A/N- Okay, so a quick explanation as to why I am the most horrible person in the world. Disappearing for nearly a month and now only posting a short chapter.
In a word- Uni. In a sentence- Fucking uni has drained me completely.
So with my muse on vacation, I have to take a break for two days (now that all my essays are finished) and drabble away with some of my future works before
I can regain my momentum and give these stories the dedication they deserve, otherwise they'll suffer.
Thank-you for your patience.
P.S- What's with all the sudden jumps in favouritings and followings again? Have I been mentioned in another media article? If so, someone please tell me in the reviews because that's how I found about the one in the Klaroline magazine.
Anyway- here we go.
Klaus.
The Feared Vampire.
The Original Hybrid.
King of New Orleans.
Was sitting on the floor, his back against the couch staring blankly at the wall as the pain continued to sear through his heart.
He remembered this agony, he'd felt it when Finn had died, when he and his siblings had just freshly been connected to one another through one of Esther's evil spells.
And even though the magic had been undone, the pain had lanced through his heart as Kol had burned and now…
It wasn't as much the searing white-hot anguish as it was the sudden absence.
The hole that Elijah's death would leave in his life.
Elijah hadn't only been his brother, he had been the closest thing Niklaus had ever known to a loving father.
It had been Elijah's face he'd seen when he'd first opened his eyes.
Elijah's leather wristbands that had suffered when he'd begun teething.
Elijah's fingers that had held his hands when he'd been learning to walk.
Elijah had taught him to hunt, to survive in the wilderness and then been by his side- unendingly for nearly a thousand years. Sometimes hating him, sometimes fighting him but he had never stopped loving him.
Niklaus had known that and now…
Someone crouches down in front of him and holds out a cell phone, "It's Ms Pierce calling, sir"
Ms Pierce.
Katherine.
The one permanent thing in his life.
Someone had joked once that at the end of everything, when all civilisations had fallen and humanity was dead and destroyed, it would be Klaus and Katherine, emerging from their nuclear bomb shelters to raise armies of vampire cockroaches against one another. He'd laughed when he'd heard that but he had found such comfort in the thought, after centuries of seeing everything fade into dust in its own time, the idea that at the very end he wouldn't be alone.
"Katerina" he murmurs her name now, her true name, because after everything perhaps only he knows who she really is.
"Klaus" she can barely say his, choking on her tears and struggling for air, he wonders how she knows before discarding the thought, she has always known everything.
"I…" she breaks off and emits a strangled laugh, "I guess I should say I'm sorry for our loss or something just as useless"
"The Lord works in mysterious ways?" he suggests sarcastically and she laughs again,
"He has a plan for us all?" she counters and that statement has him thinking.
Niklaus had never put much store in the gods, the ones of Mikael, his biological father or even the God whom Rodrigo Borgia had converted him to.
But if there was a deity somewhere, with the power to give or take life…
It had just incurred the wrath of Niklaus Mikaelson and Katerina Petrova.
It had made a grievous error and would suffer dearly for it.
"You will stay in New Orleans" he orders, "I need you to watch over Erik and the Quarter"
And to reassure everyone because when word got out that Elijah, his wise Councillor was…
There would be full on panic, enemies would be arming themselves and allies would be crouching in shadows terrified.
After all, Niklaus was the blood-soaked monstrous King and Elijah was…had been his voice of reason.
Katerina would have to fill that role now.
"Bring back his body for burial" she begs, "Along with the heart of his killer"
He smirks humourlessly, "Oh don't worry sweetheart, by the time I'm done you and I will be bathing in their blood"
He ends the call and faces down his servant, "Get me a car" he snarls, "I'm going hunting"
Caroline felt bad.
She felt guilty.
But she supposed if her plan was successful Elena would forgive her.
Besides, the place had already been burnt out.
But still…
She winced as the crowbar brought down more plaster, crumbling to the floor as she hurled the long blue tool at the basement wall of Dr Gilbert's long abandoned medical practice.
Which adjoined the town hall, separated only by a wall that she had steadily destroyed in less than ten minutes.
Sneaking in to Dr Gilbert's office had been easy, she, Elena and Bonnie had used to sneak in there every Easter to hide eggs everywhere and she knew the back parking lot and the basement of the town hall…
She'd snuck down there when she was ten years old, convinced there was something hidden down there.
She'd found out at seventeen that it was a dungeon where she would be tortured for days.
By her own father.
These hunters want to come into her town and hunt her and her friends?
Bring it, she's survived worse, they've all survived worse.
She has to climb through the hole and winces when her hair becomes stuck on the concrete side of the town hall wall.
She pulls herself free and lands with a soft thump, pausing momentarily in the fear that someone has heard her.
That someone is down here with her.
She holds her breath and waits, when she does not detect any signs of life she sighs with relief and moves forward, inching up the metal staircase until she can hear what is happening above her.
Caroline hasn't learnt how to count the number of people in a room by their footfalls alone but she can distinguish voices.
There are at least ten people that are talking and two people arguing when she hears the word 'basement' and flashes back into the darkest corner, pressing herself into the wall as hard as she can and holding her breath.
As it turns out she needn't have bothered, the door to the basement was opened and two heavy objects were thrown down the stairs.
Caroline's breath catches in her throat and she squeezes her eyes shut because she might not know how to count people by their footfalls but she knows all too well the sound of bodies hitting the floor.
She waits until the door shuts again and inches forward, breathing as silently as possible.
Because the stairs wound in a tight spiral, the bodies are twisted on the rusted metal, hanging upside down with their heads facing the floor.
But she still recognises the woman in her hospital scrubs.
Meredith Fell.
And the man in the bespoke suit.
Oh God.
"Elijah!"
Caroline tries to climb the stairs around Meredith's body but her arms are splayed out and blocking her path so with a moan of 'Ew', she slips her hands under the doctor's armpits and lifts her up, carrying her down and laying her on the concrete.
She kneels on the stair by his head and awkwardly turns his body over onto his back.
His face has gone grey and the veins are protruding from his skin, the white oak stake is jammed into his chest and Caroline feels her eyes grow wet with grief.
Elijah had always existed in the periphery of her world, she'd known him as the vampire Elena trusted, the honourable Original.
But when she'd begun her relationship with Klaus, she had started to see Elijah as the elder brother.
The man who was so prim and proper in public but would walk into his brother's room whenever he felt like it, even if said brother was naked or in bed with someone else.
The man who always used perfect grammar but cheated at Monopoly.
The man who had welcomed her to New Orleans with astounding politeness and then shown her a pamphlet for male chastity belts.
He had a surprising sense of humour and was so kind to her, never judging her, thinking her stupid or looking down on her…
She reached up and tried to fix his tie before wrapping her hands around the stake and pulling on it as hard as she could.
The white oak weapon came free with a sickening slurp and she lost her balance, tumbling down the stairs and landing on her arse.
She hisses and swallows her curse, waiting breathlessly to see if anyone upstairs hears her and comes thundering down the stairs, armed to the teeth.
No-one comes down the stairs but someone goes up.
Elijah sits up with a strangled gasp and looks around curiously, observing his surroundings before he hears her whisper his name,
"Caroline?"
With an impossible grace, he spins on the stair and pulls himself to his feet, descending to the ground and offering her a hand to lift her up, but for all his controlled movements he's clearly still confused. "Where are we?" he asks quietly, "And whom is holding us here?"
"Okay" Caroline drew him back away from the stairs, "First things first"
She pulls him into her arms and grips him as tightly as she can, "I am so, so glad you're not dead!"
He smiles, "Thank-you"
She nods, "Next thing, we're in the basement under the town hall which I'm pretty sure is filled with vampire hunters who are trying to take out every supernatural in town…so…"
She trails off, Elijah's eyes have gone red and he's smiling, he takes her wrist with gentle fingers and cradles it, taking her fingers and wrapping them tighter around the white oak stake.
"Watch over this for me" he requests before flashing up the stairs,
"Elijah!" Caroline shrieks as the first body falls to the floor with a blood-curdling scream.
Shots are fired but they're blocked out by the sound of already dead hunters hitting the wall and ceiling as Elijah's fancy takes him.
She bursts onto the first floor and nearly collides with a man's head while Elijah is regaining his normal skin tone by draining a hunter dressed in army gear dry and somehow managing to look elegant as he does so.
Blood is splattered all over the floor and the walls and Caroline takes a few deeps breaths to ignore the delicious scent.
She is not hungry, she is not hungry, she is not…
"Who's there?!"
The shouting comes from down the hall and Elijah follows at her heels as she races to the office,
"Bonnie?!"
The door is locked but she manages to kick it open and when she sees her friend standing in the centre of the small room she tries to throw herself into her arms…but an invisible barrier stands between the two of them.
"Bonnie?" Caroline holds out her hand, "How come I can't reach you?"
"The Mayor must have made this office private property" Elijah notes, running his hand along the wooden panelling,
"Caroline, we don't have time for this we need to find our friends and leave"
She ignores him, Bonnie is standing there staring at her as if she's a complete stranger.
"Where's Klaus?" she asks dully and Caroline blinks in confusion, "What? Klaus isn't here Bonnie, he's in Richmond waiting for us…come on, we have to go!"
Bonnie's staring down at the white oak stake in her hand,
"You can't leave" she murmurs, "My father had my mother's family come in and ward the town, nothing supernatural can leave it"
Caroline flounders and turns to Elijah who nods quietly, "I encountered the witches on my way into Mystic Falls they're the ones who staked me"
Oh God.
"How do we undo the spell?" she asks her friend desperately,
"There must be something? Some sort of counter-spell or salt or…I don't know but Bonnie there has to be some way!"
"When will Klaus get here?" Bonnie asks, apparently ignoring everything that Caroline is saying,
"He won't" Elijah answers coldly, understanding the situation better than she does at that moment
"He's staying in Richmond amassing a vampire army to send to Mystic Falls if I am not back by midnight tonight"
His hand flickers to the watch on his wrist and Caroline figures that sentence is half-lie, half-truth.
She suddenly has an idea, "Bonnie, call your dad. Tell him this, he's a smart man, he'll know that however many hunters he has they can't possibly stand up to whatever Klaus throws at them. He'll have to drop whatever the hell he's doing"
"He wants you gone" she crosses her arms and leans against her father's desk,
"He wants Mystic Falls to be free of vampires, so he hired hunters and brought them to town, he lured you here as bait so that Klaus would follow and his entire line could be wiped out with his death"
Caroline felt light-headed, she'd known that Hopkins had hated vampires but she'd always assumed that he would eventually come around and accept their existence in their hometown.
Like her mother had, like Carol Lockwood had, like Alaric Saltzman had.
These people who'd had way more reason to hate vampires but had learned to live with them.
But now he wanted to kill them all? To kill Klaus and in doing so kill Bonnie's friends and family?
"Bonnie…look just get your dad to call them off and we'll all leave, we'll pack our stuff and go anywhere! Just please, let us leave alive"
"And where would you go Caroline?!" she demands,
"Back to New Orleans with Klaus and his sick, twisted family? And Elena? Would she and her boyfriend's go with you? And what about Jeremy and Matt? If you go into exile they'll have to go with you"
"And if we die what do you think will happen to them then?!" Caroline cries,
"Bonnie, if Elena dies today, Jeremy will get himself killed trying to avenge her death and Matt would die before he ever let that happen and that will be on you!"
"Oh so this is my fault?!" Bonnie stands up and stomps her foot,
"I'm not omniscient Caroline, I can't stop every bad thing that comes to town I can only do my best to help"
"Then help her now" Elijah interrupts,
"Call your father and attempt to reason with him, I've already slaughtered the hunters in the grand foyer, as long as Caroline holds the white oak stake I cannot be killed and I am sure that the Salvatore brothers will feel no qualms about killing anyone who gets between their loved ones and safety"
She simply sneers at him, "Elena was wrong, you're just as much a monster as your brother and you…" she turns to Caroline,
"You didn't even blink when he threatened to kill human beings so maybe you're right and I should have done more to help but I don't think I should have made you that daylight ring…maybe I should have tried harder to discourage Elena from transitioning…maybe I've just been holding on to the memory of who you and Elena once were, not the monsters you are now"
Caroline steps back and shakes her head, trying to dislodge the cruel words before they sank into her memory,
"We have to go" Elijah whispers in her ear, "I hear someone coming"
Whether or not this was true or he was simply giving her an exit strategy before her heart broke any further Caroline would never know, because she would never have the courage to talk about this moment with anyone.
She turns to leave before looking back over her shoulder,
"Remember Bonnie, please remember…when all this is said and done, that I loved you once as my own sister and I would have died for you. I still love you…will always love you and I understand you but I will never forgive you and I will do whatever it takes to keep my family safe"
"Alright" Elijah links his arm through hers and leads her from the town hall down into the alleyway behind the large building,
"Firstly, do you have any idea where your friends might be?"
Caroline takes a deep breath and runs her hands through her hair, "Um…I don't know, let me think…they won't be able to go home or to any of their regular haunts- which for Damon is essentially the Grill…um Damon and Stefan were both soldiers so maybe they're hiding in the forest?"
Elijah frowns, "For their sake I hope not…which wars did they fight in?"
"Stefan fought in world war two and Damon fought in the civil war" she answers while keeping an eye out for any impending threats,
"Are there any buildings where they could take a defensive position? Where they know the layout and could fend off any attacks?" he asks.
Caroline closes her eyes and tries to think what Damon would be doing right now.
Being a major asshole sprang to mind.
Rick's apartment building wasn't likely, it was way too close to the town hall and the church was full of windows, the library was no better…the school.
"The school" she tells him excitedly, "It's the safest place for them to be. They know the layout and it's impossible to track people through there"
He stands in the sunlight and brushes his thumb over his daylight ring, "Lead the way"
A/N- Yeah right, like I would kill Elijah!