Caroline came to very slowly, her head pounding, skin crawling, and honestly she thought she might throw up. Which was a first since turning… Vomiting wasn't a big problem for vampires in her experience.

Yet to open her eyes, Caroline could feel she was tied to a chair; metal chains and ropes cutting into her cold skin. She tried to focus enough through her whopping headache to hear anything in her surroundings, to figure out where she was before her captors knew she was awake. And it wasn't like she had the strength to open her eyes yet, even if she wanted to.

It was another few hours of drifting in and out of consciousness before Caroline felt strong enough to crack a peak at her surroundings. She felt fractionally better than earlier, but she would need a hell of a lot of blood to truly kick the vervain from her system.

When she was finally aware enough to truly take in where she was, she felt a presence behind her. Craning her neck to see, Caroline couldn't turn enough in her restraints to get the angle she needed.

"Who's there?" she called, croakily.

Her voice echoed eerily around the dark dungeon, but there was no response.

"You don't know what you're dealing with!" she said, with much more bravado than she felt. And it's not like it was true, she'd been shot up with vervain, of course they knew what they were dealing with.

"Who are you!" Caroline yelled, louder still, when she still didn't receive any response. "Tell me, or you'll regret it!"

When she finally felt a movement from the figure, and he came into her field of vision, she shook silently, suddenly terrified for her life.

"Klaus," she breathed, keeping her voice as steady as possible.

"You are supposed to be dead, love."

"So are you," she replied, while taking a shuddering breath, in a vain attempt to calm herself.

"Well," Klaus intoned menacingly, coming even closer to her. "I believe I am dead, sweetheart. But somehow, you're living. Care to explain this discrepancy?"

Caroline shivered as he stalked toward her, until he settled his hands on the arms of her chair, his face so close to hers she reared back in an attempt to get away from him.

"How is this possible?" she whispered, still trying to keep her fear at bay. Those hands, that were so close to hers, had killed her once before after all. And Caroline would never forget the feeling of dying, nor the feeling of being dead.

"That is what I'm asking you," he said, his voice raising impatiently. "How are you there and I'm here."

"Shh!" Caroline said harshly, suddenly completely distracted from the man in front of her.

"Did you just 'shush' me, sweetheart?" Klaus asked, indignantly. He didn't think anyone had the audacity to shush him in a millennium!

"Did you hear something?" She asked quickly, trying to focus her mind on the world beyond the stony cell she was currently in.

"I think I can hear –"

But it was Caroline's turn to be cut off as a hissing gas began seeping through vents in the walls, and she began coughing violently.

"Sweetheart?" Klaus asked, rushing to inspect the vents, and trying in vain to block them with his body.

"I think it's vervain," she choked out, through the haze.

"Well obviously," Klaus muttered, though quiet enough she couldn't hear.

But as soon as it started, the gas stopped, the noise was replaced by footsteps coming down what sounded like stone steps.

"What is it?" Klaus asked.

"Footsteps," she whispered.

"I can't hear…" he responded, though Caroline didn't reply straining her eyes to see who was there.

The ominous steps continued until, for the second time in as many moments, a face was revealed from the shadows, and Caroline's heart leapt and plummeted, somehow simultaneously.

"Hello, Caroline."

"Daddy?"

Bill Forbes unlocked the cell, and stepped in.

His face held an expression Caroline knew all too well. It was resolute, and disappointed. She'd seen it a thousand times before, and she hated that he wore the face now, because it meant he knew.

"Daddy, you have to help me," she spluttered. "Someone tied me up here, they're trying to hurt me."

Klaus felt a sympathetic twinge for Caroline. It was obvious to him that her father wasn't there to rescue her.

"You need to trust me, Caroline," Bill said, kneeling down in front of his daughter. "I will help you. You just have to tell me; how do you walk in the sun?"

"Caroline, love, don't trust him," Klaus said quietly, his eyes flicking between her and her father.

"If I tell you, you'll help me?" Caroline said, hope shining in her eyes.

"Yes, sweetie," he said, every bit the doting father.

"Caroline, don't," Klaus implored.

But he was too late, as Caroline's eyes flicked to the ring on her finger.

Bill's tender hands picked up her hand, and slid the ring from his finger. He tossed it far out of reach and got to his feet.

His eyes were determined, as he went over to a chain on the wall, that neither Klaus nor Caroline had noticed before.

"Daddy, what are you doing?" Caroline said, her eyes wide.

Without a word, Bill began to pull the chain, and suddenly Caroline knew what was coming.

"Daddy, no, please!"

But there was no use, because a fraction of a second later, a vent opened, letting in full sun from the world beyond her cell.

Caroline screamed, and Klaus could hear every ounce of pain she was feeling; her skin was sizzling, blistering. But before she was set fire completely, Bill shut the slats.

Ominously, he pulled a blood bag from his pocket and opened it up.

Caroline's face changed instantly in response to the scent of the blood; her eyes darkened, and black veins ran up her face, feeling the need to feed, to heal.

Bill appraised his daughter, that furrow of disappointment returning. He placed the offending bag down on the table behind him, before moving back toward the chains, his hand ready let the sun in at any moment.

"Daddy, please, you don't have to hurt me, I can control it. I don't kill people, I don't, I swear."

"Oh, Caroline," Bill said. "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to cure you."

"What…. You can't –"

But her agonised screams finished her sentence, as Bill opened the slats a second time, letting sunlight flood the room.

And that was how the cycle repeated for the rest of the day, leaving Caroline weak and limp as the sun went down many hours later.

Bill assessed her once more before he left the dungeon, disdain filling his eyes.

"You will get over this, Caroline," he stated. "I can't bare any alternatives."

With that, he was gone.

Caroline sat, still upright in her chair, looking completely shell-shocked and despondent.

"Caroline?" Klaus breathed. "Sweetheart, are you okay?"

It was a stupid enough question to pull her from her stupor.

"Of course I'm not okay," she said, tears springing to her eyes.

"I'm sorry for being concerned, love," Klaus replied, immediately on the defensive. "I won't make the same mistake again."

"What are you even still doing here?" Caroline snapped. "Go terrify some other girl you killed. This one has enough on her plate right now."

"Don't be naïve, Caroline," Klaus drawled. "I'm dead, there's not a lot of riveting conversation over here."

"Well lucky me! Won the jackpot today!" Caroline said, sarcastic enthusiasm in every syllable. "If you're so dead, and not having riveting conversations, how on earth are you talking to me! You're dead!"

"And you're a vampire, love, use the brain in that pretty little head of yours, and consider that maybe the impossible is often possible!"

"Okay, okay," Caroline snipped. "Jeez, no need to be rude. I'm trying to wrap my head around having a little chat with my dead murderer!"

"Yes well, love, wrap faster, because I am fast losing patience –"

"You're losing patience? Are you kidding me?" Caroline laughed, angrily. "I'm the one strapped to a chair, after a full day of daddy-daughter torture time, having to listen to your pompous ass insult me!"

"You are trying me, Caroline, and you would do well to not make me angry!"

"Oh, grow up, Klaus! You're a grown man, it is not my duty to not make you angry!" Caroline bit out. "Also, what are you going to do? Kill me again? Tried and failed with that one, honey, better luck next time!"

Klaus growled, and launched himself at her. Caroline flinched back, his hands gripping her restrained arms tightly. At contact, Caroline felt as though she was being drenched in ice, but said nothing, opting instead to stare furiously at him.

Their eyes staying locked for a few moments, both with half-snarls on their faces, until Caroline, exhausted, relented somewhat.

"Truce?" Caroline asked, still frowning crossly at him. Though she was willing to enter a cease fire, if it meant she could conserve what little energy she had left after the day.

"And why would I enter into a truce with you?" Klaus spat – apparently not as willing.

"I don't know, Klaus," she sighed, closing her eyes. "Maybe because we're stuck here. Maybe because you've literally been haunting my dreams for weeks now. And if you wanted to leave me alone, you would have. But here you are."

Klaus' scowl deepened, but he looked away. She was right of course; he was there because he wanted to be.

Klaus relaxed slightly, and took a seat on the only other bit of furniture in the dungeon; a table right by the entrance, about four feet from where Caroline was tied.

He studied her for a moment, trying to decide what next.

"How are you here?" she asked.

"How are you?" he replied.

"Bonnie," Caroline said, tentatively, noting the twitch in his eye when she mentioned the witch's name.

"When you know… when Elijah… did the thing," Caroline stammered, trying to find the least offensive way of pointing out her friends and his brother successfully killed him. "Your energy was added to all the energy Bonnie was channelling. And since she didn't need to use it on you, she turned the full force of it on me."

Klaus' eyes were narrowed as he watched her, keenly taking in all the information.

"And whatever she did worked, because next thing I know I'm gasping for air, and…"

"And?" he pressed.

"And I was back," she finished, lamely.

"Right," he said, sceptically.

"And what about you? You've been a real asshole with the whole haunting me stuff! I haven't been able to sleep properly since, like, May!"

Klaus chuckled, but didn't say anything right away.

"I don't quite know," he said, stiltedly, after several moments of silence, as though those words were quite difficult to say.

"Well, then," Caroline prompted. "From your point of view what physically happened? I'm sure the rest can come down to witches and their juju."

"One minute I was being tortured by your witch friend, and killed by my brother, and the next I was in the blackness."

"The blackness?"

"Yes, the blackness. It was just black, sweetheart, black. A darkness pressing in on me, suffocating me, pressing in on my eyes, restricting my movements. I had no control."

Caroline watched him closely as he spoke, and once again, she couldn't help but feel for the hybrid. She knew the feeling he was talking about, and it was the most awful thing she ever experienced.

"That's awful, Klaus," she said, gently. "I'm really sorry."

"I bet you are," he grumbled, his mood changing like a switch, all traces of vulnerability gone. "I think you're probably especially sorry for the part you played in my death."

"Hey!" she said indignantly, swiftly kicking herself for feeling sorry for him. "I had nothing to do with your death, asshole, since I was on a stone slab staked to death by you when you were killed!"

"Oh don't pretend you're not happy I'm dead!" he said haughtily. "You would have probably delivered the final blow if you could."

"Happy you're dead? Do you even hear yourself?" Caroline cried, disbelieving that anyone could be such a complete pestilence. "Dead-you is literally stalking alive-me. If you were alive, at least I wouldn't be getting yelled at for trying to be nice to you!"

"Oh, woe is you, Caroline," he said, in a melodramatic, sing-song voice, before switching to condescension. "You're alive, love, stop acting like everything is so horrible for you."

Now, it had been a long and draining couple of days for Caroline, and while she usually left crying to be done alone, she couldn't help the sudden tears brimming in her eyes once more.

"How can you say that?" she whispered, her voice shaking. "Are you so self-centred that you forgot my dad has been trying to torture the vampire out of me today?"

Even in the face of her distress, Klaus said nothing, just looked disparagingly at her.

"Just leave me alone, Klaus," Caroline said, letting the tears fall as she twisted as much as she could in her seat trying desperately to find a more comfortable position. "Today has been the single worst day of my life. And I have died. Twice. I don't need anything else from you to add to the pile."

"Your guilt trips won't work on me love," he said, spitefully. "I do not care."

"Believe whatever you have to, Klaus. Just stay out of my head please."

With that, Caroline shut her eyes and was silent.

Klaus watched her as she vainly attempted to sleep. And for all his bluster about guilt trips, he definitely felt some guilt panging in his chest.

The woman across from him was silently crying. He could see her body shaking, and tears leaking from behind her closed eyes. He could hear every shuddering, heavy breath she was trying to stifle.

She was just being kind to him, plus she was his only link to the living.

Klaus felt another pang in his chest when he remembered what she endured all day. She was tortured, for hours, at the hand of someone who was supposed to love and care for her, and she had still found it in her to extend kindness to him.

It was a kind of empathy Klaus seldom encountered, but often craved.

It took hours for Caroline to cry herself to sleep, and even more for Klaus to stop watching her while she slept.

And it was just a few more after that, when Bill showed up for another day of the same business as the previous day.

Caroline cried, screamed, and pleaded with her father to show mercy. Klaus watched it all, and there was nothing he could do about it, even as his rage at the violent malfeasance.

He noticed her eyes flick to him occasionally, when it seemed the pain was at its worst, and her father's words were cutting deeper than the sun's rays. Klaus suspected she might be making sure he was still there.

When the moon rose, and Bill packed his twisted job up again for the day, Caroline slumped, as far forward in the seat as her restraints would allow, trying to regain control. But with every passing hour without blood to revitalise her, her recovery time was slower.

"Sweetheart," Klaus said, tentatively.

"What, Klaus?" she said, with such little care that Klaus was almost taken aback.

"Thank you for what you said last night."

Caroline frowned, exhaustion etched in every line on her face.

"What did I say?" she asked.

"You said you were sorry about my experience over here. Thank you for saying that."

It wasn't quiet an apology, but she would take the the attempt on face value.

"You're welcome," Caroline said, trying to sound haughty, though not quite managing it.

"I had lost track of how long I had been trapped there," Klaus said, looking at his hands folded in his lap. "The nothingness never ceased pressing in on me. Until at one point or other, I felt something. It seemed to numb the cold somewhat."

Caroline watched Klaus' face closely. It was happening again. She was feeling compassion for him, despite everything.

"I've been around my fair share of magic over the years, Caroline," Klaus said, looking back up at her. "I know how embracing power works. I've felt the pull of more than 12,000 full moons in my life time, every time I could feel the needs of my wolf thrumming, trapped under my skin."

"That's why you wanted so badly to break the curse," Caroline said gently.

She'd never considered what fuelled Klaus' manic desperation to break the curse. And she thought, perhaps after a thousand years of living on this fraught plain of existence, maybe she would be driven violent with want for something.

"It is, but that's not the point," Klaus replied. "The point is, I felt that energy, I knew how to embrace it. How to follow it, find it. And it led me to you. It was still black, but I could move, and feel. Then one day the energy was no longer just energy. The blackness was gone, I could see you, feeding, living, going about your life. But I couldn't reach you."

"I could feel your energy too," Caroline said, tentatively. "Even before you were in my dreams. I was keeping my wits about me, because Bonnie said she didn't know what the consequences of my coming back would be. I first started noticing new energies around about a week after the sacrifice."

"What do you mean 'energies'. More than one?" Klaus asked, furrowing his brow.

"Well, yeah I think," Caroline said, trying to remember through her exhaustion. "Early on I felt different things, I tried tracking what I felt, but I didn't know what was actually different, and what was my projection, if you know what I mean?"

"Not really, love."

"Well you know, some days, if I was feeling rotten, I couldn't be sure if I was feeling rotten because of myself or because of the energy I sensed. Or when I noticed a stable type energy, whether that was influencing my emotions, or I was influencing the energy. And, well, then the dreams started, and from there, I just tried not to think about it all that much."

"I see," said Klaus, still appearing to be deep in thought. "Can you remember anything else? Anything about these energies, any differentiating characteristics at all?"

"I don't remember," Caroline whispered, helplessly.

"Please, Caroline, think, it could be important. If I managed to make some sort of physical form, maybe another entity can."

"Klaus, please, I can't think right now," Caroline said, feebly trying to push herself into a more active position. "I am so tired."

Klaus instantly felt bad for pushing her, he took in her ashen face, her scorched skin that really was taking its time stitching back together.

"Of course, love, sorry."

"Mmhmm," she hummed. "Thanks, Klaus."