Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Diaries or any of the characters within that world/series, I'm just having some fun with them.

Сan you feel this magic in the air?

It must have been the way you kissed me

Fell in love when I saw you standin' there

It must have been the way

Today was a fairytale by Taylor Swift

KLAUS' P.O.V:

After a millennia, it was safe to say that my best paintings were done in the wee hours of the morning. Locked away in my studio with a bottle of whiskey at hand and the smell of turpentine and linseed oil radiating in the air. The scent was almost unbearable against my heightened senses.

It was easy to lose myself in these moments. With everyone fast asleep I could paint for hours on end without a single interruption. Which is why I was still hard at work at 3am with no sign of stopping.

In the more recent months it seemed as if all I did was paint, an endless flow of the same colours and hues slapped upon canvas after canvas. The same muse taking shape time and time again. Blonde hair, blue eyes, smooth pale skin. The same cocktail of features that sent a rush of serotonin through my central nervous system.

Caroline was my obsession, her face staring back at me from the canvas. There had been other muses before, fleeting inspirations that disappeared as quickly as they had arrived, but it was hard to imagine finding a muse in another woman after her. She was perfection, and not just because of her heart-wrenching beauty, she was unlike any other creature I had ever encountered in my long life. Compassionate, kind, gently, loyal, and feisty.

To begin with my obsession had been strictly lust-fueled. Like Eve craving the forbidden fruit. But it didn't take long for Caroline's whole personality to seep into my very being. I wanted to impress her. I wanted her to like me. I wanted to woo her in a way I'd never wooed any woman before her. And here I was, after over a year of pining, painting yet another portrait of her in the middle of the night.

A splash of turps hit my fingers as I dropped a paint-coated brush into the murky liquid, swishing it around the container and then pulling it out to wipe it on the old t-shirt that I was using as a paint rag. The colour smeared across the material in a deep blue stroke and I repeated the process until the brush came back clean. Moving the brush into a deep yellow, I filled the bristles and worked across her pale hair, adding shading to the areas that had previously been a mix of yellow and white swipes.

I worked this way until the sun started to rise upon the city of New Orleans, the golden light illuminating areas of the portrait that had previously been cast in the shadow of the dim lights that lit my studio room.

After a while my work started to slow down as the sounds of my family members shifting through the house made their way to my ears. I gave up as the clickety clack of light feet neared closer and closer to the door, coming to a stop as my visitor rapped softly on the door.

"Come." I said, leaving the brush in the jar and then spinning on my stool to face the door as it opened to reveal the blonde who I had spent the majority of the past twenty-four hours scrutinising over.

Her arms were crossed across her chest, and she had one eyebrow raised, her lips pulled up at the edges in a slight smile. "You didn't come to bed last night."

"I was busy."

"I can see that." She peered around me at the painting, her smile growing. She uncrossed her arms and walked further into the room, coming to stand directly in front of me. Her hands felt soft against my skin as she caressed my chin, lifting it so our eyes made contact. "Will you ever get sick of painting me?"

"Never." I started, turning my head to kiss the skin of her wrist, feeling the blood pulsate beneath the surface. "You're too beautiful not to immortalise in art, Love."

Our eyes met again and I could feel the telltale pull in my gut, the alpha in me recognising its mate. Reaching out, I placed my hands around her waist and pulled her down onto my lap, pressing my lips against hers. One of her hands wrapped itself in my hair and the other pulled me closer by the neck. Her lips melted to mine, her scent filling my entire being. I pushed myself as close as I could to her, enjoying the taste of her lips on mine. But I couldn't fight something niggling at the back of my consciousness.

What was I missing?

She must have felt my hesitation, pulling her lips away from mine. My eyes scanned her body, trying to figure out what it was that was different. There was something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"What's wrong, Nik?" She asked, her voice low. Staring into her blue eyes I could almost imagine the niggling in the pit of my stomach not being there.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Wrapping my arms around her, I buried my face in the crook of her neck. She started to massage my scalp with her fingers, rubbing soothing circles.

A shiver ran down my spine as her lips gently pressed against my ear lobe with a kiss. "Nik, we're going to have to talk about it sooner or later."

Another shiver ran down my spine, this time shooting straight to the uneasy feeling that rested in my gut. I pulled back, eyes wide.

"What did you just say?"

Her head tilted to the side and her lips part slightly. Her face started to blur and I blinked rapidly, trying to get them to focus. Reaching up with one hand I rubbed at them, feeling wetness against my eyes and cheeks. Tears.

"I said that we're going to have to talk about it sooner or later. Nik, are you okay?" She caressed my cheeks in her hands, her eyes searching mine. "You're scaring me. Don't cry."

A strangled breath escaped my lips as I finally realised what it was that had been bothering me since she had entered the room. "You cut your hair short. Did you do that while I was painting?"

She let out a laugh that echoed through the room. "No, Rebekah did it. Don't you remember?"

"Why would you let Bekah cut your hair?"

Her brows immediately furrowed and she pushed herself out of my grasp and up onto her feet. "Nik, you asked her to. So that my mum wouldn't need to know everything that happened. Don't you remember?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Standing up from the stool, I took a step in her direction. Her hands went up in front of her, blocking me from coming closer.

"You asked Rebekah to cut it after what Andre did, to make it look nicer."

Andre. The name made my heart tighten and I stumbled back from her hands blocking my path, losing my footing as I stumbled over the stool and landed against the canvas, sending it toppling to the ground as I fell in an undignified heap.

A second later she was there above me, a halo of golden light surrounding her face as she reached out to me.

"Nik?" She whispered. "Nik, can you hear me?"

Shaking my head back and forth, I knocked her outstretched hand away and pushed myself up so that I was sitting half on the broken easel and canvas, and half on the floor. She moved, the action hazy as everything seemed to dim to one blurred shape. I rubbed my palms against my eyes until they hurt and a thousand little shapes danced in the darkness behind my eyelids.

"Klaus?" This time her voice more nasally, and it sounded wrong. Removing my hands, I blinked my eyes against the now-dark room. There, standing in front of me wasn't my mate. The woman in front of me wasn't nearly as bright as Caroline. Her hair was dark brown, her skin a shade of olive, and she was holding a small bundle in her arms. "I swear Nik, if you're having some kind of episode, take it outside. You already woke up Hope, after it took me literal hours to get her to sleep. And none of us are in the mood to deal with your crazy shit."

"Hayley." I croaked out, each syllable grating against my vocal chords. I looked around the room, realising that I was no longer in my art studio at the plantation in New Orleans, but instead in my bedroom in our villa in Italy.

"No shit." She bit out, holding the bundle out for me to grab. I reluctantly took it, looking down into the wide eyes of my three week old daughter, Hope. "Now, you can be the one to get her back to sleep while I go back to my beauty rest, okay?"

She turned and stormed out of the room, her dressing gown flowing at her back. I opened my mouth, ready to demand that she come back and take care of Hope herself, but as I looked back down I couldn't do it. It had all been a dream, and by Hayley's reaction it hadn't been a quiet peaceful one.

Looking about the room, I took in the disheveled blankets, the knocked over bedside table. Maybe taking care of Hope would be a good distraction from the nightmare that had plagued my sleep. I placed her carefully down on the bed, her eyes following me as I righted the bedside table and climbed onto the mattress beside her, pulling her close.

"Sorry for waking you, Sweetheart." She made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat and struggled in the swaddle she was secured in. "Why don't we see if we can get some more rest, eh?"

A/N: So, after several months without a laptop I finally managed to get myself a brand new one, and I'm finally getting my writing mojo back. This story popped into my head as I was scrolling through Pinterest looking for some writing ideas and I saw the dialogue prompt "C'mere, you can sit in my lap until I'm finished working." I didn't end up using that bit of dialogue in the story, but the idea popped into my head for Klaus to have a Caroline-centric dream, turned nightmare, only to be confronted by the bundle of joy who is going to be the protagonist of 'Breathe Again', my sequel to 'Still Breathing'.

I wanted to highlight some of what Klaus is going through now that Caroline is gone, and also bring up/revisit some dialogue and scenes from 'Still Breathing'. Review and let me know if you remember where some of the dialogue comes from! I'm very excited about some upcoming one-shots in this series, and about 'Breathe Again', which is still in the outlining stage at this point (because I'm lllllaaaaazzzzzyyyy).

I hope you enjoyed, and I can't wait to see you guys again soon with another story from the Breathing series.