A/N: Yay! Vampire Diaries is back on TV! What did you all think of the new episode? Anyways, I hope you enjoy! If you have a minute, please review- I really appreciate it! I'd also be open to any suggestions or quote recommendations that you have, just PM me :) Chapter 6 will be up in the next couple days! Thanks again:)

Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Diaries

Lessons of Love, Chapter 6: Klaus to Caroline, Part 3

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." Albert Scweitzer

To Caroline Forbes, there comes a point in which you come to know another person well enough on the outside. You know their quirks and habits but you still aren't quite sure about all of their true thoughts and feelings and personal philosophies. And that's where Caroline felt she was with Klaus.

She knew him. She knew that he was not the evil, good for nothing Original that they had all pinned him to be. In the past few months, ever since the Original Ball, Caroline had come to a huge realization: Vampires still have feelings and thoughts and opinions.

Okay, Caroline knows that she already knew that. To say her immortal friends (cough, cough Damon) are not opinionated is an understatement. Her immortal friends happen to be quite vocal about their thoughts and beliefs, it just seemed so natural to pin Klaus' for him.

So the blonde vampire calls him.

"Yes?" he asks simply when he picks up the phone.

"I just want you to know that I want to accept your dare. For real this time, no strings attached."

She can almost hear the smile come to Klaus' lips.

He meets her thirty minutes later and they walk. They walk and talk about everything and nothing. He tells her his personal beliefs and she tells him her goals and dreams. It's almost like twenty questions. It's simple and easy. It's almost natural.

"Your turn," Klaus says, the remainder of a laugh in his voice as he had just listened to Caroline talk about how she had wanted to be Britney Spears when she was little.

Caroline stops and thinks. Klaus studies her patiently, with a raised eyebrow.

"You've been around for like a bagillion years, right? Well, what's the most important thing you've learned over all the time you've been around?"

Now it's Klaus' turn to stop and think. And he thinks. And thinks. And thinks.

"Well," he says, running a hand through his dirty blonde curls, almost nervously. "Love, you have to realize that there is so much that the world has to teach you. Some people learn those lessons a lot faster than others and I am a slow learner. At least, I consider myself to be. But I think that the most important thing that I have ever learned is something that I'm still working on."

"And what is that?" Caroline asked, gently.

"That sometimes we lose our ways. We…we seem to lose touch of ourselves, our true selves, over time. And its not just humans I'm talking about, its vampires too.

"I think that I used to be fun, at least that's how I remember myself before I was turned. When I became a monster I lost sight of Nik and became this Klaus persona. My family abandoned me and I felt myself spiraling through the many centuries and I can finally feel myself slowing down."

Klaus paused and looked at Caroline with a small smile.

"And its because I've finally met someone that I can be 'Nik' with. I don't have to hide my fears and anger from you, Caroline. You accept me and you make me better and I thank you from the bottom of my old, dead heart for it."

And it was then that Caroline knew that Klaus was not heartless. He was, in fact, the exact opposite. Klaus was just a person trying to find purpose in this world, trying to deal with the unfair acts that had been committed against him, that were out of his control, so very long ago. And because of that he was still, partly, human.

Essentially, he was just like her.