In which Caroline runs away and it's actually sort of fulfilling.

Okay, so this was written/first imagined with the whole problem of Klaus settling down in New Orleans when I don't believe that Caroline (the real Caroline, not the pod person that took over her body after Klaus left) would stick around in Mystic Falls unless she absolutely had to. With all that wanderlust in her, I don't think she'd want to be tied down to NOLA like she was to Mystic Falls and we all know she deserves better than sticking around in one city for the rest of her existence. By the way, the places mentioned in this drabble are Girona (Spain), Lapland (Finland) and Salisbury (England). All are incredible places and I urge you all to visit them!

The first time, he finds her in the outskirts of Girona. She's busy taking selfies of herself against the blue-yellow-orange walls of those cute little buildings when he casually strides up to her once she lowers her phone.

Honestly, she's surprised it took him so long – he's kind of obsessive about people making a break for it.

"Well, you look like you're having fun." He says, casually, hands shoved into his pocket carelessly as he strides towards her.

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Well, duh," She says, dryly.

There's a flicker of a smile on his solemn face before his jawline tenses.

"Somehow I didn't expect to find you here," He intones.

"Here, as in Spain? Or here, as in not New Orleans?" She challenges.

And that jawline tightens further.

"You left." He accuses.

Caroline raises an eyebrow. "I left you a note." She says, loftily.

"A note," He scoffs.

Caroline crosses her arms over her chest. "I couldn't stay there." She admits.

This time, Klaus raises an eyebrow. "Because it was such a hardship for you?" He says, dryly.

"No, because it was sucking the life out of me," Caroline confesses, brutally, making Klaus flinch.

"The city or me?" Klaus asks, coldly.

Caroline's shoulders slump and she approaches him as one might a wounded animal. She reaches up and curls a hand around the back of his neck, bringing him close to press her mouth against his sweetly.

"Klaus, it wasn't you I was walking away from." She insists. "It's just-" She sighs. "Look, New Orleans is your dream. It's your city. And I stuck around because I love you and it made you happy and you happy makes me happy. But I don't want it to be my life." She bites her lip. "That's why I left. It had nothing to do with you, Klaus."

"Why didn't you tell me you were unhappy?" Klaus asks, his voice clipped with anger.

"Yeah, because you're so easy to talk to," Caroline says, sarcastically. "Look, I was never intending to be gone for long. I just needed a break from New Orleans and I was always going to come back," She soothes.

"So, I just sit in New Orleans, waiting for you to return from your holiday?"

"You were the one who promised to take me wherever I wanted to go." Caroline snaps then.

"I'm sorry if my responsibilities of ruling a kingdom ate into your travel plans after graduation, love," He retorts.

"Don't talk down to me!" Caroline hisses, taking a furious step forward. "I'm not some gold-digging teenage airhead expecting you to shell out a free trip to fucking Moscow in your private jet every time I ask. You were the one who told me to get the hell out of Mystic Falls and instead, you shoved me into another small town."

"New Orleans is hardly the same as Mystic Falls," Klaus argues because he's just not getting it.

"No, but it represents the same thing!" Caroline stamps her foot. "And if you can't understand that, then you're not the same guy that promised to take me wherever I wanted to go."

Her words cut him but she intends them to, even if she said them in some slight hope that he would at least try and understand where she was coming from. Maybe it is selfish and childish, but she doesn't want to settle down and play pretend queen of a city she feels nothing towards. But she had, for the past three years; she had done it because Klaus is her guy and she knows it makes him happy. For that alone, she would never have walked out on him if every moment she spent in New Orleans didn't literally feel like dog years.

"So, what?" Klaus challenges. "You go globetrotting and I wait in New Orleans like a good little boy for you to come back?"

Caroline smirks because the image of that is too good to be true. "I don't think you've ever been a good little boy,"

"Don't joke," Klaus growls and it is a testament to how far they've come when she rolls her eyes instead of feeling that instinctive little thump of fear in her heart every time she talked back to him in Mystic Falls (because, hey, she wasn't an idiot; slightly reckless sometimes, but she always knew what he was and what he could do to her if she pushed him over the edge).

Caroline sighs. She places tentative hands on his shoulders and pulls him close because the warmth of him against her is always nice to have.

"I will come back," She promises, lowly, leaning on her toes in those pretty panda flats she had bought on an impulse buy a few weeks ago in a street market in Modena a few weeks ago, and pressing her forehead against his. "I'd never leave you, Klaus. I just… I need some time away from the New Orleans of it all, but you're still my forever." She hesitates, because this next question of hers may just make or break them (because if he isn't willing to give it to her, can he really be her forever?). "Can you trust me to come back to you?"

She waits as a myriad of emotions pass over Klaus' face before his expression settles on resignation.

"I want you, Caroline," He admits, and she knows how hard it is for him to say that, right to her face even. "I'm not happy about being even a second away from you, but I also don't want to tie you down to a place you don't want to be in." His eyes search hers. "I believe you will return to me when you are ready."

Some of the tension slides out of her shoulders because there was that part of her –the part of her that had been left behind one too many times – that was afraid of just what his answer would be.

She clears her throat and nods. "Great," She pauses. "Did you want to go for lunch, maybe?"

The next time he finds her (because obviously waiting didn't mean staying away), she's in Lapland, hovering over the Giant's Kettle thoughtfully.

"If you're going to jump, I suggest you don't think so hard."

Caroline smiles and reaches out a hand absentmindedly which Klaus takes from behind.

"Will you jump with me?" She asks, coyly, looking up at him through her eyelashes.

His eyes rove over the subtle red flush to her skin from the sauna in Rovaniemi.

"Are you sure there is anything else you would rather spend your time doing?" He asks, lowly, his eyes slick with heat.

Caroline bites her lip and the indecision is clear on her face. After all, being a committed relationship with the Original Hybrid (who could do dangerous things with his fingers) had left her spoilt where her sex life was concerned and celibacy, now that they were separated geographically semi-permanently, has certainly put a damper on that.

But, in the end, she wants to make these memories with him, so she shakes her head.

"Maybe later," She concedes, because she's sure once she's jumped into the rift, she'll want to him to warm her up and that'll definitely lead to sexy times. "So, jumping, yay or nay?"

His hand is comforting in hers because there's still that very human part of her that thinks she's stupid for wanting to jump into a freaking pothole. But his thumb strokes over her knuckles and her shoulders loosen.

And suddenly, they're soaring through the air and landing in the frozen water and she screams and he laughs and it is perfect.

The third time he finds her, it's been four years since their last meeting and along her travels, she's heard something about some long-lost sire lines showing up in New Orleans and she knows Klaus would never take that the right way and apparently it had ended in some great, big bloodbath and she almost wishes she could've seen it go down (as a spectator, only, because her days of legendary vampiric battles are totally over). He's kept his eyes on her, of course, especially with the new threat in his city, and vampires drop by every now and then with a message or a gift or a letter and she sends postcards and souvenirs and she posts cute Instagram photos with witty tags, which does wonders for her loneliness but it's not the same as actually having him there with her.

Anyway, so, the third time he finds her, she's taken a little detour on her whole globetrotting adventures. Apparently, there's this vampire serial killer making serious moves in Salisbury and Caroline hadn't been able to bite down her curiosity and worry, so she had, of course, gone to investigate once she was in the area.

Vigilantism isn't the new rage, but it does wonders for her inner adrenaline junkie. She's not stupid enough to confront the prick who's butchering the bodies of adolescent girls and leaving them to be found in the town square face-to-face, because he could easily be centuries older than her and wouldn't that be just a monumentally stupid idea. Instead, she takes the sneaky route and compels any potential victim to make like a tree before they get gruesomely murdered. Unfortunately, her whole justice crusade inevitably catches up to her and that's how she finds herself with a stake shoved into her stomach and the wall behind her as her throat chokes with blood.

The serial killer (Edmund Drayton, if anyone was wondering) in question is handsome, she'll give him that. Tall, dark hair, unassumingly gentle hazel eyes. The kind of guy that human her would've gone for in a second (and did, considering Damon), which just makes the anger curdle in her because all she had wanted to do was make sure that no other girl ended up like she did, clawing at the sheets and at his face as his teeth ripped into her neck and his hand dug between her legs.

"You're that baby vampire Klaus Mikaelson likes to shag, aren't you?" He asks, cocking her head, as if he's incredibly curious about her reply.

She bares her teeth instead.

She hates that, how people define her by the man she's screwing. As if her life revolves around him. If it did, she'd be in New Orleans now. But it doesn't and she isn't and it just pisses her off more.

He sighs. "Pity, my dear, because this means your death will have to be quick. I can't have the Hybrid showing up here and-"

His sentence cuts off brutally when a hand slides through the flesh of his stomach, sticking out of his abdomen crudely. Suddenly, he is yanked away from her by that very grip and thrown into the opposite wall, Klaus' hand sliding out of him with a dreadful squelch that has Caroline biting down the bile.

"Unfortunately," Klaus' voice is smooth with threat. "I won't be as understanding with you."

The ensuing fight is quick and messy and Edmund is left in thick sluggish pools of flesh on the floor, an arm and leg in the corner and his head still clasped in Klaus' hand.

"Anger issues much," She comments.

He gives her a withering look. "Perhaps if you hadn't been so foolish so as to hunt a four-hundred-year-old vampire with a fetish for violating and slaughtering young women, I wouldn't have had to resort to this." He gestures to the carnage at his feet.

Caroline snorts. "You haven't changed a bit. You're still blaming everyone else for your own shortcomings, you jerk." She hisses.

Yesterday, she would've totally been throwing herself at him and kissing him like his life depended upon it, but the second he had victim-blamed her, any goodwill had disappeared.

"You could've died, Caroline," Klaus snaps, and it's obvious that his goodwill for her is in low quantities as well. "All because you wanted to play superhero."

Their separation has not done them so well, she thinks. Four years is a long time to go without seeing him and she recognises the truth of that in the tension between them now.

She never wanted it this way.

Klaus drags a weary hand across his face, ignoring the streaks of blood that bloomed on his skin.

"I'm sorry," He says, suddenly.

Caroline softens.

"Yeah, I know," She says, quietly.

His eyes centre on the wound, grim and bloody through her shirt, in her stomach, and he's at her side in a moment.

"You need blood," His teeth tear into his wrist and he holds it up to her mouth.

Once she finishes, her thumb sweeps away any crimson still clinging to her mouth and she drops her hand to her side, shifting awkwardly.

"Thanks,"

Klaus shakes his head. "You never have to thank me, Caroline." His lips twitch. "I will always come for you."

Her eyes water, much to her annoyance. This was the Klaus she had wanted to appear. Without much ceremony, she slips into his arms and curls against his chest like a wounded kitten, her nose jutting against his collarbone. His arms come to rest around her, one a band around her waist and the other twisting in her hair, matted with dirt and sweat.

"I've missed you," She confesses, her voice muffled.

His chuckle drums through her. "I've missed you too, love," He pauses and his hesitation is very vulnerable, which only makes her chest ache. "I don't want to pressure you, but it would make me very happy if you would come home now."

Caroline knows how much it cost to ask that now. It's been on the tip of his tongue for the past five years, but he hasn't brought the request (and really, she's proud that it is a request and not a demand – character growth, obviously) out into the world until this moment. She doesn't need to look beyond his eyes to know that whatever altercation that happened in New Orleans has changed something indelibly between them. There's a new tension to him that she hasn't exactly aided by not being near him (and considering how close she came to dying today, she's almost agreeing with him). But she won't apologise for that. She won't apologise for having her time in the sun and she knows he would never expect her to.

Is it sad that he's at a stage in his life where he wants to settle and she just wants to wander? Yes. But she's had five years of freedom which hasn't dulled the ache in her chest of not seeing him in the last four. So, maybe globetrotting can be put on hold for the moment while she just revels in him and no, she doesn't think that's giving up a piece of herself by falling in with what he wants for her, because at the end of the day, she wants him and she hasn't had him for four years.

She has eternity to run, after all.

"Okay."