A/N: Thank you so much for the feedback for the last chapter. This one's a bit heavier, and a lot happens, but I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you to Sophie and Wifey for beta work.
Hugs!
-Angie

"Katerina, it's your turn!" Kol called, trying to be heard over the obnoxiously loud hairdryer.

"My turn for what?" Katherine asked, walking out of the bathroom, her hair in curlers. "Kol, I unloaded the dishwasher yesterday, it's totally your turn. Also, I need you to help me with these, because somehow Saint Prissypants didn't manage to inherit my fabulous hair genes."

"Aren't you all supposed to be genetically identical?" Kol asked. "And anyway, I wasn't talking about the dishwasher I was talking about picking up Caroline."

"We are identical. I don't understand how she managed to make our hair texture as limp as her pathetic personality."

"Katerina. It's your turn to pick up Caroline," Kol repeated.

"No, it was your turn. Oh my god, Kol! Did you not pick her up?"

"I thought it was your turn!"

"Well, I thought it was your turn," Katherine fired back immediately before taking a deep breath. "Look, it doesn't matter whose turn it is. I can't go out in curlers, so you go pick her up and bring her back and we will never speak of this again, especially to Klaus."

"Right, right," Kol said distractedly, scanning the room for his keys and then flinching as the door burst open, Klaus walking in nearly foaming at the mouth with rage.

"Kol!"

"Nik, you weren't supposed to be back for another two–Why do you look like you're about to murder an entire town slowly and painfully?"

"Where is Caroline?" he asked slowly.

"Rehearsal," Katherine said.

"And yet, you both are here while she's not."

Katherine and Kol exchanged a look, and silently agreed that not answering was the best strategy.

Unfortunately, Klaus did not seem to be on board with said strategy.

"Where. Is. She?"

"Judging by how angry you are, I'm going to assume that you know and this is a test to drive the point home," Kol said slowly.

"Ten points to Slytherin," Katherine muttered dryly.

"Slither-what?"

"Call the Bennett witch!" Klaus snarled, interrupting Kol's question. "And Katerina, if she dies, I will–"

"Kill me, yes I know."

XXX

When Caroline came back to consciousness, all she could feel was a blinding pain. She tried to take a deep breath, but failed as the substance she'd been injected with flooded her system. After what felt like forever, she successfully evened her gasps of air and opened her eyes slowly.

The witch was gone, and the curtains were still closed. Her eyes watered as she tried to ignore the bone-melting burning fire that ran through her so that she could concentrate. She wasn't sure whether it was Klaus's terror or her own flooding her body, but she tried to push it down and focus on sending him anything helpful. It helped to tell herself to concentrate on certain things.

The fact that her daylight ring was gone was the first thing she noticed, but she tried to push it aside.

Sage overwhelmed her sense of smell, but if she worked hard, she could hear the faint sound of traffic outside, a lot of it judging by the constant motion of tires against pavement.

There was someone moving in the next room, and there was a tiny sliver of light moving through the curtains. Caroline hesitantly tried to swing towards it, and her leg didn't burn. Artificial light, then, she noted. So definitely a city or somewhere with streetlamps, and it was probably night time.

She tried to project the information to Klaus, focusing intensely on what she could see and feel, and she was rewarded by a gentle feeling of reassurance and love, which warmed her up from the inside.

However, she had a feeling that no matter how fast Klaus arrived, it would be better if she saved herself. She wriggled her wrists again, wincing at the pain, before gritting her teeth and pulling. There was some slack, but not much.

Dear spy movies, please don't let my life be a lie…

Two cracks echoed in the air, and Caroline hissed in pain as she pulled her hands through the loose knots of the ropes, nursing her broken thumbs and rolling her shoulders as the bones knitted together and the skin of her wrists that had been burned by the vervain regrew.

She was exhausted and achy and thirsty. She could feel her skin drying out as she moved, and she knew it wouldn't be long before it would be difficult to move. Desiccation had always seemed like the worst fate imaginable, but she'd never really been faced with it head on, and it terrified her.

She felt horror well up in her stomach as she pictured being locked in her own body unable to move, waiting for someone to save her, completely alone.

She felt warmth spread through her again, and she smiled, because she wasn't alone.

She never would be again.

XXX

"Invading my personal space won't make the location spell go any faster," Bonnie snapped, and Kol could tell that she was resisting what must have been the fifth urge in as many minutes to throw Klaus against the wall with magic.

Kol knew that it was hard enough to perform the spell in a moving truck hurtling down the highway at eighty miles an hour, but doing it with the Original hybrid breathing down your neck was even worse.

"Nik, back up a bit, will you?"

"You let her get taken, you don't get a vote," Klaus growled, and Kol rolled his eyes.

Bonnie stopped chanting for a moment to shoot Klaus a glare before resuming, the truck's engine stuttering slightly, and Bonnie huffed in frustration, her eyes filling with tears. "I can't do it. Are you sure that Klaus's blood will work?"

"It should," Kol said diplomatically.

"Well it's not working."

"Why not?" Klaus asked rudely, and Kol sighed in exasperation.

"I don't know," Bonnie said, and Kol could tell that Bonnie was near one of her rare breaking points. It took a lot to upset her, but she'd gone through a lot of change in a very short amount of time, and now the only person who had experienced that change with her was clearly in some very deep trouble.

"Well, figure it out."

His brother was absolutely awful at people. Awful. The worst.

"Bonnie, hey, look at me. It's going to be fine, all right, darling?" Kol said, cupping her face and wiping away her tears with his thumb. "It's going to be fine. Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Close your eyes," he repeated, turning her gently to face the map again and resting his hands on her shoulders. "Take a deep breath. Good, now let it out. Keep doing that, and try to find your power. Let it fill you."

Bonnie took in a shuddering breath, and he could feel the power crackling hot under her skin. He pulled his hands away slowly as a created wind picked up, making Bonnie's hair float slightly in the air. She began to chant, and Kol grinned as the bead of blood on the map crept north, which was thankfully the direction that they were headed, stopping in New York City.

"Well, that's excellent. A city with a population of over eight million people. It'll be so easy to find her," Kol grumbled.

Klaus was grinning though, and Kol raised an eyebrow at his brother. "I know exactly where she is."

"Where?"

"Well, I don't know yet, but I know I'll find her once we get close enough. The link should be able to sense it," he said before clicking the intercom button to talk to Katherine, who was driving. "Pull over."

Katherine obligingly pulled over, and Kol resisted the urge to roll his eyes as Klaus sped off.

"What the–"

"Vampire powers build cumulatively, and we're the oldest," Kol said quietly, answering Bonnie's half-asked question. "Nik is not only an Original vampire, but also a hybrid. I wouldn't be surprised if he could run at least 250 kilometers per hour."

"How many kilometers are in a mile?"

Kol sat down, his legs dangling over the edge of the open truck compartment, and Bonnie sunk down next to him. "A little over one and a half. He should be there within two hours, though I don't doubt he'll have to drain one or two people to make up the thirst from it."

"But that's awful."

"That's two random people in exchange for your best friend, darling."

"They're still people," Bonnie said weakly.

"Looks like you're in a bit of a moral quandary again, Bonnie Bennett," he said, trying not to sound too amused with her inner confliction.

Bonnie ran one hand through her hair, biting her lip. "No, I don't think so."

He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

"You're not?"

"Well, I am, but not as much as I would have been a month ago. You were right about the world not being as simple as it seemed."

"I know," he said, giving her a small smirk, and she just rolled her eyes. "Decided that not all vampires are the same, then?"

She snorted. "Definitely not."

"And there is such a thing as a good vampire?" he prodded.

"Stop fishing for compliments, Kol."

"I wasn't, darling. I was just asking."

She was silent for almost a full minute before speaking again. "I think it's a lot more complicated than I thought initially, and...and I think that I don't know. I don't even know if there's such a thing as a good person."

"Fair enough."

He pretended that the brush of their hands before he took hers was accidental, but saw her exasperated smile out of the corner of his eye. He looked at her and was about to talk when Katherine interrupted.

"So, are we going to head to New York, or just wait for Klaus to come back with Caroline thrown over his shoulder like a crazy caveman?"

XXX

Klaus dropped the body of the woman to the ground, not bothering to mourn her, and wiping the blood from his lips with his hand before speeding off towards the building Caroline was being held in.

He wasn't sure how he knew, but he felt like he was being pulled there.

The door slammed open and he stepped through with no trouble before being brought to his knees by an aneurysm. He gritted his teeth, trying to gather his strength to push through the onslaught of pain, and he could feel Caroline's presence so close. His vision was blurry, and he was just about to push forward when the aneurysm abruptly stopped. He looked up to see the witch on the ground with a broken neck, and Caroline swaying as she walked.

"Caroline."

She was in his arms before he registered that he'd moved, and he could feel her weight leaning against him, her body weak with thirst. "Caroline, love, look at me."

She shook her head, her breathing shaky and ragged, and he quickly bit into his wrist and pushed it against her mouth, feeling the press of her lips against his skin, the piercing of her fangs as she sucked from the wound, the color flooding back to her cheeks.

When she pulled away, he was feeling a bit light-headed, but that was easily fixable from a person on the street.

"What happened?" he asked, grabbing her hand and dropping it at her cry of pain, settling his palms on her waist instead.

Her hands were mangled, but seemed to be slowly healing themselves, and they both winced as a particularly painful sounding crack of bones shifting reverberated through the air. He squeezed her waist lightly and pulled her to him, his hands moving to rest on her back as he just held her.

"The witch injected me with something," she said quietly, her words slightly slurred.

"What do you mean she injected you?"

"I mean she shoved a needle into me and everything hurts and I don't know what it was."

"It still hurts?" he asked, feeling his insides turn to ice.

His blood was a potent cure, and as far as he knew, she was immune to werewolf venom. It just made no sense. "Vervain?" he asked.

"Maybe. I don't know. It hurts," she said, a bit breathless, and he could see the flush that had returned to her face after he'd healed her gradually fading, leaving her skin tinged with grey.

He picked her up easily, cradling her to his chest, and he ran, weaving through the busy streets of Manhattan, unsure of where he was going, but knowing it had to be somewhere. He saw a hotel and ignored the people giving him suspicious looks as he walked straight to the front desk and compelled himself a room, slapping down a credit card without looking at which one it was, if only to avoid any potential bureaucratic issues while he was trying to save her.

He held her to him while they rode the elevator to the first floor (it would be quicker to come and go that way), stroking her hair as she slowly went limp in his arms, her eyes closing.

"Caroline, stay with me, love."
"I'm so tired."

He could feel the panic welling up in him, and she shifted uncomfortably. He tried to calm himself down, knowing that she would feel his unstable emotions, which would just exacerbate the problem.

He set her down on the bed and pulled out his phone, cradling it to his shoulder as he climbed in bed behind Caroline, pulling her to sit against his chest and biting his own wrist to press his blood to her lips while the phone rang.

"Brother?"

"Where are you, Kol?"

He faintly heard Kol ask Katherine where they were before he came back on the line. "About an hour away from the city."

Klaus explained the situation as best he could and started to give him directions to the hotel when his brother interrupted. "Let me give you to Bonnie. I have no idea what a rock-feller is."

Klaus couldn't restrain an exasperated huff as he heard the faint rush of noise indicating that the phone was being handed to Bonnie.

"Which hotel are you at? I'll map it on my phone."

About an hour later, there was a knock on the hotel door, and Klaus opened it to see Bonnie and Kol on the other side. Bonnie ran to Caroline's side, and Kol turned to Klaus. "Katerina went to get blood bags."

"Good," he said, walking back to the bed and sitting down, trying not to reveal how light-headed he was from constantly feeding Caroline his blood, though Kol gave him a knowing look.

Caroline was beginning to look sickly again, and Klaus bit into his wrist again. Before he could press it to Caroline's mouth, Kol had bitten into his own and pressed it to her lips.

"Kol!" Klaus growled, but Kol's mouth pressed into a thin line.

"You're losing strength fast, Nik. You need time to recover. I can help."

"But–"

"God, Nik...Why do you always have to do everything yourself? Are you really going to stop me from helping her? Helping you?" Kol asked angrily, pulling his wrist away from Caroline's mouth when her skin had returned to a healthier color.

"I just don't understand why. This isn't like you–"

"How would you know? How would you know what's 'like me'? I spent half of the last thousand years running from you and a quarter of it daggered in a box. If anything has been made abundantly clear in the last two years it's that you don't know me at all, and that you're not interested in changing that."

Klaus felt his insides clench, his walls going up, the temptation to lash out growing with every second, but all he could think about were Caroline's words the night she'd accepted the bond that he should try.

He and Kol were far more alike than they were different, and that caused them to clash a great deal. Yes, he cared greatly for his little brother, and Klaus had thought Kol knew, but perhaps he hadn't.

His death had hit them all hard. It was unexpected and devastating, and the way that Klaus dealt with grief was to lock it away and distract himself with something else, and that something else became making a more concentrated effort to claim Caroline.

But perhaps he'd gone about it the wrong way.

Kol had looked down on them from the other side and saw the show they put on in public of not caring, and perhaps they'd been good enough at convincing the people of Mystic Falls that they'd convinced Kol as well.

The thought caused a wave of what was becoming a more familiar feeling lately. Overwhelming guilt.

"That's not true, Kol."

"Isn't it, Nik? Why can't you stop treating me like a constant fuck-up and assuming everything is motivated by my own self-interest? Trust me, Nik. Trust me like I trusted you when you pulled the dagger out of my chest. Give me the second chance the way I gave you your eighth."

"Kol, I–"

"You used to be my favorite brother, Nik," Kol said, venom in his voice.

"I grieved for you," Klaus said, his voice equally tinged with fury. "I nearly killed the doppelganger for it."

"The keyword there Nik is 'nearly'. You were more concerned with your new hybrid family than you were with getting your brother back."

"She was Caroline's friend," Klaus said, a bit weakly.

Kol gave a harsh laugh. "She would have forgiven you eventually and you know it. You had eternity to convince her, and the girl was a pretentious bore."

"Don't talk about Elena like that," Bonnie cut in.

"I will talk about the girl who murdered me any way that I wish to, Bon-bon," Kol said, and Klaus had never heard him speak so harshly to Bonnie.

"Leave us," Klaus ordered Bonnie, who raised her eyebrows.

"Excuse me?"

"This is a discussion for family only," Klaus said.

Bonnie shot him a glare and walked to the door, muttering that she'd be right outside.

"Kol," Klaus began uncomfortably. "I understand that it might appear that I only care about you when it's convenient, but I assure you that's not the case."

"Say it all you want Nik, but I want proof."

Klaus flinched, understanding his brother's need for reassurance, but not liking it one bit. "The daggers are in my studio in New Orleans in the cabinet behind the spare canvases. You may do with them what you wish."

Kol froze, his eyes narrowed, before an almost cruel laugh escaped him. "That's your offer of compassion for your brother, Nik? That you'll give up your weapons you used against us?"

"What do you want from me?" Klaus asked frustratedly, not understanding what he was supposed to do.

"I want the three hundred years of my life back."

"I can't give that to you," Klaus said. "That's impossible."

"I know."

He heard Caroline take a shaky breath behind them, and Kol immediately had his bloodied wrist pressed against her mouth, and when the color rose back to her cheeks, he pulled away and glared at Klaus. "I'm going to take Bonnie out to try to distract her from this, not that you care," Kol said quietly, walking away without another word.

Klaus stared dumbly at the closed door for a few moments before sinking down next to Caroline, taking her hand. "What are we going to do, love?" he mumbled, more to himself than to her.

"Make an effort not to be a gigantic douchebag. I hate to say I told you so, but…" Caroline croaked through her dry throat, trailing off.

"But you told me so," Klaus said, helpless to the affection creeping into his voice.

She began to turn towards him, and Klaus helped her, determined not to let her waste energy, making her huff before she spoke again. "Telling him where the daggers are is a good start," she said, clearly trying to encourage him.

"What else am I supposed to do, exactly?"

"Well, you can start by not murdering him for the kiss that's going to happen in the play."

"Beg pardon, love?" he asked, stiffening.

"You've got to be kidding me," she said grumpily. "It's acting."

"Right," Klaus said, gritting his teeth and trying to talk himself out of his admittedly irrational jealousy.

Caroline's eyes fluttered closed, and Klaus bit himself again and brought his wrist to her face. Her eyes fluttered shut as she drank from him before settling herself against the pillows. "You could also just make an effort in general. You know, be extra nice. Buy his favorite foods or whatever."

He didn't answer, shifting uncomfortably, and she cracked an eye open, giving him a dirty look. "Seriously? Do you really not know his favorite foods?"

"To be fair, food today is very different than it was three hundred years ago, love."

She hummed, snuggling closer to him, and he was unable to resist lying down to pull her to his chest, burying his nose in her hair.

"I love you, but you can be such an idiot sometimes," Caroline mumbled, and he barely registered that she'd drifted off a few seconds later, instead focusing on what she'd just said.

They were mated, and she'd accepted the bond, but it was the first time she'd ever spoken those three words to him.

Why did the milestones of their relationship always have to be the silver lining of the clouds that were his fights with Kol? he thought a bit miserably.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Any thoughts on what might have been the substance Caroline was injected with? Bonnie and Kol's growing trust? The Klaus and Kol fight at the end? Predictions? Favorite parts? Things you didn't like so much?
Let me know! :)
As always, you can catch me on thetourguidebarbie on tumblr.
Hugs!
-Angie