A/N - Yes, of course the title is inspired by a song. "If I Never Knew You," is a haunting balled performed by Jon Secada and Shanice. It was shamefully cut from the original version of Disney's "Pocahontas." It poses the questions every one with a broken heart must face: Is everything we lost worth all that we gained, or would it be better if we'd never loved at all? Edited 3.16.2020 for grammar.

Whispers in the Night

June 3, 2019

Caroline Mikaelson looked around the skeletal remains of what had once been their home. It wasn't home now. It wasn't anything. It was just an empty building... Wasn't it?

How had they gotten here? Was there ever going to be any other ending? Should there have been? The freshly divorced blonde had no idea how they ended so far from where they came. All she had left was his name. That much she would keep. It had been their name. When she met her now ex-husband, they'd been at a meditation retreat in a tiny monastery in rural Tibet. They'd both been hiding high in the Himalayans, each running from something.

Klaus Mikaelson had been running from a family that never wanted him. A world that never wanted him. He'd been a mistake – a bastard: the only one of his mother's seven children with a different father. He'd found out when he was thirteen. By fourteen, he'd run away to find the father that never knew he existed. As it turned out, he'd never wanted a son in the first place, let alone a runaway. He'd barely gotten the words out before another door slammed in his face. He'd been warned by his stepfather that if he left, there would be no coming back. So, Klaus hadn't even tried. He wandered around England aimlessly for a few years doing things like bussing tables and walking dogs until he was old enough to join the Royal Air Force.

At first, he thought he'd finally found a family. His fellow soldiers were a random group of misfits just as he had always been. He thought his little clique would be friends forever. They were stationed in Porton Down, the site of The Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in the English countryside. In 2013, samples from Syria were sent to the lab to be tested for the presence of Sarin, a deadly nerve agent. The plan was to assure military equipment could withstand the synthetic organophosphorus compound should it be employed as a biological weapon.

Klaus and his crew were supervising two scientists transferring small amounts of the gas from one lab to another. A clumsy chemist managed to drop a sealed container with such force that a tiny amount of Sarin was released into the air. While they were all fully ensconced in protective gear, the newly designed equipment was not as effective as previously anticipated. Before injections of atropine and pralidoxime chloride could be administered, all of Klaus' friends, and both scientists, had perished before his eyes.

It was a miracle he'd lived at all. As the sole survivor, he'd been upgraded from soldier to lab rat. He then underwent nearly two years of testing before he was finally released from the service when his initial contract expired. With nowhere to go, and no one to leave behind, he'd retreated to the mountains. He'd gone to run away from society, but instead he found a reason to return.

Caroline was the architect of all Klaus became. While he had an abusive stepfather, she'd lost hers to the streets when she was seven. He died of a heroin overdose the week she turned nine. In her final year of college, she'd watched her mother die from a fast-growing brain tumor. After she graduated, she found she really had no idea what to do with her life. She'd gotten a degree in Social Work, but that didn't mean all that much without her mom. Everyone kept telling her what a recluse she was becoming as she retreated more and more within herself. After a while, nobody called her anything because nobody called. Her friends could handle only so many missed calls and delivered, but unread, texts before they stopped trying. By the time her mother's life insurance came through, she'd narrowed down her belongings to a single suitcase and backpack. Without a word to anyone in her tiny town of Mystic Falls, she'd boarded a plane to Tibet.

Despite all the tragedy they'd endured before they met, Klaus was magnetically drawn to her inner light. He'd found in her what he'd been looking for his entire life: solace. He looked at her and the world stopped. That kind of attention wasn't something she could ignore. Hadn't tried to ignore. He was older, but not by enough to matter. When they met, she'd just graduated at 22. Four years her senior, he'd been in the RAF for eight years, having been recruited early on and shipped out the day he turned 18. They were married a week after he turned 27, which was only five months after they'd met. Still unsure what to do or where to go, the first year of their marriage was spent in that tiny monastery in the mountains.

Klaus had an ear for languages. English had been his first, but by the time he'd left home, he could already speak German and Spanish as well. His first job had been walking dogs for a French family. They'd given him a small space in their basement in which he'd slept on an old army cot. Within three months, he was fluent. They'd moved back to France shortly after. He hadn't gotten an invitation, not that he'd expected one.

Caroline was the first person who'd ever made him feel wanted. They arrived around the same time and were both struggling to learn Tibetan. With each other's help, they'd picked it up in a few months. Since she'd taken Italian in high school and college, they'd quickly swapped their romance languages. After she'd picked up German, they'd learned the Cyrillic alphabet and added Russian to the list.

Multilingual and madly in love, they'd joined The United Nations as Peacekeepers. Since they already knew French and could therefore pick up The Democratic Republic of the Congo's dialect easily, they spent only five months in Manhattan at UN Headquarters learning Lingala and Mongo. Armed with nine languages, they went to live in a port city on the Congo River called Mbandaka as part of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC, often called MONUSCO. The Botanic Garden of Eala quickly became their favorite place in their new rainforest home. It was a haven for the struggling citizens to retreat to when the weight of poverty became too much to bear.

For a time, the newlyweds were very happy with their lives as Peacekeepers in the equatorial jungle. Shortly before their second anniversary, Caroline told Klaus she was expecting. He was over the moon at the prospect of a child of his own. He swore to her that their child would not have to endure what they had. Whether or not to stay in Africa had been a topic of much debate during the latter months of her pregnancy. They loved their home, but did they really want their daughter to grow up in the middle of one of the poorest countries on the planet? They ultimately decided that they would finish out their time with MONUSCO and then transfer back to a developed country. With 193 members states making up the United Nations, they had the world at their feet.

Klaus and Caroline felt blessed. They lived in a cute little house painted mint green with watermelon trim. It ran on solar power and had a working sink in both the kitchen and bathroom. While they didn't have a bathtub, they had a small outdoor showerhead and an indoor toilet, which was more than most houses could boast in the heart of Africa.

Klaus was quite the artist and painted a large mural on the wall of their future daughter's nursery himself. It depicted a family of his favorite animals, wolves, running through the Garden of Eala. There were three cubs frolicking while their two parents watched from atop a large boulder as the harvest moon shone brightly overhead among the stars that he painstakingly created one by one as Caroline's belly grew larger with each passing day.

Eliza Mikaelson was born on the first day of winter in 2017... just in time for Christmas.

Their daughter was perfect. She was six days shy of full term, eight pounds even, 19 ¾ inches with bright blonde hair and her mother's sapphire eyes. Every time Klaus picked her up, he wondered how he would ever be able to put her back down. The choice was usually taken from him when she'd cry for her mother to breastfeed her. Unfortunately, that meant he was relegated to diaper duty. In the world according to Caroline, if she put the food in the baby, Klaus got to deal with it coming out of the baby. Having been smart enough to learn nine languages, he'd decided early on that he was smart enough not to argue with her.

Their happiness was short-lived.

In early April, reports began to surface of an outbreak in a small market town called Bikoro to the south of their modest two-bedroom home in Mbandaka. By the second week of May, testing confirmed it was the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. It spread to the city a week later. For several days, it felt like the world shut down. Nobody left their homes, especially not anyone with children. In an attempt to contain the outbreak, the DRC's Ministry of Public Health began inoculating limited personnel with an experimental serum known as recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus.

Klaus, Caroline and Eliza all received the V920 vaccine on the 21st of April.

Klaus was terrified after his brush with Sarin. Caroline supported him as best she could, but he mostly wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately, their bosses didn't care too much about his time in Porton Down. People were gathering to pray for the city in churches all over the country, and the UN strongly suggested they attend services the next morning. All of the agencies converging in the Congo wanted their workers to be seen out in public to show the world that action was being taken to stop the spread of the virus. Wednesday morning, the three of them went into town.

May 23rd quickly became the worst day of their lives.

Three of those who had been infected had been spirited away by their families on motorbikes from the hospital in Wangata. When the new parents saw panic spreading among the congregation, they knew where those patients had come to pray at the hour of their death. The second he got his girls home, he scrubbed all of them raw and burned their clothes. He could barely breathe over the next few days as terror clawed at his chest.

By the 24th, Klaus' worst fears were confirmed when Caroline and Eliza began coughing up blood. Once again, he alone had been spared from a chemical weapon.

He sat frozen in fear at their bedside as they were hydrated with multiple large bore IVs day after day after day. The doctors pumped them full of heparin to help their blood clot as the hemorrhagic fever ripped through their veins. They were the first to receive packed red blood cells and platelets once the Red Cross replenished supplies from up the river in the country's capital, Kinshasa. Caroline was a fighter. After a week of horror, her fever finally broke and her body slowly began to heal. Eliza wasn't as lucky.

June 3rd, 2018 was a Sunday. Despite the best efforts of the World Health Organization, the Red Cross and the United Nations, Klaus and Caroline watched their daughter succumb to hypovolemic shock eleven days after they'd been exposed.

Eliza Mikaelson was 164 days old when she died.

Caroline spent another week recovering before Klaus took her back to the house in which she now grieved. They tried to be strong for each other, but their marriage died not long after that. He blamed her for surviving when their child hadn't. She blamed him for not suffering the virus with them. Even after all the testing that had been done back in England, no one really knew why Klaus was so much stronger than everyone else. Realistically, Caroline knew it wasn't his fault he hadn't gotten sick. In the same way, he knew it wasn't her fault that she'd survived when Eliza hadn't.

Grief wasn't rational. Grief just was.

The final day of their marriage was almost as hard as the day their baby died. All their mutual pain and rage came out at last. They'd screamed and cried and fought for hours before Klaus finally walked out of this very room, leaving her to stare at the baby wolves now staring at her. The last thing she'd said to him was that she'd wished they'd never met. Wished she'd never known him. Wished he'd never known her. Wished that she could take it all back for a chance to start over.

That wish was the final straw for Klaus. Nothing was as painful as that single sentence. As hurt and angry and scared as he was, he'd never considered what life would have been without Caroline. He knew what it was now that she was gone. In some ways, life had gotten easier. In some ways, nothing would ever be easy again. In some ways, he'd come to understand that wish. He wished he hadn't.

Klaus didn't know how he felt when he walked into Eliza's old nursery and found his ex-wife huddled in the corner crying the blue out of her eyes. Given that it was the anniversary of their daughter's death, he shouldn't have been as surprised as he was. Shock was evident on her tear-streaked face when she opened her red-rimmed eyes and saw him standing in the shadows. Since that dreadful day, he'd had no idea what to say or do around her. Apparently, that hadn't changed in the months since their divorce was finalized. He inhaled a deep breath and sat down next to her, neither of them saying a word as they wept in silence for all they had lost.

Hours passed as the sun slowly set outside the dusty glass that had once been their daughter's windowpane. By the time Klaus finally got up, the only light in the room was that of the moon coming in from the African sky. Caroline seriously debated whether she should just let him go... but what could she say if she went after him? She'd learned often that something said in anger wasn't necessarily untrue. What if she'd meant what she said?

Nothing had haunted her more than that one question: What if? What if she could take it all back? Knowing what she knew now, what would she do? If she knew what she would lose… would she take the risk? Had all they'd lost been worth all they'd gained? What did they have left? They didn't have Eliza. They didn't each other. What did that leave?

Love. It left the love.

If things had been different, if they'd never gone to Tibet, who would they be now? Where would they be now? They might be safe, but half as real. In all that, what truth would there be? They would have never known that love like this existed... but then they met, and then they kissed, and then they knew. Maybe they'd known all along. Yes, they knew what it was to grieve… but only because they'd had something to lose. Someone to lose. Their baby was dead, but her memory would live on. The rest would all fade away. The fights would fade. The angry words. The bitter tears. The harsh light of day. The cold black of night. One day, it would all be gone… but not her. Never her. If nothing else, Caroline had learned one thing: past the thinking, past the breathing, past the beating of her heart, there was one thing that remained forever true: Eliza.

When the sound of the front door opening echoed around the empty house, she jumped up and went after her ex-husband. "Klaus, I..."

When he turned to look at her expectantly, her voice trailed off as words failed when she saw his face. It hurt that his once beautiful dimples had faded beneath a shadow of stubble. He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his dirty blonde scruff that was long overdue for a cut. He didn't know what to say either. What was there to say that hadn't already been said a hundred times over? I'm sorry I didn't get sick? I'm sorry I was stronger? I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough? I'm sorry our baby died? I'm sorry I left you all alone in our dead daughter's nursery in the middle of the jungle? All of those were true, but it was too late for those truths. What did that leave?

What if Klaus had the chance to start it all new? What would he do? Would he choose to forget Caroline and Eliza? Or would he cherish those memories? Would he always remember that while he had lost, once he had won? His wife taught him how to love. That love proved fallible… but what of their daughter? What had she left behind? What was her legacy?

Eliza showed her father something he'd never thought possible: unconditional love.

Long moments passed before Klaus turned to walk out the front door for the last time… and then he heard Caroline's breath catch in her throat. "Wait!" she called, rushing after him. He turned to face her, his own face broken. Wishing she would let him go. Wishing she would never leave. Again, she found that sometimes words fail. No longer was it that she didn't know what to say. She just didn't how to say it. What were the right words to be the last words? He looked down at her bloodshot eyes, her runny nose, her puffy lips, and he waited. Finally, she audibly inhaled and steeled herself to say the only thing she could: the truth that did matter.

"If I never knew you..."

"I know, love."

Three words. That was all he managed to choke out before his eyes began to spill once more. That was all that he needed to say. It was all she needed to hear. He cupped her cheek in his calloused palm and wiped away a tear from her elegant cheek bone with his thumb. A jolt of pain shot through his gut, making his cobalt eyes involuntarily slam shut when he felt how easily she still leaned into his touch. He inhaled a shaky breath and had to force down the lump in his throat with a painful gulp before he could look at her eyes. When he did, he found that hers had also closed against her will.

They'd spent a lot of time with their eyes closed. Too much. Rage had just seemed so much easier than grief. Anger was gone now. It had faded away. Grief remained. All he could see when he looked at her now was the ghost of his daughter. Their daughter. She would always be theirs.

Neither of them would take a single moment of it back. Taking it back wouldn't make it better. They would always have that one truth in common. They would always have Tibet, and Manhattan, and Africa. They would always have the memories. The love. The loss. The joy. The grief. The laughter. The tears. They would always have Eliza. Even though she was gone, they would never forget that she had been. Before she had died, she had lived. She had loved, and they had loved, and love is always better.

Even with nine shared languages, there were no words left. They'd said them all. She nodded her head in silent agreement. Yes, they both knew they would do it all over. That it would be worth it. That they had been worth it. That Eliza had been worth it.

Caroline memorized the feeling of Klaus' rough palm on her wet cheek, knowing it would be the last time either of them would set foot in this house. It hurt too much. Being together hurt. Being apart hurt. Finding each other hurt. Losing each other hurt. Everything hurt. Klaus pulled his hand away and kissed her forehead. She wrapped her arms around him and inhaled his earthy scent one last time. He held her to his chest as long as his heart could bear. Taking with him all that he had learned, it was time to say goodbye. The final lesson was that he knew now how to say nothing. So, that's what he did. He said nothing.

When Klaus silently pulled away, Caroline held her head high as she watched him walk out the door and out of her life. As he faded into the dark night of the jungle, both of their hearts ached for one more look… one more moment... but they knew the not looking just meant one thing.

I'll never forget you.