[Edit: 3 Oct 2021]

If OOC please let me know~ My VDP knowledge is limited.

Klaus POV

The inherent beauty he'd been chasing eludes him no matter how hard he tries.

The delicately drawn lines that make up her face are wrong, not like the smooth, delicateness of the original version. It's incorrect, inaccurate. Nothing like her, despite how the picture seems to suggest it is. Caroline…but also not.

Scoffing at this, Klaus curls his fingers around the paper, his hand reducing the brilliant bend of her jawline into a crumpled mess. The scrunched ball finds its place on the floor among a growing pile of not-good-enough; each and every sheet holds an image of Caroline, so precise it even shows the freckles on her nose, but still wrong. Not her. Not perfect.

From the very moment he first put pen to paper and had drawn the curve of her cheek, he was aware the detail did not capture the essence of the woman he loved. As much as he struggled, her eyes remained lifeless, or if they held longing it was for someone else. Her gaze would wander off the edge of the page, focused on some other wondrous sight, never him.

Klaus hates the way it affects him. It's just a drawing. It's not a flawless copy. But still. His long dead heart feels it. How though. He knows only betrayal – more than a lifetime's worth – and he's vainly eager for something more. Something he's sure Caroline can give him.

It hadn't been much of a struggle to keep her from worming into his affections. She'd burst through the walls, grabbed his very sanity and ran. Granted, he hadn't put up much of a chase. He wanted her, wanted the things she could offer him.

Whether she's fully aware of it or not, Caroline is what he wants most. His hybrids are important, beyond any doubt – they are his family, but the blonde has placed herself between him and his goal. If he can successfully obtain The Girl there is no doubt in his mind he can obtain his hybrids too.

The brightest point of contention standing in the way of his goals: Elena (read: the bane of Klaus's very existence and Caroline's best friend extraordinaire). Contrary to some whisperings he's heard, he does not take pleasure in pain, he's merely well acquainted with the knowledge that sometimes to get what you want you need to suffer. And he needs Elena's blood. If this jeopardises his momentum with Caroline, so be it. She does, after all, currently had a life mate – granted a stupid one, in Klaus's educated opinion.

Caroline can find a new best friend. Klaus cannot live another century or two alone in his "monolith of manpain" as Rebekah had so dearly put it.

If he has Caroline, he dares to reason, perhaps he will not need the hybrids – the pain and loneliness can be cured. But he does not have her, and she's making herself rather hard to obtain, so be that as it may Klaus will drain Elena dry if necessary.

For a fleeting instant he lets his mind dwell on that moment. Caroline in his arms, their lips fighting ravenously, her voice filled with laughter and joy as she clutched at his shoulders… Only it isn't his shoulders. His brief moment in her arms had been a farce, a ruse brought on by the mere chance that he had inhabited her boyfriend's body. It had been the werewolf's name the girl gasped, the werewolf's touch she sought.

His clenches his hand around his pen and an inky line smears across Caroline's finely sketched features. He crumples this work too, dropping to the ground. The paper rustles to accommodate it's brethren's weight and scatters a bit further into the study.

Klaus hadn't been able to resist. Who could? He had taken, hungrily, knowing that although the experience would shatter him later, at that very moment it was his life. Because for once she was his, right there, so close, so warm, his. He was in control of Tyler's body; it was Klaus' mind that urged the limbs to run eager hands over her waist – and the sensory memory is as real as it would have been if it were his body. But all the time it had still not been him in her eyes, to her he was the football player and Mayor's son, not an Original hell-bent of stealing her best friend's blood.

Lips twitching at the memory, he wonders whether she has those long arms wrapped around said boyfriend at present. Would she think of Klaus? Ridiculously, he comes to the conclusion that she might, but only to wish his rotting corpse to hell or a worse fate.

She was feisty, he would be surprised if she used it as some kind of turn on. He's not sure if this should provoke his laughter or if he should indeed find a damp hole to hide in. He does neither, if his past had taught him anything it was that no degree of self-satisfaction would ever lessen the final blow.

"Klaus,"

His eyes lift from the clear sheet of paper before him to land on the wolf in the doorway. She is brilliant, he created her. Yet he feels no abundance of pleasure in her company. He lowers his pen to the desk and raises a brow.

"Yes?" Klaus watches her shudder as he speaks; he finds it mildly amusing that her cheeks flush when they stray over his face. He wonders what face he is wearing to gain such a reaction.

"The Salvatore brothers are outside, they want to talk to you."

"I don't wish to talk to them, send them away," He lowers his head and picks up the pen anew, tapping it twice against his finger before he starts with one blonde curl.

"It's about Elijah,"

Klaus has more self-control than he likes to let on, but a snap sounds and Klaus watches annoyed as ink seeps over Caroline's single curl of hair like a flood of blood. His hand loosens from the fist it has formed and he examines the black coating of his fingers.

He tries to pretend it is blood and nearly succeeds. -