Klaus's POV

I sat the plate of sliced baguette on the table with the rest of the food other town's folk had brought. I couldn't say I wasn't shocked at the turnout. Everyone in Mystic Falls had to be present at this block party.

"Klaus! Rebekah! You two made it." My sister and I are greeted by Mayor Carol Lockwood as we turn around from the buffet. She gives us both light hugs before turning behind her and moving to the side. "I don't believe you've all had the chance to meet. This is my son Tyler. Tyler, this is Klaus and Rebekah Mikaelson. Tyler's been living with his uncle out west for a little bit, but he says he may be moving back home soon. Isn't that right, honey?"

His eyes shot up to mine, then he quickly looked down again.

"Yeah, Mom. I told you I would have to discuss it with Mason first."

"Oh, pish-posh. I'm still your mother. You need to start thinking about coming back so you can catch up in school. Now that you aren't playing football, you will have to focus a lot more on your grades if you want to get into a great college. I will be having a conversation with Mason first thing in the morning."

Tyler's mouth opened to respond just as someone yelled his mom's name.

"Duty calls! Enjoy the party. We'll catch up later." Carol is whisked away by the crowd as her son still stands in front of us.

"I'm going to go find Matt." Rebekah falsely smiled at Tyler. "It was nice meeting you." I looked down as the sound of Rebekah's heels clicking filled my ears, then faded away. Now it was just Tyler and me.

I abruptly looked Tyler Lockwood directly in his eyes. "If you move back here, you're dead." The words crawled up my throat viciously before I could stop them.

"Excuse me?" Tyler Lockwood's voice came out in an arrogant and cocky tone. He crossed his arms over his chest as his eyes narrowed at me. "And who the fuck put you in charge?"

"I did. I'm the one who had to save Caroline after you left her for dead, then ran back to Colorado with your tail between your legs." Tyler opened his mouth to speak, but I kept going. "I hate to break it to you, mate, but just because you left Mystic Falls to escape your problems, that doesn't mean those problems disappeared. She's still hurting from what you've done!"

"Wait—Hold on. What are you even talking about? Left Caroline for dead?" Tyler smoothly looked through the crowd; which didn't fail to piss me off even more. "Is she here? I think she and I need to have a conversation."

"Even if she is here, why do you care? You almost killed her. A conversation with you is the last thing I'd think she'd want! If I were you, I'd stay away from her."

Tyler's nostrils started to flair in anger and annoyance. "And again with the mention of death!" He took in a few deep breaths to gather himself before he continued; his voice sharp. "Okay, Shakespeare. Last time I checked, people my age break up and move on all the time. Why are you being so damn dramatic? She'll get over me soon enough."

"Get over you?" The question tumbled out of my mouth just as realization hit me all at once. Bonnie, or whomever had possessed Bonnie, had cast the spell that made Tyler bite Caroline. Which meant the witch that cast the spell controlled every part of it. It was possible that Tyler Lockwood had no idea what he had done.

"Judging by how she's staring at you, I'd say she's getting over me pretty quickly." He clasped me on the shoulder and threw me a hard look. "I'll see you around…mate." Venom and sarcasm laced Tyler's voice as he let go of me and went to join his mother.

My attention immediately switched to the beautiful woman coming to a stop in front of me. Her blue eyes were as blue as ever as she had gone a bit darker on her eyeliner and mascara, and her blonde waves were tousled in the most perfect of ways. She smelled like lavender and…Caroline. She smelled like I had always remembered her to smell as a human, except intensified. The more she had hung out around the house with Rebekah, the more I noticed just how similar she was to the Caroline I had lost. There were so many things about her that made me almost forget that she wasn't the Caroline of my time. The way her voice did a tiny upward pitch when she was excited about something, the way she moved her hands as she talked animatedly about her future plans to Rebekah, Hell, even the way she stood was just as I remembered her to stand.

But I also noticed how different she was from my Caroline as well.

This Caroline was more eccentric. She took charge and wasn't afraid of doing so. She made sure everything was perfect and often felt like she had failed if anything was shy of perfection. She was a fireball that could never be extinguished.

Which made me love her even more.

I was starting to think I loved her more than I ever had, and at one point in my life, I didn't think that could be possible. But this Caroline, although different from mine, was the Caroline that mine had aspired to be. She was strong. She had a life going for herself and saw more coming her way. At one point I had even heard her discussing colleges with Rebekah.

What if me being here was going to mess all that up for her? What if I had waited all this time and come all this way just to have to let her go again?

I couldn't focus on that now.

"Hello, Caroline." I allowed myself to smirk at her.

"Hey, Klaus. I'm glad you could make it." A bright smile lit up her face before her eyes widened. "I mean—I'm glad you and Rebekah could make it the block party."

I smiled at Caroline.

"I'm glad I could make it too, love. Have you eaten yet?" I inwardly winced as I used her nickname, although she didn't seem to notice, or if she did, her expression didn't change.

"I haven't actually. Rebekah told me you…baked?" A teasing smiled graced Caroline's features. Her eyes seemed to mischievously sparkle.

"Oh!" I chuckled. "Is that hard to believe I can bake?"

Caroline's waves shimmered as she slowly shook her head.

"No. I actually think it's an interesting discovery. I would never have imagined Niklaus Mikaelson baking in his lair." She wrinkled her nose up playfully and smiled as I let myself laugh.

"Lair?" I asked through my smile. I had not smiled this much in a long time.

"Yeah." She began walking toward the buffet table and I followed. "You know, the place where the super villain sits on his cushy chair and tries his best to achieve world domination?" She began to pile a few items of food on her plate and got closer to the baguette.

"Do you really think I'm a villain?" I had to ask her. Much like my Caroline, this one was as equally hard to read.

"I feel like you could be, and maybe at one point, you were." Caroline's blue eyes twinkled at me as she held eye contact. "Doesn't mean you don't have room for redemption."

I could only think of how wrong she was. For all the things I had done in my past, I didn't deserve redemption, and I couldn't even find it in me anymore to be upset or sad when it never came for me. Another Niklaus from a different time would have been angry. Angry because, although he was in the wrong and didn't deserve any type of forgiveness, he still expected it. In fact, he thought it was owed to him. I no longer was that Niklaus, but sometimes I couldn't stop him from moving toward the surface if I let my guard down low enough.

She continued on down the table and finally put a piece of the baguette on her plate. It was then that she noticed I had no plate in my hands.

"Not hungry?"

I controlled my face to keep from smiling too hard at her observation. Hundreds of years ago, as a human, she had asked the exact same question.

"As a vampire, be it decades or centuries, sooner or later you stop having the desire to eat. Food stops calling out to you. It's not like it doesn't smell delicious or anything but it's almost as if the positives your brain pushes out to you for eating just…stop occurring. Instead, it shifts to blood. Blood becomes your cherry pie, so to speak."

"I noticed that Stefan and Damon don't eat much. Rebekah either. But you don't eat at all?"

"I do sometimes for appearances. Much like Rebekah. She eats around you all because it's normal, if there is such a thing. At Rebekah and I's ages, we don't have the desire to eat at all."

Caroline takes a bite of her food as she takes in what all I have just said.

"And just how old are you?...And Rebekah? How—how old are you both?" Caroline quickly amends her question to include Rebekah. I make sure she knows that I can tell she is asking only about me for the moment.

"I was born in a time where record keeping wasn't really a thing. On some forgotten rock in some forest that may or may not be destroyed by now is probably a record of how old we were up until we finally decided to move on to another place after being changed. The only thing we know for sure is that it has been over 1,000 years. We were born in what would now be called the 10th century."

I watched Caroline's face become calculating. She must have been doing the math in her head.

"Wow. I can't imagine being around for that long."

"As morbid as it may sound, as the people around you live and die and the cities, states, and countries build and rebuild, you get used to it. You change as time changes and you go on. The best thing immortality gave me was freedom."

Caroline smiled as she picked up a piece of the baguette, but then frowned.

"I've only been a vampire for a few months. I know it changes us." I can see the slight moisture building in Caroline's eyes as the lights of the party reflected off them. "But what if I don't like who I'm becoming?"

"Then change, love. Being a vampire amplifies what you were when you were human, but it doesn't force you to stay that way."

Caroline slightly smiled as her eyes became happy again. She quickly changed the subject.

"Okay! So, if I'm going to eat a piece of the Super Villain Baguette, you have to, also."

Caroline held up a piece of her bread and waited for me to grab it. I took it and laughed as she looked satisfied at my acceptance of her offering.

"Okay. We both take a bite in 3, 2, 1—"

"Caroline!" Elena Gilbert aggressively pushed through the crowd and came to a stop in front of us. "Caroline, it's your mom! She was just talking to Stefan, Damon, and I and all of sudden started to slur her speech. Next thing we know, she fainted. Come on! The ambulance is on the way."

Caroline looked almost apologetic at me as she quickly sat her plate down and ran in the direction that Elena had just come from. I swiftly searched for Rebekah in the crowd in preparation to leave, but instead, I saw Bonnie Bennett making a beeline for the forest.

I stepped forward to follow her.

"We need to go to the hospital!" Rebekah roughly pulled on my forearm. "Caroline's my friend and she needs us!"

"I have to go follow the witch, Rebekah! I'm sure she's behind this. Sheriff Forbes will be fine." I attempted to walk toward the forest line where Bonnie had disappeared into again, but Rebekah jerked me back so that I was looking at her.

"No, listen to me Nik! She won't be fine." Rebekah's eyes showed a hurt in them that I hadn't seen in a long time. "Sheriff Forbes is dying."