[Edit 9 Jan 2022] I decided to remove the last section of this chapter to the next chapter since this one was its own roller-coaster.

Canon timeline? Who? What? Where? Never met her.

Gratuitous overuse of metaphors.

"Kol?" I ask my mind recalling my conversation with Klaus the day before. He'd mentioned asking Kol about my wolf abilities. My stomach makes a valiant effort to turn itself inside out and my mouth dries. I stare at the man in silence. Could he…? What were the chances that he would know? Klaus hardly knew enough to explain it; to a complete stranger the dots wouldn't connect. Right? My fingers tremble in his frip, fear riding me hard.

"Now, now, no need to fret. What horrible stories has my brother told you?" But despite the soft cadence of his voice, the sudden gentle caress of his thumb against the back of my hand, his eyes are gleaming much too brightly. I don't know how he knows, but he does, I'm sure of it.

"N-none," I start out weakly and become aware of how pathetic I'm being. I shake my head and draw a deep breath, steeling myself, "Unfortunately nothing, as I mentioned, I haven't heard anything about you." I narrow my eyes, keeping my chin up.

"How rude, Nick." Kol sighed, his eyes never leaving mine. I can feel the quiet strength in his touch, aware of the reason for it. My heart beats against my ribs painfully.

"Are you quite done yet?" Klaus asks with a growl.

"Oh," Kol releases my hand slowly, his eyes holding all his mirth, his fingers lingering a moment too long on the back of my hand. He straightens and gives Klaus a lopsided smile. "I almost forgot you were here, brother."

"I see so," Klaus replies calmly and moves his shoulders as if to get comfortable. "Now back to why we're here in the first place,"

Kol waves a hand to ward off Klaus' subject and winks at me. I'm still frozen, with my hand lying like lead on the bar top. "Business is boring, I'm itching for some fun. What do you say, how does a little morning massacre sound?"

Klaus growls again, "I don't care what you do with your time, but don't waste mine."

"So fussy so early in the day. Are you ill?"

"No," Klaus snarls and clears the gap between his brother and himself. "Did you get what I need or not?"

"Impatient as always, did someone try to stake you again? Was it this pretty thing?" again he turns his attention toward me and I can barely breathe past the itching need to punch the man.

"Kol," Klaus mutters, so clearly a warning but the dark haired vampire grins and leans back.

"You're no fun," he pursues his lips, "I did what you asked."

"And?" Klaus demands. My eyes skirted between the brothers.

"Nothing out East or South,"

"Absolutely nothing, are you sure?"

"Yes, but there were faint murmurs up by Iceland and a few scattered close to Vatican City, and those are just for the strange vampires. They're just rumours about diamond-like skin and a coven called the Volturi. No hints on any wolves along the coast. If they exist as you seem to believe, then they're damn good at keeping hidden."

A flurry of pride unfurls in my stomach and I fight back a sudden smile. Our tribe isn't necessarily secretive, but we knew how to protect ourselves. I lower my gaze to the bar top and close my eyes hoping this will hide the emotion.

"Witches in the North seem to know about something called the imprint." I jerk at the word, eyes darting up at Kol. A lopsided grin steals over his face as he notices my gaze. "Nothing much truly, just whispers of a bond between soulmates that exist among a few species,"

Klaus nods, "Which species?"

"Mostly fabled shape shifters, but apparently something that can occur in vampires as well, although it's apparently much rarer." Kol lifts his brows dramatically and spears me with his gaze. "Have you imprinted, Leah?"

My mind was still whirring at this information, did that mean Klaus could imprint? My breath stalled in my throat, had he already imprinted? On Caroline? I'm going to throw up. I press a hand over my mouth and move my gaze away from Kol, hardly aware of Klaus' vaguely interested gaze following my movements.

Kol obviously knew, there was no doubt in my mind anymore, and he was trying to make things difficult. For Klaus or me? It didn't matter. All that I could imagine was Klaus gazing at Caroline, believing she was his everything. Klaus feeling like that pretty blonde was his gravity, his air, his life source…I couldn't take that away from him. I couldn't ruin his chances by exposing that I'd imprinted on him.

What would Klaus do? He'd probably not care about my imprint, but my merely being here would be a burden if he knew. It would make his relationship with Caroline, if one ever did develop, difficult at best. Surely she wouldn't be too happy about having a doe eyed girl following Klaus around. (Another one.)

I really am going to throw up.

A soft click makes me lift my head and the waiter offers me a patent customer-care smile before leaving the food in front of me. I stare at it for a moment, a freshly poached egg with a scattering of mozzarella on a bed of salmon and hash brown. My stomach doesn't even bother growling, I still feel too sick. I tilt my head back, ignoring the delicious aroma in favour of wallowing in tough luck.

I'm going to look like sickly, pre-vampire Bella if I continue this no-eating thing up.

"Leah?" My eyes find Klaus' in the dim lighting and I can almost pretend there is some sympathy in them. "Was it Sam?"

His question is natural enough, I'd probably assume it too if I were him, but I can't help but feel disappointed. I look back to the mirrors behind the counter, taking in my dark eyes, the slight curve from when I broke my nose falling from a tree at seven years old. The traces of Jane's attack are long gone, but I can see the churning of malformed, disgusting bones beneath my skin - the curling embrace of the hatred I felt toward myself as Sam tried to send me away.

I'm destined for failure. If the entirety of my existence has taught me anything, it's this.

Kol makes a clicking noise reminiscent of a clock at the minute mark and his disappointed stare burns through my skin. "Nick, apparently once one imprints they will protect the imprint with their life."

It's another opening, one that will let me benefit from the revealing, but the possibility of Klaus having imprinted on Caroline…it makes me hold my tongue. I send Kol a glare to shut him up.

"Seems like an awful lot of effort for another person," Klaus mutters and Kol snorts.

"Yes, because you don't care about anything enough to risk your life, do you Nick?"

Klaus glares, answering the question with one of his own. "And what would you know about risking your life?"

Kol stiffens, "I at least, didn't stake my family when it seemed convenient to do so."

"I have my reasons." Klaus growls.

"Everyone has bloody reasons, brother, but most of us don't think to temporarily bury our families for them."

"As if you haven't attempted to kill me,"

I watch the brothers wearily while they snipe (glad, so glad not to be their focus), drinking in the sharp edge of their words even as the tense lines of their bodies suggest a coming fidt fight. They are eerily beautiful in the grill's dim lights, their mouths twisted, eyes dark. But their appearance does not distract me from their words. The dawning horror of their words has my eyes wide. They can't truly be saying the truth though.

Kol stiffens, "There was a time when I looked up to you, but you are no longer the brother I cared for."

"Of course I'm not! Did mother or father try to kill you in your sleep? Did our family look at you with disgust? Are you a half-breed bastard?" Kol doesn't answer and so Klaus continues. "You try living a decent life when there's no one to sugar coat growing up."

"My life was as hard as yours when mother turned us." Kol defends with glittering eyes.

"Was it?" Klaus demands, "You found yourself some pretty little witches to keep you company, to teach you magic. I had to deal with my wolf on my own; there was no one here for me, Kol, no one! Mother didn't hate you, father actually looked at you, even when Elijah and Rebekah promised to stay at my side they betrayed me."

Kol pushes to his feet, his gaze menacing and his lips curled, "I didn't come here to bicker with you, Klaus. This is why our family cannot stand to be around each other; even the impeccable Elijah is sickened by us. I've done what you asked so I'll be going."

"Running away isn't going to fix anything, brother,"

"No," the shorter snarls and shoots Klaus a venomous glare, "It might not, but it's better than trying to kill your problems,"

"And you haven't murdered for the sake of your own gain?"

"I do what needs to be done," Kol snaps and turns away. His hands shaking, Klaus pushes to his feet as well and he stands in silence for a moment before either of them move. "I will continue looking,"

Slowly Klaus inclines his head and Kol looks at me. "Let's meet again, Leah,"

"Sure," I mumble and offer a bewildered wave as he leaves.

I look at Klaus' pinched features for a moment, my mind struggling to interpret their conversation, to process all the information. All I can say for certain, was that Klaus looks defeated. I turn back to my abandoned food, my body still rejecting it. Klaus settles down beside me and I hear Hayley take Kol's seat.

My fingers wrap around the polished fork and I stab at the egg without thinking. "You've staked your brother?"

Klaus' sighs; I can almost hear his eyes roll. "Granted, I've unstaked him many times as well,"

I purse my lips, trying to tell myself that he lives a different life. Living for hundreds - thousands?- of years must give you different rules in the game of life.

(Emmet's fist goes through the stone without much force, chunks of rock and dust fall around us in the clearing - a twisted snowfall. "Done."

Edward, standing nearby with Renesmee tucked under one arm, sighs. There's dust in his perfectly coiffed hair and Nessy sneezes. "You could have just moved it."

"I'll move your face," Emmet says, dropping into a comically bad fighting stance. His eyes glitter in the evening light and he's barely got a hold on his smile.

Nessy breaks away from her father to imitate her uncle's stance. "I see you have chosen violence. No one threatens my old man." Emmet crooks a finger and Renesmee launches herself at him with a shriek that has me covering my ears.

Edward slinks to my side as we watch Renesmee be tickled down to the ground screeching. "I've seen him rip bears apart." Before I can open my mouth, he continues, "It was deliberate."

I stare at the mock-fight, watch as Emmet let's Nessy overpower him and shove her fingers into his ears. "Aren't you scared of her being hurt?"

"I don't think there's anyone in this world I'd trust completely with her safety. But I know he'd never choose to hurt her.")

Klaus had told me stabbing him would be pointless, was it the same for his whole family? "Can he not die or something?"

"Oh he can die," Klaus informs me easily, "but dying doesn't come easily to an Original,"

"So," I glance at him, "I can't just tear you apart when you annoy me?" I ask, a part of me wanting to lighten the mood, another part wanting to crawl into a hole and wonder why I was here in the first place.

Klaus' lips twitch and he seems like he's about to smile, but his face falls into an emotionless mask instead. "No, death isn't something anyone can give us, you wouldn't be able to kill me… perhaps you could harm Kol and you could definitely kill the Salvatores, but for me? It's not possible."

"Everything is possible, nothing is impossible," I tell him and Hayley snorts, I bite back an ugly comment and instead focus on the man at my side, "Why do you think it's impossible?"

"You want me to divulge how you can kill us?" He questions amused and when I shrug he removes the fork from my disemboweled egg and places it back on the counter. "You can't, let's leave it at that."

My brows lower in a scowl and I try to snatch the fork back, but he gets to it before me. "Okay, so I can't kill you." He holds the fork up and each silver tooth gleams in the dim lights. "But I can put you to sleep,"

"Sleep?" he asks softly, giving me a curious glance.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that that's how you had your family in coffins. You stake them and they sleep, right?"

He raises a brow at me, "Interesting deduction, you put the stake in and leave it there, but it works for the rest of them, not for me."

I scowl, "You're special." His brows quirk and I wave a hand at him to dispose of the unspoken question. "You can't be stopped, so you're as powerful and terrifying as Elena said."

Klaus makes a noncommittal noise and replaces the fork. "Truly, I am,"

"There's no one who can rival you?"

He glowers at me, "I tend to wonder why you have so many disconcerting questions. Who are you aiding, Clearwater? What are you trying to accomplish by annoying me?"

I shrug and give a self-conscious smile, "I'm just curious." And I doubt the annoyance I inspire is anything particularly special. Most of the time when I speak Klaus seems amused, as if he can't wrap his head around what's going on in my head. Not to say he didn't want to murder me at times - I've seen his eyes do the freaky black vein thing, trembled beneath his snarl (like yesterday). This isn't one of the latter times.

"'Curiosity kills the cat', if I remember correctly." He taunts.

"Good thing I'm a dog, huh?"

For several seconds he remains still before he closes his eyes and gives an annoyed groan, "You're as awful as Hayley. Why are you both so irresistibly annoying?

Hayley snorts on Klaus' other side, "Beats me,"

While I hate to be in agreement with Hayley, I have to nod. "I never was this annoying back home."

Hayley hides a laugh in her hand and Klaus narrows his eyes at the hidden insult. "Please, find the old you," he says and waves over the bartender. "Place the lady's food on my name,"

"Yes, Mr Mikaelson,"

I shake my head and place a hand on Klaus' arm, grabbing it back just as quickly. "You don't need to, I have money," Money that's steadily dwindling, but I'll get a job.

"I don't fancy being a gentleman, Clearwater, I'm not doing this to appease you. So leave my decision be,"

"He's made up his mind, you won't change it." Hayley says.

I roll my eyes, biting back my protests. Klaus begins to stand and Hayley eagerly jumps to his side. I wave down the tender and he rushes forward, "You guys looking for any hands around here?"

The man frowns before giving a nod, "We could use some help. Do you have any experience as a waiter?"

"Not really," I cringe, "But I'm a fast learner,"

"You have a CV?"

"I can compile one?" I offer slowly and the man chuckles.

"That's fine, why don't you do that and bring it in, I'll give it to the manager myself."

"Thank you," I offer a smile and stand, glancing to see how far Klaus had already gotten. He and Hayley are already by the door and don't seem keen to be waiting for me. "By the way, sorry for that," I indicate the untouched food with the slaughtered egg.

The man's face twists, "You really don't like egg, huh?"

I shrug and hurry after Klaus and Hayley, the gesture while not taken for me still makes me feel squishy inside. It's a strange feeling, one I'm not used to and one I'm sure won't stick around for long.

Everything is…too much. I thought vainly that moving away from Forks would be good, if not relaxing. Yet separating me from Sam has not made the problems disappear. Baring the obvious emotional turmoil, living in Mystic Falls has awoken a swelling tide of confusion, tendrils of joy and self flagellation whipping about, seaweed pulled by the current. I'm going to get whiplash if this keeps up.

There's, unfortunately, not much to do about it. I was bad at regulating human emotion in Forks, what could have possessed me to think I'd suddenly grow a reasonable EQ? If the last few weeks (hold up inside a mansion, living off the graciousness of a woman I cannot stand and a man who cannot stand me) have taught me anything, it's that I probably need some therapy.

But! Klaus and Hayley probably need therapy, too. So, there's that.

At least, I muss, in Forks I knew my place. In Mystic Falls I'm free falling from a cliff into raging waters. I don't know where the sharp rocks lie beneath the surface of Klaus' facade. I don't know if the sharp edges of Hayley's glares will cut me as I crash down. At least in Forks I knew where to aim to avoid the razor edges of the salt sharpened outcropping.

I don't know if, when I reach the water, I'll be forced to drown or if somehow the current will pull me away from certain death.

I nearly slam into Klaus when I exit the Grill, he stands frozen with his back to me, Hayley off to his side with a vicious scowl on her face. I follow the wolf's gaze and spot Caroline in the distance, her hair falling in perfect, golden curls and her face carefully make-uped to accentuate her eyes.

She sparkles.

I glance at Klaus; his face is stretched in a smile, a real smile. I might even dare to say he looks happy. My breath catches.

"Good morning, Caroline," Klaus murmurs, voice honey thick and dripping warth, and inclines his head. When he lifts it, his blue eyes are bright and focused, intense on Caroline's pretty face.

"Klaus, Hayley," she greets shortly, her gaze skims over both to settle on me. "Hey, Leah!"

My cheeks hurt, waring between smile and snarl. I settle on something that is probably a grimace. iIt's not her fault. It isn't. /i "Hi,"

She closes the space between us, her shoulder glancing off of Klaus' as she narrows in to drag me into a hug. Her hair smells like coconut and sunshine and I hate it. She sways me with her inhuman strength before pulling away, my arms are still limp at my sides. Her eyes are cool as she assesses me, for what I don't know. "Oh," she says, there's a sharpness to her smile that wasn't there before and it's near unbearable under her scrutiny. "Looking a bit grumpy today, wolfie. You good?"

"It's nothing," I mutter and take a step back, out of her hold. Her arms lower to her side and my gaze finds Klaus. He still hasn't lost that disarming smile, even though Caroline had virtually ignored him in favour of me. "You're awfully happy this morning." I say hoping that somehow this doesn't turn into a mess, that Caroline's face does not sour, that Klaus' eyes do not blacken.

He hardly seems to notice the yawning awkward gap between him and Caroline. Just stands there, beaming, happy to be sharing the same space as her.

My skin itches.

Hayley is standing still as a statue, the tension of a cat ready to attack.

Caroline chuckles, bright and airy, the sharpness of her gaze suddenly gone. "Nothing like a new day to cheer me up." She makes a show of looking me up and down. "How are you doing? Elena mentioned you were staying by Klaus and I meant to check on you, but I never got around to it,"

I shift and dart another look at Klaus. It takes some effort to force out the words in as level a tone as possible. "I'm fine, why wouldn't I be?"

Caroline blinks and her eyes do that sharpening thing again before it melts away behind what is seeming to be a very fake sparkle. Her grin reveals teeth and the wolf inside me wants to rise to the challenge. "No reason," She looks to the side as if seeing Klaus and Hayley for the first time since arriving. "I'm sure things by Klaus' house can be just a little difficult. You seem good though, we were getting worried when you didn't show up around town."

"That's my own fault," I defend. Again I sneak a look at Klaus but he is looking away now, his head turned from us.

She hums an affirmative and smiles at me, her eyes twinkling. I want to snap at her to stop, for the love of all that is holy just stop. "You cut your hair, it looks lovely,"

"Thank you…Caroline?"

"Yes?"

"Maybe we can talk later?" My gaze is still on Klaus, but I feel Caroline's sight shift back to me. "How about you give me your number? I could actually use your help with something,"

"Sure," she grins and extends her hand, "I can put it in your phone."

I wince. "I don't have a cell phone," I want to hurry away, hide in the forest, muzzle beneath my tail, as Caroline blink slowly, the only sign of her own racing thoughts. "Ah, you can just say it…my-my memory is pretty good." I'm too hot, boiling under her gaze, feeling the itch to explain, to rationalize my lack of technology in the modern day. I beat the urge down violently, reminding it that I don't need to explain myself to her or to anyone.

"No phone." She says, eyes doing another once over, no doubt taking in my every fault, cataloguing my scuffed sneakers, the torn edges of my jeans, my overall lacking. She shakes her head, "Well okay,"

My face is still red, "I'll have to phone you from Klaus' place,"

Caroline looks at Klaus, her face carefully neutral before facing me. "Don't be embarrassed, Leah. There are many people who don't have phones. There are studies showing the overall detrimental effects of cell phones-" She cuts herself off and shakes herself before offering another of those bright smiles. "Hm, you phone me and we can meet up. It's better to talk in person anyway, too much static over the line."

My eyes shoot off to the side, Klaus has tensed. I cringe; I shouldn't do this to Klaus. But this was one fight I couldn't (wouldn't) win for him. If he really loved Caroline and wanted her to trust him more, he'd have to earn it on his own. I couldn't let his love commitment issues hamper me. I give Caroline a nod and she recites her number, telling me to meet her the next night, at the Grill, for supper.

We're halfway down the road when Klaus speaks. "She seems to like you." His shoulders are rigid and his back straight where he walks in front of me. Hayley is at his side, her sleeve brushing his occasionally.

I know the bitterness, the biting hook of trying to fish for elusive game.

(Emily sits across from me, her frown deep and her knee bouncing. She stares at her feet and occasionally mutters the first syllable of a sentence she can't seem to form.

"You seem happy." I say with my eyes glued to the top of her head, drilling holes down and down. She flinches like she can feel it - the weight of what I have not said.

"I-" she starts and then stops. Her hands come up to cover her face.

Good, the bitter voice in the back of my head, which has been getting more insistent as of late, says. She should feel bad.)

I understand where he's coming from, but I don't know how to say that he is wrong. She's shown me common courtesy, yes, but her kindness is just as barbed as it is genuine. I have no doubt that Caroline meant it, her help and her concern, but she was fishing too. Searching for a reason - to do what, could be anything.

No one is purely altruistic and people are not single faceted.

As much as I want to hate her for rejecting Klaus (hate her for existing rent free in his head and not taking responsibility for what that does to him) it's not why she angers me. Her not being with him leaves space for me - and I know, I know it's awful, but I'd fight to the death for even a fragment of his attention, for his mind to be filled with me instead. So I hate her, however, I hate her for being what I cannot be.

She's not daft, at least not daft enough to be blind to Klaus' obvious obsession with her. Whether she accepts his affection or not, Caroline has already accepted that she has some sort of hold on him. Klaus has treated her with nothing but reverence, despite her being in a relationship already he does not push her. He waits and he hopes and she dismisses him and I can't be mad about it.

"She's very…nice," I say eventually. I wonder if he knows that I know, he cannot possibly be that blind to how much his face expresses. Yet, it is Klaus. "She reminds me of my cousin. Care-free." I drift off and watch the shift of his shoulders, the curl of the hair at his nape. "You know, when Sam imprinted on Emily, she didn't know we were together. She cheerily told me she met a 'Sam'. How many Sams could there be on one reservation you might ask? The answer is one. Just one Sam and he'd been mine until she came."

Klaus gives no indication that he's listening to me, Hayley's head is tilted, her hands curled into fists. I carry on. Despite everything I've told him, I never truly felt that I conveyed the true scope of what made me come here. I'm not a good story teller, emotions are difficult. Vulnerability is difficult. To a man, tattered from a hard life, my sob stories would seem insignificant, but to me they were shattering and I wanted him to understand.

There's so much more than this, I want to tell him.

"When she finally found out she was devastated. She tried to leave him, twice if I remember correctly. She had that look in her eyes, you know the one," I wave vaguely at the air, eyes caught on the fibres of Klaus' coat as they accumulate dew. "I hated it. She used to look up to me, but then I was a kicked dog in her eyes. I thought I could not be more angry after Sam's betrayal, but this, this was so much worse. Pity, charity," I say the words with the beginning of a snarl and force myself to breathe through it.

Hayley's steps almost stutter in my silence, but Klaus has shown no reaction. I peer down at the ground, we're moving so much slower than earlier.

"One day Sam there was some kind of disagreement in the pack - it doesn't matter what - and the phase took him suddenly, violently. His wolf clawed half her face off." I pause, tasting the screams, feeling the heat of blood on my fingers. "When I first saw her afterward, I was giddy at her pain, at the disfigurement. I thought 'now Sam will want me again'." I clench my hands in the fabric of my sleeves. "I've never hated someone as much as I hated myself in that moment, because she smiled at me. Covered in bandages, hooked to an IV in a hospital bed , she smiled and reassured me that everything was going to be okay. It was the first time I understood what spite could do to a person."

We've stopped moving, Klaus still has his back turned but Hayley is staring at me, her eyes unfathomable. I force myself to continue after a deep breath, "The whole thing still hurt, I couldn't escape from that, but I tried to look at it from her eyes. What could I but accept it? Sam imprinted on her, she did not know and still she tried to fix it, for me. In the end all I've done is turn my anger from her to Sam. It's so easy to step away from something when you realize you can never have it, that having it will hurt someone you care about."

"Is that the morale of your story?" Klaus says, turning to grace me with a glare. "Put all the blame on Caroline and I'll be able to move on? How quaint."

He is admitting it to me, his love for Caroline. My head shakes and I reach for Klaus' arm, barely touching him, my hand hovers between us. "No. Moving on is…difficult and you don't have to." I look down at my hand between us and regret wells in my stomach. "You don't need to run away like I did, because you actually stand a chance." I look up at him, drowning and grasping for a missing lifeline in the face of his heartbreak. "Nothing good can come from loving someone who is already in love with someone else. But, you - she, she would be so lucky to have you. Plus, you're so much stronger than I am."

"Why do you say that?" He asks, his face unmoved by my declaration.

"Because you're not a love sick girl trapped in the mind of the man she lost. You are decades, centuries old and have likely faced challenges far beyond most people's understanding. You stand up for yourself, you work towards what you want, you-you're a problem solver. You don't need to escape your problems, you face them head on." I drop my arm. "I know you can win her over if you show her the side of yourself that's worth loving."

Klaus shakes his head, "What makes you so sure that there's anything worth loving left in me?"

What do I know of love? What valuable experience can I glean my wisdom from? What is love other than pain and disappointment?

Perhaps, I think, one day I can love Klaus and know the unique pleasure of being left behind by him, too. Because you're a complete stranger but here I am. I give him a smile despite the weight in my throat, "You are more than your suffering, more than your faults. I barely know you, but I know you deserve love too."

"I've never been loved before, Clearwater," he says, and I'm terribly aware that this is the first time he has disclosed something of himself to me. "I doubt anyone can love me, I'm a hybrid bastard, who never knew his father and whose mother hated him."

There are so many words trapped in my chest, so many things fighting to be said, none of them sound right. Did mother or father try to kill you in your sleep? What does a person say to that? I want desperately to think I can help him, if only a little. Yet the chance of my being the person to help him is infinitesimal. All I can do is hope that somehow he will do it on his own. "You shouldn't be so quick to call yourself unloved," I say, "even the worst of us get a chance. You just need to not give up."

I'm a fool. I'm a fool and a hypocrite. Klaus does not need to know this.

"You sound hopeful," Klaus says and drags a hand through his hair. He turns to resume walking, it takes me a moment to force myself to follow. Hayley trails silently behind us and I dare to glance back at her.

She watches the back of Klaus' head with singular focus, mouth a thin line.

"What makes you smile?"

"Smile?" he barks and frowns at me. "I smile all the time,"

I laugh, it sounds fake. "No, you glower and pout, and sometimes you'll smirk."

"I don't pout," he says affronted and my own smile grows wide and genuine, "smirking is the same thing surely."

"It isn't," I insist, "smiles are happiness. Smirks are just-"I make another meaningness hand wavy gesture "smug."

He snorts, "I don't see why I can't be smugly smiling."

I dare to bump him with my elbow, emboldened by the banter. "That sounds like something a vampire would do. But…smiling is…when your little brother says you're cool and when you finally get the chicken casserole to come out just right." I pause to feel the ache, let it settle between my ribs before I continue. "You smile when you look at Caroline,"

He frowns, "I do not,"

"Huh, denial," I say and when he turns to glare at me his lips twist into the smallest of smiles. It's beautiful.