Chapter 8: Who am I? I am Waldo.
"So if I've got this all right now: bitch-witch…"
"Stop calling her that."
"…asked you to hide that crappy necklace with unknown purpose. And then you and the bitch-witch…"
"Stop calling her that."
"…trashes her house. And then you apologize, the bitch-witch…"
"Stop calling her that."
"…somehow repairs her home without even blink and then she convinces you to do what she wanted you to do from the start?" Katherine said. "Correct?"
"Yes." Stefan answered.
"I've gotta give it to you, that bitch-witch…"
"Stop calling her that."
"…is getting good." Katherine got up from the cold rock they used as a couch and started looking at the cave's walls like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
"Yeah, she is." Stefan said. "And if you didn't get it the first four times I said it, 'stop calling her that!'"
"Calling her what, Stefan?" Katherine asked and turned around. Her face looked all innocent, but Stefan had learned to see through that façade a very long time ago.
Stefan sighed. "You know what you're calling her." He said.
"No, what do I call her Stefan?" She flirted with him and put on the same charm as he once fell in love with as a human.
"Just stop calling her 'bitch-witch' okay?" He said a bit irritated.
"Well isn't she?"
Katherine got the answer she was looking for when Stefan didn't answer, looked down to the ground and then changed the subject.
"So, where do you think I should hide this hideous thing?" He said and got up from the rock as well.
She shook her shoulders. "I don't know. It's you task, not mine. I couldn't care less about a trashy necklace that should not have seen a day in this world after the 80:s."
"Well, be like that then. But remember: bitchy girls don't get blood from Stefan's car." He used a voice that he knew would provoke her since it was the same one he used when he talked to small kids.
As he thought; she gave him a very angry look and went to the left side of the rock they'd been sitting on before. She took the ugly necklace from his hand, shoved up a handful of dirt, put the necklace in the hole that appeared and then buried it under the dirt she had previously dug up.
"A basic procedure. Are you happy now?" She said angrily
"Very." He smiled a little mocking smile. "No, actually, could you do it a little more to the left. That would be really helpful. Thank you."
"Oh you mean like this?" She said and attacked him in an attempt to tickle him.
He defended himself and they rolled around on the ground, laughing and tickling each other.
"Doesn't this look cozy?" Elijah's voice filled the cave with jealousy.
"Elijah? What are you doing here?" Katherine asked, sounding like a wife who just got caught by her husband in the bed with someone else. She had forgotten all about the torture he had been performing on her for days.
"I came back when I realized that you two were locked inside these caves. So, how about it? Do you want to get out of here?" He said.
"Yeah, that would be great." Katherine answered.
"Exactly. And I have to get to school." Stefan said to everyone's surprise.
"Well then. Just put on these…" He gave them each a ring with a rainbow colored jewel in it. "And you should be good to go."
"Thank you." Katherine said to Elijah when they finally got out of the cave.
Stefan disappeared as soon as he saw the daylight and two seconds later they recognized the sound of his car driving away.
"Could you give me a ride home?" She asked. "I'm too weak to get home on my own from here.
"Sure." He looked guilty when he understood why she wasn't strong enough. He was going to say something about it, put changed his mind when he realized that it was better just to leave that subject behind them.
"You want a bloodbag?" He offered instead.
She lit up a bit. "Blood would really not be the worst thing right now." She said as they wandered through the thick, green forest towards his car. They didn't get more than a hundred feet before she collapsed and he had to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way.
"What the hell happened?!" Caroline rushed to Stefan who sat outside their high school with the rest of the gang, watching the police carry out a black bodybag.
"He, she, it, got to one of the students. Austin Chase. Did you know him?" Stefan answered with a low, brooding voice.
"No, not really. But I mean, who did? He was that art geek, right? The one who always kept him for himself?" Caroline asked the question to the school building like it would give her an answer. But at least it was better than to look on the gang and see how Stefan sat as far away from Elena's seductive face as possible, Matt calling Rebekah to see if she got any info and to talk dirty for about ten minutes, and the disgusting sight of Bonnie crying into Tyler's comforting chest.
"Yeah, exactly. But I could have sworn that the new chick had become friends with him." Caroline didn't need to turn around to know how Tyler's face looked when he said it. She didn't want to make him think that she still had feelings for him, but she was still mad at him so she just turned around towards them with the bitchiest face she could and a matching voice.
"I told you guys it was something sketchy with her!" She had, unaware of it, turned against Bonnie, who snapped as she understood what she meant.
"My powers are not off! They've been working just fine! So if that Alex chick is a vampire, I would have known!"
"Oh, you're so full of yourself! It's so freaking annoyingly irritating!" Caroline vented.
"Isn't it always annoying when someone's irritating?" Bonnie grinned.
"Well not annoyingly!" As soon as she had said it, Caroline realized how childish it sounded and wished that she could take it back since there was no way that
Bonnie would pass up a chance to mock her to death.
"You know" Bonnie said with just that mocking voice Caroline had suspected, while letting go of Tyler and walking towards her ex-best friend. "Just because you put a 'ly' at the end of the word doesn't really make it a whole new word." She grinned in her face and then turned around again to go back to her moron boyfriend who was laughing like a donkey.
The next thing Caroline knew, she had lost control of her body and was attacking the very surprised dark-haired witch. It took the strength of both Elena and Stefan to pull her away from Bonnie but not even that was enough when she saw how Tyler protectively put his arm around her newfound nemesis, so Rebekah had to step in with her Original strength. All three of them, Rebekah, Stefan and Elena, had to push her down to the ground and keep her down long enough for Matt to yell "Caroline snap out of it!" in her ear.
She stopped kicking and screaming and gave Stefan an ashamed look. He replied it with looking very uncomfortable and turning away from her. So did also
Elena, Rebekah and Matt. Tyler's face was just filled with hatred and despite towards her. I his arms stood Bonnie barely up on her own. No actually, scratch that, she didn't stand on her own at all and her upper body leaned on Tyler in a very weird way.
Caroline didn't understand what was happening until she saw the bite mark on Bonnie's almost blue neck. Her face was so pale you could think she was made of ice. Caroline let a horrible thought slip through her mind and it wasn't until afterwards that she realized she had thought it out loud.
Everyone looked horrified at her and she slowly got up and brushed the sand of her violet summerdress. She was numb; she just couldn't feel a thing.
Everything went in slowmotion as she turned around, picked up her beige schoolbag and walked towards the school. She didn't turn around to see the disgusted faces of her friends who did everything they could to keep Bonnie alive, and she didn't stop until she had disappeared around the corner. Then she just fell down to the ground again and stated crying. She had never felt anything as soft and comforting as the schools stone walls at that moment and she leaned against it like it was her mom.
How could everything turn out this way? They had it so well last year, but that was before everything suddenly came crashing down like a faulty spaceship.
First Elena went all crazy about the fact that Stefan didn't love her back and decided to try to commit suicide. Then her mom mysteriously died in some drug raid she had been called in to do in a mansion just outside of Mystic Falls. And then on top of that, her best friend is suddenly telling her that her boyfriend made a move on her and that he shouldn't be trusted and that she did have feelings for him but that she wasn't going to act on them and even if she wasn't, she thought it would be unfair to Caroline to be together with someone who clearly was in love with someone else. So she confronted him, he said it was true, and at the same time as that happened, both of her best friends left town for Europe without telling anyone but letting everyone believe that Elena was still in town by blackmailing Katherine into acting like her.
And then they came back and Bonnie started sucking mouth with Tyler before she even had a chance to unpack her bags.
Oh, and she almost forgot the thing that really made this fall the worst one ever, which is nothing less than the fact that she got kidnapped, possibly tortured and now she's missing two weeks of her life and also living with the new sociopathic, homicidal and ferocious sheriff who she may or may not have feelings for.
How the hell did her life get so messed up? It was so simple before, just her and her parents living under one roof without the gay stuff, she had friends she could trust, there was no boy trouble or messy vampire issues. Life was just plain and simple.
" 'The icequeen finally turned to ice, huh?' Nice way to make your friends pull away even more." Klaus appeared around the corner and made her stand up as soon as he saw her sitting there, drowning in self-pity. "And Bonnie's doing fine now by the way, I gave her some of my blood and she seemed to have recovered just fine since she's now trash talking you like the pain in the ass she's always been." He took her hand and dragged her into his arms and just held her there, just so she would know that he would always be there for her.
She looked up in his eyes to see if she could find the answer of the question she was so afraid of asking. He started croon a classical melody he'd learned in the early eighteen twenties, and then slowly started to move with the melody. Before Caroline knew it, they were dancing a soft waltz to his crooning behind Mystic Falls High with its stone walls as hard and cold as the hearts of the unforgiving and judging people inside.
After a while, his crooning stopped but they didn't stop dancing. It was like they just couldn't get enough of each other's presence. Everything was perfect, he was perfect. But as always in Caroline's life, when something was perfect, it just couldn't stay perfect. The moment they had got ruined by the annoying school bell ringing and reminding her that she had to get to class.
She pulled slowly away from him and turned around to get her bag. "Thank you" She said. "And I think I said 'Oh look, the icequeen finally turned into ice herself, how poetic.'" She could hear his laughter even though she knew he tried to not let it out.
"Indeed you did, Love." he said, just an inch from her ear.
She smiled towards him and gave him a light push with her shoulder to get by him. "I have to get to class" She whispered and hoped he would stop her.
She didn't even get two feet before he took her hand, turned her around and pulled her against him. Her beige, soft bag fell of her arm and landed with a thud on the ground. He lifted up one of her blond curls and put it behind her ear. His hand slipped down on her cheek and pulled her face closer to his. She looked him in the eyes and noticed something in that blue color she'd never seen before; love.
When their lips touched, Caroline though she was going to explode. All the feelings she had tried to deny for so long came rushing to the surface and she put them all out there in this one kiss. His lips were so soft and gentle, and everything else disappeared. There was nothing in this universe that existed except for their lips.
He pulled away from her and the urge to pull him back in was almost irresistible. Nothing had ever made her as happy as she was in this moment. She was euphoric.
Klaus played softly with her hair and stroke his thumb over her cheek. He was smiling. Not his usual cocky smile, but an actual smile, with actual feelings.
"I've got to go." She said reluctantly.
"I know." He said and pulled her even closer.
She looked up in his eyes for the third time this day and was yet again overwhelmed by all the love in his eyes. She kissed him quickly on the mouth and he let go of her. She picked up her bag and started walking away from him again, wishing that he wouldn't let her go this time either. He heart stopped when he heard him call her name behind her.
"Caroline?"
She turned around and smiled the most beautiful smile.
"Yeah?" She said.
"I love you." He said and smiled just as beautiful back.
Caroline thought that her body would explode any second now, because she was too happy for it to hold it in.
"I love you too." She said, turned around and ran into the school as the bell rang for the second and last time.