A/N i know, i know its been ages, such a bad bear. I wish i had good excuses like work or college but the truth is i discovered House on netflix, remembered how much i fancy Hugh Laurie and have been binge watching them till my eyes bleed.
I am back to writing now and in exciting news the lovely gargslywoof has heroically offered to beta these which is just brill, she rocks!. :-)
Onward with the tale..
Chapter 6
"Stef," her voice rattles harshly around the boarding house as she enters. "Hello?"
"In here," Stefan answers in that tired, defeated tone that has clung to his voice now for weeks.
In the parlour Stefan stands by the fire, but her eyes skim over him only briefly before settling on the other figure in the room. The one whose presence makes her cheeks flush and her blood thrum with nervousness. He tilts his head and observes her impassively.
"Klaus?" the word holds enough uncertainty to make Stefan look at her curiously and she scrambles to cover her mistake. "What is he doing here?" she addresses Stefan in an irritated voice and Klaus' eyes narrow.
"I think Silas is in Mystic falls." Stefan answers a different question and she scowls at him and tries not to look at the hybrid lounging with feigned indifference and guarded eyes on the leather couch opposite.
Stefan talks and she tries to listen but all she can hear is her own heart beating in her temples and the rustle of Klaus' clothes as he stands and walks across the room. He's unusually quiet, only a few disdainful quips have left his mouth, and he's let Stefan decide their course of action with almost as little input as she's given. Perhaps he's feeling equally distracted by what happened between them; by the night they shared, the undeniable depth of the connection, and how carelessly she shattered it with her frightened cruelty.
They head to Professor Shane's office and on the way over she catches him watching her with a cold, appraising expression that makes her stare straight ahead and fight the urge to swallow nervously. By the time they arrive he seems to have made a decision. The humour is gone from his eyes and he goads them with nasty playfulness while she does her best to ignore him and concentrate on finding Bonnie and her crazy witch massacre.
"We'll have to split up," Stefan says when they identify two possible locations for the last point of the expression triangle. She'll go with Klaus, she decides; she'll talk to him about what happened earlier that morning - and if he's not too obnoxious - she may even apologise.
"Fine, you two go east, I'll go west," Klaus says and turns to the door.
"Ok." Stefan gathers his jacket, ready as always to be a hero.
"No." She draws both their gazes with her shrill objection and she moderates her voice and tries to sound casual as she turns to the hybrid. "I think I should go with you."
"I disagree, love." He makes the endearment feel like a slap across her cheek, so coldly does he utter it. "I'm quite powerful enough to handle anything lurking in the woods on my own, you two are not. So unless you have some compelling reason you'd like to share then you'll go with Stefan." He raises his eyebrows and looks at her, daring her to say something. Her silence deafens her and makes him sneer.
"I thought not," he says, and then he's gone with a loud whoosh of air.
"Care?" Stefan's voice brings her back from the pointless, stupid staring she's doing at the space where he'd stood and she takes a deep breath and makes for the door.
"Let's go," she growls, and leads the way without turning to see the frown she knows is on her friend's face.
It's she and Stefan that find Bonnie in the centre of a circle of witches, laid out on the ground like an offering to some long dead god. Blood vessels burst in her head as the witches send them back and she drops to the floor.
The in a rush of air Klaus is there and for a moment she thinks that everything is going to be ok. It's not. He holds Stefan back, tells them they can't save their friend without giving Silas what he wants.
He's right.
She doesn't care.
"No!" He roars in the same moment that she turns the dagger on the witch. And in that instant, as the blade slips with barely any resistance between fragile ribs, she can't tell herself the violence of it doesn't feel good. But then the others fall, toppling each in turn like dominos and realisation falls on her like a ton of cold, wet earth.
She looks around the circle of dying witches and then her eyes find his, her own filled with a plaintive sort of pleading, though what she's begging for who can say. But his face is set with anger and there's no solace to be found there.
Stefan looks shocked; his mouth hangs slightly open, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Oh god she killed a dozen witches with a flick of her wrist, and Bonnie is mumbling about the triangle and she can't think so she just stands there like a statue frozen by her own mistake.
"Get her out of here," Klaus barks at Stefan and gestures at a now unconscious Bonnie. "Before I finish her off myself."
She looks at him, taking charge, and falls into the safety net of his decisiveness. "What about them?" She asks, looking around at the corpses littering the clearing.
"Pile them up over there while I go and get a bloody shovel."
He goes and the bodies feel colder with each corpse she drags to the edge of the clearing. Each one's skin is more frigid than the last, each unceremonious dumping digging a deeper pit of guilt in her stomach. The third from the last witch looks barely over twenty, her hair mousy and pulled back into a modest ponytail. How much had this girl ever seen, Caroline wonders. Had she travelled? Studied? Had she ever been in love? None of that can happen now; her skin is too cold.
By the time Klaus returns she's feeling a little insane, her own voice turning on itself over and over in her mind, accusing then justifying, scoffing then pleading, and finally, without anyone to hear and no one who could ever accept it, apologising,
He doesn't look at her and she sits on a tree stump and watches him dig twelve perfect oblong holes one by one. Dirt falls on the mousy girl's face, filling her open mouth, and she wants to tell him to stop. Instead she watches and feels the phantom taste of soil on her tongue.
Eventually he throws down the shovel and retrieves his jacket. He glances at her once and hesitates just a fraction of a second before turning to leave.
"Klaus." She stands and follows him, not knowing what else to do.
He spins and pins her with an angry glare. "What, Caroline?"
"I…" she trails off and then she feels her eyes focus on the ground at his feet as she struggles to hold back the rising bile in her throat. "I had to." the justification she has to cling to for her own sanity's sake comes tumbling out, though he's hardly the one she needs to explain herself to. "They were going to kill Bonnie, I had to stop them."
"Keep telling yourself that sweetheart," his pretty mouth twists mockingly. "It won't make them any less dead"
A wash of guilt rushes over her like a cold wave and she shudders. He smiles a nasty, victorious smile. "Won't undo this bloody expression triangle either."
She hates him. Right now she needs him to step up, to be there for her, to put aside their spat from this morning and prove that he actually cares about her. Instead he's hiding behind a wall of vitriol and sneering condemnation. She focuses on her hate - it certainly tastes less foul in her mouth than her guilt - and shoots back. "And whose fault is that? If you hadn't spitefully slaughtered your own hybrids-"
"So we've a massacre each then," he cuts in with calculated softness. "I suppose we are alike after all."
"I am nothing like you," she snarls.
"No, perhaps not." He makes a show of musing on her words. "I acted in self-defence; those hybrids were plotting to kill me, whereas these poor witches were innocent."
Her eyes widen at the audacity. "Innocent? Seriously? They were going to kill Bonnie!"
"Bonnie, who, if you remember, lured them here to massacre the lot of them for Silas. You saved her the trouble though, didn't you? Ended them all without a moment of hesitation, I'm quite impressed."
"Oh god," she thinks she might throw up as the truth tumbles haphazardly about in her stomach.
"They came to preserve the balance, fight the good fight, and you - you murdered them," he continues as if she hadn't spoken. "One quick stab to kill a dozen; very efficient work Caroline, I must say."
"Oh god, I killed twelve people," she murmurs to herself, eyes flashing over his face before settling on her own hands.
"Indeed you did." He steps close and forces her to look into his eyes. "Perhaps I shouldn't have worried so much about sullying your light. You're as ruthless and bloodthirsty as I am underneath, aren't you? Did you notice how young some of them were? Hmm?"
Her lip trembles and tears flow down her dirty cheeks. "Why are you saying this to me?"
He ignores her. He has no compassion, she doesn't know now how she could have ever thought him worth hers. "Barely out of school, poor things."
"Stop it!" She wishes that sounded more like a command and less like a plea but her voice is cracked and broken with regret and her stomach churns sickeningly.
"Did you enjoy it Caroline?" he asks conversationally, mercilessly. "Holding all those lives in your dainty little hands for a second before you ripped them away; did you savour it?"
She swallows and looks away and he laughs nastily. "I thought so. Perhaps it is I who should be ashamed of being caught with you."
Her gaze snaps angrily back to him at that and he smiles a poisonous smile. "Good night my love, sweet dreams."
She closes her eyes against her guilt and his brutal words and when she opens them he's gone and she sits down on the damp earth and breathes in the smell of the soil under her hands. She thinks of the girl with the mouthful of dirt and she cries.
"Caroline," the familiar voice calls to her across the ocean of misery she swims in and she looks up to see him stepping out of the trees looking handsome and concerned and a little like salvation.
"Tyler?" In a moment she's up and in his arms. "Oh my God, Tyler!"
"Hey Care," he murmurs warmly into her neck. "Hey, it's ok."
She pulls away and sighs. "It's not Ty, " she says sadly. "It's really not."
He strokes her hair and she forces a watery smile. She's dreamt of his return so many times, but never once did she imagine it like this: with blood on her hands and doubt in her heart. No, she scolds herself, there is no doubt. Perhaps a few hours ago there might have been. Perhaps then she would have looked at her first love and wondered, just wondered, if maybe in the most secret corner of her heart she hadn't already replaced him.
That doubt is gone now. Klaus' vileness slithers around her body hand-in-hand with her guilt, making her sick and angry. She hates him now so much she can barely pull her mind away from that loathing to focus on the man who should be filling her senses with the joyful rightness of his return.
"Care?" he squeeze her shoulders. "Babe, what is it? Is everything alright?"
She laughs a little manically. "Let's see. Silas is in Mystic Falls trying to end the world, Elena's an emotionless bitch, Bonnie's a basket case, and Klaus, just when I needed him to be decent for once, is being a colossal, unfeeling jerk. On top of that I just killed a whole coven of witches and pretty much handed Silas the keys to the other side. So no," she presses her fingers together as if in prayer and tries to calm her breathing, "nothing is alright."
Tyler pulls away and looks at her questioningly. "You needed Klaus?" he asks and tips his head that way he she remembers so vividly, jaw a little tense, eyes a little suspicious.
"No God, of course not." Her denial sounds forced and tinny in her own ears and the dismissive wave of her hand is wooden, unconvincing. "Seriously, that's what you take from that? Did you not hear the dead witches part?"
"No I heard that part." Tyler looks at her almost coyly from under his lashes. "And thank you for that by the way, I was dreading this massacre most of all."
"What?" she questions dumbly, her mind ahead of her lips, already realising something is terribly wrong here.
"But now I'm more interested in your boyfriend."
"You're not Tyler." She steps back, understanding flaring brightly, terrifyingly, in her mind. "Silas?"
"Smart girl," He smirks playfully as her mind races to process all the implications of his words.
"What do you want with Tyler?" she demands, concern making her bold.
Silas laughs, a perfect replica of Tyler's, and those beautiful dark eyes shine in the moonlight. "Not that boyfriend, babe. I'm talking about the upgrade."
"Klaus?" she gasps and where there should be relief that it's invincible, irredeemable Klaus and not Tyler who's in Silas' sights, there is only fear. She wants to run, vamp speed, to the mansion; wants to bar the door and keep this mind-invading creep away from them.
She glances around for an escape route and when Silas speaks again the accent is rich and sexy and she knows she'll be looking into blue eyes as she turns back to face him. "Your lover's mind is a little harder to read than yours," Silas says with a humoured lift of his lips. "Try as I might, I can't seem to snag the cure's location out of it," he smirks conspiratorially and leans in like they're sharing a tidbit of gossip. "Honestly it's all a bit of a mess in there, I think the boy has issues."
Well ain't that the truth, she thinks, but instead of derision she feels an inexplicable surge of something fierce and protective. "Leave him alone."
"Gladly, just as soon as he hands over my cure." Silas purses Klaus' full lips in a gesture so disconcertingly familiar her eyes linger briefly on them. "So, my pretty Caroline, we have two options. Option one - you get that cure for me and I leave you, your shabby little gang, and your broken boy toy alone."
Silas lifts his hands from his sides and mimics Klaus' teasing close-lipped smile and raised brows. "Option two," he continues brightly, "you resist me and I unpeel each of them from their skin, prise open their minds and shatter what's left of your collective sanity, starting with the hybrid."
She has no response other than to lift her chin and glare rebelliously at him. She shouldn't care. Seriously, screw Klaus. She'd needed him and he'd had a perfect opportunity to show her some basic human kindness tonight, to show her that he actually cared about her. But he couldn't get over himself and his stupid pride and insecurities for five minutes to be there for her. Screw Klaus, she thinks again without conviction; in the other half of her mind she's already racing a mile a minute to his side.
"Choose carefully, Caroline," Silas advises and steps in close, running a finger down her cheek - Klaus' finger without Klaus' familiar heat. "Or this -" Suddenly a stake is being forced through her rib cage just skimming past her heart. She screams in pain and Silas fixes her with those gorgeous grey-blue eyes she's been weak for since they first shone with admiration for her that day at the ball. He twists the stake and she sags against him. "This will just be the beginning."