Thank you for your patience and for checking out this small little story! I have an idea for an epilogue/alternate ending but I don't want to over promise and under deliver. This was always the intended ending that I had envisioned when I mapped this out. Please let know what you think! Thank you!

There was an improbably silence.

Crickets chirped to the sinking sun and the autumn leave rustled from their branches and floated down to the wet ground. The rustling of the wind shook the tin roof above the porch. And in the dim in her human mind, years away from the heightened senses and no longer a product of the magic that bound her, Caroline could only hear the quickened pulse on her heart beating in her ears.

All those years ago, the first time she had met him, she had felt fear.

It had been a foreign feeling then, a darkness that coiled inside of her. For decades of knowing him, that fear had evolved into more and different things, molded and muddled by her feelings for him. The fear of being with him or apart from him; of him, of her. And then the fear of never knowing any of that again had gripped her with a ferocity she was wholly unfamiliar with.

The book dropped with a thud onto the damp hardwood deck. It took her an embarrassing long time to register that he was standing in front of her. A desperate sob ripped through her as she scrambled to her feet, tossing off the small quilt wrapped around her and launching into his arms. Even 1000-year-old vampire reflexes weren't enough to catch her neatly, as she wound one arm over his shoulder and the other under his other arm.

He certainly felt real. He even still smelled the same of bourbon and copper after all this time. Wordlessly, he scooped her up into his arms and into his lap as he sunk onto the steps of the deck, her sobs quietly wracking through her small frame. Her head stayed buried in his neck, the visceral fear of losing him if she dared looked up, released her grasp at all.

"Caroline, love—" he finally murmured against her temple; the love ghosting through his lips with a hoarse whisper. His worn hands continued to run gentle soothing circles on her back. "Look at me."

"I thought you were dead." She pulled back to look at him, her hands palming his cheeks. A shuttered breath passed through his lips. "I don't understand. Are you really here? Are you mine?"

The small murmur of mine that had barely been a whisper cored him in a way that both unfamiliar and uniquely tied to everything that Caroline brought out in him. In his small forever of a life, hers was all he could ever really be.

Her fingertips pressed into his skin; around the corners of his eyes, under the curve of jaw, across the peak of his lips. Thumbing away her tears, he leaned in quickly, pausing as his lips ghosted over hers, his forehead pressed lightly against hers. Fisting her hand at the top of his shirt, he kissed her without a thought or reason, a promise of everything that was real.

"You know of any other creature that could leap at me so freely and still carry their heart inside of them?"

X-x-X

"Two sugars and honey, right?"

The tea kettle had screamed just moments before and Caroline's hand shook as she took it off the stove and poured the water into the cup before him. Klaus's sudden presence had unnerved her; for the life of her now she couldn't recall what words she had spoken to him to get them to the point where she was pouring earl grey in her kitchen and feigning ignorance that she had every forgotten his tea preference.

He nodded gracefully and stirred the cup with a deliberately slow pace.

Over the centuries, the quiet thrum of human hearts had faded into background noise. When he had been angry or hungry or bored, blood snaking through the ventricles of the human heart had been a siren singing out to him. Sitting in Caroline's rustic and cluttered kitchen, the soft hum of her beating heart could only remind him of a ticking clock; the inevitability of an ending he didn't know he had to be prepared for.

"I was mourning you this morning." Caroline murmured as if to herself. She swallowed and looked up to meet his gaze. "And now you're in my kitchen. Drinking my freaking tea. My god Klaus, I've been mourning you for days."

"Days." he scoffed without preamble. "That's bloody rich. What do you think the last several months have been like for me?"

Caroline recoiled visibly, the change in his demeanor so sudden. "So now that I'm human, I may as well be dead?"

"That's preposterous." He gritted out. "But you are indeed, mortal. There are a lot of things I can stop love, but time is not one of them. And the last 75 years? There's nothing to account for that time I lost with you. There's not an endless stretch of eternity laid before us any longer."

The spoon clinked in a harsh noise, breaking the uncomfortable silent that had engulfed the room. He had a discomfort about him that didn't suit him and she felt herself wilt away from him just a bit more. It seemed their small reunion on her back porch had been short lived.

"I didn't anticipate you finding out about my de- about my diversion." he explained unaffected after a long moment. Spoon clinking once more, he rested it on the saucer next to the cup. "I was unaware there was still a Bennett witch around. We left things unsettled and now that I have had some time for reflection—"

"Reflection." She scoffed, sinking into the chair across from him. Moments early she had been in his arms, on his mouth, and now she felt untethered and unbalanced; a stranger with him. "How are you here, Klaus."

"I needed time." He explained, a shaky breath skimming over the words. "I didn't know how to obtain that without a diversion." He took a timid sip of tea and set the cup down. "And I needed you safe. You're mortal now; that doesn't afford you the protection you need."

"What exactly are you protecting me from?" she exhaled deeply, crossing her arms petulantly across her chest. "To your point, you've been gone 75 years, Klaus."

"My enemies have long memories, Caroline."

"Then why are you here." It was a statement, a demand.

A plea.

Uncharacteristically edgy, he glanced up to her from his tilted head. His hair; usually coifed in a much more mannered style was long and unkempt and covering much of his eyes. It was the first time she was looking at him past the whole of him since he had arrived. His t-shirt was wrinkled and the jeans he wore seemed almost too big for him.

"There was quite the skirmish." He explained as he watched her eyes study him from across the table. "Do you really wish me to bore you with the details."

"Klaus." Caroline released her annoyance and frustrations out through her breath. "We're here now. You might as well explain."

He wasn't even sure he had an explanation. Centuries spent calculating plans and contingencies and now, other than the scheme to get him here, he had none. Storming out of her house so many months ago, he hadn't planned to come back. He felt time apart would give him perspective, but it had only shaded and clouded his thoughts and judgements. The memory of their departure in Paris had haunted him for decades. More recently, his visceral reaction to her months ago he felt he owed her, and even himself a proper closure.

The words stalled in his throat, barely passing through is lips.

"I came to bid you goodbye, Caroline."

"Good- good, what?"

Stuttering was uncharacteristic of Caroline, but here she was a jumble of small syllables and a lack of clarity.

"It wasn't long after I left, and I'm not even quite sure when the idea has planted in my mind, but once the seed had taken root, I felt it was best to find a way to make it work."

Clasping both hands around her mug, Caroline drew the tea up to her lips to take a sip. "You faked your death just so you could come back here."

"Well, it's not exactly the most novel of my ideas." He responded, glib with a smirk and a slight roll of his eyes. She tilted her head just a bit in annoyance. "This relationship of ours, it's been arduous wouldn't you agree?"

"Tumultuous at best." She bit out, blowing her breath through her nose. Licking her lips, she settled a bit in her chair. "Once you stopped trying to kill me, it was wonderful Klaus."

The softness in her voice, the sheen across her soft blue eyes arrested him.

"I was angry with you. I didn't quite understand where to place that." He explained further, stirring the tea in front of him with a bored abandon. Clearing his throat, he dropped the spoon allowing it to clink against the rim. He looked to her directly. "I still am, just so we're clear."

"Klaus, how-"she gulped thickly, the tears widening in her peripheral vison. Sniffling and swiping at the rogue tear on her cheek, she sat up straighter. "I just—I was scared. I didn't know how to say goodbye. I didn't want to."

The pounding of her heart thrummed in his ears.

Swiftly she got up from her chair. "This is seriously weird ok? Like we're just going to pretend like I'm not human right now? We're going to be pretend this isn't the last we'll ever see of each other?"

"Caroline—"

"We're going to pretend that you're not upset with me?" she rounded the island in the kitchen, and Klaus followed suit getting up from his own seat.

"Grant me a bit of leeway here, love." He took a stance on the opposite side of the island from her. "I'm doing my best to be understanding. You have been through a tremendous amount of pain—"

"Stop it! You have no idea what's it's like!" Caroline exploded; the tears no longer held. "That's what you're really here for right? You want to know why I did it. Why I took the cure, why I didn't give you chance to talk me out of it, why. "she took in a heavy breath. "Why I didn't choose you."

Klaus took a shuttered step back, as if she had struck him.

"You weren't there when my mother died." The words were murmured now, as if speaking of her brought back a weight she hadn't carried in decades. "You weren't there when I turned off my humanity. Or when Stefan died. You understand though, the grief that consumes you, that's amplified because of this supernatural curse that was put upon you."

Grabbing a napkin off the counter, she swiped at her cheeks. His face was pensive and taut; words and emotions being held at bay. Many squabbles with him over the years had led them to be well versed in the art of fighting one another. They had usually ended in a clear victor. There would be no winners here today.

"You may not have been the life you would have initially choose at the time but you loved being a vampire." Giving him a sad smile, she nodded. "You were brilliant."

"I loved being strong. And independent." She acknowledged and bit her lip distractedly wiping at the counter in front of her. She continued to speak, but kept at the task at hand unable to look him in the eye "That withers Klaus. In the face of all that loss. You shift from being independent to just being alone."

The house settled into a kind of silence then; she stopped her ministrations on the counter but moved to rinsing the dishes off in the sink and moving them to the dishwasher. The noise hadn't necessarily stopped, but the conversation had stilted. She knew he was still there, that there would be no easy or hasty exit this time. And time felt heavier somehow now, especially in regards to his presence. The weight of silence nearly unbearable.

"How could you have been alone, when you had me?"

Her head shot up at his whispered admission, his confession, his vow.

"You had me, Caroline." He echoed, a small but distinct emphasis on his words. "But as you have well proven, you didn't choose me."

The small house, her home, and the small life she had built for herself felt vulnerable trapped in his words. There had become a very distinct moment in her life where she had reached a precipice and had made a choice. She wasn't naïve to think that choice would never catch up with her, she had just envisioned more time to come to terms with it. Time, she realized, had never been on her side.

"I had to make a choice, Klaus. I couldn't know then if it was the right one or not—"

"You knew exactly what you were doing!"

Caroline took a step back at the roar of his voice before bucking back into her position a mere inch away from him.

"What is that supposed to mean?! You have no idea—"

"All those years of traipsing around the globe with you, all those in between times! That's what I'm talking about! A severe need to never just stay." His voice cracked into a whisper as he gasped for a breath. The next words out of his mouth could have easily been a caress as softly as they came out. "You did the one thing that ensured I would never be able to follow you."

She winced and ate whatever words she had just prepared to hurl at him.

"Where was my choice Caroline? Decades of waiting for you to make a decision; a deep seeded understanding that I didn't deserve you. I killed your friends, put you on the verge of death, brought you tremendous pain. I never deserved the chance. I certainly know I don't deserve you. But I deserved to have a say in this."

"It's my life." The words were whispered but the timbre reverberated through her grinded teeth.

"Rubbish." Childishly, he rolled his eyes. "It was our life the moment you stepped into my arms in New York. I am well versed in the nuisances of your controlling attributes, sweetheart. I only mean—" there was a pause, and a softening in his expression. "I know it was your life, your choice and your humanity. But I deserved the choice in getting a bloody goodbye. You stole that from me.

"I tried to get you to stay in Maine—"

"Maine?! That's the yardstick to which I'm measured up against all other choices? You called; I came. From the very first night on your birthday— "

"Which you caused!"

"Yes," he hissed "and you never let me quite live down that one tiny indiscretion, have you? I thought we had move well past that. Am I going to have to explain this for the rest of eternity?"

"We don't have eternity." She bit out.

"Yes, well who's burden is that to bear?"

Even as he slung the words towards her, he knew deeply that it would always be his burden. He had carried the wolf forged within him for centuries and dealt with the pain of needing such and integral part of his being released. A hundred lifetimes had been spent stealing away from his vengeful father as he and his siblings were hunted down as prey. Now, an eternity spread out before him only showed yet another anguish to be fraught with.

She let his words linger and settle around them.

"The point of all this is, you're the only person my entire existence that has held me accountable to any rules. And I mostly abide by them. You asked me to stay in Maine. And for once I was completely caught off by surprise. I had every intention to making this a permanence when you shuttered me away in Paris. Caroline, I needed a breath to figure it out, not an eternity."

X-x-X

When they had bought this house, Caroline had loved the rustic interior and the quiet of the countryside. It had been before the cure, before even a possibility of forever with someone other than Klaus. Years with Danny has pushed her forward and rooted her in place. The time came to pick a future. It was only the following year she had watched the sun set over the mountain ridge, the vintage engagement ring newly nestled on her finger, and wept as she took the cure sitting on her back deck.

"You know, I didn't even have the option to think about if I wanted kids or not."

Her soft words punctuated the relatively quiet afternoon. The river ebbed through the trees somewhere in the distance and birds sang through the cool and gentle breeze. She had left him with the weight of his words in the kitchen and moved to the back deck, nestling into the same rocking chair she had taken the cure in all those years ago. He had joined her sometime later settling into the top of the back stairs.

"I was seventeen and undecided and then I was frozen in time and the decision was made for me." He hadn't turned, but she knew he was listening to her just as intently. He may never understand her reasons for the decision she had made, but he would respect her enough to hear them all the same. She sighed and shifted. "But then I had the twins. And despite everything, despite that they weren't even really mine, that was a gift.

"When Bonnie got pregnant, it seemed like the most normal thing in the world. Nothing supernatural or threatening, just this small miracle that got to be in our lives. I was her godmother, Leah, and when Bonnie and Enzo died, I got to help raise her. This too, was a gift.

"When the girls were really little, I would pinch myself sometimes. I didn't even know I wanted it— them, motherhood, the chaos until it was there covered in juice pulling her sisters hair. It was a once in a million lifetimes opportunity. The thought never even occurred to me that I could have it again." She paused, her next words a hushed whisper. "I wanted it."

He turned then, surprised etched in a face that would never age.

"I ached with how much I wanted that again." She continued, his torso pivoting towards her. "And for it to be just mine. Rick and I- we never even considered the girls anything but ours. But there was always going to be this unspoken vow that they were his, and Jo's and I was just a satisfying stand in." she chuckled softly to herself as a warm memory wrapped itself around her. "I didn't move for a week when I found out I was pregnant with Gracie. And when I felt that first kick, it was so much different than before. Being human, being mine, being someone, I made."

"You never spoke of this, before I mean, with me."

He had never asked he realized. He had always assumed that the cities of the world; their museums and beaches, their culture would fulfill and satisfy her. Even before he knew her, or loved her, that had been her wish for her all those decades ago. Sifting through is feelings, he couldn't have imagined denying her this small and wonderous miracle for herself.

"Klaus," she leaned forward from her hair, her hand landing on the back of his head. Her fingers wound between her curls, and for a moment allowed herself to picture a bright little girl with those same features. "I love you. I don't know if I even remember a time that I haven't. But that love doesn't compare. I didn't know it was something I wanted more than—"

"Me."

"Us." She amended, his head shifting just enough for her to cup his cheek. When he finally met her gaze, soft tears had once again began a descent down her cheeks. "We can't leave things like this."

Faltering under her plea, he held her hand to his face, kissing along the lines of the inside of her palm.

"Well, that we should remedy."

X-x-X

There was something familiar about Caroline's home that Klaus couldn't quite shake. It was defined by her style and small personal effects; he had often ribbed her about her affinity to nest into whatever home they had settled in during their times together. As more time went on, he even noticed himself making choices in regards to his own home to her tastes and preferences.

She had only come to the Mikaelson compound once and even he couldn't mask the contentment that exuded from him at having her in his home. She had spent hours in his study, grilling him about his books, his art, his time during various points of history. Reflecting back on that time now, he felt she was searching out something in her queries, not just about who he used to be but maybe an inkling, a root of who he could be.

Sinking into the worn leather couch, Caroline tucked her legs under her watching Klaus poking at the hearth of her fireplace. Soft classical music played from her hand me down record player, and the twilight of the evening settled in around them outside. For a moment, there was a comfort and familiarity that spread through her; a vision of a life that could had been.

"I would be remiss if I didn't apologize for leaving so abruptly the last time I was here." He turned to face her, the flames licking inky shadows across his face. "When you told me everything, it was shameful to me now how I behaved. To be the bearer of causing you so much pain, when I already had the responsibility of causing you so much previously…"

Eyebrows knit, but determined, she stood up and sauntered to him. Hesitantly only a moment, she slipped her arms around his waist landing her head on his chest and squeezing until she felt his arm wrap around her body. It felt deliberate and unguarded to him, to the point where his fingers felt comfortable finding the sliver of skin between her shirt and her pajama bottoms. A small gasp slipped through her lips at the contact and she buried her face into his torso.

It was only mere moments before they had begun swaying to the gently melody of strings that coursed through the small house. Caroline had always been partial to cello and violins; he had been thrilled to treat her to shows at Carnegie Hall during various adventures in New York. Time, in all its brevity, felt at its briefest as they fell into the familiar steps. One arm securely around her middle, the heat of his palm against the bare skin on the small of her back, the other with fingers entwined as she allowed him to move gingerly through her living room.

In all her years of dancing; at Miss Mystic Falls pageants and vampire balls, during weddings and school dances, and in all her partners, Klaus was the only one that could lead her but still be led by her. There was a symmetry in their movements, a tandem that was only built on trust and intimacy. He had grinded against her at clubs in Barcelona and waltzed with her in the background of twinkling Paris lights. She had shimmied next to him singing along with the Beatles as they brushed their teeth before bed and he twirled her down the beaches of Greece.

"You said I was strong." She murmured kissing the dip in his collarbone. Planting small kisses along his neck up to his jaw, she continued, her hands running up the planes of his arms, his chest until she had his face in her hands. "You said I was full of light." She kissed the small dip in his chin, the corner of his lips until his eyes burned into hers. "But you made me brave. You made me shine—"

Capturing her lips in his he couldn't hold back any further. It was different than their kiss earlier; the urgency was replaced with a languid caress, a discovery of lands once lost. There was a newness to his ministrations she realized as both hands scoured the whole of her, his tongue continuing its exploration. There was restraint in his approach, in his touch that didn't register at first.

"You won't hurt me." She whispered between kisses, eliciting a growl that caused her to press into him even more. Pulling back, she ran her fingers along his cheek and chin, across his lips. "Take me upstairs. "

x-X-x

In the moonlight, the pale expanse of Caroline's back reminded him of a placid lake, a flat calm. Her curls tumbled over her shoulders and down her spin as she hummed in contentment. His hands had begun a gradual descent from her shoulders and ribcage, to the tip of her tailbone. Hours had been spent memorizing every dip and freckle, every spot that opened her up to him, but experiencing her now as a human had been a brand-new experience.

He had no experience in resisting his nature with a human, or with her. He had to learn all over again how much pressure his lips, his hands and hips could burden her with. But he had been diligent and patient, the familiarity and connection settling in the fabric and fiber of his being also as soon as he had tasted her, sunk into her.

Every touch, every kiss was punctuated with a love letter, a goodbye note. Memories he would have to savor for an eternity.

"I do love you." She promised, her arms caged around the pillow under her chin. He smiled his dimpled grin, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "Everything is so hard to explain; about what and why I did it. Trying to make you understand that if it hadn't of been for you, I couldn't have ever mustered the courage to take the cure, walk away. But, not that. Its not hard to explain or show you how much I love you."

"It's certainly different," He rasped, his voice coarse and the words tender. Every plan and contingency he had thought of over the last several months always ended in the same conclusion to him: a final goodbye. "seeing the pink in your cheeks, the flush of your skin when I touch you certain places. Your heartbeat, not quite the siren's call I thought it would be, but a lovely melody all the same. I adore you. Worship you. I love you, too."

The weight of the finality of his words sank into her. Years of grief, his goodbye was not one she had made room for.

"But sweetheart, I can't be human." He bowed his head in penance, his forehead resting against hers. The possibility had been mulled and tolled in his head for months. He loved her, had bent impossible ways for and around her but he would lose too much himself in the journey if he took the cure.

She kissed him softly. "I know." She sighed. "I know."

"Rest your eyes, love."

Pulling the duvet up, he tucked the comforter around her bare shoulders, kissing her forehead. "You'll wait until I'm asleep?"

"However long it takes."