"Why are you running?!" His rage yelled after her.
He was hurt. Hurt that she didn't let him comfort her. Hurt that he couldn't do anything for her but still wanted to try. Hurt that she seemed to be running away from him.
She wanted to be alone. She needed to think and having him around wasn't helping. She ran, she ran faster than she's ever run. She just kept going, towards the setting sun, until now. Up on the tops of huge steep hills turning into mountains under her feet, the sun just a sliver of light about to disappear.
She sighed, catching the breath that wasn't even straining after all her effort, slowing down.
Klaus was there. She felt him. He chased her all this way and now he was just ten feet away from her, trying to understand her with his eyes in silence.
Good, Caroline thought, let him watch her, she didn't care anymore, so long as he wasn't speaking. Finally she can think. She climbed the tallest tree in her vicinity with ease. Standing up to the tallest of the branches that would hold her, she gripped the very top as the wind swayed with the tree and her.
She closed her eyes to the moonlight that was slowly taking over the sky. She breathed, feeling that power of nature she loved, that strength she loved, that thirst, that craving for more, she even loved that.
She heard Klaus and almost felt him through the sound, lean against the tree she was up, all the way down on the ground. He sighed softly and slid down, sitting like a haphazard child, at the base of the tree, who didn't know what to do because their emotions were going every which way.
She smiled softly at his turmoil, his uneasy state was in direct relation to her, pretty much every time, she thought.
"Yes."
Caroline opened her eyes. Who had said that? It wasn't Klaus, it came in on the wind.
She picked her chin up, daring it to say more.
Dark laughing, arose and wisped away, like those dreams. The dreams where she thought Klaus was taunting her for killing. She felt the threat in the laugh but wasn't scared.
"Yes, child." the wind picked up and wrapped around her, it felt like a blanket, real and sturdy. She let it take her and she was no longer holding the tree at all.
Klaus looked up, his mouth opened in shock and terror of what was happening to Caroline. He sprang up and climbed.
"Caroline!" he called out but she didn't hear him. Her body was suspended above the tree, she wasn't holding on to anything.
How, what magic is this?! Klaus hated things he didn't understand, especially when it had to deal with her, the one person he loved, fully and completely.
"Yes." he thought he heard the word whispered in his ear, but it must have been in his thoughts. He reached an arm out for her.
The wind wrapped around her neck, forcing her whole body up and pushing her chin up further. Caroline's eyes faced the sky, a powerful sensation was surging through her. She couldn't think or feel anything else but this power.
The wind roared around her, Klaus had to hold tighter to the tree. He felt so weak against it, what was happening to her?!
Bonnie screamed in a fever sweat from her bedroom down far away in Mystic Falls, her eyes turning milky white for the second time that day.
"The transition is commencing." The voice that had come from Bonnie's throat before surfaced once more and the word floated through the fierce wind straight into Caroline's floating figure.
[Caroline dreaming]
She looked around, in Klaus's bedroom, the doors to the den were opened. She looked around cautious. She knew she wasn't sleeping.
"In here, love." His voice sounded and she was drawn to it. He was in front of her now and leaned in. She let him come close and their lips touched, he bit her bottom lip and drew blood.
Caroline flinched away, feeling the drops down her chin.
"You're not Klaus."
His eyes sparkled at her, he knelt down and magically pulled real Klaus up into this dream state with them, "Good girl."
Caroline looked worried at real Klaus who was lying there, looking dazed, "Get out of him!" she screamed at this thing mimicking Klaus's body that smirked at her.
"But I thought you loved this one?" He taunted and real Klaus stirred more hearing his own voice. "He certainly loves you."
Real Klaus tried to grip his new surroundings and scrambled with his vampire speed to the wall behind him.
Caroline looked at him relieved for a moment that he seemed okay, before her eyes narrowed at the pretend Klaus.
Real Klaus was in a magical daze, how was he watching himself, what happened to Caroline?
"Who are you?" She asked succinct yet angrily.
"Oh, welcome to the show." fake Klaus's smile was radiant and he shifted into the form of Stephen, "Is this better? I'm not that happy with it." pretend Stephen shrugged and picked at his clothing for a moment. The look of her disdain at his jokes, made him smirk again, his voice was Stephen's, "I'm Amel."
"And WHAT are you?"
Klaus gathered that this Amel thing had been parading around in Caroline's mind, where they were now, looking like him and he wasn't happy about it, but he let Caroline lead the questions.
His smile never left, "I'm the spirit that wants you." Her eyes just blinked blankly at him to continue, she wasn't flattered in the slightest and that made his fake Stephen grin even bigger.
"I've succeeded in the most perfect arrangements for you to carry my energy. You're impeccable." his hands flourished, uncharacteristically of Stephen.
"What sort of arrangements?" Caroline crossed her arms in front of her.
Amel jumped over the back of the couch and lounged with his arm over the back beckoning her, with a loose wave, to face him again. This spirit was certainly full of himself, she thought, so she only made it halfway around. Reminding herself that actions speak louder than words.
"It all started with Klaus giving you his blood that first time because your silly boyfriend mutt bit you. That, right there, alerted me to you." He picked his hand up pointing to make this his number one. "You handled that craving, that power and temptation, so beautifully and you had no idea what it was. I've been searching for a creature like you since the dawn of time."
He let that wash over her, smirking and continued, "I needed to make sure you were the one, so I gave you just enough rope to hang yourself." He laughed.
"I manipulated those humans into killing themselves for the great struggle against the supernatural," He said this epically with his hands raised, "thus bringing the hunter to town, so that I could make sure that cutie doppelganger would become human again via the cure" He raised two fingers.
"I watched as you drained the boy who bit you, like a pro. I then coerced his little wolf girl to un-sire the hybrids from Klaus, leading him to murder them all," three fingers on his hand now.
"During which time, I gained the trust of Bonnie, though she thought I was Qetsiyah and we sealed away that prick Silas good and tight, couldn't have him lingering around. But she was too smart to let me into her mind at the time, all that damned meditation." He spat, "So when you and your lover boy here started that whistling bit, I totally took advantage of her then! Her drunk lust for nature's power - witches, am I right?! Hah" He licked his lips in self promotion and raised 4 fingers.
He stood up to Caroline now, his unlike Stephen grin creeping her out, "And then, what better way to solidify a perfect magic expression triangle, but have you, my splendid girl - who already drank some of the doppelganger's blood without me doing a thing! - kill the final piece? Putting Bonnie in danger wasn't difficult at all, you'd be surprised how many people can't handle the power you can! And your fucking loyalty and love for that witch girl... urg, it was magnificent!" His whole palm was up now.
Five points to his horrible arrangements. Caroline's now sorry she asked, not even able to comprehend how she had been so duped in every way.
"It was so cute that you fell in love with Klausie here in the process. I added an extra little oofph to his blood so that you could become more impervious and you thought it was just 'his ememense power' haha" Amel mocked her in a girls voice and grabbed Klaus's shoulder pulling him up to his feet.
Klaus didn't care what was happening to him, he was only focused on Caroline making certain she was okay. All this news, from this spirit, what the hell did he want?
"It really did make my job easier." He patted Klaus on the back with a Stephen looking hand, "He taught you a bunch, tested you, trained you, canoodled with you." His eyebrows raised emphatically, "Passed with flying colors all around, dear girl!"
Caroline swallowed, she hated that this Amel thing was using her connection with Klaus against her, but rallied.
"So what do you want?" she asked darkly, her arms still defending her position.
Fake Stephen's head tilted to the side, "I believe I said, you." He walked close to her, looking up at her from under Stephen's eyebrows, "I can't actually corporealize, being a spirit and all. And that's a big bummer, because I can't drink the blood that I love, but you…" His face was very close now.
"You can carry my energy and feed me. You have that strength, that control I need. You will gain even more power and we will have an adorable symbiotic relationship forever." Amel's tone changed for the more light one he'd been using the whole time, "Plus I wouldn't mind being in that package!" He looked back to Klaus, "if you know what I mean." he winked like a sleeze at the Original.
Caroline and Klaus were frowning in distaste, he just smacked his lips together in delight at their misery.
"I'll give you three days!" Amel exclaimed, "Get your shit together. I'm sure you'll wana write in your diary, make a list or whatever the fuck you organized control freaks do. And then on that full moon, you'll meet me in the center of the death triangle, I made so nice for you, and we will merge." fake Stephen's eyebrows shook up in down in hilarity.
"Don't think you can get away, I'll always find you," he whispered darkly, "I'll kill as many people you love as I have to, until you face me. Bye bye now."
Amel wished them well with a wave of Stephen's hand and the dream state of Klaus's bedroom vanished.
They fell. Caroline and Klaus fell the whole height of the tree from the bare air Amel had held them in, all the way down to the mountain rocks. The fall was jolting, but they were vampires, extra powerful vampires, so it hurt, but they were already healed.
They could have gotten up immediately, but they just laid there. Bodies strewn as they had fallen, next to one another but feet to shoulders. Caroline and Klaus blinked up to the sky. Each of them thinking, trying to take it all in, both of them were strategists and they needed to decide what to do next.