Chapter 4: Love and pain are intertwined, just like you and I

Caroline woke up in an unfamiliar room. It was dark with its dark grey walls, easy lightning and the windows covered with thick, dark purple curtains.

She looked around and saw that the room actually was nicely decorated. That's not really the scenario you expect when you wake up in an unfamiliar place, possibly kidnapped.

The whole room went in dark purple, grey/silver and black. It was really nice actually, it looked rich. There was a sofa in the same soft, dark purple as the curtains and everything else made of fabric. All of the wooden items, like the bed, the book shelves and the beautiful desk, were all made of the same smooth grey/silver-like wood. There were three sets of wooden double doors in the room; one pair was in night black and the other two were in the same silver/grayish wood-sample as the furniture. The floor was the only thing that wasn't in the same colors as everything else; it had a more light shade of gray and was almost more white than gray. But of course half of the floor was covered by a thick, cozy, black carpet.

On the walls there were mirrors and pictures of her and her friends in black and white with frames of silver. Well that wasn't creepy at all. And in some corners there were actually dark green plants, in: drum roll please…. silver pots.

Caroline went suspicious out of the bed, which of course had dark purple and gray sheets, and walked a little curious and a little scared around in the room.

She looked at the book's and realized there was a lot of deep stuff there, but also some more light reading. She went on and was suddenly standing in front of the first pair of gray doors. She opened them.

The inside of what apparently was her own, huge walk-in-closet was just as perfect as the bedroom behind her. It went in the same color palette but in a lighter shade and with a more modern touch than the bedroom. Most of the wood had been replaced by silver-looking metals and glass, and the floor had a big, black wall-to-wall carpet. The closet had spotlights with bright, white light covering every single drawer and section. Caroline noticed all of her clothes and a handful of new ones were perfectly folded in the drawers or hung up on hangers behind glassdoors.

She got more and more creeped out by this whole thing. Everything was too perfect and too pretty. She walked out of the closet again and closed the doors behind her. When she was walking towards the beautiful desk, she noticed a sketch on the wall she thought she had seen before. It was of her one of those days last summer, when she was still nnhappy. Before her mother…

The sketch was so familiar to her, but she couldn't remember where she had seen it before. Caroline realized she didn't even know what she remembered. She couldn't remember the last thing she did to end up here. Now, why was she here.

A bit hopeful that the area surrounding the house would make her realize where she was, Caroline went towards the windows and opened up the curtains.

Pain. Burning pain. Caroline's body was shaking and burning as the sunlight hit her. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't move, the pain was too much.
A firm body lift her up and moved her back to the bed where the sunlight couldn't reach her.

Klaus pulled the curtains together again and sat down next to her in the bed.

Of course, now it all made sense. Why she couldn't remember anything (compulsion), why everything was so perfect (he was a stalker) and why she recognized that sketch (he liked to draw her and he was really good at it).

"What have you done to me?" she tried to ask, but her voice was out from all the screaming of pain, and what really came out was: "Squiiiii".

"Sorry love. Here, this will make you feel better and recover sooner" he gave her a bloodbag.

Caroline ripped it up and drank it with a wild expression. She gave Klaus a confused but mad look.

"What did you do to me? Where's my ring?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing, Caroline. I found you outside my door two weeks ago. You were hysterical, had no ring and looked like you had been tortured. You asked me for help and to protect you from what was hurting you.

"Yeah I don't think so... Wait, did you say two weeks ago?"

"Yes dear, I did. Why do you sounds so..."

"Because I don't know what's the last thing I remember!"

Klaus looked at her with, was that sympathy? in his eyes.

"I'm sorry I don't know what happend to you, I've been trying to figure it out, but the leads just stop. There's a dead end everywhere I look."

"I thought there was nothing that could stop you from finding out the truth. Who could cover up their tracks this good?"

"There's a few people, but not many." He gave her another bloodbag.

"Where am I?" She asked when she saw he wasn't going to diskuss the subject anymore.

"You're at my place, in your room."

"My room?"

"Yes, love, but the original idea was actually meant for someone else a long time ago. When you weren't waking up, I rebuildt the room and put your stuff in it.

You're welcome to stay here for as long as you want, I figured it must be hard to still live in the same house you used to live in with your..."

"Yes, yes it is, now tell me again why we're talking about this?"

"Okay, I can take a hint, we can talk about something else... Like your lack of memory. Now what is the last thing you do remember?"

"I don't, I don't know. It's all just so foggy." She put her face in her hands of frustration, and her blond curls fell down and hidd her quite crying.

Klaus lifted a hand, put a strand of her hair behind her ear and then took a careful grip of her chin and turned her face up and towards him.

"Try, go easy on yourself. You don't have to remember everything at once."

Caroline couldn't believe what she was hearing. She knew Klaus was in love with her, but he had never been this worried or caring before. She still wasn't fully recovered from the incident with the sun, and when she tried to stand up to walk around the room to let loose some of the frustration she felt, she fell headlong to the floor. Klaus caught her just before she hit the ground. She started crying a frustrated, terrified and angry cry, her whole body was shaking like crazy.

Klaus put his arms around her and they just stood there. Caroline remembered the last time someone held her like that, it was Matt, right after her mum had past.

No, wait it wasn't, she started to remember something.

Caroline was running through the woods. She had finally escaped. She didn't know where she was going. Just away, away from that cellar. Darkness and confusion surronded her.

She was weak and couldn't run faster than a human. Her blood wasn't rushing so much in her veins as outside of them anymore. And her whole body was covered in vervain dipped stakes and woodsplitter which were pointing out in weird directions.

She had gone without feeding for the past two days, and she was starving, so her healing process couldn't kick in. The twelve werewolf bites didn't really help er situation, neither did all the vervain that had been shoved down her throat.

She needed to find someone, someone who could help. It scared her to find out that her subconscious was already ahead of her and who it thought of first. By instinct, she had ran to this house, his house. Klaus. How could it be that the first person she ran to when she was in trouble, was someone who often got her and everyone she knew and loved in even more danger?

She was running through the open now, on the big lawn. She must have been screaming like crazy, because Klaus came running outside with first an obnoxious smile, that turned into worry and pain, as soon as he saw her. He ran towards her and took her in his arms the first thing he did. She was still so scared. Caroline tried to fight of his arms, but he just kept her in a hard, but gentle, grip.
She must have still been screaming without noticing, because he hushed her as he held her tight.

"Save me, help me! Please!" she cried.

She had stopped fighting him of, since it didnt make a difference. He lifted her up, carried her into the house and put her on a bed.

Caroline was still scared, scared that the woman that had been torturing her would still come after her. She tried telling Klaus, but he just kept hushing her and gently stoke her hair with his big hand. How did she escape? She couldn't remember. The only thing she could remember were those, those... She couldn't remember that either.

Instant pain burned in her body as Klaus kept pulling out the wood out of her, piece by piece.

When he noticed her werewolf bites he almost went into chock, they were everywhere.

"Caroline, what happened to you?" He said as he put his arm to her mouth. She fed from him, like so many times before. Why was it always she who got bitten by werewolfs all the time?

She could feel the hunger for real now, and she got greedy. Klaus let her feed, even though she almost drained him.

She looked up when her hunger was appeased enough for her to let go if instinct and realize what she was doing.

She pulled away quickly.

"It's okay, love. You were starving. I don't mind, but let me get you a couple of bloodbags now, so that you don't drain me completely." He smiled a relieved smile towards her when he saw that she was feeling better, even though she was still very confused and very scared.

"I don't know, I can't remember. There was something with her eyes... Something." She started freaking out, so Klaus took her in his arms. She was screaming, and screaming and screaming.

Klaus shook her carefully.

"Caroline, Caroline, Caroline! It's not real! It's over! Caroline snap out of it!"

Caroline opened her eyes and realized she had bed screaming and fighting here too. She calmed down a little, but not enough for Klaus to think she was okay. And she wasn't. She could still remember those eyes. Those eyes. How could she have forgotten about those eyes?

Klaus gave her another bloodbag.

"Drink up! You need it!"

"What I need isn't blood."

"You're right, that's why I spiked it with bourbon."

"Oh, thanks" she said a little out of it, how could she not have noticed the bourbon smell? It was overwhelming.

"What did you remember?"

"I..." She needed strength to tell anyone about this. She looked down at the bloodbag in her hands and then up and into Klaus' blue eyes. He smiled another one of his never-before-seen worried smiles. Caroline knew in that second that if there was anyone she could talk to about this, someone who would listen and not judge, it was Klaus.

She looked down at the bloodbag again and then opened it to feed.

A warm, comforting feeling ran through her body when the blood and the blood and bourbon mix got in her system.

She tried once more to talk about what had happened to her.

"I..." She realized that she wasn't ready yet. She didn't even know herself what really happened. She could just remember the pain and Klaus being there.

She looked up again, right into his eyes. There was something comforting and safe about him. How come she hadn't seen that before? She almost had forgot that he was a killer and manipulated people for a living. But then again, it was his nature, and hers too for that matter. He just embraced his nature a little it more than most people. So why couldn't she just see through that? Stefan had done a lot of terrible things too, and she forgave him. But on the other hand,

Stefan had actually stopped killing people and was trying to be a better person. Klaus wasn't really the not-killing kind.

He must have seen in her eyes that she wasn't ready yet, because he said:

"I understand, love, you don't have to tell me if you're not ready. You can figure this out in your own time." He leaned foreword and kissed her on her forehead.

"Just know I'm here if you need me." He turned around and was just about to leave the room through the black doors.

"Klaus!"

He stopped and turned around.

"Thank you. For helping me, I mean. I didn't know you could."

He started laughing.

"For you I can do anything, Caroline." And then he left the room.