Hello, my dears :) It's been so long and I apologise so much! But life with a baby doesn't leave much time for writing. I hope you enjoy the chapter. I have already started the next one so hopefully it wont take too long to finish. Let me know what you think and what you think might happen next :)

Gripping the door frame until his knuckles turned white, Klaus breathed deeply through his nostrils as he tried silently to regulate his growing anger. In the seconds that followed during which he had met the stranger in front of him, it had occurred to the blond-haired man that the very essence of his troubles could have been based on a lie; the lie of a potentially desperate young woman for whom he now felt nothing but hate.

Had this all been avoidable? Had he lost the only woman he had ever truly felt a connection to for the sake of a child that might not be his? With dreams of fatherhood deteriorating into a heap, Klaus continued to stare at Tyler with suspicion before addressing the man's claim.

"I think we'd best go pay Caroline a visit." He said through gritted teeth, banging the door shut before him and hearing Tyler hurry after him.

"Where is she?"

There were too many questions. Of course he had known Caroline was a taken woman when he had relentlessly and callously pursued her with little thought of the consequences. Yet, he had been foolish enough to believe that she had remained unspoken for after his abandonment of her months before. Could the baby really be that of another man's? How did he feel about that? Klaus could not be sure. A strange emptiness had taken over him now and he pounded the pavement furiously.

"No doubt with my mother…"

The journey to his childhood home was shorter than he remembered it ever being before and for that he was grateful. Klaus cut the engine of his car as he reached the imposing wooden doors of his parent's house. Following suit, Tyler left the car and felt his feet crunch on the sand coloured gravel as he eyed the grand spectacle of a building before him. He was not impressed but felt his heart sink as a feeling of home sickness washed over him upon remembering his own childhood in Mystic Falls. Never did he imagine he would be in this situation; about to enter the home of an almost stranger and the fate of his future hanging in the balance.

With a clenched up fist, Klaus thumped hard on the doors and tapped his food as he awaited an answer. Trepidation consumed him. From inside he could hear the muffled shouts of his father and he kept his hands involuntarily in fists; he could only imagine the immense sick joy Mikael would gain from learning of the potential truth regarding the parentage of Caroline's unborn child. Not for the first time that day, Klaus wished Lacy was back home beside him.

The sound of a twisting door knob caught his attention and Klaus waited, Tyler stood just behind him, as the door was yanked open. The person in front of him was not his father, as he had expected. The face that greeted him was one he had sworn would never set foot in his childhood home. Suddenly, the shouts of his enraged father made sense.

"I'm not going to ask you to come home. I don't know if you even love me anymore but I love you. Whatever you want, whatever makes you happy, I want to give you that and I'm in this… for better or worse."

She could not deny the sincerity in his voice but experience told her that Mikaelson men were always sincere up until they weren't. Trust had been broken; it was nothing more than a meaningless concept that led to humiliation and regret and she would be damned if a bunch of well-spoken words were going to derail the new path life had presented. Pressing the 'delete' button when the automated voice instructed her to do so, she ignored the stab of guilt and placed the phone back of the kitchen counter. A sudden movement from the corner of the room shifted her focus and she plastered on a smile on her face as she greeted her sister.

"You look like hell." she half-joked; taking in her sister's dishevelled, knotty brown hair and the creased red and blue striped bed pants she wore.

When her greeting gained her no reply - not even a look of acknowledgement - she sighed with exasperation. She watched her sister continue to ignore her as she inched past her and poured herself a mug of coffee. It wasn't until the first sip had passed the other woman's lips that she attempted conversation once more.

"Sleep well?" she asked, making a mental note of the afternoon time.

Again, she was met with only silence and snapping from pent up tension she snatched the mug from her sister's hand - her fingers burning slightly as coffee escaped the brim - and placed it down on the counter.

"You can't just keep ignoring me!"

Lifting her eyes to meet Katherine's, Lacy stood perfectly still as she contemplated her response and she watched on as her older sister's cheeks burned bright and her nostrils flared; not with anger but with desperation.

"Do you love him?" she asked. "Because I'm pretty sure Hayley does and she's good for Elijah. They're good for each other and she doesn't deserve to have her heart broken."

"I do love him." Katherine's reply came instantly, surprising even herself with her honesty. "I do." She reiterated; more confident in her answer when she witnessed her sister's disbelief.

"Then let him go."

Dumbfounded, Katherine stood with her mouth in a tight line and at a loss for what to say next. Ignoring the woman's reaction, Lacy grabbed her phone from off the counter and watched as the screen lit up and informed her that she had missed a call from Klaus. Her thumb lingered momentarily over the 'dial' button but she never pressed it. No conversation they could have would fix their relationship. Lacy realised that she was stuck. She missed Klaus so much that in the dead of the night she would awaken to damp pillows to find that she had cried in her sleep. The emptiness she felt in the pit of her stomach was a constant companion and the world just seemed bland without him.

Then there was Kol. Lacy stared at her nails; bitten down and red from picking at the flaking skin around the edges. She worried for the youngest of the Mikaelson brothers. He was more delicate than Klaus; more prone to being buried under by the mountain of his emotions and she knew that he was the one who deserved to be hurt the least. She contemplated phoning him but decided against it.

"How can you say that to me?" Katherine whispered, too stunned to shout.

With a sigh, Lacy replied. "You spent ten years without Elijah. You don't get to decide you want him back just as he's finally moving on from you."

"He was my husband."

"-And you left him, Katherine! The guy was a mess without you and everybody else had to pick up the pieces! You chose yourself just like you always do!"

"Just like you did, you mean!" Katherine shot back.

For a second, Lacy was unable to speak and Katherine saw her chance to fight back.

"You think you're better than me. That you did something noble by leaving Klaus and coming here, but you're not! You slept with Kol and you messed up and now you're too scared to face either of them, so you've run away. If you had been honest from the start then none of this ever would have happened. I may have been selfish and put myself first but at least I can admit it!"

"This isn't even about me!"

"Yes it is. Everything is about you!" shouted Katherine, her eyes welling up with tears and her voice beginning to crack. "I can't want Elijah back because it will mess up your perfect little life with your perfect little family, but you messed that up all on your own, Lacy. Newsflash! They are not your family."

"Yes they are!" Lacy screamed back, advancing on Katherine. "Yes they are. They were all I had when you bailed. Small town life wasn't enough for you. Elijah and his family weren't enough for you but they were for me! They never abandoned me. I might have messed up things with Klaus and Kol but I won't let you hurt Elijah. I won't let you come back into our lives only for you to leave again!"

Suddenly, Katherine could see clearly. Before her, her sister wasn't a young woman but the little girl she left all those years ago. She was a culmination of every tragedy and heartache that had befallen her in Katherine's absence when she was no longer around to protect her from the world. Lacy was tortured and broken and frightened… and she needed her family.

"I think you should back to Mystic Falls."

"What?" questioned Lacy, her voice almost a whisper.

"Go. Leave. Go home to Klaus."

"I can't."

"I don't want you here, Lacy! Just go home!"

That morning she would have fought ferociously to keep her sister by her side but the sting of her words was too much, and so was the realisation that her younger sister was an almost stranger to her now. They were not the family Katherine so secretly longed them to be; she could not compete with the Mikaelsons.

"I don't want to go home."

"Just go back to Klaus… he misses you."

With her parting words, Katherine turned her back on Lacy and walked out of her home. She did not want to be there when the other woman left. It was better to return to the emptiness; it was what she knew best.