Sedona, 2016

"Dude, I just don't get it." Mason is putting a stack of clean glasses onto the shelf, his head turned back to Klaus, "you two sound like the golden couple-in wolf terms anyway. Why did you let her go then? You know there's always the off chance that she, well, won't come back."

"When did you trigger your curse?" Klaus smirks when Mason nearly drops the glasses at the sudden turn of subject.

"College, sophomore year, why?" Mason makes a face, "and that was the lamest deflection I've ever seen."

"I wasn't deflecting." Klaus shrugs, "sophomore year you said? So you've been through the human route. Tell me, do you remember your girlfriend at the time?"

Mason furrows his brows, thinking hard, "barely. I was quite popular you know, and girls just…came and went. It was never really serious."

Klaus nods before sighing, "exactly. Young love is all nice and sweet, but fragile. There's always the doubt, the uncertainty, and people are easily swayed. It's the best time to fall in love, and the worst to preserve it."

"And you think that's what it was about?" Mason raises an eyebrow, "I mean you and Caroline?"

Klaus shakes his head, his smile wistful but his eyes firm, "luckily for us, we are not like that at all." There's a smug tone to his voice, but it soon turns to nostalgia, "she was young, but she never doubted us. She just wasn't so sure about herself, and…well, I could relate."

He knew he couldn't hold her back the second she brought up his speech about Budapest. He went there when he was only thirteen. His pack was just passing by, but he was going through a rebellious phase at the time and went rogue. He never regretted his decision, not even when he was yelled at and beaten on later because of it. As opposed to their cold words and vicious fists, he had the magnificent sight of an illuminated Danube River, palaces and bridges shining in the dark blue velvet sky.

It was his for no one to take, and it grounded him. In the light of the memory he saw himself, and his place in life.

Caroline may have been touched by the look on his face when he was talking about it, but she didn't see hers. Her eyes yearned to hold all the beauty in the world. She had yet to see what life had to offer, and what she could become.

"She still needed the chance to grow. And to be honest, so did I." Klaus grudgingly admits, "but unluckily for us, that was not something we could do together. Sometimes you have to be distant enough to gain the perspective."

Or at least that's what he reasoned with himself. What he told himself when he missed her so much he ached all over deep in the night. What he repeated to himself to keep the little sanity he had left. But the truth was he just wasn't able to deny her anything. She said she wanted it, and she got it. It was that painfully simple.

"Yeah that sucks." Mason sympathizes, "must have been hard. But look at the good side, you guys were dead serious with this. One way or another you'd end up together eventually."

He sounds so sure about it himself Klaus has to laugh, "that's very supportive of you mate, but there are a lot of…variables in this." He traces a droplet of water on the wall of his glass, "and one can only hope."

He often replayed the last night they were together. It was a full moon. Their wolves had got into a little game of hide-and-seek at Caroline's silent suggestion. One of them would disappear into the dark woods and the other would run after. The chase was thrilling and somehow reassuring. Time and again they'd always found each other. After that night Caroline's scent was seared into his mind like nothing else. Even to this day he swore he could recognize her in miles.

"Hypothetically speaking," Mason now has a mysterious smile on his face, but Klaus brushes it off as plain curiosity and nosiness, "if you see her again, what would you do first?"

Klaus doesn't even deign to answer. He just shoots him an incredulous are-you-crazy-or-just-that-dumb look.

"After that." Mason deadpans, "or have you never thought beyond it?"

If he only knew.

He pictured it so many times in his mind he's lost count. As much as he longs to hold her and kiss her and sink his hands into her blonde silky waves and make her scream out his name in ecstasy, he also misses her voice, her laugh, her company. Every time in his projection it's something different, something trivial and mundane but with Caroline nothing is really trivial and mundane. Every second in her presence makes his heart sing.

He wants to draw her. She must look different now, older and wiser. He wants to run his pencil through the paper like he run his hands through her body, every line and curve and ridge and dip. He doesn't want to miss even the tiniest bit of change, for her body now is almost like a map and each shift in contour has a story behind.

And he wants to hear her stories. Where she's been, what she's seen, who she's met. Knowing Caroline she'll have tons of photos and souvenirs ready to show him, to demonstrate her exciting discoveries nonstop with all those colorful details and witty commentaries. Or he just wants her melodious voice to flow through his ears, like he's felt in so many dreams, but real this time.

He also wants to go drinking with her. She wasn't even legal the last time she was with him. She was a light-weight and always turned to a handsy little cub when she had one too many to drink, but she said some of the most insightful things in her drunken state. He wonders if she's still like that now, if she still keeps all those endearing habits and quirks of hers.

There are so many things he wants to do with her. So many things that are just figments of his imagination, and nothing more.

"I don't know." Klaus hears himself saying, his voice flat and void.

Mason smirks, his eyes glinting in a mischief that Klaus can't quite decipher, "you might try turning with her first."

"What?" Klaus is half puzzled and half annoyed at the weird comment until Mason reaches under the counter and retrieves something. Without a word he opens his palm, and what lies there sucks Klaus in like a black hole. He suddenly feels hard to breathe but he can't for the life of him avert his eyes.

It's a white pebble.

He's up in a blink of an eye, propping himself over the counter, leaning into Mason's face, "where did you get this?" His glare is murderous, his body shaking imperceptibly from rage but his voice is barely audible, uttered like the coldest death threat.

Mason just shrugs, "she was here, Caroline." He smiles at Klaus' involuntarily softening features, "just this morning. She left this with me and asked me to give it to you if you ever happen to step foot in here." He wiggles his brows, handing the pebble towards Klaus, "it's a small world, isn't it?"

Klaus takes the pebble quietly. He doesn't trust himself to speak right now, so he just runs his thumb over the smooth surface of the stone almost piously, as if it were some priceless talisman, or a magical existence that he never expected to see with his own eyes.

"She was heading to the forests, you know." Mason gestures in the direction, "full moon."

Klaus finally raises his head, the pebble now held firmly in his fist. "Thanks," he told Mason, his voice low and calm, nothing like his tumultuous mind. All inexplicable thoughts and all unnameable emotions are swirling inside him, throwing him off balance. He's left disoriented and unsettled like he was minutes from shifting, a pain mixed with deep-rooted longing washing over him.

In the middle of all the chaos he feels a pull, so strange but so familiar, stronger even than the moon, stronger even than his own demons and fear.

And he answers to it, in a heartbeat.