Caroline sleepily searched for his warm body.
When she found nothing but cold, she shot her head up from the middle of the bed with a frown, because she was naked and resting on her tummy, under a sheet and alone in a huge bed.
She heard his soft chuckle and turned around hastily with a tuck of the sheet closer to her chest. "You're drawing me again, aren't you?" She asked him, before giving order to the wild locks that dangled in front of her face.
Klaus smiled, without taking his eyes from the pad in his hands. "No, I'm attempting to draw you, but my work is hard to achieve because you keep moving in bed, sweetheart."
Caroline slowly left the bed, wrapping the sheet around her body, and she walked over to him with a stretched-out hand.
Klaus smiled, handing her the recent captain of her peacefully sleeping in the middle of the bed.
Caroline wondered if the way that the sheet covered her so seductively wasn't Klaus's doing, but she quickly moved on to his other works.
There were so many drawings with her face, in some of them, she was smiling while in others she was caught looking at something.
Klaus watched Caroline closely and he smiled, knowing when she found her favorite portrait.
It was the one that he made of her with the Eiffel Tower behind her, the one of their wedding-night, where he had captured everything about her in exquisite detail, from the dress that she wore to the intricate way that her hair was caught up.
On paper he had a constant reminder of his happiest day, when Caroline had linked herself to him through mundane human rules that never meant anything to him until her.
For someone so attached to her humanity as Caroline was, this was the biggest proof of commitment and love that she could ever give him, and the biggest he could give her in return.
Caroline moved her eyes from the paper to him and shared a moment with Klaus, here was the day he had pledged himself to be loyal to her, faithful, and to never leave her side.
If anything, she felt as if their vows were the words giving life to that invisible gravity that kept them together no matter what.
Sweetly, she sat on his leg and stroked his cheek. "You need to stop drawing me."
Klaus showed her his dimples. "And why would I even consider that option, love?"
She glided her thumb across his chin. "I'm scared that you might get really tired of me."
Klaus chuckled while he ran his fingers along her naked arm. "That's utterly silly of you, Caroline."
"I'm serious, Nik..."
He lowered his chin with a playful look at her. "What do you suggest that I sketch then?"
"Trees, flowers… or horses, you really like those!" She suggested excitedly.
Klaus laughed. "Regardless of how adorable you are, sometimes you're clueless."
"Whatever."
"I will never get tired of you."
"Forever is a very long time, Niklaus."
He sensed the reservation in her words. "All the human years I've lived and the centuries I've existed as a vampire, are part of a past that didn't include anyone, Caroline." He took her hand. "Until I walked inside of your bedroom, that one night and offered you, my blood."
Caroline gulped down because they had been together for so long and yet he had never really spoken about that night.
"I didn't enter your house keen on giving you a choice, Caroline, that was never part of my plan. I asked Tyler to bite you just to prove a point, that he was sired to me until I released him of his duties but when I stepped inside of that bedroom and saw you like that, I lost control over my own will."
Caroline ran her tongue over her dry lips and played with the metal pendant of one of his necklaces. "Why did you save me, Nik?"
"I wasn't going to kill you, Caroline, it was your birthday." He teased her.
"Stop..." She smiled a bit. "I'm serious. Why did you do it?"
"Saving you was part of the plan, giving you that choice wasn't." He confessed.
Caroline looked up to his eyes, he was honest with her, and she really loved him for that.
"The vulnerability and the pain that I saw in you and the way that you were so oblivious to how beautiful and magnificent you were left me taken aback. I was in the presence of this exquisite strong creature, questioning her very existence. There was so much you still hadn't seen and so much you hadn't lived, and you were wondering if your life was simply narrowed to that."
"So, you gave me a choice."
"I wasn't given one, Caroline... I was stabbed in the heart and turned into something I didn't want. It wasn't in my nature to be a vampire because I was born with the werewolf gene instead, but still, as a human I was never one to fit in. I was different from my family from the get-go but increasingly dissimilar from the moment I was turned."
Caroline reached for his neck, and she caressed him, soothing the intensity in his voice and the pain behind it. "We both wanted to belong."
"I couldn't bring myself to take away yet another choice from you. In all honesty, I have not been able to do so ever since that night. If you had asked me to let you die at the time, I would have granted you your wish. There was never a grand reason behind anything I did when it came to you. With you, Caroline, I'm unguarded."
She smiled enamored. "And I love you just like that."
"I walked inside of that house set on saving you and ended up being saved by you instead."
She melted against him happily. "I like how this marriage is making you all verbal."
"Perhaps, we should decide where to travel next so that we deviate from that." He frowned.
Caroline kissed him softly. "Where do you suggest?"
Klaus smiled. "Where do you wish to go?"
"The moon!" She said, taking his lips for another kiss.
Klaus wasn't really bothered that Caroline held his lips hostage. "It can be arranged, just so you know." He kissed her back.
"Actually... there's something I want to do, or rather a place I want to visit. Elijah used to tell Bonnie about it and I'm really curious to see it with my own eyes."
Klaus looked down from her eyes when she mentioned Elijah's name.
She stroked his cheek and smiled as he returned his eyes to her. "I know that it's still early, that we just lost him, but it's August and there's a festival happening..."
"You want to go over to Elijah's favorite city in Brazil, where everything reminded him of what being human was all about." Klaus said with a sad smile.
"I want him to be part of this somehow, and Recife sounds like the perfect city to include on our honeymoon trip." She tilted her head to the side. "He would have been very proud that his younger brother made an honest woman out of me, even when I'm flashing through hallways at dawn, wearing nothing but my ruined dress in one hand and my underwear in another."
Klaus laughed richly. "It's not my fault that I find you irresistible and that you've become immoral in your behavior, now that you have my surname."
Caroline gave him heart-eyes. "So, you will take me to the Olinda Carnival?"
"I'm quite certain that they have elevators in Brazil as well." He teased her.
"And shops, because you owe me a new dress, Niklaus."
Klaus squinted. "Caroline, sweetheart… since when do you openly accept my gifts without throwing a fit?"
She shrugged. "Since you have so much money to spend."
Klaus swiftly moved with a gasp, and she laughed as she landed on her back on the sofa with Klaus lying on top of her.
"I hereby protest, this is not the same girl I had to convince to accept a ring, one that I had actually bought for her in one of my rare honest moments." He protested.
Caroline kept on laughing. "It's all your fault, Niklaus. You gave me a Princess dress and a custom-made engagement ring and now a designed custom-made wedding ring..." She said while touching his wide black wedding band with beveled edges, that match hers. "How am I supposed to stop from falling into the dark side of it all? With everything you showed me so far, to all the cities we've traveled to... it's impossible to resist the allure of it all. It's only natural that I would want more." She made circles on his chest.
"I have created a monster." He solemnly stated.
Caroline wrapped her finger around one of his dangling necklaces slowly and pulled him closer. "Yes, you have." She whispered before she kissed him like she wanted, intensely but slowly.
"Are you going to tell them?" Damon asked Rebekah as they left his car.
Rebekah stretched her arms, tired from the ride. "I don't know how to tell Bonnie that she can, but shouldn't, practice magic because it might trick her evil side and further drive her to lunacy... that is, if I even understood that witch properly."
"Hasn't Bonnie played on the black sand box, once already?"
"Yes, but back then she was still in control. Now she'll just use black magic, there won't be any good magic to balance her out because the dead witches took that away from her."
Damon rolled his eyes, giving up altogether. "I really don't like witches… always judging and deciding who is worthy and all that elitist crap."
Rebekah narrowed her eyes at him.
"Of course, that to me you are the one exception." He smiled.
"You need to work on your lying abilities, Damon." She huffed.
"I just don't get the power trip shenanigan."
"You have vampires living by a blood code, werewolves that kill on full moons and you have humans that have no powers to defend themselves from all this supernatural environment. Witches were created to defend humans, to be their weapon, but no one likes to be used, so they eventually became independent as well."
"You know a lot about this, a lot more than I expected actually." He stopped in front of her front door.
"My mother was a witch, Damon, and a very powerful one as it was. How do you reckon Nik became such an expert? We were raised among the supernatural and we will all die because of it."
"Wow, what's with the Finn talk?" Damon quickly grabbed her arm and turned her around for an answer.
"Maybe he was right after all, no matter how powerful we became we still kept losing everything and I'm just tired." She faced away from him.
He forced her to look at him again. "You are not making any sense."
"What's the point of it all? We've spent so long fighting and trying to find a way to just... live and now I'm all alone."
"You are not alone."
"I miss him, Damon. I miss Nik. I lost Matt, Elijah and I lost Nik as well and if I start thinking that I lost Caroline as well, I'll break down and I won't be able to handle any of this. I know that they are just out there living the life that he promised her, but I still miss them." She said with tears dancing in her eyes.
"I get it, you've been with him all your life but right now you sound like a tragic little human too attached to her brother." Damon lashed out.
Rebekah tried to break away from him so that she could go inside.
"Bex... wait..." That wasn't exactly what he meant to say.
She faced him furious. "Do you know how it is to be loved unconditionally, no matter how much you mess up and stumble into trouble? I'm sure that you don't, but I do. Nik was the only person who loved me like that. Matt didn't love me for what I was, he made me fall in love with him because I was his ticket to a cabal, but Nik has been there from day one, defending me from my father's temper. There is one person in this entire universe that I would die for, and that is Niklaus. My only regret is that even though I saw how much he was hurting when I became human for Matt, I still chose a mortal life."
"So now what? Do you want to turn back into a vampire because you're tired of being human?" Damon unexpectedly snapped at her.
"What's your big fixation with my humanity?" She raised her voice at him.
"It's what I miss the most!" He yelled at her.
Rebekah fell silent.
He clenched his teeth. "I miss being human more than anything and you're throwing it all away because you had one stupid heartache. And because you have this unhealthy umbilical attachment to Klaus."
"I'm not the one who spent years bending backwards for Elena, even when she couldn't choose which boring sweater to wear."
"At least I didn't go around with a broken lie detector, while my boyfriend played me." He countered.
"You didn't just say that..." Rebekah hissed.
"I did." Damon replied with clenched teeth.
They faced each other angrily for the longest time.
Hurriedly leaving the house, Kol spoke without noticing the tension between them. "I need to speak to you..."
Rebekah and Damon stared at him furiously.
"Excuse me, for interrupting the pre-sex going on here but Bonnie is packing up to go to Brazil to meet with Angelus." He informed them.
"She's what?" Rebekah reacted surprised.
"Has everyone in this family lost their Goddamn mind?" Damon opened his arms.
"Can you please go up there and talk some sense into her?" Kol asked Rebekah.
"She's your girlfriend, not mine." She replied distressed.
"She refuses to listen to me. She's gotten into that thick skull of hers, that she found a way to bring Elijah back."
"She can't do any kind of magic." Rebekah sprinted inside of the house.
"I know that."
Kol followed her inside where they found Bonnie already on her way to the door, holding a small bag and her passport.
"What are you doing?" Rebekah asked, determined to cut her way out.
"I'm on my way to see Angelus and you can either come with me or stay here fighting Damon and your feelings for him."
"I'm not allowing you to cross that threshold." Kol warned her.
Bonnie sighed. "Even if there is the smallest, faintest, little chance to get him back, are you really going to sit around and do nothing? When you all know that he would have moved heaven and hell to get any of you back?" She faced Rebekah. "Elijah would have never given up on any of you, if he knew that there was a way."
Kol crossed his gaze with Rebekah's.
"I will get my passport." Rebekah was the first to give in.
Kol followed her silently, while Bonnie looked at Damon.
"Well, I've always wanted to go to Brazil." He forcefully smiled.
The giant puppet made of papier-mâché, bowed as he passed Caroline and she laughed with joy, touching him a little in fear at first and then laughing harder when he patted her head with his giant hand.
She knew who he was, Klaus had told her about him, he was The Man of Midnight.
She couldn't remember the name in Portuguese anymore, but she knew he officially started the Carnival in 1932, at exactly midnight of Saturday and that he was 15 feet tall.
She looked at Klaus so happy that his entire chest ached with the vision, she had loved every place they had been so far, but this Carnival was making her smile the most.
They watched it among all the hundreds of people out on the streets, everyone danced to their own music, and it was hard to distinguish the tourists from the locals who danced and sang with a happiness that was contagious and difficult to explain.
She loved that everyone was a part of it instead of simply watching the festival. There was freedom and they just seemed to get loose and play all kinds of instruments.
Anything was used as one apparently, from pans to whistles and actual instruments, anything that made noise was acceptable.
And everyone danced. Old people, children, women and men of all ages.
Caroline was fascinated, there wasn't any specific music or path, it was all a question of following an instinct and she squinted for a second when Klaus pulled her hand.
"Come on, love. You can't just stand and watch, in Olinda." He said with that dimple-showing smile of his.
Suddenly, she found herself right in the middle of the hectic crowd and for a second she doubted herself.
Klaus laced his arm around her waist and started dancing, glued to her, there was a lot of repetitive hip circling, so she easily picked up the rhythm and from then on everything was effortless.
She wasn't a vampire, and he wasn't a hybrid, they were just a normal couple dancing and laughing, twirling around and following the music and it was the best feeling in the entire world.
"I can't believe that I forgot about the idiotic Carnival." Rebekah grumbled as she passed a few drunken couples, sitting on the sidewalk.
Damon was right behind her. "I heard about it a few years ago but I've never been here."
"That's odd, with all the women willingly rubbing their asses against every man in here, I figured you would have been here every single year..." She sneered without looking back at him.
Damon pulled her into a small alley, where they could have some privacy away from Kol and Bonnie.
"What do you want?" Rebekah sighed.
"I have been here every day since Klaus left and even before that." Damon confronted her.
"One minute you're saving me, the other you're kissing me but then you're just oblivious to everything I do to seduce you. Any other man would have made a move, but not Damon Salvatore. He's too smug to admit that he has any kind of feelings stored up inside of that silly perfect chest of his." She ranted.
"If you hadn't been so busy trying to seduce me every second, I'm around you, you would have noticed that the only times I've felt like this it didn't really end well for me."
"I'm not Katherine!" She screamed livid. "And I'm not Elena either. I already had Stefan and guess what? I couldn't care less about him now. You make me laugh and you make me angry, and I want to strike you across the face most of the time, but I might have fallen in love with you."
Damon looked at her astounded for a second, before he closed the space between them and took hold of the sides of her neck, he heard her heart pounding in his ears, that vein in her neck was pumping with nervous excitement under his touch and he looked right into her eyes.
Rebekah's mouth was dry, her hand moved to his back resting over his smooth shirt as he grew closer to her, she tilted her head slightly when his lips touched hers and easily gave him permission to make the kiss deeper.
Even though they had kissed so many times by now, none of those kisses were as honest as the ones they shared away from all prying eyes.
Klaus and Caroline ended up in a slightly less crowded street now that the day was beginning, she was humming the sounds around her as Klaus lifted her arm and she twirled around before finding his chest again.
They had pretty much found their own rhythm among the relentless partying crowd.
"Are you tired, love?" He asked her, after another spin.
Caroline shook her head, carrying on with a small dance.
As he brought her closer, she kissed him happy that she got to kiss him in the middle of all this euphoria that was surrounding them, because that's exactly how she felt, ecstatic and overjoyed even.
Caroline was kissing him and stroking the back of his neck blissfully when someone bumped into them, she broke the kiss remembering where they were and smiled at the boy walking by them.
The boy smiled. "Less kissing and more dancing."
He moved to the sound of Samba, moving along with the dancing crew.
Caroline looked at Klaus laughing but she couldn't resist a second kiss that was again abruptly interrupted by another boy.
"Sorry..." He grumbled.
He wasn't as nice as the previous one and Caroline found it hard to smile. "It's ok..."
For the longest heartbeat, the boy stood there watching them with a strange expression, as if he was silently affronting them and when he did turn around to leave, Caroline noticed the peculiar tattoo of a wolf on his forearm.
Deciding on shaking the weird vibe away, she faced Klaus with a smile. "Come on, let's go. My feet are starting to kill me." She took his hand and his side.
They walked this time, enjoying the ongoing uproar around them but slowly getting lost in each other, his arm was around her shoulders and her hand was resting over his chest.
When Caroline looked down from his eyes visibly lost in thought, he moved his hand down to the middle of her back. "What's on your mind?"
"The more I see of the world, the more I feel that you truly meant what you said, that you would take me to all of these cities one day."
"I did mean it, I wanted to show you everything I had ever seen and known."
Caroline rested her cheek against his shoulder. "You're still excited about everything."
"Because with you it's like seeing it all for the first time."
"So, you're not tired of seeing the same stuff over and over..." She said in a low voice.
Klaus recognized the talk from earlier and the pesky doubt that haunted Caroline lately, so he stopped and pulled her gently to him. "I will not get tired of you, ever."
Caroline didn't answer, it was stronger than her, the possibility of forever being too long for him was a reality for her.
"I have been many versions to the world, Caroline. From Niklaus to the feared Klaus but I've never been what I am when I'm with you. A husband, a lover and a happy man." He smirked at her. "How could I ever be tired of being happy?"
Caroline stroked the back of his neck and came closer to his lips, she was beaming now as she kissed him, she didn't need anything else, just to know that he was happy.
Kol and Bonnie stopped in front of Angelus' huge white mansion, the black gates were open, and they made their way inside to finally leave behind the commotion that still happened on the streets.
"They have been dancing all night, how can they still walk?" Bonnie asked Kol.
"It goes on for the entire weekend, the dancing and drinking and all of the mindless sex."
He answered back a little harsher than she was used to, so she pulled his long sleeve to make him look back at her. "I won't do anything stupid."
"Aside from coming all the way to the house of one of the world's most powerful followers of Macumba? He deals with death and black arts like we deal with blood, it's as easy as that to him and although he said himself that he couldn't bring Elijah back, we are here because you think that you are capable of doing it."
"When I told him about Vicki, he thought the same that I did, that maybe that door is still open or at least just a bit cracked open and that's the only chance we might ever have, Kol."
"Promise me that you are not going to take part in any of this directly."
"If that's what you want." She murmured.
He took her hand. "Stay close to me."
"This is cozy..." She grimaced when she saw a few dead chickens on the ground, there were also a lot of half-burnt cigars and a few other items that she didn't want to know.
"Angelus?" Kol called into the quiet house.
A tall man smoking his long cigar calmly came their way and laughed loudly when he recognized the man calling for him, he clapped his hands happily. "How you have grown, little Kol."
Kol laughed. "And you're still poorly at telling jokes, Angelus."
Angelus laughed on with a rich laughter but then he landed his eyes on Bonnie. "Oh, but what do my eyes see? What name does this beauty have?"
"Hi... I'm Bonnie." She said blushing.
"My dear friend Elijah never stood a chance... it is good to finally give a face to the warm voice. And what a beautiful face that is." He bowed slightly to her.
She smiled nervously while Kol raised his eyebrow annoyed.
Angelus smiled. "My heart is filled with joy, having you in here is making me remember my good friend with Saudade..."
Bonnie looked at Kol for translation.
"It's hard to explain... it's a deep feeling of nostalgia, longing. It's missing someone so much that it hurts." He explained sadly that it fit so well what everyone was feeling lately.
When Klaus and Caroline turned the corner, her eyes instantly were drawn to the huge mansions, they all seemed straight out of some movie, but her admiration was short-lived as she spotted the two men walking straight in their direction.
She couldn't explain it but she just knew that they were trouble and the way that Klaus instantly pulled her a little behind him, proved her right.
The two men stopped only a few feet away from them.
One smiled at Caroline and she gave him a repulsed look as a comeback.
"Welcome to Brazil, Mr. Mikaelson. My name is Vaughn and I'm here on behalf of my employer who would like to meet with you."
"And who would that be?" Klaus asked annoyed with the two men, especially the one gawking Caroline.
"All in good time. We will be here until tomorrow night."
The one on the right, handed Klaus a card.
Klaus took the card briefly looking at it. "I'm not interested in whatever this is."
"I wouldn't be so hasty to judge something that might be good for you." The one with his eyes on Caroline spoke up.
"And I would stop looking at my wife if you want to walk out of here alive."
"Let's just say that we share a few interests." The first man said. "You attract a lot of attention to yourself, Mr. Mikaelson. A hybrid capable of shifting at will and being able to control its wolf side while in wolf form is the kind of news that travels fast around our world. I beg you to consider a first meeting at least." He touched the other man's arm to tell him that it was time to leave.
Reluctantly, he left but not without glancing at Caroline once more.
Focusing on what they left behind, Caroline took the card from Klaus's hand to inspect it. On the front, there was the name of a hotel and in the back of it the image of a small wolf.
She looked at Klaus confused but he actually seemed troubled by the entire mysterious scene.
Just then ahead of them there was a familiar laughter coming from an alley and not long after that Rebekah stepped into the street, fixing her hair while Damon was right on her heels trying to steal another kiss from her.
Silently, Klaus watched his sister as she started to widen the distance between them, at least he was seeing her again and she was happy, so that made the sacrifice of being away from her worth it.
Caroline started shaking her head, he was stubborn enough to the point of letting her go.
"Rebekah!" She called out loudly.
Surprised, he glanced at her.
"I can't let you do this." She smiled knowing that it would be an emotional reunion. "Enough is enough."
As soon as she saw him, Rebekah started running to Klaus and threw herself into his arms like she had done so many times, when they were human, and he returned home from a hunting trip.
Klaus held her closely as she started to sniffle. "Don't cry, silly Bekah, no man..."
She pulled away from him and finished the sentence for him. "... likes a crying baby. You used to say that whenever you came home with Elijah... and you called me Bekah."
Klaus cleaned her tears with a smile. "Care to explain to me what you were doing in an alley with Damon Salvatore?"
Rebekah smiled cutely. "How is the honeymoon working out for you?"
"Remarkable." He squinted at her.
"I have another blonde to tackle." She smiled, sneaking away from his scold to hug Caroline tightly. "I've missed you, C."
Caroline sighed. "I've missed you too, B."