THE PRINCESS RETURNS

by Augustus Filch

Rebekah Mikaelson, the only daughter of Esther and Theodore Mikaelson, has finally returned to the United States from her two year exile in St. Judes College, a boarding school in northern Scotland. The rumored reason for this princess' return seems to be a happy one: the cherished debutante season in New York City.

As the daughter of a socialite and the heir of one of the most successful import-export companies in the world, Rebekah's pending coming out to society is one of the most anticipated events between the reigning families of the Upper East Side. And surely, the celebration itself will be nothing short of grand.

Yesterday evening photographers caught Rebekah stepping out of JFK airport's entrance gates, only to be greeted by her very own battalion of the most coveted bachelors in town, that is, her brothers. The very public family reunion was cut short when cameras started flashing, as is common knowledge that our elite princess has never been a fan of the spotlight this reporter so gallantly offers.

With hope, we await what promises to be the event of the season and Rebekah's long-anticipated entrance into the world she was born for.

Sincerely, we thou loyal subjects.

See photos on page 14.

/

"So," she whispered, "Rebekah's back then."

Klaus took his gaze away from his poorly concealed scotch-in-a-cup. He looked worse for wear than usual too. Caroline tried to remember what had happened to him at her party after she stormed out of the veranda.

Come to think of it, she hadn't caught a glimpse of Tyler either for the rest of the night.

Klaus shrugged, "I guess so, if Filch's to be believed…" he eyed the uneaten plate of food that was laying in front of him. "She arrived yesterday. Though exactly which brothers came to greet her at the airport I don't know."

She frowned at him. "You weren't there?" He shook his head, avoiding her stare. "Where is she then?"

"She's staying with a friend," was all he deigned to answer, though the strain on his features betrayed him. He wasn't indifferent to this, but concerned.

Caroline considered him for a moment longer, then eyed the breakfast spread that Esther's cooks had so diligently prepared for them. It really was decadent, she thought, the food that the Mikaelsons ate for the first meal of the day. Often, in her own home, she just had coffee and on the rare occasion, toast. But then again, her parents were hardly ever home to harangue her into eating.

Esther and Theodore sat at the ends of the table, with Finn, Kol, Elijah, Freya and her fiancé scattered around in their seats. Unfortunately for her, Klaus and she always sat beside each other. It wasn't something they were requested to do, per se, but their mothers always wore a disturbing kind of satisfied smirk whenever they did. And honestly, whatever sort of meaningless gesture kept her mother and Esther happy and appeased, Caroline was more than willing to do.

She looked down at her plate, full of the seasonal fruit, then up to Kol, seated across from her. Next to him, she noticed a mousy-looking girl, biting her nails and, in intervals, sipping a glass of milk. Caroline couldn't help the slight grimace that popped through. When she looked back at Kol, he was very clearly suppressing a snicker.

Caroline raised a brow at him in question. Just who was this lovely girl then? And more accurately, why did she look like she'd rather die than be having breakfast with this all-adoring company?

Kol kept his expression blank as a response. Yet Caroline didn't have to wait long for someone to ease her curiosity. Unsurprisingly though, that someone was Esther.

"Julia, dear, are you sure you don't want anything to eat?" Esther's voice floated all through the room like some sort of ghost. Caroline even straightened her back because of it.

Caroline thought that, if that question, in that tone, had been directed at her, she'd instantly said, "Yes, Esther, thank you." And then she would've probably let her put whatever she wanted on her plate, and eaten it without a remark. Even if that something had turned out to be raw meat.

God forbid she dared do something else.

Instead, the girl, Julia, shook her head. "No, I'm- I'm not very hungry, thank you."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Klaus' cup of liquor pause on the way to his lips. On the other side of the table, Kol stiffened vissibly and Freya actually cringed.

"Oh," was all that Esther had to respond. Getting back to her morning revisal of the paper.

Well, this girl wasn't coming back. Ever.

Theodore Mikaelson stood from the table a couple of minutes after that, without a word. His steps out the dining room were severe and tired. This wasn't much of a surprise to Caroline, as she'd been in this house several times since she was twelve and eaten countless meals with this family, and to the best of her recollection Theodore had never once stayed all the way to the end of it.

However, Mousy Julia seemed to get panicked by it. She must've caught on to the disapproval of the irrelevant parent in this family. Caroline waited to see how she would bounce back, convinced now of what was going on. Julia sat up, licked her lips and reached out to the middle of the spread to get a pastry and then very delicately began cutting it with her silverware.

"This is very good," she announced, hands shaking anxiously. Kol rolled his eyes, taking a large sip from his mug, which Caroline suspected had been not only spiked, but reaching the same amounts of alcohol that Klaus had in his.

Esther seemed to come back into herself after that, her sweet-looking smile returned. She started asking Julia about her family, nodding and ah-ing. Still, Caroline knew, everyone in that table except for the helpless new girl could see the predatory spark behind Esther's eyes.

Elijah stood from his seat on Klaus' right, presumably to retrieve the paper from where his father had left it, and sat in the empty chair on Caroline's left. He started shifting through the pages, like he was looking for something, but his eyes were set on a spot beyond his reading material.

"He's angry," he whispered. Caroline let out a sigh, checking to see if Klaus was still set on appearing catatonic in front of his family.

He'd gotten shades from somewhere, the asshole.

"I'm angry," she told Elijah very pointedly. The article on Hayley Marshall returned to her mind like a flash. She frowned. "Shouldn't you be too? I mean, he made out with your girlfriend."

Elijah paused on pretending he was looking at something very critical on the paper. His fingers flickered in the air. "Hayley's not my girlfriend, Caroline. She's a friend...a friend of the family."

She scoffed, picking up her fork and stabbing one of the carefully cut squares of watermelon on her plate. Esther was now focussed on interrogating Freya's fiancé, Aiden, who they'd all known for years but Esther just didn't seem to like very much. Likely because he hadn't been chosen by her.

"Look," Caroline sighed, "I have no idea why he'd be angry. Maybe you should ask her. She seems to know him very well. Biblically if I had to take a guess."

She turned to smile innocently at Elijah, and he reciprocated by glaring. He folded the paper and left it on its previously occupied spot, then he smirked at her before he stood to go back to his place. "Envy is a sin, Caroline. You should be careful with that."

Right, like she'd ever gone to church.

By now, Mousy Julia seemed to have gotten invested in the person sitting across from her, that is, Klaus. And Kol seemed to not care in the least about the fact that his supposedprobable intended, as Klaus had so poetically put it the other night, was in the midst of getting infatuated with his older brother.

What was so appealing about him anyway?

Caroline theorized about this practically on a daily basis. So, yeah, why not give it another shot? She looked at Klaus now, he had obviously fallen asleep on his chair. His hair was a mess, honestly, and it looked like he'd just fallen out of bed this morning or- or well, that bench in the park that he favored when he was too drunk to get back home, and just put on the first thing he'd found inside his dresser. He did smell good, so he'd had to shower…

"Ugh," she shook her head slightly; her train of thought didn't always end on how he smelled, not always.

In a certainly expected turn of events, Caroline reached for Klaus' mug, taking it from his slumbering hold and drained it of what he'd left. This caused Klaus to jerk up in his seat, startled, his hand coming up to massage his temple.

"Christ," he muttered, looking around, seemingly lost. Kol chuckled.

They really were lucky of just how much Esther disapproved of Aiden that she didn't notice the entire table was working very hard to get drunk as soon as possible to endure all this. Even Freya seemed to have had one too many mimosas, that if she hadn't yet stormed out of her parents' house on account of Aiden's fragile feelings.

Finn posed to be the only one who'd managed to stay completely sober, yet still looking up to the ceiling, appearing to be begging for sweet death. Julia too, if her unfortunate exuding of anxiety was anything to go by.

"You can get your own liquor, sweetheart, this one's mine," Klaus told her, snatching back his mug and sneering at her when he saw it was empty.

"You fell asleep, you idiot. And apparently," she pushed his elbow from where it rested on the arm of her chair, "this family breakfast is nothing but an attempt to trap Kol into marriage."

Mousy Julia looked up at this. Well, Caroline thought, look who's suddenly not so aloof when the view's good enough to stare at. Klaus smirked, his sunglasses still covering his expressions safely. Kol gave her a warning look.

"I didn't know about it," Klaus replied nonchalantly, lying blatantly too. "I thought today was going to be just family. So really, I don't know why you're here."

Caroline couldn't help the indignant sound that escaped from her throat. It was a mistake, she knew, because Esther's attention shifted to her in an instant.

"Caroline, darling, everything alright?"

She could picture perfectly the grin on Klaus' face without so much as looking at him.

"Everything's perfect, Esther. Thank you again, for inviting me today," she used her more pleasant voice to respond. Not that Esther didn't know what her real voice sounded like, but she also knew Caroline would never dare address her with anything less than honey in her tone.

"Of course, darling. You're family, you know that," Esther smiled at her, sparing a moment to set her severe eyes on Klaus before she returned to her one-sided conversation with Aiden.

Caroline grinned back at Klaus, whose mood had gone brooding. He took his sunglasses off, likely because of some hidden threat delivered by his mother's gaze.

"See?" Caroline whispered to him. "I'm family."

He roamed a hand through his hair in exasperation. When he placed his eyes on her, it felt like he'd set her on fire. Like he wanted to burn her out of his sight. Caroline pursed her lips, holding his gaze in defiance; see who can burn out the fastest, then.

Klaus leaned in, completely ignoring the startled stares from both Kol and Mousy Julia. Caroline felt his fingers on her cheek, tenderly going through her skin. She could smell the alcohol in his breath, how it matched with hers.

"Not yet," he whispered, "not if I have anything to say about it."

/

When she stepped out of the Mikaelson home, the car was already waiting for her. And if the sun was to be believed, it was close to being noon, which meant she had already spent way more time than necessary inside that godforsaken house. She took a deep breath of air, ridding herself of the aftertaste breakfast had left.

She felt his hand on the small of her back, not guiding her, but pushing her out of his property.

"You know," she said, throwing her curls over her shoulder. "I wouldn't have guessed how deep your disgust for me runs the other night by how willing you were to inform Tyler of our situation."

Klaus had put his shades back on. She saw him clench his jaw. "He was mauling you, Caroline. You looked like you were about to punch him in the face."

"Then you should've let me." Caroline tried to look past his sunglasses, tried to get any hint from his eyes, but she could only see the outlines of his lashes.

He nodded. "Next time, I will."

The hand on her back gave her a small nudge forward. He wanted her gone, she knew. But something about Elijah's words had stuck in her mind. Klaus seemed to always be annoyed about something, yes, but if it had caught the interest of his brother enough to ask her, maybe there was a good enough reason behind it.

"Klaus, are you angry that I slapped you?" her question seemed to have struck a chord. He tensed and the hand he'd kept on her body spasmed.

"No," he said, "you were drunk. And I should've-"

"It's okay if you are. Really, it wasn't alright and I'm, well, I'm sorry, I guess." Caroline mumbled, looking down at her shoes.

The morning after her party she'd woken up in her bed with Bonnie passed out beside her. She'd been able to retrieve a few embarrassing moments from her memory, but when the look on Klaus' face had flashed through, she hadn't known what to do with it. Yes, she'd been angry and still was, with reason, but the fact that she'd reacted that way was...disturbing. Even more so with her mother's voice inside her head, telling her that no, Caroline, ladies do not slap the person they're supposed to marry.

"No, I shouldn't have-" he paused, and Caroline looked up. Klaus finally took off his sunglasses, he was visibly exhausted. "I'm sorry too."

She nodded, as this was, likely, the closest they were going to get to an actual truce. And as for his apology, short and all, it was the most sincere he'd sounded to her in some time.

Her driver stepped out of the car, hurrying to open the door for her. Caroline put her hand on his arm lightly as goodbye. And just as she began to walk away, Klaus said, "I didn't get a chance to say this the other day but, happy birthday, Caroline."

Her lips curved in a small smile. She thought, as she watched him, that he really did look tired. No, he looked resigned. And she knew why. Knew perfectly well why, and this because she was going through the exact same thing. He'd even told her at breakfast, the night of her party as well.

I'm her intended.

And she'd just turned eighteen; a healthy reminder that they were running out of time.

"You know I don't want any of this either, Klaus," she tried to convince him of it. Maybe as a way to carry the weight between the two, maybe to make him remember that she was just as much a victim here as he was.

"Yes," he said, gulping, "I'm aware."

/

Hi everyone! I'm so sorry it took me this long to update and that the chapter was a bit short, but truth is I have been struggling with getting the time to write anything. But I promise the next chapters are going to come out soon. I hope you enjoyed this one, I had a lot of fun writing it too and I think it's a start into explaining the kind of relationship Klaus and Caroline have in this universe. Next chapter: Rebekah.

Have a great day and thanks for reading!