it to Vaughn, who took a sip of whatever was inside.

"Right there," Alaric indicated, pausing the video and pointing to the mug on the screen. "Klaus could have easily poisoned him then. That mug isn't station issued. Where did it come from?"

"Where is it now?" Caroline countered. "Can't you swipe it for poison residue or something?"

"It's mysteriously gone," Alaric replied. He ran a hand over the scruff on his jaw. "You know as well as I do that Klaus has unfinished business with Vaughn. I still can't understand why he let him go in the first place."

"Well, he did," Caroline reminded him. "That's got to count for something."

"It doesn't count for anything. I don't live in a fairytale, Caroline, where I can trust the people I want to trust. I live in a place where men kill men every day. Sometimes for deep, dark reasons and sometimes for no reason at all," Alaric looked her straight in the eye. "The ones with no motive scare me."

"What do you mean?"

He let out a heavy sigh. "The FBI is going to want to build a case to put everything on Klaus," Alaric told her. "The Artist murders, the sorority girl murders, all of it."

"That's insane," she smacked her hand against his desk. "He was in rehab for half of it, and we know for a fact that Vaughn killed those girls!"

"The mayor wants answers and the people want to feel safe again."

"But it would all be a lie," Caroline said. "Until Silas strikes again."

Alaric gave her a dark look. "Don't start with the Silas thing," he warned. "And if that is even true, maybe the guy wants to pin it on someone so he can retire from whatever game he's playing."

"That's not justice," Caroline argued. "I thought that's what you wanted. I thought that's what you were all about."

"I'm telling you that's what the Feds and the Mayor and the rest of the City is going to care about. This is Chicago. It's about politics and PR. We've got a bad reputation as the murder capital of America. It's out of my hands."

The captain tossed his hands into the air, as if the gesture alleviated him from any responsibility.

Caroline fumed inside, but kept her cool. "Just let me talk to Klaus. He can tell me how to fix this."

"I can't do that, Caroline," Alaric shook his head. "The FBI will be questioning your relationship with him anyways and what you've observed of his behavior. I don't want you to be dragged into this as an accomplice, which could very well happen. You're an innocent girl. It's not your fault you've gotten mixed up with bad people."

Caroline scoffed to hide her hurt. The day before she had 'instinct and intelligence' now she was just a dumb girl. "I'm not as innocent and naïve as you think I am," she crossed her arms, but Alaric dismissed her. "At least I'm smart enough to know that if Klaus ever did murder anyone, he's smart enough to get away with it. You really think he'd let something like a security camera catch him in the act? Maybe you're the one that's naïve."

His mouth dropped open at the barb, but she didn't give the captain a chance to respond. She spun around in a fury of golden curls and slammed his door behind her. She ignored the stares from the desk jockeys and lower level officers around her as she walked through the precinct and down to the elevators.

Summer heat hit her already flushed skin as she hopped down the steps of the precinct, her mind throwing curses to the man back in the detective's office who refused to see reason.

"Hey blondie!"

A teenaged voice called from the bottom of the steps and she looked up to see a young, black boy approaching her. There was a faded ball cap laying backwards on his head and a skateboard in his hand.

"You Caroline?"

She shifted, tightening her grip on her purse instinct. "Who wants to know?"

"'Cause if you are Caroline, I have a message for you," the kid said. "Been waiting all day for a nice looking blonde girl and you're the nicest lookin' girl I've seen come outta that building."

"Who has a message for me?"

"Someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you, ya feel?"

Caroline shook her head. "What?"

"Chain of communication," he clarified waving a hand in the air like that explained everything. "Look, all they said was to tell you 'work backwards' that's alls I got."

"Work backwards?" Caroline repeated, still not understanding. But the boy was already tossing his skateboard to the ground and rolling away from her, the small wheels loud and brash against the concrete.

She watched him go, not looking back at her. For a moment she thought about following him, but he was already gone. There was no way she could catch him on foot. The sound of the skateboard fell away against the honking of cabs and the shuffle of the morning crowd trying to get to work.

A man shoulder checked her and she stumbled into a walk, eyes staring at nothing as she followed the flow of the pedestrians on the sidewalk.

"Work backwards," she repeated to herself.

The two words see-sawed in her mind as she took the train home. When she got there, Marcel was waiting in the kitchen. There was a mug in his hand. A yellow one.

Her reaction to the sight of that mug was irrational. It wasn't the mug from the video, but she didn't care. She marched forward and took the yellow thing out of his hand, throwing it against the wall. It smashed, liquid rolling down the wall like tear drops and bits of shattered ceramic scattering along the floor.

"Whoa," Marcel said. "Everything okay?"

"No, everything is not okay!"

He placed a careful hand against her arm and nudged her away from the broken bits, over toward the table. "What happened at the precinct?"

Caroline let her purse fall to the floor and sunk down into one of the dining chairs. "Alaric wouldn't even let me see him," she told him, dropping her forehead into her hand. Her "I don't know what to do."

Marcel took the chair across from her. "Maybe there is nothing to be done," he offered. "Klaus isn't exactly innocent. I take it you know about…his sister?"

"Yes," Caroline replied.

"And you know about…Alexander."

Caroline's eyes snapped to his. "What do you know about Alexander?"

"I know that he was hiding out after Rebekah disappeared. I know that he used a fake passport and identity to get to America. I know that I found out what his fake identity was and passed it along to Klaus, along with his location, and I know that not long after that Alexander was found dead."

"And do you know who killed him?"

"I know that what happened to that man, he deserved it," Marcel replied. "I'm from the south, cher, and in the south, if the law fails, we take it into our own hands."

"Well, it's failing now," Caroline replied.

"You don't think Klaus killed Vaughn?" Marcel asked. "He sat right outside last night and said that Vaughn would be taken care of soon. You don't think that might be a confession?"

Caroline stood, turning her back to Marcel. Her palms pressed together, in a familiar gesture of prayer, fingertips brushing her lips. But she wasn't praying.

She knew she was about to cross a line. The world-to her-had always been black and white. There was right and wrong. Her parents had taught her that. Her teachers had taught her that. The sleepy little town, where nothing bad ever happened, had taught her that.

And since she'd met Klaus she had been living in a world shaded in gray.

She tried to imagine what he would do in a situation like the one she was in. Klaus trusted knowledge and logic.

Logically, Klaus was the best lead. He had motive, he had opportunity, and the evidence was stacked against him.

Caroline had always trusted her heart and her feelings and she knew what her heart was telling her. Suddenly, the message the boy outside the precinct had given her made sense.

Work backwards.

She dropped her hands and turned back to Marcel.

"We're going to prove Klaus didn't do this," Caroline announced, squaring her shoulders. "And you're going to help me do it."

Marcel grinned. "Thata girl," he replied, slapping a hand against the wood of the dining table.

"First things first," she said. "The police won't let me have the files, but can you get access?"

"Like taking candy from a baby."

"They can't know we're working on this. Alaric thinks they might pull me in as an accomplice. I wouldn't do well in prison."

Marcel laughed. "I'm good at covering my tracks. No one will know where we go poking around."

"We'll need Vaughn's autopsy report. If we can find out exactly what poison killed him. We can start there."

Marcel nodded and got to work. He settled into the computer at Klaus's desk, hacking his way into the Chicago Police Department's online database. Caroline cleaned up the mess from her tantrum as her brain spun other possible leads about where to work. Her mind snagged on another thought.

"Hey," she called out as she brushed bits of ceramic into the bin. "Do you know what the 'chain of communication' is?"

Marcel looked at her over his shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"This kid came up to me outside the precinct earlier, said he had a message for me. He said he couldn't tell me who it was from, but that it came from the 'chain of communication.'"

Marcel nodded thoughtfully. "What was the message?"

"Work backwards," she told him.

"Sounds like it came from Klaus," Marcel guessed. "It doesn't surprise me he has his own information network set up in the city. That's how he worked back in London. He passed information through homeless folks, street rats, those sorts of people. They see and hear more than you think and most people don't pay them any attention." He turned in the chair and gave her a funny sort of appraising look.

Caroling threw the rest of the broken ceramic in to the trash bin and then turned, catching his gaze. "What?" she asked, not sure what the look meant.

"You realize that this means Klaus knew he was going to be caught," Marcel pointed out. "And he's trusting you to figure all of this out."

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Great."

"It also means he's already given you all the clues you need to do it," he added, he tapped the side of his head. "You just gotta think about it all. One thing I've learned about Klaus, he likes to speak in code. Everything he says can have double meaning."

Caroline snorted. "Just what I need. A boyfriend who sends mixed signals."

Marcel laugh out loud. "Boyfriend," he shook his head in amusement, "well, let's work on getting him out of jail first, then you can worry about all that other stuff."

He continued to chuckle to himself as he turned back to the computer and Caroline thought she heard him mutter the word 'boyfriend' to himself again.

"Here are the autopsy reports and here is the witness account from his cellmate," Marcel said a little while later. "He started having convulsions in the afternoon about an hour or two after meal break. Coroner reports that he had been poisoned with strychnine."

Caroline looked at the report on the screen. Klaus had been researching strychnine poisoning just the day before. Shane had been poisoned with a solution of strychnine. Perhaps there had been more relevance to their poison lessons that she had first thought. Caroline realized it was probably one of the instances Marcel had talked about, where Klaus was giving her clues, she just didn't realize it at the time.

"Does it say anything about tannic acid?"

"No," Marcel answered.

Caroline ran upstairs to get her laptop and brought it back down to the living room, taking a seat in Klaus's easy chair. She opened it up and did a search on strychnine again to refresh her memory. "Derived from a berry, used in pesticide . . ." she mumbled along to herself as she read. "Causes a poisoning when inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the eyes or the mouth, which results in muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia."

She scrolled, sifting through the information. On the desk, she spotted a pad of yellow post-it notes. She set the laptop aside and got up reaching for them, and swiping a pen from the desk. Marcel watched her scribble a few notes on the paper, sticking each sheet along the wall next to the fireplace, careful not to interrupt the part that belonged to Klaus.

"What are you doing?" Marcel asked.

"Mind mapping," she replied, her tongue poking out as she scribbled yet another note about the poison.

When she was finished she had assembled a plethora of facts and printed a few pictures of the plants and products the poison could be derived from. She studied her work, the chaos making connections that only made sense to her. "Any of these could be the murder weapon," she said to herself.

"Finding a murder weapon isn't the problem," Marcel pointed out. "Finding another suspect is what we need." He stood next to her, starring at the board. "Impressive though."

Caroline gathered her hair off her neck for a moment, staring off into space. "Who else would have seen Vaughn that day? Who delivers the meals? The report said he started having convulsions shortly after meal time. Maybe someone poisoned his food?"

"They move through a cafeteria line," Marcel told her, shaking his head. "No one else was affected."

"What about his cellmate? Does he have one? Can you pull up the info?"

Marcel moved back to the computer. A few clicks and scrolls later he pulled up another mugshot and file. He let out a whistle. "Artie Doyle. Irish boy if I've ever seen one, Chicago born and bred," he read the information. "Brought up on assault charges and a little bit of weapons trafficking. Guess they like to keep the Irish ones together."

Caroline's mouth twisted as she stared at the picture of the ginger criminal and his rap sheet. "Wait a second," she said. "Scroll down." Marcel did as she asked and she pressed a finger against the screen. "There. His lawyer is Tessa Charles. She's prosecuting Vaughn." She straightened again, brow arching. "You think it's a coincidence?"

Marcel shook his head. "Why would a DA take on a thug like this as a client?"

Caroline didn't know. "Can you see a visitor's log or something?"

Marcel tapped his fingers against the keyboards and brought up another window. "He met with Ms. Charles two days ago. Hang on," Marcel squinted at the screen and leaned forward. "Interesting."

"What?"

"This has been tampered with. When files are altered, nothing is ever really erased forever. Not if you know how to get to it," the hacker explained. "It looks like someone had made a note that Ms. Lawyer brought her client a small care package from his family. But the note was removed later on."

"Someone hacked it?"

Marcel nodded, clacking some more. "Also, suspicious that his mother is currently living in Queens and his father is unknown. One other brother, but he's in lock up too. Maybe the Ms. Charles has a benevolent streak?"

"She didn't seem like she had much sympathy for criminals when I met her," her eyes widened and she spun around for a moment, her hands framing her head as she tried to chase the theory developing. "What if Tessa gave him the murder weapon? Chain of communication right? Someone could have blackmailed her into giving Doyle the care package and the murder weapon could have been in that! Can you find out what was in the package?"

"I can probably pull up the footage from their session," Marcel replied. "Give me your laptop."

Caroline handed it over and few moments later he had pulled up the archived video footage on her screen. She took a seat, watching over the meeting. Tessa had handed Doyle the bag, but he didn't remove anything from it for the length of their discussion. Caroline groaned when she watched Tessa stand and leave the room.

"One more idea," Marcel reassured her, taking the laptop again and pulling up yet another video. It was more difficult to see clearly, but Tessa was standing at a guard window, handing over the care package.

"Everything has to be examined," Marcel told her. "The guard will take everything out of the bag."

Caroline watched, trying to glimpse everything that was removed from the small paper bag. She listed a small red handkerchief, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, a stick of deodorant. The guard examined them methodically, while wearing a pair of gloves, before replacing the contents of the bag and letting Tessa through the steel security door.

"One of those things are laced with the poison," she mumbled to herself, noting the objects and adding them to the wall.

"Look at this," Marcel called her attention to the computer again and she pulled a chair up next to him. "Doing a little research on your girl Tessa Charles," he said. "Looking into her clients and history, maybe to figure out who might be able to blackmail her into giving Doyle the poison to kill Vaughn. She's was raised in the system."

"What do you mean?"

"Foster kid. Adopted by a middle class family when she was fourteen after going through eight different foster homes. It turns out she had a brother and she tracked him down when she was eighteen after she graduated high school. Says here he was in a mental institution. Hang on," Marcel typed some more and pulled up another screen. " His doctors report that the two wrote letters and she visited him once, brought him some gifts, but they fought and he punched her, and after that she cut off contact." Marcel clicked over the screens. "Now here is where it gets really interesting," he licked his lips and shifted slightly so that his body was turned toward hers as he read. "A couple days later, the brother's cellmate is found dead. The autopsy report shows that he suffered convulsions and asphyxia from—"

"Strychnine poisoning," Caroline finished.

Marcel nodded. "I'd say we found our newest suspect."

"But why would Tessa Charles kill Vaughn? Just on her own, out of the blue?"

Marcel had no answer.

The ones with no motive scare me. She could hear Alaric's words ringing in her mind.

Caroline went for her cell phone, left in her purse by the dining area. "We've got to call Alaric, tell him what we found, the police can search her house or do something to connect her to the murder."

She barely made it half a step away when Marcel's hand shot out and wrapped around her arm. He stood up, facing her and she tried to yank free.

"What are you doing?"

"What are you doing?" Marcel questioned. "Look, I like you, and Klaus is my boy. But I'm not about to march into the Chicago precinct and let the cops know I hacked my way into their system, okay? They aren't likely to take a shine to that."

"We can't just let our lead go!"

Marcel's eyes shifted around the room, his gaze landing on Caroline's mind map wall. "The cops aren't going to help. The law isn't going to be your friend. You're on your own in this," he let go of her arm. Caroline rolled her shoulder and frowned. "Klaus taught you the brains part, I'm going to teach you the other part."

"What other part?"

Marcel's lips and teeth spread into a saccharine grin and Caroline arched a brow. She could already tell she wasn't going to like whatever it was he was about to teach her.

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Caroline flinched every time a neighborhood car or yellow cab rolled down the street. It was full dark, except for the lamps lighting the sidewalks. She was in a pair of black workout leggings and one of Klaus's black Henleys. She didn't own anything black besides the leggings, so she had to borrow. Black clothing wasn't really her thing, but Marcel had insisted.

She smoothed a stray hair from her face back into her tight braid and shifted her head to look over her shoulder catching a bit of Klaus's smell on the fabric. The girly part of her heart clenched. It had been almost twenty-four hours since she had seen or spoken to him. It was the longest they had been apart since they'd met.

"Almost got it," he whispered from below her.

Marcel was crouched in front of a door knob, twisting a couple odd looking tools into the lock and trying to break in.

It clicked and Caroline heard the beep of an alarm system. That was her cue. She slipped through the open door and spotted a keypad on the wall just next to the entrance. Her latex covered fingers pressed the number combination that Marcel had hacked from the security website. The mechanism blinked green and read "stay" and Caroline let out a breath as her now partner-in-crime shut the door behind them.

Caroline followed as he walked forward into the small two-bedroom home. She couldn't help laughing to herself as they crept over the hardwood floors. Now she could add breaking and entering to the list of questionable activities she had engaged in recently. Her mother would be so proud.

They made their way through the house in the darkness. Tessa had left a quarter of an hour ago. She'd looked dressed up and the black-clad pair were hoping she would be out for a while.

Marcel slipped into the living room and discreetly drew the curtain, giving them a bit more protection from prying eyes. The street lamps allowed a little light, but her eyes were adjusting. Caroline glanced over the bookshelf on the far wall. The titles struck her. Amidst the plethora of law books there were quite a few Shakespeare titles. Caroline slipped one from the shelf and opened it up to the page that was marked by a red ribbon. A bit of the text had been underlined in pencil, the lead soft against the white page,

"Think you I am no stronger than my sex," Caroline read quietly.

"Being so father'd and so husbanded?

Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose 'em:

I have made strong proof of my constancy,

Giving myself a voluntary wound

Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience.

And not my husband's secrets?"

She closed the book and flipped it over to check the title of the play.

"So, what are we looking for exactly?"

"Creepy masks, black jumpsuits, stiletto heels," Caroline listed as she put the copy of Julius Caesar back on the shelf.

Marcel smirked in the darkness, his teeth white against the moonlight. "Sounds like a Saturday night down in New Orleans," he chuckled.

"Also, strychnine poisoning or anything that can make it," she continued. "I'll check her bedroom and bathroom. You take the kitchen."

Marcel gave her a nod and disappeared from the living room. Caroline slunk through the darkness toward the other side of the home. The halls were covered in paintings, but no personal photos. Caroline squinted at them in the darkness. She brushed her fingers at the corner of each one, all labeled with the same moniker.

A.S.

Tessa's bedroom door was cracked open at the end of the hallway. Inside was a Queen bed in the center. There was a large window covering the wall that faced the street and across from the bed was a long dresser, a mirror hanging over the top.

It was an orderly room, for the most part. No clothes laying on the floor or items out of place. Caroline noticed a jewelry box on the dresser. A small gold bracelet was left next to it and a class ring.

Caroline reached for it, but stopped just before her fingers touched the gold. Her head jerked up at the sound of a door from down the hall.

She remained still as a statue, counting breaths, waiting to hear footsteps coming closer or Tessa's voice, dreading that she had been caught in the act. The rational part of her brain told her it was probably just Marcel, opening another door or searching around, just making too much noise. She wished she could call out for him to be sure, but didn't want to risk it.

After a few moments of nothing, she let out a breath. It was only Marcel, she told herself again. She was sure of it. Steeling herself again, she pinched the ring between her gloved index finger and thumb and brought it close to her face so she could get a good look at it.

It was definitely a girl's style ring, with a small delicate band and a pink jewel wrapped in the middle.

"St. Charles High School," she read the description. "Class of 2011."

Caroline's eyes widened. The ring didn't belong to Tessa.

Alexandra Ivy Walker.

Caroline read the name over again. She remembered that name. It was a girl from the university; one of the girls Vaughn had killed during the birthday party in the dorm. Tessa had her ring, out in the open on her dresser. A piece of evidence from a murder victim in the home of the prosecuting lawyer and, in Caroline's mind, potential murder suspect. If that wasn't proof enough to make Tessa a more solid suspect to Alaric and get Klaus out of jail, she didn't know what was.

In her excitement, she missed the tale-tell creak of floorboards behind her. Caroline glanced up at the mirror and froze when she saw Tessa's dark reflection in the glass. Shadows from the lamplight outside cut across her bronze face and in that moment Caroline's breath caught. With Tessa's face half covered in darkness, Caroline found herself back in the hotel room at the Blackwood, rain pounding on the window and a cruel woman standing in front of her, wearing an ornate mask and threatening her life.

She realized it was the very woman that was standing behind her at that moment.

Caroline whirled to face, her braid whipping around her face, and smacking her in the nose. Tessa cocked her head and gave her a smile.

"Hello Caroline."

She opened her mouth but was silenced as Tessa cracked her across the head with something hard and her world went black.

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Boom boom boom!

Hope you guys are sticking with me and following along okay. I know these long updates are a bitch when you're trying to keep things straight within the stories but hopefully it's still enjoyable.

Credit to the above passage goes to Shakespeare...and maybe Christopher Marlow too. Depending on who you ask.

Thank you to my betas for this chapter Kkausykins, klarolineepiclove, and livingdeadblondequeen. They're amazing! Alex (klarolineepiclove) actually visited me here in Chicago recently and is proud of the fact that even though it is the "murder capital of the u.s." she managed to survive.

And again, thank you readers for your massive amounts of encouragement. I know the fandom has dwindled a bit, but I'm still here, and I'm glad for those of you who are with me :)

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