a/n: Thank you all so much for the lovely reviews! I really love writing Klaus and Cami, but you guys keep me motivated to do it in a timely manner, lol. That being said, I wanted to give you all a little warning that I'll be out of commission for about 10 days, so I'll be skipping an update next week. I am not abandoning this story by any means, and didn't want anyone to panic when the next update is slow in coming. I'll have the next chapter up within two weeks.

Chapter 4:Turning Tables

Weak.

She was so weak when it came to Klaus.

How was she supposed to protect her kids from being hurt by his actions when she didn't even have the self-discipline to protect herself? She threw on a sweatshirt over her yoga pants and stomped back toward the living room where she'd sent him to wait after he interrupted her bath.

When she rounded the corner she found him kneeling in front of the fireplace, adding another log to the low-burning flames. She watched the muscles play along his back as he stoked the fire back to life, appreciating the ease and grace with which his body moved. Her palms itched to press against his skin, to feel his muscles tighten beneath her fingertips as she had once before. Instead, she clasped her hands together, her fingers turning white under the pressure, and made her way over to the couch. Ignoring the lamp, she opted instead to leave the room illuminated only by the forgiving ambiguity of firelight. She tucked herself into one corner of the sofa and pulled both feet up beneath her.

He sensed her return to the room, but didn't turn, instead, allowing her a moment to settle in. When he was satisfied with the quality of the fire, he joined her on the couch. He took his place at the opposite end, watching her watch him, cautiously. He hated the guarded look she wore when she looked at him now, but knew he deserved no less. Despite all his self-righteous tendencies, he knew Cami's reservations regarding him were well deserved. He would have to work on that.

First thing was first.

"I'm sorry, for what I said," he offered, quietly, but sincerely. "I should have never implied that you…that your son…" He tapered off, unable to find better words. The boy's existence was still a source of discomfort for him. Cami had implied that the child could be his, and though a small part of him had basked in the possibility, the realistic part of him had shut the feeling down quickly and thoroughly.

He was a hybrid and she was human and that was that.

The alternative possibilities made him immeasurably angry, so he tried not to focus on them too often. Once they were back in New Orleans he could keep his distance from Cami and the boy…maybe over time it would become easier to put the possibilities out of his mind, but for now, he was stuck dealing with them head on.

And so, the different likelihoods flitted through his mind once again…

One…Cami had, at some point, had an affair with someone else and was now lying about it. There were two problems with that possibility, the first being that he doubted she was lying, as she was one of the most honest people he'd ever known. Plus, he liked to think that he would know if she ever lied to him. The other issue with this theory was that, in order for her to have had an affair with someone else, he and Camille would have to have been in some sort of committed relationship…which, to be fair, they had not been. He hated this possibility.

Two…someone had somehow gotten her pregnant without her knowledge and therefore without her consent…meaning, against her will. This possibility caused him to see shades of red he'd never experienced before. If this was the case, which he hoped with everything in him it was not, he felt certain she had no memory of the…event. When she told him there had been no one but him, he believed her…or at least, he believed that she believed it. He abhorred this possibility.

Three…somehow, against all the odds, he and Cami had managed to create a life. This was the possibility he entertained the least, because it was the most unlikely, and it had the most potential to devastate him.

A son.

His son.

Their…

He pushed the idea away, reminding himself of the impossibility of it.

And so, he vacillated between the other two options.

Camille is a liar…or…Camille is a victim.

He pushed down the rage that simmered just below the surface and focused on her presence at the other end of the couch. She looked sleepy and warm and beautiful, and he thought about that night three years ago.

He remembered making love to her, her body pliant and blessedly warm against his. He remembered lying with her in his arms afterwards, burying his face in her soft hair, breathing in the scent of her.

"I'll do it," she whispered, and he pulled back to look her in the eye.She looked back at him with those wide luminous eyes that he found it so easy to lose himself in.

"I'll protect Hope.You can compel me.I'll do it…" she said, raising her chin, putting forth a bravado he was certain she didn't feel.

He trusted her though, more than anyone else, to keep Hope safe, to care for his child until he could come for them.

"I'll find you.When it's safe…I'll find you," he said, running his fingertip softly along her brow, the bridge of her nose, across her lips.

"Promise?" she whispered, her voice trembling only slightly.

"I promise," he whispered back, pressing his lips to hers, sealing his promise with a kiss.

"I believe you," she said, pulling him back to the present. "And I even forgive you, Klaus. I know you were angry…maybe even hurt," she said the words softly. "But…" she shook her head, "I don't know if I can ever forget those words."

He nodded, his heart uncharacteristically heavy. "Fair enough," he conceded, seriously. "I shall do my best to replace your memories of my misdeeds with more noble actions in the future."

A small smile touched her lips at the thought of Klaus Mikaelson acting nobly. In the past, on most days, for him to act tolerably was all she really hoped for.

"What do you want from me, Klaus?" she asked, frankly. "I mean, obviously, you want to see Hope, but she's four so, she's sleeping at eleven PM at night, so…I mean, what do you want right now?"

"Such a simple question, with such a complicated answer, Camille," he said, his lips curling provocatively around the curves of her name.

She felt warmth in her cheeks and she sat up a little straighter, refusing to fall prey to his charms. She couldn't risk it. She had to stay clear and focused on what was best for the kids. And right now that meant figuring out what his plan was for them.

He could tell she was uncomfortable, so he gave her what he assumed she was asking for; a brief rundown of his plans for the immediate future. "I would like to get back to New Orleans as soon as possible. I know you probably have affairs to put in order here, so we can take a few days, if need be, but I'd like to leave as soon as possible. As for Hope…I took the liberty of peeking in on her while you dressed." He paused, looking away. "She's beautiful," he said, looking back at her. "Thank you, Camille…for protecting her…just as you said you would…as I trusted you would."

She almost thanked him…for keeping his promise, for finding them, but she was still angry it had taken him so long. "What took you so long?" she asked, taking the opportunity to voice her thoughts on the subject. She tried to keep the accusation in her voice to a minimum, but she wasn't sure she'd succeeded.

He bowed his head. How he regretted that it had taken so long to bring them home.

"When Thora threatened you, threatened everyone in my life that I…that meant something to me…I had to protect you all as best I could. The best way for me to protect Hope was to have her far away with absolutely no ties to me or anyone I knew. Davina cast that spell to make Hope untraceable by locator spells, but as you know, it would only work if she was with someone who was a stranger to me. My solution was to make you a stranger, to compel you to forget all of us and send you both far away, with only myself knowing where to find you. Even I didn't have an exact location, but when I compelled you, I added a vision…a suggestion, if you will…of a lighthouse and cold Atlantic waters."

Cami gasped.

"The lighthouse," she whispered. She hadn't realized that the vision he'd planted within her mind had come from him and not from her own dreams. She'd just thought she was drawn to the old lighthouse on Breaker Point for some inexplicable reason. Now, she knew there was a very good reason.

She remained silent, so he took that as a cue and continued with his story.

"Obviously, I couldn't know how close to the place you'd settle…a mile, fifty miles…but I knew you'd be close…close enough for me to find you easily enough when the time was right, when it was safe."

"So, what happened?" she asked, no trace of accusation in her voice this time, only a genuine desire to know the truth.

He sighed.

"Things fell apart after you left. Thora destroyed the talisman I needed in order to restore Hayley to her rightful form, so the wolves remained of little use to us in the fight to defeat her. She was more powerful than we gave her credit for…she bound Rebecca and Elijah to me and then stuck a dagger in my heart. Your friend, Davina, apparently thought you were better off without the likes of me in your life, because rather than try to find and undagger me in order to locate you, she left my siblings and I in our tomb, bound together and forced to slumber as long as that dagger remained in my heart. During each full moon, Hayley and her pack attempted to find Rebecca, Elijah and I…but when their efforts failed, they turned toward defeating Thora instead. They knew if they could kill her, her curse would be broken, unbinding my siblings and I, allowing Rebecca and Elijah to awaken and be freed. Unfortunately, it took much longer than they would have liked to defeat her. Honestly, considering the small amounts of time they had to work with…it's miraculous they defeated her at all."

He paused there, and she watched his face. Guilt was etched clearly into his features…it was visible in the set of his mouth, the squint of his eyes. He knew that the curse he'd placed on Hayley and her pack had cost them all something he was unaccustomed to caring about.

Time.

Not a precious commodity when you are immortal. But when those you care about are not? What then?

"About three months ago, Hayley and Jackson's pack finally managed to kill Thora, releasing Rebecca, Elijah, and I from the binding spell. Apparently, there was some debate amongst my siblings about whether or not undaggering me was the best course of action. It seems my beloved sister had taken a page from Davina's book, wondering if maybe it was best for you and Hope to simply remain gone, with no memory of those you'd left behind. Fortunately, Hayley can be quite persuasive where Elijah is concerned…she knew I was the only one who knew how to find Hope."

He looked down at his hands.

"It's been nearly three months since Elijah removed the dagger from my heart…and it was only last night that I was finally able to breathe without a crippling pain in my chest."

He raised his head, his eyes locking with hers, and Cami's heart wrenched at the sheen of tears she saw there.

She panicked.

She'd been doing fine up to this point, maintaining a decent amount of anger toward him for his long list of offences: walking in to her bar five years ago, making her care about him, compelling her, leaving her, coming back, taking her daughter, saying what he had about her son…the list went on.

But this? She didn't know what to do with this. Her heart willed her to take his words at face value…it pressed her to open her arms and comfort him…to take comfort in his arms.

Stay strong, she thought to herself. She needed to keep her head in the game while she figured out this stuff with Nik. Her son, her children, had to remain her first priority. She swallowed hard and cleared her throat.

"I'm sure finding Hope was a great relief to you," she managed, her voice thick and strained around the lump in her throat. She purposefully ignored the fact that it was her room he'd been skulking about in the middle of the night last night.

He looked like he was about to say more, to argue, so she pushed ahead, giving him what she knew he'd come for, "We'll go with you. We'll go back to New Orleans."

Her intuition worked. That silenced him.

"We can leave tomorrow. There's nothing holding us here." She paused, and then added, "None of it was real anyway." She stood abruptly. "Are we done here? I'd like to sleep if we're packing up and leaving tomorrow." She looked at a spot near his shoulder, purposefully avoiding his eyes.

None of it was real anyway.

Her words rang loud and clear in his head.

"Yes," he said, his tone subdued. "Of course. You're tired…it's late. Get some rest and I'll come back tomorrow."

She nodded, stepping around him and heading for her bedroom.

Feeling dismissed, Klaus couldn't help one last attempt at connecting with the woman he'd spent the last three months searching for. Of course, he'd been searching for his daughter as well…she was, after all, the single most important person in his life. But after a thousand years a man knows himself pretty well…and something inside of Klaus was telling him he'd been searching for Camille O'Connell a lot longer than three months.

He reached out, instinctively, and caught her arm as she passed by.

She looked at him, questioning.

A three-and-a-half-year-old memory came back to him.

They were standing alone next to the bar at Rousseau's.

She poured them both a drink.

"I'd taken a shift from another girl.If not for that, it could've been someone else standing here right now instead of me…" she said, sounding just a little sad.

He tossed back his drink, setting the tumbler on the mahogany bar.

He stared into her blue eyes, and she didn't look away.

"You know, I prefer to see it the other way.If it wasn't that night, this bar, that hundred dollar bill, it would've been Jackson Square, staring at a painting, or Frenchman Street, listening to jazz."

He stepped into her personal space, and she didn't back away.

"I would've found you…" he whispered.

His fingers tightened around Cami's arm, and he tugged her into his embrace.

She stumbled a bit, caught off guard.

He held her upright, folded her into his arms, and held on, tightly.

Hesitantly, Cami's arms came up and slipped around Klaus's shoulders.

His forearms tightened around her ribs, crushing her to him, and she responded more readily this time. She pressed her toes into the carpet, adding to her height, and allowing her arms to slip up over his shoulders and wrap loosely around his neck.

She felt him take a deep breath, experienced the way the air trembled as it left his body on exhale. Her arms tightened around his neck and the muscles in her throat worked, emotion overwhelming her as she tried desperately to reign in the enormous amount of relief she felt at being in his arms again.

"Took a little longer than I'd planned," he breathed into her ear. "But I found you," he whispered, fiercely.

She was nodding against his shoulder; the first few buttons of his dress shirt were unbuttoned, and he could feel her eyelashes brushing against the bare skin of his collar bone.

He slid his hand up between her shoulder blades, tracing her spine until it disappeared under her soft, blonde hair. His palm cupped the back of her neck, his thumb tracing the little whorl of downy hair at the base of her skull, just behind her left ear.

She shivered.

He remembered that particular spot from another time she'd let him cradle her in his arms.

Then, almost as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

Suddenly, she had pulled away. There had been a rush of cool air, announcing her exit, and then the door to her bedroom had closed, softly but firmly.

This time it was Klaus who was left standing alone in the dark.