A/N so I've been a bad bad author and you are well within your rights to shun me here after. But. but but but, i do have an excuse. Moved into my new house (which we haven't finished building quite) and its been mental. Also a nasty bout of The Block :-S

Anyway I hope you can forgive me, the next chapter is already mostly done!

Chapter 7

She wakes with a rough cough that tears at her throat and a dull ache in her chest. Light presses intrusively against her closed eyes and she groans self-pityingly.

"Hey." Stefan's even tone holds a little more concern and a lot more fatigue than usual, so she forces open her unwilling eyes and focuses blurrily on him.

"Stef?" she croaks as she tries to coax her sluggish brain into remembering what the hell she's doing on Stefan's couch. "What happened?"

"You were attacked," Stefan tells her as he reaches over for a glass of water to hand to her. "Klaus found you in the woods, do you remember anything?"

Klaus. His name pings off her ears and her mind snaps to attention. "Klaus?" she asks with emotion ringing incriminatingly in her voice. "He helped me?"

"Yeah he brought you here."

Klaus helped her, she thinks. After every foul, wounded, hurtful thing he said, still he came back for her and he helped her. She can see him in her mind's eye as he found her bloody and unconscious in the dirt. She can picture how tenderly he'd have lifted her, the words he'd have mumbled as he cradled her against his chest. "Its alright sweetheart," he'd have said. "I've got you love, I've got you."

"Where is he?" she demands, already trying to sit up; instinct, as always, driving her to go to him.

"Ah ah," Stefan pushes her gently back. "He went looking for whoever did this, looking pretty murderous, and I have orders to take care of you."

"No he can't!" This time she does sit up, aware that worry might look a little like panic right now. "Stefan this isn't something he can just rip the head off of. We need a plan, we need to regroup, we have to find him-"

"Caroline," he interrupts and again stops her rising with a firm hand on her shoulder. "Who did this to you?"

She swallows nervously and from his furrowed brow she knows he's already guessed the answer. "Silas. And right now it's Klaus he's after. We need-"

"What the bloody hell have you done to my brother, you manipulative little trollop!"

"Rebekah," Stefan greets the youngest Original's intrusion in his signature long-suffering tone. "What can we do for you?"

Rebekah tips her head and gives Stefan a flash of a fake smile. "It's Caroline I'm here for," she informs him testily. "That little bitch did something to Nik this morning that has him acting even more like a lunatic than usual."

"Rebekah," she drags the other girl's haughty accusing gaze back to her as she speaks. "I haven't seen Klaus since last night."

"At least try and lie convincingly," Rebekah sneers. "My brother spent the whole night off somewhere in a rage and came back raving about father."

"Mikael?" she breaks into Rebekah's rant with her mind racing through a hundred worst-case scenarios.

"Then you showed up," Rebekah continues without acknowledging the interruption. "And the next thing I know he's tearing apart the house and destroying the furniture. Now he's vanished and I want an explanation. Nik's a big enough pain in the arse without some spiteful little prick tease-"

She's offended, but she's also putting together parts of a puzzle in her mind that make a worrying picture. "Rebekah shut up!" she snaps, making the blonde stop short and stare at her in insulted disbelief. "I wasn't at your house this morning just like Tyler wasn't in the woods last night, and Klaus never saw Mikael. It's Silas, he can get in your head and make you see whatever he wants."

"Silas?" Rebekah looks at her questioningly but with no trace of doubt and its strange how being taken seriously makes the whole thing seem terrifyingly real. Part of her, she realises, had hoped to be dismissed. "Bloody hell, that's bad."

"You think?" Fear makes her snippy and sarcastic but Rebekah doesn't seem to care, the Original thinks for a moment then spins on her stilettoed heel and makes for the door.

"Where are you going?" Stefan stops her.

"To find my brother," Rebekah tosses back her hair but the sass of the action is dulled by the deep furrow in her brow.

"Wait. Seriously, Rebekah stop," she calls, her voice rising as the original turns again towards the door. "Silas is dangerous, we need to come with you."

Rebekah rolls her eyes and Stefan gives her a quizzical look. "We do?"

"Yes Stefan, we do. Silas isn't your regular 'villain of the week' bad, he's end the world bad and we need to band together on this. Come on Rebekah, do you even know where to look for Klaus?"

The blonde looks irritated by her bossy tone and places a hand on her hip. "Do you?" she challenges.

She bites her lip and nods. "Yeah, I think I do?"

"Bloody hell" Rebekah grumbles as her heel sinks into soft earth. "This is ridiculous. What in God's name would Nik be out here for?"

She doesn't look at the Original as she pushes low branches from her path and answers distractedly. "Clarity."

She hears Rebekah huff behind her, and Stefan moves closer to ask quietly, "You sure Care?"

"Yes, if Klaus has been seeing Mikael then he'll be a mess; he'll be out here getting his head straight, I know he will." She doesn't mention how she knows his patterns , nor that he'll more than likely be doing it on four paws , she just presses on into the forest. She can't begin to acknowledge how worried she is for the hybrid - that's too much like admitting she feels something for him - but she can react, and action has always been her go-to setting for stress.

After a few moments she realises she's alone and a second after that she hears the unmistakable sound of violence a little to her left. "Shit," she mutters and vamps through the scratching branches to find Stefan dangling from Rebekah's iron grip like a spluttering marionette dancing its wooden legged jig in thin air.

"Rebekah!" Fear makes her yell sharp and high-pitched and the youngest Original turns black eyes on her.

"He tried to kill me," she snarls. "He has the white oak."

"What? No he doesn't it's a trick, Silas is-" her words are cut off when another form blurs into the clearing and knocks Stefan from Rebekah's grasp; the two roll together and come up as one, like perfect matches in a mirror. Two pairs of Stefan's soulful eyes look back at them and beside her she hears Rebekah curse under her breath. Yeah she agrees mentally, shit indeed.

After that it's a confusing pantomime of violence and fear, they strike at each other and at shadows, she sees Rebekah snarling like a trapped beast and doesn't know if the threat is real or imagined. She stabs Silas, or so she thinks, hiding in Stefan's skin, but it's her friend who cries in pain while the ancient immortal laughs Rebekah's laugh.

Finally, bloodied and panting, and with absolutely no clue which way is up she finds herself alongside the real Original while a matched pair of Stefan Salvatores stare beseechingly at them. Rebekah brandishes a stake. "Which one?" she cries in panic, terrified that the blonde will just stake both to be sure.

"I don't know," Rebakh snaps as both step towards them with palms outstretched innocently. They step back with adrenaline pumping fear though her veins with the erratic rhythm of her heart.

Suddenly a grey-brown blur barrels into the figure on her left sending him rolling away across the soaked earth. The creature steps to its side so it's between her and the downed man and growls menacingly. Stefan - no Silas surely - lifts himself up and looks indecisively at the snarling wolf before disappearing into the trees.

The wolf turns to them, its eyes a fierce yellow, and growls again, more softly this time, almost questioningly. She nods that she's ok and steps towards him, because it can only be him and she's not afraid of him. Even like this he only seeks to protect her.

"Thanks," she says softly and reaches out a tentative hand but he's gone before she can touch him, leaving only Rebekah's "What the hell was that?" ringing in her ears.

"Your brother," she says as she watches the space where his wolf form had stood, the form she'd felt so curious to see just a few days ago. His wolf is small and scrawny compared to Tyler's and the rusty grey of his coat isn't as impressive as Tyler's jet black sheen;yet the power that had emanated from him, that harnessed fierceness that had sent even Silas running, that power was as compelling in wolf form as it was in human. The thought that 'he is beautiful this way' flows like water through her mind bringing with it emotional flotsam from all their previous encounters and surging forward, carrying her helpless towards whichever troubled ocean it leads.

"Get everyone together at the boarding house," she orders, her certainty that she knows what's going on better than any of them carrying conviction into her voice and Rebekah and Stefan, shaken as they are, obey willingly.

"Where are you going?" Stefan asks with concern and she gives him a brief confident smile.

"To get Klaus, I'll see you there."

"Klaus," she calls as she enters. "I know you're here, Klaus, so get your butt out here, we have work to do."

"Caroline," he greets coolly as he appears. "Kindly keep it down love? I still have wolf hearing, you know."

"Yeah," she gives him a crooked rueful smile. "Thank your furry side for the save for me ok?"

He doesn't return her smile, he looks tense and resentful and she sighs inwardly at how nothing is ever easy with him.

"Stefan and Rebekah are getting everyone together at the boarding house," she decides to ignore his obvious bad mood and get to business. "You know, so we can decided what to do about Silas."

He raises an eyebrow affecting a nonchalance she knows he doesn't feel. "Well delightful as that sounds I have no interest in watching your pathetic bunch of do-gooders pretending they have a shot against Silas. Run along and play at heroes, let the grown ups deal with this."

"Seriously? You're going to go all lone ranger when we're up against a bad guy twice your age who can get inside our heads and make us see whatever he wants." She scoffs. "Genius strategy considering Silas can turn our worst fears-"

"I'm not afraid of Silas." His snarl cuts through the air like a blunt blade leaving the edges ragged. "I'm not afraid of anything."

"You're afraid of Mikael," she counters. She can't be gentle with him, although looking at him now with his hair damp and curling from the shower and the clean naïve smell of soap on his skin, a part of her, a part she curses for its weakness, aches to be.

"Mikael's gone and I won't be fooled again." Composure glazes fragilely over his surface, a brittle barrier she has no choice but shatter if she's going to bring him into the fight. If she's going to keep them all safe.

"Fine, well then you're afraid of me. You're afraid of opening up to me like you did the other night." She stabs her hands towards the ground letting the emphatic gesture punctuate her words. "You're afraid that I'll see the real you and I'll hate you anyway."

He draws back, hardness settling in his eyes. "A fear that proved well-founded if you recall."

"Seriously!" Exasperation makes her snap. Sure, she gets that she hurt him, but he can't get over himself for a second to see anyone else's point of view and she's starting to feel more pissed off than compassionate. "I panicked ok? And I lashed out and if you hadn't been acting like such a massive dickwad I would have apologised."

His anger surges up to meet hers and he leans towards her menacingly as he retorts, "I can assure you I would not have accepted it."

"No I guess you wouldn't. Because you are so incredibly narcissistic and insecure that you would rather have people despise you on your terms than reject you on their own." She shakes her head and feels disdain curl her lips. "God you're pathetic."

"Don't walk away from me," he vamps into her path as she moves to storm out and escape the rage that crawls under her skin whenever he pushes her buttons like this.

"I should have walked away ages ago," she all but snarls.

"And yet you did not," he counters. "In spite of the many opportunities I gave you to do just that. To spare you my influence in spite of my own desires."

She rolls her eyes at the blatant disingenuousness of his words. "Oh yeah sure, you're just so noble."

"I was protecting y-"

"You were protecting yourself." She doesn't let him finish, she's had about enough of his bullshit for today. "I was so wrong at the ball wasn't I? You understand people just fine, but you're too much of a coward to let anyone, let me, understand you."

"You couldn't begin to understand me girl, you're just a child."

"So are you," she fires back in exasperation, all thoughts of reasoning with him lost to her own anger. "Jesus, you're like a toddler with your tantrums and your daddy issues-"

He roars and surges forward pressing her against the wall with his forearm across her throat. She's not scared of him, she's certain now on every level that he will never really hurt her and she can live just fine with her windpipe crushed so she lifts her eyebrows as if to say "yep just like that" and he drops her, runs a hand over his face, and turns away.

She feels his anger leave the room in a rush, hadn't realised until she felt it go how it had filled every square inch of air around them. In the empty space it leaves she presses the advantage. "This is big," she says firmly. "Like end the world big, and we don't have time for one of your episodes. So just get the hell over it already and turn around."

He does, and he looks beaten, beaten by the hardness of her truth. Beaten by the length of the night and Silas' brutal mind games. Just beaten. Tenderness swells in her stomach flipping her from angry to gentle in the space of the one shuddering breath she can't keep in. She steps towards him and he just waits, his head canting to watch her with eyes the colour of sorrow and the ocean. When her fingers reach to his side to tangle with his he looks down at them and turns their joined hands over to watch his own thumb scrape across her knuckles.

He's broken she thinks. The thought isn't new, but she hasn't felt so vividly before just how damaged he is, how poorly equipped he is to handle Silas' special brand of nasty. "What did Silas say to you?" she asks, aware that her voice is low and intimate, and that they are standing very close together in this moment. "When he was me?"

She sees uncertainty in his expression; his mouth moves but he doesn't speak, then he straightens a little and firmly pushes the question back at her. "What did he say to you?"

She rolls her eyes in annoyance- why does she always have to be the mature one? Why even when she reaches for him can't he meet her halfway? "He said he'd hurt you, ok." She snaps indignantly, how quickly she pendulums from gentleness to anger with this man, this delicate brutal man she can't stand half the time but couldn't bear to even imagine destroyed. "Apparently that's what I'm afraid of, not my-"

In a flash she's pressed against the wall again but this time his lean body presses her back and his mouth slants urgently against hers. She kisses back, thinks she will always be helpless to do anything else; the feel of him is intoxicating, addictive like a drug with that same exhilarating buzz and that same knowing of how much you risk by taking it.

He pulls back and looks at her after kissing her just long enough to make her feel fuzzy-headed and disoriented when he breaks away. "He said he'd hurt you," she repeats in a small whisper and lets that fear Silas saw so clearly show in her voice.

Klaus glances down then back to meet her gaze. "He already did," he replies in a tone soft enough to match her own. "He looked at me with your eyes and in your voice told me that I could not protect you, that I had failed you, that I am nothing to you."

She shakes her head and lifts a hand to his bicep, falling once again into the drowning waters of caring for him. "I didn't say those things."

He laughs, a short mirthless sound that breaks harshly against her ears, a stark contrast to the tenderness swirling in her chest. "Those words did not seem ill-placed on your lips, sweetheart."

"Yeah well." There's no come back to that, he's right of course. "Shut up." She pulls him back and kisses him again until he groans into her mouth and runs one hand up the back of her leg to hook her thigh over his hip. God the way he touches her. The purposeful self-assurance that usually graces his every movement morphs into something urgent and instinctive that makes her feel like the most desirable creature on the planet.

His mouth feels amazing against hers, the kisses open-mouthed and hungry, teeth and tongues rough and messy as they clash erratically together. She's moaning, she hears the pitch of her own desire rise as he presses between her legs and grinds against her.

It's too much. "Jesus," she gasps as she rips her mouth from his and lets the intensity of her lust overflow into hissed, clipped cursing. "Fuck, Klaus." The hard Ks clank together in the charged air around them as he trails wet kisses down her throat and soothes the air with a low murmured "Caroline" against her skin.

His hand finds its way under her shirt to knead her breasts through her bra and she presses her chest greedily towards him. "Please," she begs senselessly, "Klaus."

He pulls away and looks into her face and she can see the uncertainty that wars with the desire in his eyes. He wants her. God he always wants her so much, but she can tell he's on the brink of pulling away again. Not this time mister, she thinks determinedly and uses the only strategy she has to keep him there; she picks a side in his internal battle and reaches a hand down to rip open his jeans and take him roughly in her hand.

One thousand years old and still just a man, he groans helplessly at her touch and she knows her side has won, thrills all through her body at the victory. He couldn't deny her now for anything she thinks as he grabs her thighs and hoists her up against the wall. It's not how she pictured their first time, hard against a wall with their clothes still on and his big empty bed waiting neglected upstairs. She wants to be in that bed with him, their bodies naked against the expensive cotton, but if they move he'll think, and if he thinks he'll stop. She finds she can't bear for him to stop.

Her skirt bunches around her waist, exposing her long pale thighs that contrast so prettily with the dark navy of his t-shirt, and she watches in transfixed anticipation as he pulls aside her knickers and explores the wetness he finds there with bold, deft fingers. He swears in a harsh, guttural language she doesn't recognise then tips his head up to claim her mouth again.

She likes this position; this is the way she feels with him. Elevated, high up on a pedestal of his esteem with him below her reaching up. She feels powerful, she feels like the one and it's everything she wants.

She awkwardly shifts so she can guide him towards her entrance, knows that she's rushing this. Knows that this is not how he wants it, that he would want their first time to be perfect, to dazzle her with a thousand years of skill, to be in control, to have total surrender.

She wants just this. She wants their reservations crumbling before the urgency of their desire. She wants his urgent needy groan as she angles herself so that the tip of him touches her wetness. "Klaus please," she begs in a voice that's pure command and he obeys.

He pulls away from her mouth and looks into her eyes as he pushes smoothly inside her. Stillness. A moment of utter stillness surrounds them, bodies connected and frozen in that instant of completion. They hold each other's gazes for long breathless seconds before she sees emotion swirl in the blue vortex in his eyes and he exhales sharply, that quick rasping exhale that he does when emotion overwhelms him.

He says she couldn't know him and perhaps he's right, perhaps a thousand years of history and bloodshed makes him truly unknowable. But she thinks he's wrong, that she seems to know him far better than she should. She knows all his tells; those little cracks in his ugly posturing and cruel defence. The tiny chinks of light in his dark armour.

She brings up her hand to touch his face, skates the fingertips lightly over his cheekbone and down across his lips. She knows his face so well now too, knows intimately the long curve of his lashes and full lines of his mouth. Those accents of the feminine that only enhance his handsomeness. The moment stretches out almost into tenderness, but they're coming together after weeks, maybe months of their own unique brand of foreplay, and lust pulls irresistibly at their bodies.

He moves inside her and she's lost, hurtling into the abyss of desire headfirst. She kisses him roughly, forces his lips apart and invades his mouth, sucking at his tongue and making him growl and thrust purposefully inside her.

She crosses her ankles behind his back, caging him as if afraid he'll pull away, and tangles her fingers in his damp hair pulling his mouth harder against hers. He holds her effortlessly with one hand cradling her ass and the other grasping behind her neck possessively. The rough denim of his open jeans rubs against her as he drives into her, stimulating her almost beyond endurance as his hands travel over her body squeezing her breasts and behind with a bruising force that makes her thrum with pleasure.

"Fuck," he gasps when her lips leave his to trail wetly over his cheek to his ear.

He feels so good inside her and she can hear herself grunting like an animal as their rhythm quickens and their bodies pull taut as longbows, every nerve at breaking point, every sinew quivering in anticipation.

"Oh god," she's so close that she's almost angry in her desperation for him, her open palm slapping down against his shoulder in a stinging demand for release.

He complies, takes them down in a blur of vampiric speed; spins and slams her spine into the hardwood floor and drives mercilessly into her making her mewl and gasp.

She claws at his back, nails sharp in the soft skin, and the faint scent of his blood taints the air. The always ravenous monster under her skin pushes to the surface making the veins beneath her eyes buzz and crackle; he pulls back slightly without breaking rhythm and takes in her red-eyed hunger and without a word he tips his head to the side and offers her the pale column of his throat.

And God help her, she bites him. Vaguely, somewhere beneath the lust and the hunger and the vivid memory of the intoxicating taste of his ancient blood she's aware she shouldn't, that she's already taking too much from him. Somewhere within she knows that everything she takes that she can't give in return will only make walking away from this harder, will make him less willing to let her go.

She doesn't think about it though, she's rocketing towards her destination with his blood pouring down her throat and his cock pistoning deep inside her. She withdraws her fangs, clumsily tearing the skin to thrash underneath him, hips thrusting erratically in a quest to reach the orgasm building just out of reach in her belly, throwing them out of the building rhythm. He growls a reprimand, pins her hips to the floor and crushes his mouth against hers in a gesture so uncompromisingly masculine and with a strength so vast and unyielding that she falls apart before it, her scream muffled in his mouth as she comes.

He follows her, hot and wet inside her and pulls away from their broken kiss to praise her against the skin of her throat. She barely comes down. She's been waiting for this so long and the feel of him still rock hard inside her as he kisses her neck makes her undulate invitingly against him.

"Bed," she whispers in his ear. "Now."

In a moment he has them on their feet and stumbling together between kisses up the arcing staircase towards his room, awkwardly shedding clothes as they go, uncoordinated and incongruously human after the preternatural fierceness of their coupling.

At his door he presses her with human force against the wall and kisses her deeply while he fumbles for the knob. Finally the door opens and she turns them and backs him, unresisting, into the room, her hunger for him barely touched by the frantic orgasm they just shared. But in the slight quieting that follows it she finds her need turn to something so much softer, so much worse. She surprises him with a hard shove to the chest and he loses his balance with a curse.

She's laughing when they hit the bed with a slight bounce, laughing and pressing him down so she can take him into herself again without a moment's hesitation, grinning at the eagerness with which he sits up and reaches for the clasp of her bra. Beneath her is a creature, a thousand years old, who's done everything and been everywhere, who has suffered and caused suffering in equal measure for a millennium and yet right now he's just a boy eagerly making love to a girl.

She can't name it anything but that. She's fantasised about fucking him so many times and had already justified that half-planned sin within her mind; inescapable, carnal, all body, no heart. But this now in his bed, this is different, a greater and a lesser sin; this is greedy hands and speaking eyes and kisses that surge up from your chest like fireworks.

In his lap like this, with his mouth exploring her throat and his hands mapping her hips as he moves inside her she can't deny the connection between them that she'll hate herself for later when she faces her friends or watches her ceiling in the dark. She'll no doubt beat herself up for giving in, for wanting him just more than she wants to do the right thing.

But not now. Now she is lost in this, in him, in them together. "My love," his voice thrills her, his love spoken into her skin empowers and terrifies her and makes her hips surge against his in response. She can't be with him, not really, and they both know it. She's good and he's just, just awful. But nevertheless in this moment she can't imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else.

"Klaus," she speaks her love in his name, that love she can never, ever, let herself feel. "God Klaus, yes!"

She throws back her head and quickens her pace, losing herself in sensation for a while before his hands travel up to take her face between his palms and pull her back down into a kiss that burns right through her body. He offers her everything in that kiss, throws down his body and his wounded soul before her. Asks for nothing back, only that she take it. She can't and he knows it but he offers it anyway and despite herself she loves him for it.

He rolls them so he's between her legs again, his weight settling over her and his lean, strong arms span either side of her head as he kisses her. She hooks her own hands around his shoulders and clings to him, opens her legs and mouth wide, inviting him in as deep as he can go.

They kiss like that, like lovers, until he breaks the connection of their mouths to pepper her cheek and throat with kisses. "Caroline," he says her name like a benediction as he lays offerings of wet kisses at her altar. "My love."

Her orgasm builds slowly and with it a drowning sense of sorrow. He pours so much, more than she imagines he realises, into this coming together. Pours in so muchfeeling that she feels its press down on her like a warm heavy blanket. Pours out all his loneliness too, a loneliness as unrelenting as the centuries he's lived, so that it seeps from every pore and evaporates against her skin.

In this moment she wants to be the salve to the pain of that loneliness, she wants to be the one to bring light into the darkness of his world. To smash down the walls he thinks protect him but only serve to keep him trapped in his own unhappiness.

She can't, she knows she can't. She is too young and too righteous still, despite what she is, to throw away her morality for him in all his wickedness. But knowing this doesn't stem the swelling sadness pressing into the back of her eyes so that she has to close them against the onset of tears.

He runs his tongue along her collarbone making her moan as her body begins to clench around him and her breath shortens. She wants to say his name, offer it to him like a gift, but she fears it will come out broken and choked so she bites her lip as her pleasure and her sadness link hands and rise up within her. One of his hands is in her hair, firm but gentle, and the other reaches beneath them to angle her so that each thrust of his hips grinds against her clit until she's tumbling over the edge and her sorrow silently breaks the banks of her eyes and wets her cheeks.

"My love." He comes inside her with a final firm thrust and she feels him smile against her neck briefly before lifting his head to run his cheek across her own.

"Caroline?" he sits back suddenly on his heels, leaving her feeling cold and empty.

She wants to tell him it's ok, to explain away her wet cheeks with a smile but she chokes and gives a little strangled sob instead. She reaches for him as he moves away and shakes her head mutely. His expression breaks her heart, just a moment ago she'd felt his smile against her skin and now he's drawing a thin mask of impassiveness over his devastated eyes.

"Klaus," she manages as he takes another step away, eyes slipping away from her face.

"I suppose we're late," he cuts in in a brittle voice, expression fragile. "Feel free to use the shower," he offers, looking anywhere but at her face.

She pulls the sheet over her breasts and sits up. "Klaus I, er, thanks."

He nods and heads towards the door. There must be something she can say to make him stop, she thinks, but all she has is his name in a whisper one more time.

He doesn't turn around but he stops and tension drops out of his shoulders, making him look a little defeated and tragic, framed naked in the doorway. "I am a monster Caroline," he says quietly and then after a small, determined, breath and without turning to face her. "But I will do right by you."

Then he's gone leaving her faint "I know" to barely cause a ripple in the air where he had stood.