I am SO sorry you guys! Going back to school from spring break + writer's block = not good for readers. I will try very hard to make this chapter good enough to wait for. I will incorporate some flashbacks, so if you like em' this is your chapter! Don't own TVD, for the thousandth time. :)

Real love stories never have endings.

-Richard Bach

Now

March 2012

Klaus remembered being a little kid, pretending along with Em that he had the power to make himself invisible. He'd put on one of his father's coats or she would wear one of her mother's rings and, bam, just like that, nobody would be able to see them throw their vegetables outside or sneak into the kitchen past 11 o'clock to get to the door to see each other. It was a handy thing, the suspension of belief. And it was apparently something you outgrew fast, because no matter what he did to imagine that no one could see him as he walked through the Mystic Grill, he could not convince himself that this was truly the case.

Klaus knew that nobody else knew about Emily's death, and this was just what happened when Elena Gilbert's peers realized that they were in a 50 mile radius of him, but he still felt hundreds of eyes trained directly on him.

He also knew that even the people that hated him most, such as Elena herself and the Salvatore brothers, could not help but to at least like Em a tiny bit. It was hard not to. She didn't really talk to them, but when she did it was never threatening (or catty like Rebekah). But mostly she would just stand beside him or go off and wander.

One of Emily's favorite pastimes was to explore through every corner of Mystic Falls and try to guess what used to stand here a thousand years ago. Every once in a while she would get stumped and ask him to try. But most of the time it took her less than two minutes to realize that the park was an old friend's house or the high school was an Indian burial ground.

Now, though, Klaus put on a smirk and walked straight to the table that sat Elena Gilbert and Damon Salvatore. "Ah, Elena, what are we speaking about today? Another plot of my demise, because if I remember correctly your last ten did not work out so well, now did they?" Klaus teased, bringing up a chair from the table over and setting it at the corner of their booth and sitting on it backwards.

Elena's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. "Never give up hope," she spat. "Just hoping it's sooner rather than later," she muttered.

Klaus laughed. "Oh, come on, love! I can't be that bad, can I?" Elena opened her mouth but Klaus cut her off. "Don't answer that," he smiled.

Damon joined on the banter. "Loner today, Klaus? Where's your pretty little girlfriend? Emily, right? If you don't hang on to her, I could just..." Damon smiled nastily and licked his lips.

Right then and there, Klaus realized that he would not even blink before ripping out the elder Salvatore's heart right here in front of Elena and every patron in the restaurant. But doing that would give him a weakness and…..Then he realized that there was no weakness. His weakness was now six feet under.

Yes, might taunt him to near death about her death, but that was all they could do.

One of the biggest fears that Klaus had about bringing Emily into his problem was that she was not an Original. Sure, she was about the closest thing you could get to one, but that was not enough. If someone were to catch her off guard, they could easily bring her down and kill her. Just like that.

Turns out, she didn't need anyone else to do it for her.

Klaus attention was brought back to the conversation at hand. "What's wrong, Niklaus?" Damon sneered. "Hybrid got your tongue?" Beside him, Elena's face showed the fear and worry she was feeling whenever someone she loved tried to take on Klaus, physically or verbally. "Damon, no," she tried. Damon looked to her, lifted up his eyebrows and shrugged, then glanced back to Klaus.

"But, seriously. Where is little Emily? Only one of you I actually sort of liked."

Klaus's face kept even. "Back home" he answered simply. "She couldn't make it today."

Damon scoffed, but didn't say anything more. Elena sat up, putting her back up straighter. Probably to show strength in herself, but Klaus knew how absolutely terrified she was. "Did you come here," she asked, "to just have a nice little conversation with us?"

He had been ignoring her for the most part; after a while Elena Gilbert got incredibly annoying. But now he could no longer find himself being able to throw out witty comebacks or taunts, even the ones that burned at the back of his throat. Now, all he could think about was Em; how she would always order a Coke and fries here, or when she got Elijah to split one of the biggest hamburgers Klaus had ever seen with her. That was just Emily. She was very persuasive.

Damon and Elena stared at him, waiting for an answer that would never come. Klaus could no longer speak, so he just nodded, smiled grimly, and stood up to the door and left, hoping that they did not take his silence as surrender.

The irony of the relief that swept over Klaus as he entered his brother's bedroom did not escape him. His house had been the last place in the world he had wanted to be, but that trophy now belonged to everywhere else in Mystic Falls. He sat on the chair on the other side of the room with his elbows resting on his knees, his feet anxiously tapping.

Elijah was sitting on the bed, back straight and looking steadily at his younger brother. "You seem restless," Elijah sighed.

"I went to the Grill," he explained. "It sucked." He laughed nervously at his use of words.

"Why?"

"Is it not obvious? They don't like me anyway. They loathe me. But then they mentioned Emily and I just….." Klaus trailed off, noting how Elijah understood what "they" was referring to without asking.

"Maybe you should say something. Tell them," Elijah suggested. Klaus stared at him dumbly.

"Have you lost your mind?" Klaus questioned, accusingly. "Why the hell would I even think about doing that?"

Elijah shrugged. "Maybe pity, I suppose. They all generally liked Emily. They might feel a bit sorry for you."

"That's the last thing I want them to feel for me," Klaus muttered. "They wouldn't feel sorry for me anyway."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I was there!" Klaus blurted. "Because I'm alive and she isn't. They would fill in the blanks themselves. Even if they don't actually know themselves that I was there." Klaus looked away from his brother, too upset to look at anywhere but the floor in the hallway.

"Does that bother you?"

"Hell, yes," Klaus said. "Wouldn't it bother you?"

Elijah shrugged again. "I can't say. I guess if I knew I was being true to myself, I'd want to believe that everyone would come around sooner or later to my way of thinking. "

Klaus snorted. "I bet all the witches in Salem were thinking that, too, when they smelled the smoke."

"What is it that bothers you the most?"

Klaus fell silent. It wasn't that he was not being taken at his word; if the situation had been reversed, he too might have his doubts. It wasn't even that everyone in the whole goddamned town would treat him like he'd beheaded six people in front of their children. It was, having seen him with Emily, they could believe he would ever willingly hurt her.

"I loved her," he said, his voice breaking. "I can't forget that. So I don't see why everyone else can."

Elijah looked toward his brother, pain streaking across his face. "Klaus? Would you tell me about Emily?"

Klaus frowned at his brother. "Why? You knew her too. Almost as well as I did."

"I just want to hear about Em in your own words. Is that fine?"

Klaus closed his eyes. How could he convey to someone else the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, turned the mug they were sharing so that her mouth landed where his had been? How did he explain the way they could be in a locker room, or underwater, or in the piney woods of Maine, but as long as Em was with him, he was at home?

"She belonged to me," Klaus said simply.

Elijah's eyebrows lifted. "What do you mean?"

"She was, you know, all things I wasn't. And I was all the things she wasn't. I could paint circles around everyone; she couldn't even draw a straight line. She had always been into sports, I never really was. She could play the piano better than the greatest prodigy. I could barely read the music notes." Klaus lifted his outstretched palm and curled his fingers. "Her hand," he said. "It fit mine."

Elijah nodded. "Go on,"

"Well, I mean, we weren't always going out. It happened later on, you know. But I've known her forever." He laughed suddenly. "She said my name before anything else. She used to call me Kiss, because Rebekah would call me Nik around Em. And then, when she learned the word kiss for real, she'd get it all confused and look at me and smack her lips." He looked up. "I don't remember that, exactly. Mother told me."

Elijah smiled and leaned back against the pillows, relaxed. He was now lost in the memories about a girl. He closed his eyes, and turned to Klaus. "How old were you when you met Em? I know you were there when she was born, but I forgot how old were all were."

Klaus furrowed his eyebrows together, deep in concentration. "Um, well, I was four. Rebekah was only weeks old. You were, I believe, thirteen or fourteen, not sure which. Kol was only about one and a half. And Finn was sixteen."

Elijah laughed. "You two were always together. Alexandra, remember Em's mom, used to say that she had to pull you two apart whenever you both started playing."

Klaus grinned. He remembered Alexandra, or Alex, as everyone really called her. She had loved them all, especially Klaus. But she was also incredibly soft for Rebekah. "We were always real close. Like brother and sister."

Elijah looked up. "And then, one day, you weren't," he whispered. "When did that happen, anyway?"

Klaus frowned. "I don't know the day, exactly. Em would. It just sort of evolved. Everyone figured it was going to happen, so it wasn't much of a surprise. One day I kind of looked at her and I didn't just see Em, I saw this really beautiful girl. And, well. You know. "

"And you really loved her, didn't you?"

"More than anything."

A cloud passed over Elijah's face, as though he was having an inner struggle with himself. "So how did you know? How did you know it was love?"

The way he asked it was not to be mean, or confrontational. If he had been bitter or direct, Klaus would have clammed up immediately. But as it stood, it was a good and valid question. "There was an attraction," he said carefully, "but it was more than that." He chewed on his lower lip for a second. "Once, we broke up for a while. I started hanging around with this girl who I'd always thought was really hot, Tatia, remember her? I was, like, completely infatuated with Tatia, maybe even when I was still together with Em. Anyway, we started going to places and fooling around a little and every time I was with Tatia I realized I didn't know her too well. I'd hyped her up in my head to be so much more than what she really was." Klaus took a deep breath. "When Em and I got back together, I could see that she had never been less than what I'd figured her to be. If anything, she was always better than I remembered. And that's what I think love is," Klaus said quietly. "When your hindsight's twenty-twenty, and you still wouldn't change a thing."

At that, Elijah fell silent. This was not the immature, spoiled child that everybody knew Klaus to be. This was the wise, loving part of him. The part of him that only Emily Harte could ever bring out. Now Elijah looked back up. "Klaus," he asked. "What's your earliest memory?"

The question took Klaus by surprise; he actually laughed out loud. "Memory? Uh, well, I don't remember much of being human. I don't know. Oh, wait- there was this toy that I had. Not sure what it was..Well, anyway, I remember me playing with it constantly and Emily trying to grab it away. She was, like, barely one."

"Anything else?"

Klaus clamped his hands together and thought back. "Her birthday," he said. "Now probably two years old. We came into the living room in the morning and her parents had lots of presents circled on the floor for her to sit down and open."

"We?"

"Yeah," Klaus nodded. "You know how we always used to go to each other's houses when we were kids."

Elijah nodded thoughtfully. "Tell me truthfully," he asked. "Do you actually have any early childhood memories that don't include Emily?"

Klaus tried to run backward in his mind, replaying his life like a loop of film. He saw himself standing in a makeshift bathtub (the kind made of things like metal back then) with Emily, peeing in the water while she giggled and his mother yelled bloody murder. He saw himself making a snow angel, swinging wide his arms and legs and hitting Emily, who was doing the same thing beside him. He caught glimpses and snippets of his parents' faces, but Emily was off to the side.

Klaus shook his head. "Actually," he said, "I don't."

Klaus found himself in his bedroom, the one he and Emily had shared. It was a simple room, mostly; nothing special. Although, it was immense in space. The king sized bed was the first thing that you saw when you walked in, the entirety of it covered in white, from sheets to pillows. There were two nightstands beside each side of the bed and one long dresser beside the bathroom door, all mahogany. Overlooking the back into the woods was a floor to ceiling window. There was a bay window on the other side of the room, the cushions and the draping curtain also white.

This looks like Em's room, Klaus thought. Completely white, completely innocent.

But if he had learned anything, it was that innocence can't save you. That life wasn't fair. That bad things happened to good people. And sometimes it caused that good person to do unspeakable things.

Like kill them self.

Klaus wretched his eyes away from the white, which was difficult. Everything was white. So, he looked to the dark, hardwood floors. Eventually he sat down, his back against the softness of the bed. And then, he lay on the cool, hard floor, his eyes drifting to the underside of the bed.

Klaus spotted a small, porcelain box, surprisingly. It wasn't his, so it must have been Emily's. But why would she keep it under the bed? The box itself probably cost hundreds of dollars itself, not even counting what was expectantly going to be something valuable inside.

But when Klaus reached under the bed to grab and open the mystery box, he found something, not valuable in money, but infinitely more. Inside was an extraordinary amount of things, considering how small the box had actually looked. There were probably about five letters, old and worn out, that they had written to each other over the centuries when they were apart. Klaus knew that there were countless of these letters around the house somewhere (and even more in places that he had no clue about), but these were her favorite, apparently. Klaus reached up behind him without looking and placed the letters on his nightstand gently.

The next thing he noticed was a necklace. Klaus remembered this from probably the 1700s or around that time, anyway. It had a simple silver chain, but that's not what Emily had loved about it so much. Connected to the chain was small heart – shaped pendant. Inside was a small amethyst jewel, because that was Emily's birthstone. February 10th, Klaus thought. This was her birthday present from him for a year. She was so thrilled to have that she never took it off. It's probably not even real, Kol had warned, teasing. If you're not careful, you are going to end up with a green streak around your neck. It was real, though, and Emily had loved it so much. Klaus stuck the necklace in his jeans pocket.

The last thing in the box was something Klaus did not recognize. It was small music box, a picture of Paris on the outside of it; Paris from probably the 1930s or 40s. When Klaus cranked the handle, La Vie En Rose began to play. A smile appeared on Klaus's face; this was one of Emily's favorite songs. He could imagine Emily, being dragged to shop by Rebekah in Paris, and finding this small little music box that played La Vie En Rose and being completely transfixed by it. Klaus closed the porcelain box, stood up, and put the music box on the dresser in front of the mirror.

He stared at the music box for a moment, watching the picture of Paris at night, beautiful and bright. Klaus snatched the box back up and sat on the bed that he had once shared with Emily, the one where her dead body lied for hours, and played La Vie En Rose. He let his eyes go wide and stared at the box until he was seeing absolutely nothing.

Then

February 1069 A.D.

"Happy birthday!" Emily's hand flew to her chest as eleven people suddenly shouted at her as she walked into her house. Then, realizing exactly why and who had shouted at her, Emily grinned and laughed hysterically with them as they laughed at her.

Alex came up and hugged her youngest daughter so tight that Emily was sure she would burst right there. "Happy 17th birthday, sweetheart," Alex whispered.

"Thank you, mother," Em whispered back. Alex let go and James came up. "Happy birthday, darling," he smiled. But he didn't hug her. He wasn't into the whole public display of affection like her mother was; Emily was suddenly glad.

Jasper walked up. "Looks like," he started, "a new wild child will soon be joining is." Emily wasn't sure, but she would bet that at that moment her mother's face looked like someone had just told her that she would have as many kids as Esther does one day; it would not be a pretty face. "I'm sure that if that was going to happen, it would have already begun," Emily stated. She was sure that when her big brother walked off he muttered, Late bloomer. But she wasn't sure.

Esther and Mikael walked up and hugged her together and smiled while she smiled back. But when she looked up, only Esther was smiling. Things had been strange with Mikael lately, but nobody was sure what was wrong with him.

In the past couple of years, Mikael had started to get abusive toward Niklaus and only Niklaus. Klaus wasn't sure why, but Mikael sure had a reason.

Breaking her thoughts, Rebekah bolted into her. "Now we are both seventeen!" she screamed. She did this very year considering they were only weeks apart. But Emily always screamed back, just to make her happy.

Elijah and Finn came up together, probably to save some time, and hugged her. "Happy birthday," Elijah congratulated for both of them. "Thanks," she smiled.

Kol came up and hugged her almost as tight as her mother. "Birthday girl!" he declared. Emily giggled.

Now, Klaus waltzed up. God, he's beautiful, Emily thought suddenly. Klaus's scraggly dirty blond hair and his clear, piercing blue eyes walked up to give her a hug that nobody else could top. Intimate and warm, his hands slid down to somewhere a tad lower than the small of her back. He turned back to make sure no one else was in the room; thankfully, everyone else had already gone into the kitchen.

Klaus buried his face into her neck and trailed open mouthed kissed along it. Emily buried her hands into his hair, smiling at the sensation. Smiling seductively, Klaus lifted his head up and went for her. Emily's full, pouty lips were soft and warm. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she pressed the length of her body against his. She tightened her arms around his neck. Klaus ran his tongue along her bottom lip and she opened her mouth for him, her fingernails scraping through the hair at the nape of his neck deliciously. He slid his tongue into the heat of her mouth, and hers eagerly glided against his. He felt his skin ignite every time Emily touched him. She nibbled on his bottom lip and he growled. He picked her up effortlessly and set her down on the back of a couch. One hand ran up her leg to feel the smooth skin beneath the hem of her skirt, fingers digging into her thigh. The other tangled in her hair, crushing her lips harder against his.

He was burning and he reveled in it. Kissing Emily was more than just mere physical pleasure; it was a need, a necessity. It was euphoric. Klaus knew he would never let her go, that he would keep her forever, by any means necessary. It was immensely satisfying to have her in his arms, so responsive, so willing. In that moment, Klaus knew that Emily would always be his, as he would always be hers. They belonged together, to each other. Always and forever.

After what seemed like hours, Klaus set Emily down and she grabbed his hand, intertwining it with his. Together, they walked into the kitchen where their families had been waiting and found out that they were only gone for a few minutes.