A Moment of Rest Upon the Wind

by Catheryne

Caroline/Klaus. Decades after the final goodbye brings about excruciating realizations and new beginnings. "I've lived a thousand small years, but a handful of years were lifetimes of their own." Occurs post TVD, Originals and Legacies.

A Moment of Rest Upon the Wind

by Catheryne

Part 1

Children come. Adults leave.

Each name that passed through the large yawning doors of the school was carved in her mind. Never forgotten. Their peals of laughter still echo through the halls in the quietest of evenings, just when the school year ends. They were the days of solitude she longed for the most. They were the nights of isolation that she craved and feared in equal measure.

They come to her as children, eager to be molded, open or guarded, yet earning to learn more of the world that lay in wait for them.

They leave her once they shed their coils, and step into the world in their true skin. They come as children, drink all they can drink, and leave—if she was successful—fully formed.

Decades now they came and went. Classes upon classes. What was a temporary stint while Alaric's turn came to explore the world became her life.

Caroline took a breath of the still air that smelled faintly of the lake. The calmness of the surface belied the depth of the water.

Here was Peace. In her immortality, this was to be her Peace.

Standing at the dock, under the sharp sun, she closed her eyes. It was ironic that she, and so many like her, would take breaths to comfort, to mull, to find calm. They certainly did not need the air. It was one of those memories, those actions tattooed in your soul.

One day, in a year or even in a century, she remembered him warn, or plea, truly she could no longer decide which. All she truly knew was that she did not cherish the words enough when they were uttered.

Too late. Decades late.

You will turn up at my door.

Here I am, she whispered. What do you have to offer? Show me.

But the air was still; the sun was sharp, the water calm.

And he was silent.

At peace.

Was this her peace—forever standing on the dock, the doorstep to the only tomb she would know for him—scattered as he had been into the wind?

Are you still here?

And he was silent. Not here. Gone long ago.

Children will come. And she will help them out of their shells and into their skins. And then she will usher them into the world. And they will leave.

And still, here she would be trapped in a prison world of her own making. Because how she would leave, she could not know. Her rational mind had known all along that he was not here, but this was where Hope had let him free.

Turn around, and don't look back, she told herself as she walked back towards her car. This was how you say goodbye, she told herself, knowing tomorrow she would return to stand on the dock, to breathe, to speak with someone she knew was not there.

Every mortal she knew before her immortality had gone. Many of those who told her they would leave forever—gone. Even the bursts of sunshine in her long darkness had left her, thinking fondly of that time when love and friendship intertwined.

A hundred years, a thousand, he had playfully teased her. When she was young, ill prepared. He came too early, and left too soon.

But he was at peace.

And underneath the calm perfection of her exterior, Caroline had never known as much turbulent storm.

Everybody leaves.

She was surprised the find an intruder inside her office. Had Caroline been the young, less experienced vampire that she had been before, she would have sped for a weapon or a shield. But violent, dastardly intruders did not bury their faces in books.

Of medieval poetry.

Her lips twitched. As much as Hope was her own woman, she was also her father's daughter.

Caroline's brows rose, then furrowed at the sight of the muddy boots on the desk she had otherwise kept pristine. She would have complained, but the girl had long been dear to her as a child and dearer as she grew into her immortal skin.

And she and Hope, loss for loss, were like competitors in a race that no one else would willingly wish to enter.

"I hope you intend to wipe off that grime when you leave."

The book lowered to reveal the bright blue eyes. Hope cocked her head to the side, her auburn hair falling partly down her shoulder. "Who says I'm leaving?"

Everybody leaves.

"The kids are out on school break. There is no one to welcome or scare off," Caroline offered.

"Which begs the question—why are you still here?"

As if she did not know the answer. As if the decades and the company did not reveal to her, clue by agonizing clue, the reason that Caroline returned. As if they were not the friends they had become by now.

How much Hope knew now that she did not know when first she donned that blue dress.

Every few years or so, Hope would pop in unexpectedly with one mission.

There was no outward sign of it. Hope had honed the skill to perfection. There was no hitch in her breath, or a spasm of a muscle. But Caroline knew.

She had become too cocky. Hope had missed the year before, caught up in a hunt somewhere in eastern Europe. The year before, she was caught in a romance that took her to a dimension that Caroline doubted even Elijah could have pronounced. Usually, she kept it well away from prying eyes. But these days, Caroline had been too caught inside her own head that she was careless. Her eyes darted to it, right by the edge of the desk. It was an unassuming velvet box that once held a priceless gift.

And now it was even more precious.

In an instant, Hope was on her feet and she grabbed box. At exactly the same moment, Caroline gasped the other end.

"Give it to me," Caroline said firmly.

Hope's eyes narrowed. "I love you, Caroline," she said, softly. And Caroline knew she meant it. "But you should not have this."

Strength for strength, Caroline knew that Hope could take it. Slowly, she released the box. Charmed by witches so powerful that no other hand could ever break the seal, Caroline released her breath. "It's of no use to you."

Hope's jaw tightened. "It shouldn't be of any use to any us," she responded. Grasping one end in her grip, Hope took the other end with another hand and with all her hand tried to break it. Once. Twice. It was a ritual now. She expressed rage with a groan, then smashed it on the floor. Did not even expect it to break into pieces before slamming her muddy boot onto it to no avail.

"Hope—"

Again. And again.

With a frustrated roar, Hope hurled the box into the fireplace.

Spelled, the box simply clattered back down onto the desk, soiled but no worse for wear.

"Are you satisfied?" Caroline asked softly.

Hope snorted. "Never."

Caroline picked up the narrow box, then picked up a tissue from the box sitting on her desk, idly wiping at the grime until it was good and clean. Who knew spells could be better than a sealant to protect velvet. When she looked back at Hope, she could see emotion brimming in her eyes in the form of tears that she would not shed.

"You shouldn't have it. No one should."

Caroline brought the box close to her chest, clutched to her heart. She walked over to Hope, then held her eyes unblinkingly. "Do you trust me?" Hope looked away. Caroline gently turned Hope's chin, the way she used to do when Hope was a young student, and Caroline had not yet been in a desperate search around the world for a solution to the twins' joining. Reluctantly, Hope met her eyes again. "Trust me. Please. I would never-"

Years of searching like a madwoman, determined to find a way to save both of her girls, Caroline had scoured through spellbooks by ancient mystics, read prophecies by wise men long forgotten by time, and copied down indecipherable carvings on walls of millennia old monuments. And then she was called to a dig, surreptitiously handed the small torn piece of parchment so old it should have broken into ashes long ago. What power it had that through a thousand years buried in the sand, exposed to the elements, the writing survived.

Should she fail, this was the only key to bring her fallen daughter back.

It was a spell that fed into itself, nourishing and sustaining through the centuries.

Caroline had prayed that she would never use it. But she had found it, and what mother would she be if she did not at least keep it close. She had never truly known the sheer magic of it until Freya had paid a visit to the school once, a long time ago when Hope was still a student here. And what Freya told her chilled her to her core.

It was one thing to bring the dead back from Veil. It was another to free a soul from a prison world.

And completely another to snake a dark smoky hand into the deepest recesses of Peace, wrap gnarly fingers around the soul, then snatch them back into the living, with all the rage and agony and madness purged rushing back to take the place of your humanity.

And with Caroline's blood and Freya's magic, the rolled up parchment was sealed into the box.

"Then why do you have it? There's no threat to the girls anymore."

"It's indestructible," Caroline stated as a matter of fact. "Where else would it be safer than with me?" She prided herself in her self-control. She was Caroline Forbes. She was Miss Mystic Falls. She controlled her blood lust by sheer willpower. She turned off her humanity and kept her head. The many times she had been tempted, yet kept herself from falling until—

"You're not selfish, Caroline," Hope allowed.

Caroline nodded, with a smile. In this prison world, all of her own making. Living dead, alive but not living. Here to stay as children come and adults go, a constant while they lived their lives and saw the world. She had seen the world enough trying to save her girls. She was satisfied to stay at his doorstep, a mock tomb to the ashes that was long rested in the wind, on the surface of the water, sank and mixed in with the silt. "I'm not selfish," Caroline repeated. But my God, sometimes she wished she was. Just a little.

Maybe she could have lived.

But what is the point of living now?

"Okay," Hope said, with finality. The same finality these conflicts ended with every year or so. "Keep it somewhere unseen, won't you? There's no point tempting weaker people than you."

And then Caroline recognized the wistfulness in the other woman's voice, realized why she returned every time, needing desperately to destroy the spell.

A kindred spirit.

With a sad smile, Caroline took the box and opened the drawer. She slid it inside, hidden from view. And then she took Hope in her arms for an embrace. "Those weaklings," Caroline whispered into Hope's ear. She could hear the tears in Hope's giggle. "Not us. Never us. Just a few decades more and we'll be over it."

Hope reluctantly pulled away, and Caroline knew how much control it took for Hope to show her strength. Her mother would have been so proud of the woman she had become. And she knew how much Klaus was.

Klaus.

First time she even thought his name. He was just always there in the back of her mind. But she never named him. Could not name him.

The pang of pain that shot into her heart turned into a vise that gripped her, handicapped her, completely paralyzed her.

Sometimes she wished she could forget his name. It was never fair how long it took, how much living she had to do, before she truly saw him and who he had become.

As if her words reverberated loudly, even if they were only in her mind, Caroline recognized the shift in her companion as Hope reached to clasp her hand. She blinked back the moisture in her eyes before they threatened to spill. "Those weaklings." This time, it was Hope that used the words teasingly. "Come on. You might not want to leave the school for this perpetual wake, but I'm sure you won't say no to coffee. My treat."

"Your treat?" laughed Caroline. "Will miracles never cease?"

tbd

Chapter Management

Part 2

There was a time when she lived for their banter. He always had the best lines, tested perhaps on dozens of women in the thousand years that he lived before she was born. In the darkest, most traumatic moments of her life, there was this scary monster whose name was whispered under their breaths. She was told he was evil, and horrific, and soulless.

His words sent her into a flurry, waging the most violent war against her own walls every time his full lips broke into a sly smile or a smirk, a gentle greeting that always complimented her. Her shield almost always dissolved into peals of laughter, and she had tried her damnedest to keep him at a distance.

She would not stay, she told herself.

Soon he would be gone, and this would be the most difficult of his crimes to swallow.

As much as she took pleasure in his words, in his voice, today she would seek refuge even in his silence. He led her into his home, wordless still. She held onto his arm, her grip tight but comfortable, as if it was right there that they belonged, and they were simply lost all the times they met before.

Caroline sank into a soft cushions of his couch. When he turned to leave—a host should be gracious and always offer to pour one—she tightened her hold on him and pulled him down to stay.

Last days. Last hours.

Last words.

One could not help but wonder, she thought to herself, watching the way the sunlight played over their intertwined fingers as they tentatively touched, how much he had changed in the two decades since she first laid eyes on him. This giant of a figure, this fearsome of a character that struck terror in the hearts of many, had turned into someone who could so peacefully make a decision the way he had.

Having been pushed away for a thousand years by so many. Having been abandoned early on. Having such soul crushing fear of being alone that he would entrap those closest to him so they could never leave him.

He came to her world cloaked in darkness, and here they lay in the final moments, chaste on a couch, their fingers tangled together, like a young couple newly acquainted and in the fresh bloom of love. Her heart felt light, growing heavy as every hour passed. She turned her head to him, and his face softened, gently breaking into a familiar smile. His silent greeting was wordless and even so she could hear his voice in her head.

'Hello, love.'

There were no professions, no tensions tonight. Gone were the days of frantic desperation. Over the years, he had shown her more than any words could communicate.

She was always the one who held herself in such tight control that she could not know how much she would regret the words now lost in time.

He could tell she struggled as she licked her lips. That dimpled smile was understanding. No anger. Just acceptance. He accepted her silence the way he accepted death.

And she hated and loved him in equal parts that he could be so at peace.

Is that the peace that a lifetime of a thousand years bought you?

Soon, he would be gone. Unlike him and his acceptance, death was still a struggle to her. The loss of her mom, the break that occurred, the hysterical agony of losing Stefan – she was not as mature or calm as he. Maybe a hundred years more of her immortal life would get her a fraction of his peace.

"You don't have to say anything, love," he assured her. "You've told me over the years. Not in so many words, but I heard it."

She sighed in relief, nodded and smiled sadly.

She was Caroline Forbes, and this should be easy. It was easy enough with the handful of men before. It was easy with all her friends. She could not understand what took the words away.

He understood. But what a difference it would have been if she could be as open to him. Now, seeing the soul he had become, seeing the genuine love family had brought him, she wished so badly it would not have been too late. But time is short now. Certainly not long enough to encompass what she had recognized too late about why she showed up, why she came to him when he called, and why she accepted him every time.

"You can do something for me," he told her. "One last favor for your favorite supervillain."

And his words made her chuckle, because it was so obviously an endearing tease. He knew. She leaned her forehead into the crook of his neck. She breathed him in as if she could sear the scent that was so uniquely his into her brain to last her through forever without him.

She wished she could loathe him for leaving. It might ease the passing of the coming years.

Even that, she failed. Who could hate a decision that she knew was made wholeheartedly for his child? She certainly would have done the same for her girls, blood or not. She would give her life for theirs, as Klaus was doing now for Hope.

"You were never the villain of my story," she whispered. "Far from it. Sometimes I tell myself you can be a hero." He had certainly saved her many times. The first few times he was the reason she needed saving. Other times, he simply was. Against her forehead, she could feel how his smile widened. She could see it in her mind even if her eyes were closed. "Tell me what you need, aside from watching over your daughter at my school." She was going to do more than that, she was sure. As strong-willed as Hope was, Caroline could not help the fondness that overtook her every time the girl reminded her of her equally stubborn father.

"When I'm gone—"

That brief pang of pain, a flash of anger, overwhelming regret. Each one fought for prominence in her throat.

"It could be a month, or it could be a hundred years, my sister would come to you. It is the only gift I can give her. With the hell I've put her through, she deserves it. Give her the Cure, if she wants it."

It was a tall ask, to be responsible for something so invaluable, something so desired. How would he know that she would not be tempted in the hardest of days to take it for herself, or to offer it to another? And what woman in her right mind would always be at the ready should she be needed.

She pulled away to meet his gaze. "I swear I will." Her fingers tightened around his. "I don't regret a second of our interludes these last twenty years. They were few, far between, but—"

"Like ships passing in the night."

"I wish it was longer," she told him. There was so much more beauty, and music, and art. There was so much of the world to explore.

In his calm acceptance, he did not concur. Instead, he brushed his lips in her hair. "Those moments were worth a lifetime," he said.

She had longed to turn her lips to his, to take one selfish moment. After all, after this goodbye, there would be no more selfishness. After him, there would be no more her.

It would all be about the children, after all.

Caroline shook off the reverie. She opened her eyes and the dimly lit surroundings of his New Orleans home fell away. This was where he lived now—in her dreams, in her memories of those precious moments interspersed in the two decades of their entwined lives. Those moments lit up the muted colors of her memories like sunlight dancing on intertwined fingers, creating a play of shadow and light.

Revisiting them made her feel young again. They made her heart race the way it no longer did these days. Some of them made her breathless and dizzy.

To be so young. To be so—

The vehicle that stopped before the school was unfamiliar. She made her way to the entrance.
When she opened the door of the school to see Rebekah standing there, her hand in Marcel's, somberly looking at her as if decades had not passed since both Klaus and Elijah… faded… She was the same beautiful young woman.

"I was expecting you," Caroline said in greeting, her voice light, cheerful. "You look happy." She could tell that Marcel was pleased with the observation.

Rebekah's chin rose. A small smile appeared on her lips. Caroline caught the slightest tremor before the other vampire caught it. "And you look—different," Rebekah allowed.

Caroline bit her lip to stifle a grin. "I guess living forever with a partner ages you more slowly than living forever minding hormonal teenagers."

At this, Rebekah eases into a chuckle, melting the tension between them by a fraction.

"Please," Caroline continued, "come in."

She ushered them into her office and gestured to the seats before the desk. Instead of taking their places, Marcel shuffled towards the large windows and peered outside, seeming to scan the grounds. It was as if caution was ingrained into his very bones that he could not let down his guard even in a school.

Then again, with the number of attacks that her students had thwarted over the years, his caution was not misplaced.

Meanwhile, Rebekah walked around slowly, looking at the display shelves that housed several of Ric's and her books. There were random titles from other interim headmasters and headmistresses. Over the years she had taken off for the solution to the merger, and when Ric journeyed the world to document magical creatures, other people have come and gone and left their mark. Rebekah stopped before a shelf, then reached forward to touch a simple silver frame. A simple sketch of a girl and a horse.

"Scotch?" asked her visitor.

Ever the Mikaelson, Caroline thought. "This is a school. I don't keep alcohol to socialize with my students or the faculty."

Rebekah threw her a glance, her look undecipherable. "You have something very valuable to me." Caroline nodded. "Do you still have it?"

For the first time, Caroline sensed uncertainty in the other woman's voice. "Of course, I have it. I gave my word. It's yours, Rebekah. I was just holding it until you're ready."

Rebekah then sank into the seat. Caroline recognized the relief. Inspecting her office had been a distraction, and a mask to hide the anxiety. Caroline walked over to a nondescript painting of a phoenix that simply looked like a museum print. Moving the frame out of the way, she unlocked the vault and returned to Rebekah with the precious vial. This time, Marcel was standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder.

"He loved you," Caroline said to Rebekah, handing her the cure for vampirism.

She did not miss the slight tremor in Rebekah's hand as she reached for the vial, holding it close to her chest like the precious gift that it was. "He did."

He was giving her death, Caroline thought.

"He just gave me back my life," Rebekah said softly.

Caroline's gaze flickered to Marcel, who looked down lovingly at the woman seated in front of him. His look of affection did not falter. She licked her lips. She was a messenger, a keeper. She was asked to give the vial when Rebekah was ready. Caroline blurted, "Are you sure?" Perhaps she was just one of the rarities who gloried in her vampire life. Perhaps she was searching.

When she was ready, Klaus had told her.

"Are you ready, Rebekah?"

Rebekah looked up at her, her somber eyes calm. Like her brother before her. "I lived my life," Rebekah answered simply. She took a deep breath, then stood up. "We will have a celebration dinner. We'll invite the family. We're going to toast, just like we did for my brother. We'll talk about my exploits and misadventures as a vampire." She took Marcel's arm, then declared. "And then I begin my mortal life. My niece is around, I trust." Caroline nodded. "I will extend a personal invitation."

The door closed behind Rebekah as she walked away. Left standing at the doorway, Marcel glanced at Caroline with a smile.

"You know, I had never seen him happier than he was every time he would visit Mystic Falls," he told her. Marcel continued, "You brought him so much that he never could find elsewhere."

A flash of memory in the woods, of stolen kisses. Of brilliant smiles.

"He trusted very few people. He trusted you most of all."

"I would have been too afraid to do anything to that vial," she responded. Caroline had heard too many stories about Rebekah, especially from Stefan, occasionally from Klaus.

Marcel chuckled, then shook his head. "He trusted you with Hope."

The question was at the tip of her tongue. One vial. One cure. One immortal life to surrender. Be turned human. Klaus' gift to Rebekah was the choice to turn human.

"And what about you?" The words spilled from her tongue unrestrained. An immortal life without her. She would not wish this pain on her worst enemy, and she was on positive terms with Marcel since encountering him in New Orleans those final weeks.

"Still a lifetime to live with her, no matter how short or long it is," was his easy response.

We all have a shell. We all wore an armor to battle.

Her own was chinked. His seemed fresh and new. She would like to see him as the decades passed, and Rebekah aged. But today he was a knight with a brand spanking new armor, ready to face what lay ahead.

"As long as that choice was hers, I will live with it," he told her with full resolve.

~o~

It rarely rained around this time of the year, adding to Caroline's surprise at the thunderclap and lightning that criss crossed the dark sky. She squinted at the windshield, worried about how risky it was to continue driving in this condition. The unexpected weather made her slow down the speed of the car.

She reached the school grounds in a slow roll. Unexpectedly, a crack of lightning and a blinding light made her lose her grip on the wheel. Caroline touched her cheek at the warm prickles left there. It was electricity crackling in the air. The handful of lamps dimmed and died. Soon, she heard a terrible groaning noise. Each flash of lightning illuminated her surroundings. The huge tree on the grounds had been struck, and large branches fell to the ground.

Caroline jumped in her seat at another lightning. She reached the driveway. It would still be a bit of distance to get to the front door. Caroline dug in her bag for her keys and searched for an umbrella. With her keys dangling in her fingers, Caroline muttered under her breath about umbrellas that go supernaturally missing suddenly.

The brief illumination of the lightning caught her attention. A huddled figure on the grass. Caroline peered but the rain and the darkness made it difficult to discern. When the bright light sparked again, her eyes widened.

Was that a human, on his knees, bowed and twisted? Caroline turned the car and turned up the headlights so she would not be so dependent on the lightning.

The lightning!

Caroline hurriedly took her seatbelt off. There could not be any dilly dallying when someone seemed to be in trouble, injured and broken, caught in a storm. When she stepped out of the car in the torrent, her heels immediately sank into the mud. Exasperated, Caroline took off her heels and rushed barefoot to the figure, squealing at each crack of lightning, chilled to the bone by the rain.

"Sir!" she called. The man did not respond. Caroline ran across the grass until she fell to her knees before the figure huddled on the ground.

She reached for him, and missed. Reached forward in concern until her palm finally touched the cold bare skin. She gasped in concern, and exclaimed, "Let me help you."

His hair was soaked in the rain, the waves adhering to his scalp. She rested a calming hand on his back. The figure recoiled as if burned. Impossible. The freak rain was cold; the wind was cold; her bloody undead hand was always cold.

"It's alright, it's alright," she cooed, like she was wooing a wounded bird.

He was lean, tight, but so very delicate in his twisted form. In his broken state, he shook. Caroline's tears rose in overwhelming empathy. He groaned, a deep, broken sound, seemingly torn from his very center. Carefully, she turned him so she could inspect what injuries there were.

When she came face to face with him, the air was sucked out of her entire world. For a moment she swore the torrent stilled, long raindrops hung frozen right where they were around them. Her hands were unsteady as she slowly reached to cup his face. Her lips parted at the sight of pained, questioning dark blue eyes. Her heart had been dead long ago, but she swear she could feel a phantom leap of the muscle bursting into bloom, then fluttering in dizzying speed. With the thrumming in her ears she could not know how she heard him.

"Caroline," he hissed. Agonizing pain apparent in him, his shoulders threw back and he gritted his teeth, clawing for a semblance of control. "What have you done, love?"

tbd

Part 3

Her mother raised a strong woman.

This litany repeated over and over in her mind. In the cold nights, the words were a blanket she used to warm her. She was bright, bubbly, strong. This was the person she needed her girls to see. In front of them, she would be unfazed.

"I'm taking the girls for the holiday this year," Alaric told her. Sharing the caretaking of real humans, one gets to know the other well enough. Their mutual respect helped in the arrangement, as well as eternal gratitude. Caroline should have felt a pang of envy. After all, Christmas was her holiday. At least, it used to be. It was of the person she had been. But Caroline had never been a good liar, and if strangers could tell from her demeanor that something was wrong, there was a snowball's chance in hell that it escaped Alaric. "And you are welcome any time. We'll get your room ready for you."

She had kept the smile on her face as she prepared the twins for the week away with their father. Caroline grinned as she kissed cold red noses eager for adventure. "Lizzie, Josie, don't finish all of Santa's cookies, okay?" With a tight hug and a kiss for each girl, Caroline said goodbye. "Have the best time with your aunts and uncles."

It was routine now, as she and Alaric took one girl through each side of the vehicle, then strapped them in securely at the backseat. Shutting the door, Alaric walked over to Caroline to give her a hug. "Drive safe," she reminded him of their precious cargo.

"The offer stands, Caroline." She gave a small smile, nodding in acknowledgement. "Your friends miss you."

But she was in no way ready for Christmas, for socializing, for pretending this had not been one of the very worst years. The girls did not need the horrible mess that she was as a core memory. Once they were out of sight, her faint smile faded, and finally she could release the tension in her shoulders from having to lift herself straight as if she could not just melt into goo and seep into the ground. Caroline made her way back to the dimly lit house, gray and dark, a stark contrast to the neighbors, a huge deviation from the festive colors that she greeted the holidays with each year.

And by God, if the neighbors would not turn down the repetitive Christmas song blaring in the night, she swore she would snap some necks.

"Hello, love," came the smooth, familiar voice.

Caroline looked up at him as he leaned languidly at the column, a playful smile on his face. His dimple showed, and if she had not known better she would call it a boyish charm. With anyone else she would have straightened once more, made an effort to smile in welcome.

Not with Klaus.

No matter how many months it had been between today and the last time they were together, pretense would never be required with Klaus. She trudged on towards him, in the direction of the house. Caroline knew her feet probably dragged, and nothing was inviting. He had driven all this way and she was a mess. Instead of recoiling, he stretched out his arm and offered his hand.

For all the effort it took to simply exist now, Caroline took the offer and placed her hand in his.

She reached his side, rested her head on his shoulder as they entered the empty house. Reluctantly, Caroline tore herself away from him and walked over to the small kitchen. She poured from the half bottle of scotch that Stefan had kept there. Klaus stepped forward, expecting her to hand it to him. Instead, she threw back her head and downed it in one swig. Klaus placed his hands in his coat pockets, then chuckled.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"Of course, love. I know how exhausting it is to put on a show for other people, even if they're family."

"My girls," she said easily, without a hitch or hesitation to claim them, "don't deserve the years of therapy they'd have to face if their childhood memories are all about a dysfunctional mother."

He stepped forward and placed a hand over hers. Then she reached for the bottle and poured a shot into her now empty glass. "I am happy to make a contribution to the Saltzman family trust, in case you finally want to let go. Five years, ten years of counseling? With how much you've kept in check since childhood, I might just fund it for fifty years."

Caroline giggled, watched him raise the golden liquid to his full lips. It was wonderful to laugh, even a little. It had been months since she did. Her smile did not completely fade when she asked, "Not to be cold and unwelcoming, but what are you doing here, Klaus?"

"You will never be cold and unwelcoming, Caroline. Not to me," he responded. Despite the years of flirting and wooing that never had been subtle, Caroline could tell it was said only in affection. "On your favorite holiday."

On the first holiday since Stefan died.

"He did well by you," he said, half a statement, half a question.

"He was dead before the ink dried on the marriage documents," Caroline replied sharply. Her hand flew over her mouth. Damn the lack of pretense—it was her damned setting with Klaus. Klaus' eyebrows shot up, his eyes curious, studying her. Her shoulders began to shake, and then she could find hysteria-driven giggles racking her body. "I'm not even sure anyone filed it. I don't even know it was legal."

Instead of finding humor in it, he watched her. Understanding how grief came in a myriad ways, and how people processed them in extremes. But hell if he would hold her back from probably the few times she let out real emotions, allowed only because none of her friends were here, and the children were off with their father.

As the emotional break calmed, Caroline used her fingers to wipe at the moisture that seeped out of the corners of her eyes. She caught her breath finally and took the still half shot glass, arching an eyebrow at the way that Klaus drank.

There was something so intimate about the way they shared this one glass while standing by the kitchen aisle, with dozens of glasses that she could have brought out instead.

"He eventually did well by you," he pressed. "You're alive."

She could not believe he was pressing this, when she really did not want to discuss it. There was a reason she was spending Christmas alone. Her voicemail was bursting; she had hundreds of emails and text messages left unread. It was not as if she did not have many friends who were concerned about her decision to take time away when everyone.

But there was only one person who was here, pressing.

She placed the glass down on the counter, then raised bright eyes to him. Stubbornly, she parried, "Why do you care?"

"He was my friend," Klaus reminded her.

"And I loved him." Caroline shook her head in frustration. "Shouldn't this just—" Her hands gestured wildly, trying to express the emotion not just with words but her fluttered actions. "—Drive you crazy, make you hate us—"

So, this was the silence in those months. For a moment, Klaus had been concerned that this was the relationship to sever this long game. Instead, did he detect a tinge of shame?

"Love…" When he poured another shot, he offered it to her. This time, she raised it to her lips and she took a small sip. Good. Scotch was not tequila shots. He would show her. Eventually. There was a wide world to see. When she was ready. Klaus walked around the aisle, removing the barrier between them. She swallowed, then placed the glass on the counter. He drew closer to her until he could hear her slow heartbeat, and feel her breath on his face. "The day I hate you is the day I cease to exist—maybe not even then."

"Stefan—"

"You loved him." She nodded. "And Tyler, and Matt, and a hundred more boys in the future. Maybe. You've had lovers, and so have I." Klaus cracked a smile when a moment of irritation flashed in her eyes. "But it changes nothing. All the loves that come and go will be moments to cherish and remember—but they'll be nothing compared to forever." He raised her hand to his lips, then stepped back, giving her more space. Caroline let out the breath she did not even realize she was holding. Suddenly she regretted the distance it added between them. "Only when you're ready."

Stefan had only been gone months.

"When I'm ready," she repeated, and it sounded like a promise.

And it pleased him. "You have only to say the word."

Klaus turned his back on her and walked to the living room. He looked around at the tree that stood in the living room with its string on lights that she had been forced to put on for the children. Sitting on the round red rug at the bottom of it was one wrapped gift. Alaric had brought the girls' gifts with them, so they could open them on Christmas morning. Klaus bent down to pick up the lone present.

For Mommy. From Josie and Lizzie.

"That's lovely," he murmured. "And look at that handwriting. Very impressive for their age." Klaus glanced at her. "But I don't need to be surprised. How lucky they are to have such a good student for a mom." She flushed. "Hope would be lucky to be under your wing. She'd be writing cursive in a week."

If he was not who he was, and she was normal human Caroline, what a fun alternate universe Brady Bunch they would be, she thought.

"I don't have the energy for Christmas, Klaus," she finally admitted out loud to him.

"That much is obvious, love."

"I know how stubborn you are, and you're going to say it's better to get back to normal," she continued.

Klaus picked up the throw blanket and then arranged the pillows on the couch. He took out his phone and pressed a few buttons. Then he started hunting around the living room. With a satisfied snort, Klaus grasped under the couch and came back up, holding the remote in success. He flopped down on the couch, tapping the place beside him.

When Klaus turned on the tv, Caroline frowned. "What are you doing?" She had expected him to make many arguments and a case for the giant Rockefeller Christmas tree, or the neon alien-like lights in Shibuya, or the nostalgic white Christmas in the Nordics. She did not expect him to flop down on the sofa and scrawl through the newly released list of holiday romcoms on Netflix.

"Do you really think that low of me?" he feigned outrage with a sparkle in his eye. "Did you think I came here to woo the recent widow of an old friend?" Caroline walked slowly towards him and took her place next to him. She leaned against him, warm and inviting. "I know how to act human, at least," he told her. It was the casual way he dropped a kiss on her head—not romantic, but fond. Caring. "You have a broken heart, and you don't want to celebrate. He left, and you're heartbroken."

Caroline was very sure he selected the words carefully. She hated the other word. He wasn't going to say he died.

"Broken hearts mean romcoms, pizza and ice cream—the latter two of which are-" He glanced at his phone. "—here in twenty minutes."

"And here I thought scotch and microwave mac and cheese was going to be dinner."

"When have I ever underdelivered?"

"Never."

Caroline appreciated his warm arm as he brought her closer to him. "This one is about a spunky American girl who stumbles into some mistaken identity shenanigans, then brings Christmas cheer to a family of stuffy European aristocrats," he murmured. "This sounds interestingly improbable." Klaus clicked to select it. When it started, he grunted, "She's blonde and bubbly. Maybe this is more probable than I thought."

For the time being, the dark cloud that hung over her cleared. Klaus commented gently about the plot.

"Oh he's adopted!" he exclaimed when Caroline rose to answer the door to claim the delivery.

Caroline broke open the ice cream seal, and moaned in satisfaction as the sweetness covered her tongue. She turned to him, then offered him a spoonful, which he took with a grin. The wistful look on his face was not something she imagined. She put the pint down, then reached for a slice, curling back into him.

The couple on the screen stood before the skating rink now, then turned to each other. Their silhouette stark and idyllic as they stood with the sun behind them. When they melted into their kiss to tick off the final holiday movie trope, Klaus' arm around her tightened. "Well, isn't that romantic," he said softly.

"I know you'll be gone in the morning," she said, matter of factly.

He paused the movie. "I will stay if you want me to."

He was a father, who had a child only a couple of years older than hers. "I won't keep you away from Hope."

"Hope is staying with her mother. I was going to pop in for breakfast." Klaus shrugged. "Say the world, Caroline. I know that for some ridiculous reason, you are not used to it. But I choose you. I will always choose you." Silence. And then he concluded, "You're not ready."

"Thank you for tonight."

~ o ~ o ~ o ~

A thousand years he lived.

Glorious, wondrous, legendary years. A millennium and then some.

In all those years all that he ever wanted to have was real, genuine love-like the kind that his father had starved him for since he was young. In all those years, he feared eternal solitude—to walk the world alone forever. Both his desire and fear fused and became the reason for many of what—he knew by the end—had been the root of all the decisions he had made. Or the evil, as some would categorize it.

But not all of them were so awful, he thought. They were what brought his salvation.

His fear of being alone eventually led to his daughter. His search for love brought him Caroline.

Family. Sacrifice. Salvation.

His peace he found before he ever faded. His legacy, his miracle child, would get to live. And he knew his strong, noble family would be with her. And she was under the care of the best soul on earth—his surprise, the whirlwind he was unprepared for, the bait that became his obsession.

The bright-eyed beauty that he had sworn to mentor and to spoil with beauty, and art, and the world. Yet over the years since Mystic Falls had become the one who taught him what would be more valuable—family, legacy, his very worth.

Those last hours with her, knowing a soul so pure and open, the only woman who truly saw him over the years, brought a calm and peace that heaven could only hope to be. Not one soul anywhere else ever compared.

Twenty years he knew her, spent even less with her, but her handprint in whatever wretched soul remained in his was stark and final. Immortal. And not once did she ever utter the words. Twenty years—a grain of sand in the length of his lifetime, a fraction of a speck of dust in his infinity.

Yet in his peace, he found his comfort when he closed his eyes and remembered her, looking up at him as they stood under the sun, her hair a golden halo around her face, on the streets of his kingdom. Because however irredeemable his enemies thought of him, towards the end of those twenty years, she knew him. And so she always, always came.

She was right. It was not yet time.

It was not she that was not ready for him.

It was he. The millennium had not been enough to make him the man worth loving. She was the only one who insisted.

It had not been time.

And then, it was.

A thousand years he lived. And right this moment it was a thousand deaths that tore through him all at once. Maybe more, his mind screamed, as the force that wrapped around him with its many fangs dug into his skin and burrowed forcefully into every muscle, ever sinew and tendon, then gripped his bones and shattered. Already on his knees, muddied by the wet ground, cold and burning all the same, his back bowed, his entire body contorted as if he was going through a hundred wolf transformations all at once.

"No, no, no, no," he could her murmur—in fear, in disbelief, in sadness.

Gods, he abhorred ever knowing she was unhappy when they were—their version of living. And now, knowing it was his presence, his current state that made her so.

The indignity from the cry of pain that ripped from his throat humbled him. For once he was grateful of that freezing torrent that was unceasing, because it hid those pathetic tears that it squeezed out from him.

In front of her.

With all the strength that he could muster he pulled himself together, growling at the effort. He straightened, despite the war raging inside of him. Klaus straightened and willed himself to get beyond the pain that would destroy him had he been alive. He controlled the wrenching pain by swallowing his screams. You are a hybrid. A vampire. And Original. Pain cannot make you cower.

He turned his gaze to her. And he could see it in her, could tell that she knew how the pain raged in him.

Her trepidation turned into determination before his eyes.

She was majestic. Even more now, wiser and more secure than last he had seen her.

How long had it been, he wondered? How long had he been gone?

She held fast to his arm, and she stood, pulling him along, lending him her strength the way she had never had to in their lifetimes. While his pride rejected the offer, this body—forged by some miracle—still staggered. And he held on, resting his arm around her shoulders to lean against her, allowing her the burden of his weight. Her arm snaked around his waist to bolster him. In their proximity he turned his head and buried his face in her hair. Briefly.

The scent that assailed his senses was intoxicating.

She was breathtaking, he thought, as she firmly took charge of the impossible. The torrent of rain, the lightning and the rolling thunderstorm were bullies that chased them. As fast as she could, supporting his weight, she took him through the yawning entrance and into the school. The empty hallways allowed their surreptitious escape from the elements. The noise from outside did not let up, as if it was a giant chasing after its stolen goose.

Caroline assisted him into one of the cushioned sofas. The pain that ripped through him still raging, but out of the rain he could grit his teeth through it. The moments that passed helped dull the pain until it was a ceaseless, steady throb. The very worst could have been the passing through.

She turned around, hurried to the fireplace, and quietly stoked it until the flames were stronger. It would take time, but the air around him began to radiate warmth.

Caroline spied a coat in the corner, probably forgotten by one of the students before they left for school break. She picked it up, then handed it to him.

Klaus only then realized he had passed through naked.

"I'm going to look for clothes, for a towel," she told him. Caroline helped him into the coat to give him some cover. Her mind was racing.

And then she knelt in front of him, still reeling in disbelief.

"Stay," she whispered.

His throat was raw from screaming in pain. The throbbing all over him was muted, but still persistent. Yet he could not help but respond, "I don't know what year it is, for me to tease you about how long it took you, love." She bit her lower lip. And then he nodded. "I swear to you I am not going anywhere."

It was those words. It was him. Damn him, because he was the one that would make her sad again.

The determination that served as adrenaline in the last few minutes, allowing her to take him from the elements while in shock, that brought them inside and into the warmth, was sapped away from her muscles in an instant.

From her position upright on her knees, Caroline sank down, sitting on the floor and resting her body against the side of the chair. And she began to sob. Deep, racking, shaking sobs.

Klaus reached for her, almost afraid to touch her lest this turned out to be a heavenly dream, and he found himself still in the calm serenity of Peace.

When he touched her, he felt the warm glow of her cheek, the stain of her tears. "What a mess we've become in old age, love," he murmured. With not a little effort, he pulled himself off the couch and lowered himself to the floor, barely caring that the coat could not cover him. "Caroline," he said.

"How?" she gasped, her eyes bright with tears as she looked at him.

In that second he knew, believed her fully. He should not have doubted it. There was not a single selfish bone in the girl he knew from Mystic Falls, or the woman she had become in their encounters.

"I don't know, love," he admitted.

If it was her, it could be so simple. It was a flare of longing or a sign of devotion. Be it right or wrong, they were made to figure it out. Rebekah should still be here, maybe Freya. They would know powerful beings that could assist them, even if they needed to reverse this.

But it was not, and Klaus was at a loss not knowing if this was a boon or a danger to the ones he loved that were still here. He drew closer to her, years of longing crashing in waves over him. He brushed her tears away with his thumb.

"I'm sorry I never said it," she whispered.

But he heard it. And he saw it. Actions always spoke more than words.

His lips pressed over hers. The surge of warmth inside him was hotter than the burning embers in the fireplace. She was still wet from the rain but had been thinking only of his change of clothes. Her lips surrendered under his, parting gently, allowing him access. Her arms snaked around his neck, locking and pulling him close.

He could feel her lean back, and he supported her as she lay back on the carpet. His body followed closely, his neck still locked in with her arms. Klaus deepened the kiss, gently, without the frantic youth that pulsed through them in the woods.

"Klaus, I love—"

The words cut off when the doors flew open, sending the cold wet air in the room.

tbc

Chapter Management

Part 4

He still clouded her judgment. It was the accusation that Alaric threw in her face. He clouded her judgment. Since she was a young vampire, unwillingly caught in the snare of his abashed grin when he never even made an effort to hide. Until now with decades behind her, caught up in the fervent nobility of sacrifice that made his eyes shine.

She was trapped. Her judgment clouded. And why did it have to come upon her so late?

Or maybe not late at all, and she had just stubbornly refused to admit it?

There had to be a way. He told her so himself, in that rushed flow of despair his words tumbled together. There was a way, but his daughter had no time.

Why did he have to be so noble now, and why was that her heart's point of no return?

She loathed and adored this bullheadedness of his. It was this persistence that drove him to chase her for years. Without it, he would have brushed her off the moment she denied him. His arrogant generosity was the reason the school existed. His obstinate willfulness was the reason he was a legend.

But it was why he would soon just be legend.

Tonight, the girls she bore inside her were going to be instruments of his destruction. And then, strong brave foolish stupid noble loving self-sacrificing—he would end it all.

If she were a better woman, knowing how deeply he felt for her, she would stand there and be the final sight he saw.

For the life of her, Caroline was not going to watch him die. She was not so kind, after all.

Her judgment could be clouded, but her heart was not. If this was the last day, then for once, Caroline Forbes was going to throw caution to the wind. Tonight there would be no rules, no one to cajole her, no one to blame.

Tonight was going to be her choice.

Caroline tucked her girls into bed with a kiss on each forehead. She had given clear instructions to Alaric. Once the spell was done, he was to take the twins away, quickly. One day when they were older, once they comprehend what their roles were tonight, there would be nightmares. She did not need them to include seeing Klaus Mikaelson stake himself.

Caroline steeled herself against the cold numbness that ran through her.

"My brave girls," she said to them, "I am so proud of you."

For no one else in the world would she put her daughters through this. But when he pleaded with her, when he beseeched her, and she looked into those blue eyes.

Caroline swore that this could be the very thing that would wash away all the blood, all the pain, all the terror of one thousand years. And she and her girls could be part of that. If only for this one final time, they could give him a gift.

"And I'm sorry," she whispered.

A small hand wrapped around hers to comfort her. Caroline looked down at Lizzie. "Is this going to make you sad, mom? If it is, Josie and I will take care of it. No one can make us do it."

"No, no," Caroline paused. But she never wanted to lie to her girls, not when she could help it. "And yes."

Josie sat up on the bed, then frowned. "What do you mean?"

And then Caroline felt the tears in her eyes, dabbing at them, laughing softly to hide the emotion. "Sometimes we feel opposite things at the same time. Sometimes you feel so sad, and happy too."

Lizzie shrugged. "I feel like that most of the time."

Caroline nodded. "And it's perfectly fine. Get some sleep. Tonight, your dad will take you to do your magic. I'm just sorry I won't be there. But your dad will be there. He'll keep you safe." Caroline stood, then approached the girls, kissing each forehead tenderly. "Thank you for doing this for Mr Mikaelson, girls."

"We're doing it for you, mom," Josie said somberly.

When Caroline closed the girls' bedroom door behind her, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Taking deep, calming breaths, willing her heart to descend back in her chest, so long had it been stuck in her throat that it would have choked her if had been a creature that needed to breathe.

When she sufficiently collected herself, Caroline straightened. Her mind was clouded; her heart was not. Her feet moved of their own volition. He did not need to tell her where he would await those last hours before the ritual. Caroline made her way through the maze of the corridors until she emerged in the residential wing, a private area cordoned off from students.

Caroline pushed open the door to Stefan's old room, now converted into a small library of the most precious of their books. Klaus looked up, unsurprised. Of course he heard her yards away, maybe more. "Care for some bourbon, Caroline?"

A small smile touched her lips. "Where did you find bourbon?" The way he swirled the liquid in that glass, right near where the precious treasures were, was just asking for trouble. He lowered the small leatherbound he was reading.

Klaus did not bother answering her. If he wanted something, he could so quickly fetch it. He was one of the most supremely overpowered supernatural beings, after all. Nothing defeated him truly. Nothing could kill him, except when he decided it could.

The faint smile faded.

"What are you doing here, love?" She stepped forward, holding his gaze. "If you think you can change my mind—" Klaus trailed off. His fingers grazed her cheek. "Please don't."

She glanced at the time. Caroline took the glass from him and placed it on the edge of the bookshelf. Then she grabbed the book, glanced at the page where he lingered.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

"Macbeth, Klaus? So typical," she murmured.

"Creeps in this petty pace from day to day," he recited to her, not needing the verses to share, "to the last syllable of recorded time, And all have lighted fools, The way to dusty death."

"You are so melodramatic," she said gently, teasingly, half meaningfully.

If she was truly so convinced that he would kill himself, no one could truly stop him. This was Klaus, willing to die for his child. And Caroline was going to face however long her immortal life was, now knowing it was going to be lonelier than how she anticipated it for all his promises, in the searing solitude thinking of what could have been. And she would live no matter how cold the nights would be, willing to walk alone for hers.

Wordless, she took his hand and led him out of the library, to the bedroom she occupied. At the sight of the bed, Klaus paused. She turned to him and met his quizzical gaze, as if the decision was warring inside him. Any other day, any other night, there would be no hesitation. She could read the thoughts that whirled in his mind.

Her judgment was no clouded now. No. The next step was clear as a day with a ridiculously large rainbow screaming that the rain was gone.

Caroline released his hand, then rested hers on either side of his face, the stubble forming prickly against her soft skin. She leaned forward and kissed one cheek, inhaling his scent. Sandalwood. Musk. Mist. God, she would this. If only she did not waste those years. But that was always the end, was it not? Regret for not having had more. She turned to the other cheek, expecting the same rough stubble, until she found her lips buried in the soft, cushioned kiss.

And her lips parted, her mouth pliant under his. He deepened the kiss, his free hands now grasping at her waist. His mouth slanted against her. She stumbled backwards towards the bed and he held fast to her. The backs of her legs hit the edge of the bed, and Caroline tumbled backwards, taking him with her as he held fast.

When their lips parted, Caroline looked up to him lying on top of her. He bent down for a taste of her lips. The teasing humor was gone. She could see it in his eyes. He knew it as much as she did. What this was. What this meant. Whatever came afterwards, whatever lay beyond for him, he could remember or forget.

For Caroline, it would be seared for eternity like a brand.

But her mind was unclouded, her heart clear.

They could have done so many, lived so much, if he only fulfilled his promise.

Quietly, somberly, she sat up on the bed. Klaus watched her as she stood. The moonlight streaming through the curtained window provided some illumination once Caroline switched off the light. The faint silver light coming from the window framed her, bounding off the golden halo around her head.

Caroline reached for the buttons-

The words spilled from his lips unbidden, "Marry me."

Not again. "You're dead in a few hours." By his own hands. "No."

She could not help or hide the flare of anger that Caroline knew was apparent in her eyes.

He rose from the bed and walked over to her. Klaus took her hand and brought it up to his lips. "I swear on my own daughter's life, if there was ever anyone who could make me stay—"

And the anger inside her, once an ember, sprung to life. So did the paralyzing pain.

She looked at him, saw in his eyes the acceptance and that peace.

Instead, Caroline reached for the bottom of Stefan's shirt and pulled it off him. Any other day she would have thought this uncomfortable, laughable even, to take off her dead husband's clothes off a man in that dead husband's old living quarters. If Stefan could see them now, he would probably find humor in it too, and then remember who they were and wince. But Stefan was calm, and secure, and safe.

And Klaus, to her, at least—he was always—

Not calm. Yet not violent.

Secure, but insecure.

Safe. But he made her the most afraid she had ever had in her life.

He made her fear her own death twice. And terrified her of what comes after his.

Caroline's breath caught in her throat. She slowly divested herself of her clothes. When she dropped the last of them to pool around her ankles, Caroline peered up at him from under the cascade of her hair.

It was the very first time she stood in front of anyone fully naked. His eyes roamed over her pale skin made paler by the full moon.

He took off the rest of his clothes, then in a split second he was before her. Caroline rested her palms on his chest. Slowly, she ran her fingers, traced the muscles, until it rested right there. That very spot. Caroline brought her lips over his heart, placing fluttering, soothing kisses, willing her soul to burrow deep within to rest against it.

So when he plunged the stake, he would take all her memories of tonight with him.

She could swear he knew the mindless flow of her consciousness, because he buried his fingers in her hair and gently, he turned her to face him. He brought his lips to her cheeks, once, twice, several times until her tears were dry.

She loathed him, and she cherished him.

Those kisses were the most painful ones she had ever suffered.

Caroline lay back on the bed and Klaus followed. Her legs parted, giving him access. When he buried himself inside her deeply, Caroline gasped and raised herself on her arms, watching him. She swallowed deeply when he hit those parts of her that triggered sparks of lightning in her brain. Caroline threw her head back, panting with every thrust. Her breath coming in sharp exhales as he buried himself deep, deeper still.

And then she was looking down at him and he crawled on all fours. She held her breath, watching him as he moved down. She sucked in a sharp breath when he placed a kiss on the taut skin below her navel. Her belly quivered as he drew lower still. He placed a kiss on the juncture between her hipbone and her thigh.

"Marry me," he pleaded with her, burying his nose in the golden curls hiding her lower lips.

She loathed him, and she loathed him, and she loved him, her mind screamed.

Deftly, Klaus hooked his arms underneath her knees. Her legs parted and she gasped. She felt them open for him, the wetness of their earlier activities still warm, cooling in the air. Her breath, her body, all her trembled as he rested her legs on his shoulders.

"Klaus," she sobbed.

And then he buried his mouth into her moist softness, delving deep as his thumbs and insistent tongue parted her to explore further. Caroline could not help the mewling sounds that came from her throat. She swore she was crying, or mewling, or shouting—extremes that she could not even tell apart. He laved deeper, the sensations washing over her so violently she racked and thought she was drowning.

She loathed and she loved and she loved and she loved.

The explosion of bright light took her so high she knew not when she would touch the ground. On her next conscious thought, Caroline saw herself back on the bed, idly caressing his dark blonde curls as the rested on her chest, his nose nuzzling her breast.

Sensing the shift, he glanced up at her, his eyes glinting like his lips. "Welcome back, love." Klaus placed a kiss on her lips, and she tasted the unfamiliar taste, knowing it was her smeared on his lips. In that position, Caroline felt him against her thigh, strong and hard. Eagerly she parted her legs, making room for him.

She felt him at her entrance. Caroline reached down, and sucked in her breath at the smooth and sure way he slid inside her. He thrust in and out so smoothly, without uncertainty, as if deep inside his body knew he belonged inside her. Her vision narrowed into tiny pinpricks even as she moved with him, matching his pace. Klaus rested his forehead against hers as they moved. Caroline held his gaze until she could not hold anymore. A cry erupted in her throat and she felt his warmth spill inside her.

Few things she could think of that could get her spent, completely exhausted. She curled beside him, using his arm as her own pillow, burying her face in his chest. Caroline twined her legs around him, letting exhaustion take over her.

Caroline stirred moments later. He was above her, searching her face.

He was beautiful. He was hers.

And soon he would be gone.

But now, he was hers,

Wordless, Caroline cradled his hips between her legs. She reached down, never breaking his gaze.

Come home, love, she thought to herself.

He pumped his hips, plunging into her core. Caroline's back arched. She hiked her legs around his hips, higher and tighter, holding in as much as she could. She could not bear to have space—air—between them. Tonight he was a part of her and she of him.

Go on, love.

He came, spent himself, and Caroline caressed his back, easing him down.

And she slept, tired, satiated, holding on to him tightly as if she could stop what would come.

Caroline woke up in the dead of the night, alone, the bed cold. A prologue to the rest of her forever, she thought. She sat up on the bed. And then she heard it. Midnight.

She was not going to watch him die. Alaric would take care of the girls. Klaus could have his noble final act. Why subject herself to that pain?

Marry me.

If she were a better woman, knowing how deeply she felt, she would stand there and drink in the final sight of him.

Caroline picked up a robe and sped to the site. She knew the moment that the Hollow entered him, and saw the desperate action as he clawed for the stake. The girls were ushered away quickly by their father. Caroline moved towards Klaus.

And then Hope and Elijah took him away.

She was going to New Orleans.

tbc

Part 5

So what if she was a mama's girl?

Lizzie could think of far worse things for a daughter to be. She lit the candles, so many of them, until the whole top of the cake seemed like a single joint bonfire.

It was Hope who ushered her mom into the dining room and placed the hat on Caroline's head. In unison the two younger women sang the birthday song to Caroline's delight. She clasped her hands over her mouth when she saw the ridiculously horrid looking cake that was on literal fire.

"Happy 100th, mom. You are the sexiest centenarian on the face of this planet."

"Oh sweetheart," Caroline replied, receiving a kiss on the cheek from Lizzie. A pang of sadness crossed Caroline's face. "Having a daughter is the best gift for an old lady like me." Her mom, ever the empath, beamed at the auburn-haired tribrid in the room. "And by some miracle, I got three."

Hope grinned, pulling out a bottle of champagne from her bag. She shook her head slightly at Lizzie.

Brush it away.

Josie was not a topic she brought up. She and Hope learned it the hard way, as one by one the people in Caroline's life fell away. Caroline abhorred talk of death. Over the decades they had been the constant. If Lizzie was grateful for anything about turning immortal, it was that she could spare her mom the loss.

There were good days when memories brought laughter. These couple of decades, Caroline grew more pensive with everyone that passed. Elena, Damon, Bonnie, Sheriff Matt.

Josie drove her over the edge. Having refused to turn, with Josie being so in tune to the earth and their source of magic, her human body could only take her so far.

Cool or not, Lizzie loved listening to Caroline talk about her life. And on her birthday, it was going to be a treat. All the stories that Caroline divulged when she became tipsy were fantastic. One time, tipsy as a clown, her mom told the story of her dad turning into a psycho vampire hunter. But the times when Caroline was really drunk were classic.

There was that year when they learned about Hope's dad painted the town red, then gifted her mom the sketch. Of her and a horse! Hope cringed at the idea and laughed along with them. At that time, Josie and Lizzie thought that Hope came to these birthdays eager to absorb snippets of stories about her dad. She always looked like the perfect blend of wistful and sad. But she always brought the booze, so she was always going to be invited. The next year Caroline had unwrapped the picture frame of the sketch and the same one was displayed in her office until now.

Lizzie would never forget the 78th. Caroline had been more pensive then. Bonnie had just died months before. Drunk Caroline, inspired by the jazz that played on the sound system, began talking about dancing on the streets of New Orleans one unforgettable night.

They were captive audience, all three of them. Caroline Forbes, with a wine glass in hand, swayed to the music and closed her eyes. With a smile, she remembered out loud the arms that wrapped around her, his breath close, holding on to him as he spoke about the meaning of art.

"Sometimes I like to watch everyone in the studio," Caroline admitted to them, "imagining his voice, telling me about the depth of the strokes and the contrast and light and how that damn apple is really the true secret of life."

That birthday her mom was drunk enough never to say a name and also drunk enough to so starkly tell them who it was without saying his name.

Lizzie and Josie were entranced at the youth that teased their mom's face. Hope grew more intrigued.

Tonight was spent before the fireplace, regaling each other with stories of adventure. Lizzie watched fondly as Caroline recounted the ridiculous adventures of a younger Caroline Forbes. Sober, this was how it started. She could not believe the stories have not run out yet. Her mom did have an interesting young adulthood. She found it funny how her mom's jaw dropped as she and Hope talked about the mythical creatures that mysteriously found their way to the school over and over whenever Caroline was off searching for answers.

If dad had been alive, suffice it to say he would be dead.

She plied Caroline with more alcohol, meeting Hope's eyes and nodding.

"So, Caroline, that spell that you found—the one that Aunt Freya warned about…"

Caroline smiled sadly. Her eyes were bleary. Lizzie fought down the urge to stop her because she was drunk. She and Hope, together, made a decision borne out of decades watching her mother's shine dim. With every year, and every death, until soon Caroline would completely fade away.

How fair would that be? It was like extinguishing the sun.

"I told him there could be options. And he knew it. One day, he told me, in some forgotten language, in some city lost in lava, likely lies buried the secret to having everything." Caroline reached for Hope's cheek. "But he was terrified for you. He loved you so much."

Hope closed her hand over Caroline's and turned her lips into her palm. Like it or not, Lizzie thought, that girl became as close as a sister to her. In one of their secret rendezvous—because boy, did this day take a lot of plotting and planning—they had to face the fact that they were part of some weird familial but never consummated connection. Lizzie rued the day when they would get her mom drunk enough to disabuse them of the notion that she never got together with Hope's dad.

Lizzie blinked away the tears that rose in her eyes. She half suspected that part of her mother's blind search all those years ago was also in part to prove him right.

"I found it in Cuicuilco," Caroline shared. "The lava buried it for more than two thousand years. The locals had taken it down on that small parchment. Cost a fortune, no one could understand it."

"Until Aunt Freya."

All of a sudden, Caroline drew back her hand and wrapped her arms around herself. Lizzie wondered if the memory of her encounter with Freya Mikaelson still brought phantom chills to her. Hope's Aunt Freya seemed such a cool old millennial. Heh.

But you don't live that long, collect power for so much time, only to be cool. Sometimes, you would need to be cold.

"Girls," Caroline said, "my age is starting to get to me." Lizzie knew it was a lie. Something about that encounter with that ancient, powerful witch had stuck painfully to her mother. All she knew was that there was a magically sealed box that taunted them, sitting on her mom's desk, whispering, calling—singing!—to her whenever she was nearby.

One night in the darkness she found Hope standing in the office herself, staring down at the velvet box. "It's chanting," Hope said.

When Caroline left the two of them for bed and to sleep off her lightheadedness, Lizzie and Hope made their way to Caroline's office.

"Do you know what needs to be done?" Lizzie asked.

The velvet box sat there, taunting them. The witch that cursed it sealed was one of the most powerful, and certainly the oldest living one they knew. Her powers were miniscule compared to Freya Mikaelson's. As powerful of a tribrid Hope was, Lizzie was certain her witch magic paled in comparison.

Hope took a small knife from her pocket, then cut into her skin. She pushed the knife to Lizzie quickly. "Before they heal," Hope told her. Once Lizzie had the cut in her palm, Hope placed both their hands on the box, smearing the blood. She chanted in Latin, and motioned for Lizzie to say the words back, exactly as she said them.

The box popped open with a snap.

"I've listened to Caroline enough times over the last fifty years," Hope stated, proud of herself. "When she was assuring me that no one can get to the spell. Freya used her magic, tied it to the core of her bloodline to Esther, and she mixed it with Caroline's blood."

Lizzie picked up the piece of parchment, careful that it did not disintegrate into ashes with how ancient it was. She glanced up at Hope, and was startled at the flash of the camera as Hope took the photo. She tossed the parchment back into the velvet box and closed it tight. "Come on."

~ o ~ o ~ o ~

With a flash, she stood between him and the intruder. He cursed under his breath as he struggled to stand. Whoever it was had no knowledge of the extent of his powers. It could not be so far in the future that anyone would dare attack anywhere if they knew that Klaus Mikaelson was returned.

Caroline glanced at him, her sharp eyes softened. It was more painful that the pulsing ache in his muscles. "It will be back. You went through—"

"A thousand hells," he finished, grimacing.

"Your strength will come back, Klaus," Caroline assured him. He felt her touch his arm gingerly. "Now, I'll protect you. Stay here."

The prospect was unusual, so against his very being. Immediately, he found himself protesting the concept. "Caroline," he said, objecting with his tone.

She cocked her head and furrowed her brow. "I'm not a baby vampire anymore, Klaus. I've been responsible for a school of supernatural children. I can take care of one villain."

Even now as he grew in strength, he doubted he could strangle even a measly werewolf. In fact, he doubted he would be able to withstand a class of kindergarteners high on sugar. His knees were still trembling.

He cursed out loud this time. No one threatened him or his own. Does this world not know that Caroline Forbes and this whole school was his own. There would need to be some reckoning, a massacre large and outrageous enough that the supernatural world that would be capable of hurting her would think twice.

How long had he been dead that anyone would dare this?

Then again, their interludes since Mystic Falls had been few, far between, and so intimately between them that barely anyone would have known. It was one mistake he would not make again. The world would know her. This time, no one would think of her without fearing the wrath of Niklaus Mikaelson. If there was anything he could do to ensure she would be safe in the next thousand years, it was that.

He could not stop her as she sped away to confront whoever it was that intruded. From the quiet that descended upon them, Klaus could tell there was magic in air. This was no simple wolf or even a vampire. There would have been commotion. The strange, cold chill spoke of more ancient, dreadful power.

Clearly, Caroline had veered the conflict away from him.

Stubborn girl. It pissed him off, but recognized that no one had protected him in this way ever in the thousand years he lived. Elijah had cared about his immortal soul, and sought his salvation in the ways that an older brother could. But this is the first that anyone had protected his person since he took his father's abuse.

He had always been more physically powerful than anyone else who gave a damn.

Having lived too long with his gifts, Klaus had never been one to reject or forget the advantage it gave him. He allowed himself to be supported by leaning against the walls of the corridor, making his way to an empty office. He willed himself to move faster, the withstand he weakness that proved to be headwinds. The loud crash from outside made him flinch.

So it was not just some quiet, dark magic out there that she faced. The altercation had turned physical. It was consistent, and he assured himself that the longer it continued, it meant only that she held up her own.

Save for periods rare and far between, she had not been a violent vampire. Who knew how long she would last? He never even saw the intruder, so Klaus had no hint of how strong it was.

Strong, he thought, if the destruction was any indication.

He hobbled his way through the corridors. It was fortunate to find himself in a small office. It looked like it was one of the teachers'. He was able to pull on the most nondescript trousers in the world, and pull a gray sweater over his torso. At least, even as weak as he was, he was clothed and more able to move.

Klaus Mikaelson was no damsel in distress. He made his way towards her, wondering if his current state would not prove to be more of a hindrance instead of help.

His eyes widened when Caroline's crumpled figure slid down the hallway and stopped a few feet from him. And then the hall was quiet, the wide open doors shut. The chill lifted as if nothing had happened. Klaus rushed to her side and saw the large gash on her forehead. It healed before he could even reach for it. He crouched down and felt the crunch of broken glass under his palm. Klaus pulled back his hand and saw the deep cut, then wiped the blood on his pants.

Caroline opened her eyes with a gasp. She stood and took his hand, pulling him along with her to get out of the school. He could barely keep up. Curse this weakness. Klaus Mikaelson was too proud to call out for her to slow down.

Had he not been the one to save her from the start of their relationship. Sure, he was the one who put her in danger many a time. Back when he was wilder, with nothing to lose having nothing gained. It was only when he accepted his own limitations—ones that stare you straight in the eye when finally have a child, fully dependent on you, waiting to be your legacy—that Klaus recognized how little power and physical strength mattered.

In that time, she came back to his life, wiser for the years they had been apart, brighter now with wisdom and sharp with her empathy.

She became his savior.

He happened to be worth knowing, she had told him gently, but not without a tinge of irritation in her voice. She had sounded disappointed that he did not know it. He looked back at her then, surprised. The chase had been on for twenty years, on and off, punctuated by the highs of falling back into each others' lives in a series of combustible encounters and coated with quiet connections.

But what a pair they had been. She had never come as close as she did then to telling him that he had meant something more than a secret, uncontrollable attraction.

More than his legend.

"Get in the car, Klaus."

Hearing the panic in her voice, Klaus got into the passenger seat.

"Are you alright?" he asked. The gash, while short-lived, was nasty.

Caroline pulled out from the driveway. She nodded, her brows furrowed. Klaus could tell she was deep in thought.

"I'm weak, Caroline, but my brain is as alert as the day I died."

She looked back at him from the corner of her eye. "What do you remember?" she asked softly.

"Everything," he said softly. "Like it was yesterday."

Her breath caught in her throat. Klaus knew she was thinking back to those last days. She bit her bottom lip.

The night in Mystic Falls, right before the Hollow was transferred. The measly day with which they tried as best they could to fit the promise of music and art and beauty. The chaste goodbye that marked the end, uncharacteristically simple and short compared to the deafening roar that played through his life. Simple and short and sweet like her human life.

"Part of me died too."

Klaus glanced at her. Her eyes were steady on the road. Her foot on the gas pedal even. Her jaw locked, and she swallowed. She blinked quickly, clearing her sight.

"I went back to Mystic Falls like you asked. I secured the cure, safe for Rebekah." She stated the words calmly, emotionlessly. "I wanted to take Hope, but I knew I didn't need to worry. Your family gathered around your daughter like a pack. They would have made you proud."

If there was anything he never doubted when he died, it was that the Mikaelsons would protect their own.

Every member of that family knew and lived the grief of losing him, losing Elijah, and they would have closed ranks to survive.

Caroline had none of that.

"Part of me died. And I came back home to pick up everything just as they were. No one really consoles you when some vampire who had a crush on you twenty years ago stakes himself," she said softly, almost flippantly, belying the pain underneath.

Memories of that night still seared fresh in his brain. Dying took none of it away. He would ring down Peace and Hell before he let anyone touch those memories. They were what saw him through in his afterlife. His daughter was safe to live her life. And in the very end, when she was wrapped around him, when she looked up at him, he saw it.

No words could compare to what he knew from the way she breathed out his name. Nothing could take away from how he looked at him.

Then again, all the memories he treasured was the two of them. Their shelter was their memories.

Alaric Saltzman would have known. That was not a stupid man, if a little self-serving. Klaus would like to believe that the man would have known by the fact that it was to Caroline that he had come. He saw in that man's eyes that he knew more than either he or Caroline said in so many words when he arrived for the transfer.

"We focus on the girls," she said, her voice stronger now. "That's what he told me the moment I stepped out of the car."

Curse that bastard.

"He was right. I lived for those children, and all the children that came under my wing. I wasn't going to be any help to anyone if I showed them how I really felt inside."

No one knew. No one grieved.

Caroline spent her entire life on others, yet could tell no other soul what she lost.

"I realized how selfish I was when Hope came back to school. As strong as she was, she was a teenage girl who just lost her dad. In the rare moments she folded in, I could grieve with her."

He reached to brush away the tear that trailed silently down her cheek. Klaus knew the moment she smelled blood.

Caroline took one hand off the wheel and grasped his wrist. His palm had still been throbbing, and his brows knit in disbelief. The skin still had not stitched together. The past thousand years of his memory had no recollection of wounds that stayed beyond seconds. There was a dull ache permeating his bones, but it was barely a drop in the bucket compared to the hellish agony brought by the passing through. Still, this wound was annoying.

She pulled over to the side of the road. She grabbed his hand. He would have held back, but she was strong and took a closer look. "Since when?"

"Right before we ran. When you were knocked out." Caroline deflated. "Worried about me, love?"

"Don't try to be charming with me. I'm pretty sure someone—or a group of someones—is after you." She glared at him. "And you're human!"

"Woah woah woah," Klaus exclaimed, throwing his hands up. Caroline stared at him, puzzled by the reaction. "Human? There's no need to be insulting."

Caroline let out a surprised laugh. "You're miserable."

"No, I'm not. I'm in shock," he answered slowly. "One moment I was in a calm, normal, nondestructive boring afterlife, and the next I was going through the worst physical torment of my existence. I thought I was being punished and brought to Hell, that Peace realized its mistake taking in my wretched soul." His eyes flickered at the memory. "And then the next moment, you were with me. And even a thousandfold of that pain was worth the sight of you again."

She turned in the seat to face him, holding on to his injured hand. "Look at me." Caroline reached up to flip on the light in the vehicle. Klaus drank in the view. She was the same, frozen in time from the day she died her human death. And she was different, even without creases or folds on her creamy complexion, deep in those blue eyes Klaus saw a vastly changed woman. "I am not the girl you said you enjoyed," she confessed. "I'm not even the woman you left behind in New Orleans."

"I hate to disappoint you, love, but you were always vastly different every time we met. Never made me love you any less."

Her eyes fluttered closed, and he watched the tears like rainfall drop. Klaus leaned forward and caught one on his lips as he pressed them against hers, sliding in closer. Her grip on his hand loosened, and he brought both up to cup her cheeks. Caroline leaned into the kiss, grasping at his sweater and pulling him closer still. Like she did not want to let go. As if she had lost him once and was never going to lose him again.

And then he recognized the change.

This was Caroline in mourning still, grieving because she never had a chance.

Human.

He had not been human in more than a thousand years.

Most humans he did not even bother to despise. They were too low in the hierarchy, they had mattered only when they were of use to him.

Surely this was but an unexpected side effect of the being torn from Peace. Surely the universe will right itself again.

If there was a threat to this reunion, the universe needed to make it right. Nothing can tear this apart.

She pulled away from him reluctantly. Klaus licked his lips, enjoying the cherry flavor of her gloss smeared on his mouth. Caroline flushed like the high school girl he had met and overwhelmed. She was not that young girl now, but Klaus adored that he could make her forget, for a few moments, all the losses that had come since.

If there was one thing he could accomplish in this incarnation, it would be that he could spend every day helping heal those hidden wounds.

Klaus glanced at the screen of the phone when Caroline pressed on it. He looked at her in surprise. He recalled no time in his life that Caroline connected with this sister. On the day that he took Caroline around New Orleans, it was time between the two of them, cocooned in their own private world wherever they went. And so she grieved alone.

"Well it took you long enough," came the brash, familiar voice on the other line. Freya had been gentle once, the sweetest of Mikael's children. But the centuries had not been kind to the witch.

Still, Klaus straightened in his seat, eyes narrowing.

"Now, sister, is that any way to speak to my dearest friend?"

And the silence was pregnant and long.

He could hear the drawn out exhale from the other end of the line. "Niklaus," she said softly in recognition.

"Freya," Caroline said into the phone, cutting in.

"I should have known that—"

"We're on our way," Caroline continued curtly. "Get ready." She ended the call.

tbc

Part 6

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Her eyes closed, Caroline's lips curved at the so familiar voice, the warmth of his lips brushing over the shell of her ear. The wind was cold on her face, steady, biting redness into her cheeks.

Seventy eight never looked so beautiful.

She won't open her eyes. Caroline could be anywhere and anytime in her lifetime. The back of her lids were a portal to forever ago. Don't open your eyes. Keep them closed, and his arms would tighten and shield you from the wind. She could smell the water in the air, but overwhelmingly around her it was his fragrance that wrapped her. Sometimes she wondered if there was disease that has rooted deep in her brain, because if she took a deep enough breath in times of solitude, she could swear it was his scent that enveloped her.

If you don't open your eyes, he would always be there. Warm, alive.

Hers.

The wooden planks on her bare feet, the cold wind, the bright sun.

At eighteen, she had meant the desperate words that she had choked out, when she was burning from toxins raging through her veins.

I don't want to die.

Sixty years ago seemed like a lifetime past. For most people it was long enough. To other vampires, it was the blink of an eye. The last decades were such excruciating crawl as one by one those that she loved, those she had known, passed. Sometimes she imagined standing on this very dock, imagining that the air still carried a part of him, and for the briefest teases in her mind's eye, Caroline would remember the last time he hovered above her, with that charming smile, his eyes pools of bottomless blue, pressing his lips on hers.

And she could stand under the sun. It would be so simple to slip off the ring.

Maybe then she could release the breath stuck in her chest since that night, that sunken ball that had constricted her breath since the moment on the road from Louisiana to Virginia. When in the middle of the road, Caroline hit the brakes in the middle of the road and sucked in an audible breath, wheezing, panting, but could not get enough no matter how much, how long.

That night, two hours into I-59 North, on the center lane, Caroline Forbes died her second death. No one else would know. Her soul rent straight through, violent and vicious and jagged at the edges. Her right hand lifted to clutch at her breast, her fingers crumpled the cloth over her heart. Right there, right then, she could feel it as if it was into her that the stake buried, fulfilling its thousand year purpose.

Caroline's eyes opened, and she swore the lake was more brilliant now as the water caught the light of the sun.

In Peace, she wondered, if he cherished the same sight. In Peace, could he see what havoc he had caused her—more chaos inside of her than when he was here wrecking wanton abandon?

In Peace, was there rest?

There was certainly none here.

Caroline looked down at the ring on her finger, abhorring how indelicate and garish it was. She hated the design, hated the memory of its creation. How easily she could slip it off and be done with the horrid ugliness of it. How mean Bonnie was when Caroline had come to her for this protection, and she had looked at her in disgust for what she had become. Never mind now that all the years that followed, Bonnie had been such a friend that Caroline learned to cherish the ring that had started so ugly, spelled by someone so mean.

When her eyes were open, and she was grounded, the air around her was cold and the wind biting. Caroline wrapped her arms around herself. The lake and the grass were all she could smell.

Without the phantom scent of him, the ghost of his embrace, Caroline was adrift in reality.

But there were children to come in need of guidance that only she, with the wisdom of her years and the experience she had gained, could share. The children never stopped coming, and the adults never stopped leaving. She wondered how long she had to live until the deaths no longer hurt.

Decades passed her by, the blink of an eye in her existence.

Caroline was not even twenty when her mother died.

Not thirty when she was widowed.

Forty when opened her eyes to truly see him, and lost him almost all at once.

Damon died first, and then Elena. Their human lives were rich, and they left a legacy of children that had eventually come to her school and gone.

Alaric passed, growing older than he had ever expected, with sincere gratitude on his lips knowing his children was hers to guide forever.

Josie—

Firmly Caroline stamped out the thought and pushed it to the darkest recesses, far in the back of her head that it would hell before it could claw back out. Only in the cool still nights did she open the door to that part of her brain. Only in solitude when she sat in bed and the air was still did she ever take out those memories to cradle them close to her breast, nuzzle them, and made her acknowledge. Whatever the circumstances of arrival, she had had a beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed infant who grew into a strong woman that refused eternity.

Caroline was seventy eight when Bonnie Bennet died. It was her Josie that found her at the lake, standing on the dock, basking in that phantom embrace and the sun that could not hurt her. As she aged in her unchanging skin, Caroline's senses had sharpened enough that she had known it was Josie from yards away.

When Josie touched her arm, Caroline's lips curved in welcome.

"I want to show you something, mom."

She turned to find Josie, somber, her gaze kind and patient. Her daughter always seemed to quietly understand, wise beyond her physical years. Caroline recognized the same unspoken concern when she had spoken with the twins the night that she and Klaus had sought their power to siphon the Hollow from Hope and into him. Her little Josie, not so little anymore, middle aged and mature. With Josie, Caroline was never surprised to be the one learning.

Josie led her off the wooden planks of the dock and onto the wet grass. She smiled in encouragement, then knelt on the grass. Following suit, Caroline lowered herself, feeling the moisture of the dew seep into her pants. With a firm hold, Josie brought Caroline's hand to the grass. Her daughter buried her fingers into the soil. Fully trusting her, Caroline did the same.

"Witches' powers come from their bloodline, their ancestors," Josie said quietly. Caroline's brows furrowed. "The magic comes from nature. Do you remember the stories you used to read to us? All the rituals that involved rituals under the sun, dancing around bonfires, traipsing about in the woods."

She stifled a grin. "Your father always had the weirdest collection of books. Completely inappropriate bedtime reading for little girls."

Josie allowed a half smile. "You have to admit—completely suitable for young siphon witches, though." Her daughter shrugged. "Do you know what happens to a witch's essence when she dies?"

Caroline's lips parted. She should have known. Josie always felt so much more. And with how distraught Caroline had been after the funeral, standing out at the dock communing with ghosts that her three girls fully knew but would not say aloud, of course Josie would try to figure out what could be done.

"Do you think that when we die, we're gone?" Josie pressed.

If she had, she would not have spent all those moments lost, willing to feel the ghost of his arms around her, summoning his voice, his scent.

"Matter cannot be created or destroyed," Caroline answered softly.

Looking pleased, Josie nodded towards the ground that Caroline could swear she felt pulsing under her palms. "Our power and our energy, our whole being, return to nature. Your friend is everywhere, mom. She's right there, part of the earth and the grass and rain that's nourishing everything around you."

So captivated was she with the quiet wisdom in her daughter's eyes that Caroline did not realize how wet her face was with the tears she did not even remember shedding.

"If you find yourself wondering if she's still there, then tell me. Do you feel her heart beat in the ground?"

Caroline looked down at her soiled hands, closing her eyes once again. She tuned out the rest of the world. First she allowed the sounds coming from beyond the trees, out on the street, fade into silence. And then the quiet conversation from voices—registering her two other daughters speaking quietly in the car as they waited. Her surroundings grew quieter still, until the only sound was Josie in front of her, breathing slowly, her heart beating. Caroline focused her hearing closer.

Beneath her palm, the slow, steady pulse. Of the ground, of the earth.

It was fooling herself to think that was Bonnie's life force.

"Death doesn't destroy. Birth doesn't create," Josie said. Caroline drew her hands from the ground. She looked back at her daughter with a sad smile. "We just changed from one form to another, in one neverending cycle."

Caroline was seventy eight when Bonnie Bennet died.

She was also seventy eight when her daughter gently told her that she was ill. Caroline was seventy eight but she felt the same smallness, the same helplessness, that she did when she was not even twenty, sobbing on a hospital bench, when Stefan told her about her mother's diagnosis.

Her Josie was beautiful, and it was too soon to have death impatient at her door. It was too soon for her mom, for Stefan, for Klaus at 1000 years old. Too soon because Caroline was not done, and no amount of restraint and generosity ever made it okay that this death seemed to be chasing her to claw at everyone she loved.

She drew a deep breath.

Maybe one day, even if every death hurt the same, she would learn to fool herself into burying her fingers in the ground and willing the heart beat of the earth to weave imagined whispers in her veins.

~ o ~ o ~ o ~

One did not cheat final death without consequences.

However he ended up back here, he was certain that the greater universe would seek to right perceived wrongs. Whatever chased him in the school would not have given up.

The Spirits would know he was out of place.

But lying down on the hood of the car, staring up at the night stars while her head lay on his chest, Klaus wondered if there was any other time when his place in time had even been so right.

"What was it like?"

So in tune to her that he swore their hearts beat exactly the same rhythm, Klaus did not need to ask.

Heaven. Peace.

He searched for the words, and as much as he could listen to himself for hours, the precise words escaped him. "It felt like being here with you."

She craned her neck and squirmed higher up against him, pressed her lips to his jaw. His fingers buried in her hair and he turned his face, meeting the next kiss with his. For the first time since he returned, just for that brief moment, she turned to him, her eyes sparkled. Every time they met, she was a different woman. Tonight on the side of the road, a glimpse of the teenage girl that first captivated him peeked through the many versions of Caroline that had surfaced over the years.

Caroline rested her head back on his shoulder as they lay on the uncomfortable hood, propped up by the windshield. Idly, her fingers played on his chest.

"Did you—did you see your family?"

Vaguely, he remembered watching from beyond a veil. But Caroline was as open a book as those in display in a museum, encased in acrylic, right on the page that changed the course of history. He knew what she was truly asking. "My parents' and my paths never intersected in Peace, Caroline. Or else Peace would not have been the word I'd use." In truth, he could not even know if Mikael had ever found Peace. Esther, maybe. "Once, I saw your mother."

Her body stilled. Her hand on his chest rested. "Oh?" Her voice light, in acknowledgment.

"She said, 'words can turn to ashes, but a mother's love will never burn away.' Does that mean anything to you?"

She turned her face into his sweater, not bothering to respond. The warm moisture that seeped to his skin where she buried herself was answer enough.

He may not have enhanced senses or the strength he had enjoyed, but his long life had given him a heightened sense of awareness and the healthiest dose of paranoia. It was enough to tell him that they had been followed from Mystic Falls, and at least twice on the road creatures had come close.

As much as he did not want to burden her, Klaus prepared to call her attention. Like it or loathe it, until they reached New Orleans and sought his sister's help to make sense of what had happened, Caroline being able to fight off their pursuers.

Klaus abhorred breaking the moment. Over her shoulder he saw the shadows move. The darkness solidified, building a formidable figure that he hoped the years have built Caroline's strength to withstand.

Within a blink, the creature had faded back into the shadows. Klaus narrowed his eyes and caught a flash of auburn that just as quickly vanished.

His heart swelled with inexplicable pride.

They were an hour from New Orleans when Caroline stopped to refill their gas. She turned to him and playfully dropped a peck on his cheek. Klaus broke into a grin. By all measures, they were too old for the last two days. It felt oddly like overcompensation, but he would be cursed if he could not admit that he was relishing it.

"I'll be right back," she told him, climbing out of the vehicle. "I'll get you a donut." The rush to escape the school meant Caroline had no money aside from the small bills and coins scattered in the car. Klaus had made a game out of hunting for them while she drove. He was keeping the cash, he informed her. She could compel her way out of the convenience store. Meanwhile, he was going to need every last one of the thirty two dollars that he scrounged as he struggled with mere humanity. The biggest of stroke of luck for them was the phone in the car.

It did not take her long to emerge. The gas station was nearly empty. He saw the exact moment that Caroline looked up in alarm. His ears perked at the sound. The howling was long and eerie in the distance.

Klaus slowly looked up at the sky at the same time that she did.

The moon was golden, bright and full.

Any other pair of people would have thought it beautiful and romantic.

He cursed under his breath, throwing open the door of the car. Caroline froze. Three pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness. Klaus climbed out of the car, running towards her as fast as his human speed could allow.

"Mom, go!" was the sharp back that came from behind him. Klaus whirled around to see a tall blonde standing there, her hands raised. The three wolves snarled, but took a step backwards.

Klaus pulled at Caroline. She blinked, caught her breath, then shook her head as if to clear it. The bag she carried dropped to the floor, then Klaus found himself flashed back to the car. The wolves started to advance towards Lizzie Saltzman. And then Caroline was gone, back before the wolves, between her daughter and the three.

Placing herself between her daughter that was clearly stronger and more powerful than she was, and three wolves that could easily kill her with a single toxic bite.

Klaus moved, woefully aware of the limits this body had placed on him. He began to run towards Caroline. From behind him leapt a large white wolf, overtaking him and posturing before the hostiles. With a mewl of recognition, the three dispersed, backing away. His heart hammered in his chest, looking at the tableau in front of him.

Caroline's daughter, tall and self-assured, thrumming with her witch power but looking too young for what Klaus knew she should have been. Heretic, he thought to himself.

Fully formed, luxurious and beautiful in her white fur, courageous and overprotective. And very pissed off. Like her father. The wolf that he knew was Hope prowled before Caroline.

Flanking Caroline.

If his heart could swell more, his next death was going to be from cardiomyopathy.

"Go," instructed the Saltzman girl. "We'll meet you there. I'll take care of Hope," she said, confirming what Klaus already knew of the identity of the wolf. "Very sure she wouldn't want your reunion to kick off with her standing naked before her father after she transitions back."

~ o ~ o ~ o ~

Only upon stepping into the compound did Klaus allow a fraction of his guard down. His hand tightened around hers as she stopped beside him at the courtyard, looking up and around the large, open space. She bit her lips, and Klaus knew she remembered that last night that she had been here, slipping surreptitiously to wait out the hours in the privacy of his room.

By God, they wasted so much time. Overconfident about forever, playing at chasing each other for centuries.

As if the world was only the two of them, and they could bend destiny to their will.

Her other hand reached to hold onto his arm. He turned to her, pressing a kiss into her hair.

His mind silently screamed in protest at the shuffle that ensued as Caroline's grip on his arm loosened. This was the Abattoir, and as far as he knew, this was friendly territory. There was no danger. She stepped away from him, and then his arms were full.

"Rebekah," Klaus greeted. He looked down at his sister, still as young and smooth as the day he died. He had thought by now that she would have long decided to take the cure. She certainly talked about it in his lifetime as if it was the solution to all her problems. Still… "Good to see you, sister."

And then Rebekah turned to Caroline who stood aside to watch the reunion. "Thank you for bringing him. We'll take it from here."

Caroline pursed her lips.

No one knew, she had told him. With him gone, there was no reason to address it.

But God, they already wasted so much time.

Klaus walked towards where she stood, then took her hand.

Rebekah's eyes flickered to the intertwined fingers. Her expression softened. "Good old Nik," she murmured, "not losing a beat at all." Her look towards Caroline was more measured consideration. "I think we're going to need to have a longer conversation." She began to pull Caroline with her. "Come. You need refreshments." To her brother, she said, "Freya's been in mood since your phone call. We'll leave you to our dear sister."

Klaus nodded in acknowledgment as the two moved towards the interior. The last sixty years of her own version of solitude taught him a clear lesson of his fallibility. Just as he leaned on his family to surround Hope, so must he allow the power of family to surround Caroline.

The sight of the magnificent Lizzie Saltman, Heretic, and his very own tribid daughter, protecting Caroline today bolstered his conviction.

She would never be alone again.

Freya made her way down the stairs. She stopped in front of Klaus and laid a hand on her brother's chest.

"Welcome home, brother," she said softly.

"You look nearly unchanged, sister," Klaus returned. "Seems you have been sleeping well."

Freya's lips curved. Despite her initial opposition to prolonging her life and living Dahlia's version of corruption of immortality, there were sacrifices that needed to be made. She was, after all, the oldest Mikaelson, burdened with the care of the youngest siblings and Klaus' child. "How can I best look after immortals, if I don't do everything I can to stay. The key, I find, is to do it a decade at a time." She took a deep breath, then patted her hand on his chest.

Klaus took Freya's right hand between his own, then kissed it. Freya had never wanted immortality, had enough power and was not burdened by the abuse that he and his other siblings suffered under their father. She could always have just walked away and left them to their own devices. Yet here she was, caught between human and immortal, having taken on the role as the head protector.

Because he and Elijah were gone.

And he left behind a daughter. The last of their line.

"Know that I am grateful, Freya. Always and forever."

Freya blinked back tears. How difficult it had been to get through his stubborn opposition to outsiders, how he had fought against this very privilege that he enjoyed now from her devotion. "Family is power," she repeated to him Elijah's long held belief. "I have never forgotten it, Niklaus. Love, loyalty. That's power."

Klaus released Freya's hand. "It's good to hear that from you, Freya. I need your help." He was not going to lose what he had found. Not without a fight. He glanced towards the door through which Rebekah had taken Caroline. The sixty years of his death was like a blink of time to him. He certainly did not experience the loss that he could see behind her eyes each time that he looked at Caroline. But even without it, he fought down the urge to storm through so she would never be out of sight.

Living in Peace was living without pain. It was the complete and utter absence of guilt.

Living in Peace was living without fear. The type of fear that remained, even as he knew that they were in a fortress now, physically with the walls of the Abattoir shieling them, figuratively by standing in the house with one of the longest living Original and a witch that had harnessed energy from the earth by just as long.

For someone who existed for one thousand years of murder and mayhem, insecurity and uncontained sin, living in Peace was a blessing. It was a gift to shed the burden of a dark life.

Peace was knowing his path would never cross with his father's again.

Peace was a day with Elijah, their footsteps echoing as they walked side by side, perusing the greatest through the march of civilizations, exchanging anecdotes about the great men and women they had run into during their separate, at times intertwining journey lines.

The thought had made her smile.

"Coming back was like being bombarded with it all, all at once. Every death I doled out in my lifetime, I experienced myself at once. Everything heightened, clawing at my bones like fiery daggers." At this, her smile faded. Klaus held out his hand, unwrapping the temporary bandage that Caroline had used after cleaning and dressing it during one of their pitstops. Freya's eyes widened at the barely healed wound. "I'm human, Freya. Completely, utterly, powerless."

Freya's lips thinned. Holding his wrist with her left hand, she covered his wound with her right, whispered an incantation. Klaus felt the heat and itchiness of his skin rapidly closing over and stitching itself together. Self-satisfied, she asked, "A simple sharing of the blood, Niklaus, could have rid you of this inconvenience. All that would have been required was to think of others more than themselves. The hardest is to be capable of thinking beyond one's self."

The words rankled at him, as if the insult was against him. Klaus drew his hand out of Freya's hold. "I need your help."

"Tell me," she urged.

"I just know that Hell is coming for me. These shadows have tried and failed to swallow me since my return."

"Creatures commanded to balance nature. Those who knew that you should not be here."

"If I can't protect whom I love, it will destroy me worse than death," he confessed. Klaus sank into a wrought iron chair. "Sister, I cannot stay human and a prey, not now when I have so much to live for. If this is what I am to become, then certainly this is torture far worse than any father had ever doled out."

From Peace.

To desperation.

How the mighty king had fallen.

A potted plant shattered in the courtyard shattered. Klaus looked up, and watched as one by one the pots broke, what soil was not entangled in the roots dropped to the terracotta mosaic. Freya's look was intense, mingled fear and fury. "Freya," Klaus called her name, his voice firm, commanding. He started to reach for her to shake her off what madness had taken hold of her.

The door slammed open. Klaus looked up to his other sister, wide-eyed, seeking him, "Nik!"

Through the open doors he saw Caroline crumpled on the floor, grasping hair, twisting in pain. It was the tearing scream that gave him a measure of comfort. Pain was good. Pain was alive. In the periphery of his vision, he saw when Hope and Lizzie arrived to the compound. It did not stop him from grabbing his sister by the throat, jarring her out of the madness, bringing her to present.

"Check on your mother," he bit out at the girls. He narrowed his eyes at Freya. "Let her go." It was meant as a command. It came out as a plea.

The hard flint in her eye shattered. Freya used both hands to claw at his hand around her neck, at his wrist. Caroline gasped, catching her breath audibly. He could clearly see the blood dripping from her nostrils as Lizzie helped her up.

Rebekah met his gaze before going back into the room, letting the door swing back closed behind her.

It was only moments later when Caroline emerged from the same doorway, a little worse for wear, weary, but alive. Klaus released his sister from his grasp.

"I should have destroyed that spell the moment you came to me," Freya said, her voice trembling but strong. Accusatory. "You swore you wouldn't use it. For the life of me, I don't know why I trusted you at your word!"

Caroline's chin rose proudly, the look of one who had nothing to hide. Blood dripped from her nose, and she wiped at it with her hand, smearing the redness over her face. "What is with you Mikaelsons always jumping to this accusation that I did it?" Caroline threw back. "I'm a vampire. How do you think I could make that magic work?" She strode back out to the courtyard and stood by his side. It was almost involuntarily. Klaus found himself stepping forward, putting himself between her and Freya. In his current more vulnerable state, even if she was stronger and faster, he was still the best shield before a volatile Mikaelson.

"It wasn't Caroline," Hope's voice rang out. She stepped forward, throwing a beseeching look at her father. His heart leapt. She smiled sadly. Klaus wanted nothing but to gather her in his arms and breathe in her scent. His white wolf, his charming Hope. "I'm sorry." And then she shook her head, her brows furrowing, her lips thinning in that same expression that her mother used to have ages ago, when she knew that she was in the right, and he was being unreasonable. "Wait, no. I'm not sorry," she corrected herself, realizing what was true at that same time.

His Peace was the knowledge that she could live her life.

"Do any of you know how it feels knowing that the most important people in your life died because of you?" His Hope, a woman now, was brilliant in the hurt that she so freely displayed. That did not seem like a trait she would have taken from Hayley, who nursed her fears in anger, despite the bouts of temper and violence that she had not been averse to show if it meant a melee with him.

"Do you know how it felt to walk around in school, with my friends talking about how a legend like Klaus Mikaelson, sacrificed his life for me?" A legend, she said. After all that he was, that school spoke of him as a legend, and not as a villain, a big bad.

That was not Alaric's doing, for sure.

You were never the villain of my story.

At least Hope did not grow up with that burden.

Hope looked towards Caroline. "I know you think you were so good at hiding it-that no one knows," she said softly. "But I knew. And Lizzie knew." She shrugged. "Josie too."

What he thought he had gifted her with his sacrifice, seemed to be a curse branded onto her.

"I forget which birthday it was by now," Lizzie stated, walking over with a white cloth. The younger woman wiped at Caroline's cheek with it, the pristine towel coming off pink as she cleaned off some blood that had dried since. The tender, caring gesture was not lost on him. It was a measure of peace, a small one, knowing that despite not having the siblings that he did, Caroline seemed to have gathered this power all on her own.

Many other mothers failed at this, even after being granted the privilege.

"I know it was right after your trip to Mexico. You thrummed with excitement." Lizzie glanced at her friend. "We'd never seen you so alive."

"He was right, you told us. Buried in lava, in some forgotten ancient city. There was magic that could have given him everything he ever wanted," Hope repeated.

Klaus' lips parted at the familiar words, thrown as an aside to shake off the protest that she formed in her mind to keep him from doing what he was bound as a father to do. He certainly did not anticipate that she would have spent years of her life proving it. By the time he was gone, proving him right would have been in vain anyway.

And she searched, and she searched, and she searched for it.

"Her blood and mine. Mikaelson and Forbes," Freya murmured, putting together the pieces of how her finely crafted spell had been broken. Her niece. Caroline's daughter. "You had called me to help you seal the spell so no one would get its power. You swore no one could take Peace from my brothers." After the spell, Freya went home to New Orleans and slept her decades, knowing Caroline had the ancient magic and no power of her own to bring them back. In her sleep, Freya would be away from the temptation borne from loneliness. In her sleep, no one could touch Niklaus or Elijah.

"You brought him back," Freya said, turning to her niece.

He could see the play on his sister's face.

"Freya," he said softly, menacing even. He warned quietly, "Do not test these bonds that our brother spoke into existence." Just as Freya had chosen to spend what remained of her limited lifetime protecting her family, so would he. "Never again."

She nodded curtly in acknowledgement. "Then you had better pray this humanity is reversible, Klaus, because if not, after your time, she will have forever to fend for herself."

Tbc

Part 7

Part 7

Ancient magic, buried for thousands of years, older than any of the Mikaelsons, took from a power so deep that a cataclysm sought to cover it. Millenia had passed before Caroline Forbes had in her search surfaced a hint of the answer.

"No reversals," Freya had declared after studying the language. Her voice had a sharp edge, hiding the disappointment of failure that colored her tone. On her shoulders she carried the burden for weeks, going through tomes and grimoires, disappearing for days, desperate for a hint that he could stay. Because how could Klaus Mikaelson, of all the legends that had come, be relegated to some regular human death—accident, old age, illness? Klaus Mikaelson was the Original Hybrid, destined for a far more fabled end.

His death deserved to be spoken in hushed, quiet notes, or sang on a high in the lyrics of a bard's song.

Then again, he had already had one, turning to dust in the wind by a white oak stake wielded by his own brother.

It was a day later than Kol arrived at their doorstep, utter disbelief in his face at finding his brother in the flesh. He himself who had returned from death far too many times that anyone counted, knew that Klaus' death by the white oak stake, when the Other Side was gone, had been a permanent one. But where there was ancient magic, he had learned to accept that there would always be another unknown.

"Returned in a human body, destined to die human," Kol had told them. Since he learned of Klaus' miracle return, he had searched crypts and tombs and pyramids, and his wife had convened with ancestors. Far too many of their combined sources, though old, did not even surpass the lifetimes halfway through the scrolls' origins. Every answer directed them to the same conclusion that Freya had.

Through it all, Klaus listened in quiet. Caroline sat beside him, reaching to rest a hand on his knee, surprised to find little tension. Long ago, he would have simmered in fury at the unsatisfactory answers. In his power, Klaus Mikaelson had known what he wanted, what he deserved, and would rage against this dying of the light.

Caroline followed him with hooded eyes, not rising from her seat as she absorbed the words as if receiving an ultimatum. The cold dread spread inside her, numbing her heart and making her limbs heavy.

Klaus thanked his older sister, placed a gentle kiss to her forehead. There needed to be no more words between them. The gratitude he had expressed at their reunion sufficient to hold her through. It was more than all the affection shown between them since Freya revealed her identify to an oversuspicious Klaus, long, long ago.

"And do you still adore your little brother despite being no help to you, brother?"

Klaus chuckled half-heartedly, but pulled Kol to him into a tight embrace. "I may have use for you yet, brother, if I am to grow old in this feeble form."

Kol turned his face into Klaus' neck, then mumbled, "Anything you need, brother."

Except not anything, Caroline thought. Not at all. Klaus needed to live, to be immortal.

To not die.

Hope rushed to her father, her cheeks burning, her eyes liquid. In another life, Caroline would take the girl aside, would talk her down the heightened emotions that were apparent on her face. But the confirmation had come crashing down on her the very same as it did Hope, as it did Klaus. Caroline did not fool herself into believing otherwise, but she fooled herself in thinking there would be hope.

"I'm so sorry, dad," Hope gasped, sobbing the way she used to do as a young teenager. Caroline had not seen such unrestrained display from Hope since Klaus had died decades ago. Since then, Hope had carried herself admirably well, always composed. "I tore you from there, and I didn't think. I was the selfish one."

"Hey, hey," Klaus said gently. His hands closed over his daughter's shoulders, prompting her to look into his eyes. "Never think this was your fault. Never regret this." Hope blinked up at him, and for a moment Caroline saw a flash of the vulnerable little girl that first stepped into her school. "I don't care that I came back human." Liar. "I got to see the formidable woman you've become. You take my breath away, little wolf. Your mother would have been proud." He reached up to tuck Hope's hair behind her ear. "You gave me another chance to live."

Too much. Too much it strangled her.

Wordless, Caroline retired to the room that she had simply begun to share with him in the weeks since arriving to New Orleans. As much as she knew that Klaus treasured his family, the finality of his state was one truth that she had yet to accept. He told her once that he loved her light. She found no light inside her now, and there was no reality where she could stomach hearing from his lips how he accepted this.

Light poured through the wide French windows, tinted red orange with the setting sun. The thin curtains fluttered into the room, blown gently by the wind. Genuine beauty was outside, she was sure, and certainly her figure struck a silhouette standing as she did in that light, throwing a looming shadow across the room.

She had no time for genuine beauty, nor a pause of appreciation. Caroline drowned out the music from the street that reached the second floor, the notes cradled by the wind. She took her earrings out and tossed them on the top of the dark mahogany bedside table.

"You're seething, love."

"I didn't say a thing."

Klaus followed her into the bedroom, a shrine that still held his belongings, impressive in its state given the decades he had been gone. She turned her back to him, walking over to the balcony to look out into the street. Seeing nothing, really. But she would rather turn away then see him.

He was not going to stay. He couldn't stay.

"I don't want to talk, Klaus. I need some time."

What happened to waiting, to last loves, to a year or a century? What happened to having the miracle of a second chance, borne out of her stubborn search to prove him right and two headstrong daughters who took destiny by the horns and had it yield?

Oh God, like he had time. She had eternity; he had one measly human life.

She felt him stop behind her, so close. Caroline stiffened, her back straightened in defense. "Klaus—" she started in mild protest, though she should have anticipated he would ignore her request for solitude. He knew as well as she did that for sixty years, she had spent too much time in solitude, always always pretending that he was there. There would be no self-imposed solitude anymore.

"Close your eyes."

For the life of her, she found herself complying, her eyes fluttering shut, and she hated that her eyelids closing drew out tears to creep down her cheeks. She tasted them on her lips, familiar, comforting. It meant the cold numbness in her heart had not killed even a fraction of this injustice.

His fragrance wrapped around her, not as a faint memory that triggered the most primordial part of her brain. With her eyes closed, her every breath was not oxygen. Every inhale was Klaus Mikaelson.

Just like the decades without him. Behind her. And now in front of her.

The difference was that today, he was right there with her, flush against her back, so close she felt his breath against her ear. His hands rested on her hips like they had been frozen in stone this way.

"Keep them closed. Now tell me everything you hear."

"You," she said softly. "All I hear is you."

His heartbeat, regular, human. The slight speed that it picked up when she spoke. His heartbeat so frail and normal like any other mortal. That was the rhythm that would be the background of her nightmares. His breath steady, natural, deep. It would be the music that would play in her life in the neverending days after.

She felt his lips on her jaw.

"To your left, listen."

A small group was huddled together, from the sounds of clinking glasses, they seemed to be drinking. That made sense. She thought she remembered a bar in that direction, but honestly she had not paid much attention when they arrived that night. Her sole focus had been to seek Freya's help to figure this out.

"They're irrelevant," she said in a clipped voice. "Inane conversations filling their hours." Caroline long prided herself for being in tune to the other souls around her. She was just tired now, beaten down.

"They're singing a birthday song," he added.

"I don't care."

Why did he insist on making this more difficult?

"What else do you hear?"

She whirled around, dislodging his hands from their place on her hips. Her body felt orphaned at the coolness that replaced his warmth there. Caroline glared at him, ignoring that she knew her face was wet with tears, angered by the gentle calmness he exhibited when he had been given a death sentence. He had promised her forever, that he would wait for eternity. This was the second time he was reneging on a vow.

"I don't want to hear anything else. Stop it."

His jaw was set, and he raised his hands to cup her face. The pads of his thumbs were rough when they brushed at the tracks of her tears. The soothing gesture did more to dry the skin, but she swore he could not massage the sense of betrayal that was raging in her. She was the only thing she could control, when every other choice was being taken from her once more. And she can choose to be angry. That she can control.

"You need to pay attention to everything around you. You listen, and you look. You have a lifetime in front of you, and I will make Hope swear on my grave that she will watch out for you the way she did for us the entire trip to Louisiana. But I want to be at peace, Caroline. The only way I can find that is if I know that I did everything I can to get you ready, however long I have."

Laying out a damned will and testament like a bloody human already. "I hate you," she whispered, fervent, impassioned, quiet.

"You don't."

"You came to my life blazing hot too early and too sure," she stated, accusatory. She could see his small smile at the memory. He was cocky and charming, and he had tested her conviction in ways she could not even understand. Too openly, unabashedly in love. "You wanted everything all at once." Caroline's gaze drifted to his chest, resting her hand above his heart. Her voice softened. "If you had come later, once I had a few years under my belt, once I had a chance to live some form of a life, maybe this story would be different."

Who knows if it would have been better? It would have certainly been easier. All the confusion of a new vampire, a teenager coming into her own womanhood, would be replaced by the self-assurance she had carried in the later years of their connection. If only he came then, and offered her all that he did when she was all of eighteen versus his thousand, Caroline just knew they would not have wasted all those years.

"I had a thousand years to know what I truly wanted."

He wanted her.

And she took her sweet time to realize what she wanted. Years of living, years of existing without truly living. But she needed every one of those long years. She needed the love and the heartbreak and the losses, no matter the pain that came with them. She learned from every year, from every one of them.

From Tyler, she learned what value she brought by devotion, as she became his anchor into his transition. From Stefan, she learned sacrifice, to put everyone else above yourself. From her Josie, she learned that we are all part of the universe, and will always be ingrained in the people we loved and the places we had been. From her Lizzie, she learned that no matter the challenges thrown, you run headlong and survive. From Hope, she learned that everyone had the capacity to grow stronger from each loss.

From Klaus… From Klaus, she learned that love was not a choice, but it was your choice how to love. He showed love to his siblings once by taking them out of commission to protect them. He showed her his love by letting her go to live her life while he waited. He showed his daughter love by giving his life for hers.

But she was done with living in love with someone lost. A hundred years was a very long human life, plus however much more she would have. In finite time.

The numbness inside her cleared, and despite the setting sun, her surroundings brightened. She shifted, and wondered if the change was apparent in her expression.

"Caroline?"

Her lips parted at the realization. Her fingers curled on his shirt. She pulled him closer and hooked an arm over his nape, pulling him to her with a fervent kiss. Deep, passionate, determined. "I'm tired of losing everyone."

"Well, I plan to oblige you until I am old and gray, love. Apart from that, I am woefully unable to commit."

"I don't know how you survived one thousand years. I can't do another round of this, not after this. I've lived more than my fair share." His brows furrowed. "My kids needed me. Not anymore. They're—"

"They're magnificent," Klaus finished for her, voicing his silent compliment at seeing the girls in action. "More than ready to stand on their own." He could not hide the pride in his voice. To think that he had once been reluctant to recognize his own child, only to have fate turn around and change him into a man willing to sacrifice for her, and now a man who knows there is nothing more he or Caroline would be needed for.

Listening closely to her, putting the pieces together, standing so close their breaths tangled together. He should have been opposed. He should have fought against the concept. Instead, he fully anticipated her declaration. "If you're going to be human, I don't want to live forever."

In that split second, he knew this was their key to forever.

His blue eyes searched hers, the pause pregnant. The truth hung heavy between the two of them. She met him with the love and conviction that the quiet years had embedded inside her.

And in return, respect.

"Peace was overrated without you anyway," he said softly, in acknowledgment, in acceptance.

~ o ~ o ~ o ~

The wedding was held in the garden. Rebekah had commandeered her brother to set up the flower arch. She looked proudly on at the pinks and whites and blues that livened up the place. She was a stellar organizer, much, much better than the young girl who used to run school events with a military hand, Rebekah thought.

It was her wedding day, almost a century in the making. So Rebekah allowed herself the gasp that escaped her when she saw her emerge, a flower crown adorning the top of her blonde curls, holding down the long sheer veil, her smile bright and unrestrained. The white dress was simple, opposite of the extravagance of the gowns that his brother had once picked for her. He had a hand on this one too. It had become a tradition-Caroline's trust in her brother's taste exceeded what allowance Rebekah would ever have given him and he was her blood—that Nik would present Caroline the dress she would wear to the milestones. No jewels sparkled or encrusted it. The bodice was not hardened to form. The white shift dress was long enough to tease the grass, delicate lace interwoven into the chiffon in the most careful manner to not damage the delicate material.

Caroline was a hundred and Nik was eleven hundred. Her brother had died at least two times, and the blonde once. It was ridiculous to be misty eyed. But she was, and Rebekah abhorred it.

Nik, who always waxed poetic in anger or in sorrow, took her hand. When he gave his promise, Rebekah swore it seared into his soul. "I fell in love with you when you told me you didn't want to die. I had never seen a creature so beautiful clawing at life like it was so precious. I had never wanted more to finally just live. I am going to spend forever loving you."

Rebekah expected it before it happened. Caroline Forbes was a sobbing mess before the first words were out of her mouth. "I don't know when I fell in love with you," she admitted. "All I know is that very soon since I met you, I just questioned why you loved me, but never doubted for one second that you did. I just know that one day I woke up and I was heartbroken, because you weren't with me. And then I looked back and thought how heartbroken I had been for so long, because you weren't there. And then, you were. And I swear, Klaus, I won't ever be heartbroken again."

Wearing the veil was silly, Rebekah though. Even so, her breath hitched when Nik gathered the veil to reveal the bride that they had seen all along anyway. Rebekah blinked away the tears that clouded her view. He cupped her face, and laughed softly when she did the same with his face.

"You are so beautiful," Rebekah heard her say to Nik. And goodness, that girl needed her brother. She was too deep into it, too open now. Nik, beautiful. But good for her.

When they kissed, Rebekah's heart expanded. They looked like they murmured to each other. Sweet nothings, to fill one lifetime.

During the simple family dinner that followed, Rebekah rose to give her maid of honor speech. "I shall not bore you all with stories of the bride and groom. They were few and far between. Unfortunately for us all, they have been quite adept and skirting intrusions." Despite the carefully curated plans, her hand trembled still when she reached for the precious vial from her bag. "The greatest gift that I can give you, Caroline, is the one you handed to me a few years ago. I was not brave enough to take it despite all my protestations to Nik and Elijah."

Just as the bride herself had asked for.

Rebekah walked over to Caroline, who stood to receive the vise tight embrace. Caroline took the vial in her hand and looked down at it.

Klaus eyed her, questioning. "Think again, Caroline. There is no going back."

She leaned down and kissed his lips. Then, her movements methodical, Caroline uncapped the vial and poured the contents into her champagne. "I love you." She tipped her whole flute into her mouth and swallowed. "As long as we both shall live, Mr Mikaelson."

In a few hours, as the family filed out and away from the plantation, Freya would channel the two young woman's witch powers to bring up the veil, hiding the home behind the decrepit, abandoned front. A veil so strong to keep the creatures who sought for balance and a way to pull the Original Hybrid to Hell after his narrow escape. A veil so powerful that the two could live the rest of their human lives in that idyllic solitude.

They were alone now, the vast expanse of the plantation fields lay before them empty. There was a lot of work to do to fill out the decades before Freya would pull down the veil. There were ten years of relative safety where they would be cloaked completely from those who would seek him harm.

Caroline held his hand as they made their way up the wooden steps leading to the corridor towards the bedroom. The old steps would need to be replaced due to years of usage. Klaus would see to it, work with his hands in the days to follow.

"I know you're not used to being trapped like this. Original Hybrid, feared by everyone, always roaming the world to strike fear in the hearts of many. Now here you are, inside a veil that no one can enter and leave. Human. Waiting out our lives. Is it worth the trade?"

Klaus raised their entwined hands, the matching bands adorning their fingers. He pulled off the daylight ring from her finger. She needed no other ring than her wedding band now. "Is it worth it for you?"

"I would trade a thousand years for one lifetime with you," she reminded him. His hand tightened around hers. "And I would do it again."

Now, to live out their human lives. However long it takes.

Epilogue

I've lived a thousand small years, but a handful of years were lifetimes of their own.

Awoken from a decade of slumber, Freya Mikaelson stood gate at the end of the cobbled pathway before the abandoned and decrepit old plantation that used to be her family's respite away from the busy city. Out there isolated in the country, one could live life out of sight. Idyllic still in the latter years, perfect to raise a family. To every passerby, the old plantation house, with its creaky wooden plans and falling rafters, was a condemned, ill-kept structure that spoke of a long forgotten past.

Calling on the ancestral powers, chanting a spell long taught to her by her own abductor, Freya's hands gripped those of her niece and the Saltzman girl.

The invisible veil fell. At the sight of the plantation house, more upkept yet dark and quiet, Freya's demeanor dimmed. Hope released her hand and stepped forward.

"Wait," Freya said.

Hope paused, then turned back to her aunt. She put on a brave, accepting smile, then nodded in reassurance.

"It was bound to happen one of these decades," Lizzie added, walking towards the stairs leading to the door.

At the top of the steps, before turning the doorknob, the two linked arms. The girls thought they hid so well, but Freya saw the deeper inhales, the heavier footsteps. Freya followed closely behind them. She walked through the empty living room, noting the hardbound books piled on the coffee table. Lizzie sat in the armchair, then leafed through a Jane Austen novel, finding a creased page that had a folded ear.

"Mom used to get so mad when we bookmarked like this," she shrugged. In their own private, enchanted world, Caroline must have found the freedom from control and hyper organization, grown so much that she dared not to use yarn or a cardboard to mark her place in a book.

Stems were dry in a vase that sat on the console table by the staircase. Twisted, dark petals littered in a crescent around the base of the vase. Freya's fingers ran over the top of the console, then she rubbed the pads of her fingers together, noting the amount of dust that gathered.

Her niece slowly made her way up the stairs. Hope paused in front of the closed door. Every decade that Freya woke to bring down the veil, this was the stop that she knew her niece looked forward to the most. She relished the tours that her father gave as he showed her the masterpieces he produced in the decade in between her visits. In those visits, as the decades passed, more and more that Freya noticed Hope's eyes lingering more at the silver and gray that peppered her father's temples than the paintings he displayed.

The gallery was still. Freya could see the dust hanging in the air where the light streamed through the wide windows. Hope stepped into that light, the dust particles disturbed by the movement. Unsurprisingly, as Hope removed the cover of several of the pieces, Klaus' paintings revealed the familiar face.

The oil memorialized shadows and creases on Caroline's face, marking the passing of the time that they had long ago thought was impossible.

"She looks beautiful," Lizzie observed, appearing at the door. She walked closer to the painting, began to reach for it but stopped. "She looks happy."

They had been content, satisfied in the private world that they created. If only for the calm in her brother's eyes the last decades of their visit, Freya knew there would be no regrets. Last decade, Freya took her brother's hand in hers, his once strong hands veined, speckled. She brought it up to her cheek. Maybe even last decade, she knew it could be the last time.

She supposed Caroline had known it too. The woman had been nearby most of the time. It was clear in the way that she looked at him, clearer than the previous decade, clearer still than the decade before.

She saw the longing gaze that Hope threw towards the end of the hall, at the large wooden doors that led to the master bedroom.

The large doors were closed shut, like the others. But that door, she knew, must never be disturbed.

"We'll go," Freya said abruptly. She nodded towards Lizzie Saltzman, who took her friend by the hand and began pulling her down the stairs. Freya waited until the reluctant young women stood one of each of her sides, taking the hand to channel power once more beyond her own, chanting the spell over and over, until the elegant and quiet house morphed into a foreboding vision before them, the last home of her brother and his wife forever cloaked to the rest of the world.

A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

fin