Bring Her Back

Ummm... angst? Blame Les Miserables which I've watched five times now since Friday.

"Ah, if it isn't you again. How can I help you Klaus?"

He clenched his fists, remembering that he had a purpose for being here and displays of anger would do nothing to help him achieve his goal. "Bring. Her. Back." He ground out, staring down the man in front of him.

"You know, this all would have gone so much nicer if you had just gotten the cure for me like I asked. But you just had to take your sweet time, so I retaliated. What's a little collateral damage in the grand scheme of things?" Klaus had to restrain himself from wrapping his hands around Silas' throat at his comments, remembering a time when he had referred to Caroline as such. But she had become so much more to him, she was so much more, and he could not lose her.

"You will bring her back or I will destroy the cure and leave you to walk on this godforsaken earth for the rest of eternity." He expected the threat to hold at least a little weight, but Silas just laughed.

"The only way to bring her back, is for me to take the cure. And if you destroy it, I'll just shove the white oak stake through your heart."

"You think I want to live without her? I would accept death." The image of her cold body, neck unnaturally twisted, stake protruding from her heart. Rational thought had fled him. He wasn't sure how many people he had killed, wasn't sure who he had killed in his anger and grief. All he knew was the she had chosen him, he had been going to her house because she wanted to talk to him, and Silas had killed her before he had got there.

And he would have her back.

It wasn't hard to find Katherine now that he wanted her found with every ounce of his being. Wasn't hard to follow the trail of his sister and Elena. They tried to fight him off, all three of the girls, but his grief fueled him; his desire to have Caroline back gave him the necessary strength to fight on. When his sister, the last of them, fell to the ground, all three of their necks broken, and he found the cure in Katherine's little hiding place. Though he couldn't forget Elijah's help in the matter; he had been surprised to find his brother there, but upon explaining the situation tersely, he helped him readily enough.

Then he was back in Mystic Falls, back to her. Back to her murderer. And he would do anything, face anything to have her back.

What he hadn't anticipated were the repercussions of dying and being brought back to life as she had, as all his enemies had.

Caroline, Kol, and Finn. The only ones who were brought that Klaus made a concerted effort to save from the slaughter that ensued. The ones who came back, though his own enemies were many, for the most part seemed to have some sort of vendetta against the scooby gang. So he left them to it, hoping to repair his family. To have his girl back. Oh, he slaughtered his enemies when they came for him, but it was much easier than the first go around. They were an unimportant bump in the road that didn't bear much thought in his mind.

Kol and Finn were fine. Maybe it was because they were originals, he did not know. Caroline- well, Caroline wasn't fine. She couldn't speak for two months, and when she could speak again it was small words only. A look of confusion never left her eyes, and it was a constant struggle to get her to drink blood. She fought him tooth and nail every time he tried, until finally he slipped blood into her other food, her drinks, her mouth while she was sleeping. Anything to get her what she needed to stay with him.

It wasn't just that though; she was nearly always in a semi-catatonic state. If she wasn't sleeping, she was eating. She clung to him every time he tried to leave her side. She wouldn't go near anyone but him, and if she was left alone she would not leave his room for fear of meeting with his siblings. Her light was gone, and he had no idea what to do to bring it back.

Then the tears started, uncontrollable sobs bubbling from her throat, and she herself seemed confused, scared by them, and all he could do was wipe them away helplessly. Whenever she was awake, tears were leaving trails down her cheeks, and he didn't know what to do. There was nothing he could do for all his power and strength. Nothing he could do to console the one he loved in the midst of her misery.

So he searched for witches to help him, resorting to threats and blackmail to get what he wanted. That also meant he was leaving Caroline alone in his home more and more, and each time he returned to her he found her more and more a shell of her former self. But if he could just find the witch that knew the answer, there had to be one, she would be fine. She would be herself again. He couldn't lose that hope, not after having her dead and returned to him. He wouldn't lose that hope. It was all he had left.

Klaus found her smiling once when he came home, looking over the drawings he had made of her, laughing slightly, pointing at one of them, and though he did not know what had amused her so, he felt better. She was smiling again, that had to be a good thing, right?

It wasn't.

The next time he returned to her, he found her on their bedroom floor, a broken off chair leg pressed against her chest, broken sobs as she said over and over, "What am I?" He tried to console her, but she would not be consoled.

He had to compel her not to try to kill herself. He would never have dreamed of doing such a thing under normal circumstances, but this? He couldn't lose her again, especially not by her own hand.

Then he found her. The witch that knew of what ailed his sweet Caroline. Telling him his siblings didn't suffer from it because the original spell to become vampires had been on them. But she was technically dead, not meant to be among the living, and that was slowly driving her insane.

They would tell the legend of the once mighty original hybrid. He who had walked the earth for a thousand years, who had survived nearly everything that had been thrown at him, had been reduced to sitting before a glass coffin with the girl he had fallen in love with tucked inside. She was not dead, not alive either, but she had been put in an eternal sleep by his compulsion, for he could not bear to see her truly dead. And they told the story of a man who loved too much.