Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait! I am so in love with the attention this story is getting! Thank you all for being so kind to me. I do hope that you continue to enjoy! Let me know what you think! Enjoy!
There is freedom waiting for you,
on the breezes in the sky,
And you ask "What if I fall?"
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?
-e.h
Caroline had the best night of sleep in what feels like forever. And it was on a couch of all things. She didn't even bother looking for a blanket, just sank into the warmth and fluffiness of the couch and fell asleep immediately. She doesn't want to think about how she ended up with a blanket when she regained consciousness at like five-thirty in the morning and had to hunt down the other bathroom to pee. There was only one person who could have done it, but she didn't want to think about it too hard, lest she starts to expect things that she shouldn't.
Caroline fell back into the couch, wrapping the big blanket around herself like a burrito and sleeping comfortably until she could no longer ignore the soft sounds of Klaus talking on the phone with someone in the other room. She grabbed out her phone off of the coffee table in front of the couch and peaks at the time again to see that it's almost noon and she slept so well. She didn't want to leave the warmth of the blankets but knew that she would have to at some point. She just wants to lay on this couch all day for the next three years because it's been so long since she has been able to relax like this and she can feel the aches and pains from weeks of living on the street without break. The last time she slept in a bed... was probably the last full moon.
She slept for three days after the full moon. That has never happened to her before. That's a lot to take in. A night of sex, going through the terrible trauma of transforming into a wolf, rampaging around a room for a half-hour, then going through the terrible trauma of transforming back into a human and then passing out. She knows, that while she can transform pretty quickly, it usually leaves her down for the count for at least half a day. She's not really sure why it's so hard on her, but she knows that her aunt wasn't like that.
Maybe it has something to do with her mother not being able to trigger the curse. Caroline has always wondered about it - same as her aunt - but has never really known who to ask about things like that. She's never stuck around with people long enough to make connections to them. She has never really found someone she was willing to stick around with who may have been able to help her while she searches aimlessly for her aunt.
It's been so long now she hasn't been able to find her aunt, she's starting to suspect that she's never going to find her. Not looking as she has. But she's not sure what else she can do. If she was desperate enough, she would go back to her hometown... which is somewhere. Somewhere on the East Coast, she thinks. She moved across the country to live with her aunt.
No doubt she could ask her parents, but they would definitely be suspicious as to why she would ask them as opposed to asking her aunt, although she's sure if she thought about it she would be able to remember. But this isn't important to her. She doesn't really care much about where she came from. She expected that her life would never be taken back there and that, honestly, she probably wasn't going to see her parents again. She loved them, or at least she knows how to go through the motions of love, for her parents, but she knows that there isn't a relationship anymore.
The only way for them to remain on good terms as progenitors and progeny is these weekly phone calls. They just so happen to be the only thing keeping that relationship alive.
Caroline isn't going to hold her breath on that. All this time on the street, and years before that with her cynical aunt, makes her very pessimistic. At least when it comes to people. She has been on the run for so long that it's okay. She enjoys being able to see so many people. It's nice to be able to see places she's never heard of before. She does hate not having a place to lay her head and regardless of how many people that she surrounds herself with, she always feels alone. And sometimes it's okay because everyone feels like that one way or another, but sometimes it's so hard that all she wants to do is quit.
She wants to go home and be a kid again, but she's never really been a kid. Not since she killed that boy back when she was a young girl.
"Good morning, love."
Caroline blinks a few times, realizing that she was sitting up on the couch, staring at the dark curtains that she closed on her way back to bed this morning, knowing that the sunlight was going to wake her earlier than she would want if she hadn't.
She looks over at Klaus, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and a sly half-smile across his lips. Caroline rubs at the back of her head, wondering how crazy her blond hair looked before realizing that she didn't really have an option to care she just twists around in the couch and smiles back at him, wiggling her fingers.
"Good morning."
His smile widens fondly, looking her up and down a bit. "Sleep well?"
"Yes," Caroline admits, standing up and stretching. She goes up on her tip-toes and stretches up as far as she can go, finding relief in the popping that rips up and down her arms and legs. There is one in her hip that feels particularly good before she lowers flat back onto her feet and turns to Klaus, adjusting her shirt back into place. "I haven't slept that good in weeks."
Klaus nods, still smiling. "That's good. You look rejuvenated."
"Compared to the trainwreck I was yesterday?" Caroline asks rhetorically, rolling her eyes.
He laughs, pure white teeth flashing as his smile grows. "You aren't a trainwreck. You are beautiful. Glowing like a sun."
Caroline hated that his attempt to shower her with empty compliments was enough to make her smile. It has to be the accent. Her ears aren't used to hearing people speaking like that saying those sorts of things. That's got to be where that mushy feeling in her chest is coming from. To cover up the heat building up in her cheeks, she jokes, "Glowing as in radiant or as in radioactive?"
Klaus laughs again and she decides then and there that she liked the sound of his laugh. She also liked his Adam's apple bobbing as he looks down at the ground, smiling and shaking his head. Disregarding all of the weirdness and unorthodoxy of their relationship, Caroline can honestly say, impartially, that Klaus was a beautiful man. Despite being older than life itself, he seems very boyish and childish - at least at this moment.
"Radiant, definitely," he laughs, shaking his head more. "Now, are you ready for something to eat? I have been listening to your stomach growl all morning."
Caroline flushes deeply, praying to God that wasn't true. She doesn't remember her stomach growling other than last night but that doesn't mean that it wasn't. It's just embarrassing to think about it.
"Okay," Caroline says, running her fingers through the knots in her hair. "I'll go see what's around here. I'll be back in a bit, make sure to answer the door for me."
"I'll come with you," Klaus says, pushing up the sleeves of his brown henley shirt to his elbows.
Caroline gives him a look as she walks past him and into the bedroom, seeing the bed slightly disheveled on one side but otherwise the same as she saw it the night before. She walks over to her bag and pulls out her little, worn-out black wallet. She digs around until she finds a simple black hoodie that lost its strings long ago and stuffed the wallet and phone into the big pocket, it is huge, practically drowning in it. "You? Why would you come with me while I find something to eat?"
"You don't think we should take this time to get to know each other?" He asks flippantly.
Caroline gives him that look again, walking up to him. She studies his expression for a moment before it came to her. "You think I'm broke, don't you?" He blinks a few times, but his silence is deafening. "Oh, I get it. Yes, I don't have a home. But how do you think I've been surviving all this time? Not just on the sympathy of strangers and bed partners. I do have some money. Not a lot, but enough to buy meals every day."
Klaus looks interested, which is probably peripherally, for the sake of keeping conversation, which is fine.
"Tell me more," Klaus says, gesturing out of the room. "Let's go out and eat then. I'll let you pay." He grins.
Caroline rolls her eyes. "I'll pay for myself. Not for you. And we aren't going anywhere fancy. Probably something cheap that will clog your arteries, give you heartburn and shave ten years off your immortal life."
Klaus laughs, shaking his head as she slips on socks and her worn tennis shoes that are still damp from the night before and follows her to the door. As they walk through the short hall to the elevator and hit the floor for the lobby, she finally looks at him again. "You laugh, but I mean it."
Klaus smiles lightly. "I believe you," he says placatingly, blue eyes pointed up toward the number decreasing as they descended to the bottom floor. Caroline rolls her eyes playfully.
"Without sounding like a rich white girl," Caroline says, stuffing her face with a handful of fries, "my parents give me an allowance. They have for as long as I can remember. Ever since I left home to live with my aunt. About a year or so back they started sending more money, separately." She shrugs her shoulders. "Neither of them will say anything about what it was that changed, but something obviously did." She swirls some more fries around in ketchup and stuffing them into her mouth, shrugging and saying, off-handedly, "Thank god for youthful metabolize and lycanthropy because I would have to be rolled down the street at this point."
That makes Klaus smile as he eats a few salty fries, looking like he should be above it, yet also able to make anything look natural. Caroline watches as a sultry smile crosses his lips when she realizes, he realizes that she's staring at them. She drags her eyes down toward the salty fries, trying to ignore that look on his face. She would rather not give this self-centered, ancient vampire the satisfaction of seeing the blush that's working its way up her neck and cheeks.
"Shut up," she mumbles, which makes him smile more. "Can you really eat that?" She nods toward the fries. "I mean, does that even do anything for you?"
"Are you asking if I get any nutrition from this?" Klaus asks, a playful glint in his eyes. He can tell when someone is trying to change the topic. Thankfully he accepted the topic change with grace. "No, not really. Although it does help curve the cravings."
Caroline gives him a sideways look. "Really?"
Klaus nods, genuinely. "Sure, it's like... it's like drinking something filling, like milk. It doesn't really satisfy the hunger, but it does quiet it for a time. Eating regular food does that for a vampire. It doesn't fulfill the need, but it does help."
Caroline blinks, surprised that she could actually understand that analogy. She figured that the magic of vampirism would be too much for her to understand, seeing as they are literal opposites, like the sun and the moon, but it wasn't that hard for her to wrap her mind around. Sometimes, from a distance, when she watches the world pass her by and she is able to recognize a vampire in a sea of humans, she can find some comparisons to make and some differences. Sometimes it seems like they blend in seamlessly and other times it's like the differences are astronomical.
"I didn't know that," Caroline says softly, picking a bit of cheese off of her burger and eats it. She leans on one of her arms, fist against her temple, staring at the man next to her in the busy fast food joint. "Tell me more."
"About vampires?" Klaus asks, mirroring her pose and offering a pursed smile back at her.
"Sure. About vampires or anything," Caroline says. He tilts his head a bit, blue eyes locked onto her face making her feel as if she has to clarify. "I don't want your life story or anything. I don't want to peel you back layer by layer or anything sappy like that. I just want to talk. Tell me about anything. Tell me about vampires. Tell me about the places you visited in your seven millennia of life. Tell me something."
Klaus's teeth show with the smile that crosses his face and a bit of a laugh that escapes him. "I fear seven millennia is a bit longer than my lifespan, love." At least he looks more amused than insulted.
Caroline waves her hand around dismissively. "Five then. Whatever. Just talk."
"Do you like the sound of my voice, love?" His eyes are bouncing with blatant amusement.
Caroline scoffs hard enough to hurt. She definitely didn't deserve that. "No," she says, forcing herself to not rub at the pain in her throat. "I just figured since you were alive since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I figured that you would have a story or two."
Klaus laughs again, blue eyes shining as the sunlight pours in from behind him lightening his hair to look like a halo around his head. Despite knowing that he is so dangerous and could kill her easily, he somehow looks like an angel. She knows he isn't, but she can't help thinking it when he smiles like that. Flashing clean white teeth, sunlight turning his hair into a golden blond, and eyes bright blue in the light and crinkles around his eyes and nose with his smile. He's beautiful. A beautiful, fallen angel.
And amongst the real angels and humans with kind hearts, the devil found a safe place for her to stay, even if only for a little while.
"So," Caroline says, using her own voice to pull herself from her thoughts, "got anything? Unless you've got somewhere to be today."
Klaus shakes his head slowly, still looking at her with pretty, blue eyes with green near the irises and speckles of yellow mixed in. "I think I have some stories that may interest you."
Caroline turns so her whole body is facing the old vampire. "Okay. You have my undivided attention."
So they talked, for hours. In a little fast food restaurant for hours on end talking about anything and everything. Well, almost anything. Tiny touches of their personal lives, like family and stuff, slipped in once and a while, but nothing too crazy. Mostly they talked about places they've been, people they've seen, crazy stuff they heard of while on the road. Klaus, having lived since the dawn of time, was able to regale tales of times passing. Klaus may not have been an expert on every subject, but it always seems like he knows a little bit about everything.
He's very worldly and willing to share that information with her. It's nice to be able to just sit around and talk about aimless things, not having to worry about getting too personal or getting bored. Klaus is... surprisingly easy to talk to. She was inclined to believe since about three million years separate them that she wouldn't have anything to talk to him about, but that wasn't the case.
Caroline knows that Klaus is old. That he's been alive for centuries and has a ton of siblings. That he's got a strong love for art and he's fascinated with werewolves. It is the reason that he stopped her last month when he heard a young wolf was in town. It's obvious he wasn't going to get any information out of her, seeing as she has no idea how the world really works, judging by all of her questions and fascination with the simplest story. But he seemed more than happy to tell her anything that she wanted to know about Vampires and Werewolves. She knew all that her aunt told her, but it was still interesting to hear it from someone else. Especially since Klaus saw werewolves in their prime. When there were a lot of them.
Caroline doesn't see many these days. It would be crazy to live in a time where there were so many of them all wondering about. She knows in the grand scheme of things it's not all that different from today, but it's interesting to think about. Or maybe she's just romanticizing a time in her head that really wasn't all that different than now. Maybe it just makes her feel better to think of a time when there were so many people that were just like her.
And she wouldn't feel so alone.
They talked all the rest of the morning, through the lunch rush, and into the early evening when Caroline called it quits. She stands up and stretches for the tenth time that day, that and bathroom breaks were the only time she was able to pull herself away from their conversation. But her back and hips hurt from sitting there for so long, it's time for them to leave.
"Ready to go?" Klaus asks, standing up too. He cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders around to loosen up his stiff muscles. "It seems the day has left without us."
Caroline nods. "Yeah, my hips hurt. Can we go walk around a bit before heading back to the hotel?"
"You read my mind, love."
They leave the fast-food joint and walk around the city a bit, admiring the life around them, carrying on their conversation. Caroline links her arm through Klaus's as they walk around aimlessly. It's nice for a little while to pretend that this is her life. Comfortable, safe, leisurely, simple. She knows that this isn't her reality. She can feel the pressure of the full moon pressing down on every fiber of her being. Once the full moon has passed, barring Klaus doesn't send her into another three-day coma, she knows this will come to an end.
This isn't her life and she's not going wish that it was. But sometimes it's nice to pretend, if only for a little while.
"I see you looking around, love," Klaus says, pulling Caroline from her thoughts. "Hoping your aunt Cassie will be about here?"
"Force of habit," Caroline admits, wrapping her hands around his inner arm. "I'm just hoping that she'll appear before me. Stupid, right?"
Klaus shakes his head. "The love of a family is sometimes the only thing we've got."
Caroline sighs as a gust of cold wind penetrate her black hoodie, making her shiver and hold tighter onto Klaus's arm. She's envious that he isn't able to feel the cold like he does. Sensations, like touch, and emotions are all heightened to vampires, according to Klaus - as it is with werewolves, though to a higher degree, whereas hot and cold itself isn't. He didn't say whether it was hampered in some way or if their other senses were so heightened that it was normal to that of a human and just felt easier to handle.
"I just want her to be okay," Caroline admits quietly, realizing that they had walked around the block and were making their way back to the hotel. "She just up and vanished without a word one day. I just want to make sure that she's okay. I worry about her."
"Even though she abandon you?" Klaus asks.
Caroline glares at him, not in the mood to argue family dynamics - especially her own family - to someone like him. "She didn't abandon me. Something chased her off. I just need to make sure that she's alright. She's my aunt and she looked after me. The least I can do is make sure that nothing bad has happened to her. You have family still around, don't you get that?"
"I understand, and my family isn't the pinnacle of good choices and trust-worthiness, but at least it is clear to me where I stand, and where they stand with me," Klaus says, eyes scanning the crowds, moreso from natural distrust whether than like her, who is looking for her aunt.
Caroline scoffs, shaking her head. "I know perfectly well where I stand, thank you very much." She looks at everything but the man next to her.
"I just think - "
"I didn't ask you what you thought, Klaus," she says, voice razor thin. "My family is my business. Just like yours is for you. I'm not poking and prodding into your life unsolicited, so butt out of mine. We have a good thing going, please don't ruin it, okay?"
Klaus doesn't respond, looking annoyed, like her reasoning was a good enough one for him. That or he thought it was pointless to hold out on someone that was willing to turn their back on her even though they are family. Caroline knew it wasn't like that. With how paranoid her aunt is, she knew that there had to be a good reason for Cassie to have just left her. There is a reason. A good reason for this.
Besides, it costs Caroline nothing to make sure that Cassie is okay.
Caroline called it quits early that night, even though all they did that day was sit around and talk, she was still exhausted. Usually, in the nights leading up to the full moon, she gets more and more anxious. She knows that she must turn, she feels it in her bones. She even experiences these... pre-transformation pains. Like growing pains or cramps before a period.
Once more, as far as she knows, she's the only one who has these. A part of her wants to ask Klaus since he's such a wealth of information - and because he would probably just tell her - but she's afraid of what the answer might be. Cassie always said there was something about Caroline that was a bit odd but never really explained how or why she thought so. Caroline could guess what it was, but there is always this touch of worry that comes to her whenever she thinks about what is going on.
Honestly, she hates running. She hates that she feels so alone all the time. She hates that she doesn't have any connections with people because Caroline loves people. Despite them making her feel like she's alone while in a crowded room or a busy street, she still loved people. She loved that they were all so different and worldly and wonderful. They were capable of great things both good and bad. But no matter what, she has always believed in the good in people, which is why she chooses to ignore Klaus's look.
Cassie is out there and needs her. She knows it.
Tomorrow is the night. The night of the full moon and even though she's tired and restless, her racing mind keeps her awake even long after Klaus gets off the phone with the tenth person he spoke to that night and began to settle into bed. But even still, after hours of laying on the soft couch, Caroline just stares up at the ceiling, letting her mind whirl.
She's never had a partner preplanned before, so she's not sure what tomorrow is going to look like. Is she just going to wake up tomorrow and they are just going to have sex all day? Seeing as a few hours leading up to her transformation was enough to knock her out for three days, she can't imagine what an entire day would do to her. Are they going to ignore each other until the evening? She just doesn't know. And honestly, despite the weirdness that they left on, she hopes that they are going to be okay when morning comes. She will just have to see tomorrow.
After a few hours just laying there, her mind spinning about what might come tomorrow, her eyes finally droop closed and sleep consumed her.
She wakes up to Klaus coming out to make himself some coffee. She stretches across the couch, rolling onto her back and wiggling back a bit so that she can hang off the arm of the couch and look in toward the small kitchenette. "What time is it?"
"It's about eight-thirty, love. You don't have to get up just yet." He doesn't sound mad anymore, but she's not sure she knows him well enough to go off of her feeling alone.
"I think I'm ready to, though," Caroline mumbles, pushing herself up onto her feet. She walks into the kitchenette, leaning against the counter next to him as they both watch the coffee pot fill up. She leans so close to him that she can feel the heat coming off of him. "Look, Klaus, I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean to bite your head off."
"No need to apologize to me, love. Aggression is natural for a werewolf." His words are flippant, smooth as if he completely forgot about their little conversation from the day before.
"Not for me," Caroline says, running her hand through her hair. "I'm not an angry person. I am not normally aggressive. Cassie always said it was strange."
Klaus looks at her, eyebrows quirked a bit. The slightest bit of annoyance that was still on his face completely smooths out as she offers him something else to ponder what she said. "Really? No aggression at all?"
Caroline crosses her arms over her chest. "I mean, no not really. I get mad, but I'm not an angry person. I don't have fits of rage like others do. Cassie told me that werewolves learn to control that anger once the moon provides them an outlet, but I've never been like that, even before triggering the curse." Caroling shrugs. "Maybe it was because I was young and it was hard to tell, especially after I turned. I just don't get angry, and because I don't, I wanted to apologize for ripping your head off. I'm sorry."
He studies her face, looking for something - what? She doesn't know.
"Are you still mad at me?" Caroline asks. She doesn't want to, but she knows that if he was, and he asked her to leave, she would. Well, even if he told her, she would. If this weirdness continued, she'd have to run, if nothing more than to get the hell out of this weird situation. And honestly, Klaus doesn't owe her anything. He has been more than kind and helpful to her than she could have asked for.
She just has no idea what she's going to do if he kicks her out.
"No, love," Klaus says, voice soft. "I wasn't mad at you to begin with."
Caroline isn't sure she believes that for a second, but she's not going to argue with him. If he isn't going to kick her out tonight, then she's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"So..." Caroline says slowly, fingering the hole in her shirt at her ribs, not sure she knows how to look at the man standing next to her. This is steadily becoming weirder and weirder. This is her form of coping with her transformation every full moon but there isn't any sort of rule book. She's making this all up as she goes along. All she can do is continue pushing onward. "So... what is the plan for today?"
Klaus smiles, deviantly.