Author's note: This was written for Klarosummer Bingo. A dying Caroline decides not to carry a secret to her grave, and the person she tells is far more invested than she could realize...

Warning: Terminal illness angst. But also a happy ending because my muse is a flighty bitch.

Prompt: "The days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change."
― E.B. White


It was stupid to be afraid. Doctors gave her less than four months to live. But that's not why she was afraid. Caroline had made her peace with the cancer. Instead, her thoughts strayed to a shadow-filled room that stank of cigars and nervous sweat. How she hated Vegas. She hated that tacky city so much she hadn't ventured closer to the West Coast than Chicago in almost a decade. She'd sworn that the things she'd seen there would be taken to her grave.

But now the grave was calling Caroline, whispering her to do what she'd always known was right. The truth deserved to be told. She wasn't stupid though — speaking out against the Mikaelson Family would get her killed — even on her deathbed.

The doorbell rang, and she heard Jeremy shuffle down the hall to answer. He was her favorite among the night nurses, bringing her a steady supply of his home-brew version he called giggle gummies. The rest of her palliative care team were way too uptight and kept lecturing her about the importance of a healthy eating. Tumors were rotting her body from the inside out and they wanted her to eat kale. Even before she was dying, kale tasted like despair and burlap.

Jeremy's voice was suspicious as he called out, "There's a detective here to see you."

"Come in," she shouted, pleased that she'd mustered enough strength to keep her voice from cracking. "Might as well get this over with," she whispered.

"Eager to be rid of me already?"

Caroline lifted her weary gaze, startled to see the stranger already at her bedside. "Detective, you must have ears like a bat," she scoffed, fighting a rising blush as she took in impossibly chiseled features and a devilish smirk. "And moves like a ballerina since you managed to get across my house without making those floorboards squeak."

He chuckled, a twinkle in his gray eyes as though enjoying a private joke. With a flash of a silver badge pulled from his pocket, he introduced himself. "You can call me Klaus."

"They already sent you from Vegas? I just called yesterday — the cops must really want my story."

His gray gaze flickered from hers briefly as he muttered, "I had some family business to attend in the area."

She was struck by the regret she heard in his voice. He must not get along with his family. "Your family's complicated, huh? I get it — I ran away to Vegas to become a dancer and my mom never spoke to me again."

A shadow passed over his handsome face as he settled in the chair at her bedside. "I chose a path my family approved of, but I don't always agree with their decisions. I often wonder if things could've been different if I'd chosen differently." Caroline's sudden fit of coughing interrupted whatever he intended to say next, and with a furrowed brow, he quickly poured her a drink of water from the pitcher on the table. "Apologies, love. I shouldn't ramble on. Your call to Vegas Metro Command was routed to my station. You said you have information on one of my cold cases?"

She hated how her heart still clenched in fear — even now when her reality seemed so close to slipping into the unknown. She traced the raised edges of the colorful flowers on her quilt, recalling how happy she'd been the day her home ec class had surprised her with the gift. She'd lied to her students with a too-bright smile, pretending that she was taking a brief break from teaching. Even then, she knew she wasn't coming back.

She sighed, "Lately, I've been reminded of E.B. White's quote, 'The days when summer is changing into autumn — the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.' This was a goodbye gift from my students; they thought I'd only be gone a semester or two." She didn't bother to mask her bitterness as she added, "Change is a hard lesson to learn — I hate that it's the last thing I'll teach them."

A note of surprise entered Klaus' voice as he said, "You were a teacher?"

Despite her fatigue, Caroline's temper flared. "Seriously?! You think a stripper's always a stripper?" She savored his chagrined expression, adding sharply, "There's a limited shelf life even if we aren't stupid enough to get involved with the mob."

An unreadable expression briefly crossed his face as he murmured, "I didn't mean to trivialize what you went through."

What she went through. "I worked a private party on the Strip. It was at the Moonstone, so I didn't ask too many questions — all the girls knew if you did a high-roller event there you didn't have to worry about rent for a few months." She winced as she thought back to how ridiculously excited she'd been at the possibility of seeing a celebrity there. She'd even practiced trying to be casual when asking for an autograph.

"I didn't recognize anyone at first." Mostly because she never looked anyone in the eye when she was dancing. No matter how upscale the places were, she never could get past the fact that she was naked. "I was in my own little world where I just wanted to dance and create something beautiful."

"I'm sure you were beautiful, sweetheart." Gray eyes widened a fraction as Klaus hastily tacked on, "Are beautiful."

Caroline let out an inelegant snort. "Stage IV breast cancer pretty much sucked out whatever looks I could lay claim to." She lightly patted the white blonde peach fuzz still trying to grow in after the final, completely useless rounds of chemo. Not to mention the mouth sores and peeling nails and paper-thin skin that bruised easier than an apple. It wasn't fair that her corpse started rotting before it got put in the ground.

"But surely there are treatments," he began, waving a hand carelessly, "your science has advanced considerably since...well, science is quite impressive these days."

'Your science'? What the hell did that mean? "It's metastasized. I'm out of treatments and obscure clinical trials and stupid dreams of some magical cure."

Klaus looked decidedly uncomfortable by her frankness, as though he hadn't realized he was talking to a dead woman. "You must not have any experience with cancer — some people have all the luck. You know, at that party, I thought I was lucky too — I was chosen to dance on the main stage right in front of the gaming table. From the color of the chips to the expensive cut of the Italian suits, it was easy to see that this is where the power was."

Caroline still recalled the fat rolls of cash bundled with gleaming diamond and platinum money clips, and how the men indifferently tossed them to the stage. "I was probably surrounded by terrible men who do terrible things, but I didn't realize the danger until Mikael walked in." Noting Klaus' obvious interest, she couldn't help but ask, "Have you ever heard of a worse name for a mob guy than Mikael Mikaelson? It's like if Disney decided to do The Godfather."

They shared a laugh, his dimples deepening as he looked oddly surprised by his own amusement. He must've worked Mikaelson mob cases for years until he'd become numb. It felt good to laugh with him. He had a nice laugh — warm and charming and full of possibilities — it made her wish she'd met him sooner. She was proud to carry his laugh with her.

It was nothing like Mikael's laugh. "The mood shifted the moment he showed up. The guys seemed to sit up a little straighter and the women who'd been using every trick they knew to get attention shrank into the background. Even I knew who he was." He'd certainly been on TV often enough since his latest acquittal. Witnesses against Mikael were rare and those that managed to survive long enough to get to the trials all recanted their testimony at some point — before suffering tragic accidents.

She shivered at the memory. "I remember how he stared at the girls with a shark's grin and laughed. There was no context, no connection — just this disjointed laugh that went on too long."

Concern colored Klaus' tone as he asked, "Did he hurt you?"

"No," she quickly said, shame keeping her gaze lowered. "I mean...it could've been worse." Shaking her head, Caroline pressed on with her story, fighting the bone-weary fatigue that kept making her eyes want to shut. "At first, he sat at the poker table and played, absently enjoying his cigar and brandy. Eventually, the other men at the table seemed to relax, and I tried to just shut my eyes and let it all go like I used to, finding a rhythm and letting my body lead me where it wanted."

It hurt her to go to that place again, where she could feel the heat of the lights overhead and the shame of sweating like a pig in such an elegant room. "But I couldn't relax. I was stiff and uncoordinated and my makeup kept melting. I couldn't keep my eyes off of Mikael. It was like a part of me was just waiting for something to happen."

Klaus leaned forward, body tense as though he already knew her secrets. Clearly, he was dedicated to his work, and as a good detective, he must've formed his own theories over the years about what happened.

"There was a young guy there; he barely looked old enough to drink. He was so sweet to the girls, asking our names and blushing anytime we'd wink at him." She bowed her head, fighting back tears as she told the detective, "His name was Henrik."

Klaus' jaw tightened; the strong line could cut granite as he nodded to himself, a faraway look in his gaze. He was probably thinking of the gruesome crime scene photos. There was something so dark and twisted about hurting such an innocent face. She wanted to comfort Klaus, but wasn't sure of herself; it had been a long time since she'd been attracted to someone. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong...everything.

"Henrik got mad at Mikael when he played a fifth ace. He called out the blatant cheating and really embarrassed him in front of the others. At first, everyone thought it was a joke, just guys shit-talking over poker. And then Mikael grinned."

There was a soothing pressure in her palm and Caroline looked up in surprise when she realized at some point he'd grasped her hand. Klaus held his body stiffly, as though he didn't offer comfort often. His touch was cool to her feverish skin, and she couldn't deny the gratitude she felt that he didn't shrink away from her illness. She'd learned the hard way that people could be weird about death. But it seemed Klaus wasn't one of them.

"There was a moment where I guess I got distracted, because suddenly Mikael was on the other side of the table, and at first I thought he was going to pull out a gun, but instead he had this stake carved with weird symbols." She shook her head, still confused by what she'd seen. Could she trust Klaus with what she saw next? Only a crazy person would believe her.

As though sensing her hesitation, the detective quietly observed, "You saw something that couldn't be explained. Tell me what it was; you have my word that I'll believe you."

How did he know? Caroline let out a choked sob she didn't realize she'd been holding. She'd been afraid for so long, and to have someone willing to understand...It was a gift. "What I saw, it...it's impossible! He moved so fast and plunged the stake into Henrik's chest. He was so strong it pierced all the way through to the other side. How?! No one can be that strong!"

Klaus' fingers twitched, but she clung to them, desperate for him to believe her. "I think I heard screaming from some of the girls, but I couldn't make a sound. I remember shaking all over, and my feet wobbled in these ridiculous, glittery chunks of acrylic." She'd seen hungry wolf glances from the men whenever she danced, but those were dangers she could plan for. Human dangers. How was she supposed to know that there was another kind of danger?

"I don't know how to explain it, but their faces changed. Henrik's boyish features seemed to crumple, and there were these black veins that suddenly appeared." She dropped Klaus' hand, hiding her face in both palms as she fought to catch her breath. "But it's Mikael's face that haunts me. His eyes bled black and I guess I must've gasped, because he turned to smile at me with these teeth that were too long and too sharp and his laugh. God, his laugh."

Klaus' voice was curt as though anger simmered just beneath the surface. "I can assure you God has little to do with Mikael." He tilted his curly head, eyeing her curiously as he asked, "Why did you decide to tell your story? I can see your fear is as strong as it was years ago."

"Because I watched that boy burn. Mikael must've put some kind of accelerant on Henrik's clothes, because he caught fire almost as soon as he was stabbed and that smell. Fuck. Setting somebody on fire like that? I've never seen such evil." Caroline tearfully confessed, "I thought of that poor boy's family and how they'd never know what happened to him. I thought of them every day that I was a coward and didn't tell anyone what I knew."

Mikael had flashed her a malicious grin once the fire died out, and casually removed a gun from a shoulder holster. Caroline's heart threatened to burst out of her chest when she was forced to her knees, the barrel pressed so far into her forehead the mark remained weeks later. He pulled the trigger. The empty click from the chamber only heightened her fear. He pressed the trigger again and again, laughing viciously as she squeezed her eyes shut. "Keep your mouth shut or the next time it will be loaded," he threatened.

And she did. She kept her mouth shut and she stayed alive.

Something of Caroline's horror must have shown in her eyes, because Klaus clutched her hand tightly, his gaze fierce as he told her, "You're no coward, love. You faced Mikael and were clever enough to survive."

"It was selfish to keep quiet and I need to make things right for Henrik. I'm dying and Mikael and his mafia minions can have whatever the cancer hasn't taken." Another coughing fit choked her again, and Caroline closed her eyes, wondering if the detective would mind if she rested for a bit.


Klaus watched the intriguing woman quietly nod off, her erratic heartbeat betraying how little time she had left. It amazed Klaus how life still held surprises for him after all these centuries. He'd been a loyal stepson to Mikael, blindly carrying out his orders with a bloodlust that rivaled his own. However, when his baby brother had been murdered, supposedly at the hands of the loathsome Salvatores, that's when he'd grown suspicious.

Proof had been frustratingly slow to obtain, but then Mikael had gotten word that a witness had surfaced after all this time, and he'd dispatched several of his most trusted men to take care of it. However, Klaus carefully arranged for their private plane to be delayed, operating on a hunch that Caroline would be worth her weight in gold.

It turned out she was worth so much more.

He lightly stroked her knuckles, watching her peaceful face. She had a good, gentle heart and it moved him that she'd wanted to set things right to honor Henrik. Not to mention she'd given him the final pieces he needed to make his move against Mikael. He was grateful to her for so many reasons. And he would see her rewarded. With a knowing smile, Klaus leaned forward to begin.

Caroline will make a marvelous vampire.