AN: Appreciate the feedback, guys.

Part 6

CAROLINE

Her coat was snug and warm. It was unnecessary really. The night was warm enough around these parts. What she should have remembered was an umbrella, she thought, walking down the moist street. Here and there were puddles where the spread of the cement mixture was laid out unevenly. The drizzle was unpredictable. Thankfully enough she was close to her destination and needed not fear the rain.

These were empty streets. They felt empty. For the longest days she had never felt so alone. Marcel had vampires watching over her almost since the day she arrived, and she always felt those strange watchful gazes of the wolves the day she took Daniel home.

The coil in her belly grew tight. Any time she remembered Daniel now, and the joy he brought, she remembered Hayley's dark eyes and the look on her face out there in the park.

Caroline paused outside the old, nondescript door. She reached up a hand and grasped the large brass knocker and gave a couple of rapid knocks. When she heard the door unlock from within, she pushed the door open and found herself on the top step of a stairwell, assailed by the pungent scent of blood and liquor, her senses overwhelmed by the loud music that thrummed vibrations on her cheeks and eyelids, so loud was it, and completely captured her ears.

A few minutes or so and she would have adjusted, her vampire senses heightening and dimming enough in places where she would be able to control the input she received. She walked down the steps as her hearing adjusted. The smell of blood made her throat tickle, but it had been a mere few days since Klaus fed his blood to her. She never truly craved human blood a week or two after tasting Klaus, thought of it more as nourishment than anything.

Caroline fully expected to be jumped. She had a stake in her purse for just that small measure of security, yet never assumed it would completely protect her walking into a den this way. Especially not Sendak. Not Marcel's Sendak. This was where the wild things are, and she was fully aware of what she was challenging being there.

Yet aside from the few cautious glances thrown her way by a half dozen vampires at the bar, the rest of the creatures surrounding her were either indifferent or warm.

Marcel had not placed a purse on her head. She realized, Marcel had told no one save his inner circle that she had betrayed him.

For a minute the thought warmed her until she remembered the attack in her home that left it in shambles, requiring her to move herself and Daniel temporarily into Klaus' house. He had known about the danger and the certain death he was sending both of them to when he handed Daniel over to her, with not so much as a warning. She was sure that was his payback.

Then again if he wanted her dead she would be right where she stood.

Sometimes it was so obvious that Marcel was mentored by Klaus. His actions were most often completely confusing, in reverse of his words or intentions. If they both did not want the same metaphorical crown, Caroline was sure they would be the best of friends and they would be completely terrifying working together.

Caroline saw him sitting at the bar, somewhat hunched over, but knew that he knew she was there. His relaxed slouch grew tense and even though many of those that surrounded him had already turned to watch her walk into the music bar, he was still stubbornly focused on the drink in front of him.

She had once been an insecure, neurotic, control freak. The last two years exposed to Klaus may have generally lowered, if not completely eradicated her insecurity, but she was still a ball of nerves that wanted to control the world. Her core personality was going to be the death of her, again, she thought, standing in the center of an establishment of supernatural creatures approaching someone she had just recently betrayed. The old Caroline would have laid out the plan on a storyboard and realized that should she make it out of here alive she was pretty sure she was going to end up in trouble still.

She was only a few feet away from Marcel when he jumped from his seat and jogged to the stage, then caught the mic tossed to him. Caroline turned towards the stage and the people converged in front of her to get a closer look. She stifled a grin as the drumbeat rose and Marcel made a show of shaking his hips, to the eruption of squeals from a handful of the female audience and the guffaws of the male.

These were his friends, all around her. And this was why he had the upper hand against someone far older and stronger than he. It made it so much easier for him to learn secrets, kept him from wallowing in times of failure and most of all, he had love in droves.

Marcel basked in the applause that followed his song. Finally, he focused his gaze on her and raised his eyebrows. Caroline swallowed. It was their first confrontation after the date, a blur in her memory really in the haste and the hyperfocus on stealing and destroying the white oak stake.

Marcel grinned at those that surrounded him, and patted backs and shook hands as he made his way to her. "There's my little thief." When he stopped beside her, Caroline felt his hand rest on the small of her back as he led her to a private area of the bar.

"I'm surprised to see you here, Caroline," he said in greeting.

She scanned his face, trying to get more from his expression that what she was seeing then. "Did you expect me to be dead by now?"

"Look," he said, running his palm over the close shave of his head, "what I left on your machine- I was angry and pissed off. You used me." She did not flinch at the words. He was right anyway. She used him, and she was pretty sure he was trying to use her too. "I never meant for you to be hurt. I didn't know who Daniel was until recently, from the talks we've heard. I wouldn't have spent almost two years caring for that kid if I knew early on he was Klaus'. By the time we put it all together the kid was too adorable to kill."

And she was glad, because there was very real fondness that she saw in him when he first handed the baby to her. She could not believe she imagined that. "You wouldn't have hurt a child," she said honestly. "You and I may have been lying through our teeth most of our friendship, Marcel, but I think I still know you enough to be sure you couldn't have lifted a finger against Daniel."

"I wouldn't have handed him over just like that, but his guys kept getting killed by the pack," he told her. "And my guys are my family. Klaus knows that. My family is above everything else."

"So you knew that somehow, this kid who's in your care has werewolves after him."

Marcel licked his lips, then nodded. "I have witches trembling at my very name. Didn't take me long to realize my beloved sire knocked up a wolf. He always did enjoy exotic women back in the day. I can tell you, there is not one type of supernatural creature that he hasn't tasted."

It should have hurt. Normal girls would have been threatened by stories like that. But new or old, undefined or fully committed, nameless or descriptionless as was her relationship with Klaus, Caroline's own personality could not even take exception to what she knew she had. "Why did you give him to me?"

Marcel smiled, leaned forward, then reached forward and touched a lock of her hair. His eyes were regretful when he told her, "Because you, Caroline, coming into New Orleans all alone, gorgeous, with no strings holding you back-you were always too impossible to be real."

Elijah was right then, Caroline thought, her head spinning thinking of all the times she was so exposed, so vulnerable, without even knowing how much. She had been too comfortable thinking that Marcel knew nothing about her.

"It was a pity," he continued, "because for a few hours there I almost bought in to the entire damsel in distress thing you had going for you." She had not been as clever as she thought, fully believing she had the upper hand. He smiled grimly. "I bought into it hook, line and sinker that I had to make sure you didn't get killed walking around the French Quarter that night."

Caroline caught her breath. He knew, even then, so early in the game. Elijah was right, dammit. She hated that he was right.

"So sweet and innocent and prim around me. And then I see you fucking my demon sire against a stinking back alley wall."

She sharply sucked in her breath, her skin crawling at the thought, drowning in the intense memories of Klaus all over and around and inside her, knowing that Marcel had been watching.

"By the time I figured out what I had in my hands, I thought you wouldn't mind taking care of the cub."

She was glad that Marcel had the presence of mind to pull her into the room. Caroline would have been mortified had he whispered all this while they were surrounded. She wanted to slip away, but this was exactly why she traversed the quarter to get in touch with him, no matter how dangerous it was. Marcel would give her answers that Klaus and Elijah would never find out all on their own, because of precisely that—they were on their own. Marcel had a network. It was merely a lucky surprise that Marcel still thought fondly enough of her that he did not sic his army on her.

"Fine." She was not going to blame him for handing Daniel to her, no matter what danger it brought to her life. When he gave her Daniel, he gave the boy back to a family that had lost all hope for him. Immediately Hayley's sad, longing dark eyes teased her brain again. She shook away the vision. "Hayley—Daniel's mother-" she choked out. "She says her family has prophesied a child, an Alpha that can help them rise back to their old power in Louisiana. I need them to stop trying to take Daniel away."

His eyes narrowed. "I heard about the attack in your house, Caroline. I'm willing to bet they aren't the family that Hayley was looking for. They were too messy, too violent, too weak. "

"They almost killed me!" she threw back.

Marcel shook his head. "There are two packs after him-both part of the original. Only one Alpha can bring them together after they split off centuries ago. That's why they both want Daniel. It's not so bad, you know, being the Alpha, being respected."

"It's a child. You can't put the fate of two packs on one baby."

"It's up to his mother," was Marcel's response. "Look at millions of people in the world looking for a purpose in life."

Klaus left a bloodbath trying to release his inner werewolf, when someone tried to take away from him who he truly was. And he left a bloodbath trying to raise a hybrid army for a semblance of a family.

"Are you going to keep him away from greatness if that is his destiny?"

She took a breath, her brain working out what he had said. Her phone vibrated, and Caroline took it out of her pocket and read the message.

"My sire is looking for you," he stated, not asked. Caroline nodded once and turned away. "You know you're too good for him, don't you?"

And for the longest time she had acknowledged Klaus' evil, knew he was terrible and he had done so many things wrong in the last thousand years. Not now. Not when the blood he spilled in the last few years had been to protect her. Not when she was the one who was taking away a child from his mother. Not when she sometimes woke up with dreams of killing Hayley, and knowing she could live happily ever after pretending to be a family. Not when all he had done was for her.

But Marcel did not need to know that. Maybe evidences of her darkness would be just a little secret between her and Klaus.

She walked to the door, but before she left she turned back to Marcel. "You saw me that night with him," she repeated. His silence was acknowledgment. "If you knew I was involved with Klaus all along, why did you spare me?" Because he let it play out, let her wrap him around her little finger, was lulled enough for her to be able to take his one weapon against Klaus.

"Maybe I didn't want Klaus and his wrath coming down on me."

Caroline smiled sadly. "Marcel, you are too arrogant to make decisions based on fear of Klaus."

He chuckled. "Then maybe it's because you understood me so well. It's not often I come across anyone who gets me the way you do."

"You know, if we met any other way we could have been friends."

Marcel nodded. "I don't doubt that one bit, Caroline. Now go, before I remember you stole my only leverage against my immortal enemy."

KLAUS

She came to him, late in the night. When she stopped at his bedroom, he immediately sat up in the bed that he hardly slept on. In the dead of the night she was a golden silhouette at the doorway. All he could do was to set aside the pad and the pencil on the bedside table and drink in the sight of her.

"I'm glad you're home," he said to her, and tamped down the urge to ask where she had been, what she had been doing. She was safe and home and in his room. The child was asleep in the other room, and she had been given space to sleep in but she was standing there.

Klaus padded across the bedroom and stopped in front of her, still standing on the threshold of his room. When he tipped up her chin so he could look at her face, he saw the exhaustion and the loneliness and something much more. There was a heartbreak in her eyes that he had only ever seen in his reflection. "What is it, love?"

And then her cool smooth hands were on his neck, cupping his face, resting on his shoulders, pulling him to her. He let her guide him down so she could wrap her arms around him and her mouth would reach his. When her lips rested on his, Klaus pressed back at once.

"Caroline," he whispered, and as they kissed and she held onto him so tightly, as if she could not let him go, he heard the murmur low in her throat, like she choked on his name. He could not tell what it was, but it had been building since the park, deep inside of her he could tell, and the emotions that she hid all the more called to him.

She did not meet his eyes, like she knew he was trying to read her. Instead she buried her lips in his neck near the point where his pulse used to beat when he was alive. Klaus felt the wetness of her tears on his neck.

He could feel himself, hardening, tightening, being this close and this intimate with her. "Caroline, love, tell me what happened."

But she was shedding her clothes even while he pleaded, pushing away his, finding instead of talking the need to be pressed up against each other. It was nothing strange or new to him, so he let her and helped her. Shirtless now, with her standing only in her panties, Klaus moved them over to the bed. He pushed her back on the bed and then pushed down his own pants to his ankles.

Klaus climbed on the bed, resting his knees between her legs. He looked down at her with her hair fanned around her head, registered the red-rimmed eyes and the tears on her cheeks. He reached out a tentative finger and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Klaus laid down on top of her and kissed her, his lips hard and searching on hers.

Not once had he told her he loved her, but she knew, believed it, never doubted it. And he swore whatever it was that bothered her now he was going to fix it, was going to find a way to make her happy. Because that was all he ever wanted the moment he met her.

"Make love to me," she whispered thickly through her tears. He raised himself on his elbows and looked down at her. "Just make me forget." And then, with a pleading look up to him, she hooked arm around around his neck and said, "Will you compel me to forget if I asked you?"

He raised himself up, extricating himself from her arms, and then sat back on the bed, looking at where she was lying there. He licked his lips, then rubbed a hand on his nape. "I think we need to set some ground rules, love."

It was only then, it seemed, that she realized what she had asked for. Her face fell. Caroline sat up on the bed, still naked save for her panties. She released a breath, then stood up and ran across the room to the bathroom door. He heard the running water of the shower and listened intently until he heard the soft sobbing noise.

He watched her from the bathroom doorway as the shower fell on her shaking, sobbing body. She looked up at him through the water. Klaus stepped into the shower and blocked the water, feeling it pelting his back. At least without the steady barrage of the water, he could see clearly which tracks of liquid on her face were tears. "I think by now you and I both know, Caroline, that we're spending the rest of our immortal lives together." It was the closest he had come to a proposal, but he had always referred to their relationship as forever. "I have all the time in the world to figure out the reason when you come to me upset or in tears. Hell, I can even be flexible and make love to you any time you ask, at the drop of a hat—in an alley, in bed, in fucking Space Mountain."

She was looking up at him still, listening and watching while tears welled in her eyes.

"But you don't ask me to compel you. I will never compel you," he told her, half to admonish, half to promise. "When you're with me, you choose me."

Her eyes half-lidded, she nodded, clinging to him and pressing herself against his wet body as she whispered into his ear, "I'm sorry."

And then he slid around her so she would be back under the shower. He reached for the soap and slid the slick bar over her chest, working up a lather that he helped rub over her arms and her back and her stomach. "Now tell me what's wrong. I'll help you. I'll fix it for you."

Caroline reached for the knob of the shower and turned the water to full blast, letting him help wash away the soap. She clutched at his bare shoulders. Caroline reached for shampoo and washed his hair, gently rinsing and telling him quietly, while the water half-drowned her voice. "Remember when I told you I loved you?"

He kissed the corner of her lips. "Like it was yesterday."

"Remember when you promised me that you would take me anywhere in the world?" He was quiet then, because he would never forget. And she knew it. Klaus pressed against her, nipping at her jaw. She stroked her fingers in his hair, buried her nose in it. "I want to leave, Klaus. I want you to show me all the cities you love. I want you to take me tomorrow."

And if she could sink into him, the way she melted in his arms, he would gladly allow himself to vanish into her as well. They were all the words he had wanted to hear from the day he led her, an angel in blue, dancing across the floor.

But she was no longer that naïve girl that knew him for nothing but fear.

He was no longer just the big bad villain that came to threaten her friends.

So he said the name, because now it made sense why she would be so devastated, and he needed to know what was in her mind.

"Daniel?"

And that was when her tears rose again. Klaus reached for the shower knob and turned the water off. The bathroom was dead silent, and they were wet, naked, shivering, completely open.

"I can't be the person that takes a child away from his mother," she confessed. "No matter how much I love him. I can't be the girl that takes anything she wants. I can't be someone that takes the choice from a child. And I can't do that to Hayley."

Klaus cupped her face and looked into her eyes. "You don't owe her anything."

And she looked at him sharply. "Stop it. She's still your son's mother, and don't even get me started on that."

"Why don't you, Caroline?" He could have said it angrily. But really, there was no anger. If he could, he would beg for it to end it. "Go ahead and blame me for sleeping with her and knocking her up." If he could just anger her enough, she would not be so broken over losing a son.

"Do you think I'll ever blame you for anything that resulted in Daniel?"

But she was crying. She was crushed. He could almost not stand to look at her face. "I swore I would never hurt you."

She lowered her lashes. He could see the teardrops falling from her eyes to the tiled floor. "I know I'm not Daniel's mother. And I respected my own mother enough that I'm not going to ignore Hayley. She could grow into it, you know."

But there was nothing more to say.

"You would have been an incomparable mother," he told her.

He regretted the words even before he finished. But it was true, and needed to be said. One day, in one hundred years, maybe it would become another reason for her pain, when she had seen the world and lived life. Maybe it would happen in five hundred or a thousand years. But it would happen, and she would sink into the depression knowing she would never experience the fulfillment of waxing and waning in pregnancy, bearing a child with someone you loved. Rebekah experienced it. If he was half-deserving of Caroline, he could have delayed the realization rather than push it.

Caroline covered her mouth with one hand and teared up. She cupped his face with her hands and kissed her deeply.

"One day, when you find yourself hurting, you have to remember that I am never going to stop loving you," he told her, for the first time verbalizing what he felt. She turned her head and kissed his lips. "If you need us to give Daniel to Hayley, we'll do it. And tomorrow we'll leave, and I will show you the world like I promised you."

Holding on tightly to him, Caroline whispered, "Klaus, please, I need you."

He lifted her up in his arms, soaking wet, and walked out of the bathroom. He padded across the carpeted bedroom floor and ruined the sheets of his bed when he laid her there dripping. He did not bother with towers. Sodden, he climbed up to the bed with Caroline. He pulled off her wet panties and tossed it over his head, hearing it land on the carpet with a plop.

Her legs parted to make room, and he slid up over her. Klaus reached between their bodies and held himself at her entrance. "I need you so much," she said to him again. He surged inside her, and Caroline grasped his slippery back. She was tight around him, and he could feel her stretching again to accommodate his length. He pulled out and thrust in. "Please, please." She moved herself underneath him unsteadily, and he could see the effort bead on her forehead as she searched for some release of her own.

Klaus held onto her waist and looked deeply into eyes. There was a need in her, overwhelming her as she fought off her own sadness. He maneuvered both of them so that he would lie down on the soaking wet bed, and she was on top of him, her legs on either side of his hips. He guided her slowly with his hands on her waist until she gasped and recognized the movement that gave her the most pleasure. When she slammed down on him, Klaus hissed at the pleasure.

"Have at it, sweetheart," he told her.

Klaus thrust up in her whenever she moved. She pushed herself closer and closer, and Klaus rode out the movements with her. Finally, he felt the clenching of her body and he was ready to receive her when she melted limply against him when she found her release.

In the morning, when Hayley came, Klaus watched from afar as Caroline handed over a bag to Hayley. The wereworlf girl turned towards him and gave a small smile, mouthed a word of gratitude, as if it was his decision that swayed Caroline. He watched from a distance as Caroline gave a kiss to his son and spoke to him until he calmed enough to be handed to his own mother.

The boy would be fine. He had his blood. And he had a kingdom waiting to rise from the ashes.

He could not think of the tender child of the child, and the fresh scent of his breath when he fell asleep on Klaus' bed.

His heart swelled at the sight of Caroline standing straight and proud as she waved to the departing car.

And when she stayed there long after the car had vanished.

Finally, he walked over to where she stood silently. He wrapped his arms around her from behind. Despite her strength he could feel the slight tremor going through her body.

"If you want to turn it off, you have my permission, love."

And he could feel her body as she forced calmness inside her.

"Why would I turn off my humanity? It's what makes me who I am," she answered softly, unconvincingly.

He brushed his lips against the shell of her ear. "I'll bring you up when it doesn't hurt so much anymore."

She turned around in his arms and met his eyes. "That's never going to happen, Klaus."

He wondered if he meant turning off her humanity, or that the pain would be less.

"Now show me—where does the world begin?"

tbc