A/N Yay! It's finally time to Klaroline Fall Bingo! This is a very personal story for me. It's about the person I was and who I became. I used the prompt, "pumpkin fritters." Please let me know what you think!

This story is dedicated to survivors.

A Light of Hope

"Bloody hell." Klaus Mikaelson looked down at his phone and cursed under his breath. He'd been forced by his older brother, and business partner, to drive into this hellish town to appraise an estate full of art for their gallery. His own works weren't enough to keep them afloat, apparently. It hadn't been worth the gas it took to get to the country. Elijah's text revealed that all the "original" pieces by Monet and Gauguin were already hanging in museums around the world. The last thing on the planet that he wanted was to go back and face his siblings with bad news. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sighing, he decided to stop at the next place he saw and pull himself together. He hadn't even bothered to shave his stubble, sandy blonde hair curling behind his ears.

The thirty-three-year-old pulled off on the side of the road at a small diner just up a gravel path. Slamming the door of his Porsche 911 Turbo, he stalked inside, accompanied by his bad mood. A bright sound pulled him from his reverie. "Welcome, friend." He looked up and saw a beautiful girl in her late twenties who looked oddly familiar. "Can I interest you in our fall special?"

"What is it?" he asked warily, eyeing the quaint little diner with distaste. His orange cashmere sweater was probably worth more than the rusty red pickup truck he'd seen parked out front. He took a seat at the bar, tapping away on his phone while she waited patiently for him to look up. "Sorry, love. Business."

"Pumpkin fritters."

Klaus looked at her, confusion evident on his handsome face as he tried to place her. "Come again?"

"The fall special," she clarified with a grin, undeterred by his obvious moodiness and disheveled appearance. "They're my very own, award-winning recipe. Can I get you a plate?"

"Have we met?" he asked, tucking his phone in the back pocket of his designer jeans.

"I don't think so," the woman, Caroline by her bright white name tag, replied. She had golden curls cascading down the back of her happy orange sweater over a pair of worn out jeans and simple white sneakers. She had a plain white apron tied around her slim waist, and her face and arms were speckled in flour and fall spices. "It's a beautiful day outside," she observed, watching a few colorful maple leaves drift down from the trees like she hadn't a care in the world.

Klaus hadn't even noticed. "I suppose."

Turning her attention back to her grumpy customer, Caroline smiled. "So, how about those fritters?"

For some reason, he couldn't say no to that happy, shining face. She was so eager to share her creation, so proud. He wondered if he'd ever been that proud of anything in his miserable life. Probably not. He was divorced with no children, and being forced to spend less and less time making the art he loved. Years ago, he'd have been obsessed with every detail of that autumn day, memorizing every line of every leaf to memorialize it on canvas. Now, he couldn't even be bothered to remember what month it was. "Whatever you recommend," he finally agreed, feeling some of the tension leave his body at her enthusiasm.

"Oh, you'll love them; I promise!" she chirped, bustling about to gather supplies from around the diner's open kitchen. He didn't think he'd ever been as excited about anything as she was about making him those pastries.

Klaus squinted his eyes, tilting his head to the side as he searched his mind for any kind of memory of this glorious creature. She wasn't someone he could forget. "Are you quite sure that I don't know you? You just look so… familiar." The blonde smiled as she added nutmeg to a bowl of flour and butter, shaking her head slightly.

And that's when she saw it: that spark of recognition, followed immediately by a frown, and then the inevitable look of pity. Everyone always got that look when they realized who she was. "Oh," he said quietly. "You're Caroline Forbes."

"That's me," she confirmed with a sad smile. Oh, how she hated that look.

"I'm sorry." His voice was barely a whisper as he remembered the headlines. What had started as a runaway college girl had become an international sensation.

It had been a tragedy.

This angel didn't deserve what had happened to her; his heart sunk in his chest. If something so terrible could happen to such a beautiful person, what hope was there for a man like him? But to his surprise, something sparkled behind her sapphire eyes, and she shrugged as she continued to stir. "I'm not." At his look of shock, her musical laughter filled the air. "Sorry," she chuckled, amused, "you just look so confused."

"I… admit that I don't follow." Caroline shook her head, grinning. That smile gave him hope and filled him with a warmth he couldn't explain. He wanted to keep seeing it. But more than that, he wanted to understand. "You went through hell. How can you possibly not regret it?"

There was a wisdom behind her eyes despite her age. "Because it made me who I am. For or better or worse, I am who I am because of that man. Because of the things he did to me, to us. It made me stronger. He tried so hard to break me, but he never did. And that's something I can be proud of, and thankful for."

Klaus marveled at her. The pride he could understand, but no one should have been grateful after what she'd endured. No one. And yet, there she stood before him with a speck of flour on her nose, filled with a sunshine optimism that radiated throughout the diner. "I can see that you're strong," he agreed. "But I do wish you didn't have to be that strong."

The pastry chef smiled ruefully. "Yeah, well, I wish that I wasn't famous for the worst things that ever happened to me."

The man from the big city frowned, shaking his head. "You aren't famous because of that." She quirked an eyebrow at him as she pulled out a frying pan. "You're famous because you were the one to survive. You escaped, and instead of running, you started screaming to anyone who would listen about a monster in the woods with a dungeon full of women. Nobody believed you, but you wouldn't stop. You saved those other girls. They are alive because of you. That's why I remember your name."

"He wasn't a monster," she disagreed, the smell of fresh oil beginning to bubble wafting around them as autumn leaves fell beyond the window. "He was just a man. I tried to tell myself that he was a monster, but eventually I realized that that's what he wanted me to think. He wanted me to be afraid. He haunted my dreams for years before I finally figured out how to stop giving him all my power. It wasn't until I met Katherine that I really began to understand."

"I remember watching her on television," he said speculatively. "She was a bit… louder… than you are."

The blonde burst out laughing. "We kind of had a good-cop, bad-cop thing going for a while there." Kat was the one who walked into a police station and refused to leave until someone heard her story. When she found Caroline, the younger girl corroborated everything she'd ever said. "And it worked. It took a long time, but we eventually got someone to listen long enough to know that we were telling the truth. That there really was a house in the country full of women suffering. That they needed help."

"And you got it for them."

"We did." She dropped the first of the fritters into the cast iron skillet, smiling when the spice hit the oil. "Kat and I still talk to Bonnie and Elena every day." She beamed as she thought about her sisters. "We got justice for all of us. But more importantly than that, we stopped any other girls from being hurt. He'll never see the light of day again."

Klaus inhaled deeply of the fragrant fall scent of fresh pumpkin blending in with the dough, and he thought about what she'd shared. If she'd asked why he was in a bad mood, he wouldn't have remembered. It just didn't seem to matter anymore. "But you will," he said softly.

Caroline's smile radiated, the glow of the lamps framing her blonde hair like a halo. "The light is all I see." She pulled the first of the fritters from the pan and set them on a plate covered in paper towels to absorb the excess oil. They looked delicious and made his mouth water. "I guess I could be pretty pissed off about everything I went through, but that isn't who I want to be. I deserve better than that. He took enough from me without me handing over my ability to see genuine beauty." She drizzled caramelized pumpkin sauce over the crispy treats, and Klaus marveled at the way she seemed to find such peace in something as simple as a pastry. He had all the money and resources in the world, but he didn't have her strength. He watched the sugary substance drip over the fritters and began to imagine what colors he would need to mix to recreate their simple elegance. "I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why this happened to me, to so many other women. Why he got away with it for so many years."

Pulling his gaze away, the artist leaned forward on his elbows and asked with interest, "And what did you decide?"

Eyes sparkling, she slid the plate across the counter, beaming with pride at her creation. "I decided that there was no reason. I had to find my own meaning, find my own sense out of nonsense. I firmly believe that I went through all that so that someone else wouldn't have to. And it was so that I could meet Kat, and be reunited with Bonnie and Elena. We woke up the world. We changed the world. And we brought our abuser to justice. Life doesn't get more meaningful than that."

Caroline glanced down at the fried treats, silently imploring him to try one as her face reflected her excitement at such a simple joy. He just stared at her, trying to process how someone could possibly be so serene after surviving the house of hell. "Don't think about it anymore. Let it go; let all of the darkness just go." She smiled encouragingly, pouring a glass of milk from an ice-cold pitcher and pushing it toward him. "All you have to do is close your eyes and take a bite."

Smiling at her from the depths of his soul, he flashed her his dimples and felt something shift inside of him. As the pumpkin sauce dissolved on his tongue, he knew what it was to be still. He closed his eyes as he began to chew and felt a separate peace wash over him. There, in a little country diner in the middle of nowhere, he learned the lesson of a lifetime: there is always a light of hope. He didn't know it yet, but his life would never be the same. All that mattered was there in that moment. Something as simple as the fall special could stop the world from hurting.

"Well?" she asked expectantly, worrying her lower lip. "Do you like them?"

"They're delicious, sweetheart. Best pumpkin fritters I've ever had."

"Yay!" A bright smile split her porcelain cheeks in two as she clapped her hands together happily. "I'll pack up the rest of the batch for you to bring home. It's too much to take in all at once."

"Yes, it is." They shared a glance and both knew they weren't talking about the pastries anymore. "But it gives me something to look forward to."

Caroline flashed him a smile and he returned it. Oh, it was tempting to stay, but it was just too much. The truths that she'd shared were more than he could absorb in one autumn afternoon. When he got home to his big city penthouse, he wanted to turn around and run back to her. He wanted to bask in the glow of her light, but something stopped him. She didn't need him. She had everything she needed in that tiny town, everything she'd ever wanted. Despite everything that had happened, she had herself, and that was more than most. More than him. He knew he had a long way to go, but she'd set him on the path. He pulled out a paintbrush and began to mix the colors of fall, phone shut off at his side. As he lost himself in the canvas, he thought that maybe their paths would cross again. But then again, maybe not. Maybe one simple fall day with a beautiful girl was all it was meant to be. One glorious day with a plate of perfect pumpkin fritters.

And for him, that would always be enough.

A/N This was a very personal one. Please let know what you thought!