Hello, I had a heck of a time trying to upload this...D: don't fail me now FF. Anyway, I am not on Holiday (sort of) for a month. I will do my best to update frequently and with rich plot (this fic is honesty heck long). Thank you for the reviews :) you guys are the bomdiggidy!

He takes one last step onto the beach and collapses. Water continues to lap at his legs, rising above his calves and sipping on the liquid dripping from his thighs.

"Leah," He leans over her; wet fingers, coated with sand come up to cup her face. They leave trails of silver granules on her pale russet skin. "Leah," he tries again, voice swallowed by the crashing of waves against the distant cliff face.

She lies still, nothing moving except the hair being tugged by eager sea water. Her silence is crippling and Klaus frames her face. He tries his best to ignore her half crippled lower body, a healing still to be done. "Wake up." But she doesn't move and he presses trembling lips to her bluing ones. Nothing.

He pulls away, eyes roaming her bare body. After a moment he presses his hands to her chest and starts to pump. Weary of the mauled skin of her stomach. Willing her heart to beat, dying to feel the natural heat of her skin under his hands. The same heat he'd felt against his lips in a fleeting mistletoe kiss, against his fingers when they'd held hands, the heat he didn't know he needed until the moment he couldn't feel it anymore.

It drags back memories of times long passed. Days in which he allowed himself to feel, to love. When Black Death claimed the servant girl whose face Klaus can barely remember. When old age stole his one true friend, her blind eyes searching for him even as her last breath past her lips. When he'd given his lover his blood to bring her back after she died and she'd killed herself in horror at what she had become.

Klaus mind whirrs at the gravity of his helplessness, again he can do nothing. Like so many times before he's crippled by emotion, wrapped so tightly around his chest that he fears if Leah doesn't wake he'll cease to breathe.

Leaning forward, he tries to breathe life into her body. Her chest rises and falls with his efforts but her skin remains cold. He tries to wake her heart with his hands once more.

He can hear Leah's laugh, see her smile, feel the weight of her gaze when she doesn't know he's aware. And damn if he'll survive never seeing it, hearing it, feeling it again. Although none of it makes sense. She's never made sense, her being with him has never made sense and he can't imagine being lost in this confusion for the rest of his too long life. Alone again. Broken again. Lost again.

Cold again.

"Leah," He breathes, demands, prays, laments.

The water rushes up and licks at her cheeks, making her body shift in the sand.

"Don't go."

Her shoulders jerk under his hands and then she's turning, thrashing in the water. He instantly grabs at her, turning her on her side. Too hopeful to breathe. Too terrified to hope.

But she starts coughing and water is pouring from her lips. He holds her as she continues to shake, soaking in the shivers that cover her skin. Enjoying her ragged gasps because at least they mean she's breathing.

Then without warning she starts to fight him, a whimper of alarm pouring from her lips as he holds her tighter, whispering. "You're okay,"

And like a mantra it seems to bring her into focus.

Cracked and dry her voice sounds like a dying request, overflowing with pain. "Klaus?"

"Yes," he says against her hair, closing his eyes against the unnatural splurge of feelings moving throughout his body. "You're okay, I have you now." Finally the reality of it crashes into him. If he'd been a few seconds longer in forcing the change, a few seconds longer in dragging her from the water, she'd be still and cold, silent in a way Leah was never meant to be.

Her arms tremble up and around his waist, the slide of their skin a welcoming distraction from the buzz in his head. In her arms, gripping her as if she'd slip from his fingers any second, he feels the warmth return. It's slow, like lava oozing from a sea bed, chasing away the chills of both their bodies and leaving Klaus half breathless in relief.

He didn't lose her too.

Throat burning, he pulls away from her enough to cup her face, to examine the hopeless desperation lining their depths. In his mind he can see her body torn apart, falling, falling, the light already fading from her eyes. Unable to resist, not seeing any reason why he shouldn't, he leans forward and captures her lips. It's not heated, not nearly anything like their state of undress demands, but it's enough. A hope. A promise.

She's still trembling and Klaus knows if from her body's attempt to rectify her shattered pelvis, her broken leg, the gaping hole in her stomach

Leah sighs and presses her forehead to his. "You're here."

He wants to reassure her, say that of course he'd be there, but he cannot lie. He'd almost not gotten to her in time. He'd almost lost them both. Instead he closes his eyes, settles for drinking her heat in, drawing comfort in the flutter of her heart over the sounds of the ocean.

And just as easily as it started she tenses, pulling away from him. He feels the rush of cool air like a sledge hammer, and he should know, he's been hit by one before.

"Klaus," Her voice rises and he opens his eyes to meet her gaze, is somewhat resigned to the horror there and still feels a measure of annoyance. "You're here," Unlike when she said this line previously, it's now dripping in realisation, a mangle of hurt and plead that he doesn't really want to address. "Where's Hayley? Did she go for help? Is, is she hurt?" Her voice breaks on the word, face flushing and frustrated tears gathering on her lashes. "Klaus, where is she?"

He doesn't know how to answer. So he shakes his head and lifts a sandy hand to rub at his face.

"Klaus!" The plea leaves something bitter in his throat, although he's sure she already knows the answer to her question.

"I was too late." Is all the Original manages.

He expects those tears to fall, for Leah to wail like Klaus feels like doing himself, but as always she surprises him.

The shapeshifter does indeed allow the tears to fall, but instead of the torment that is wrecking Klaus's soul Leah's face contorts in anger. Her eyes flicker between wolf and human, her snarling teeth sharpen to fangs.

Her hands clutch at Klaus's shoulders with an iron grip, his skin the only contact she has with the world above her small patch of pain on the sandy bank.

"I'm going to find that fucking bloodsucker and rip her throat out." Leah states, the intensity of that promise waking something long dormant in the pit of Klaus's mind.

Admiration, fear, love. He doesn't know, but whatever it is it makes his lips part.

Once again, he finds himself shaking his head, a semblance of apology clinging to his tongue. "She is gone."

Leah clearly wants to protest, the way her hands shake is evident enough, but she seems to catch on to his meaning and freezes. "You killed her?"

Once he would have expected her to be glad, now he's simply grateful she doesn't try to take that fury out on him. "After I found Hayley… When I came across you and Jane it was too late, you went over the cliff and it was only natural."

She nods slowly, jerkily, clearly not happy, but not willing to protest either. She would have done the same, Klaus knows. She would have killed the vampire and apologised later. But still the fury burns in her eyes, accompanied with a cool spark of betrayal he hadn't been expecting. "Where were you when she came for Hayley, for me?"

He stiffens. The churning gut of sorrow over Hayley is suspended momentarily by the accusation. He knows he cannot get mad about this, her words aren't unfounded. Yet age old cold anger crawls through his veins. The same anger that ended with dead hybrids and staked family members.

"There was a second vampire," he tells her through his teeth. He would have been there for Hayley, for Leah, if he could have. Doesn't she understand that? Doesn't she know how much they both mean to him?

The glint in her eye is cold.

Klaus knows they're both being ruled by grief, but he has no more control of it now as he had none of the other times it's gripped his heart and threatened to crush it.

There's a flash of hurt in his chest, separate from Hayley's death, separate from Leah's almost-death, it's the hurt he's familiar with feeling when he loses someone. Someone he can see, can hear, can touch but they're no longer there in actuality. It makes him bare his teeth, tremble with the need to attackprotectmakeitstop. He's felt this kind of loss too many times before and knows that death was less painful, less tormenting.

Betrayal. It's a bitter whisper staining the back of his throat.

So when Leah, struggles to get up, he stands and offers her a hand. Eventually taking her into his arms when it's clear she has not healed enough to walk on her own. And although she accepts it and her skin is alive with natural heat, he feels cold where they touch. When she instructs the way across the beach and through the forest he holds his tongue. They touch, but the distance somewhat broadens when they find Hayley's body and they hold each other for a minute, but Klaus is sure he can feel them moving apart. The distance grows without either of them bothering to bridge it.

Read and review ;)