A/N: Songfic to Blank Space by Taylor Swift.
Summary: Snapshots of Caroline and Klaus's relationship through the years.
Enjoy!
-Angie

"Nice to meet you, where you been? / I could show you incredible things"

In Klaus Mikaelson's humble opinion, he had the worst luck of anyone he'd ever met. Trust Caroline Forbes to turn up after three years of him waiting for her, having finally (hopefully) decided to take him up on the offer to be her last love (which he hasn't taken back, mind you), right when he's about to ejaculate into a blonde bartending human that if he squinted just so could pass for Caroline. Or, rather, she could pass for a half-arsed imitation of the real thing (the real thing being the livid blonde standing in the doorway of his bedroom).

He had never seen anyone pair righteous fury and a ruffled dress that pulled it off quite as well as she did.

His hips screeched to a halt (quite literally, as the bedsprings had always been rather creaky), and within ten seconds he was fully dressed, and had ducked the polka-dotted suitcase Caroline had pitched at his head.

He caught it before it hit the floor and set it carefully next to his bed, before turning to see Caroline staring at Camille, her eyes narrowed.

"So, who are you?"

Camille had pulled up the bedsheet to cover her chest, and was watching Caroline as though she might try to eat her face within the next five seconds. To be fair, if it had been any other vampire, Camille's look of complete terror would be justified, but Caroline always had exceptional control.

Not that Camille knew it.

"I'm Camille," she said, her voice trembling a lot less than Klaus would have originally anticipated.

Caroline made a dismissive humming sound and turned to Klaus. "Moved on to other blonde girls with C-names, now? Are you going to be her last love, too?"

Camille gave a dismissive snort behind him, but neither he nor Caroline addressed it.

"No, actually. Well, not on purpose. You were the only one that invitation was extended to."

"Okay, well, you can consider that invitation rejected, then."

And with that, the force of nature known as Caroline Forbes whirled around and stomped away.

Klaus watched her go, slack-jawed.

"You know," Camille said conversationally as she snapped her bra, "If that's the Caroline I've heard so much about, you might want to follow her."

And he did.

"Saw you there and I thought / Oh my God, look at that face / You look like my next mistake / Love's a game, want to play?"

"Caroline!"

She leaned against her car, arms crossed in front of her. It was clear that she had been waiting for him, but trying not to look it. She wanted to be caught almost as much as he loved the chase.

And to be clear, he really loved the chase.

"What?" She snapped.

"Jealousy isn't a good look on you, love."

Actually, he was lying. It was a very good look on her, but it didn't do to perpetuate this sort of behavior.

"I'm not jealous."

"That's excellent, because you never had a need to be jealous, Caroline."

"Oh, really? Because if I was jealous—which I'm not—I wouldn't believe you for a second, considering the fact that you just had your dick in some girl that looked almost exactly like me."

"Caroline, I mean this in the least demeaning possible way, but the sequel is never as good as the original."

Her mouth dropped open, and he realized that his analogy might not have been the most flattering thing in the world, even though he had prefaced it with the obligatory disclaimer.

"There are so many things wrong with that, I can't even start," she said, turning around to get into her car.

"Don't leave."

"Why not?" She asked, her hand wrapped around the latch to her driver's-side door.

"Walk with me?"

She glared at him, but fell into step with him on the sidewalk.

"I don't get it," She said suddenly.

"What?"

"Well, I mean, I guess I didn't exactly expect you to be celibate or anything, but you could have at least left your door locked."

He held back a laugh. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever."

"It's you that I love, Caroline," he reminded her gently.

She rolled her eyes. "I still don't get that. You've lived for a thousand years. If you fell that fast for me I have to wonder how many other girls you fed those lines to."

He smiled.

"None quite like you, Caroline."

"Ain't it funny, rumors fly / And I know you heard about me"

"So, how did you two meet?" Caroline asked casually, taking a sip of her cocktail.

"If you're worried about competition, don't be. I've lost count of all the times he's accidentally called me Caroline."

Caroline wrinkled her nose. "You're joking, right?"

"Nope," Camille said irritably.

"Why would you put up with that?" Caroline asked, honestly confused by Camille's behavior.

The other girl just shrugged. "I knew where we stood and he was good in bed."

Caroline choked on her drink, causing Camille to smirk. "What, didn't you know?"

Caroline glared at her. "Not to turn this into a competition or anything—" Camille snorted, "—But considering that in the last two days we broke a bedframe, knocked down two doors, and the number of wearable bras I have left sits at the one I'm currently wearing, I'd say that I know pretty well."

There was a semi-awkward silence for a moment before Camille spoke again. "He loves you, you know."

"He has a funny way of showing it," Caroline mumbled before downing the rest of her drink in one go.

Camille shrugged. "Well, he did say he wouldn't go back to Mystic Falls."

"How did you know that?"

"I hear things."

Caroline bit her lip. "I wasn't in Mystic Falls, though. I mean, I was for awhile, but then I left."

"Sounds like you're upset because he didn't take advantage of the fact that he only specified Mystic Falls."

"I'm not upset. It's just not like him, is all."

"But wasn't the reason you didn't want to be with him that he was like that? Didn't you make it clear that you didn't like how pushy he was?"

Caroline glared at the other girl. "Sounds like someone thinks they're a psychologist."

Camille smirked. "I am a psychologist."

Caroline just rolled her eyes. "Can I get another screwdriver?"

"So hey, let's be friends / I'm dying to see how this one ends / Grab your passport and my hand"

Klaus's study door opened with a bang to reveal Caroline, who walked in as though she owned his office.

Although, to be fair, she basically did.

"We're going to London," She announced, perching herself on the edge of his desk, her legs elegantly crossed at the ankle.

"Are we?" He asked casually, already trying to figure out how quickly he could conscript the jet (last he'd heard, Rebekah was off with it doing lord-knows-what in Spain with the Ripper).

"Yep. Tomorrow."

He nodded numbly. "All right, love. Anywhere in particular you want to see?"

"Yep," She said, slapping a large stack of paper that he hadn't noticed her carrying in front of him, "Here's the itinerary, color coded for convenience."

He held back a laugh when he looked down at the neatly printed schedule (which was, indeed, color-coded).

"Let me know when our flight leaves," She said brightly, already halfway out the study door.

He stared rather blankly at the spot where she had just been sitting for a few moments before. What. Just. Happened?

"I can make the bad guys good for a weekend"

"Klaus, seriously, it's just for a few days. It won't kill you."

"No, but they've certainly tried."

She just glared at him.

"What?" He asked defensively.

"Stop being such a baby about this. All you have to do is sit in the living room and not kill anyone. You've done it before, I don't see why you can't do it now."

"Perhaps that would be because every time I've been in their presence before I've had some sort of motivation for not killing them."

"Are you saying that I'm not enough of a motivation to be nice now?" She asked delicately.

"I'll be on my best behavior," He said immediately, trying to get himself out of the hole he'd just dug for himself.

She nodded once and then returned to her packing.

"Caroline?"

"Hmmm?"

"You know that I'm not going to change, right?"

She turned to look at him, folding a pair of jeans. "I know. I don't want you to change, I just want you to not murder my friends."

"But I can kill people that aren't your friends?"

She gave him an exasperated look. "I'd rather you didn't, but I know you will. Look, I just don't want to hear about it, okay? Not from you, not from my mom, not from my friends…If you kill anyone, you'd better do a damn good job hiding the body."

He laughed, and he could tell that she was trying to suppress a smile. "Is the Bennett witch your friend?"

"Yes," Caroline said warily.

"Is the doppelganger your friend?"

"Elena is, yes."

"Is the doppelganger's younger brother your friend?"

"Yep."

"The quarterback?"

She nodded. "Mmmmhm."

"The elder Salvatore?"

She snorted. "Unfortunately."

"Does that mean I can kill him?"

She opened her mouth, most likely going to say something along the lines of, 'As long as you hide the body,' but seemed to realize that he'd take it seriously.

"No," She said, sounding a bit put out herself, "You can't."

"So it's gonna be forever / Or it's gonna go down in flames / You can tell me when it's over / If the high was worth the pain"

"Happy Anniversary, love."

She gasped slightly when she entered the dining room, which had been rearranged to seat two.

"You remembered?"

He looked vaguely insulted. "Of course I did. You coming to New Orleans is ranked in the top ten most important moments of my life, you know."

"What happened to 'time becomes meaningless when you're a vampire'?" She teased.

He shrugged.

"That was before I met you."

She laughed. "Smooth."

He gave her a slightly hurt look. "It's not a line if it's true."

"And what about now? Is time meaningful now?"

He smiled at her, all dimples, and she felt her insides warm as he led her to a cleared space next to the dining table and clicked a remote control button.

As the acoustic guitar came over the speakers, she frowned.

"This is–"

"The first song we ever danced to, yes," He finished for her, offering her his hand.

She smiled at him and took it, letting him pull her against him, swaying slowly with the music.

"Who knew you were such a romantic?" She asked teasingly.

"Don't ruin the moment."

"We'll have plenty more for me to not ruin."

"Hmm?"

She smirked at him. "You promised me eternity, remember?"

"Well, Caroline Forbes, who knew that you were such a romantic?"

She rolled her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Got a long list of ex-lovers / They'll tell you I'm insane / 'Cause you know I love the players / And you love the game"

"Klaus?" Caroline called, "Who's Alphonso, and why do you have a letter from him declaring his undying love to you?"

Klaus poked his head into his study, where Caroline was pouring over a stack of letters in a box.

A box he'd never intended her to find.

"Alphonso was a young man who...er...fell in love with me. In the fourteenth century, I believe."

"And you kept his love letter?" Caroline asked, looking unimpressed with his explanation.

Klaus shrugged. "I kept love letters from all of the ones I've killed."

Caroline raised an eyebrow.

"You're different," He said quickly.

She rolled her eyes. "Clearly," She mumbled.

She didn't resist when he took the letter out of her hands and put it back in the box, closing it firmly.

"I love you, Caroline."

"Did you love Alphonso, too?" She asked, though her voice was more teasing than anything.

He gave her an incredulous look.

"What?" She asked, trying to look serious, but the smile she was trying to fight down soon gave way to her giggles.

"Cherry lips, crystal skies / I could show you incredible things / Stolen kisses, pretty lies / You're the King, baby, I'm your Queen"

She didn't like the whole idea of thrones and crowns. Sure, she wanted to be a princess when she was little, but being Queen was...boring. And she didn't mean that as an insult. Klaus was very efficient with his time, and generally made reasonably good decisions. He did what needed to be done with his little city-kingdom-thing (honestly, she still wasn't quite clear on what she was supposed to call it), and he never required all that much (read: any) interference from her.

And as much as she liked ordering people around, there wasn't really much point in doing it unless she actually had something that she wanted them to do.

She hardly ever came to what she jokingly called "the castle section" of their mansion because there really wasn't much for her to do when he was working.

And by working she meant "working."

"Working" as in telling people all the ways they'd failed miserably as supernatural beings and inflicting whatever punishment he felt like inflicting.

He occasionally insisted that she sit through meetings or hearings just to show a united front (she was pretty sure that he purposefully picked days where he was seeing people that he knew would mouth off so that he could enjoy her facial expressions), and today was one of those days.

She hardly ever spoke during these things, usually opting to stare off into space or sneak some reading in when Klaus wasn't looking, and as a result she was pretty sure that no one outside of the mansion had ever heard her say more than a few words.

For the last hour, the two idiot alphas in front of her and Klaus had been arguing in circles about some sort of territorial dispute, and she was at the end of her rope.

"It's our farmhouse. It doesn't matter if it belonged to your pack ten years ago. You moved on, we took it, and now it's ours," Idiot Alpha #1 said.

"The property is legally in the name of my family, so it belongs to my pack," Idiot Alpha #2 argued.

Caroline rubbed her temples.

"It doesn't matter if it's in your pack's name. We occupy it, so it's ours."

"No, you stole it from us."

"We found it while you were gone, we've been living there for years now, get over it!" Idiot Alpha #1 shouted.

"No. It belongs to my pack."

"Okay. Nope. I've had it," Caroline said loudly, causing everyone in the room to stare at her in surprise, including Klaus, "If you can present to us the legal deed that shows that you own it, then it has to be transferred back to you. Otherwise, it belongs to whoever is currently residing there," She said to Idiot Alpha #2.

"That's not fair," Idiot Alpha #1 said loudly.

"Life's not fair," She snapped back at him, crossing her legs with her hands folded in her lap, eyes narrowed, "Any questions?"

"You can't do that," Idiot Alpha #1 insisted.

"That's not a question, and of course I can. I'm the fucking Queen. Now, you need to leave before I bitchslap you so hard that your uvula shoots out of your mouth."

She leaned back in her chair as they left, raising an eyebrow at Klaus's almost awed expression.

"What?"

He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb and smiled at her. "Nothing, sweetheart."

"I want to go soon. Do you mind if I take off?"

She knew that it was important to him that she participated in the running of New Orleans, and she was willing to spend a day or two every month doing it, but she was at her limit for the day.

His lips twitched. "You're the 'fucking Queen,' love. You can do anything you want."

"Great. Well, Queen Caroline wants to go get a beignet, because she deserves one after that clusterfuck," She said irritably.

"I'll have someone get some for you," He said, squeezing her hand.

She knew that he knew that she had meant to get them herself, but she wasn't going to complain. If she had beignets, she could sit through the rest of it, which would make him happy.

Relationships were a two-way street, after all, and Klaus being happy was a good thing for the health of the Earth's population in general.

About ten minutes later she had a large platter of beignets sitting next to her, which she happily dug into while Klaus dealt with whoever was next in line.

She moaned as the taste of fried batter and powdered sugar hit her taste buds, causing Klaus to give her a heated look out of the corner of his eye. She licked her lips teasingly before focusing back on her food.

Fine, so sometimes she liked being Queen.

"Wait, the worst is yet to come, oh no…"

He held her as she sobbed into his chest, stroking her hair.

The day of Liz Forbes's funeral was sunny and hot. They had flown back to Virginia from their summer home in Paris when they'd heard, and Caroline had been unable to separate herself from him.

They were the only ones there–the rest of her friends having moved on long ago, whether to explore other places as vampires, or to explore other states with their spouses and children–and he led her back to his mansion after they lowered her into the grave.

She asked for blueberry pancakes, explaining that her mother used to make them for her when she was a child, but when he set them in front of her she didn't touch them.

They sat there in silence for awhile, Caroline glaring at her blueberry pancakes as though they had wronged her in the worst possible way, and Klaus watching helplessly wishing that he could fix it.

He couldn't.

"Rose garden filled with thorns / Keep you second guessing like / 'Oh my God, who is she?' / I get drunk on jealousy / But you'll come back each time you leave / 'Cause, darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream"

He dropped the heart that was in his hands and reached out to her with his bloody hand, trying desperately to think of a way to fix this situation that he'd managed to create for himself, but he was at a loss this time.

She stared at Enzo's dead body, wringing her hands, tears streaming down her face.

"Why?" She asked hollowly.

"I...I didn't know."

"You didn't know what? That he was my friend? I told you I had a friend coming," She screeched.

They had been together for fifty years, and he'd never seen her this angry before.

"Caroline…"

"No. Don't you dare fucking 'Caroline' me, Klaus. You can't...I won't let...I'm done."

"You're….done?" He asked slowly.

She glared at him. "Yes. I'm done."

Klaus watched her walk out the door that night, her polka-dotted suitcase rolling behind her, crunching leaves on the pavement as her hair blew around her in the autumn wind, and all he could think was that he would never see anyone pull off righteous fury and a ruffled dress quite as well as Caroline Forbes.

"But I've got a blank space, baby / And I'll write your name"

He finds the letter on what had been their bedside table the next morning, and vaguely wonders how she managed to get in without him noticing. Then he reads.

Klaus,

Don't put me in the box with Alphonso.

I'll be back someday.

C

A/N: Hope you enjoyed it. Remember to review :D
Hugs!
-Angie