Chapter 8: Give Me a Reason Part 1

Here it is: chapter 8. It's almost just Klaus and Caroline oriented from beginning to end. This is the first part of my big confrontation chapter. Things are about to get serious...

Thanks again to the lovely reviewers: SittingOnTheEdgeOfTheUniverse and freshly caught Cornish pixies

It took Caroline a few moments to realise what Elijah was talking about. She mentally skimmed through her conversation with Elena and fell on the moment she'd told her Katherine was human. Katherine, who was Elijah's epic love. Katherine, who Klaus had been chasing her for five hundred years. Of course Elijah would want to protect her. For perhaps the first time ever, Caroline had power over an Original.

"You know," he said again, louder this time as he heard the sound of Klaus closing the door behind him. He grabbed her shoulders and looks straight into her eyes, pupils dilating. "You will not tell Klaus what Elena told you tonight. You will forget that Katherine has taken the cure." As he saw Caroline's eyes remain as they were, his eyes widened in disappointment.

"Yeah, I'm on vervain!" she snapped.

"Caroline, you cannot tell Klaus that Katerina is a human again. He does not need to know that he has a new doppelganger blood bag," he said.

She placed her hand on her hip. "Why shouldn't I? She killed me!"

Elijah nodded sympathetically. This was the least composed he'd ever been. "I know that. Please, Caroline. You know what it's like to have Klaus hunt the person you love."

He was right of course. Even though Tyler hadn't done half the deplorable things Katherine had, both she and Elijah were in the same boat. She sighed, "What does it say about us that we're living with the man who's going after our loved ones?" Between her conversation about Tyler with Hayley and now this, she was starting to rethink where her loyalties lay. Worst still, her morals were getting confused. She realised that she really needed to sort her life out. "Look, I'll think about it. I need to go find Klaus."

"Thank you," he said as she slipped out of her bedroom and then outside. She strode down the street and then turned into the Dauphine Street bar. It was time for her shift but the real reason was because, as she predicted, Klaus was sitting on the bar stool, drowning himself in vintage bourbon.

"Hey," she greeted him as she dropped her handbag onto the counter. "Isn't it kind of early to be drinking?" she asked. Klaus ignored the question, answering simply by taking a long swig of beer. She filled the silence. "So, you seem pretty relaxed lately."

"Aren't I always?" he asked, grinning. He cocked an eyebrow at her and leaned back onto his seat. "What do you mean?"

"Here in New Orleans, you're not plotting or murdering or anything. It's refreshing."

"Caroline," he said, "You've lived your whole life in Mystic Falls. You don't realise that leaving that town changes you, it clears your head, at least for a while."

Caroline frowned. "If you hated Mystic Falls so much, why didn't you leave before you had to?"

His eyes met hers. He said simply, "Every time I tried, there was always something in my way." He studied her face. Blue eyes, blond hair, she looked like an angel smiling down at him. He was the dark to her light and yet there was genuine smile on her face when she was looking at him. For a second, it seemed like she might be opening up to him. Then she spoke.

"If you're head's cleared, have you rethought any of the decisions you made in Mystic Falls. Like, say, chasing Tyler to the ends the earth?" Her last few words were filled with judgement and bitterness.

Of course, Tyler. That boy was a thorn in Klaus' side, getting jammed further in every single time Caroline said his name. Didn't she understand that he'd betrayed him and forced him to kill his hybrids, even though he'd toiled for months to acquire them? No. All she could think about was how much she loved Tyler and how if she buttered up Klaus enough, she could get him back.

Klaus jerked out of his seat. "I should have known that was why you were here," he muttered. He started out of the bar. This time it was Caroline who was running after him.

"Hey! What the hell do you mean?" she yelled.

He rotated so that he was facing her squarely. "I mean that was why you came to New Orleans. Silly me, thinking you had enough self-respect not to prostitute yourself for him!"

She smacked him and bit back, "Actually, that's not why I left. I left for me, so that I could live my own life outside of Mystic Falls and because I wanted to protect my mother!"

"So either way, you were just using me," he continued, letting the hurt catch in his voice.

"You were my ticket out of Mystic Falls, but I honestly consider you a friend," she protested.

Klaus still didn't understand. "Then why would you bring him up?"

"Is it that crazy that I might want to save the man who's being hunted because of me?" she asked. Before Klaus could decrypt what she meant by that, she raced out of the bar. She stopped a block away. Her heart was racing, not from the physical exertion but from the force of her confrontation with Klaus. The crazy thing was that she hadn't understood how much she was linked to Klaus' hatred of Tyler until now. Of course, Klaus felt betrayed by his hybrids but he was angry because she cared. She cupped her hands to her face, realising that confronting Klaus would maybe make Klaus even keener to kill Tyler.

About a quarter of an hour later, Caroline decided that Klaus would probably have left Dauphine and it was safe to get back to work. Much to her surprise, upon entering the bar she saw him chatting with Cami. He didn't seem to have moved since she'd left. Carefully, she snuck past them and into the kitchen. She noticed Klaus looking up at her but he didn't do anything. She breathed a sigh of relief. As she entered the kitchen, she saw that Sophie was staring through the small window in the door at Klaus and Cami. "I don't like him flirting with Cami like that," Sophie said explanatorily.

Caroline gaped at her. "He's flirting?!" she exclaimed, pressing her face to the glass. "With Cami? Why?"

Sophie shook her head. "I don't know. I tried to talk to her but I couldn't really without spilling some secrets. It's a shame there hasn't been any vervain in New Orleans in decades."

"He's being vindictive," Caroline sighed, turning away and pressing her body against the door. "I said some stuff to him that he didn't like and now he's taking it out on Cami to spite me."

"What did you say?" Sophie asked, interested.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Oh, I just asked him if he could stop harassing Tyler." Sophie nodded in understanding, having probably heard all about Caroline's ex from Hayley. She looked up as she heard her phone vibrate.

"It's a text from one of the other witches," Sophie explained. As she read it, she gasped and said, "I've got to go, like, right now! Can you cover for me?"

Caroline nodded earnestly as Sophie rushed out. Then she went back to staring at Klaus and Cami.

Meanwhile, Klaus was having a grand time charming the trousers off of the pretty bartender. He was not, as Caroline suspected, doing it to spite Caroline. He told himself he was only in need of some leisure, and he was awfully thirsty. By the time Cami's shift finished, Caroline had unglued herself from the window and Klaus took the opportunity to pull Camille outside into the alleyway.

He kissed her heatedly, delighting in being so close to her flesh and to the very blood in her veins. His hands explored the area under her t-shirt until Cami got self-conscious and pulled them away. "Not here," she breathed into his ear. Happy to comply, Klaus lead her down the street and finally into his building. Promptly his mouth met hers again.

It was her turn to strip him of clothing. As they pushed open the door to the loft, she tugged off his shirt and gazed down at his torso while he continued to kiss her neck and face. As he started to remove her shirt and then his trousers, she whispered, "Am I some kind of rebound off of Caroline?"

Klaus grinned wolfishly. "Do you care?" he asked, as he dropped his jeans to the floor. Admiring his form, she pressed her body up against his and snuck her tongue into his mouth. "No," she replied breathlessly.

Klaus pulled his mouth away and said, "Good, because you might not live to see the second date." Before she could ask him what he meant, his face unmasked his true vampire features and he sank his teeth into her neck.

After Sophie left, Caroline tried to keep an eye on Klaus and Camille at all times. She didn't know how to explain it but somehow she could tell that he was up to no good. Maybe it was the glint in his eyes or maybe it was the all-too-friendly way he whispered into her ear, pausing to inhale the scent of her lovely, warm blood but Caroline felt that Cami was nothing more than a piece of meat to him. Oh and then there was also the little voice in the back of her head telling her that Klaus was in love with her and would never flirt with another girl.

At that thought, Caroline pulled herself away from the scene unfolding before her eyes. She couldn't open herself up to thoughts tempting to accept Klaus' feelings for her. She started texting Sophie, enquiring about the big emergency at Witch Headquarters. Caroline could have sworn that she'd only turned her back a couple of moments, but when she walked out to the bar area, they were gone.

She panicked and pressed 5 on the speed dial. Klaus' phone rang twice before it passed to voice mail. Naturally, Klaus was ignoring her. She rushed out of the building and ran down the street, only a hair away from vampire speed. There she went; into the building, up the stairs, into the loft and finally into the master bedroom.

Caroline gasped when she saw Klaus draining the human girl of blood. Without thinking twice, she charged at him, knocking him off the bed. He snarled, an awakened beast, and pinned her neck to the wall. His monstrous features faded and he grinned at her. "Care for a bite?" he asked, pulling Cami's almost limp body to Caroline.

Involuntarily, she breathed in the scent of her blood. It was B+, her favourite. She turned away, hiding her face from Klaus. She let her bloodlust calm down, and then took Cami from Klaus. She felt his satisfaction as he saw her accept his gift. She looked straight into Cami's eyes and started her compulsion:

"You are to leave the French Quarter of New Orleans and you are to avoid it at all costs. You will forget everything that Klaus did to you tonight. You're just a little tipsy from drinking after your shift ended," she said. As Cami started to limp away, she called after her, "One more thing." She bit into her wrist and brought it to the bartender's mouth. "Go," she said softly, watching as Cami left the apartment.

As soon as the door closed behind her, she turned back to Klaus. Disappointment and sadness shone out of her face. Indignantly, he wiped his mouth of blood and rather immaturely he stuck his chin out, as if daring Caroline to reprimand him. She simply turned away. His actions spoke louder than any of her words could.

"That's it? No lecture about her being a person, not a blood bag? No search for the last fragments of my humanity?" he asked, grinning in conceit.

She stared at him in surprise. "Would it do any good?" She started to walk away but last minute she realised she couldn't just abandon him like that. She felt like she was responsible for his downwards turn. "Why did you do it?" Klaus was incapable of answering because he didn't even know himself. "Was it because I said something about Tyler; did you want to take your revenge or make me jealous or something?"

"How would I make you jealous when you've made it so perfectly obvious that you couldn't care less about me?!" he exclaimed.

"That's not true!" Caroline said. "I care, Klaus. If you thought I didn't then you wouldn't have done all this!"

"Did it ever occur to you that I was just thirsty? We're vampires, Caroline, it's what we do." Caroline could almost hear frost creep up into his voice.

Caroline shook her head fervently. "No, no, that's not it. I know you, you strike out because you're angry at the world, and most of all because you're hurt." She took a deep breath. She was going to be the bigger person here. "I'm sorry that I hurt you, Klaus, but you can't be mad at me because I'm trying to protect the man that I care for."

"Which one?" Klaus challenged. It was like he'd thrown down a gauntlet, like he was daring to deny the feelings she had for him.

"What are you talking about?" she replied quietly.

"I'm talking about how you're deeply attracted to me," he said. She scoffed at him. "Are we going to dodge around this for the rest of our lives? In a year, I might kiss you and in a century we might have slept together but nothing will ever come of it?"

The future he imagined for them seemed daunting to Caroline. She could just about picture him being around for the rest of her immortal life. One hundred years down the line, she's in a pub in a place far away, she gets drunk, he's there, and they sleep together. It sounded really depressing. She gazed up at him. He was waiting for her to reply, a kind of desperate want in his eye. His hair was mussed and blood stained his clothing. His mouth was in a tight, serious line.

Without thinking, she lunged for him, hooked arms around his neck and kissed him. It was rough at first, passionate, then it softened. She broke away. He stared at her, grinning, not at all smugly but with genuine happiness.

Out of the window, they heard a cry. Caroline rushed to the window and saw Marcel's vampires dragging five witches through the streets. Sophie was one of them.

Please, please comment. I want to know what you thought about the kiss, the argument, etc and all your expectations for the next chapter.

Since this is a two-part chapter, I'll probably have the next chapter out within a couple of days, and then, unfortunately a short break.

Thanks!

-Brianne.