Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries - the original books were written by L J Smith and the TV show was developed by Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson. This story is the product of their characters and world and my imagination. Any recognisable lines (verbatim or amended) from Vampire Diaries episodes belong to the writers, not me.
Caroline
Caroline woke suddenly, gasping awake as her mind replayed a jumble of memories from the party.
Oh god – the party. A dull evening suddenly turned insane. The blood, and the crazed creature who had cut through them all with his fangs until she'd managed to get hold of her father's gun (all the while trying not to look at his bloodied face and lifeless eyes – he'd never even had the chance to fire one bullet before he'd been attacked) and shoot the monster enough times that he had been forced away and unable to finish her off.
She'd been dying, though, bleeding out quickly enough that she was sure she'd follow her parents into death's embrace in a matter of minutes.
And then that man … no, not a man, another monster.
So handsome, but with a smile like a sharp knife.
He had spoken such beautiful, tempting words to her. He had made her realise how badly she wanted to live.
There had been a glint in his eyes that told her it wasn't going to be as simple as just admitting she didn't want to die.
Wasn't that what her father's stories had taught her? There was always a catch.
Of course, she hadn't known that this was the catch.
She'd been too woozy from the blood loss to truly think about what the monster might require of her as the price for saving her life. If she'd thought about it for more than a brief moment, she might have considered that he would change her into one of the creatures her father had despised and hunted.
After all, it really was a cruelly ironic outcome.
Perhaps she should have died a human rather than lived as something else.
Vampire.
Because she knew that was what she was now. Knew it from the memories of her father's dark tales, and from the burning in her throat unlike anything she had ever felt before.
Maybe she should have died human. It was certainly what her father would have wanted, and probably her mother too.
Caroline, though, she wanted to live. She wanted to visit the great cities, to see the culture and the art, to explore the world.
Was that selfish? Was it stupid?
It was too late, though. She'd made her choice, however ill-informed and prompted by the rapidly approaching deadline of her own demise, and she'd have to live with it.
The whole situation was … disorienting, to say the least. But she had to keep calm.
First thing was getting her bearings. She was lying on a four-poster bed in a mostly-dark room that didn't seem to have windows. Creepy, to be sure, but she vaguely recalled her father saying something about sunlight being a vampire's weakness, so it was probably for the best that the room was lit only by a few lamps.
She tried to remember everything she knew about vampires.
It wasn't much. All her information came from snatches of conversation she had overheard and the tales her father had told her when she was a child (and when she believed such things were only fanciful, if morbid, tales).
Most of what she could remember involved how a human would defend themselves against a vampire. At least she knew to avoid sunlight and stakes, and that holy water would have no effect on her (regardless of what the stories suggested), but that was about it.
William Forbes had seen fit only to warn his daughter about the supernatural world, not to prepare her for involvement in it.
Then again, she doubted this was a path her father had envisaged her taking. Though perhaps he should have, considering that his habit of hunting dangerous creatures could easily have made him and his family a target.
Still, what use was there in dwelling on such things when she had far more important issues to consider.
She went to try the door and startled herself with her sudden speed. She moved with deliberate slowness when she tried to rattle the door handle, but jerked back when it shocked her.
She had no idea if that was a coincidence or some sort of magic she didn't know about, and she decided to back away to be on the safe side.
So, she was safe from the light but locked in a room with no obvious way to get out.
She suddenly thought about home and felt a strong pang of grief hit her.
The last few years had made her father a distant enough figure that his death didn't hurt as it once would have, but it was still painful, and the thought of never seeing her mother again was even worse.
She felt the panic rise even further as the reality of her situation hit her. Her family was gone. She couldn't go home. She was going to have to rely on a monster to help her.
And she felt so very, very thirsty.
She idly wondered whether vampires could hyperventilate.
"You seem a little stressed, love."
She jumped at the sound of his voice, having been so engrossed in her own thoughts that she hadn't noticed his entrance.
"A little stressed," she hissed, allowing her frustration out, "you killed me!"
She remembered with great clarity the brief moment of total panic when she had closed her eyes and his hands had wrapped around her neck and wrenched.
She could still feel the ache from it.
"A temporary thing," he countered, "and now you're stronger than you've ever been."
"I'm a monster," she whispered, the burning in her throat a constant reminder, "I never asked –"
"You knew you were making a devil's bargain, love," he cut her off, "perhaps this was not what you expected, but you have all the time you want now to see the world and everything in it."
She hated that he was right, and she refused to admit it out loud, stubbornly holding on to her anger.
He paused a moment to give her the tiniest smirk before he continued, "we can speak soon enough of how a girl like you learnt of monsters. For now, you have to complete your transition."
He opened the door to let a man, perhaps in his late twenties and eerily blank-faced, enter.
Caroline held herself stiffly, trying to keep control, but he smelled intoxicating and she was so hungry, so eager to sink her fangs into the man's neck. And the monster watching her knew it, judging by his satisfied smile.
"No," she almost whimpered as her body screamed for blood.
"You have to eat, sweetheart," he gouged a nail down the man's neck, and blood came bubbling out, the smell potent in the small room.
She tried not to breathe, tried to block her reaction to the delicious aroma.
The monster gouged another line down the man's neck and Caroline gasped at the surge of hunger and want she felt, even stronger than before. She knew any control she had was quickly slipping away and she hated it.
"No one would miss him," the monster crooned at her, "he's a thief, a gambler – I found him down an alleyway trying to force himself on some young girl."
And then Caroline snapped.
Perhaps he was lying and the man was a model citizen, but she was so, so thirsty, and he had just given her the perfect excuse she needed to push aside her guilt and indulge.
She surged forward instinctively, burying her fangs in the man's neck.
It was glorious, a heady rush of pleasure as she drank the blood that tasted better than anything she had ever had before in her life.
She heard the air shift and suddenly the monster was behind her, the lean, muscled lines of his body pressed against her back.
One of his hands rested lightly on her waist while the other tucked her long hair away from her face, and he murmured praise she was only half-able to pay attention to.
It was over too soon, the man's heartbeat slowing and then stopping entirely. She detached her fangs, hunger sated, and let his body fall to the ground with a thump that echoed around the room.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror mounted on the wall. Eyes still a little wild, hair mussed, dark veins beneath her eyes that were now starting to fade. And blood everywhere – on her hands, her clothes, her face.
She saw the monster move to stand next to her. With his tousled curls and dimples he looked more like an angel than a devil, or he would have if she hadn't seen the dark, vicious glint in his eyes.
He swiped his thumb across her bloody lips and then popped it into his mouth.
"Delicious," he murmured as she felt her stomach swoop and a heat bloom across her cheeks.
She could sense her equilibrium returning now that she had blood in her system.
Still, she refused to look over at the body, not wanting a reminder of what she had just done. Instead, she sank down into the one chair in the room and began to twist her hands together nervously.
The monster perched on the bed next to her and watched her closely.
"Now that you are a little more settled," he said, entirely ignoring the dead man on the floor, "perhaps you might tell me your name."
She thought about withholding the information, but he didn't seem like the sort to back down easily. Besides, she imagined she would need all her stubbornness over the coming days to stop herself being steamrollered by the sheer force of his personality, so she probably needed to pick her battles carefully.
"Caroline," she told him, "Caroline Forbes."
She saw recognition in his eyes when she admitted her surname, and she was a little worried about what that meant.
"Well, Caroline," he drew out her name in such a way that it almost sounded obscene, "that explains a great deal."
"How so?" she asked tersely.
He gave her a terrifying smile, "you should be grateful to Stefan, love. If I had gotten hold of William Forbes, his death would have lasted much longer."
Caroline stiffened at the venom in his voice. Her father had been involved in shady things, and she knew from eavesdropping on him occasionally that there were more supernatural dangers in the world than most people ever knew about. But nothing had prepared her for the slaughter at the party, or for this monster in front of her.
"Who are you?" she wondered.
"My name is Klaus. Perhaps you've heard of me."
She had, Caroline realised with a sharp, unpleasant shock. His had been a name her father muttered every now and then, alternately fearful and vengeful.
Klaus. The Originals. The first vampires.
"So, you have heard of me," Klaus grinned with relish, "excellent."
Caroline didn't consider it excellent at all. She just thought it made her situation even more complicated and dangerous than it already was.
Klaus Mikaelson was not to be trifled with. The things he had done were whispered about among her father's Hunter set, and if even half of the rumours were remotely true then she was staying with probably the most dangerous creature on the planet.
"Did your father teach you to shoot?" he asked her, almost conversationally.
She shook her head, "my mother did – she said a girl should know how to protect herself. My father has mostly ignored me for the last five years … He took a lot of hunting trips."
Klaus' smile twisted slightly into something more demonic, "yes, his 'hunting trips' have caused a number of problems over the years. Still, they were minor irritations in the grand scheme of things – he and his associates have some ingenious methods but they are rarely a match for any of my kind who are over a few decades old."
She didn't know what to say to that. She'd loved her father, even if it was in the same distant way he'd loved her, but it was becoming clearer every moment that his attempts to hunt the monsters in the dark had been, if not entirely futile, then at least largely ineffective.
Klaus explained vampirism to her quickly and succinctly. He answered some of her questions and ignored others. She felt he was being honest with what he did say, but that didn't mean he was telling her everything … probably not even close to it.
Caroline disliked the idea of being uninformed and hoped a future opportunity would arise for her to get a fuller picture of what her existence would entail. Somehow, though, she doubted it would be easy to get information from Klaus that he didn't wish to give her.
When he spoke of how often she would need blood, especially in the first year, she blanched at the idea of so many deaths on her hands.
She was feeling guilty enough about murdering one man in her starved frenzy, even if he hadn't been a good person, and she wasn't sure she could handle doing such a thing continually.
"Is it necessary to kill?" she asked Klaus, trying to sound as if she didn't care about his answer, "can I not just take a little blood?"
He looked at her as if, for a brief moment, he was torn about what to say, but then he shrugged carelessly, "death is not a requirement, though it is common in the victims of baby vampires. But with practice, control and a little compulsion, you need only kill if you wish to."
His tone suggested he didn't much care if humans died. She imagined he restrained himself only to make it easier to blend in – massacres had probably been easy enough to cover up a few hundred years ago, but were less so now as populations increased, travel grew easier and news spread quickly.
Regardless, Caroline decided that she would do what she could to ensure she never killed those she fed from. Maybe Klaus didn't worry about such things, but Caroline had a feeling that every dead body would haunt her.
When Klaus finished with his explanation of what she should expect as a vampire, he stood up and inclined his head towards the door, "fancy a change of scenery, love?"
She nodded eagerly, too excited at the idea of moving around the house to conceal her emotions.
"You aren't ready to go outside yet," he said, "but it's dark enough that you'll be safe to use a room with windows. I need to do some work in the library, if you wish to join me and read a book."
She was so pleased to get out of the room that she moved too quickly as they went down the stairs. She would have run straight into Klaus if his speedy reflexes hadn't let him spin round to catch hold of her.
He smirked a little, "we may need to practice moving at human pace before you go out, sweetheart."
Feeling defensive, she wished she could snap at him, but she didn't want to risk annoying him enough that he would force her back into the room she'd woken in, bored and alone.
Instead, she quietly murmured her thanks and let him lead her into the library.
It was a magnificent room, with bookshelves covering every wall reaching to the top of the high ceiling.
She moved towards the nearest shelf, which seemed to house an extensive history section, and began eagerly scanning the titles.
Klaus appeared next to her suddenly enough that it made her jump a bit. His mouth curved up into a wicked smile and she found herself rolling her eyes at him.
He didn't seem to mind. Instead, he pulled a book out and handed it to her.
She looked at the title and realised it was a volume on the role of women in the Civil War. She wondered if Klaus realised that the Civil War was one of her favourite historical periods, or if it was simply a good guess.
She found herself fiercely pleased that he had handed over a history book to her like it was nothing. So many of the men she knew assumed that just because she liked pretty clothes and parties and loved going out to purchase a new dress, that she had no brains in her head at all. She usually just scoffed at them and then got a lecture from her parents on the proper way to speak with a potential suitor.
"I didn't know there were any books about women in the Civil War."
"My sister Rebekah's doing – she's elsewhere at the moment, but she has a particular interest in women's role in history. Such texts are difficult to find but we have a fair collection."
Pleased with the book, Caroline curled up in one of the comfortable armchairs and began to read.
Klaus settled down at his desk and soon became engrossed in his work. Still, while it seemed his entire attention was on his papers, she got the feeling he was also keeping an eye on her.
Not that she would have been foolish enough to try and make an escape. Even with the element of surprise she didn't think she'd get more than a few metres before he stopped her. And Klaus Mikaelson was not someone she wanted to irritate.
Just over an hour had passed before Caroline heard the door creak open and she caught the delectable scent of fresh blood.
It made her mouth water and her fangs cut into her gums, but she forced herself to stay still and calm.
She was in control. She could do this.
She felt Klaus' heated gaze on her and looked determinedly down at her book.
But her head shot up quickly when Klaus spoke, "nice of you to join us, Stefan."
It was the first time since Klaus had snapped her neck that she'd seen the creature who had murdered her parents.
There was only a splatter of blood on his clothes now, and his eyes were not as wild as they had been at the party. He looked almost tormented for a moment, but then his expression settled into a mask of blank indifference.
He must have been out. Out killing someone else's family.
He could have made someone an orphan in the past few hours, or maybe he'd simply killed a whole family, leaving no survivors.
She felt a rush of hatred towards him, the emotion magnified by everything that had occurred in the past day.
Why should he walk in like nothing was wrong?
Her parents were dead. More than twenty others had perished, and he seemed to have barely given it a thought.
Her body moved before her brain caught up, and she flung herself at the new arrival with the firm intention of tearing him to pieces.
Caroline had been a vampire for less than a day. She was young and untrained. But she was very angry … and she surprised Stefan.
She managed a couple of bites before Klaus was behind her, an iron grip on her arms as he pulled her away and caged her in an embrace that might have seemed almost romantic if it weren't a painful, stifling thing.
"Leave, Ripper," she heard him say to Stefan.
She couldn't focus, couldn't stop struggling against Klaus' hold.
"Control yourself, Caroline," he ordered her harshly, before he continued in a slightly gentler tone, "I don't want to snap your neck, sweetheart, but I will if I need to."
"He … he killed them," she spat out, "I'll kill him."
She felt his rumbling laughter, "you'd certainly give it a good try, sweetheart, of that I have no doubt, but he won't be so easily surprised again."
"Why did you stop me?" she asked, angry and frustrated.
"Stefan has his uses," was all that he said.
It wasn't much of an answer but she didn't think he'd say anything further, not at the moment. It was very clear that Klaus wasn't about to let her fulfil her fantasy of ripping the other vampire's head off.
"Feeling a little calmer now?" he asked.
"No," she muttered mutinously.
Her shock and anger made her jittery. She couldn't stand the thought of just sitting still and reading.
His mouth quirked, making him look like some mischievous demon, "how would you like to learn to fight, Caroline?"
Now that was an idea Caroline could get behind.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.
The next chapter, with some Stefan POV, should be out in the next few days.