Caroline buzzed around like an angry hornet, verbally assaulting waiters and musicians alike. If she stopped and thought about it she'd feel bad, but she didn't want to think about it. Thinking was not an option. Not while she was at the Lockwood Manor.

Thinking would lead to feeling and feeling would lead to crying and that was not okay. She hadn't cried since she found out the truth about Tyler and Hayley. It wasn't like Tyler would know whether or not she cried herself to sleep over him, but that wasn't the point. She would know, and he wasn't worth her tears, so she refused to shed them.

Tyler cheated.

Cheating was the one thing she could not get past. She had only and would only ever forgive one cheater. Her father. And it wasn't that she was okay with the fact that he left her mother for Stephen, but she had always been so afraid that if she didn't forgive him and accept his choice to leave, that he would leave her behind and never think about her again.

She had always been a daddy's girl. Even now that he was gone, she was still a daddy's girl.

But Tyler was not Bill Forbes, and Tyler wouldn't get a free pass.

And she wouldn't let anyone see her hurting. He was a dirty, rotten cheat and she was so over him. So what if he picked that were-bitch over her? Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. Caroline knew the other girl was a slut from the moment she laid eyes on her. If Tyler wanted to go slumming, then good riddance.

She liked to think that she was fooling herself, but she could feel the nagging, human insecurities clawing at her. She wanted so badly to get over those feelings, to leave them behind and never look back. But it's hard to let go of something that had been so ingrained in her personality for so long. Everyone seemed to think now that she was a vampire she was strong and confident, but she wasn't. She was the same girl with the same insecurities. And once again she was second choice.

She was always falling short of someone. For her parents, it was the human version of herself. For her friends, it was Elena. For Tyler, it was Hayley. All she ever wanted was to be someone's first choice. What she was now realizing was that she probably should have specified that someone shouldn't be a murderous psychopath.


Caroline raged over her underlings, the tyrant in her own tiny universe. It amused Klaus to see her like this, so charged, so full of life. Real. In her anger, her honesty broke viciously free. It was her honesty that had truly captured his notice. At first, she had simply been a beautiful face. A prize to be won. And conquest to be conquered. When he invited her to his mother's ball he'd intended to seduce her and be done with the little attraction.

But then she had turned on him, sliced him open with her brutal honesty. Using her uncanny intuition to dig inside him and pull out all the broken bits. She saw him for exactly what he was and she hadn't cowered at the sight. He didn't scare her, but she terrified him. And he loved it. He couldn't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, she saw through him with such ease because underneath all her pretext of perfection she was just as broken as him.

She told him that because his father hadn't loved him, he didn't think anyone else would. He wondered if that assessment hadn't been a little bit telling of her personal fears.

"And how am I doing?" Klaus asked interrupting the young blond vampire's downward spiral into a full-fledged rampage.

Her gaze snapped to him, ready to tear him to pieces. She ran him up and down with her meticulous gaze, searching for a flaw. Her expression pinched for just a moment before it smoothed into an exasperated grimace.

"You're… perfect." She admitted.

Klaus grinned, broadly.

"Which is so beyond annoying I can't even look at you." She said, but despite her words, she seemed unable to look away. The hint of a smile warming her eyes.

"They didn't waste time, did they?" He said, fracturing the moment.

Caroline looked around and saw the sight which had caught his attention. Tyler and Hayley crossing the bridge to join the party, hand in hand.

Klaus couldn't help but look for her reaction. Part of him wondered it if was all an act. If the breakup had been faked, another ploy conjured up by her friends to use her as a distraction, but one look at her face told him otherwise. Her lips were pressed tight and her eyes were sad. She looked small, so small. The controlled heartbreak exposed her for exactly how young she was. Still young enough to crumple over the betrayal of a lover.

Klaus knew better. Heartbreak was always a bitter sting, but a few centuries had a way of putting each one in perspective. Not that he'd had his heart broken. Not really. He'd never cared enough for any of his lovers to be wounded by their loss.

Seeing Caroline so saddened by the wretched hybrid with the nerve to break his sire bond made Klaus want to rip the whelp's head clean off. However, Klaus doubted that he could get away with such action without kindling the wrath of Caroline Forbes.

Instead he reached out and took her hand. And she let him.


Caroline couldn't help it. Her eyes kept seeking out Tyler in the crowd. It was like he was a magnet forever drawing her attention. He and Hayley talked and laughed, flirting madly. She may or may not have overheard them openly mocking the Miss Mystic Fall pageant. Actually, she'd strained her vamp hearing to catch every word. Not that she'd admit it.

She felt another twinge of betrayal. Tyler knew she was the former Miss Mystic. He knew the pageant was important to her. Sure he'd cheated, but part of her wanted to think it was a stupid mistake, a mistake that he regretted. She wanted to believe that he had truly loved and respected her. She wanted to believe it because the alternative hurt too much.

It was stupid. She didn't want to care. She soldiered through her pageant director duties with a smile plastered across her face, dealt with the endless supply of Elena/Salvator brother of the week drama, all the while, Klaus trailed along after her. She wished that for just one day she didn't have to deal with everybody else's problems. She wished she could go back to when Mystic Falls had been a safe place to live, before the vampires, witches, and werewolves. She was tired of curses, cures, dopplegangers, and foreboding prophecies. She just wanted one normal day.

Apparently, that was too much to ask.

Caroline started after Elena, to try and prevent her friend from making yet another incredibly stupid life choice, but Klaus caught her arm.

"What?" She snapped.

"Walk with me." He said.

"No." She said, resisting his hold.

"This is supposed to be a date, sweetheart." He said.

"Yeah, well, I have things to do." She said.

"Unless I am mistaken, your duties as pageant director have all been fulfilled. Quite eloquently I might add." He said. "You're done."

"Elena…"

"Is a big girl." Klaus cut her off. "She can handle her own problems for one evening, don't you think?"

Caroline huffed because she couldn't think of any other arguments, besides the obvious. She didn't want to be alone with Klaus. It wasn't that she was worried about what he might do to her. He wasn't going to hurt her. If he'd wanted to hurt her he'd had plenty of opportunities on occasions when she'd given him much more provocation. But she'd told him once that she was too smart to be seduced by him. She didn't want to give him the opportunity to prove her wrong. When she'd said he couldn't seduce her, she'd been in love and securely in a relationship. Now she was lonely and rejected. She had a habit of making bad life choices when she let her insecurities get the better of her and she couldn't help but worry that her impeccable self-control might meet its match in Klaus Mikaelson.

Reluctantly, she nodded her surrender and Klaus released her arm.

He held out his arm for her to take, "Walk with me?"

She was startled by the fact that this time it was a request rather than a demand. She slipped her hand through the crook of his arm and lightly wrapped her fingers delicately around his firm bicep. He smirked, his "I won" smirk which infuriated her, but she also couldn't help but feel a little flattered that he saw her company as such a lofty prize.

There were a lot of things not to like about Klaus, but he definitely knew how to make a girl feel special.

He whisked her away from the party, snatching a bottle of champagne and a couple glasses as they retreated across the bridge and wandered the grassy grounds. Silently they traipsed across the property.

Not one for extended silence, Caroline started talking, and once she started she found it hard to stop. He was an incredible listener. She'd missed having someone listen to, someone who wanted to hear what she had to say. It was intoxicating.


He smirked at her as she railed on about her problems. They were small, trivial, and so human. He slowly corralled her further from the gathering, carrying the champagne as she used wild arm gestures to convey the gravity of the situation between Elena and Damon. Klaus didn't care in the slightest, but he adored the sound of her voice and he found the way she cared so much about things that wouldn't matter in the slightest in few weeks, endearing. But then again, he found almost everything about her endearing.

She was a mess and borderline neurotic. She was vapid and sometimes incredibly shallow. But she had infinite potential. She was a constellation of possibilities, a galaxy of promise. She could become so much than what she now was, something truly special. Far more special than the doppelgänger all her friends fawned over. Or the insipid witch who had about as much foresight as a fly about to collide with a spider's web. He only hoped that he could convince her to allow him to watch her become all that she could be.

"So being a vampire has changed her." Klaus summarized her rant about the doppelgänger. The moment Elena Gilbert's human heart stopped beating, she became entirely useless to him and his interest in any aspect of her life was ended, unless he could find the cure and shove it down her throat.

"But being a vampire only amplifies who you already are." Caroline argued. "It doesn't turn you into a completely different person."

"That's very peculiar." He said, amused that he was the only one who seemed to have realized how closely the doppelgänger's behavior mirrored that of his sired hybrids. So desperate for the approval of the one who created them.

"What's that look for?" She asked.

"It will all make sense eventually."

"Whatever," She said, sinking down onto a bench. "Just hurry up and find the cure."

"I'm working on it." He assured her as he sat down beside her.

He set down the wine glasses and began opening the champagne.

"Would you ever take it?" She asked.

He glanced at her, considering her question for a moment, though he didn't want her to know that. Would he ever actually consider it? He wasn't sure.

"Now, why would I want to cure myself of being the most powerful creature on the planet? Hmm?" He countered.

"So there's not one single moment in your whole like that you wanted to be human?" She persisted.

He popped that champagne.

"How about you?" He asked.

He poured them both a drink. She sipped hers as she considered the question.

"Life used to be a lot easier." He continued. "Don't you miss the days of being…" He pulled out his secret weapon and unfolded the old application. "chair of the Mystic Falls Beautification Committee and the director of the policemen's yearly ball."

"Is that my Miss Mystic application?" She asked, launching to her feet and snatching at the paper. "Where did you get that?"

"When I am chosen…" He continued.

She made one last snatch at the paper before settling back with her hands on her hips, allowing him to have his way. Smiling as smile that looked more like a grimace. She was far from amused.

"Now I'm really enjoying your use of when here, it's very confident." He teased.

She attempted to conceal her mortification.

"And above all, I promise to aspire, inspire, and perspire." He continued. "Obviously we found a shortage of words ending in spire."

Her calm broke and she snatched at the paper again. "Very funny, it's hilarious. Just gi…"

He held it out of her reach and she stopped, realizing just how ridiculous her reaction truly was, and she began to laugh at herself. He joined in her amusement. Recognizing how small her former human concerns had been was the first step in getting her letting go of the life that was over and opening her mind to the possibilities of an immortal future, a future without the limits of time and the fear of impending death, a future that could be so much more than this little town that stifled her potential, even if she didn't see it that way yet.