"When something terrible happens people wake up."

Jenny Holzer


Despite Caroline telling Bonnie that they wouldn't find anything else on Arcana XXII, she still continued to pour through the books they'd already gone through. Given Klaus' reaction, they were lucky the name was even in one of the books. Caroline had taken to doodling the roman numerals in the margins of her notepad, it wasn't particularly helpful, but she was still processing the fact the Klaus was going to be there imminently.

"Has Klaus ever mentioned the name, Michele?" Bonnie's voice sounds from behind a book.

"Ok, it's not like I committed to memory literally everything he said," Bonnie's disbelieving gaze peers over the book suddenly and Caroline rolls her eyes at her. "Oh, whatever. Judge me all you want, but you know if a guy ever said those things to you, you'd keep a mental bank."

"Whatever you need to help yourself sleep at night, Care. So no Michele?"

"Nope, why?"

"It's scrawled out in the margin of a slip of paper crammed in here. Michele to Forli with 1499 in parentheses and then is signed N. M." Bonnie leaves the paper where it is but slides the book over to Caroline.

"I mean, I'm not an expert in Klaus' handwriting, but those are his initials. It looks like it was being used as a bookmark though," Caroline doesn't touch the page, but slides it back, "maybe the page means something?"

"No," Bonnie wrinkles her nose, "it just says a bunch of stuff about justice and death or whatever."

"Find anything yet?" Stefan appeared over her shoulder, and Bonnie shoots her a panicked glance. They hadn't informed anyone that Klaus would be arriving shortly, and also possibly on the warpath. Damon was already on thin enough ice with Klaus and Alaric wasn't enough of a blip on his radar for Klaus to care about his life.

"Yeah, actually," Caroline returns Bonnie's stare before turning to Stefan, "Bonnie found a reference to a super old group that can help us. Like a justice league or something." Please leave it alone, Stefan.

"Great," Stefan claps his hand together, moving toward the table, "where do we find them?"

"I've actually got…" Caroline hesitates for a second. If she mentions Klaus' name, things between her and Stefan will just get that much weirder and there's only so much she can rock the boat in their close living quarters.

"Klaus. He's finding them for us," Bonnie interrupts. Caroline sends her a thankful glance. Maybe if Stefan heard the news from her he'd actually realize how desperate they were to find an answer.

"Are you serious?" his brows furrow while he waits for an answer. "Bonnie," he takes a breath and leans over the table, "are you being serious? The two of you invited the Mikaelsons back into Mystic Falls without talking to anyone first?"

"Because Damon and Alaric were being considerate when they performed an ancient ritual to bring back the guy who locked you in a safe for 6 months without asking," Caroline snaps. Oh no, Stefan didn't get to accuse Bonnie of anything, not when he was constantly making excuses for Damon while everyone else dealt with the trail of disaster behind them.

"Look, I'm not excusing what they did, but love makes you do desperate things."

"You totally are excusing it, Stefan!" Caroline pushes her chair back and stands. "People die, they die every day and their loved ones mourn them and move on. I get that I'm not the most shining example of healthy mourning, but I'm not raising the dead, cheating on anyone with a freaking ghost, or oh my god, contemplating a magical organ swap!"

"I can see I've walked in at the right moment," Caroline whirls, of course she was the only one who didn't apparently notice Klaus come in while she ranted, "and I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Caroline here, mate. Your lot isn't exactly the pinnacle for healthy relationships." Caroline barely refrains from laughing out loud. That was rich, coming from Mr. I-Killed-My-Parents-And-Kept-My-Siblings-In-A-Box.

"Klaus," she smiles back at him, quickly burying her desire to laugh at his hypocrisy. They needed him on their side and she wasn't about to screw that up. He looks a little worse for wear, but given he managed to get to Mystic Falls from god knows where in just over three hours, she'll excuse it this time.

"Hello, Caroline," she's glad when he returns her smile after he shouted at her on the phone earlier, she'd never admit it, but it eases the weight off her shoulders a little. "Bonnie, Stefan."

"Klaus." Somehow Stefan's greeting sounded a lot less friendly than Klaus' which was an accomplishment. Bonnie waves from the chair, which Caroline realizes, is about as nice as she's ever been to him.

"I won't be imposing on your kindness too long," Caroline sneaks a glance toward Bonnie when the word kindness drips from his lips like poisoned honey. Bonnie rolls her eyes at the two men, shaking her head at their pretentiousness. "I've just come to collect Caroline." He turns to address her, "I'd sooner walk into hell than trust your friends so I'll be setting up at my former residence."

"Super," she bites, walking over to the coat rack to grab a jacket and her purse before whirling on the two men, "could you two be any less helpful? Honestly," shaking her head, she directs a frown toward the only other sane person in the room, "Bonnie, I'll text you."

Thankfully, Klaus follows her out the front door without any more snarky comments, letting it latch behind him and the ensuing battle of wills that was about to happen. If this was going to be as bad as they all knew it was, they'd need to actually stop bickering for 30 seconds straight. Hopefully Klaus' knowledge of whatever the hell this group was could actually get them out of the hole they'd managed to dig themselves into.

She doesn't have time to think about anything else, like how he'd opened the car door for her, or that they were going to his big, secluded, and most importantly empty house. No, she'd much rather think about the end of the world than the trouble they could get into where they wouldn't be heard.

"I need to know exactly what you all have done, because if you actually require the services of Arcana XXII," Klaus pauses and waits for her to buckle her seatbelt, "we're going to need a little history lesson." Ugh, and she was this close to wandering into his bedroom. Leave it to Klaus to ruin the mood.

"So after you...left, when Katherine died I mean," she doesn't miss the way the corners of his lips twitch, "we found out she was wrapped up in all sorts of Traveller magic, which still actually doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but whatever. Anyway, the Travellers wound up coming to Mystic Falls and basically screwed everything up. There were a few good ones, but there was also a lot of crazy."

"Yes, they're not known in the witching world as being the most stable lot," Klaus agrees, speeding through the streets. Caroline shoots him a glare for interrupting her but continues.

"So Alaric starts dating one of them, Jo, and she gets pregnant but then her brother like stabbed her in the stomach during their wedding, and then her brother, Jo's I mean, manages to tie Bonnie's life to Elena's so basically she's in a coma until Bonnie dies." To his credit, Klaus appeared to be understanding her jumbled explanation. It was hard trying to sort through all of that in her head, but she had the feeling that giving him an off-handed, you just had to be there, wouldn't end well.

"The fun never ends here, does it?" Cringing, Caroline notes how weary he sounds. She wondered what he'd been up to since he left, if it had been a welcome reprieve from the drama or just another game to play.

"Let's just say, we've really come to appreciate you as a villain," she jokes, trying to lighten the mood, "so then, what I didn't know because I don't make an effort to hang out with my high school history teacher, is that Alaric went totally crazy and was keeping Jo's body preserved. But I mean like, full on crazy. He kept trying to get Bonnie to do a uterus swap or whatever," words were unable to describe the look that Klaus gave her right then, "right? I know. Super gross."

"Is that even physically possible?" He asks, but she doesn't even bother with that one, giving him a look that hopefully conveyed her feelings on the matter. She knew she was walking a dangerous line going down that road with his murder twitchy hands and all, but he needed to know the full scope of crazy that had happened.

"So flash forward a few weeks and he's managed to get Damon to join him on a trip to crazy town. I'm not really sure how they did it, or anything considering the Other Side was destroyed like last year, but they stupidly decided to...ok, hold up, I need you to promise me you won't get mad because I had nothing to do with this," she turns to face him.

"I'd argue that you should have killed those two years ago," he answers as smoothly as he pulls into the wide drive. Caroline rolls her eyes.

"Klaus," she frowns, cocking her head.

"Fine," he relents, "I won't get too mad."

"Damon and Alaric somehow used blood magic to bring Silas back to life so he could bring back Jo and break Elena's curse," she spits out quickly, closing her eyes and biting her lip. Klaus is silent, he's silent long enough that she hazards opening one eye.

"I see. It's not really Silas though, is it, Caroline?" His voice is deadly quiet and he stares ahead at the front door, not bothering to move. Shit.

"No," she admits. Klaus was totally mad, "he doesn't look...right. And if it's possible, he seems more unhinged." The lopsided creature was...well, he looked a bit what she had always imagined Frankenstein's monster had looked like. One arm was too long, an eye drooped closer to his nose while the other sat higher up on his forehead. He stood seven feet tall now, body crippled and twisted in an awkward stoop.

"Well, it looks like you'll be needing Arcana XXII after all. Come along," Klaus sighs, finally sliding out of the car. Caroline hurries after him, only pausing when he unlocks the front door.

"So what's the deal with Arcana XXII? Why all the secrecy?" Her voice sounds too loud in the open foyer, too loud to be discussing something so secret. He yanks the sheet off the table in the entryway and pushes open the double doors on each side of the room.

"It's an ancient blood order dedicated to keeping the balance and it's a secret because we don't exactly want them massacred, do we? Not with your lot wreaking the type of havoc you manage to dredge up from the pits of hell," he holds up a finger, indicating that she should wait there, before speeding away. Caroline lets out a huff, she can hear him slamming doors open and racing all over his giant house. She isn't sure what he's looking for, but apparently he doesn't find it when he reappears at the top of the stairs empty handed.

"Right, so ancient blood order or whatever. What do they do?"

"I'm going to assume you don't know your tarot?" Caroline confirms his assumption with a shake of her head, "right then. There are 22 major arcana, the main cards," he's in front of her in a split second, pulling a deck of cards out of his back pocket. He cuts the deck with a single hand, offering her the top card.

"Temperance," she reads, picking the card from his fingers and glancing it over. She's seen tarot cards before, the were always brightly colored and new looking, but Klaus' tarot look much older. Klaus flips the other 21 cards over, so they face up on the table. "I don't get it," she trails off, setting the card back down on the table to admire the others. Each figure is depicted as a black marble sculpture, like a textbook image of the statue David, with gold lines cutting through ancient black stone.

"Many of the old witch lines were eradicated in 1484. Witch trials," Klaus shrugs, "they had a rat on the inside and were able to wipe out nearly the entire council. This created an imbalance that threatened our delicate perch, and you know how peculiar those witches are about their balance," she doesn't laugh at his glib humor so he continues.

"I'd heard a rumor about a witch in Galta, near modern day Istanbul, offering a supernatural army and power to those that wished it. It was only known as Arcana XXII within a very small circle originally. To the rest of the world," he picks Temperance back up and studies it, "it wasn't called anything, not to those who were ignorant of its existence. But people need a name to feel fear. Just as the name Mikaelson strikes fear in those wise enough to recognize its weight, Arcana XXII brings back memories to those old enough to remember its power."

"I should have known you'd been involved," she scoffs. Power and loyalty, she knew Klaus couldn't resist either of those words, even if it meant making a blood pact.

"And a good thing too," he hisses back at her, "your friends have been dabbling in blood magic which was wiped from all history for a very good reason. The only way I can even imagine a way to contain this disaster is through more blood magic which carries a price I doubt you're willing to pay." Not to mention the sheer number of favors he'd have to call in from people he was happy to never hear from again.

"What's the price?" Caroline asks cautiously. Klaus scoffs, this was the same girl that killed 12 witches to resurrect Silas in the first place, just to save her friend. It's a wonder they hadn't resurrected the world's most powerful zombie any sooner.

"Well I'm not exactly a blood witch, now am I?" He snaps.

"Look, I get it ok? We've created a giant mess and I really appreciate you coming to help us clean it up, I really do, but…"

"No, Caroline, you don't get it," Klaus laughs, "your lot has basically brought on the apocalypse. This is…" he brings a hand to his temple, not even sure how to help her grasp the gravity of the situation, "you've created a creature that has no goals, has no grasp on reality, and no tiny hold on sanity. This...this thing only wants to create as much destruction as it possibly can, and because you used one of the most powerful immortal beings as a vehicle, well," he flips his hands out, having worked himself into a pissy mood, "he's not exactly going to be easy to kill."

He wasn't sure she ever would be able to understand what those two fools had done, and she knows the same thing. Given Klaus' mood, Caroline had a decent understanding that they all wouldn't make it out of this, a fact she wasn't quite yet ready to admit to herself. But whatever Klaus was describing? She could no more fathom that than the endlessness of space.

"Do you know a blood witch? Or at least how we start to fix this?" Klaus doesn't answer her questions but slides four of the cards toward her. Death, the World, the Tower, and the Emperor.

"We'll start by finding these three," he tells her, pulling out his phone.

"There are four cards though," she eyes him, already knowing what he was going to say next.

"You've already found the Emperor."