Full of Light, Full of Love

by thatsanotherlovestory

A home for the gifts I've written for Klaroline Gift Exchanges hosted on Archive of Our Own.

3. still my heart is saying we were right

Hello lovely readers!

The latest entry in this collection is the gift I wrote for the Klaroline Sweet Swap gift exchange (and if you were wondering why I haven't updated "A Life You Love" yet, this 30,000+ word monster is the culprit)

My prompt was to write a story inspired by the song "If I Never Knew You" from Disney's Pocahontas.

Here's the summary: Klaus and Caroline see what their lives would be like if they'd never met. Needless to say, they aren't pleased with the results. But with limited time before the Hollow's dark magic starts consuming Klaus from the inside, their worst nightmare of having to live without each other in real life might be dangerously close to coming true.

This story is set during the series finale of The Originals, in the period of unaccounted for time between when Hope snaps Klaus's neck and when he wakes up at home in New Orleans. So this story diverts from canon as soon as that title card drops. The 'flashback' (it isn't really a flashback, you'll see) portion of this story diverts from canon during TVD episode 3x05, "The Reckoning" (aka the one where Klaus and Caroline meet).

There is dialogue taken from the show in some of the earlier 'flashbacks' which I don't claim to own. Nor do I own any of the many songs and popular culture references in this story.

The title for this story comes from a line from the song this gift was inspired by, "If I Never Knew You."

Happy reading!

---

Alaric led Lizzie and Josie back into the house a few minutes past eleven.

Caroline's eyes frantically searched all three faces, looking for some hint that they hadn't been able to complete the spell, some clue that Elijah had made it in time to stop them, some suggestion that together they had found another way to save Hope without needing to sacrifice Klaus.

But Lizzie's face was a guileless canvas of cheerfully smug satisfaction, Josie's wore the triumphantly exhausted expression that only came as a result of a job well done, and Alaric just looked resigned and sympathetic.

It was the sympathy that was the hardest to take.

Alaric took one look at Caroline's face and told the girls to go get ready for bed.

Once they were out of earshot, Alaric sat down on one of the couches in the common room and gestured for Caroline to sit beside him.

"So that's it, then?" Caroline asked, the silence suddenly too stiflingly heavy to bear. "The girls took the dark magic from Hope and put it in Klaus, who must have staked himself with the white oak stake in the time it took you to walk through the forest and back to the house. I should try to find Elijah, find out what the family's going to do now, and we'll have to work out a leave of absence for Hope—the poor thing's lost both of her parents in the span of only a few weeks. Remind me to tell the school psychologist to make herself available to Hope whenever she needs to talk, and remind me to set up a meeting with Hope and whichever Mikaelson is serving as her guardian now—it's probably Elijah because he and Klaus were so close, but he's been in France with amnesia for years now, he knows nothing about Hope's education…" the words spilled out of her like a rushing river in the absence of a dam.

"Caroline, you need to breathe," Alaric ordered.

He was looking at her like he was scared she was about to break. But she wasn't. She was Caroline Forbes, she'd survived loss before, and she was sure she would have to survive it again in the future. She was still standing, even after losing her father, her mother, and her husband, so there was no reason for Alaric to think that the death of Klaus Mikaelson, who she'd gone years without seeing or talking to, would be the one to send her over the edge.

Because even if she was willing to admit to herself (but never out loud, and especially never to Alaric, who'd shot him with a crossbow earlier that day), that she did have feelings for Klaus, she certainly didn't love him as much as she'd loved her parents or Stefan.

Caroline corralled her own thoughts. Love? She'd really thought the word 'love' in the same sentence as Klaus? Her thoughts were clearly starting to take on a life of their own, because she did not give them permission to insinuate that she loved Klaus. She'd always been attracted to him, she'd grown to maybe, perhaps, almost consider him a friend, and she now respected him as a fellow parent, but those feelings weren't love.

She felt…shortchanged, that's what it was. He had promised to be her last love, however long it takes, and now he was just going to sacrifice himself with no regard to the vow he'd made? Her relationship with Klaus was all about possibilities, about the whole wide world that was hers for the taking as soon as she was ready for Klaus to hand it to her on a silver platter. And now he was just cutting all of those possibilities short.

"He asked for you," Alaric told her. "Care, I think he was going to ask you to kill him."

Caroline's eyes widened.

That possibility would have never occurred to her. Yes, he'd extended the white oak stake towards her when he'd said that 'someone' would need to kill him when the spell was complete. But Klaus must have known that she couldn't do that, and he wouldn't have asked that of her. Wouldn't he?

"No," Caroline shook her head vehemently. "He wouldn't have put me in that position."

"Maybe he wouldn't have wanted to," Alaric conceded. "But is it really so hard to believe that he wanted the last person he ever saw to be you?"

Caroline couldn't think of anything she could say in response to that.

She should have been the last person her mother saw, but she hadn't been, and she would always regret it.

She was the last person her father saw, but that had only made her feel marginally better about his death.

She wasn't the last person Stefan saw, but she was the last person to know about his plan to sacrifice himself.

But she couldn't think about that.

She couldn't think about how today, she'd incontrovertibly equated Stefan's sacrifice with the one that Klaus planned to make. How she'd all but told Klaus that she would be equally as devastated at his death as she had been at Stefan's.

After ten years of the stages of grief, of self-reflection, of trying to move on, Caroline recognized that there was no way she could have stopped Stefan from sacrificing himself to save Damon and Elena, to give them their happy ending at the expense of her own.

In contrast, Klaus hadn't told her his plan at first because he hadn't wanted to know if she would stop him. If she hadn't tried to stop him, he would think that she didn't care whether he lived or died. If she had tried and succeeded, Hope would have died. If she had tried but failed, Klaus still would have sacrificed himself for Hope, but at least he would know that she cared about him.

Caroline had ended up choosing door number three, because, as she had told Klaus, he was being a good father and a good person, which was all she had ever wanted from him, but she didn't want Klaus to die, and she didn't want Hope to be an orphan. It seemed like the best option at the time, but now that she was facing the consequences of her choice, she wasn't so sure.

Her decisions to allow Lizzie and Josie to help him and to tell Elijah about Klaus's plan were made with a heavy cloud of guilt hanging over her head—because she'd known all along that she could stop Klaus from going through with his plan, and she'd always known what she would have to say.

As Stefan had told her once, she had Klaus wrapped around her little finger.

If she'd asked him to please not do this, if she'd cried, if she'd reminded him of all of the promises he'd made her, if she'd told him that she wanted to be with him or that she loved him; he would do whatever she asked of him.

But that would have been selfish.

As hard as the choices she'd been given were to make, Klaus's were worse: live and lose Hope, or die and hurt Hope and Caroline.

All he'd ever wanted, all at once, he'd said earlier. He wanted to live, he wanted Hope, and he wanted Caroline. And he'd found himself in a position where there was no way he could have all three at the same time.

"Well, I think that my presence is not adding anything to the internal monologue that is surely underway at Caroline-speed inside your head right now, so I'm going to go to bed," Alaric announced, standing up. He looked seriously at Caroline, as if he was trying to convey a message with his eyes. "For the record, I still think he's evil and I'm not sorry that the world is rid of him, but I am sorry that you got hurt."

Caroline just nodded, still not knowing what to say, or if there even was anything to say.

Keeping her eyes fixed on the front door, just in case this whole night was a hoax, or a bad dream, or the Mikaelsons had somehow pulled off another eleventh-hour miracle as they so often did, Caroline heard Alaric walk away, then the quiet click of his door closing.

Caroline sat silently in the common room, willing her brain to turn itself off. She didn't want to turn her humanity off—she'd done that once before, and it had been a mistake—she just wanted to stop thinking for a little while, so that maybe she could have a moment's peace before trying to make sense of the chaotic storm swirling through her mind and her heart.

"I have to do this spell," Caroline heard a voice whisper from the edge of the woods boarding the house. "We need to get her to want to help us."

There was no verbal response, just a resigned sigh.

"Do you what you must," a second voice conceded.

That voice was older, male, familiar. Caroline recognized it as belonging to Elijah Mikaelson.

The first voice had been less familiar, but Caroline still knew that she had heard it before. It was younger, unmistakably feminine. Older and lower-pitched than the twins, without the accent that would have immediately identified it as Rebekah. And she was talking about a spell that she wanted to perform, so she must be a witch. Logic told her that Elijah must be speaking to his niece.

"I just don't get it," Hope continued, tears audible in her voice. "Why didn't he tell anyone that he was planning this? Why did he want to do this in the first place? Why didn't he try to find another way, instead of telling me how proud he was of me and then sneaking off to sacrifice himself while I was in my wolf form and couldn't stop him? Didn't he want to live?"

Caroline wanted to scream at the girl that Klaus's desire to live wasn't the problem. Of course Klaus wanted to live. In a thousand years, he had only experienced one brief instance in which he wanted to be human, because he enjoyed being the most powerful creature on the planet; being strong, ageless, fearless—forever.

The problem was that as much as Klaus wanted to live, his love for his daughter had made him willing to sacrifice his own life to save hers.

"Your father thought that this was the only way to save you from the dark magic that was consuming you," Elijah lectured.

Klaus had told her the story: The four Original Vampires had each become a vessel for a quarter of a source of dark magic called the Hollow in order to prevent it from consuming Hope; they'd remained separate for seven years, until Hope had gotten so frustrated at her father's absence in her life that she kidnapped her own mother to lure Klaus back to New Orleans; after her mother's death, out of frustration with her father's inability to be near her without putting her in danger, Hope had taken the pieces of the Hollow and consumed them herself; Hope was being consumed by the dark magic, and the fact that she'd accidentally activated her werewolf curse hadn't helped matters.

Caroline was trying not to blame Hope for the mess they had found themselves in. She clearly had abandonment issues that weren't her fault, and the anger issues that were part and parcel of being an untriggered werewolf.

But there were times that Caroline thought that if Hope had just been able to rein in her anger and frustration, if she'd perhaps consulted a teacher or a family member before making rash decisions without thinking through the consequences, they might not be in this situation, or at least would have more time to find a solution.

"And he did tell someone about his plan," Elijah pointed out.

"That did him a lot of good," Hope scoffed sarcastically, her sadness giving way to the anger that new werewolves had an abundance of. "Even if she spent all day frantically looking for another solution, she still couldn't come up with anything, and she still didn't stop him from going through with it."

"She told me about Niklaus's plan, in the hopes that I would be able to stop him. Don't blame her, Hope; it was I who let her down, not her who let your father down. Based on her actions this evening, I would conclude that she already seems inclined to help us," Elijah told Hope.

So it wasn't another Mikaelson or a witch ally who they needed on their side, it was her. Well, Elijah was right, she would be happy to help them if she could. And not just because of her own ill-defined-but-more-positive-than-they'd-ever-been feelings towards Klaus. She'd lost her father when she wasn't much older than Hope, and she wouldn't wish that grief on anyone. If there was any way she could ease Hope's suffering, even a little, she would gladly do so.

Caroline stood and quickly made her way outside, ready to ask Hope and Elijah what it was they wanted her to do, but before she could get the words out, she heard Hope say, "I'm really sorry about this, Ms. Forbes," and then everything went black.

{ }

Elijah had nearly ruined everything.

He had just finished getting Hope settled in the room designed for werewolf transformations when his brother intercepted him on his way to the ritual that would release Hope from the death grip the Hollow had on her and allow him to shoulder the burden in her stead.

Elijah had made clear that he knew Klaus's plan, and the only person who could have told him was Caroline.

She didn't get nearly enough credit for her intelligence, Klaus had mused on his walk through the woods. She'd told him that the course of action he had chosen was that of a good father and a good person, and therefore, she couldn't justify standing in his way. So she hadn't. But she'd made no such promise to ensure that no one else stood in his way, once they found out what he meant to do.

He'd said that he didn't want to know if Caroline would have stopped him from sacrificing himself, but when presented with a question that appeared on its surface to only have two answers, Caroline had found a third—the only one that would give him everything he would need to see his plan through to the end: proof that she did care about him, at least enough to want him to live, and reassurance that, as much as they both hated the outcome, he had made the right choice and was finally doing right by his daughter.

He couldn't tell what broke his heart more, that he had finally made himself into a man that was worthy of her when he only had hours left to live, or that she couldn't even bring herself to say aloud that him doing so was all she ever wanted from him.

He wondered if Caroline had known that Elijah would offer himself as the sacrifice instead of Klaus. He wondered if Caroline had been all right with that, if she was determined to keep him alive, even if it meant his (better, braver, smarter, more stable, more noble, more moral) brother had to die.

As much as he didn't want his brother to die, he had to admit that the thought pleased him.

For a thousand years, Elijah had been the hero, and Klaus had been the villain, irredeemable in all but his brother's eyes.

But not to Caroline.

"You weren't the villain of my story," she'd told him earlier.

He remembered thinking it was odd, the way she'd said it, since Caroline should know better than most that life was not a fairy tale, and people weren't always neatly classified as either heroes or villains.

They'd passed the medical offices of Dr. Elena Salvatore on their way into town. The doppelganger had been Mystic Falls' collective pride and joy, yet she'd also killed his brother and the thousands of vampires he'd sired because she didn't want to be a vampire. To Mystic Falls, Elena could do no wrong. To Klaus, she was a selfish, judgmental, hypocritical murderer.

Caroline's reassurance that he wasn't a villain in her eyes had meant more to him that it probably should have to a thousand-year-old vampire who had long ago accepted, and even embraced, the fact that morality wasn't black and white but thousands of shades of every color in between.

But he'd needed the reassurance after Caroline had told him that she'd gone to New Orleans—to him—when she'd been scared and needed someone—needed him—to help keep her and her young daughters safe, and he hadn't been there for her when she needed him. And maybe it wasn't his fault that he hadn't been there, but he still felt that he should have been, still wished that he had been there—taking her hands to try to calm her anxious rambling, crouching down to be at eye level with her daughters as he introduced himself to them, promising all three of them that they would be safe with him.

When he'd arrived where Caroline's daughters were preparing for the spell, he immediately scanned the area for her, but she was nowhere to be found. So, he'd asked Alaric, who'd given some excuse about her not wanting to be in the woods while Hope was undergoing her werewolf transformation for the first time.

He saw through that excuse immediately. Alaric and the young witches had been there setting up for far longer than it had taken him to incapacitate Elijah and set Hope free to transform and run wild among the trees. If Caroline had ever intended to supervise her daughters as they performed the spell, she would have never seen or heard him pull Hope from the boarding house.

Then Alaric said something that truly stunned him for a moment.

"She just couldn't watch you die."

He had hoped that she would be present in his last moments, it was true. He hadn't wanted their last moments to be him leaning in to kiss her and her flinching away as the clock tower struck, reminding him of just how limited his time left on Earth was.

But he couldn't cause her anymore pain, not now.

That was his dilemma, of course. He could only hope that she cared enough about him that the idea of his death would hurt her, but he didn't want to see her hurt, especially not over him, who was so undeserving of her.

So he stepped inside the boundary the girls had created for the spell, hoping that Caroline would change her mind and join them, but knowing that she wouldn't.

Caroline's daughters didn't even look at him as they chanted, walking around the edges of the circular boundary they'd created.

The moment they siphoned the dark magic out of Hope and put it in him, Klaus shouted as the glowing blue light made contact with his chest in a reaction that looked like he was consuming the light when the magic was already starting to consume him.

Within seconds of completing the spell, Caroline's daughters were quickly whisked away by Alaric, as if he thought that the power that Klaus had absorbed was contagious and he didn't want the girls exposed.

In any other situation, Klaus would have laughed. Not only was the Hollow not in any way harmful to the girls, but Klaus was familiar with their lineage and knew that the Gemini Coven was full of dark magic of their own, something that, at thirteen, their latest set of twins would already be familiar with.

The girls hadn't seemed afraid of him, though. Either Alaric hadn't told them anything about him, or Caroline had told them about the good she'd seen in him. Or maybe both, and they'd cancelled each other out. And there was always the possibility that they'd simply chosen to ignore Alaric's warnings about him, which made Klaus like the girls that much more.

Klaus had listened intently as they bargained with Caroline over their reward for helping him. If it hadn't been his daughter's life on the line, he would have been amused, maybe even proud. Watching the impulsive, materialistic blonde and the calculating brunette negotiate was almost like watching little, teenaged-girl, school-uniform-clad versions of Rebekah and Elijah at work. Rebekah would scream and cry and demand what she wanted, and Elijah would strategize and persuade whoever needed to be persuaded that what the Mikaelsons wanted was also in their best interests. As powerful as they were on their own, no one stood a chance against them together. It was no wonder that Caroline eventually caved to most of their demands.

They hadn't fought Alaric when he'd pulled them away, and though it also could have been because it was cold and they were tired and they'd already accomplished what they set out to do, it supported Klaus's conclusion that the three women of the Forbes/Saltzman household spent their time humoring Alaric and his simultaneous fear of and immersion in the supernatural; agreeing to his face and then turning away and rolling their eyes at his hypocritical sense of moral superiority and his impossible need for control over something that was, by its very definition, beyond human control.

Alaric seemed to have appointed himself the moral authority on the supernatural, and had chosen to run a school for supernatural students so that he could mold them into what he considered a good person. Everyone was either good or bad to him, and once you made one mistake, there was no redeeming yourself in his eyes.

Klaus didn't care what Alaric thought of him. Alaric was getting on in years and would be dead soon enough anyway. Alaric could think Klaus was the most evil being to ever live and unworthy of living on the same planet as his daughters, and Klaus would carry on without giving Alaric's opinion of him a second thought.

But Klaus did care what Hope thought of him. What Caroline thought of him. Even what her daughters and his siblings thought of him.

As Klaus picked up the white oak stake and held it to his chest, he thought about the funeral his family would hold for him.

He hoped Caroline would attend. He pictured her wearing a black dress, her blonde hair curling on her shoulders, tears streaming silently down her face as she trailed after his coffin. Hope would be angry, stubbornly fighting for a way to bring him back, but Caroline would be stoic, regal in her grief. She would tell Hope to take comfort in the fact that he had given his life to save her; that he hadn't died in vain, but honorably, in the name of love and sacrifice.

That was what would get him through this, that picture of Hope crying into Caroline's shoulder, Caroline's arms around Hope as she tried to comfort her. Hope would need Caroline's strength after he was gone. Hope and Caroline, the two most important women in his life, were both strong, far stronger than he was. But while Hope's strength was a battering ram, knocking down anything and anyone that tried to stand in her way, Caroline's was made of an elastic resilience that allowed her to bend without breaking.

That was when Elijah showed up and nearly ruined everything for the second time that night.

He once again tried to stop Klaus from going through with his plan, clearly upset that he hadn't arrived in time to prevent Caroline's daughters from moving the Hollow into Klaus in the first place.

Because of his timing, Elijah's presence and pleas for Klaus to reconsider did little more than annoy him.

Unfortunately, they also distracted him.

He was just telling Elijah that this was his decision when he heard Hope's voice from behind him say, "And this is mine," and then everything went black.

{ }

When Caroline woke up, she was lying on a cold linoleum floor that looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place where she'd seen it before, especially since she'd almost certainly never seen it from this angle before.

She sat up, looking for some clue of where she was and what she was doing there.

It took Caroline only a second to realize that she was in a hallway at Mystic Falls High School, the rows of lockers and school spirit posters a dead giveaway.

There were two other people in the hallway, a couple embracing. The boy was dark-haired and wearing a grey tee-shirt and jeans, his arms around a blonde girl wearing a grey blouse, black cardigan, jeans, and ballet flats.

When the girl spoke, it was her words, rather than her voice, that made Caroline realize who they were.

"I just want everyone to be happy. Even in the midst of all the crazy, unhappy bits."

Caroline herself had said that to Tyler during Senior Prank Night, years ago.

In fact, when she spoke, the girl who Caroline now suspected was somehow the past version of herself had turned so that Caroline could see her more clearly, and she definitely recognized that outfit. Then she shifted again and Caroline could see her face.

Which was identical to her own.

Aside from her clothing, this other Caroline had slightly longer hair and her makeup was a little heavier, the way she'd worn it as a teenager.

Caroline looked down at herself. She was still wearing the coat, leggings, and over-the-knee boots she'd been wearing when she'd gone outside to meet Hope and Elijah.

Hope, who had wanted to do a spell to convince her to help them save Klaus.

The only explanation for why there were suddenly two Carolines was that this was a part of Hope's spell, though Caroline still didn't know what the spell would do.

Caroline and Tyler, the only people she'd seen since she had woken up, both looked like they had during their teenage years.

Had Hope managed to send Caroline back in time?

She was fairly certain that witches had not yet been able to use magic to time-travel, but if any witch was powerful enough, it would be Hope.

The idea made Caroline worry. If that was the case, Hope must want her to change something in the past, and she must have chosen this specific moment to send her back to. But Caroline had no idea what Hope wanted her to do, or why she'd sent her back so far in the past, when she would really only need to go back a few months to stop everything that had gone wrong in Hope's life recently—her mother's kidnapping, her mother's death, her absorbing the Hollow's magic, Klaus resolving to take the magic from her and kill himself so that it couldn't hurt anyone ever again. If that was all she needed to fix, Hope could have sent her back to the day she'd given Henry two vials of her blood and positioned her to interrupt the transaction before Hope set in motion a series of catastrophic events.

The other Caroline and Tyler hadn't noticed her yet, which was good, because she wasn't sure how she could explain the situation to them, especially since she knew that the first rule of time travel was to not change anything.

Caroline took a tentative step towards them.

Still, they didn't seem to notice her, either her movement or the sound her boots made as they landed on the floor.

Perhaps Caroline had watched too many Christmas movies, but her next thought was that Hope had magically manufactured some strange version of It's a Wonderful Life. No one had noticed her because she had landed in a world where she didn't exist.

Before she could come up with any possible reasons why Hope would want Caroline to see an alternate world in which she'd never been born, Caroline realized that of course she existed in this world, since there was another Caroline standing in the hallway with her.

No, this was more like A Christmas Carol. Hope wanted her to see something, some alternate version of her life where she'd made a different choice and everything turned out differently.

She was pondering what it was Hope wanted her to see when another set of footsteps approached.

The other Caroline didn't know who the blonde who already knew her and Tyler's names was, but Caroline sure did.

Rebekah.

And once she arrived, Caroline knew exactly why she'd been sent to this specific time and place.

Because Rebekah hadn't been the only person, or even the only Mikaelson, she'd met that night.

Caroline had met Klaus that night, too.

But why did Hope think that showing Caroline the night she met Klaus would make her want to help them save him?

She couldn't do anything but watch as Rebekah moved forward and snapped the other Caroline's neck, just as Caroline remembered her doing.

Caroline had quickly stepped forward, trying to intercept Rebekah, but even as she grabbed the other girl's arm, she still didn't seem to notice Caroline at all.

So Caroline couldn't intervene. To everyone in the past scene she was reliving, it was like she wasn't even there.

But because Caroline was there, she would get to see everything that happened that night that she had missed because Rebekah had snapped her neck.

Deciding to test how far she could venture away from the past, alternate version of herself, Caroline left the other Caroline lying on the ground and followed after Rebekah, who was dragging an uncooperative Tyler in the direction of the gym. She slipped through the doors after Rebekah flung them open, pulling Tyler along with her.

Elena, Bonnie, and Matt were inside, and so were two former classmates that Caroline only vaguely remembered.

And in the middle of the floor, at the center of everything, was Klaus.

Caroline couldn't help but say his name aloud when she saw him standing there, a wicked smirk on his face, looking more evil, and well… Klaus-like, than she'd ever seen him, making her realize how much Klaus had changed since she'd known him, and how much of an effort he must have made to be more gentle around her. Even when he'd bitten her, shouted at her, threatened her, he never looked so purely, senselessly evil like he did at that moment. Caroline had always been able to find the human part of Klaus, the part that had real emotions and was acting out because of them, but not now.

Klaus looked right through her, unseeing, as he forced Tyler to drink his blood, challenged Bonnie to find a way to make sure werewolves survived their transitions into hybrids, then snapped Tyler's neck.

Bonnie quickly left the gym with Matt, Rebekah pulling Tyler along behind her as she followed them out the doors.

Caroline decided to stay in the gym rather than follow either of them. She was fairly certain that Rebekah had dragged Tyler to the classroom where she remembered waking up when she'd lived through this night the first time. Her sense of time told her that it probably wouldn't be long until the other Caroline recovered from her broken neck and woke up. And if she could have intervened she would have followed Bonnie and Matt to tell them what they needed to know to save Tyler without Matt having to put his life in danger, but since she couldn't help them, she would rather not witness yet another occasion in which a friend put themselves in a life-or-death situation.

So Caroline stood still and watched as Stefan arrived and Klaus compelled him.

But as Stefan killed Dana, Caroline was fairly certain the girl's name was, she felt herself pulled out of the gym and into the chemistry lab where the other Caroline was just waking up, and Rebekah was sitting on the floor, searching through Caroline's old phone.

They had a brief conversation about Tyler's state, during which Rebekah continued to scroll through the other Caroline's pictures.

The Rebekah got to her feet and stomped angrily over to the other Caroline.

"Why is that doppelganger bitch wearing my necklace?" Rebekah demanded angrily.

As the past Caroline started to stammer out an answer, trying to process the new information that the necklace Stefan had given Elena used to belong to an Original vampire, the temperamental and impatient Rebekah reached out and snapped Caroline's neck again.

That hadn't happened last time.

Rebekah had asked about the necklace, then stormed out of the room, returning a few minutes later, then Tyler had woken up. That was what happened last time.

But apparently, although it hadn't before this moment, this alternate universe could deviate from the events of the past.

Caroline's mind raced through possible reasons for the change as she followed Rebekah back to the gym, where she screamed about her necklace to Klaus, who forced Elena to admit that Katherine had stolen it, then set a time limit on the scoreboard, compelling Stefan to drink Elena's blood if Bonnie wasn't able to find a way to keep Tyler alive after his transition within twenty minutes.

By the time she and Rebekah had returned to the classroom where Tyler was stirring and the other Caroline was still unconscious, Caroline was fairly certain she had her answer. She just wasn't sure she was ready to admit it, even to herself.

"Where am I? What happened?" Tyler asked groggily.

"You're in transition," Rebekah answered matter-of-factly. "If your witch friend can find a way to help you successfully complete the transition, you'll be my brother's first hybrid. Quite an honor, really. And if not, then you'll die."

"What happened to Caroline?" Tyler asked, noticing her body for the first time.

"She's just taking a nap," Rebekah said. "I'll admit, I lost my temper. But it might be a good thing for her and for you. She's out of harm's way, and if you die, she won't have to see it."

Tyler appeared to be considering this when Klaus strode briskly into the room.

"Well, the verdict's in. The original witch says the doppelganger should be dead," Klaus announced.

"Does that mean we can kill her?" Rebekah questioned excitedly.

"No, I'm fairly certain it means the opposite," Klaus replied.

"Elena's blood. Drink it," he instructed Tyler, holding up a test tube.

Within seconds, it was all over. Without Caroline's protests, Klaus hadn't needed to spend time assuring her and convincing Tyler to drink the blood. With the other Caroline lying still, Rebekah didn't need to restrain her as she had last time, leaving her free to help Klaus force Elena's blood down Tyler's throat. With their guidance, Tyler hadn't struggled to drink the blood, instead swallowing it as quickly as possible to get the process over with.

Klaus only noticed the other Caroline after Tyler had fallen to the floor, twitching and moaning in pain.

"I assume this pretty little thing was a victim of your quick temper, little sister?" Klaus idly touched one of the other Caroline's curls.

Whatever Rebekah would have said in response was lost as Tyler growled, his eyes turning yellow, with veins appearing under them, as he bared a mouth full of fangs.

"Well, that's a good sign," Klaus murmured appreciatively.

By the time the other Caroline woke up, Klaus, Rebekah, and Tyler were gone.

{ }

When Klaus woke up, he was in—if he wasn't mistaken—the cafeteria of Mystic Falls High School.

The last thing he remembered was his daughter sneaking up on him from behind and snapping his neck before he could plunge the white oak stake into his heart, but he had no idea why she would bring him here rather than her own school, or even to the car to take him home to New Orleans.

As Klaus contemplated what Hope had done and why, he realized that he couldn't feel the insidious, parasitic presence of the Hollow inside of him. He didn't have the blackened veins that he'd expected after seeing them on Hope. In this place at least, his mind and body were entirely his own.

His thought process was interrupted by the arrival of a hastily-moving figure through one of the multiple sets of double doors.

A figure that was a precise replica of himself from seventeen years earlier.

Klaus was distracted by thoughts of how much had changed since then, including himself. His past self's features were sharper, fiercer, harsher than his own; his posture predatory, like a snake poised to strike.

Had having a child changed him that much?

On the subject of his child, this place had Hope's devious fingerprints all over it. He was certain that it was his daughter's magic that had put him here, and though he wasn't entirely what 'here' was, he was sure that his body was safe in Hope and Elijah's care.

It wasn't exactly a chambre de chasse, since he was observing the scene rather than living it, but it must be similar in that the entire thing seemed to be taking place on a mental plane.

Though he did seem to be alone. Usually when Klaus had been pulled into a chambre de chasse, he was with his siblings.

Klaus heard feminine laughter before another set of double doors opened and the doppelganger appeared in the doorway, within arm's reach of the past version of Klaus.

"There's my girl," the other Klaus said.

"Klaus!" Elena gasped in surprise.

She turned around and attempted to run away, but the other Klaus used his vampire speed to block her escape.

"You are supposed to be dead. What are we going to do about that?" he taunted.

Klaus followed as the past version of himself gripped Elena tightly by the arm and pulled her quickly through the hallways until they reached the gym.

As the past version of Klaus threatened Elena and ordered the ordinary human students to leave, Klaus wondered why Hope had decided to show him this particular memory. Especially since it taken place years before she had been born. Yet she had somehow managed to manufacture a precise reproduction of the scene. Even if someone (Caroline?) had told her about the events of that night, there were details that she wouldn't have been able to copy because she hadn't been there, since no one would have bothered to tell her about what the random students participating in prank night looked like, or the low-cut purple shirt and sneakers that Elena wore all the time, or the exact position of the mascot painted on the gym floor, yet all of those things were faithfully replicated.

Hope must have pulled this memory out of his own mind, though why she'd been looking for it or what spell she had used it for he didn't know.

He watched as the past version of himself tormented the occupants of the gym: Elena, the humans Dana and Chad, the Bennett witch and the human Matt when they arrived.

Then, when Rebekah brought Tyler in, he forced the werewolf to drink his blood then snapped his neck, ordering Bonnie to find a way to ensure he survived his transition.

After years spent with no contact with them, Klaus had almost forgotten how dramatic the vampire population of Mystic Falls could be. He had to restrain himself from laughing at Stefan's entrance, at the melodramatic interactions between Stefan and Elena. Stefan threw promises of loyalty and obedience at Klaus, then attempted to attack him when he struck Elena.

For someone who saw himself as honorable, Stefan wasn't reliable when it came to keeping his word.

Klaus did let out a chuckle when the past version of himself echoed his sentiment. Apparently his opinion of the younger Salvatore brother (or the older, to be quite honest) hadn't improved with time.

Klaus let his mind wander as the past version of himself compelled Stefan to obey his every command.

This night obviously had considerable significance to the supernatural world, as it was the first time that Klaus had successfully created a hybrid. But it also had considerable personal significance to Klaus, as it was the night he met Caroline.

Klaus wasn't sure what, if anything, Caroline had told Hope about their relationship. His daughter had never mentioned Caroline, in the context of either of their relationships with her, yet at times she would emulate her in a way that reminded Klaus of just how much time Hope had spent with Caroline over the last seven years. Klaus had concluded that Hope couldn't possibly know how much Klaus cared for Caroline, that he would do nearly anything to keep her safe and happy, or the promises he had made her. If she had, instead of accidentally inciting a war between vampire supremacists and every other supernatural population in New Orleans that didn't share their philosophy, Hope would have simply walked down to Caroline's office and asked her to call him, knowing that even if he was ignoring Hope's calls, he would have answered the second Caroline's name appeared on his screen.

His thoughts were interrupted by an irate Rebekah storming into the gym, shrieking about the necklace Stefan had stolen from her and then given to Elena.

His sister had always been dramatic, but she had matured considerably over the last decade—since Hope was born, really. Klaus had never stopped to think about how the months that Rebekah had looked after Hope all on her own had changed her, as focused as he had been on how the time spent away from his child had affected him.

As proud as Klaus was of Rebekah's character growth in the present, in the past, he was clearly annoyed by her antics. The past version of himself halfheartedly interrogated Elena about the location of the necklace, believing her easily when she said that Katerina had interfered.

Not wanting to witness any of the surely sickeningly heartfelt promises and declarations between Stefan and Elena that he had been fortunate enough to not hear last time, Klaus followed the past version of himself and Rebekah as they left the gym after starting the clock.

Klaus passed the twenty minute time limit by returning to his contemplations of why Hope had wanted him to relive this night.

She couldn't have overheard his conversation with Elijah about Caroline telling his brother about his plan. She wouldn't have seen his many drawings of Caroline he'd done over the years, or the letter and check he'd mailed to Caroline when she'd first started at the school. She couldn't have heard about their relationship from Rebekah or Kol, since she hadn't seen them in person for years either, and he knew his siblings wouldn't waste what little time they could spend talking to their niece on stories from years past.

While his gut instinct may have told him that Hope's plan was about Caroline, the more rational part of his mind reasoned that this had to be about hybrids. If Hope could stop Klaus from figuring out how to make hybrids, the entire course of their family's history would change from that moment.

Klaus followed as the past version of himself engaged in a brief exchange with Bonnie and Matt, then intercepted Elena as she tried to run from Stefan, who was doing everything he could, even going so far as to cause himself physical harm, to keep himself from hurting her.

"Now this is fascinating. I've never seen this before. The only thing stronger than your craving for blood is your love for this one girl," the past version of Klaus observed.

Klaus couldn't believe that Caroline had married Stefan, when getting him to admit that he cared for Caroline was like pulling teeth, yet he forced himself to resist Klaus's compulsion to drink Elena's blood, with strength and determination born from his love for Elena, the likes of which Klaus had never seen even after living for a thousand years. Klaus had made Stefan promise to do right by Caroline; a promise that Stefan had clearly never kept—repeatedly prioritizing Damon and Elena over Caroline without even sparing a thought to her feelings. It baffled Klaus that even after Stefan had sacrificed his own life so that Damon could live happily ever after with Elena, both of whom would remember Stefan fondly as the noble hero who sacrificed himself to save them and the town, without even telling Caroline that he was planning to do so, she still wore his rings around her neck, honoring him in death more than he had ever respected her when he was alive.

Would Caroline honor him the same way after his death? Klaus made a note to tell Elijah to return Caroline's bracelet to her. It wasn't quite the same thing, didn't have quite the same weight to it, as a ring, but he doubted that she would feel entirely comfortable wearing them together.

The moment that he had met Caroline was growing nearer, Klaus recognized the series of events as the past version of himself compelled Stefan to turn off his humanity.

When Klaus left this room, he would go to the classroom where Caroline, Rebekah, and Tyler were. He would spar with Rebekah over whether or not they needed to kill Elena; he would try to reassure Caroline that Tyler needed to drink Elena's blood, as unappealing as the thought was to her; and he would implore Tyler to drink the blood, which would successfully complete his transition into Klaus's first surviving hybrid.

But that wasn't what happened this time.

Instead of staring at him as he walked into the room, her beautiful eyes challenging, brimming with disgust and dislike, Caroline was lying across one of the lab tables.

Klaus immediately concluded that Rebekah must have snapped Caroline's neck, something that she hadn't done when this night had actually happened, and that Hope was magically manipulating his memory, trying to show him something that seemed to hinge upon him not speaking to Caroline as he had originally.

"Well, the verdict's in. The original witch says the doppelganger should be dead," the past version of Klaus announced.

"Does that mean we can kill her?" Rebekah questioned excitedly.

"No, I'm fairly certain it means the opposite," Klaus replied.

"Elena's blood. Drink it," he instructed Tyler, holding up a test tube.

Within seconds, it was all over. Without Caroline's protests, Klaus hadn't needed to spend time assuring her and convincing Tyler to drink the blood. With the other Caroline lying still, Rebekah didn't need to restrain her as she had last time, leaving her free to help Klaus force Elena's blood down Tyler's throat. With their guidance, Tyler hadn't struggled to drink the blood, instead swallowing it as quickly as possible to get the process over with.

The other Klaus (a far inferior specimen, Klaus decided) only noticed Caroline after Tyler had fallen to the floor, twitching and moaning in pain.

"I assume this pretty little thing was a victim of your quick temper, little sister?" the other version of Klaus idly touched one of Caroline's curls.

Whatever Rebekah would have said in response was lost as Tyler growled, his eyes turning yellow, with veins appearing under them, as he bared a mouth full of fangs.

"Well, that's a good sign," Klaus murmured appreciatively.

The past version of Klaus and Rebekah dragged Tyler out of the room, leaving an unconscious Caroline behind, and leaving Klaus certain of why Hope had wanted him to relive this memory:

He hadn't met Caroline.

{ }

Caroline made note of the changes between her real past and this alternate reality as Damon and Bonnie informed the other Caroline of everything she'd missed that night while she'd been unconscious.

Klaus had left town to look for more werewolves to turn into hybrids, taking Rebekah, Elena, and Tyler with him. This time, without Caroline there to argue on Tyler's behalf, he had completed his transition more quickly, and Klaus and Rebekah had taken him with them when they left the school rather than leaving him behind to say goodbye to her with the intent of picking him up later. Those few minutes earlier that Klaus, Rebekah, and Tyler had left had made all the difference when it came to Elena, since they had taken her from the hospital and left just as Damon had arrived, missing them by mere seconds.

A still-humanity-less Stefan had been left behind: both to punish him for his insubordination by separating him from Elena, and because Klaus didn't need him anymore now that he had Tyler—his first successful hybrid.

As Damon informed everyone who had been at the school the night before what he, Katherine, and Jeremy had been up to, Caroline let her mind wander.

The other Caroline hadn't met Klaus at Prank Night like the real Caroline had.

Hope hadn't just been showing Caroline her own memories, she had changed a very significant moment, and Caroline knew Hope well enough to know that she had done so for what she saw as a very good reason.

But until she made it out of this alternative universe and back into the real world, Caroline had to figure out why Hope had done this to her, if there was anything she could do to undo what Hope had done and get herself back home, and keep track of all of the consequences of her not meeting Klaus and how that one small change had led to larger differences between the real world and this alternate reality, starting with Tyler's and Elena's absences.

If Stefan and Damon were busy trying to find and rescue Elena, then they wouldn't be… how were Stefan and Damon getting themselves into trouble at this time? Right, this was when they had tried to use Mikael to kill Klaus, only to have that plan backfire as Stefan and Damon's plans so often did.

Especially since Caroline knew right now that their plan couldn't work in this alternate timeline. Elena wasn't there to dagger Rebekah, who wasn't there to be daggered. Rebekah was with Klaus, not in Mystic Falls, so she wouldn't be there to verify Stefan's information about Mikael being there. Katherine couldn't pretend to be Elena, since Klaus would know that Elena was with him. And Tyler wouldn't be able to make sure that Caroline was out of harm's way while everyone else put the plan into action.

Without the plan to lure Klaus back to town using Mikael, Caroline didn't know if Klaus would ever return to Mystic Falls.

If that was the case, then the other Caroline would never meet Klaus.

On the heels of that revelation was another: that must have been the purpose of Hope's spell; to show Caroline what her life would look like without Klaus so that she would help Hope and Elijah save his life in order to avoid having to live without him for real.

If Caroline had known that that was Hope's plan, she could have told her that it wasn't necessary. She'd meant what she'd said to Klaus when she'd reunited with him in Paris: she did think that he was someone worth knowing.

She wanted Klaus in her life and in Hope's life. She wanted to have the chance to get to know Klaus as he was now—as a parent who had made incredible sacrifices for his child, who had finally been able to reunite with the family he had fought so hard to protect, who had experienced love, loss, pride, guilt, triumph, and defeat in the years they'd spent apart. She wanted Hope to get to know her father, not as the hero she'd idolized as a little girl or as the monster she'd heard rumors about as a teenager, but as the complex individual he was.

Unfortunately for Caroline, it appeared that figuring out why she was being forced to watch an alternate version of her life was not the key to escaping it, because nothing changed.

Caroline still stood in the living room of the Salvatore boarding house, watching and listening as Stefan, Damon, Bonnie, Jeremy, Matt, and the alternate version of herself discussed what they could do to try to get Elena and Tyler back.

She supposed that made sense. Hope wanted her to see what her life would look like without Klaus. The spell clearly wouldn't have its intended effect if it allowed her to return to the present as soon as she realized how what she was seeing deviated from her memories.

Tuning out the Salvatores' latest hare-brained scheme, Caroline tried to think of what else would change in this alternate universe where the alternate version of herself had never met Klaus.

The other Caroline would never be asked to play the distraction while everyone else tried to kill Klaus and his siblings. Tyler wouldn't disappear to try to break the sire bond, since he would never find out it was even possible, and therefore, the other hybrids he helped break their sire bonds wouldn't be killed, and so neither would Carol Lockwood. Elena wouldn't spend the next however many months it was looking over her shoulder, constantly vigilant, knowing Klaus could try to abduct her at any minute. Bonnie wouldn't be forced to do Klaus's, and then Esther's bidding. The Salvatores wouldn't be competing over Elena, instead working together to save her.

With every consequence came a new question. Would Elena still become a vampire? It wouldn't be under the same circumstances, but it seemed like anything could be possible here. Would they all still search for the cure? There were so many things—Jeremy's death, Elena turning off her humanity, Katherine becoming human and dying, everything that Stefan had suffered through because he was Silas's doppelganger—that might not happen if they didn't. Would Hope still be born? It wasn't entirely inconceivable that Klaus might run into Hayley on his cross-country search for werewolves to turn into hybrids.

There was no way of knowing who would live or die depending on what changed, but Caroline had a feeling that she would survive. She didn't have any proof, just a gut feeling, but if Hope wanted her to see what her life would look like without Klaus, it didn't make sense to cut her life tragically short.

Caroline supposed that she would just have to wait and see what happened next.

{ }

While Klaus didn't appreciate his alternate self's lack of attention to Caroline, he had to admit that he did have some good ideas.

He stayed focused, moved quickly, and was able to leave Mystic Falls with the doppelganger and his hybrid, exactly according to his plans, just as Damon Salvatore arrived to carry out some hastily thrown together rescue mission to save them.

Yet looking at the scene—a triumphant Klaus and Rebekah in the front seat of the truck, an exhausted Tyler and Elena in the back—Klaus couldn't bring himself to resent Caroline for inadvertently derailing his plan to create more hybrids when she'd challenged him to try to save Tyler and Elena.

In fact, Klaus pitied the other version of himself for not having the pleasure of interacting with Caroline.

He had to wonder if the alternate version of himself would ever get to meet Caroline, since he didn't seem to have any plans or reasons to go back to Mystic Falls.

How sad it would be for the other Klaus if he never got to meet Caroline, if he had to live without her light infiltrating his world.

Everything he ever wanted, all at once, he'd said. And none of those things were the hybrids that his past self had been so determined to create.

They didn't matter. Hope mattered, Caroline mattered, his siblings mattered, but the hybrids didn't matter.

The other version of himself would just have to figure that out on his own.

Because what would he have? Rebekah at his side while he made hybrids using a captive Elena's blood. He wouldn't have the rest of his family: he wouldn't even know that Freya existed or that Marcel was alive, he wouldn't have Caroline, he wouldn't have Hope—a loophole, an exception to a rule he'd never questioned, couldn't be an inevitability in every possible path his life could have taken. The odds of him running into Hayley on this trek were slim to none, as he had no idea where she'd lived in between her birth in New Orleans and when she'd turned up in Mystic Falls twenty years later, and Hope wouldn't be Hope if the stars hadn't aligned in the exact way that they had.

On the other hand, Kol wouldn't die, since he was still daggered in his coffin in the back of the truck. Alaric wouldn't become an Original-vampire-killing monster with his mother still sealed in her coffin. Alaric wouldn't kill him and Bonnie wouldn't need to move him into Tyler's body. Finn wouldn't die either. If only his siblings knew the danger they found themselves in when left to their own devices, they might appreciate how seriously he took their safety.

In fact, this alternate universe seemed to offer a more desirable fate to nearly everyone. The other Klaus got to create hybrids. Caroline wouldn't get bitten by any hybrids. Caroline's father wouldn't die, since he wouldn't come back to Mystic Falls to help Tyler. Matt wouldn't have to spend any time with Rebekah, which he knew from experience would definitely improve the boy's quality of life. Tyler would never find out the sire bond could be broken, so the other Klaus would never want to kill him, or actually kill his mother. Bonnie would never be forced to reunite with her mother. The Salvatores would be free from their train wreck of a love triangle. Elena wouldn't become a vampire.

And yet, even with all of these advantages, Klaus still would gladly have rather lived the life he did live, so that he would have Hope and Caroline and his family in his life.

Was that Hope's plan, to show him that he was happy that she had been born, that even after everything her existence had put him through, even as he prepared to sacrifice his own life to save her, he had no regrets?

He knew that selfishness was a Mikaelson family trait that they all suffered from, but that didn't sound like Hope.

As much as Klaus might want to think that he had passed on to Hope only his very best characteristics, he knew that genetics didn't work that way. He'd given his daughter whatever artistic talent he possessed, his impervious resilience, his hardheaded stubbornness, and his relentless determination, but other than that, they had little in common aside from both having blue eyes. Hope's bravery, like Hayley's, was born from a sense of loyalty and justice, principled to the point of at times reaching self-righteous indignation, rather than his own calculated self-interest. Their strength was accompanied by a grace that could convince anyone that being strong wasn't a choice or an acquired skill, but an automatic reaction. Hope's temper, like Hayley's, had a slightly longer fuse than Klaus's. And while Hope had inherited her fierce protectiveness and desire for independence from both of them, her werewolf instincts surely came from Hayley, who had still identified herself as a wolf even after years as a hybrid. Hope was half cunning Mikaelson witch and half strong, loyal Crescent wolf, and while she could be dangerously impulsive and strong-willed, Klaus had never known her to be self-centered.

No, Klaus was sure that while Hope had been the one to trap him in this alternate world, this wasn't about her, or proving to him that she was worth sacrificing for. He already knew that, and despite everything they'd been through and all of her life that he'd missed, he knew that she knew it, too.

The phrasing of his thought gave him pause: all of her life that he'd missed. He had missed years of Hope's life. And Caroline's life. He'd only just met Caroline's daughters at the age of thirteen.

The main difference between the life he was now forced to observe and the one he'd actually lived was that this other version of Klaus had never met Caroline. Hers was the life he had missed, not Hope's.

Hope wanted him to see his life without Caroline, so that he would…

No, so that he wouldn't want to live without her, after seeing how inferior a life without her was. And in order to not live without her, he would have to live.

Within moments, Klaus had assembled what he felt was a reasonable timeline of Hope's thought process: after she'd snapped his neck, Elijah must have told her that Caroline had told him about the plan; Hope, as calculating as any Mikaelson, must have come to the conclusion that as the only person Klaus trusted enough to let in on his plan, even when he hadn't told his brother who was usually his closest confidante, Caroline was their only chance to stop him; then Hope had cast the spell to show him what his life would have been like if he'd never met Caroline in order to make him want to live, if only so that he wouldn't have to leave her again.

He also assumed that while he was under this spell, Hope and the rest of his family were frantically searching for any other solutions to eliminate the dark magic now festering inside of him.

It was a sound plan, Klaus had to admit with a fair amount of pride. The spell kept Klaus out of the way while everyone else tried to save him, while trying to convince him that he wanted to find an alternative solution without anyone having to waste their precious, limited time arguing with him.

As the other Klaus drove west, Klaus was left with a lingering question that he wouldn't have an answer to until he woke up: how did Caroline fit into this plan?

{ }

It only took a few weeks for Stefan and Damon to start leaving Caroline out of their plans to find and rescue Elena.

The other Caroline was making a valiant effort to settle into a new routine that didn't include her boyfriend and one of her best friends, throwing herself into her schoolwork and extracurricular activities. She spent a lot of time with Matt, who, as their lone human, was also left out of the Salvatores' schemes, while Bonnie and Jeremy spent most of their days holed up in the boarding house.

So while the four of them were working on a rescue effort similar to the one Damon had used that summer to keep track of Klaus and Stefan, the other Caroline devoted her time to planning the Homecoming dance.

She chose the theme and bought decorations for the gym. She picked out her dress. She designed and sold tickets. She was resigned to her fate of not having a date to her last Homecoming, but she, Bonnie—who wasn't speaking to Jeremy after the cheating-on-her-with-his-dead-exes fiasco that had been the same as real life since it hadn't involved Klaus—and Matt were planning to hang out at the dance, since none of them had dates and Stefan wasn't planning on going.

Then Damon informed her that her Homecoming dance was going to be the setting for their plot to have Mikael kill Klaus.

Their plan was similar to the one that had actually been carried out. Stefan would call Klaus, telling him that Mikael was in Mystic Falls, though without Elena, he wouldn't be daggered. Presumably, Klaus would come to try to kill Mikael before his father could kill him. Stefan and Damon were also hoping that Klaus would bring Elena with him when he returned so that they could try to steal her away from him.

(Caroline already knew that that would never happen. Looking back, she would never understand how the Salvatores never learned that Klaus was so much smarter than they were, and that by continually acting like he was stupid, they were setting themselves up for failure.)

From there, Stefan had explained, Mikael would take over, finding Klaus and staking him with the white oak stake before he had a chance to fight back. Stefan and Damon would be responsible for incapacitating any hybrids that Klaus brought with him, Bonnie would offer magical assistance in any way she could, depending on what Klaus did and who he brought with him, and Jeremy was there to keep channels of communication to the Other Side open.

When the other Caroline asked what her role in the plan would be, Damon only offered a snarky, "Just try to stay out of our way."

She hadn't participated in this particular mission in real life either, since Tyler had used vervain to incapacitate her and taken her home. There was little chance of the same thing happening at this version of the dance, but it seemed her presence was still not required.

Stefan's humanity-free period had been rough on Caroline, who considered Stefan a friend, even though they weren't best friends at that point. Between him and Damon, Stefan was usually the one who made an effort to include and protect everyone, though his priorities were always Elena and Damon. Damon didn't even make an attempt to cover up his willingness to leave all of them to die as long as Elena (and himself) were safe.

As the day of the dance dawned, the other Caroline congratulated herself for choosing a dress that wasn't white, because she was sure the dance would get bloody by the end.

Even though they didn't want her involved in the plan, the Salvatores were still keeping the other Caroline apprised of what was happening through text messages.

She received an alert while she was curling her hair that Klaus had crossed the Mystic Falls town limits. Her phone chimed again while she was painting on her eyeliner, letting her know that, as they had planned, Klaus had first stopped at the boarding house, where Stefan and Damon had informed him that Mikael planned to kill him at the dance so that he would have an audience. She had just finished zipping herself into her dress when she received another notification, this one informing her that Mikael and Klaus were both on their way to the high school.

The other Caroline hurriedly replied that she was on her way before grabbing her keys and rushing out the door.

As the other Caroline ran through the pale pink and gold balloon archway in front of the gym's open doors, Caroline watched in horror at the scene unfolding inside the gym.

The model Eiffel Tower that the other Caroline had purchased and painstakingly covered with strategically placed Christmas lights had been pushed over, the lights scattering across the floor. The cream-colored curtains that she'd had screen-printed with the silhouettes of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, and the Palace of Versailles, and hung to hide the bleachers had been torn and stained with blood. More lights in pink and warm white had fallen to the floor. Pink and white paper flowers and glittery gold ribbons were everywhere, hanging askew or crumpled. The DJ booth was in pieces, the first line of 'Je Ne Regrette Rien' repeating on a loop as the CD skipped.

And in the center of the gym was a burning corpse with a stake sticking out of his chest.

Caroline felt a split second of panic and fear, terrified for only an instant that something had finally gone right for the Salvatores in this alternate universe, before it sunk in that it was Mikael lying dead on the floor, not Klaus.

The other Caroline screamed, and Caroline almost had to laugh because she wasn't sure what the alternate version of herself was more upset by: the dead vampire, or the ruined dance decorations.

Caroline's heart went out to the other version of herself, completely able to empathize with the devastation she must be feeling. Her 'Romantic Parisian Rendezvous' Homecoming had become something out of a horror movie.

Caroline (well, both Carolines) were the only people still in the room as they both surveyed the damage.

Stefan and Damon entered the gym a few minutes later, both looking defeated.

"What happened?" the other Caroline asked. "I know I was fashionably late by a few minutes, but I can't believe I missed everything."

"Well, believe it, Blondie," Damon retorted. "Even your convenient absence could not salvage our plan. Klaus was here, with about a dozen of his new hybrids, he killed Mikael, and now he's gone."

"Elena and Tyler?" the other Caroline timidly asked.

"Not here," Stefan answered shortly. "We never saw either of them."

"Did anyone else get hurt?" the other Caroline asked.

"No, Bonnie got everyone out," Stefan replied. "Like you said, the dance had only just started, so there weren't many people here yet. They all left pretty quickly once Bonnie pulled the fire alarm."

That made sense. Bonnie, being Bonnie, would want to protect the lives of innocent students in any way she could. Fortunately for her in this universe, there had been fewer bystanders and an easy, accessible way to evacuate them all.

"Little Gilbert and the quarterback weren't here either," Damon commented. "And I wish I hadn't been here. It's all over. We have nothing else to use as leverage over Klaus, nothing to bargain with. He's just going to travel around the world creating his hybrid army using Elena's blood, and there's nothing we can do about it. She's gone, and she's never coming back."

With that, Damon trudged out of the gym, no doubt headed for the Grill to drown his sorrows in bourbon. Stefan followed with a shrug, leaving the Carolines alone once more.

As the other Caroline sighed and started to clean up the ruined decorations, Caroline paused to make notes of the ways that Homecoming had been different in this alternate timeline than in her real life.

Both scenarios had ended with the same result: Klaus killing Mikael. But in this alternate timeline, Klaus had crashed the Homecoming dance rather than moving it, since Tyler wasn't there to offer his house as an alternate location, and Klaus hadn't settled into his own mansion in town until after Mikael's death. Without Katherine's duplicity, plus Stefan's compulsion, the fight between Klaus and Mikael couldn't have been a fair one, even though Klaus hadn't had the advantage of having it on his territory. Caroline remembered being impressed by Tyler's—which were actually Klaus's—party planning skills on such short notice, and was somewhat surprised that he hadn't done something similar, then quickly realized that without Tyler's house or his own, he had nowhere to host such an extravagant event. And since Rebekah wasn't daggered or in Mystic Falls, he had probably left immediately in order to celebrate their father's death with her.

And once again, the other Caroline had narrowly avoided meeting Klaus.

{ }

Klaus hadn't been surprised when the alternate version of himself received a call from Stefan insisting that Mikael was in Mystic Falls, threatening to kill him.

The other Klaus scoffed. Death threats from Mikael were nothing new, nor was Stefan lying to try to save the doppelganger.

Then he heard that chilling voice over the phone.

"Hello, boy," Mikael drawled.

Both Klauses pretended to be unaffected as they recalled years of torment at Mikael's hands.

He hadn't had to hear Mikael when this had really happened. He had been daggered, he remembered Stefan telling him that. In this timeline however, Elena was with him, and unless the Salvatore brothers had suddenly started trusting Matt Donovan with anything more important than serving their drinks at the Grill, that meant they didn't have a human available to dagger Mikael. In addition, without Rebekah there to vouch for their story, they needed another way to prove that they were telling the truth.

Stefan quickly rattled off the story: Katherine had found and awakened Mikael, who had turned up in Mystic Falls intent on killing Klaus and threatening to kill Stefan and his brother if he wasn't able to fulfill his goal.

Naturally, Klaus—in any timeline—was more concerned about the threat on his life—since Mikael must have been in possession of a white oak stake—than he was worried about the Salvatores becoming collateral damage.

It was unnerving for Klaus to see that calculating look that appeared on his copy's face as he spoke to Stefan—like the visual equivalent of hearing your own voice recorded.

He knew that the other version of himself was considering his options, and not particularly liking any of them. He could continue running from Mikael and just hope that his father never found him; or he could go to Mystic Falls and try to kill Mikael once and for all before he could kill him.

Mikael had been brought down by a Bennett witch over a decade earlier, and Klaus, though determined to break his curse, had been relatively content without having to look over his shoulder, never staying in any one place for too long, constantly vigilant in case Mikael appeared out of the shadows.

Klaus knew that the other Klaus had come to the same conclusion, and was leaning towards the riskier option, but the one that, if it all went according to plan, would mean he would never have to worry about Mikael ever again—or, at least until Davina brought him back to life again, but the other Klaus didn't know that.

He was a hybrid now, and he had an army of sired hybrids to fight by his side. He had never been stronger or better prepared to finally defeat Mikael once and for all.

"Stefan," the other Klaus sharply interrupted his rambling. "I will return to Mystic Falls immediately. Mikael is not going to kill you and your brother. I am going to kill him."

With that, the other Klaus hung up the phone and prepared to leave.

As the alternate version of himself convinced Rebekah to stay in Portland with Tyler, Elena, and their family to keep them away from Mikael and the Salvatores, Klaus felt his spirits lift as he realized that he would soon get to see Caroline again. He remembered that she had been present at the Homecoming dance turned wake.

Which had taken place at Tyler's house, and Tyler wasn't coming to Mystic Falls with the other Klaus. So the wake wouldn't happen in this alternate timeline.

Still, no school-sponsored event took place without Caroline's presence, so Klaus was sure he would see her.

When both Klauses arrived in Mystic Falls, however, he was less certain. The other Klaus headed straight for the Salvatore boarding house, where he was informed by Stefan and Damon that Mikael had gone to the high school, wanting to kill Klaus in front of an audience of unsuspecting students.

So they immediately turned around and went to the school, Stefan and Damon following close behind.

When they arrived, Klaus saw an arch made of light pink and gold balloons in front of the nearest set of doors into the gym, which were propped open.

It hadn't escaped his notice that Caroline would have been responsible for that and everything else that was a part of the dance, and that Mikael and the other Klaus would surely destroy all of her hard work in a matter of minutes.

The Bennett witch joined Stefan and Damon, parking her car next to theirs and walking as quickly as she could to try to keep up.

When they entered the gym, Mikael was standing in the center of it, a small group of students milling around, barely paying him any attention as the danced or chatted among themselves.

What they all noticed more than the dance's decorations or attendees was the deadly white oak stake that Mikael was carelessly twirling in his hand.

"Hello, Niklaus," Mikael greeted flatly.

"Hello, Mikael," the other Klaus responded, equally tonelessly.

"It makes it much easier for me that you've surrendered, alone. You must have just gotten lucky, all of those years running from me, since you've proven tonight that you don't have the brains to outsmart me," Mikael taunted.

"Bonnie, let's see if we can't make this showdown a little more private," Damon murmured, hoping that Mikael and the other Klaus would be too busy with their verbal sparring to notice him.

Bonnie nodded, striding quickly over to the opposite wall and pulling the fire alarm. The students at the dance—no more than fifty total—all rapidly made their way out of the gym.

"You think I'm alone? So literal. No imagination. That must be such a hindrance, this inability of yours to see anything that isn't right in front of your face," the other Klaus shot back.

Mikael laughed.

"You think these two are on your side?" Mikael gestured to Stefan and Damon. "They're on my side. They are the ones who sought me out so that I would kill you for them."

"And you let them use you to do their dirty work? You fancy yourself a mastermind, but you do the bidding of two vampires one-tenth of your age," the other Klaus mocked.

Right on schedule, ten of the other Klaus's newly turned hybrids arrived, standing close together and blocking the door.

"Excellent, right on time," the other Klaus clapped his hands together. "Friends, this is my despicable stepfather Mikael. Mikael, these are some of the hybrids."

Mikael shook his head.

"The big bad wolf. You haven't changed. Still hiding behind your playthings like a coward."

"I don't need them. I just need to be rid of you."

That exchange was familiar to Klaus, even though the rest of the conversation was new. Which meant Mikael's most crushing blow was imminent.

"To what end, Niklaus? So you can live forever, with no one at your side? Nobody cares about you any more, boy! What do you have other than those whose loyalty you forced? No one. No one."

And there it was.

But Klaus knew that Mikael was wrong. He did have people who cared about him: Elijah, Rebekah, Freya, Kol, Marcel. Hope. Caroline.

If there was a way to save him and he did get to live forever, he would have them by his side.

The other Klaus didn't know this, though, so he seemed upset by Mikael's statement just as Klaus had been in the past.

He rushed forward, intent on taking the white oak stake from Mikael's hands.

Mikael laughed again, easily dodging Klaus's attack.

"Your impulse, Niklaus. It has and will forever be the one thing that keeps you from truly being great."

The ensuing fight destroyed the room in mere minutes. Lights fell and were crushed, the DJ booth toppled over and equipment was broken, a replica of the Eiffel Tower was knocked down.

Neither Klaus took their eyes off the white oak stake as Mikael attacked and the other Klaus dodged his attempts. The Bennett witch was nowhere to be found, and the Salvatores kept a small distance to avoid being hurt in the fight.

Until Damon reached forward and managed to wrench the white oak stake from Mikael's hands.

Mikael yelled, and the other Klaus took a step backwards.

"Sorry, but this is a little more personal for me than misdirected anger over your wife cheating," Damon told Mikael.

When Damon was within arm's reach of the other Klaus, the white oak stake centimeters from his heart, the other Klaus reached out and gripped Damon's heart in his hand.

"No!" Stefan shouted.

They stood there at an impasse for only a brief moment before Stefan knocked the stake out of Damon's hand, sending it clattering to the floor. The other Klaus turned away from Damon, and just as Klaus had done when this really happened, grabbed the stake and quickly stabbed Mikael through the heart with it.

He tossed the body away from him, leaving it on the floor in the center of the gym just as it started to burn.

The other Klaus turned to Stefan.

"I appreciate you stopping your brother from doing something he'd regret, mate," he told the younger vampire.

"Well, if you're offering a thank you gift, would you consider giving me my freedom from your compulsion?" Stefan requested.

The other Klaus chuckled, but nodded.

"Thank you my friend. You no longer have to do as I say. You're free."

Stefan blinked as the new compulsion took hold, then looked around to see Damon already gone, the hybrids still in defensive stances near the door, ready in case Klaus had ever needed backup.

"Well, we'll be going now," the other Klaus announced matter-of-factly. "Have a nice life Stefan Salvatore."

Leaving a stunned Stefan and a ruined high school dance in his wake, the other Klaus gestured to the hybrids and led them out of the gym.

They left town immediately, never seeing Caroline even for an instant.

{ }

The other Caroline's 18th birthday came and went with little fanfare.

She and Bonnie and Matt didn't really feel much like celebrating without Elena, though Bonnie did make Caroline a birthday card and tape a few colorful balloons to her locker.

The real Caroline could almost feel the burning pain of a hybrid bite, and found herself longing for the stinging of fire rushing through her veins.

{ }

In another nondescript bar in another nondescript town, Tyler caught sight of the phone screen of a local who was lucky enough to still get cell service out in the middle of nowhere, and remarked that it was Caroline's birthday.

The alternate version of Klaus looked confused for a second before responding, "Caroline's the pretty blonde, your girl back home?"

As Tyler nodded, the real Klaus found himself wishing that he had brought the white oak stake with him into this alternate universe, so that even if he couldn't get rid of his insufferable shadow self, he could at least put himself out of his misery.

{ }

As weeks passed, Caroline found herself watching a series of events that was almost entirely unfamiliar to her.

Apparently Klaus had returned to the Pacific Northwest after killing Mikael and declared that he would never return to Mystic Falls, prompting Tyler to call the other Caroline and officially put a definitive end to their relationship, since they didn't know if they would ever see each other again.

The other Caroline cried herself to sleep that night, though she recovered more quickly than Caroline had when Tyler had left for good after Kol's death in her real timeline. They hadn't been together for very long in this alternate universe, and she had to have seen the breakup coming when her boyfriend had been turned into a hybrid and then left town with the Original Hybrid who had sired him.

On a more positive note, without Tyler in Mystic Falls, Caroline's father hadn't come to town to help him, so he hadn't died. Of course, the down side of that was that the other Caroline hadn't seen him since the day he tortured her.

It seemed that everything had changed. There were no Mikaelsons, no Mikaelson ball, none of Esther's schemes to kill her children because she'd turned them into vampires and only seemed to care after the fact that vampires were a violation of the laws of nature, no interactions or visits with Bonnie's mom—who didn't become a vampire, no super Original-vampire-killing monsters, no car accidents, and no inadvertent vampire transitions.

With the exceptions of Caroline, Bonnie, Stefan, and Damon, Mystic Falls was completely devoid of supernatural activity.

Which was good for the town's population and the police department's workload, but it also left everyone in the know about the supernatural world without much to do.

Watching the other Caroline study, and go to cheer practice, and spend time with her mom made Caroline sad as she realized how boring her life was with any supernatural shenanigans.

Without Klaus.

She'd faced her fair share of supernatural conflicts from the time Katherine killed her to the time Hope had snapped her neck and sent her into this mental time travel, but there was something special about the ones that had involved Klaus.

Caroline knew that the only explanation for that had to be her feelings for him. She'd never had to deny any attraction to Silas, or found herself wishing she could forget the atrocities committed by Kai Parker. None of the Travelers or the Heretics had ever made her feel like she was important to them, or gave her presents, or used any excuse they could to spend time with her.

After watching weeks of the other Caroline growing increasingly bored, lonely, and miserable, Caroline continually returned to the same thought: her life without Klaus was pathetic.

There was no adventure, no excitement, no dreams of grand possibilities.

This alternate version of Caroline lived by rote: she went to school, went to either cheer practice, a student council meeting, or a dance committee meeting, she hung out with Bonnie and/or Matt, she did her homework, she ate dinner, she watched TV, she went to bed.

Day in and day out. Rinse and repeat.

Other things had changed that had nothing to do with Caroline. Bonnie and Jeremy—who hadn't been sent to live in Denver thanks to Elena's absence—hadn't gotten back together, since even if she could forgive him for the ghost exes incident, it was too hard for them to be together without being reminded that Elena, the person they both loved so much, was still missing. Stefan and Damon spent all of their time either drinking at the Grill or drinking at home—without Elena, they didn't even take breaks from their alcohol consumption for missions to save her.

Matt and the other Caroline had rebuilt their friendship after their attempt at a relationship, and now it was stronger than ever. They spent a lot of time together, but Matt had made very clear that he was only interested in an innocent, human friendship, to which the other Caroline had gladly agreed.

Caroline missed Matt, and wished that their relationship was like that in real life. Now that Bonnie had left Mystic Falls, Stefan was dead, and Elena and Damon were human, Matt had reverted back to his original anti-supernatural stance. Caroline tried not to take it personally that he had had no problems with Elena when she became a vampire, or with Rebekah being a thousand-year-old vampire, but had found the idea of being in a relationship with her after she had turned into a vampire impossible.

In this universe, though, Caroline and Bonnie both lived a nearly entirely human existence, so there were times when Matt forgot that he was best friends with a vampire and a witch.

The three of them only ever saw Stefan and Damon when they happened to be at the Grill at the same time. Stefan, though he had turned his humanity back on the night of the Homecoming dance, when Damon had finally gotten through to him that they'd lost Elena and would likely never see her again, had dropped out of high school, not seeing the point in bothering to earn his seventeenth high school diploma when everything else in his life had gone so wrong.

The only incident that caused the Salvatores to look up from their glasses of bourbon was the increasingly violent and destructive behavior of Alaric's dark alter ego. He killed Meredith's boyfriend (what was his name again? oh, what did it matter.), but not Caroline's father because he never came to Mystic Falls.

Caroline was fairly certain that it had been Elena who had figured out what was wrong with Ric, since she spent the most time with him, but in this alternate timeline, it was Stefan who put the pieces together.

Fortunately, since Esther was still in a coffin wherever Klaus was, Alaric did not become a super Original vampire hunter. The Salvatores locked him up in their basement cell until Bonnie found a way to exorcise the darkness from him. For a month afterwards, he stayed with the Salvatores just to be sure there were no lingering side effects.

With Alaric healthy, he never tortured Caroline or revealed her undead status to the council, which made the other Caroline's life a lot less stressful.

Still, sometimes it was the little things that sent a person over the edge.

Even as she'd taken all of the other major changes in stride, Caroline cried as she watched the other Caroline change into a pink and white dress with a bold swirling pattern and white go-go boots for the 1970s Decade Dance.

{ }

The other Klaus, Rebekah, Tyler, Elena, and an ever-growing contingent of hybrids spent the next few months travelling the world.

They spent a few weeks in Chicago, a few weeks in New York City, a few weeks in Los Angeles. They never settled anywhere, and why should they? They could go anywhere in the world, why tie themselves to one city when they could make any city they wanted their playground until they got bored of it?

Their stays in each cities became increasingly shorter as the other Klaus got bored increasingly quickly.

He undaggered Elijah after a few weeks of travel, and Kol a few weeks after that, but they both left as soon as the greyed veins disappeared from their skin.

He had no shortage of female company, but he drained them all by morning, none of them more than a pretty face to keep his bed warm for a few hours.

Klaus tried to remember what he had been doing in Mystic Falls during this time period. There had been the ball his family hosted, Esther's plot to kill them, the revelation of the second white oak tree, then the Decade Dance, saving Caroline from Alaric, taking up residence in Tyler's body.

He'd literally died in the real timeline, and he preferred that over the careless, emotionless existence his alternate self was living.

Nothing mattered to the Klaus in this alternate timeline. He had finally achieved the goal he had been working towards for centuries, but he didn't know how to stay still and be content with what he had, so he kept traveling, kept finding more werewolves to turn into hybrids, because he had made siring his own species his new life's purpose after no longer having breaking his curse to serve as his life's purpose.

Elena was exhausted and miserable, and the other Klaus didn't care. Tyler was homesick and miserable, and the other Klaus didn't care. Rebekah was frustrated and miserable, and the other Klaus didn't care.

The other Klaus didn't care, didn't connect with people, because he hadn't met Caroline, the person who made him care about her.

Gorging on blood and women was nothing compared to the feeling that glowed in his chest when she smiled at him.

She made his life interesting, as opposed to the repeated cycle of tracking down werewolves, turning them into hybrids, going out to celebrate, taking a woman home, sleeping with her and then drinking from her, that the other version of himself maintained for weeks.

Eventually, he had more hybrids than he knew what to do with and decided to focus on training them instead of making more of them.

But as the other Klaus barked orders, Klaus bristled at how harsh and cruel his alternate self was being, remembering that Caroline had all but demanded that he treat his hybrids as people rather than slaves.

He wondered what Caroline was doing in this alternate timeline. Going to school and cheerleading practice of course, planning school dances, spending time with her friend the Bennett witch, but was she still risking her life for so-called friends who would never do the same for her? Was she happy? Was she happier without him in her life?

That last question was what haunted Klaus for weeks of his alternate self's monotonous, self-serving existence, wanting nothing more than to show the other version of himself how much better Caroline had made him, and how wrong he was for thinking that love was a weakness.

{ }

The other Caroline was in her room painting her nails pink when her mother received that call that Caroline had been dreading: a fire had been reported at Pastor Young's farm.

Just like that, the search for the cure was on.

Caroline hadn't been sure whether or not to expect it—as large a role as Klaus had played in this particular quest, nothing he had done had incited it.

Caroline was overwhelmed with sympathy as she considered everything that this Caroline would miss in this alternate search for the cure: she wouldn't become best friends with Stefan, she wouldn't have the perfect prom night with Tyler, and most importantly, Klaus wouldn't love her.

That thought filled Caroline with both pity and possessiveness. Being loved by Klaus was a rare gift… and she wanted it for herself. He had promised to be her last love, and no one else's, not even an alternate universe version of herself.

Caroline shook her head. As she saw more and more of the boring, miserable life she would lead if she had never met Klaus, it was getting harder and harder to keep a tight grip on her feelings. It was as if her life was The Wizard of Oz, and Klaus had been the one to turn her black-and-white world to Technicolor. Without him, her life was tepid greyscale with an impenetrable barrier around the Mystic Falls town limits, devoid of light and excitement, color and adventure.

She refused to return to a life without him, whether because of his death or his return to New Orleans.

Well, that was new. Until now, Caroline knew that Hope's mission was to make her realize how much she cared about Klaus so that she would help save his life, something that she had gladly played along with because she already cared enough about Klaus to want to save his life. Yet her feelings clearly went further than she or Hope had expected, because now she could not envision going back even to the life she'd been living just weeks ago, having gone years without speaking to Klaus.

She didn't want him as the answer to a question that she might someday answer, she wanted him as the man she journeyed through eternity with, starting now.

But it appeared that she was stuck here in this alternate timeline occurring inside her own head, so she resigned herself to watching the current misadventures of the alternate version of herself and the alternate versions of her friends as they tried to navigate an alternate search for the cure, which would hopefully result in fewer casualties this time.

Of course, it quickly became clear that Klaus had been the brains of the operation during the search for the cure, since Stefan and Damon had no idea where to even start. All they had was the information that Connor Jordan had given them, which wasn't detailed enough to be very helpful.

The other Caroline was, as usual, excluded from the mission in its entirety.

Said mission came screeching to a halt not long after it started, after Damon realized that only Stefan wanted the cure and he wasn't willing to let his brother die and leave him all alone. The Salvatores also reasoned that aligning themselves with suspicious vampire hunters was a recipe for disaster and that they should quit while they weren't yet dead.

Only Caroline knew that they should consider this failure a blessing. Without Hayley there to betray them and Klaus there to kill them, the second massacre for the Expression Triangle wouldn't occur, and there weren't even twelve vampires and/or werewolves in Mystic Falls to serve as replacements for the hybrids. If they never went to the island, Bonnie would never be brainwashed by Silas, forcing Caroline to commit the third massacre to save her life. Two dozen people wouldn't lose their lives, the Veil would never be dropped, and Stefan wouldn't spend months drowning in a safe, because Stefan and Damon decided to leave well enough alone for once in their lives.

So, once again without a supernatural crisis to resolve, the other Caroline threw herself into school and extracurricular activities. She hosted the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, happily bequeathing her crown to April Young, who totally got the sympathy vote because her father had just died in the fire at her family's farm. She applied to colleges, though she and Bonnie both admitted that it was weird going through the admissions process without Elena, and that it would be another painful reminder of everything that Elena was missing to keep their promise to attend Whitmore College together. So, with her mother's blessing, the other Caroline applied to other colleges in the area as well—the University of Virginia, Virginia State University, George Washington and James Madison, even Georgetown as a reach. She wasn't worried about tuition costs, since she literally had forever to pay back her student loans.

While the other Caroline waited to hear back from the universities she'd applied to, she devoted time to planning a Decade Dance, this one 1980s-themed, the one that had been cancelled in the past. Once that dance was over, all of the other Caroline's energies went into planning the perfect prom—which wouldn't have to be carefully crafted to try to get Elena to turn her humanity back on. Only a few days after prom, the other Caroline was informed that all of her hard work had paid off and she was going to be valedictorian, which meant she needed to write a speech.

Even though she had a packed schedule and thriving social life, Caroline could tell that the alternate version of herself was still feeling a little lost, searching for something that wasn't there.

Klaus.

She was searching for Klaus.

The thought made Caroline smile, and feel like she'd been run over by a truck.

The other Caroline had never met Klaus, and therefore didn't know what she was missing. But she knew that she was missing something.

There would always be a Klaus-sized hole in Caroline's life, in any incarnation in which she didn't know him, didn't love him.

In a world where she did know him and love him, that loss would be devastating.

{ }

At first the other Klaus paid no attention to the rumors of an alleged cure for vampirism.

Then Kol had found him, blabbering on about how Silas had to be stopped.

After hearing Kol's concerns, the other Klaus decided, in the interest of family loyalty—and as a result of boredom—he would help his brother defeat this Silas character.

The two of them, together with Rebekah, combined their knowledge of Silas, the Five, and the Hunter's Sword. Thanks to Rebekah's affair with one of the original members of the Five, they even knew the exact location of the sword and could get their hands on it before anyone else figured it out.

Kol was insistent that Silas should not be awakened under any circumstances, but the other Klaus wanted the cure, if only so that no one could use it against him.

In response, Kol had pointed out that no one was better equipped to find the cure than they were, so if they didn't choose to search for it, it was likely that no one else would either, knowing that they didn't have the experience or the resources that the Mikaelsons did.

Rebekah was the one who hammered the final nail in the search for the cure's coffin: knowing its value, Katerina would surely hunt it down in order to bargain for her freedom. If they just waited long enough, she would deliver the cure to them, and they wouldn't have to do any of the work.

Klaus wished he had adopted that philosophy in real life; it would have saved him a lot of effort. Of course, the search for the cure had afforded him ample opportunities to spend time with Caroline, so he couldn't regret it completely.

The other Klaus agreed to that course of action, especially after he realized that finding a new vampire hunter, training them, and waiting for them to kill enough vampires to complete their mark might take more time than he really wanted to devote to this whim of Kol's.

Klaus also noted that the alternate version of himself had more reason than he did to be laissez-faire about the cure, since he had a human doppelganger donating blood to create new hybrids whenever he needed it. He didn't need to use the cure on either Elena or Katherine to make them human again for his own purposes. It had just been a happy coincidence for her that Elena wanted the cure to become human again as well.

With the situation with the cure on the back burner for the moment, the other Klaus resumed his plans for world travel.

Klaus thought it was almost comical that the other version of himself could have everything he wanted and still be so restless and unhappy.

He knew that something was missing, and he chalked it up to not having an all-encompassing goal anymore now that he had broken his curse.

But Klaus knew that he was wrong. Klaus had learned since meeting Caroline, since Hope was born, that victories were more satisfying when they were shared with loved ones.

But this other Klaus, who unrepentantly stole Elena from her life to use her as a blood bag to create hybrids, who still took Rebekah for granted, who still treated Kol like he was a nuisance, knew that something was missing from his life, and he chased it relentlessly by constantly running around the globe, never finding what he was looking for.

The other Klaus had never met Caroline, and therefore didn't know what he was missing. But he knew that he was missing something.

Whether he knew her or not, Klaus's life would always be dark without Caroline's light to guide it.

And if her light couldn't reach whatever came after this life, the results would be disastrous.

{ }

There were three red-cap-and-gown-clad figures between the other Caroline and the seat that should have been Elena's.

Sixteen sat between the other Caroline and the seat that should have been Tyler's.

She had made her valedictorian speech and everyone had applauded politely (except Bonnie and Matt, who had cheered and wolf-whistled). Now she was just sitting and waiting for her name to be called, and for the ceremony to be over, so that she could go out to dinner with her mom and her friends and then go home.

Caroline felt tremendous sympathy for the alternate version of herself, who would never hear the epic promise that Klaus had made her on this day, who would never experience the eternal, all-consuming love that Klaus felt for her.

As she watched the other Caroline stand up and toss her cap into the air, she couldn't help but feel like that promise, rather than the new laptop she'd received from her mom or the mini-fridge she'd received from her dad, was the real gift she'd received that day.

{ }

As spring became summer, Klaus thought to himself that Caroline's graduation must be approaching in this alternate timeline.

Tyler never mentioned it as they spent May and June in Stockholm, Vienna, and Amsterdam.

Klaus didn't remember the exact date, but he remembered every moment of the day itself.

And in this inferior world, none of it would happen.

{ }

Years passed, and eventually everything changed.

The other Caroline left Mystic Falls at the end of that summer to move into her dorm at the University of Virginia. She'd decided against her previous ambition of working in the field of broadcast journalism, since news viewers watching her never-aging face every night could be dangerous to the secrecy of the vampire community. Instead, she chose the broader course of study of communications, which she could use in a variety of ways that wouldn't risk exposing her vampirism.

She pledged a sorority and immediately volunteered for the vacant position of events coordinator.

The other Caroline thrived in the college environment, which unlike Caroline's own experience, was free from supernatural drama. No secret societies, no newly-human doppelgangers showing up unannounced in her dorm room, no anti-magic bubbles.

She wasn't sure exactly when she had started doing so, but the other Caroline quickly got into the habit of hiding her vampirism.

She kept blood bags in a box that had once held a variety pack of ice cream sandwiches. She never fed outside of her dorm room. She never used her vampire speed or strength where there was any chance anyone might see.

For a while, the other Caroline was happy with every aspect of her life: her academic career, her enduring friendships with Bonnie and Matt, her new friendships, her stronger-than-ever relationship with her mother.

Then something happened exactly as it had in real life: Caroline's mother died of cancer when Caroline was twenty.

The other Caroline spent every moment she could at her mother's bedside since she'd been admitted to the hospital. She would write papers and complete her reading assignments in the visitor's chair in Liz's room. She would skip classes that didn't count attendance as part of her grade, and she never spent any time with her school friends anymore.

Everyone returned for the funeral. Stefan and Damon, who had never left Mystic Falls and singlehandedly kept the Grill in business with their alcohol consumption, were the first to arrive at the church, offering their condolences. From the time Bonnie arrived to the time the service was over and the last mourners had left, she never let go of the other Caroline's hand. Matt let the other Caroline cry on his shoulder without complaint.

The other Caroline didn't turn off her humanity after her mother's death, partly because the useless drama with Stefan and Caroline's temporary return to her insecure human self hadn't happened in this alternate universe, but also partly because the other Caroline had been ignoring the vampire part of herself for so long that she'd likely forgotten that it was an option.

Instead, in true Caroline fashion, she devoted herself completely to school and friends and extracurricular activities that she had no spare time to think about her grief.

Eventually, the other Caroline settled down with a boyfriend she'd started dating about a year after her mother's death. They got married when the other Caroline was twenty-four. Bonnie was her maid of honor and her father walked her down the aisle.

The other Caroline's innocent, human husband never knew she was a vampire.

When her husband brought up starting a family the following year, the other Caroline told him that after a car accident while she was in high school, she was unable to have children of her own (which technically wasn't a lie).

So the other Caroline and her husband adopted two children: twin girls named Jenna and Eliza.

That was when Caroline burst into tears.

This boring, mundane human life she disparaged as she watched this alternate version of herself, was disturbingly similar to her real life now. In fact, the other Caroline was better off than she was, since at least she had a husband who loved her. Caroline had Alaric, with his (honestly creepy) fixation with her ever since she had given birth to the girls (which hadn't been her choice, for the record), and Klaus, someday when she was ready, as long as Hope figured out some way to save him.

Hope had cast this spell on Caroline so that she would want to help her save Klaus's life. Caroline had already been willing to help, but now she was determined to succeed.

Caroline knew that she'd gotten a little complacent and resigned in her life since Stefan had died, but now that she saw what her life could have been and how it wasn't so different from what her life was, she admitted that she was stuck in stagnant suspended animation, and not in a romantic, "The Long Morrow" sort of way. For the last ten years, nothing in her life had changed significantly, and she kept pushing aside her own dreams and using her responsibilities as excuses to remain firmly in her comfort zone: Ric needed her (Ric was a grown man, he could take care of himself without his permanently-seventeen-year-old former student to help him), her daughters needed her (the girls were thirteen and attended boarding school, where none of the other students had their parents on campus), the students needed her (someone else could memorize the sales pitch and give the tours to prospective students and their families if she wasn't there, Caroline was sure of it).

As much as she might have been dreading it, Caroline knew that she would probably have to leave Mystic Falls soon, since she was obviously not in her thirties, as everyone from the mail carrier to the librarian knew she should be.

She'd realized years ago in this alternate timeline that what was missing from her life was the same thing that was missing from the other Caroline's life: Klaus.

Caroline had come a long way from throwing a party for her friends to celebrate Klaus's death. Sixteen years later, and she couldn't stomach the thought of Klaus dying, dying without fulfilling his promise to be her last love.

Caroline reached up to touch the rings hanging from the chain around her neck, looked down at the black clothes she was wearing.

She was tired of it. She was tired of mourning, of clipping her wings and ignoring her dreams out of so-called respect for Stefan. If he wanted to have any influence over her decisions, then he shouldn't have sacrificed himself to save Damon and Elena so that they could have a long, happy life together.

Caroline had compared Stefan's sacrifice with the one Klaus planned to make, but the difference between them was the intent. Klaus wanted desperately to live, to find some other way to save Hope, but he didn't think they could find an alternate solution in time, so he had resigned himself to doing whatever he could to save his daughter's life, even if it meant giving up his own life for hers. Stefan, on the other hand, had been more than willing to die. From the way Bonnie and Alaric had explained the plan, it didn't seem like Stefan dying had even technically been necessary if he'd stabbed Katherine with the knife and pushed her into the path of the hellfire at the right moment. But instead he'd chosen to die the town's hero, in the name of saving Elena.

And wasn't that an accurate summary of their relationship: Elena was worth dying for, and Caroline wasn't even worth living for.

So Caroline decided, right then and there, that she was going to start living for herself. And she wanted Klaus to be a part of that life.

A permanent part.

The image of the other Caroline eating dinner—meatloaf and mashed potatoes, again—started to fade. She couldn't hear their conversation about what the girls had learned in school that day any more. Caroline felt herself being pulled away from the scene, until she couldn't see anything at all, and everything went black.

{ }

Years passed, and still nothing changed.

The other Klaus continued to travel the world with Rebekah, Elena, Tyler, and the rest of the hybrids. He made new hybrids and trained the old ones. Eventually, he came up with the idea of creating military-style bases for the large numbers of hybrids that he didn't need to travel with him all of the time, and that project took several months and required him to travel to every continent.

But the other Klaus was clearly running out of hybrid-related items to add to his to-do list.

Klaus realized that his goal of reclaiming his throne in New Orleans had just sort of fallen into his lap because of other, more life-changing circumstances, and he understood that figuring out what you wanted to do with your life after focusing on one specific goal for the last thousand years would take some time, but he couldn't understand the other Klaus's lack of ambition or initiative. He should be doing something other than his passive role as creator of the hybrid species.

And yet, it seemed that that was all the other Klaus wanted to do.

In fact, he even encouraged Rebekah to find a suitable partner for Elena so that she could continue the doppelganger line sooner rather than later. Rebekah had put her foot down at the request, insisting that it was one thing to take the girl's blood to ensure that werewolves completed their transition to hybrids without dying, but that breeding her like a broodmare to ensure that he would always have a doppelganger available for his own personal gain was too insidious even for her.

And it was insidious, but it seemed that this other Klaus had never grown beyond using people for his own purposes and then disposing of them when they were no longer useful to him. He hadn't grown, he hadn't changed, he hadn't experienced any character development.

Of course, the ten or so years that Klaus was forced to watch this alternative timeline of events was only a very small fraction of his thousand years on the planet, but still, he hadn't even changed his haircut.

He also hadn't spent time with anyone who wasn't his siblings, his hybrids, the few witches he kept in his employ, or the women whose company he enjoyed for a few hours before disposing of them.

Rebekah had been in relationship after relationship—if you could call the series of men that Rebekah entertained 'relationships,' Elijah was with Katerina, even Tyler was in a relationship with another hybrid named Ariel.

Of course, Klaus had never been someone who sought long-term romantic relationships—at least not prior to meeting Caroline—but the fact that he hadn't sought out old acquaintances was concerning.

Klaus knew what the supernatural community had whispered amongst themselves about his inner circle. It was true that his trust was difficult to earn and infrequently given, but after his stints in Mystic Falls and then New Orleans, Klaus had increased the number of people he let close to him.

He had made a concerted effort to trust his siblings and give them the benefit of the doubt, rather than reaching for a dagger any time he suspected they might want to do something he didn't approve of.

Marcel had gone from prodigal son to adversary to brother-in-arms.

Vincent challenged him in ways that would have gotten him killed if someone had said those things to Klaus two decades ago, but now Klaus respected his expertise and his loyalty—even if his loyalty wasn't to him.

A witch as powerful as Davina would have been put down out of fear for how she might use those powers against him, but now Klaus willingly took that risk for the sake of his brother's happiness.

Klaus had accepted Keelin into the family without knowing anything about her other than the fact that Freya loved her and that she had been kind to Hope when she had babysat once when Hope was seven.

And, of course, Caroline.

He hadn't seen her in sixteen years, yet the day they met again, his feelings were every bit as strong as they were the day he'd walked away from her.

She'd become his closest confidante over the past weeks, someone whose opinions he valued and whose judgment he trusted. As a parent herself, she understood the turmoil and fear he felt as a result of his strained relationship with Hope. He could still count on her to not mince words like so many others would around him, to tell him the truth he needed to hear without fearing his reaction, but she was also understanding and sympathetic and every bit as vibrant as he remembered her being.

Caroline would be all right without him. She was strong, and every loss and every heartbreak she'd suffered only served to make her stronger. She would remember him, and she would likely be one of the very few people outside of his family who would react to his death with something other than relief he could no longer hurt anyone else, or petty satisfaction that he finally had to answer for his sins. She might even teach the students at her school that he was more than just a callous killer with too much power, money, and time on his hands.

But Klaus didn't want Caroline to simply be all right, he certainly didn't want her to just remember him fondly, and he definitely didn't want to be just another lesson in history class that students paid little attention to.

Klaus wanted for Caroline what he'd always wanted for Caroline: everything the world had to offer.

He'd always wanted to be the one to show Caroline the world—and as far as he knew, he was the only one who hadn't assumed that Caroline would be content to never leave Mystic Falls.

Except now some of his visions of traveling all over the world with Caroline featured the soundtrack of three girls' laughter as they snapped pictures on their cell phones and took in the unfamiliar sights with wide eyes.

If that image, one of the pure, unconditional love of family, wasn't worth living for, then what was?

Klaus was once again overwhelmed with sympathy for the other version of himself.

If he died that day (his fierce survival instincts refused to allow him to say 'when'), he would spend the last hours of his life surrounded by family who cared about him.

This alternate version of himself had alienating himself so completely that if he died, his siblings might not even notice for days. His hybrids wouldn't care—if anything, they would be relieved to be released from their sire bonds.

Klaus idly wished that Hope could find a way to sacrifice the Klaus in this alternate universe she'd created instead of the real him, which would solve their problems without requiring them to make any sacrifices they couldn't live with.

But unfortunately, a figment of his imagination would not be a suitable replacement in the plan he had already set in motion.

He wasn't sure there was a suitable replacement for him besides his siblings, who he simply could not allow to make this sacrifice for him. But if they could think of something else in whatever time he had left, he would be willing to try.

The image of the other version of himself, drinking alone in his study, started to fade. He couldn't hear the noise floating in from the street through the open window any more. Klaus felt himself being pulled away from the scene, until he couldn't see anything at all, and everything went black.

{ }

The first thing Caroline saw when she opened her eyes was Hope Mikaelson staring down at her with stubborn determination, dark circles under her blue eyes and strands of auburn hair threatening to escape the messy ponytail resting on her left shoulder.

"You're awake," Hope said, which Caroline thought at first was a rather useless thing to say, since they both already knew that. Then Caroline realized that the young witch was trying to subtly confirm that she was, in fact, back in the real world and not some other alternate timeline that existed only in her own head. "Welcome back."

Hope looked more like Hayley than she did like Klaus, a fact that Caroline had alternately resented and been grateful for over the years. Sometimes the similarities to the werewolf she had resented and disliked for so many reasons repelled her enough to keep her distance and treat Hope like any other student, while other times she found herself staring, searching for any hint of Klaus in the girl's face.

Hope's oval-shaped face, her narrow nose, her angular, arched eyebrows, and her wide eyes all came from Hayley. Her hair was lighter than Hayley's dark brown color, but with a reddish tone that distinguished it from Klaus's. She did have blue eyes like Klaus rather than Hayley's green, though Hope's were slightly brighter and a shade closer to the green end of the blue eye color scale than Klaus's deceptively soft color.

But now Caroline realized that the angry, defiant teenager standing in front of her did look like Klaus—not in features but in demeanor. She could see him in the determined look in Hope's eyes, the resolute set of her jaw.

Then she raised her eyebrows, a movement that was so indisputably Hayley that it broke Caroline free from her reverie.

"We need to move quickly if this is going to work," Hope insisted.

Caroline pulled herself into a sitting position and took in her surroundings.

She was sitting on a large bed, with Hope standing over her and Klaus lying next to her. His eyes were closed, and Caroline could only guess that he was still under the influence of the spell Hope had cast on her, or perhaps a different spell altogether. Surrounding the bed were Elijah, Rebekah, Kol, and Freya Mikaelson, two dark-skinned men Caroline had never met, a petite dark-haired girl she didn't recognize, an unfamiliar curly-haired woman, and, much to her surprise, her two daughters.

"Can someone please explain to me what's going on? Because either there are now far more Mikaelsons in Mystic Falls than Alaric would ever be comfortable with, or my thirteen-year-old daughters left the state without either of their parents' permission," Caroline demanded.

The twins exchanged guilty looks.

All three girls had changed clothes at some point while Caroline had been under the effects of Hope's spell, out of the school uniforms they had been wearing the last time she saw them and into black skinny jeans and thick cable-knit sweaters—Hope in navy blue, Josie in plum, and Lizzie in burgundy. Hope's auburn hair had been hastily pulled back into a messy ponytail, while the twins' hair had been carefully French braided—Josie's dark hair in one thick braid hanging down her back, Lizzie's in twin blonde braids over her shoulders—which suggested to Caroline that someone (she suspected Rebekah) had been agitated and desperate for a task that would keep their mind and their hands occupied.

"It's kind of a long story," Lizzie hedged.

"If there's anything I can take credit for teaching you, it's how to talk fast," Caroline challenged.

"Fine," Lizzie sighed.

{ }

(18 hours earlier)

Hope crept quietly down the hall until she reached the Saltzman twins' room. She pushed open the door, willing it not to squeak, then quickly closed it behind her and flipped on the light switch.

Josie quickly stood and turned to face the intruder, while Lizzie groggily pulled herself into a sitting position facing the door.

Before either of them could speak, Hope lit the sage she was holding so that no one else could hear them.

"What are you doing here?" Josie asked. "It's the middle of the night."

"I need your help," Hope answered.

"Again?" Lizzie questioned. "Why do you need our help, again, and why should we help you, again?"

Hope turned her attention to Josie, thinking that she would be the more reasonable and level-headed of the twins. One half of the two people she needed to save her father was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and wearing light blue cloud-print flannel pajamas. The other half, having apparently resigned herself to the fact that Hope wasn't leaving until they agreed to help, reluctantly pulled herself out of bed, wearing white flannel pajamas printed with tiny cherry blossoms and impatiently swiping her long blonde hair out of her eyes.

Hope sighed. As usual, the adults were dragging their feet and sitting on their hands, leaving the teenagers to actually fix the situation.

"What even is it that you want us to do?" Josie asked.

"The same spell you did earlier," Hope answered. "All I need is for you to do that spell again."

"Why?" Lizzie asked.

"To save my father's life," Hope said slowly, like she was talking to a child.

"He's just going to disappear again," Lizzie shot back, her mean girl smirk on her face.

"No, he won't," Hope insisted. "He won't have any reason to. We're still going to destroy the Hollow."

"How?" Josie asked.

"The same way my dad wanted to," Hope replied. "There are only a few creatures on Earth who are strong enough to possess the Hollow without being consumed by it and turning into an empty shell controlled by all of that dark magic. It was attracted to me because I'm the most powerful witch to ever live, but I'm not technically immortal yet, so having that much dark magic inside of me threatened to kill me. That's why my dad asked you to move it from me to him. I'm asking you to move it again, from my dad to someone else."

"No offense Hope, but your brilliant ideas this semester have ended up with Henry jumping out of a window to his death, you getting suspended, your mother getting kidnapped, and then your mother getting killed, and you getting possessed by dark magic and then your dad getting possessed by dark magic. What makes you think that this plan of yours is going to go any better than your other ones?" Lizzie asked. "And I wouldn't go around calling yourself the most powerful witch to ever live if you ever want to make any friends, especially since you're in our room in the middle of the night begging for our help."

"Noted," Hope retorted flatly. "Are you in, or not? Because we need to get going. We need to get back to New Orleans before my dad wakes up, and it's been over an hour since I snapped his neck."

"We're going to New Orleans?" Lizzie confirmed.

"Yeah," Hope answered. "My uncle Elijah and I need to talk to the rest of our family before we do this. Come on, your mom's already in the car."

Hope only felt a little bad about misleading the twins. Yes, Caroline was already in the last row of seats in her father's SUV. But she was lying there with a broken neck along with Klaus. But as long as Lizzie and Josie didn't turn around before the car started moving, Hope didn't think she would need to worry about them backing out of the plan.

"Again I ask, what is in it for us? If you want us to travel across the country with you without even taking the time to tell our father where we're going, then this operation is a lot riskier for us than the first spell we did. If we're going to be grounded for months over this, there's got to be something in it for us," Lizzie said.

"Right," Hope nodded, reaching into the bag she was carrying—olive green faux leather, oversized, with tons of pockets and buckles. Her mother had bought it for her for her last birthday. She was pretty sure her father hadn't sent her anything.

"Apparently you wanted these?" Hope held up two boxes containing the latest model iPhone. "My dad bought these for you as a thank you gift, and gave them to Elijah to give to you after the spell was complete, then Elijah gave them to me. You aren't getting them until after you complete the second spell."

Lizzie's eyes lit up at the sight of the phones.

"Do we have a deal?" Hope asked, shoving the boxes back into her bag.

Lizzie looked at Josie, appearing to defer to her twin.

Hope had always found the Saltzman twins' dynamic curious. Lizzie was quick-witted, sharp-tongued, self-centered—the meaner and more materialistic of the two, while Josie was more stoic, rational, deliberate; yet for all of her bluster, Lizzie usually stepped back and let Josie make the final decisions for them.

"Fine," Josie answered. "We'll help."

"Thank you," Hope replied as the twins each grabbed a large tote bag—Lizzie's chocolate brown, Josie's charcoal grey—and started shoving a change of clothes, their phones and phone chargers, and other necessities inside.

After they changed into jeans and sweaters and threw their pajamas into their bags, Hope led Lizzie and Josie out to the driveway where she knew Elijah was parked, waiting for them. Hope knew he would be impatient; she'd taken longer to convince the twins to help than she'd planned to.

Hope quickly jumped into the passenger seat, seeing in the rearview mirror as Lizzie took the seat behind her—and in front of her unconscious mother—while Josie sat behind Elijah and in front of Klaus.

"Hello, Mr. Mikaelson. It's nice to meet you," Josie said as Elijah started driving.

"The pleasure is all mine, Miss Saltzman," Elijah replied.

Something about Josie's words nagged at Hope, but she couldn't think of why, and she didn't have time to consider it if she was going to save her father.

Thanks to Elijah's sense of urgency and his ability to compel himself out of speeding tickets, combined with the lack of traffic in the middle of the night, it only took them twelve hours to get to New Orleans.

When they arrived at the house, the rest of the family was already there waiting for them—Freya and Keelin, Kol and Davina, Rebekah and Marcel, Vincent.

"If one of you could bring Ms. Forbes inside, I would appreciate it," Elijah greeted them, holding Klaus over his shoulder.

"Who are the stowaways?" Kol asked.

"Lizzie and Josie Saltzman," Hope introduced them. "They're Ms. Forbes's daughters, and the only witches who can do the spell we need. Lizzie's the blonde, she's mean, watch out."

"Ah, right. The last living members of the Gemini Coven. Nifty little trick you two can do, isn't it?" Kol asked.

"Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's a little daunting being the only two people in the world who can do what we do," Lizzie said, uncharacteristically shy.

"What do you need us to do now?" Josie interrupted. "Or do we just wait?"

"We're going to still be waiting for a while," Hope answered. "See, I needed your mom to want to help us, so I put this spell on her and my dad…"

{ }

"We didn't know that Hope had done anything other than snap your neck until we got to New Orleans," Josie said.

Caroline knew that Josie was telling the truth, and she knew that Hope was the only person responsible for the spell she'd been put under.

"And we didn't know she'd snapped your neck at all until we were halfway to North Carolina," Lizzie added.

"Mr. Mikaelson drives really fast," Josie explained with wide eyes, remembering the dramatic journey.

Caroline could see wheels turning in Hope's head.

"Have you two known who I am the whole time?" Hope demanded.

"Yes," Lizzie answered simply. "What was it that made you realize after all this time?"

"Josie called Elijah 'Mr. Mikaelson,'" Hope answered. "When Landon met him yesterday, I introduced him as my uncle, and Landon called him 'Mr. Marshall,' because I use my mother's last name at school."

"Our mother also introduced your dad to us as 'Mr. Mikaelson' yesterday, so even if I hadn't known since you'd arrived, I still would have known your uncle's last name was Mikaelson when I met him," Josie pointed out.

"I just can't believe that Lizzie Saltzman, the biggest gossip and mean girl at the Salvatore School, kept my secret for eight years without asking for anything in return," Hope said.

"Mom and Dad said it was important," Lizzie shrugged. "And I figured one of us should make an effort to keep your secret."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hope demanded.

"It means that no one would bully 'the tribrid,' if they knew who she was," Lizzie explained. "And if you really didn't want anyone to know that you were a Mikaelson, you might have considered not wearing the family crest around your neck every day for the last seven years."

Hope automatically reached up to touch the necklace, tangled with the crescent moon necklace she'd been wearing since she returned from Hayley's funeral.

"So you were mean to me to protect my identity?" Hope confirmed.

"Why do you think we never got in trouble for it?" Lizzie questioned. "It wasn't because our parents run the school, it was because they knew what we were doing and why we were doing it."

Caroline remembered the first time she heard about her daughter spreading unkind rumors about Hope—she was six, and it was something about Hope making an orphanage explode. When Caroline questioned her about it, Lizzie had furrowed her eyebrows and tilted her head, adorably confused.

"I thought we were keeping who she really is a secret?" Lizzie had said.

Caroline had told Alaric, and since then, unless Lizzie and Josie did something genuinely harmful or unacceptably mean, they had turned a blind eye to their daughters' chosen method of concealing Hope's identity.

"Could we possibly return to the task at hand?" Caroline suggested. "As I understand it, time is of the essence, and I'm sure that you didn't kidnap me and somehow convince my daughters to help you with everything you've already done and whatever you're planning for no reason."

"Right," Hope said. "The plan is pretty simple: Lizzie and Josie are just going to siphon the dark magic back out of my dad and put it in Elijah."

Caroline looked around the room. The atmosphere was solemn, but she saw no surprise or outward expressions of grief besides the dried tear tracks on Rebekah's and Freya's faces.

Everyone else must have already discussed this before Caroline woke up.

"Why exactly did you need me here for this?" Caroline asked. "You have your family, and some other people I don't recognize who I assume are friends of the family, if the Mikaelsons even have such a thing, and you have the girls to do the spell. I'm happy to help you in any way that I can, but I seem extraneous to this plan, so I'm not sure why you put in the effort to drag me here and keep me under the influence of a spell for hours."

Hope looked at her aunts and uncles as if asking their permission to let Caroline in on a secret.

"What my niece is trying to tell you is that we can't move forward with this plan without your approval, and not just because it may be the only thing standing between the whole lot of us and spending a century daggered in our coffins when Nik wakes up," Rebekah said. "And everyone you don't know: this is Marcel, it's a long story we don't have time for; that's Vincent, he's less of a family friend and more of a frequent antagonist slash occasional ally; that's Kol's wife Davina; and Freya's wife Keelin."

"Kol has a wife?" Caroline asked.

"That's what bothered you?" Rebekah raised her eyebrows.

"Sorry, but you might remember that the last time I saw Kol before today, he was a burnt corpse lying on the floor of Elena's kitchen, so seeing him alive and happily married is a little shocking for me," Caroline defended. "It's less shocking that, once again, people are hiding behind me to keep Klaus from killing them."

"Listen, you little tramp—"

"Rebekah," Elijah's stern voice interrupted.

"Whether you approve or not, I am losing a brother today. Elijah won't let your daughters perform the spell without your permission. So we are apparently leaving the future of the Mikaelson family in your hands. Either you give your permission, let your daughters do the spell, and Elijah dies; or you don't give your permission, nothing changes, and Nik dies as he planned, leaving Hope an orphan and leaving you alone for the rest of your pathetic life," Rebekah snapped, her voice breaking in several places.

"You're all certain that there's nothing we can do to give us more time to figure something else out? Some eleventh-hour magical miracle that you Mikaelsons have a knack for finding?" Caroline asked.

"We've been looking since we got back," Hope said.

"But there's not enough magic in the world to fix this," Freya continued solemnly.

"Why, do you have any ideas?" Hope asked.

"Years ago, my friends tried to kill Klaus," Caroline said. "Their plan was to desiccate him, bury him in concrete, and drop him in the ocean. That's what he originally said he wanted me to do after Lizzie and Josie put the dark magic into him."

"Is there a point soon?" Rebekah asked.

"After they desiccated him, he was killed," Caroline continued, leaving out the fact that it was Alaric who killed him for the girls' sakes. "But he survived because Bonnie had moved him into Tyler's body. It's the body that the Hollow wants, right? The Hollow possesses a person's body the same way that Klaus did when he possessed Tyler. Now Klaus probably wouldn't be willing to permanently give up being the Original Hybrid, but if we could make that work, would that be something you would be willing to consider, Elijah? Or Rebekah, you've always wanted to be human, we could move you to a human body and put the dark magic in your vampire body."

Elijah looked at her thoughtfully.

"What would need to happen?" he asked.

"We'd need the spell to move you into another body, a witch to do the spell, and a body to move you to," Caroline answered. "Even if it doesn't work, we'll at least have tried. And if there's one thing I know about you Mikaelsons, it's that you never give up. Sometimes it's as annoying as it is admirable."

"We'll do it," Hope answered. "We'll try whatever we can. But the spell I put on you and my dad is only meant to last twenty-four hours—until the moon is at the same position in the sky as it was when the spell was cast. Lizzie and Josie siphoned the spell off of you when we were ready. We only have a few hours until he wakes up, and we need to have the magic out of him and the rest of the spell complete by then."

"Now hold on a second," Caroline interjected. "Your plan is to have your father wake up from a spell you put on him to discover his brother is, at best, in another body, and at worst, dead?"

Hope looked a little sheepish.

"Well, we couldn't run the risk of him trying to stake himself as soon as he woke up. Then all of this would be for nothing. If the dark magic is already out of him, he'll have no reason to try to kill himself or force anyone else to kill him."

"That's manipulative, and I don't think I'm okay with it," Caroline responded. "Think about how you felt when you found out your father planned to sacrifice himself while you were in your wolf form and couldn't stop him. You're doing the same thing to him now."

"I'm trying to save him!" Hope insisted.

"And he was trying to save you," Caroline responded forcefully. "I know that you're trying to save him, and so will he, but that doesn't mean you aren't taking his choices away just like he did yours. I'm not saying no, I'm just saying, let's get the spell ready, then wake him up and tell him your plan. I will help you convince him it's worth trying the spell before anyone does anything rash."

"Do you think you can convince him?" Hope asked in a small voice.

"Oh please, Caroline could convince Nik that the moon is made of potato cheese soap," Kol laughed.

Caroline ignored him in favor of planning.

"So we need to find the body-jumping spell," she started.

"Considering Esther's penchant for body-jumping, I'm sure it's in my mother's grimoires. Davina and I will look for it," Freya offered.

"Great," Caroline nodded. "We'll also need a body to put Elijah in. Now, I'm sure there are no thousand-year-old vampire bodies available on such short notice, but you can always go to the hospital and find a patient on life-support and turn them once the spell is complete—why does everyone look like a light bulb just went off above their head?"

"You just gave us an idea," Rebekah answered.

{ }

When Klaus woke with a start, he was lying on a bed next to Caroline—fully dressed, so he knew this wasn't a dream. Caroline's daughters, along with his own, were standing next to him. His siblings, Marcel, Vincent, Davina, and Keelin were also in the room.

And the sleeping body of Aurora was lying on the floor.

"What is going on here?" Klaus demanded.

"Niklaus, we have a plan that would allow us to permanently get rid of the Hollow without sacrificing any of our lives," Elijah told him.

"That's what Aurora is doing here, I assume?" Klaus responded.

"Yes," Elijah nodded. "It was actually another plan of Ms. Forbes' that gave us the idea."

Klaus looked over at Caroline.

"I thought you couldn't stand in my way, love?" he teased.

"I said I couldn't, that doesn't mean I didn't want to," Caroline replied. "And the plan your siblings came up with is a lot better than mine."

"What was your plan?" Klaus asked.

"To move the Hollow into Elijah's body and then move Elijah into someone else's," Caroline answered. "You reminded me yesterday of my friends' plan to kill you, and that reminded me of how you survived. I made a comment about not having a thousand-year-old vampire's body to move Elijah into, then Rebekah ran out of the room and came back with her."

"I can't allow anyone else to sacrifice themselves for my child, that's my responsibility as her father," Klaus insisted.

"No, your responsibility as her father is to be her father, and you can't do that if you're dead," Caroline countered. "Look, our first choice plan is to have Lizzie and Josie move the Hollow from you into Aurora, and then kill Aurora, who apparently has been hanging around in your house under a sleeping spell for years, so it's not like it will make much difference to her. If that doesn't work, our second choice plan is to have Lizzie and Josie move the Hollow from you into Elijah, and then move Elijah into another body, that I recommended we go to the hospital and find so that we would be prepared for the second choice plan, but no one listened to me."

"Then why does Elijah need to be involved at all?" Klaus questioned.

"Are you seriously telling me that you've changed your mind about being the most powerful creature on the planet, and you're willing to give that up and be a baby vampire all over again?" Caroline raised her eyebrows.

"If that is what I must do to save my daughter's life," Klaus replied.

"That's only the backup plan," Caroline reminded him. "If everything goes according to plan, everyone will get to stay in their own body. But if we do have to move someone, it doesn't have to be you or Elijah. Rebekah still wants to be human, we could move the Hollow into her body and move her to a human one."

"If you want to keep the casualties to a minimum, love, you'll need to keep Rebekah alive and in her own body. Her sire line is the last of ours still intact, so if she dies, so does every vampire she's ever created," Klaus pointed out.

"Davina can separate Rebekah from her sireline just like she did with yours," Caroline answered. "And even if we eliminate Rebekah from our list of sacrificial candidates, that still leaves Elijah, who already agreed to do the spell; Kol said something about a witch he possessed; I guess you can be the one to get a new body if you really want to, though I don't think you'd be happy in the long run if you did; and this is only if moving the Hollow into Aurora doesn't work."

"I can't allow—"

"First of all, you aren't allowing anyone to do anything, everyone is offering to help," Caroline responded. "Second of all, we've had this conversation about you refusing to get out of your own way before. You seem to think that sacrificing yourself for your daughter is the best thing you can do for her, but Hope would not have kidnapped me and bribed my children to get us here to help save your life if she thought she was better off without you. Hope needs you, and she loves you. Isn't that worth living for?"

Klaus looked over at Caroline. Everything in her expression screamed sincerity.

Klaus carefully, hesitantly, reached out and took Caroline's hand in his.

"Okay," Klaus agreed. "We can try it your way."

{ }

With Freya and Davina hunting through Esther's grimoires for the body-jumping spell, the task of helping Lizzie and Josie set up for their spell fell to Vincent, Hope, Kol, and Rebekah.

Rebekah and Kol led the way to a room large enough to perform all of the spells necessary to carry out their plan. Vincent and Marcel followed, talking quietly among themselves; Hope and the twins walked together; Caroline and Klaus left some distance between themselves and their children so that if they spoke quietly, the girls wouldn't be able to overhear; Keelin had volunteered to carry Aurora, so she had intended to bring up the rear, but Elijah trailed behind them all, lost in his own thoughts.

"Caroline, we need to talk about—"

"When this is over," Caroline interrupted Klaus. "We need to get through the immediate task at hand, which is executing a plan to make sure you live longer than just the rest of the day, before I can even think about where we go from there."

"What if it doesn't work?" Klaus asked, more nervous than Caroline had ever seen him.

"Our backup plans have backup plans," Caroline said. "And if none of those work, we'll come up with new plans. Your family isn't just going to sit back and watch while you're dying. They're going to exhaust every possibility, call in every favor, threaten or bribe every ally, until the very last second."

"And you?" Klaus asked.

"I'm here, aren't I?" Caroline shot back. "And I have a last resort that I would rather do anything else before I went through with it. But let's start by letting the girls move the dark magic into Aurora, so even if we need to come up with another plan after that, at least it won't be inside of you while we're working on it."

"Caroline," Klaus grabbed her hand, forcing her to stop moving and look at him. "If your plans don't work, and the only way to keep you all safe is for me to die, please take care of Hope for me. She needs a mother, and you've been a good one to her all these years."

"What? I'm not— I don't—" Caroline stammered, shaking her head frantically.

"For seven years, she's been at your school while I traversed the globe and Hayley ruled the werewolves in New Orleans," Klaus said. "For those years, the most reliable parental figure in her life was you. When I was reunited with my daughter after seven years, do you know what her first word to me was?"

"I don't know, maybe 'what?' As in, 'what the hell, Dad, how could you just abandon me for seven years?'" Caroline suggested. "Seriously? Why are you asking me this right now?"

Klaus grinned.

"It was 'seriously,'" Klaus informed her. "She must have spent an awful lot of time with you in order to pick up your characteristic speech patterns."

Caroline blushed.

"I mean, she had trouble adjusting to a school environment at first after spending her entire life in the company of only her family, so she spent a lot of her free time in my office for a while, and I tried to make her feel comfortable with me, with the school, with the situation she was in. Plus, I think it was a relief for her to be around someone who knew who she was so she didn't have to use her fake name and pretend to be someone she wasn't. But as she got older, she started spending less and less time with me, became fiercely independent and determined to do everything on her own without any help from anyone."

"Tough, independent, stubbornly determined—yes, that sounds like Hope," Klaus smirked. "She inherited that from both her parents, I'm afraid."

"I'm sorry about Hayley," Caroline offered.

"Yes, I was pleased to receive your letter, and I'm sure Hope appreciates your condolences," Klaus responded. "And I appreciate you being magnanimous enough to forgive all of the ways that she hurt you, or at least not hold them against Hope."

"I saw her, when I passed out yesterday," Hope chimed in, looking back over her shoulder from where she was walking ahead of them with the twins. "She was in this afterlife version of the bayou, with Jackson, and Grandma Mary, and her parents. She was at peace, and she seemed happy there with all of those people she loved. She said she forgave me, for the part I played in her death."

"What does the afterlife look like?" Josie asked curiously.

"A lot like life, actually, except you hang out with dead people instead of living people. And the lighting isn't as good," Hope answered. "But, Dad, Mom asked me to give a message to Elijah, something about waiting for a dance, and I think that's at least part of why he volunteered to sacrifice himself in your place. He wants to be with her, but I don't know if he would go to the same place, you know, afterwards, since Mom was in the bayou with her family, who are all werewolves, and I'm not sure they'd welcome an Original vampire to join them."

"I'm sorry, are you saying that your mom and your uncle were together?" Lizzie interjected incredulously.

"It isn't as weird as you think, since my mom and dad were never together," Hope explained nonchalantly. "My dad was sad and lonely, so he got very, very drunk, and my mom was scared and hated that she had to ask for my dad's help to save her life, so she got very, very drunk; then, even though my mom hated my dad, and Dad didn't think too highly of Mom either, they had a very, very drunken one night stand, not knowing that Dad being the Original Hybrid meant that he could procreate with a werewolf; so needless to say, they were both very surprised when they were told that a miracle baby had been conceived."

"Every time I think you might have the potential to be a person who doesn't suck, you do something like refer to yourself as a 'miracle baby,'" Lizzie scoffed. "And it's very creepy that you know every dirty detail of your conception."

"As if you don't," Hope shot back.

"I'm aware of the magical intervention that allowed my sister and I to stay alive after our biological mother was killed—by her twin, at her wedding, so your sob story is nothing compared to ours—but that is completely different," Lizzie offered a sharp rebuttal.

Caroline looked at Klaus to see his reaction to Lizzie's verbal sparring with Hope, and to her surprise, he was smiling.

They both paused to put some space between themselves and the bickering girls.

"If you've ever wondered what pre-teen human Caroline was like," Caroline attempted to joke.

"She's wonderful, Caroline; both of them are," Klaus replied.

"Thank you," Caroline said. "They're quite the interesting experiment in nature versus nurture. Sometimes Lizzie is so much like me that I forget that we don't actually share any DNA, and other times she'll act so much like one of her Parker relatives that she's never met that I'm scared that everything we've worked so hard to protect them from is already festering inside of them."

"And your other daughter?" Klaus inquired.

"Josie's nothing like me," Caroline answered. "She's quiet, reserved, levelheaded. Logical and accommodating to the point of suppressing her own emotions. She's a lot like her biological mother Jo, and she also reminds me of Bonnie, and a little of Elijah, even, with his determination to stand by your side no matter what, ever since you left Mystic Falls."

"That reminds me, I'm angry with you," Klaus said.

"Okay," Caroline replied.

"That's all you have to say for yourself, 'okay?'" Klaus asked.

"Well, I'm not going to apologize, if that's what you're looking for."

They followed their daughters into a large, empty room downstairs where Vincent was already setting up the salt border for the spell.

"Where do you want me to put her?" Keelin asked as she entered the room behind them.

"She'll need to be in the circle while we're doing the spell," Josie answered.

Keelin dropped Aurora's still body in the center of the circle, then announced that she was going to help Freya, which seemed more productive than watching the twins perform the spell. Kol agreed with her reasoning and followed her upstairs to the attic where Freya and Davina were searching through grimoires.

"We're ready," Vincent announced, backing away from the circle.

Lizzie and Josie nodded and stepped inside the circle, waiting for Klaus to let them know that he was ready to begin the spell.

First, he hugged his siblings that were in the room (which might have been why Kol was so eager to leave). Then he hugged Marcel and shook Vincent's hand.

"I love you, my littlest wolf," Klaus told Hope, then kissed the top of her head.

"I love you, Dad," Hope replied.

Klaus turned to Caroline last, putting his hands on her shoulders as he spoke.

"Caroline, if the worst happens and I cannot be saved—" Klaus started.

"You can," Caroline interrupted softly. "I told you that years ago."

Klaus took a sharp breath as he remembered the day Caroline was referring to: her halting breaths as the venom coursed through her veins, the effortless way she saw through his façade of senseless villainy to reach the wounded human soul underneath, the courage and grace with which she faced her impending death.

"I believe you," Klaus responded.

He released her and approached the circle.

"Lizzie, Josie, whenever you're ready," Klaus told the twins.

The girls started chanting the words to the spell and pacing around the circle, just as they had the previous day.

After a few minutes, a glowing blue light was pulled out of Klaus's chest and flew into Aurora's.

Lizzie and Josie ran out of the circle, deliberately smudging the salt barrier as they went so that anyone—or anyone's magic—could enter to kill Aurora and the Hollow.

Aurora's eyes snapped open, her irises glowing the same eerie shade of blue as the light the twins had pulled out of Klaus. So the Hollow had taken ahold of Aurora's body. That was a good sign.

Aurora, in the slow movements that reminded Caroline of zombies in horror movies, got to her feet and surveyed the room, her eyes landing on where Hope was standing next to Klaus.

"Hope, get out of here, now!" Klaus ordered.

"It'll want you, too. If you're staying, I'm staying," Hope challenged.

Before Klaus could argue, Hope raced over to Elijah, retrieved the white oak stake he had confiscated from Klaus while he was unconscious, and cast a spell to send it hurtling through the air at high speed before burying itself in Aurora's heart.

The bright blue light faded from Aurora's eyes, leaving a murky dark green or hazel color in its place.

"It worked," Hope gasped triumphantly.

Before Aurora's body could fall to the ground, Josie cast another spell, setting the body on fire.

They all watched in silence as the flames consumed Aurora, the Hollow, and the last weapon that could kill an Original Vampire.

{ }

"Phones, please," Lizzie extended her hand towards Hope.

Hope just stared at her.

"Lizzie…" Josie interjected quietly.

"You offered us the new cell phones purchased for us in exchange for performing a spell. We've performed the spell, and we'd like our payment now, so that we can go home," Lizzie continued, ignoring her twin.

Hope shook her head as if to clear it.

"Has anyone ever told you how selfish you are?" Hope asked.

"If I were really as selfish as you think I am, I would be watching Gossip Girl in my room right now, and you would be an orphan," Lizzie retorted.

Hope sobered.

"You're right, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"It's not the first time someone has called me that, and I'm sure it won't be the last," Lizzie shrugged.

Hope reached into her bag and pulled out the boxes containing the two phones, handing one to each of the twins.

"I don't know if I'm disappointed in you two for accepting a bribe, or for asking for so little," Caroline said. "I don't think you have any idea just how wealthy this family is. I mean, Klaus once sent me a check for three million dollars."

"For what?" Lizzie asked, tearing open her box. "If it's dirty, don't answer."

Caroline laughed, as did Klaus, Rebekah, and Marcel. Hope and Josie looked just as disturbed as Lizzie did.

"It was for allowing his daughter to attend the school I founded," she answered. "And the money went towards the dorm expansion and the chemistry lab."

"You should have given us a heads-up," Lizzie insisted. "'Girls, if Hope or her family ever try to bribe you, don't settle for anything less than everything you've ever wanted, because they're filthy rich.' You're supposed to be looking out for us, Mom."

"I apologize for my lack of foresight," Caroline offered, trying not to laugh at Lizzie's indignation.

"Well, your girls shouldn't have to suffer for it," Klaus cut in. "They did this family a great service today, and we believe in rewarding those who help us. I'll go cut them a check."

He dashed off to another room in the massive house.

"I'm sure I can find something suitable for them in my old jewelry collection," Rebekah added, speeding upstairs.

While they were gone, Lizzie and Josie pulled their new phones out of the boxes. Klaus had also bought them cases to go along with the phones, presumably so that they would be able to tell them apart. Josie's case had periwinkle blue and lilac purple stripes with a square made of the same purple color containing a lilac letter 'J' on a periwinkle background, and Lizzie's was light pink with red polka dots and a red circle containing a red letter 'L' on a light pink background.

Hope reached into her bag and retrieved her own phone, which wore a case made of navy blue glitter decorated with silver glitter stars and crescent moons.

"I'm sure everyone will want you to have their numbers," Hope said, opening her phone's address book so that the twins could copy the Mikaelsons' phone numbers into their own contacts lists.

Klaus and Rebekah returned from different directions a moment later, with Kol, Davina, Freya, and Keelin trailing after Klaus.

Klaus handed each of the girls an envelope.

Their eyes went so comically wide when they saw the amount written on the checks that Caroline almost worried they would fall out of their sockets.

After they both stuttered shocked thank yous, Rebekah stepped forward and handed them each a jewelry box.

Each box contained a tennis bracelet and a pair of matching earrings. Josie's were princess-cut sapphires and Lizzie's were round-cut rubies. When Hope looked left out, Rebekah retrieved a third set, this one of emerald-cut emeralds.

"They're too simple for my taste, but they're very pretty and quite appropriate for girls your ages," Rebekah explained, adding that she had been saving the emeralds to give to Hope for a special occasion, since the green gems were her niece's birthstone.

"The Hope Diamond is too simple for your taste, Bekah," Kol teased.

The three girls each thanked Rebekah and quickly put on their new jewelry.

Elijah cleared his throat. He'd been silent for so long that Caroline had almost forgotten his presence in the room.

"This has been quite an emotional day, and if my presence is no longer required here, I would like to visit the bayou before the sun sets completely," he announced.

"I want to come with you," Hope replied hurriedly, throwing her phone back in her bag.

Elijah nodded in agreement.

"But we need to celebrate that we resolved this crisis and we're all still alive!" Freya insisted. She checked her watch. "Let's all meet back here for a celebratory dinner in two hours. No excuses, no exceptions."

Elijah nodded again, and he and Hope left the room.

"I want to visit Josh before we leave the city," Davina told Kol.

"I'll come with you," Marcel chimed in.

"And I want to visit Ivy," Vincent added.

The foursome left together with a promise to return for dinner soon.

"I should pack up all of the grimoires we ended up not needing to use, and then get started on dinner so that those of us who eat real food have something to eat," Freya announced.

"I'll help you," Keelin offered.

Only Klaus, Caroline, Lizzie, Josie, and Rebekah remained in the room.

"You know, today is Mardi Gras, so New Orleans is at its most festive. Let's go get beignets, and I will give you two the ten-cent tour, and I'll even get you some real, authentic Mardi Gras beads, no flashing required," Rebekah told the twins.

"Mom, can we go?" Josie asked.

"Sure, have fun," Caroline agreed. "You'll be safe with Rebekah. Please listen to her, she's older than you, stronger than you, and she knows the city way better than you do. You have your phones, so take pictures and call me if you need anything."

The twins eagerly agreed and followed Rebekah out of the room.

Caroline turned to face Klaus.

"So, we should probably talk now," she said.

{ }

Klaus led Caroline upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door behind them.

"We're the only vampires in the house, so no one will overhear, and Rebekah will announce herself when she and your daughters return," Klaus told her, crossing the room to stand next to his desk.

Caroline looked at him quizzically, casting her eyes over the large bed, easel, table, and dresser before moving to lean against the closet door.

"You didn't really think that my sister was suddenly overcome with the urge to fight through crowds of tourists with two thirteen-year-old girls she just met, did you? She was trying to give us some privacy," Klaus elaborated.

"Well, that was nice of her," Caroline replied.

"She has her moments," Klaus remarked.

After an awkward pause, Caroline said, "I'm not exactly sure where to start."

"Well, how did you end up involved in this scheme of Hope's?" Klaus asked.

"After Ric brought the girls back, I was sitting in the common room alone, just thinking about everything, when I heard Hope and Elijah discussing some spell she wanted to perform to get someone to want to help her save you. When I figured out that it was me they were talking about, I went outside to offer my help, and then Hope snapped my neck," Caroline explained.

"I apologize for her treatment of you throughout this ordeal," Klaus said. "Much like her father, Hope possesses a single-minded determination that blinds her to everything but her goal."

"She just snapped my neck. Like mother, like daughter," Caroline shrugged. "And Hope did apologize, which is more than Hayley did. In fact, I think Hayley called me stupid before snapping my neck."

"I apologize for Hayley's treatment of you in the past, as well," Klaus offered. "Can I ask, what is it that you saw while you were under the influence of Hope's spell?"

"A bored, miserable Caroline who hid who she was and settled for less than she deserved because no one ever told her she was worth more than she thought she was," Caroline replied. "What about you?"

"I saw an isolated, monomaniacal Klaus who never found something new to do with his life after breaking his curse; who loved no one, trusted no one, and would be missed by no one if he disappeared or died," Klaus answered. "And at least you had some warning about what Hope was planning. She snuck up on me and snapped my neck, cast this spell upon me, then I woke up here."

"The girls filled me in on how it is we all ended up here," Caroline told him. "After Hope put the spell on us, she bribed my daughters to come with her and Elijah back to New Orleans, using the new cell phones you bought them, which, for the record, I explicitly told them they could not have. Now, I'm not going to make them return a gift, but in the future I would appreciate you not going behind my back to buy my children something that I refused to purchase for them myself."

Klaus nodded, looking a little sheepish.

The expression quickly melted away as he teased, "But you have no problems with them accepting the checks I wrote them or the jewelry Rebekah gave them, each of which are several times the value of the phones."

"It's the principal of the thing," Caroline insisted.

"Whatever you say, love," Klaus smirked.

There was another awkward pause.

"Can I ask you something?" Caroline asked.

"Of course," Klaus answered.

"Ric told me that he thought you were going to ask me to kill you last night," Caroline said. "Were you?"

"There are very few people in the world that I trust, Caroline," Klaus responded. "Even fewer were in Mystic Falls. When you told me that you weren't going to stand in my way, because I was finally being the good father and good person you'd always wanted me to be, I considered it. But then I found out that you'd told Elijah about my plan, which could only be because you wanted someone to stop me without going back on your word, and Alaric told me that you couldn't bring yourself to witness my death. I almost hesitated then. I always hated the situation I'd found myself in, but I'd never hated it more than that moment, when I realized you were wrong."

"Wrong about what?" Caroline asked.

"What you wanted," Klaus answered. "You told me that my becoming a good person and a good father was all you ever wanted from me. But it isn't. You don't want another noble hero like Stefan Salvatore who is so concerned about being a good person that he never even stops to consider what it means to be a good husband. You want someone who will be selfish and greedy with you, who can never spend enough time with you, even if you spent every second of every day together. Someone who would fight to the death for the chance to see you smile just one more time, but would sacrifice his life in a heartbeat to save yours. You don't want a safe relationship, because you've had that and it ended the exact way you always knew it would, and that allowed you to protect yourself, because you'd been preparing yourself for the day that Stefan sacrificed you, and his relationship with you, for Damon or Elena since the day you decided you wanted to be with him."

Tears rolled down Caroline's cheeks as she listened to Klaus's words, knowing that, even though she didn't want to hear them, he was right.

"You're right," Caroline admitted. "I saw the epic love that Stefan and Elena had, and I wanted it for myself. I should have realized that just because a guy was the perfect boyfriend to your best friend, doesn't mean he's going to be the perfect boyfriend to you. In fact, it almost certainly means he won't."

"In terms of immortal life, you're still very young, Caroline," Klaus pointed out. "And when it comes to vampires making choices they later regret when they're in their first few decades, marrying a friend who died to protect people he loved is not the worst mistake you could have made."

"I don't regret it," Caroline corrected. "At least, I don't think I do. But I'm ready to move on. I can't believe I spent ten years mourning someone who couldn't even be my husband for ten hours."

"It's his loss, you know," Klaus offered.

"I know," Caroline replied softly. "You know, when I found out—from Alaric, not even from Stefan himself, who didn't even answer my phone call—what Stefan planned to do, I told him that I understood. And I did. You were right, I always knew that Damon and Elena meant more to Stefan than I ever did. But I didn't understand what you were doing, and how you could be so passive about it. I mean, maybe it's just because I'd already been through it with Stefan, but it did feel like just another person sacrificing themselves to save someone else and not caring enough to stick around for me. And then part of me couldn't believe how much you'd changed. Eighteen-year-old me would have never believed that you would one day love someone more than your own life."

"If there was anyone who could have seen it coming, it was you," Klaus said.

"I think the craziest thing about the alternate universe that Hope showed me was that the other Caroline didn't even know what she was missing. I mean, I missed you, but I knew you. She'd never even met you, yet she still somehow missed you anyway. The other Caroline grew up to marry this nice enough but nondescript guy who never knew she wasn't human, and they adopted these twin girls, and it was just so similar to my real life, except she was actually better off than I am, because at least she had a husband who loved her even if he loved a version of her that wasn't real, and all I have is Alaric, who for some reason still thinks he loves me when it's really obvious that he actually just loves my uterus for carrying his children. So in addition to helping serve Hope's actual purpose, this spell also showed me how unhappy I am in my real life. And it showed me that no matter what I do or where I go, even if it's an alternate universe, there will always be a Klaus-shaped hole in my life if you're not there."

"Then you need to consider what you do, and where you go, and who you go there with so that you can be happy," Klaus said.

"You," Caroline answered simply. "You were right. Small-town life isn't enough for me. I want adventure, and freedom, and epic love. All of the things that you promised me. And yesterday, for those few minutes I thought you were dead, because I'd been too much of a coward to go out there with you…"

Caroline broke off with a gasping sob.

"Caroline…" Klaus took a step forward, trying to reach out and comfort her.

"I knew I could have stopped you, which is why I couldn't stop you," Caroline continued. "You would hate me if I'd saved you and let Hope die, and I would hate me if I'd saved Hope and let you die."

"It's okay, love," Klaus said softly, taking her hands in his own.

"I have to leave Mystic Falls," Caroline announced in a change of subject that would seem abrupt for anyone who didn't know her. "Everyone there knows me, and it's getting more and more obvious that I don't look like the thirty-something mom of teenagers I should be if I were aging. I know I didn't exactly show up at your door, but I was hoping your offer to show me all that the world has to offer was still good?"

The look on Klaus's face was nothing short of sublime joy.

"I said I would wait however long it takes, and I meant it," Klaus replied.

"I want to stay close while the girls are still in school," Caroline said matter-of-factly, slipping easily into planning mode. "I know that they'll be fine without me at the school, I just don't want to miss them growing up. I want to be there for birthdays, and prom, and graduation, and everything that's important to them."

Klaus walked back over to the desk and picked up a box containing letters.

"These are all of the letters Hayley wrote me while I couldn't be near Hope without putting her life in danger," Klaus said. "Trust me, I understand not wanting to miss a moment of your child's life."

Caroline noticed the stamps on all of the envelopes.

"You never got any of these?" Caroline asked incredulously. "Why didn't she just ask Freya to magic-mail them to you?"

"You call it 'magic-mail?'" Klaus confirmed.

"If this relationship is going to work, you're going to need to accept my love of alliteration," Caroline responded.

Klaus just smiled.

Caroline picked up the first letter and the accompanying picture.

"Wow, this must have been when she was about nine?" Caroline guessed, scanning the letter for a date or age. "I'm sorry, did Hayley really just refer to her betrayal of twelve hybrids for the purpose of leading them to their deaths as 'petty crap?' And I used to think you were callous and unfeeling."

"Speaking of Hayley, there's something you should know, that will affect Hope," Klaus said. "I think you already know that Hayley was the Alpha of the Crescent Wolf Pack, and she also served as the representative for the werewolf faction in the council of sorts that Vincent oversaw during my family's absence from the city. Freya represented the witches, and Josh represented the vampires."

"Okay," Caroline waited for him to continue.

"As the only child of the recently deceased Alpha, Hope has inherited her mother's title," Klaus went on. "If she doesn't accept her role, and that of the wolves' representative, she could leave a power vacuum that could be dangerous not just for the wolves but for the entire city, depending on how violent those who attempt to usurp her throne decide to be."

"But she's just a kid!" Caroline exclaimed.

"I know, but if she waits until she's ready, whoever rules in her absence may acquire a taste for power and decide not to give it back when Hope returns home to follow in her mother's footsteps," Klaus lamented.

Just then, they heard the footsteps climbing up the stairs.

"We're home! Put your clothes back on if you haven't already!" Rebekah shouted.

"Ew!" "Gross!" the twins groaned.

"Sorry," Rebekah said quickly.

Klaus rolled his eyes and opened his bedroom door.

Rebekah, Lizzie, and Josie were standing in the hallway.

Each of the twins was wearing a thick stack of Mardi Gras beads around their necks and each of their wrists, Lizzie's yellow and Josie's purple. Over their sweaters, they each wore a shirt with a fleur-de-lys on it, proudly proclaiming that they'd attended the authentic Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans and the date.

"Wow, you girls went all out," Caroline commented.

"We decided to color code. We're saving the green ones for Hope," Lizzie replied.

"Of course your daughter loves color-coding," Rebekah sarcastically cheered. "Other than some slight uptight tendencies, I was pleasantly surprised by how delightful your children are, Caroline."

"I feel like she just insulted us, but I'm not totally sure," Lizzie said.

"Rebekah's compliments don't sound much different than her insults," Caroline told her.

"You're Southern, Caroline, you should be an expert at backhanded compliments," Rebekah scoffed.

"Are you kidding me? You once called me beautiful and implied I was a gold-digger in the same breath," Caroline shot back.

"When did I do that?"

"At the ball?" Caroline reminded her. "'Of course she looks beautiful, Nik gave her everything she's wearing.'"

"Who's Nik?" Josie asked, fiddling with a strand of purple beads.

"That's me," Klaus answered.

"I thought Mom said your name was Klaus," Josie said, puzzled.

"My full name is Niklaus. Most people call me Klaus, a few members of my family call me Nik, which they've done since we were children. You can call me whichever you prefer," Klaus offered.

"Thanks, but Mom calls you Klaus, so I think that's what we're going to go with too," Josie decided.

"So, girls, how did you like New Orleans?" Caroline asked the twins.

Both girls started chattering excitedly about everything they'd seen, and how infectious the energy of the city was, and how delicious beignets were.

"I'm glad you like it, because I just thought of an idea," Caroline said.

{ }

Epilogue—Two Years Later

Caroline Forbes prided herself on being a problem-solver.

So when the problems of her needing to leave Mystic Falls, her wanting to stay near Lizzie and Josie until they graduated, her desire to be with Klaus, and Hope's need to stay in New Orleans to assume her responsibilities as Alpha of her werewolf pack started percolating in her head, they all seemed to point to one solution.

It took her all of five minutes to realize that the answer to all of their problems was for her to open a second campus of the Salvatore School in New Orleans.

The city boasted a large supernatural population, which would offer them community support and a chance for students to see what species coexisting outside of an academic environment looked like. Caroline would no longer get puzzled or judgmental looks for not aging, since New Orleans was much more accepting of vampires than Mystic Falls, so she could remain there for the remainder of the twins' academic careers. Hope could stay in school, Klaus could stay with Hope, and Caroline could stay with Klaus.

They only person who wasn't enthusiastic about the idea was Alaric. When Caroline had told him her plan, he accused her of once again letting Klaus cloud her judgment. The resulting awkward pause when Caroline had informed him that she and Klaus were in a relationship went on for so long that Caroline was certain Ric had hung up.

After several days of consideration, Alaric decided to remain at the main campus of the school in Mystic Falls rather than coming along to help start the new branch.

It had taken a lot of work—and a lot of Klaus's money—to get the school up and running, but the long-awaited first day of school had finally arrived.

"Good morning, girls," Caroline greeted Lizzie, Josie, and Hope, enthusiastically. "Let me see those uniforms!"

The girls were all wearing the standard white button-down collared shirt and the navy blue plaid skirt, but they each wore a different sweater. Hope was wearing a navy blue pull-over with a V-neck, Josie was wearing a mustard yellow sweater with such a high neckline that only the collar of her shirt peaked out, and Lizzie was wearing a heather grey button-down cardigan.

"Have we passed inspection, Mom?" Lizzie asked.

"Of course, you all look great," Caroline replied.

Three pairs of hands, one with matte teal green nail polish (Hope), one with iridescent silvery-blue nail polish (Josie), and one with red glitter nail polish (Lizzie) all dove into the plate of beignets sitting on the dining room table.

Caroline and Alaric had debated back-and-forth over which school the girls would attend. Each of them knew that they would be perfectly safe and content at either school, where one of their parents would be present and the other absent. Alaric argued that moving the girls would be disruptive to their learning, while Caroline countered that starting a new school year at a new school in a city they loved wouldn't hurt them.

Eventually, they had agreed to allow the girls to choose, with the condition that neither of them could do anything to persuade them either way.

Unfortunately for Alaric, he hadn't made sure to get Klaus to agree to that rule.

Naturally, Lizzie and Josie chose New Orleans. Alaric still wasn't speaking to Caroline.

"Good morning," Klaus greeted as he walked into the room.

Klaus had arranged for the school to be built on a massive piece of land where he used to own a home until it had burned down in a fire only months before Hope was born. When he'd designed the place, he'd taken care to include a house at the very end of the building for the five of them, which had its own separate entrance to offer them some privacy, while still being a part of the school. Each of the girls' rooms were almost double the size of a dorm room for two students to share, and Klaus had allowed them to choose the paint colors and decorate any way they wanted.

"We should get going, the first students should be arriving soon, and we're on welcome duty," Josie announced after checking her watch.

Hope groaned.

"I don't want to talk to a bunch of people who are going to treat me like a freak show because I'm the only tribrid and the youngest Alpha in the history of the Crescent Wolf Pack," she complained.

"There she goes again, ruining her potential to be a person who doesn't suck. First of all, we're the headmistress's kids, so you better get used to it, wicked stepsister," Lizzie retorted. "Second of all, no one is going to know or care that you're the youngest Wolf Queen ever. Third of all, if anyone gives you a dirty look, Josie will set them on fire. No big deal."

"Yes, big deal," Caroline cut in. "None of you will be setting anyone on fire, is that clear?"

"Fine," all three girls grumbled.

"Okay, then let's go," Caroline instructed.

The girls picked up their school bags and left the house, walking over to the front doors, which had been propped open to reveal the entrance hall behind them.

"Here," Caroline handed the girls two file folders. "I have to go introduce myself to every parent and ensure them that their precious little blood-sucking, slash spell-casting, slash species-changing babies will perfectly safe here. I need you three to check in the students and give them their class schedules."

The three girls sat down at a table set up just inside the doors while Caroline walked down the driveway to the main gate.

After handing out schedules to two witches and a vampire, the next student to approach them made Hope sit up and take notice.

"I wonder who he is," she said.

"That's Patrick Burton. He's a werewolf who triggered his curse last year when he saved a teammate of his on the Mathletes from being mugged and ended up accidentally killing the mugger. His mother's family comes from Ireland, and his father's side of the family is German. He was born in Boston, he's a huge Celtics fan, his favorite color's green, and he's a Leo, so you're compatible, but not the most compatible pairing possible," Lizzie rattled off.

"And I was worried about people thinking I was a freak," Hope responded.

"Hello and welcome to the new New Orleans campus of the Salvatore School," Lizzie greeted cheerfully. "I'm Lizzie, that's my twin sister Josie, and our step-sister Hope."

Hope was clearly surprised by Lizzie's description of her. Lizzie had been calling Hope her 'wicked step-sister' since their parents had told them they were together, but she'd never called her her step-sister before.

"This doesn't mean I like you, I just don't have time to explain the Klaus and Caroline saga. Homeroom starts in twenty minutes," Lizzie explained.

"Our parents aren't actually married, but we wish they would get married, if only so that they'll have something to call each other. Remember the week they decided to refer to each other as 'eternal life partners?' I cringed for seven days straight, my face will never be the same," Lizzie shifted from talking to Patrick to talking to Josie and Lizzie as she spoke.

"Yeah, it was pretty bad," Hope agreed.

"Well any school that uses the PowerPuff Girls as the welcoming committee is all right in my book," Patrick replied easily.

"Don't let the hair fool you, the redhead is actually Buttercup, and the brunette is Blossom," Lizzie commented.

"But you aren't Bubbles, Liz, you aren't cheerful or innocent. Your favorite movie is Titanic," Hope countered.

"My favorite movie was Titanic. Now I can't watch it without thinking about your dad drawing Mom like one of his French girls," Lizzie corrected.

Hope and Josie both groaned.

"So you needed the rest of us to suffer, too?" Josie questioned.

"I jump, you jump, Jack," Lizzie smirked.

"You know I'm Team Jess."

"I sincerely apologize for taking up all of the oxygen in the womb, because there's no other explanation for your poor taste."

"Are they always like that?" Patrick asked Hope.

"Not at all; usually it's me and Lizzie who are arguing and Josie's the peacemaker," Hope answered.

Hope was grateful she was sitting down, otherwise Patrick's forest green eyes would have made her weak in the knees. She signed him in and handed him his schedule, turning to watch as he walked away.

"Did it work?" Lizzie asked.

"Did what work?" Hope asked.

"Our plan to make sure that you got to talk to the cute werewolf who you're obviously developing a crush on as we speak," Lizzie explained. "Did you really think we would argue for five minutes over a show that's been off the air for years without ulterior motives?"

"That's a trick question, because I know that you can argue about anything, but I also know that you always have ulterior motives," Hope answered. "So I'm not surprised that you had the idea, nor am I surprised that Josie played along."

In between greeting parents, Caroline listened in on the girls' conversations.

She had been worried about moving the twins to New Orleans and how they would adjust to having Klaus, Hope, and the rest of the Mikaelsons in their lives, but they'd quickly adapted and seemed to like having the New Orleans faction of the Mikaelsons around.

Elijah had left New Orleans shortly after the Hollow had been defeated, unable to see the city as anything other than the backdrop of his relationship with Hayley. Kol and Davina had returned to their own separate lives shortly thereafter. Rebekah and Marcel, and Freya and Keelin had decided to stay. Vincent, after growing tired of supernatural politics, had been planning to leave the city, but when Caroline had offered him a job as a professor at the school, he had gladly accepted the opportunity to help train young witches to use their magic for good.

"What are you smiling at?" Klaus asked as he walked up behind her.

"Our girls are getting along," Caroline told him. "Acting like sisters."

"Well, that's what they are, aren't they?" Klaus asked.

"Technically not, though apparently they want us to get married if only so that we'll stop embarrassing them with our attempts to find alternatives to 'husband and wife' that accurately portray the permanence of our relationship," Caroline said.

"I'll take it under advisement," Klaus replied, which under any other circumstances would mean an automatic yes to whatever the girls wanted.

"Whether they're legally related or not, I'm glad they have each other," Caroline said. "I've already started brainstorming our itinerary for once the twins graduate."

"Really?"

"Yes, I'm trying to avoid the empty nest thing, it sounds sad," Caroline explained. "So I'm making plans to put Vincent in charge of the school and start our world adventure as soon as our girls don't need us day-in-and-day-out anymore."

"I told you I would take you wherever you wanted, and I intend to keep that promise," Klaus smiled.

"And since you only have pure intentions…" Caroline trailed off with a grin. "I'm sorry, I have to go make a speech during the welcome assembly we planned for homeroom today. I'll see you at dinner tonight, if I can't find a way to sneak out and see you earlier. I love you."

She stretched up on her toes to kiss Klaus.

"I love you, too," he replied.

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Thank you very much for reading!

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lots of love,
charlotte