/|\ Tourist /|\
/|\
Klaus isn't even gone for half an hour, but it is enough time to find their room trashed.
His face is cool, calm, and completely blank, but on the inside he is in shock. Furniture is shattered, the walls dented, and generic photographs that came with their expensive hotel room is in fragments on the floor. Goose feathers from the pillows flutter around in the air endlessly. The canvas bag slung over his shoulder fell to the ground, a blood bag slides out onto the hardwood floor. He had gone out to get her a supply specifically for her.
And in the middle of all this chaos, Caroline is sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees as if she is cradling herself. At the sound of the door closing, her weeping stops as she looks up at him, mascara running down her face and mixing with the red blood.
Something in his expression breaks her, and her entire body starts shaking again, more violently.
"What's w-wrong with me?"
They both know perfectly well what is supposedly wrong with her.
Immediately, Klaus is kneeling in front of her and cupping his hands around her head, one on her cheek and the other around the back of her neck, gently massaging the tense muscle. She leans into his touch, choked sobbing noises coming from her throat.
"There is nothing wrong with you, Caroline," He says lowly. At her name, she meets his blue eyes hesitantly. "You are a vampire, love, this is your nature. You felt danger, you reacted, and it just happens. It's instinct; it is natural to do this, love."
"No!" She spits angrily, and he is taken aback. "This isn't nature – killing people – it isn't normal! It doesn't just happen!"
She hates the look of patience on his face. "Sweetheart -"
Caroline's hands push away his own, a snarl contorting on her face. "Don't call me that!"
His vulnerable and kind expression turns to stone right before her eyes. She feels like flinching, but instead she stands up abruptly, pacing around the room to avoid him.
"Things just don't go away like that, Klaus! You – you're smoothing things over, making everything okay when it's not, Klaus, it's not! And you can't just say this is nature. Like it's part of the freaking food chain or something, because people are not supposed to eat other people! It is so not natural!"
She is panting now, and he is watching her, his jaw clenching. Shadows from the dark room engulfs one side of his face, creating high contrast with his cheekbones. Inwardly, she marvels at how someone can look so much like the devil and an angel at the same time.
"The line is blurring," Caroline looks desperate, and she reaches forward to grab his cheeks, squeazing them as if to emphasize her point even more. "That line that separates me from being – from being an inhumane monster and being myself, being Caroline, is blurry! This isn't me, this isn't who I am, I am not this – this person! With you, I'm this totally different person, but that isn't normal! Love isn't supposed to be like this, it's supposed to be -"
She suddenly stops, because his facial expressions is so broken and she wants to take back everything she says, take it all back and just hold him close instead.
But she can't.
Her hands slide from his face, and his eyes are wide as he staggers back from her. She forgets that he can be hurt, can ache from emotional pain just like any other insecure being. They stare at each other for a while, mouths hovering open. She can see his hands squeezing themselves into fists and turning white.
"I – I didn't mean..."
His eyes are like chips of flat ice. He gestures to the door. "Perhaps you should go home, back to your town," He is sneering at her, and she flinches. "Back to being regular old Caroline, trapped in Virginia and without a real purpose."
"Klaus," is all she whispers, her voice wavering.
The man in question ignores her, and faces away from her.
She stares at his back, her arms wrapping around herself. It seems like hours they stay in that position, but truthfully, it is only mere minutes. She quietly walks towards the door, grabbing her purse from the table. She turns the knob, stepping out into the hallway, and quietly shuts it behind her.
The click echoes in both of their ears long after she is gone.
Caroline is in the elevator alone, when she sees a reflection of herself from the interior walls. She gasps aloud at her face, and starts wiping it hastily on her jacket. She has to get the blood off. Thankfully, the elevator ride was long, and when it dinged open, her appearance was put back together – hair in a perfectly messy bun, face wiped clean of dried blood and tears, and clothes pristine.
She has no where to go, so she asks the lobby for directions to the nearest train station. She walks by the dark alley where the mutilated body of the man still lies, cold and forgotten, but she holds her head high as she passes it.
She's sitting on the train, as far away from people as physically possible, her purse in her lap and staring at the ground. Her eyes focus on her hands, with blood flecks in between her finger nails. A lump of cotton appears in her throat, and she lets out a sigh.
Caroline arrives at a connecting station around five in the afternoon, and takes the next train to Virginia. It's almost ten at night and deserted when she arrives, but compels someone to drive her to Mystic Falls.
"You're going to drive me to Mystic Falls. No questions asked, no polite chit chat." She growls at him, her pupils dilating.
The man nods his head in a daze as she slips into the passenger side, slamming the door closed.
She stops the driver outside of the town line, and compels him to drive home and forget this had ever happened. It's almost midnight when she walks past her house, staring at it with deep concentration; she didn't want to go home. Not yet. She would only disappoint her mother.
Her feet carry her to the Salvatore boarding house, knocking loudly on the front door. She hears muffled cursing upstairs, sees lights flick on as the person stomps their way to answer her call.
The door cracks open, light illuminating the front yard and her face. She squints for a moment, eyes adjusting, and sees Damon making a face at her.
"What the hell are you doing here, Barbie?" He grumbles, rubbing an eye.
She ignores his unpleasantness. "Is – I don't know why I came here. I just... couldn't go home. Not yet."
Damon stares at her for a moment, taking in her haggard expression and her appearance, before calling out, "Elena, can you come downstairs please?"
Caroline feels shock coarse through her veins. "Since when did you and Elena – oh my god, did you – but what about -?"
Damon grabs her arm and yanks her into the house unceremoniously. "We'll explain later, Blondie."
She's sitting awkwardly on the couch, and sees Elena trudge down the stairs, hair mussed and pajamas thrown on haphazardly. Her sleepy brown eyes flick up to hers, and she's instantly awake with confusion.
"Caroline, what are you doing here?" The brunette asks, her head tilting.
They sit in silence for several seconds, and then Caroline launches herself at her best friend, tears already streaming down her face as she wraps her arms around her friend's smaller body and squeezes her.
Damon looks shocked, but Elena sighs knowingly and hugs her friend closer, murmuring sweet condolences into her ear as the blonde weeps into her shoulder.
Eventually, after several hours of crying and comforting, Caroline falls asleep on the leather couch at the Boarding House, and Damon carries the sleeping Elena upstairs. She wakes up to a glass of blood on the coffee table and a headache. She drinks it eagerly, relishing in the fact that it isn't stolen from someone she has to slaughter like a cow raised for only one purpose - it's beef.
She mopes around their house several days, constantly plaguing Elena about her relationship with the Salvatore brothers, which she in turn ignores completely.
Caroline hopes that if she immerses herself with someone else's social life, she will forget her own.
She's sitting by the fireplace, nursing a glass of O Negative, when she thinks of her father. When she was little, before he left, he'd take her to the aquarium whenever she was sad. The idea gets lodged into her head, and before she knows it, she's in her car and driving there determinedly, albeit over the speed limit.
She's staring at the fish passing by in the round glass tanks, and she hears Klaus' words echo in her ear - "trapped."
He's right, of course. She is just as trapped as these fish in their tanks as she is in her own hometown.
/|\
Caroline is so used to traveling with a small bag and staying in a different place each night, she gets cabin fever in Mystic Falls. It's unsettling how the place she lived her entire non-vampire life feels like her own personal purgatory.
She's sitting on the bed in her room, staring at her dresser, where the travel books mock her, each page filled with memories and a promise that causes her pain. Angrily, she tosses a pillow at them, knocking over a lamp instead; it chatters on the hardwood floor. A piece of paper floats to the ground, its picture facing up.
It's a sketch of her, delicately drawn, with a horse next to her figure.
She whimpers inwardly, resisting the urge to rip the picture apart (even though she knows she'll regret it and just tape it up later) , before leaping off the bed and speeding to her car.
/|\
The places she has visited are filled with the memory of Klaus.
She's back in LA, hanging out with her sudden best friend Angelina Jolie, and finds that the sunny weather and constant happiness of everyone around her puts her off. Caroline knows that she doesn't love LA anymore.
She tries New York City again, but after several hours of exploring, she finds herself back at the 9/11 memorial, and she still feels the melancholia from their last trip there.
On a whim, she goes back to Italy, going up the boot-shaped country to Venice. She loves it. There are no memories of Klaus to haunt her time, and she spends hours a a day, crossing random bridges and going down back streets to residential areas. She learns how to drive her own boat, and giggles as she speeds down canals.
She feeds the thousands of pigeons at St. Marks square, smiling when the birds land on her arms and her shoulders. Children flock up to her, pulling at her legs to get closer to the ground so they can touch the birds, and she obliges, handing off bird seed and crumbs to the kids. At night, when her bed is too lonely and cold, she climbs up the clock tower over looking the entire city, watching the lights of the boats and gondolas pass by.
She is at the top of the Rialto bridge, her elbows leaning against the cool marble, ignoring the loud tourists who bump into her constantly. Her eyes fixate on the rippling water, which was surprisingly clear and a murky blue color.
A hand curls around her lower back, pulling her closer to their form, and Caroline almost jumps at the contact. But the familiar scent washes over her, and she doesn't turn around to meet the person head on.
"How did you find me?" She says casually.
"Your mother," Klaus replies, and his breath pushes a blonde curl against her cheek. She nods in response, her fists clenching with anxiety.
And then she turns around quickly, arms reaching up around his neck to pull him into a fierce hug, trying to put as little space as possible in between them. He returns her enthusiastic hug, burying his face into her shoulder as his arms squeeze impossibly tight. They are rocking back and forth, eyes closed and just holding each other close.
"I'm so sorry," Caroline whispers. "I'm so sorry."
He mumbles something in reply, but it doesn't matter, because they are together again. The bottomless pit eating away at her stomach fills up with joy. They pull back from their embrace, staring at each other, and she smiles blindingly at him, and he slowly offers his hand.
She takes it.
/|\
And another chapter, hooray! I'm so glad you guys are liking my story, it means so much! I don't know how much farther I will go with it though, but I'll still continue to write if you want me too.
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