AU/AH. Caroline's daughter, Lilly, gets lost at the mall, helps her mom find something she didn't even know she was looking for in the process.

Klaus felt a faint tug at his sleeve.

Looking down, he was met by a pair of big, blue eyes, shining with unshed tears.

"I—" —a lip-wobble, a sniffle— "—mommy?"

"Uh—"

"I see modern parents forego teaching their children to not accost strangers," Elijah commented from beside him, barely sparing the blonde toddler with chubby cheeks and pigtails a glance.

Klaus glared at his brother, a sharp look meant to convey that he should be glad the toddler had come to them for help instead of keeping on wandering the crowded, dangerous mall, but the action was short-lived as another tug called his attention back to the small girl in question.

Her face was red, scrunched up in a way that made Klaus sweat as he imagined her beginning to cry and wail square in the middle of a women's store where he and Elijah already looked suspicious enough.

He should have known agreeing to buy his sister a birthday present together with his brothers would have brought terrible consequences upon him.

"Ssh," he tried to soothe her, crouching down to her level on bent knees. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

In spite of her obvious distress, she gave him a brilliant smile, letting go of his sleeve to outstretch a tiny hand. "Lilly!"

He chuckled. "Nice to meet you, Lilly," he shook her hand, gently, "I'm Klaus. What's your mommy's name?"

Lilly blinked. "Mommy."

"I mean," Klaus paused, at a loss, wetting his lips before trying again, "what do other people call her?"

"It's loooong," Lilly whined.

He gave her a soft smile of encouragement. "I'm going to need it so we can find her."

"I believe it best to bring the child to the security guard, Niklaus," Elijah suggested.

Klaus was half a second away from barking out a snappy remark that would have definitely only made the situation worse, when a loud, agitated voice cut through his train of thought.

"Lillian Elizabeth Salvatore!"

All eyes turned towards the source of the sudden upheaval.

Klaus' gaze traveled up long, lean legs to a gorgeous face of pale complexion framed by golden curls bouncing in the wake of their owner's obvious haste.

A owner who looked on the warpath.

He gulped and even Elijah cringed.

Lilly, however, excitedly perked up.

"Mommy!"

The woman all but ran the remaining distance between them and immediately picked Lilly up in her arms.

"I told you to never wander off, Lilly!"

"I'm fowwy," the toddler sniffled, head tucked into her mother's neck. "Are you awgry, mommy?"

A hand smoothed down some of the tendrils that had fled the pigtails. "No, baby girl," she promised, kissing one of the toddler's cheeks then the other, holding her close, "but you worried me. You can't just go around and chat up strangers."

"No strange! Klah!" Lilly straightened back up to point at Klaus.

Only then did the woman seem to take notice of the two unknown men staring at her and her daughter from the very same spot the toddler had been occupying not a moment before, blue eyes, of a blue perfectly matched by her daughter's, thinning to slits while her brain tried to assess whether they could be potential kidnappers.

Klaus raised his hands, palms out, and stood up to his feet.

"Klah!" Lilly shrieked by way of acknowledgment, clapping her tiny hands together.

If possible, her daughter's instant taking to him made the woman squint her eyes even further.

"Klaus, to be exact," he introduced himself with what he hoped was an affable smile, wide enough to show his dimples.

The glaring intensified, for some reason, only, a moment later, to be softened by a sigh.

She appeared tired, remnants of her previous terror at having lost sight of her daughter still evident along the lines of her features, but something about her radiated light and warmth and confidence and Klaus found himself mesmerized.

"We're still working on our 's's. Caroline," the woman offered her hand to shake, toddler perched safely on her hip. "Thank you for finding her."

"She's the one who found me," Klaus chuckled, stuffing both hands into his jeans' pockets in a feeble attempt to ignore the tingling the feel of Caroline's soft skin against his had produced. Baby. Married. Unavailable. He felt ridiculous. "She's a smart kid."

Before he knew what he was doing, he beamed down at Lilly, who, in turn, hid her face against her mother's chest with a giggle.

Caroline good-naturedly rolled her eyes.

"A smart kid would have heeded her mom's rule of not running away from said mom, but, yeah," she looked down at her daughter, pure, unadulterated love like a shower of sparkles in her eyes, "she's pretty special."

"You and your husband must be very proud."

Caroline shot him a look, an amused smirk pulling at the corners of her lips and one of her eyebrows arched in a bow, letting him know she knew exactly what he was aiming at.

"Ex-husband," she answered, nonetheless, a correction that had Klaus' heart soaring.

"That's—"

"If you are quite done flirting, Niklaus," Elijah interrupted, tone even and unimpressed, several pieces of clothing folded neatly over one arm, "I should have found Rebekah's presents."

Klaus' jaw twitched and, not for the first time throughout the last couple of hours, he found himself struggling to contain the urge to strangle his older brother.

Caroline pursed her lips to refrain from laughing.

"You are relieved from the flirting," she announced with mock solemnity.

Klaus' annoyance trickled into smugness. "Does that mean you were flirting back, love?"

A scoff was all Caroline afforded him.

But, much later, as he started the car to drive back home with her number saved on his phone and the memory of a lovely blush spreading across her skin after he had asked for it still vivid in his mind, he had a real answer.

Yes.