When Caroline woke the next morning, it was to her mother gently knocking on her door.
"Caroline, sweetie, I have to go to work, but Elena's on the phone for you."
"Mom, I'm sleeping," she said, waspishly.
"Okay, honey, I'll tell her to call you back."
Caroline rolled her eyes at Elena.
"No, mom, I'll talk to her now, I guess."
Liz tentatively brought the phone in, and handed it to Caroline.
"I'm off to work, can we have lunch at the Grill, maybe around 1pm?"
Caroline nodded in agreement, bid her mother farewell, before picking up the phone to talk to Elena.
"Caroline, I'm so glad you're alright!" the other girl gushed. "When I didn't hear from you, I just thought you'd gone away for a few days, or something. It never crossed my mind that you were in danger!"
Caroline rolled her eyes at Elena, for the second time in as many minutes.
"It's fine 'Lena," Caroline said, a little bored. "You couldn't have known."
"Why do you come here for the day?" Elena pressed. "I'm at Damon's, we can just relax, maybe go to the lake. Whatever you want!"
"No thanks," Caroline said. "I'm not really up for doing much."
Caroline didn't offer and alternate plan, testing to see whether Elena would be willing to do anything else when –
"Oh, that's okay then. Well, I'll see you really soon, promise."
"Bye Elena."
Caroline hung up before she heard Elena's response.
"Someone seems a little short with their friends this morning," Klaus stated sardonically, from where he was inspecting his nails leaning against her door jamb. "Should I be worried?"
Caroline lay back in her bed and didn't answer right away.
"You shouldn't be worried," she said, after a moment. "She shouldn't be either, really, I'm just not ready to extend any empathy to her right now."
"I see," he said, slowly. "Did you want to spend the morning exploring our connection, or would you rather stay here for a while?"
She rolled onto her side to face him, contemplating her answer. She looked far less worn than the previous day, but her eyes still held a haunted quality to them.
"I guess I'm awake now," she said. "Let's go do some testing."
xxx
It was nearly two hours later before Klaus and Caroline began their experimentation.
Caroline was adamant she needed a real breakfast first – bacon, eggs, the works – then they needed to gather equipment, then they had to drive to the woods.
"Why on earth do we have to do this in the woods?" Klaus asked, irked, as they traipsed through the trees.
"Because Klaus, we can't really test anything if we just stay in the house, and we can't do stuff around town, obviously, I can't just randomly walk around town talking to myself!"
"Okay, fine, but do we have to go this far in?" he complained petulantly.
One thing they tested while Caroline was cooking her breakfast that morning was whether Klaus could use his vampire reflexes and agility, which he could not. And Klaus was not accustomed to walking everywhere he went. He was in quite the fouler about it all actually; the walking, the tripping over stones he didn't see. It felt so infantile, so human.
"Yes, and stop sulking," Caroline snapped. "Any closer to town and we might be caught by people doing a hike through the trails. But this is far enough, I suppose."
Klaus melodramatically let his body crumple to the forest floor, splaying himself out as though he'd been walking for twenty days, not twenty minutes.
"You are a huge drama queen, you know that," Caroline intoned, as she placed her backpack full of supplies on the ground next to him, before pulling out a blood bag to take a sip. "So where should we start?"
"Perhaps with distance?" Klaus said, propping himself up on his elbows to look at her.
Caroline nodded and rummaged through her bag, pulling out two phones.
"Actually, now I think about it, we should start here," she said.
Klaus frowned at her curiously, as Caroline fiddled with the phones.
"Say something," she hissed at him.
"What?"
"Say something! Anything!"
"Caroline Forbes is actually the drama queen," he said, grinning wolfishly at her.
She rolled her eyes, and pressed play on the voice memo she just recorded.
"Say something," Klaus heard the phone copy Caroline. "Say something! Anything!"
"Apparently you won't record," Caroline mused. "I guess that makes sense."
She then used one of the phones to call the other phone, and placed it next to Klaus on the ground.
"Speak into this in a moment," she ordered him. "I'm going to go behind that tree."
He obliged a moment later and repeated, "Caroline Forbes is actually the drama queen."
To Caroline's disappointment, she couldn't hear him through phone's speaker.
"I can't hear you," she said. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes, love," he called to her, from his spot a few feet away.
"I guess it makes sense?" she said again, a question heavy in her voice, as she came back around to face him.
He hummed his response, as Caroline dejectedly picked up the phone from the ground, and hung up the call. She proceeded to fiddle some more with the phone, and Klaus regarded her irritably.
"Need I remind you, love, we do not have all day, as we are due at the grill for lunch with your mother in only a few short hours. May I suggest texting the wolf boy at a later time?"
Caroline's eyes shot up from the phone screen, and she glared at him.
"You can be a real jerk, you know that," she snapped, pressing play on the phone. "I was actually choosing you some music, so while I go do all the physical work of this test you don't get so bored."
A dulcet voice began singing through the phone's tinny speaker, and Klaus' abashed averting of eyes was enough to appease Caroline.
Well… almost enough to appease her.
"Plus, I can text Tyler whenever I see fit, you cannot dictate my life to me just because we're stuck together right now."
With a huff, Caroline flashed away about a hundred feet.
"You all right?" she called to him.
"Yes, love," he called back.
"What about now?" she called after another few hundred feet.
"Yes, love," he repeated.
"Okay, I'm going to try a couple of miles, wait a couple of minutes, then come back, okay?" she yelled. She heard his affirmative response before flashing off.
When she was alone, deep into the woods, Caroline contemplated what they should test out next.
She supposed if Klaus could exist independently from her, then that would open a well of opportunities. She could go hang with Elena without him tagging along. Maybe she would go to The Grill with Tyler. Maybe Klaus would leave…
She pushed that thought away as soon as she had it though, and decided to flash back to Klaus.
"Hey so, verdict?" she said, shortly, when she got back to him.
Though, as she looked at his face, she knew what had happened.
"That was… unpleasant…" Klaus said, stiltedly. "I felt that feeling, I couldn't see or hear, then suddenly you were back and it was gone."
Caroline gave him a sympathetic smile.
"I'm really sorry you had to feel that again," she replied. "Do you want to find the exact distance?"
Klaus nodded resolutely, though was unwilling to let that feeling consume him again.
"Okay, maybe I try a single mile?"
Klaus nodded again, and Caroline flashed away again, waited for a minute, then flashed back.
"That seemed okay," Klaus said, looking relieved when Caroline was back by his side.
"Right…" Caroline said, thinking. "I don't think we need to find the exact distance."
Klaus looked even more relieved at this.
"I gotta be within a mile's radius of you at all times," she said, kindly. "That's enough for you to have your own room in my house!"
She let out a tinkling laugh, and even Klaus cracked a smile.
"What next," he said.
"I was hoping you had an idea?" she replied.
"When I moved the blood bag," Klaus began slowly, as though carefully choosing his words. "I wondered what it felt like for the physical world when I touched it."
Caroline raised a single eyebrow.
"If you wanted to touch me Klaus, you could have just asked," she said, shrewdly.
He would never admit it, he began to flush behind his ears at Caroline's words, though she luckily didn't notice.
She sat herself down next to him, where he was still spread out on the ground, and placed her hand where she could see his.
He could instantly feel her warmth, and the softness of her hands, and he would be lying to himself if he didn't consider how comforting it felt.
"I can't feel anything," she said, evenly. "It's so strange, I can plainly see my hand isn't touching the ground, but it feels as though it is."
"Interesting," he said. "I can feel you, but like before can't physically interact with you."
"So weird," Caroline removing her hand. "I wonder what…"
And before she finished her sentence, she bodily dropped herself on him.
"Oof, Caroline," he said, feeling where her ass was connected to his groin. "You could have warned me?"
She laughed heartily, and scrambled to get off him, her face alight with an adorable mischief.
"I could have but that would have been no fun!"
"Caroline?"
Both Caroline and Klaus froze in their tracks, and Caroline's body clammed up as Damon and Elena came into view.
"Damon thought he heard you," Elena said. "Who were you talking to?"
"Just myself," Caroline said, as she subconsciously shifted so she was in between the newcomers and Klaus.
"I thought you were going to stay in today," Elena replied, looking a little hurt. "And now you're out here."
"I said I wasn't up to much, Elena, not that I was going to stay in," Caroline replied, delicately.
"How is this not much, but hanging with me is too much?"
Caroline valiantly fought the urge to roll her eyes, she really did, but right then she couldn't help herself.
"I just didn't want to hang out today, okay, or if I did I wanted it to be something I wanted do. Like hang out at my house, or go for a hike on a trail I chose. Sorry that going to Damon's house the day after I was freed from getting tortured by my dad wasn't on my to-do list."
"Tell her what you really think, Caroline," Klaus said, cheekily from behind her.
"Caroline, I –"
"I've got to get going, I'm having lunch with my mom soon, who was the only one who noticed I was missing, by the way."
With that, Caroline quickly picked up her things, the phone still warbling music through it's speaker, and turned to go.
"Your dad can resist compulsion," Damon said, snidely.
Caroline stopped dead in her tracks, and closed her eyes.
"What did you say?" she asked, though she knew exactly what he said.
"I said your dad can resist compulsion, barbie," Damon repeated, as he flashed over to her, invading her personal space in a way only he could. "So you better tell him to hold his tongue, or he'll lose it."
The threat was evident, and Caroline's skin crawled at having to talk to her dad, and having Damon so close to her.
"Don't threaten my family, Damon," she said, simply. "Please."
"Damon, don't be ridiculous," Elena said, grabbing him by the arm, and began to drag him away. "We're not hurting Bill Forbes. Period."
Caroline smiled, gratefully at Elena, but still turned to leave.
As she turned, she caught the look of utter murder in Klaus' eyes, and just shook her head at him.
"Why aren't you using your vampire speed?" Damon called suspiciously after her.
"Why are you still talking to me?" Caroline replied, without turning around.
xxx
"So, dad can resist compulsion?" Caroline asked her mother, without any pretence as she sat down for lunch.
Liz Forbes sighed a worried sigh, and looked contemplatively at her daughter.
"It would seem that way, sweetie," Liz replied, after a few moments. "I don't know what his plan is, and since Damon is the one who tried the compulsion, Bill now knows the identities of two vampires in the town. And he knows I know, but am not doing anything about it."
"I guess just throw that on the steaming pile of unknowns this town has thrown at us over the past few years," Caroline said helplessly, her shoulders sagging.
"Chin up, sweetie," Liz said caringly. "You try not to worry about your dad, and leave him to me. Damon's agreed to not do anything drastic until we find out more about what he's up to."
Caroline smiled wanly, her eyes flicking to Klaus, who had respectfully offered to sit at the bar, so she could have lunch with just her mother. He caught her eye and smiled back.
She contemplated all the new complications of her life. What was Bill's plan? Was he just causing trouble for the sake of it? Where was this connection, or link, or whatever it was with Klaus headed? Did she just have to resign herself to a vampire's eternity with a ghost-shadow? What on earth was next for her? For Klaus?
Caroline yearned to talk to her mother about everything that was going on. But she couldn't risk it. Not yet.
"You there?" Liz prompted, as Caroline's silence lengthened.
"Yep!" she said, pulling herself from her reverie. "Now let's order, I'm starving!"
Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think!
