Beta'd by Tay | peachyforbes.
Drabble for klaroline69.
between altair and vega
a field of gold, a naked tree
x marks the spot
He stands in the middle of the roads Altair and Vega and looks up from his map.
The wheat field stretches in every direction, not one car passes by.
There is no naked tree.
Ten years. The witch reminded him. Death created time to grow the things that it would kill.*
In place of the tree, instead, stands a two-story house.
Klaus smirks.
And if time does a lousy job, leave it to civilization to bloody speed up the process.
Dropping on his knees, he taps a finger on the dusty ground where it sits. A drill, perhaps? Jackhammer?
He snatches his phone from the back pocket of his jeans and sends a quick text to Elijah.
Send them all.
He straightens up, walks two steps at a time to the porch, and knocks three times on the door. There appears an old woman with a kind face, holds the knob with one hand and wipes the other on her flower-patterned apron. She smells like the cinnamon cake she just put on the oven.
"Are you the owner of this house?" The original hybrid asks with both hands on his back and his best I-promise-I'm-not-a-serial-killer smile.
The old woman with a kind face has a kinder smile. Really, these trusting country folks.
"Yes, I am." She says, the accent thick in her voice. "How may I help you?"
"Well…" Klaus takes a step closer, spreading his arms and leaning them on either side of the door frame. He stands towering over the old woman who cannot take away her gaze from his dilating eyes. "It looks like you're going on a vacation."
There's a buzzing in her ear that she couldn't place.
Perhaps if she could tell whether she's awake or not, she would've cared.
There's one scene in Kill Bill where Uma Thurman was buried alive and she did this thing where she touched the lid of the coffin with the tips of her fingers before hitting it with her fist. A few hundred punches and a badly bruised knuckle later, she was free.
She's replayed this in her mind a lot, even tried punching her way out of this shithole, yet neither is her coffin made out of wood nor is her life directed by Quentin Tarantino.
This is her own 35mm nightmare—
a montage of her desiccation
her death in a long take
—and there is no end credits.
The first act is hope. Hope is a friend you hopelessly cling to but ends up stabbing you in the back.
So she killed hope.
The second act is vengeance. A stormy love affair, endless revenge fantasies that sends phantom tingles on her spine, make-believe squeezes on her chest—
And it feels so good just to feel something.
(Good means your lungs not burning when you try to breathe. Good is not feeling the rawness of your throat after screaming for someone, anyone. Good is dreams of mother, of school, of Mystic Falls.
Good is your dried brittle fingers not breaking when all you want to do is to pluck your own heart out of your ribs.)
There's a vibration beneath her head.
The rocks, the lot of them accumulated in her sunken collarbones and gaunt cheeks, they begin ratting against her skin.
Maybe if she really believes it, she'll say someone is drilling the ground.
"Jesus, Dave. The man told us not to fucking open it!"
"Oh relax, Chris. I'm just gonna take a look. See? There's no— Holy shit."
"What? What is it?"
"It's…"
"Don't fucking touch it, man."
"Yeah, I think we should just—AHHH!"
"DAVE!"
A mile away, Klaus hears the screams.
He counts four bodies on the dig site, four pairs of cold dead eyes, four mouths hanging open to soundless cries and not a single drop of blood.
"Caroline?"
Amidst the ruins of the house, she stands beside where the Earth is cracked open, mouth still latched on to the neck of a dying man.
She doesn't look up.
"Caroline?" He tries again.
Her skin is too pale, her blonde hair too washed out, and her frame too thin. The halogen lights around cast harsh shadows on her sunken face and her eyes are hollow and black when she meets his gaze.
Against the midnight sky, she looks like Persephone dragged out of the underworld.
Mesmerized, he misses the moment where she moves. The dead body hits the ground and, on the excavator, he is pinned, her breath hot on his neck. She bites him with human teeth first, such a light fleeting thing, before ripping his flesh with her fangs.
He can pluck her away from him with one hand if he wishes to but instead he lets his fingers curl themselves around her nape, the other fisted on his side as she begins to suck greedily. A harsh breath escapes his lips. His knees begin to buckle. From the corner of his eye, he spots the cooler next to him and kicks it open with his boot. He pulls out a blood bag, rips the pack with his teeth, and drinks.
He's on his fourth bag when her grip loosens and he slides down to the ground, taking her with him. She pulls away gently from his neck and keeps her head bowed, her shoulders heaving. He watches the color rush back to her flesh, sees her skin replenish itself with his hybrid blood, and when finally she lifts her eyes, all he sees is blue.
"Klaus." She croaks with her atrophied tongue, her unpracticed vocal chords.
And the original hybrid smiles helplessly, involuntarily. She closes her eyes when he boldly runs a thumb on her bloodied lip and there's a profound aching in his chest when she leans in to his touch.
"You've made quite a mess, love."
He hears the shower running.
Her tattered clothes lay scattered on the floor along with a few empty blood bags. One by one he picks them up and throws them to the trash.
On the bed, he unpacks a handful of Rebekah's clothes and also a few of his. The shirt he has on now is caked with dust and dried blood.
He takes off his Henley, puts on a black button down when, on the nightstand, his phone begins to vibrate. Quietly, he sits on the bed, watches the screen light up in the dark.
He doesn't touch it until it stops.
In ten lifetimes, he lost kingdoms and legacies, friends and allies. He lost three of his brothers. He lost a family.
Klaus thought he knew loss, felt every shade of it, until one night ten years ago standing in a dark alley in New York and all that's left to him was the last of her scent.
It was odd. He couldn't believe it. He has lived long enough to know that no one just disappears like that. No, not Caroline. Sweet, kind, and loyal Caroline Forbes wouldn't just leave and keep her loved ones in the dark.
His phone begins ringing again.
He flares both of his palms open and sees fingernail marks etched on his skin. He didn't even realize he has them closed so tightly.
He doesn't recognize this.
This disquiet that plagued him for the last decade.
You feel the world stretch longer, wider in every direction away from you and you feel everything is out of reach.
You grasp nothing.
But now in this tiny motel room where the walls are paper thin, even so with his hybrid hearing, he finds anchor in the sound of her breath, the rustle of her movements.
He revels.
He wants to keep this moment, soak up this quiet reprieve with her just standing a door away. This is the closest he has been to her in ten years.
Let him be selfish.
Picking up his phone, he presses ignore but types in a text to Stefan.
She's with me.
And he will never let her leave again.
On the bed, he traces constellations with the cracks on the ceiling.
The hum of the air condition is an engine roar and the radio next door is a marching band to his hybrid ears.
He hears no sign of her.
It's been minutes since all went dead quiet, along with it is his reprieve.
Now, sweetheart.
He just had you back.
Aren't you being a bit cruel?
He makes himself a deal. A hundred constellations and he will barge in to where she is.
He traces his ninety-eighth.
The last decade he lived in mad haze. He killed and compelled and threatened and begged and save him, he prayed—
Just for one more glimpse.
Just to know that she's alive.
There were times he even wished bloodlines work in reverse. That if she dies, he would know because he'd die too.
Ninety-nine.
He doesn't reach a hundred.
The door clicks open. Out comes Caroline clad in a towel, water cascading down her hair, her bare arms.
She hasn't said a word.
He doesn't know what to say.
Comfort—
How do you give it when your entire life you knew and received none of it?
What gesture, what stitching of words can make up for the years she lost?
Rebekah's clothes are laid on the bed and, without a heed of him, the towel drops on the floor and she picks a simple white dress. He averts his eyes and it's just odd how he's the one embarrassed.
He's seen it all before and he daresay she's still as glorious as ever.
Then he remembers that vampires don't scar.
"How long?" Without looking at him, Caroline speaks so suddenly he almost misses it.
"Ten years." He says truthfully.
"Is my mom…"
Klaus swallows audibly, the sound bouncing off through the walls and it's the thing they can hear at that very moment.
"Yes."
He just had the word out of his mouth when suddenly he finds himself slammed to the wall, a hand wrapped around his neck. He feels the plaster fracture underneath him and he grits his teeth. He doesn't relish being in the same position twice tonight but he bends when he sees the storm behind her blue eyes.
"I'll find them and I'll kill them." She enunciates every word. "You'll help me."
Death created time to grow the things that it would kill.*
But what of creatures like them who cannot feel time?
To be suspended.
To be neither dead nor alive.
He can only imagine what she hides beneath, how she mends the cracks and seals the holes from the decade stolen from her and she would never get back.
She should be mad. She should have had lost her mind. She should have turned it off yet her stance is steady, her voice is firm.
Truly, how marvelous she is.
He surrenders. "I will."
Her eyes soften.
The hand on his neck loosens to clutch the front of his shirt. She lowers her head to his chest so slowly it feels like a lifetime passes before she melds the rest of her body with his.
"Thank you." She whispers, her warmth seeping through his skin, and this is when he knows the girl so full of light he once knew is still there.
For this girl, he will tear the world apart.
Such luck, sweetheart.
He knows a thing or two about revenge.
Before dawn, they set out to clean up.
Caroline insists she doesn't need sleep. Right now, she just wants to keep moving.
Last night she submerged herself in the tub. It's the closest thing she could do to mimic her last ten years. It's weird but somehow her body has been so used to inertia. Being buried, everything ached and playing dead deadhelped with the pain. She then wondered how Stefan must have fared and couldn't decide if the water was a welcome company. Maybe she had it easier but then again he only had three months.
On the dig site, she sits on the hood of his car and watches Klaus light a cigarette. She didn't know he smokes. It seems too human for him but still she doesn't dare to ask.
The lavender sky is bleeding orange and his frame is a silhouette against it. He takes a long drag of his smoke, the blazing cinder is the brightest thing in every direction. The wheat field runs as far as the eyes can see and she fills her lungs with the scent of the open earth.
It's a burial ground they are leaving, not only for the lives she took tonight but also for a part of herself.
She knows she should be sad but she feels nothing.
Klaus picks up something among the rubble and in measured strides, he closes the distance between them, his hand held out.
On his palm sits a bullet.
The one they used to put her down.
It's the first time she has a good look and it's certainly no ordinary bullet just by the marks on it. Somehow she can tell where exactly it hit her skull as if it left a permanent dent, as if it's a missing puzzle piece of her.
Somehow she believes it's all been a set up—the alley, the robbery, and good ol' Caroline Forbes swooping in to save the day. It's all too contrived and all too perfect that even the most powerful creature in the planet was none the wiser.
But the what's and the why's don't matter now when she thinks about it. Now she understands what it's like to be wronged in the worst possible way and to purely want to hurt someone in return. Now she sees the world as it is and it's in infinite shades of gray.
But still, she's lucky ain't she?
Waiting to be found was the scariest place to be.
And yet he found her.
After everything, after rejecting him and pushing him away for the longest time, he was the one who found her.
"I buried the others." Klaus' voice breaks through the morning fog. "The rest we have to burn."
He's staring at her so carefully as if he would shatter her just with his gaze.
That amount of adoration wrapped up in one look, she will never get used to.
Hopping off the car, she takes the bullet from his hand. She lets the tip of her fingers linger on his calloused skin as her other hand reaches for the stick on his mouth. He watches her bring it to her coral lips, her cheeks hollowing as she inhales, before letting out a cloud of smoke.
"Let me." Caroline tells him, the corner of her lips tugging up to a small smile, and, with a flick of a finger, she throws the cigar to the oiled earth.
She curls up next to him at the drive home. Her head finds a niche on his shoulder, her forehead on his jaw. Sometimes he finds her brushing her cheek against his stubble, which is highly amusing, as the feel of the tip of her nose tickling his neck.
Sometimes he can feel her breathing him in as if his very scent calms her and every bit of him expands just at the thought.
He flexes his arm around her and squeezes her in. Her eyes are closed when he looks down to nose her blonde hair. He closes his eyes too and he breathes for the first time in a very long while.
* is a quote by Rustin Cohle from True Detective S01E05
A/N: Time for a Special Shoutout! Please know that I love you all and I wouldn't be writing if not for you guys.
lily94, jessnicole, HelloCutePanda, Guest, SweetyK, Ariel C. Rilmonn, mycutehamlet, zvforever, SeirouslySerious, chillwithJyl, QuietFlightRisk, TheMiseducationofB, flipped, primadonna001, regrets-collect93, Sarcasticcraccola, Guest, utterlyobsessedlove, MrsLeaMorgan, musicalfreak and of course my lovely Tay. This one's for you.
