He should be elsewhere. He was arguably the most important man in town, at least he was undeniably the most infamous. There were far more pressing things on his plate than wooing a pretty girl. His focus should be on finding the cure and turning the doppelgänger back into a human blood bag.
Fortunately, Klaus had always been quite good at multitasking.
He would fix the doppelgänger and resume making an army of hybrids. They were all he'd ever wanted, after all. An army of monsters exactly like him. A family of his own creation, one that wouldn't reject him like every member of his own family had at some point.
But now, extraordinarily, there was something he desired even more than his hybrid, something he wanted desperately enough to sacrifice one of his hybrids, even now when they had become an endangered species.
He wanted Caroline Forbes.
He hadn't spared her a second thought when their paths first crossed. He knew that Katherine had intended for him to use a newly turned vampire as one of the sacrifices to break the curse suppressing his wolf side. At the time, he had intended to do just that. The young blonde was conveniently chained beside an equally convenient werewolf, it was simply good sense. When Caroline proved to be an inconvenient sacrifice, he made new arrangements and the girl lived.
Planning to sacrifice her hadn't been personal. It also wasn't personal when he force-fed her boyfriend his blood and snapped the were-boy's neck. He needed to make his hybrids and the Scooby Gang needed incentive to solve the problem.
He saw the pain his actions caused Caroline as she waited for the boy she loved to die a second, gruesome death if her friends didn't find a way to save him in time. He saw her pain and it didn't move him to sympathy. he simply didn't care. She and Tyler were just collateral damage.
Then he had Tyler bite her so that he could manipulate her mother, the sheriff. He had no qualms about letting her die. Even as he waited for the sheriff to invite him in, saving the girl was merely a side effect of the deal. Then he walked into her room. She lay small and weak in her bed, pale even for a vampire. She looked up at him, her acerbic wit as cutting as ever, even as she lay dying. The first thing she asked was if he was going to kill her. She thought honestly believed him capable of killing her on her birthday and that's when he felt it, the smallest twinge of guilt. Regret that she was in pain and that it had been his doing.
She looked so young, so vulnerable in her bed with a festering wound and poison pumping through her veins. She had so much life to live, and in that moment he wanted her to live every second of her eternity. He wanted to save her. He didn't want her to fear him. He wanted her to want to be saved, to want him to save her, so he gave her a grand speech and told her that vampirism meant she was free, but she wasn't having any of it.
And he realized that she meant it, she really did think so low of him as to think that he would let her die on her birthday. And perhaps he would have when she was simply collateral damage, but the twinge struck once again. He didn't want her to be the victim, collateral or otherwise. He didn't want to be the villain, at least not the villain of her story.
He didn't want her to die, more than that, he wanted to know that she wanted to live. He wanted her to crave life. And when she did he gave her his blood, cradling her like she was fragile, and healed her. And that was when he realized how wrong he had been. Caroline Forbes was no longer collateral damage. Now she was what he wanted and he didn't know where to begin to get in her good graces.
Even now, he wanted her as he watch from just out of sight as she barked out orders for the preparations for the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, he wanted her. It amused him to watch her striking fear into the hearts of a half dozen helping hands bustling around the Lockwood residence, commanding the tiny fleet of workers with her clipboard. He couldn't help but think that, if she wasn't so intent on being one of the good guys, she would make a terrifying villain.
She was quite exquisite in that way, deliciously complex, made up entirely of contradictions. The baby vampire with incredible restraint, desperate not to be the monster her parents feared she'd become. But it was the sun which burned brightest that collapsed into itself, becoming a black hole. He wasn't sure what she would become in time, but he was desperate for the opportunity to witness her journey.
She rejected him, spurned his advances time and time again, but that did not dissuade him. Her offenses, which from anyone else would have been paid for with blood, were endearing. He never intended to develop a serious attachment, managed to avoid it for a millennia, but now things had changed. She was a force of nature. And he was at her mercy.
"Now how did I know I'd find you at the helm of this ship?" Klaus mused as he sauntered up to her, hands clasped behind his back.
"Go away, I'm busy." She replied, barely hazarding a glance at the Original Hybrid.
"I was wondering what time I should pick you up tomorrow." Klaus pressed on, undeterred. He had ignored far more sound rejections from the pretty blonde.
His remark earned him a satisfying reaction. Her gaze jerked up for a moment, though she didn't look at him. Then she resolutely returned her attention to her clipboard.
"How about a quarter to never?" She replied coolly.
Klaus suppressed and amused smirk as he sidled a step closer to her, "I was promised a date in return for one of my hybrids."
He thought it was best to leave it there. Beheadings weren't exactly the direction he hoped to steer their conversation.
She finally turned her full attention on him and he savored it. Her eyes sparkled despite her hostile gaze he could tell she relished in the opportunity to banter. There were other ways that he would have liked her to look at him, but he didn't mind this one, not even when she seemed barely able to keep her contempt in check. He wondered how a dullard like Tyler had managed to amuse her for as long as he had. She had a wickedly intelligent mind. She needed and deserved someone who could challenge her, not a small town, small minded high school boy.
"Yes, a date." She said, "Like to a movie, where we don't have to talk and I can put at least three seats between us."
"Well surely the reigning Miss Mystic Falls won't be hosting the party alone, and I'm assuming you're not taking Tyler, not after his indiscretion with his lady-wolf friend." Klaus said, attempting to remind her of her recent change in relationship status. He kept his gaze downcast to conceal the glee their breakup brought him, glee that she would likely consider quite tactless.
He looked up to see her reaction. Her expression seemed to war between emotions kept barely in check. The flicker of a smile twitched across her lips, and it struck Klaus as important. That little flicker. A smile that appeared to conceal the hurt she felt. He felt like a starving man, and every detail he could glean about her eased his desperate hunger. Though none of it could sate him. No, it would take far more than she was willing to give to satisfy him. He didn't mind though, he was a patient man. He would wait. Waiting was a kind of exquisite torture, it only added to the eventual pleasure that would come when he won her.
He wondered how many times she'd used a smile as a mask, a radiant lie. The mask that showed the world what they wanted to see and allowed her to hide behind the façade. He wondered if she knew how much that smile exposed. He wonder if she even knew how long she'd been lying to everyone around her, how long she'd been lying to herself. Because Caroline Forbes wasn't happy, she was just a sad little girl who tried to be everything for everyone, but always wound up with nothing for herself.
Klaus longed to show her that they were wrong, every single person in this town, everyone who took her for granted, but she wasn't ready to let him. At least, not yet. Time would change that, of that he was completely confident. She would surrender to him. It was only a matter of time. And time was something he had plenty of.
"Fine, if you insist on coming, meet me here. Two p.m." She whirled around and flounced off, calling over her shoulder, "Black tie optional." She stopped and turned on him, pointing at him threateningly. "And I already have a dress, so don't even think of getting me so much as a corsage, you understand?"
"I'll see you tomorrow, Caroline." Klaus taunted.
