"Klaus," Caroline breathed, her words barely audible over the noise of the bar.

"Hello, love," he said, smiling softly at her.

She gaped at him for a few moments, unable to find any of the words she was scrambling for. Though she was saved the trouble, as two mildly drunk patrons squealed as they caught sight of him.

"Are you Klaus Mikaelson?" one of the girls cried.

"Oh my god, you are Klaus Mikaelson!" the other tittered, excitedly. "Can we have a photo?"

Ever the gentleman, Klaus agreed, and the girls both thrust their phones in Caroline's hands, who graciously snapped some pictures.

"This is the best place ever," Caroline heard one of them say as they stumbled away, and it made her feel a bit proud. But she was quickly pulled away from the moment when –

"Sorry about that," Klaus said, absently rubbing the back of his head, a little embarrassed.

"No problem," she replied, before jerking her head in the direction of her office. "Follow me."

Caroline was off in an instant, grateful for the distraction, and the moment to collect herself. She murmured in the ear of one of her employees that she was going to take a break for a moment, then slipped down the hallway that housed the room.

Once she closed the door to the noise, and turned to face him, she couldn't help but note the neat picture of him in her office, after so many days of fretting about him, while in her office.

"So… how are you?" she asked, still a little tongue tied.

"Well, thanks," he responded, as he took in the room around him. "You?"

"Yeah fine," she said vaguely. "Two weeks in and business seems to be going how we predicted, which is comforting."

"I see," he said, before lapsing into silence.

They stood awkwardly for a few moments, before Caroline said, "Drink?"

"Please."

She opened a cupboard by the door and pulled out a couple of wine glasses, and a bottle of red.

"Hope red is fine," Caroline said, self-consciously. "I can basically get you whatever you want, I just have to grab it from behind the bar."

"Red is fine, sweetheart."

Caroline gave him a tight-lipped smile as she handed him the glass.

Her mind was honestly in overdrive, she'd rehearsed what she wanted to say enough times, but now he was here, and she was completely bare.

"This place is incredible," Klaus said of the bar, after another minute of uncomfortable silence. "Everyone I know who went to the party the other night has raved about it. I remember you saying to me, way back, that you wanted to open your own venue."

"Mmm," Caroline intoned, her lips still tight, and mind still racing.

"It's been a funny couple of weeks," Klaus said, valiantly trying to find some flow for conversation. "Lots of flying back and forth. I'm currently shooting primarily in Canada, but have commitments in both LA, Atlanta and here, in New York as well. Plus, obviously, I wanted to see you."

He gave her his most charming smile, and was disheartened when she frowned a little, even as she nodded in acknowledgement.

"Caroline, I was wondering if –"

"Klaus, wait," Caroline said, finding her voice in time to cut off the question. "I want to say something."

"Yes?" he said gently, his heart sinking.

Caroline didn't speak right away. She leaned against her desk, and fiddled with the wine glass in her hand, her eyes darting around, as though she was still trying to pick the right words.

"I have waited so long, Nik," she began, her voice so soft, so exploratory. "So long."

"I've waited too," he said, the tiniest bit defensive, though he couldn't ignore the way his heart flipped when she called him Nik.

She frowned at him.

"Have you though?" she replied, sceptically. "Because you can't have waited the same way I have. You left me, remember?"

"Yes I left, if you can call it leaving…"

"Umm, what else would you call it?" she interjected, suddenly dubious.

"I don't know, love, taking a break, finding myself – but just because I left, doesn't mean you weren't on my mind!"

"You took a pretty long break, if that's what you're calling it. And, besides, being on your mind, isn't the same as being the one who was was left in the lurch, Klaus," Caroline said, her frustration growing. "I don't want to wait anymore."

The words gave Klaus hope that maybe she wanted to try.

"That's why I'm here, Caroline," Klaus said, imploring. "I'm here, and I don't want to wait either."

"Are you kidding me?" Caroline exclaimed. "I had to wait two whole weeks, again with absolutely no contact mind you, just to have you spring up, unexpectedly at my place of work, again."

"I had to work, Caroline! What was I supposed to do? Blow off my work to chase you?"

"That's the point, Klaus!" Caroline exclaimed. "You could have contacted me; you could have let me know something. You have the world at your fingertips, you could have worked out how to contact me – communication is so freaking easy! And you just left without any indication of whether I would ever see you again?"

"I'm not sure what you want from me," Klaus said, bemused. "You just said you don't want to wait, but now I'm here, I came, and you don't want that either?"

"I… I… umm…" Caroline fumbled. "That's not… not what I meant…"

"Then enlighten me, Caroline, because I want to give us a try –"

"Please, Klaus –"

" – I want to know whether we can make something of what we had, –"

"– Klaus, just let me say what –"

"– and from who we are now. I'd like to know what you want from –"

"Can you just let me get a word out!" Caroline cried, finally cutting over Klaus, who instantly snapped his mouth shut. "Because I'd like to know too!"

She sighed, and ran a hand down her face, trying to regain some semblance of ordered, well-thought-out speech she had been rehearsing for the past two weeks.

"When it happened…" she began, stiltedly. "When you left – because you did leave – I was so young, so lost…"

She paused to chew the inside of her lip and furrow her brow even deeper.

"Back then, I was trying to learn who I was as a person, and that is hard. And when you left… I grieved you. It felt like I was drowning. And I couldn't talk about you because no one understood. No one really knew about you, about us. And I certainly know anytime I brought you up, my friends just brushed me off because I was 'over-reacting'… just get over it Caroline."

Caroline shook her head, bitterly remembering how isolated she felt during that time.

"I don't want you to think I spent ten years just pining for you… waiting for you to grace me with your presence, or anything like that," she added quickly. "I've laughed, loved, lusted. And, sure, there were times I cried over you. There were times when I just needed to connect with you. But I got over that, I learned how to be okay, even though I was completely dropped by my best friend."

She looked back at him, many years of hurt swimming there.

"You showing up here, surprising me like this, it's not romantic. It's not charming." She was almost callous in her cutting words. "It's just proof that I need to close this chapter, once and for all, because I don't want to wait for you anymore."

Klaus' heart clenched; a painful feeling he didn't realise he could still have.

"I don't want to wait around for whatever gesture you're planning. I don't want to wait for you to show up out of the blue again, to declare your never-ending love. Grand gestures are probably nice when you're nineteen and don't know what love means. But I've hurt and loved deeply since then. I've grieved real friends who I've lost. I've had toxic friendships scar me, and beautiful ones that fill me with joy. And none of those experiences involve you. All of them are mine, and only mine."

"This place…" she murmured, looking around her office, and rubbed her hand tenderly on the hardwood of her desk. "This place is mine. It's my dream. I'm not going to put it on some backburner for the maybes and what ifs of life with you. I refuse to bet on you being there, like I did before. Especially not when I could back myself."

Klaus' brows were knitted firmly together, and he could barely register the entirety of the moment, needing her to keep talking, if only because he knew this would all be over after she stopped.

"And so what I want from you, Klaus, is this…"

She stood tall before him, jaw set resolutely.

"I want your confession. I want you to tell me how you really felt. To admit you loved me, and you ran because you were scared. I want you to say it fully sober, and not just because you were afraid you might lose me, or because it seemed like the right grand statement to make in the dead of night the first time we physically met. Tell me now, so I can finally know I wasn't crazy – that our connection was real. So we can just shut this book we started writing lifetimes ago, and just let it go. Because, at the end of the day, Klaus, we don't owe each other anything… only this… only closure."

She flicked her eyes around his face, taking in the total devastation his perfect features.

"And I know I blamed you for a lot the other night…" she said, so softly, he had to lean into to make it all out. "My insecurities and anxieties. I was overwhelmed, so I lashed out, and that was not fair. So I'm sorry about that. But I'm not sorry about this."

Caroline placed her glass that was still loosely in her grasp on her desk, and closing her eyes desperately, anything to keep the words she didn't want to say in her mouth.

"This is how I feel. This is what I want. I want closure. I want to put this teenage fantasy of us behind me, because I can't jump headlong into love with you, not now, that would be too reckless. And I don't want to be reckless."

She finished her speech, and kept her eyes shut, unsure whether she could keep her resolve if she looked at him in that moment.

"I did love you," Klaus said quietly, after what felt like hours of silence.

Caroline opened her eyes, and could see such deep honestly etched into his face.

"I never truly understood why I left you so absolutely."

Klaus began to blink away tears, a tiny gesture had tears springing to her own eyes.

"I cared for you so deeply, and didn't know how on earth to tell you," he said, vulnerability scratching his throat with every word. "To let you know you were the one shining star in my life. And I could never process that. So I ran. Running seemed easier than trying back then, sweetheart. And spent ten years loathing the part of me that did, and loathing even more the parts of my that wished I didn't."

In a move filled with brazen courage, Klaus reached out and caught Caroline's hand in his, intertwining their fingers. And it heartened him, ever so slightly, that she didn't pull away.

"I wanted to tell you," he said softly, almost as if it was a promise.

Despite the tears, an inexplicable feeling peace settled between them, and Caroline knew – she just knew –she could finally put it behind her.

"I don't want this to be it," Klaus breathed.

"This is it, for who we were," Caroline breathed back. "We're not Carebear, and you're not Nik anymore. We are Klaus and Caroline."

"Caroline, I… please," Klaus croaked, but she just held up a finger, her speech unfinished.

"We are adults now, Klaus, with real life adult wants and needs. And now we've finished writing this dumb book we started so so long ago now so…"

She squeezed his hand slightly, and gave him a mere hint of a smile.

"Maybe we can start writing a sequel in months to come."

Hi there everyone, I promised at the end of the last chapter a long note on my absence. Not that you really need to know, the nature of ff is that people just stop writing, but it got hella long. So I will post the whole thing over on my tumblr, queencarolinemikaelson. This is the sparknotes of it:
I don't know if I've ever really articulated this, but the dynamic between Caroline and Klaus in this story is modelled closely on a relationship of mine. Of course, my relationship was a lot more mundane, and less fantastical than this story, but he was my best friend for a very long time, and when he moved overseas from me, about six years ago now, it was as though our friendship never existed. We had a very strong friendship, but a very fraught romance. But it was there, it was real, and I know it was reciprocated, even if it was never spoken out loud. I tell you this not for sympathy, nor as an excuse. I'm merely sharing a part of this story that isn't in the actual story, if you know what I mean. What took me so long, I think, is I have been trying to work out what I want from him, from my Klaus. In some of the versions of this chapter, there were grand declarations of love, in some very solid banishments of hate. And as I wrote Caroline's monologue from this version of this chapter, I finally knew this is what I want from him. And I'm proud that I found my way to writing the end of this chapter on my own.

Anyway, cheers for listening to my process. Let me know what you think. xx