Chapter 16

"Well this is fun."

"Caroline."

Caroline rolled her eyes at Klaus' serious tone; his interest devoted the magazine in his hands. Slouching further down into the rigid hospital chair she patted her hand on his thigh. Three days post C-bomb, and things had fallen into a comfortable uncomfortable arrangement between them. They didn't acknowledge the inevitable, but it sat festering just below the surface anxiously awaiting its breaking point.

"Really, it's a damn Mardi Gras in here." Her attention focused on yet another nurse walking past their small waiting room. "How long are we going to wait for this doctor? We should just go do something; jump off Folly Pier or go sky diving or eat ice cream until we puke. Doesn't that sound like more fun than this?"

"On the contrary," he motioned to the pages he was perusing. "I am just about to discover the perfect bikini for my body type."

"Seriously." She snorted softly, lacing her fingers through his. "We can't have your boobs looking better than mine."

Unashamed he peaked down the dip in her blouse and smirked. "Not quite possible, love."

Caroline shuffled again in her seat but tried to relax as the squeeze of Klaus's fingers against hers. Everything about the waiting room they sat in was clinical and depressing; there wasn't a bright spot or splash of color anywhere. She couldn't argue or persuade him to not accompany her to the small tedious appointment and she wasn't finding much success into convincing him to bail now. Days into their dual confession and they had made no progress in regards to what came next.

She had always been the planner. It provided her structure and comfort but this was so vastly different than anything she had encountered. With her own illness it had been difficult; how did she process everything and get everything done and leave her loved one with some resemblance of a legacy to remember her by?

Now however, she could barely contain everything she had been struggling to hold. Every beat of his heart against her palm, every intake of breath, every touch of his hand was another reminder that there would come a day when it would be the last time. The fissure inside of her widened further every day that inched closer to the inevitable.

"This is exactly what I didn't want for us."

He gave her a curious glance as he closed the magazine. "Pardon me?"

"I mean," she released his hand and sat up straighter. "Two weeks ago, we were scuba diving in the ocean and making love in a pillow fort. Now, you're holding my hand while we wait for another stupid test that won't make any difference."

"Caroline-"

"I'm sorry." She shook her head softly and resumed her anxious twiddling next to him. "I stand by my assertion that we should still eat ice cream."

He pecked her pouted lip and she gifted him with a small smile. "You have to stop fidgeting, sweetheart." Fishing in his pocket he produced two fun size pieces of chocolate. "Here, this will help with all the piddling."

Furrowing her brow, she took the candy from him. "Where did you get these?"

"I may have pilfered them from the bowl at the nurse's station."

"I forgot how close it was to Halloween." She mused as she unwrapped one of the candies and took a bite. "Time feels different now."

"Growing up, my family liked to indulge themselves and their vanity every year with an outlandish Halloween party." He took the other half of the treat and plopped it into this mouth. He couldn't have agreed with her more on her thoughts on time, but wallowing in each other's self-indulgent sadness would do them no favors.

Latching onto his forearm with a fierce grip, she sat up straight in her chair. Her eyes were suddenly alight with happiness. "Did you dress up?!"

"For a few years, yes. Then I turned 8, and quickly grew weary of it." He chuckled as she swatted him playfully. "If it makes up for it, Hope has decided this year she wants to be the 'big bad wolf' with Kol accompanying her as Little Red Riding Hood."

"Oh my gosh." She snorted softly into his shoulder, an eruption of giggles coming from her. "That's perfect. I can't wait to see him in a dress."

"Kol is oddly content in most cross-dressing situations."

"You could be Santa Klaus!"

"Absolutely not." Klaus deadpanned even though he was secretly basking in the glow of her joy. She had laughed with and at him, and smiled in the days since their confession but the light hadn't reached her eyes quite like they were currently. He longed to be able to sketch such captivation, even with the weight of knowing the days, the moments he would be permitted to give her would dwindle with the thief of time.

"Oh come on! That's perfect!" she bit her lip, the blue of her eyes twinkling mischievously. "You would look so sexy in the red jacket-"

"Sweetheart…"

"Please!" she tugged on the lapels of his light jacket dramatically as she grinned. "Be my Santa Klaus! I may not even make it-"

The words died in her throat, the echo reverberating off the dull walls around them. Her mouth dropped ajar watching the lump travelling down to the base of his throat. Slowly, her fingers unfurled from his collar one by one until her hands trailed across his shoulder and down to this chest, placing some distance between them. He cupped her cheek then, latching onto one of her hands with his free one, coercing her to look at him.

"I mean, it's Christmas. It's so far away." She cleared her throat, the tears that threatened to spill dying behind her eyelids as she bucked up her resolve. "I could dress up as a sexy elf…"

The darkness that flashed behind his eyes was only there a moment before it had rectified itself.

"Much too tall to be an elf." He decided pecking the tip of her nose with his finger tip.

Before an utterance of a reply could be spoken, a nurse came in and called Caroline's name. He mustered up a smile as she gave him once last glance before following the nurse down the hall.

It was alone in the waiting room he allowed his mind the small indulgence of what short life he had left without Caroline meant.

X-x-X

"What do you think of this color?"

Caroline stepped back to glance between the two swatches of paint she had coated onto the bedroom wall. Colby lay on the floor beneath her, his fluffy tail swishing happily against her bare feet. She took a great deal of comfort knowing that eventually he would end up here, probably with her mother and that he would be content living out his days sunning next to the lake and chasing ducks around the water.

"I think," Klaus murmured slipping his arms around her waist from behind, "That the one on the right reminds me of that little coral birthmark you have just behind your knee. The one that shaped like tulip."

"You noticed that?" she asked, her head finding his chest, her hand entwining in his. He mumbled an incoherent agreement, burrowing his head into her hair and kissing her just below her ear. "My mom has the same one."

This week had seemingly been the longest of his entire life. The experience was so foreign; he had already lived through and beaten this once prior and yet the finality of this time made the occurrence that much more different. Their day spent in the hospital had brought everything front and center. As much as he fought it, he came to see Caroline differently. Not that his feelings had changed, but that this once strong fortitude of a woman was reduced to a weakness that she would inevitably succumb too. And he was powerless to help.

It didn't seem fair, or just.

Spinning in his arms, she looped her arms around his neck. "Speaking of my mother," she faltered, twisting her fingers at the top of his spine and tucking her face under her sea of curls. Sucking in her breath she tilted her head back up and squared her shoulders. "I, I have to go see her next weekend. It's a big thing that my home town throws every year for all the local first responders."

Before he could muster a reply, she had pulled away from him and continued her scrutiny of the wall behind her. He found relief in knowing that there was now a reason behind the urgency of fixing the small lake house but grew concerned with how much energy and focus was poured into task. He didn't bother her with platitude of reasoning; he had done nothing short of binging on his own sweet form of denial for the duration.

Time had crackled around him; a tour de force that prickled at him every chance it got. He marveled at the various points in his life where time didn't matter. Painting had always seemed to pull into a warp of space where time didn't exist. It was only a blink and he had a daughter who stood at his waist and rivaled his worst tantrums. And without wanting to acknowledge it, he knew that the time had come to tell his family and place the bookend of his life.

"I think you should go with the one on the left." He murmured, his fingers trailing along the small sliver of skin just above her cut off jeans. He picked up the rod connecting to the roller and dipped it into the tray of paint. "If you'll fetch us some tea, I'll have this done in no time."

"I have to tell her, don't I?" he may as well have heard the thought for how small her voice passed through her lips. He could imagine her then, a small child who had broken the cookie jar, lip quivering at the possibility of her mother knowing.

A shuddered breath from him and then,

"We have to tell them all."

He resigned to the outcome then. He could picture Elijah, stone faced and calm. The oldest and protector of their siblings would garner the small peak in his eyebrow, the only tell that would betray the despair of the knowledge. Kol would more than likely make a deprecating joke and then promptly drown in a neat scotch. He would later be found with red in his eyes, like Klaus had found him under the stairs after Henrik had died. Rebekah would be the egg that cracked first; a screeching banshee alternating between curses and declarations of love.

Behind them in their varying degrees of grief and understanding would be Hayley and his small daughter. He only knew Hayley as a ferocious mother, determined colleague. There was a grand respect for both those people in nearly equal measure. Finding it strange that they had worked together and raised a daughter together, he couldn't place a reaction for her. He felt she would react for Hope first and knew she would have the wisdom and grace to weather their daughter through it. There had always been tremendous gratitude for Hayley as his mother's daughter but it swelled in a way unfamiliar to him as he thought of their life past his.

Hope.

There seemed to be no less than half a million moments he would miss. Would she remember him as Elijah walked her down the aisle on her wedding day? Would she resent him for leaving her when her first boyfriend made her cry? Would she be relived of embarrassment when he didn't threaten her prom date? She was young, much too young to be dropped into the ocean of loss that would accompany his departure. How could he leave her and still convince her he could never leave?

"I'll go with you." The words were escaping from his throat before he had a chance to even process them. Part of it was pure selfishness; he knew he wouldn't be able to face his family without the possibility of seeking refuge in her arms. The other part, the more genuine part could feel how palpable her relief was at his offer. "I have to warn you however, I've never met any parents before."

"I've never told my parents I have cancer."

It was a quip that was meant to come off as light but she still winced as she spoke them. She was navigating in uncharted waters, and she didn't know if there would ever be more of a life raft than Klaus was at this moment. She would never be able to remove the stain of heartache her mother wore both times her father was taken from their life. It didn't seem fair that fate was handing her the same deal all over again; a hand she would never win.

"Do you think this will get easier?" her teeth sunk on her bottom lip as the words mulled in her head. "Don't answer that. We both know what it is." A deep sigh rattled in her chest before thieving through her mouth and she uncrossed her arms, her light grey cardigan swinging at her hips. Klaus settled into the silence with her as she worked through the thoughts whirling in her head.

He couldn't be certain, but he was sure that her strangled scream came first as her foot connected with the paint can in front of her, the contents splattering over the wall, the floor, her legs, his chest. It was an odd cacophony of sounds; her exasperation, the inking of thick paint, the crunching of tin-coated steel as the can bounced off the wall.

Wordlessly he ambled out of the room as she slowly, painfully released her clench palms, her fingers aching one by one as they felt the blood course back through them. There was a functional part of her brain that was in a panicked state looking on at the coral massacre in front of her. Yet, she remained rooted, transfixed and paralyzed with the anger coursing through her.

Klaus was back only moments later, two gallon buckets in one hand and a bucket of small quarts in the other. Neatly he set them up in various spacings about two feet from the wall, quickly popping off each lid with a screw driver. The pink-orange color covered him in a near comical way and Caroline hadn't quite deciphered what his intentions were. He jogged out of the room and was back almost instantly, the sledge hammer swinging at his side.

His grin was impossibly impish as he swirled the hammer once at his side and them smashed one of the quarts filled with a soft yellow. Caroline's hands flew up instinctively a squeal of surprise echoing off the walls of the empty room. She could feel the paint on her face and in her hair, but more importantly the small tremors that shook her from his body beside her from a laughter she found infectious.

He kissed her, the yellow and coral on their faces pasting their cheeks together, his fingers finding the curls of her hair. Handing over the hammer, he quirked an eyebrow in challenge and dropped the instrument in her palm. Bending over, as if teeing off, she lined up the hammer with a quart of lavender purple and hurled contents towards the wall a dizzyingly array of droplets landing every corner from the ceiling to the curve of his mouth.

Using his hand, Klaus scooped up a handful of paint the color of leaves in the first dawn of spring, looping it at the wall.

Another sigh, bubbled with relief instead of weighted with grief.