For goldcaught, whose been not so subtly asking for this for months. Hope you like it.
He found her in his garden.
In a thousand years, New Orleans had felt the most like home. A city that entombed it's dead, with its salt water smell and the touch of magic and religion. He'd known death - carried its weight, the iron teeth and power of it in his bones. Death was his keeper, the old and true friend who stood in his shadow. He'd walked with her through the catacombs of Paris, witnessed the horrors of Rome, laughed in the face of the English wars.
Death which had broken his cursed bonds to the mortal wheel, who gave him a monster's choice. Greedy for life, he took it. A king was a king, regardless of a kingdom. So he carved his subjects from the damned, shaped a shadow world against the hot blade of modern religion, the slow grind if the faithless and watched the stories in the stars.
But Klaus loved her.
This golden goddess, with her tumbling curls and defiant eyes. The creature he longed for through all his endless days, those nameless years he walked in this new flesh, the taste of old blood on his tongue. Here she stood, in the garden he'd built for her - the memory of another shared garden at the beginning of his world hot beneath his feet.
Her face had changed - the slope of her nose and the sharpness of her cheekbones, the curve of her mouth. But her eyes… the blue was the same, but more importantly was the expression, the defiance and demand. Klaus was unable to move, feet planted like one of her trees. He was rooted, frozen under the blue of the sky and the shadowed waters of the seas.
"So it is you." Her words were jagged, for all her hardness, there was wildness bleeding into her gaze. Klaus knew that look. Had seen it before, when her tongue tasted of pomegranates and later, when she demanded her crown as his equal. This child of sunshine and spring, in his land of death and shades.
"Yes," Klaus breathed, finally moving his feet of lead. She shifted back, the move so small another would've miss it. He ignored it, hands and lips desperate for her. "I've spent a millennium hunting for any echo of your soul and here you stand."
She lifted her palm, staring at him with feral eyes. "A millennium? And where have you been, husband, that you only know a thousand years?"
"Bound to the wheel," Klaus told her, gaze narrowed. "I suffered through lifetimes of morality, or did you fall unknowing of the gift our kin left me?"
Darkness crawled across the shining vestige of her face, blackened the eyes he knew - the punch of old power, weak but lingering as she bared the sharp points of her fangs. His lungs stilled, arousal a hot fist in his gut.
"Do not speak to me of sacrifice," she snarled before turning on her heel, striding away from him on shapely legs he longed to trace, to learn. Catalogue all the little differences the shade of mortality had carved along her flesh. "You left me."
"When did you fall?" Klaus demanded, following her further from the house, the stares he could feel from the family he'd carved into being. The survivors of their mother's insanity, their father's cruelty.
"I did not fall," was the cold response. "I stood in our river, watched our kingdom empty of souls and took the promise offered me. I have walked this world for time beyond counting, until the stars themselves have changed and I have looked. I took death's malady for a single hope and now…"
It took three strides to catch her shoulders beneath his palm, to sear the feel of her against the bone and muscles. Clumsy mortality might be, but stubborn. She snarled as he spun her, hair wild around her defiant face.
"Now what?" Klaus demanded.
"It appears you did not need me so much after all."
Klaus laughed, hands tightening with bruising force. She struggled, but he would not let her go. His little Queen, his Spring Goddess. "I stole you from beneath the nose of your kin, forced a compromise between gods to keep you and you think a thousand years, a change of flesh would do more than make things interesting? You are mine."
She bared sharp teeth and he matched her with his monster, the double gift of wolf and death. That startled her, the gold in his eyes. His smile widened. "Death is a possessive mistress, an ageless friend. Do you think she forgot your sacrifice, the love of her subjects? Do you imagine that she would let something like the folly of the gods interfere with her plans?"
Slowly, brows bunched in a familiar yet new expression, she touched the curve of his lips. Traced the double edge of his fangs. "What are you?"
"Hybrid," Klaus said softly, unwilling to startle her out of this softening. "A nightmare."
She snorted, darkness fading from her eyes. "Whose?"
He brought one cool palm to his lips, breathed in the scent of her skin. "Not yours."
Her eyes shuttered, but he tightened his grip. "Will you give me a name?"
Her lips purse, lashes flickering, "Caroline."
"I'm Klaus."
"I know," she murmured. She stared up at him, bottom lip sliding between her teeth. Everything he wanted. Here. It was clear that this wouldn't be an easy reunion, but when had they slotted smoothly? They were gods reborn as monsters, the old power lingering in her in a way it never would for him - he who was stripped of his divinity, bound to mortality as a sacrifice.
His Queen had chosen him. Abandoned her kin, walked the earth alone. She carried the same seeds of malady in her veins and chosen solitude. He knew there had been no others who carried death in the world, he would have felt them when he awoke. King of the Damned, he knew each of his subjects, felt the coldness of their souls.
But not hers.
"You hid."
"I hide from nothing," Caroline rejected, voice layering in frost. "Especially from you."
"Then kiss me."
Blue eyes flashed to his, met the challenge there. "Why?"
"I built this garden for you," Klaus told her. He let go of her palm, cupped her newly beloved face. "In each of my homes, a garden blooms for you - but this is my favorite. Do you remember the shape of it, the way it cut through my loneliness each season you left my world barren? Those little sparks of power you left me in my cold kingdom?"
Her eyes shimmered, mouth softening. "Yes."
"Kiss me."
Her lips trembled, breath catching in her throat. But Caroline was correct, she'd never hid. So, hands cool against his beard, eyes and chin stubborn, she slid her lips lightly across his.
The world shifted under his feet - a thousand years of waiting burning through his blood. Hands sliding down her throat, he leaned in and demanded more. Her lips parted, tongue a slick slid against his - she tasted golden, the long lost burn of ambrosia on his tongue. A moan, his or hers, it didn't matter. Klaus was lost, tugged her close and tight, desperate.
Hands in his hair, Caroline trembled as they both went to the rich earth, hands and bodies desperate. He gave and gave, desperate for everything she'd offer. Her mouth was greedy and desperate and when she broke apart in his arms, he kissed away the pale streaks of tears.
"I want revenge."
Klaus lifted his head from her naked breast, looked at Caroline with her red lips and flushed cheeks, war behind her eyes. "Love?"
Her hands cupped his face. "They took you from me."
"They erased you from the stars."
She laughed, the sound low and husky, body relaxing into the earth. He wondered if she knew how closely the earth still followed her, trees and flowers, bending towards her. "I abandoned them. What star could possibly hold more than you?"
He closed his eyes, bent his head, body trembling. She stroked his cheeks, thumbs a soft temptation. "Did you think I would not choose you?"
"I could not find you," Klaus ground out. He lifted his gaze, met hers. Let the bloody truth of what he'd become sharpen his face. "A thousand years, Caroline. No prayer, no shrine, no bloody carnage left me a clue."
"I will not apologize," Caroline told him imperiously, but then her teeth caught her lip and she swallowed. "I had not heard of you, the rumors of your monsters until recently."
"I was not subtle."
"I preferred solitude."
"You'll show me, these places in the world you call ours," Klaus said firmly.
"They are mine and I will consider it," Caroline returned but she smiled, a brilliant thing of sunshine and laughter.
Voices carried from the house and Caroline stilled, gaze flickering over his shoulder. Not from shyness at their nakedness, but from possessiveness.
His cock twitched, body burning for this slight girl and her golden tongue. Caroline carried a possessive soul, a defiant and burning mind, softened only by her sunshine heart. He would never let her go. Had known it the minute their gaze had caught eons before.
"They are related through my human flesh," Klaus told her, kissing the soft skin of her shoulder. "The first to share death's malady with me. I did not have a pomegranate to carry me into eternity, my love."
"You care for them?" Caroline asked, voice curious.
"They are considerably less trying than the last set of siblings I was forced to share the world with."
Those eyes of war met his again. "I will not forget, what they did to us."
Klaus lips curled, dimples bracketing sin. "Neither have I. Nor will I. Lady Death has not abandoned her kingdom, love. She's simply changed the rules to suit her. This time, I will not share you."
Caroline blinked, expression thoughtful. "Death is less forgiving than even I."
"The gods sleep. For now."
Caroline smiled, a slow terrible thing that had once left a kingdom trembling, a world silent in fear. Beloved was his Queen, but her name was feared. "I would like to meet this family, these generals."
"Who am I to deny you?"
A slanting look filled with decadence and want. "Then I just want you."
Klaus stood, pulled her with him. "You've always had me."
"Do not leave me again." A hard, biting command, the faintest vulnerability behind her eyes. Young no longer, his Queen.
"Not if I have to burn all the stars from the sky." His words were a promise, given from a soul born near the beginning of time. From which life had been created and kept safe. No more.
"It may come to that," Caroline whispered, eyes glancing to the heavens. "They will not take kindly to our bargains when the world broke."
"Death comes to all. Her price will be high, when the old things in the world decide to stir."
"They will."
He kissed her palm. "Not today."
"No, not today." Caroline agreed. The she gifted him with another smile. "Show me our home."
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