The Confessions of a Dying Hybrid - Part I

A/N Well. I guess I have a weakness. A little over two years ago, I obsessed and mentally unpacked every second of 5x11 till a writing possession overtook me, resulting in my 5x11 one shot turned fic called the Klaroline kiss. Here I am again, possessed to write something about the Klaroline episode I saw last night. Here is the result. Hope you enjoy it!

Caroline POV

"I don't care who you are. Klaus Mikaelson is gone."

No. I couldn't have heard right, but I repeat the last word of that sentence anyway, cause it was the only word that mattered in that entire sentence.

"Gone? Gone where?" Because I'm going to find him. I need to find him.

"I mean, no one has seen or heard from that man in like, three years," answers the dark skinned bartender and I go numb.

This can't be happening. This...Just can't. Maybe I need to ask about his siblings. They would know. Rebekah might hate me, but at least she knows me! Yeah! That could work!

"Listen. I know you haven't seen Klaus," I say. "But maybe Rebekah, Elijah?"

Her brows furrow for bit, thinking, then goes back to cleaning glasses. "Nope. Haven't seen them either."

"God you're so unhelpful!" I cry out finally in frustration and she narrows her eyes at me with a glare, but I continue. "Do you know anyone who would know where Klaus is? It's really, really important that I find him. Seriously. Help me out here," I finish with a nervous chuckle and small smile.

She folds her arms, biting her lip in calculation. Glancing at the twins beside me, she lets out a sigh of defeat, turning to go to the back of the bar but not without saying:

"Try Marcel. He lives about a few blocks from here and was friends with him. Maybe he knows something."

"Or she can try me."

My head snaps back at the voice behind me, my eyes widening in disbelief.

My mouth drops and I'm lost for words as he smirks at me.

"You? How...When? I don't..."

He chuckles, shaking his head. "I guess Nik likes his tasty little things blond and dumb."

I recover from my shock at that second, anger replacing it. "There is no one dumb here but you," I shot back. "How are you even alive Kol?"

His eyes brighten, moving forward. "Oh! You remember me! We only crossed paths that once you shot down Nik's advances in a blaze of glory. Flattered darling. Really."

"Save it," still mad about the blond and dumb comment. "Where's Klaus?"

A shadow passes over his face then, a seriousness settling there that makes my heart clench uncomfortably, making me wonder if I want the answer to that question.

He looks down at the twins, then frowns.

"Wait. Don't tell me this is you going for Hayley 2.0?" he says, gesturing at the girls.

My eyes grow wide, mortified. "No! They are not Klaus'...Wait," I stop with a hand up, something dawning on me all of a sudden. "Are you saying he can get vampires pregnant too?" I ask Kol. "I mean, I didn't feel pregnant after the woods and we had done it at least..."

I catch his amused smile and his eyebrow arched in interest making me shut my mouth before the oversharing continues. Goodness Forbes! Get it together.

Kol's smile broadens. "Come now. Don't stop now Darling. How many times did you and Nik do it?" he prods teasingly with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

Before I can tell him to shut up, Liz chimes in.

"Do what?" she asks innocently.

I flush crimson, and even Kol has the decency to look flustered.

"Nothing," we say quickly in unison. Way too early to have sex conversations.

The twins give us an odd look.

Kol runs a hand through his hair, looking put out. "How about we settle your kids with a friend of mine? You must be tired from your travels."

He leaves the bar and we quickly follow behind him.

"Thanks, but, I really need to talk to Klaus," I say when I catch up, then trying to keep up behind him with two little girls holding my hands.

I see the muscles in his back tense up briefly before he responds, again, sending me signals that something is seriously wrong. Wrong with Klaus.

Just the thought makes breathing a little harder and makes my brain start to entertain all the horrible things that could of happened to him. The biggest one being:

What if he's dead?

I shake the horrible thought away. No. This is Klaus. No one can kill him. He's invincible.

But my mind goes back to when Silas made him believe a White Oak stake was stuck in his back. What he had said then makes chills go down my spine, my worry increasing with the memory:

"Well. I certainly feel like I'm dying."

What if it is something like that again? What if he is in so much pain he wishes he were dead?

"Don't worry darling," Kol's voice comes in, breaking my morbid thoughts. "I'll take you to Nik. I promise."

I take a deep breath, cooling my nerves before nodding at him. He returns the nod and we keep moving as I fight down my concern all the way to our destination, not letting my fears overtake me.

After leaving the twins with Kol's trusted witch friend named Freya, I've figured out that something's up. So I say as much, Caroline Forbes' way, the minute we close the door to the Mikaelson compound behind us.

I whirl at him, getting into his face. He might be an Original and he might kill me for this, but I stopped fearing dying a long time time ago. Who knows? Dying might be the best thing to happen to me. Maybe then, I'd be free of doing the right thing; Saving Elena. Carrying and then raising babies that aren't mine. Plastering a happy face so people wouldn't have to worry about how broken and miserable I am inside because the people I really love, I can't have. My dad, my mom...

I stiffen when an all too familiar face flashes into the mix and I physically shake my head to banish the image of dark blond hair, stormy blue eyes and dimples, masking it as anger when I growl in Kol's face:

"Okay. What gives?"

His eyes widen in shock. "What?"

"Something's up and I'm not going anywhere till I know what. I caught the side glances you and Freya were giving each other in there."

He turns away uncomfortable, but I'm not done, my voice breaking a bit against my will when I'm finally able to voice my greatest fear out loud:

"Is he...Dead?"

His eyes met mine and there is so much pain there, it knocks the breath out of my lungs and my eyes cloud over.

"Oh God he is," I whisper, stepping slowly away from Kol, arm outstretched to make some distance between us. "That's...That's...I should be dead. We all should be..." I mutter to myself, in denial.

"His sire line was severed from him," says Kol so quietly, I wouldn't have heard him if not for vampire hearing. "That's why you're still standing."

I'm shaking my head, not wanting to hear any more, but I've opened the floodgates and now it seems he can't stop.

"I had trusted Davina. She brought me back, so of course I did. But she hated Klaus. So much. I realized too late she meant to kill him. I had thought she would just put him in a time out. Make him lose some years, like being daggered, but she bloody killed him and I DIDN'T KNOW!" He cries out the last words, his eyes shining with grief.

"He wasn't supposed to die," he whispers, his eyes closing shut. "He was my brother. He wasn't supposed to die..."

I'm staring at the ground as if it can make me unhear what I just heard, but I can't. No one can.

Klaus was dead.

"He told me once," I whisper against the lump in my throat, to the ground, a tear escaping to meet it, "It's not a crime to love what you cannot explain, and he loved you guys."

My head snaps up, sudden fury overwhelming me as I stalk back up to him. "His family," I sneer at Kol. "You were the reason he was TRULY happy! When he was with you all! And you!" I shove him harshly, taking him by surprise that he stumbles. "BETRAYED HIM!"

He quickly recovers and shouts back in my face.

"I SAID I DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS GOING TO BE KILLED!"

"And that makes it all better! Sorry! My mistake! GOD! You are so..."

"You do not get to judge me!" He cuts me off hotly. "You betrayed him too!"

I step back as if he struck me, mouth dropping, rendered speechless. He takes advantage of my silence, speaking accusingly at me.

"Caroline. I know exactly who you are to Nik, and your reaction to his death is only affirming it. There was something more than friendship between you two."

"Friends...then?"

I wince at the now painful memory, turning away from Kol, squeezing my eyes shut. "Just shut up."

"You say his family made him truly happy but I don't think so. I've seen the drawings of you, the magically sealed attic full of your image..."

The lump in my throat returns, hot tears pricking behind my eyes, cleansing away my anger.

"He fancied you..." Kol says softly.

"Is it really so hard to believe?"

A sob escapes, a hand going over my mouth to keep it in, but there is no stopping it, my body shaking with every tear that escapes. Strong arms are turning me around and then wrapping around me in comfort.

My head nestles into Kol's warm chest without thought, sobbing uncontrollably until there is nothing but an aching heart and memories.

Memories that are like stinging daggers to my soul because they burn and hurt so bad, making my tears come harder.

I just want go far. Far away from all of this...

"I'll take you wherever you want. Rome. Paris. Tokyo."

My fist clenches Kol's shirt for dear life, for strength to get through this somehow, but I can't. I don't want to.

"Why? You're beautiful. You're strong. You're full of light. I enjoy you."

He enjoyed me...

Don't you have a dying girl to punish for all her sins?

Things to put before my needs, my desires? I had silently thought in addition to the question I asked him then all those years ago in the woods behind the Salvatore boarding house.

"I do. But I won't. For you."

For me.

For me, he let Tyler come back to Mystic Falls. For me, he promised never to return to Mystic Falls. For me, he saved Stefan from Rayna Cruz.

And now I can never tell him how much that meant to me. As if in answer, his accented voice is coming in clear as the day I heard it last through that phone call with him, my mind unrelenting with its punishment of memories.

"So, here you are. In college. Building a life for yourself. Plans, a future, things you want."

How do I tell him now that my plans, the life I wanted to build for myself, the future I envisioned containing things I wanted, now involved him?

One thing is clear. It wasn't going to be the way I planned driving up to New Orleans. It would all have to be one sided.

"Take me to him," I say when my tears subside and I find my voice.

I feel Kol stiffen, then pull back from me to read my face. Eventually, he nods.

"Okay."

We go back inside to get Freya who Kol now reintroduces as the oldest Mikaelson. There is curiosity with how that is possible but all I can focus on is seeing Klaus with my own two eyes.

Kol stays behind to watch the twins, and a part of me kind of wishes he could come with me, seeing how genuinely pained he is over Klaus' death. I don't give it any more thought when Freya brings me around the back of the compound, not surprised that Klaus' final resting place was on the the property. All he ever wanted for a thousand years was to be near his family. Isn't that why he daggered them? Carried them around in coffins? Though his family challenged the bounds of his sanity, like he put it, he couldn't help but love them.

It's good they kept him close.

We get to what looks like a garden, bright and full of light. So contrary to the dark, broody hybrid I knew.

It didn't match him.

Freya takes a sharp right, and I follow till we get to a stone wall covered with vines and flowers.

Freya sighs deeply, standing before it for a moment before she suddenly turns to me.

"I know I don't know you, but...I feel like I do a little. Seeing his paintings and drawings of you."

I blush. Silently wondering now what was it about those things that made Kol and now Freya feel like they know things between Klaus and I.

"You were his most well kept secret. He never mentioned you but after..."She squeezes her eyes shut, biting her lip to stifle her emotions. "It's clear there's nothing he wouldn't have done for you, so I convinced Kol to put his body here. Figured Nik would like the garden since it held all the attributes he loved most about you: warmth, light."

I look down, biting my lip to keep my tears at bay. This is just getting to be too much.

She gets back my attention when she steps forward and puts a black scrapbook in my hand, her hands enclosing comfortingly over mine.

"There are more, but I think this one will help the most. I'll stand watch here, but take your time. He's waited long for you show up on his doorstep."

I suck in a breath, my brain already finding in my memory Klaus' words that Freya's triggered:

"Perhaps one day, in a year or even a century, you'll turn up at my door and let me show you what the world has to offer."

I just nod, clutching the book tightly to my chest, my heart breaking that the last part of the statement would never be fulfilled.

Ever.

When Freya lifts the magical seal on the room bearing Klaus, the stone wall parts to reveal descending stairs.

Torches magically light up as I descend, and at the bottom of the steps, lies a coffin.

I stop short, taking it in.

It hurts. It hurts so much that I almost turn around and run off.

Instead, I take a deep breath, and take a seat on the steps. Building up my courage there for awhile, I finally open the book in my hands.

My breath catches, seeing the horse picture Klaus drew me that I had shredded with Katherine. The same words from him at the bottom are there but with more:

"Thank you for your honesty - Klaus." I left another copy of this in her bedroom, giving her the version I was most happy with. I've pondered her words about why I didn't connect with people, no one ever bothering to tell me this was a failure of mine without fear of death. Truth be told, I never cared to make such relationships in a way that mattered, but, for her, I find myself curious, tempted to try now with Mikael gone and my family with me. Perhaps I can learn to connect with people from her. If she'll let me acquit myself.

A soft smile falls on my lips on the last line as I flip to the next page.

I notice evidence of pages being torn out, wondering if it had anything to do with me distracting him the next day in order for Elena and the gang to attack his siblings.

So far we've come.

My eyes fall on the next page bearing my face that is full of scorn and distaste. I can tell from the headdress around my head that this was from the 20s dance.

In the bottom, are his words: I don't know why I even bothered to go the bloody dance! What is it about this baby vampire that entrances me so that I leave myself open for rejection upon rejection?

Isn't that the million dollar question?

I am a fool. Every time I'm near her, I can't help but say things that I usually don't say, with the irrational hope that if I'm honest with her, like she was with me at my Mother's ball, she'd be able look past the murdering hybrid whose hurt her friends. I see now that is a fantasy. She'll never be ready to come to me, to give me a chance. Her light will be lost to the likes of her small town dreams and a small town boy who doesn't deserve her. No one does.

I swallow back a fresh bout of tears at the high regard he has for me, despite me being so mean to him.

Turning the next page, I can't help but grin, seeing the drawing of myself sitting on the bench, head tilted back in laughter, wearing the dress I wore for our date during the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant.

She called me perfect.

I can see him smirking as he wrote that.

No one has ever said that to me before and so genuinely in the way that is only Caroline Forbes. I have always been the bastard, the blemish, but this day, in her eyes, I was perfect.

I bite my lip, feeling the emotion leaking out of the words.

And it was only possible because of her. Just like that. I achieved perfection, acceptance for the first time in a thousand years and all I can think now is how to make that permanent, starring the woman who made it all possible. For in my eyes, her perfection, her light, is unparalleled.

And I want it. Desperately.

I take a sharp intake of breath at the heat behind those words, almost as if he said it to me physically.

I don't know how much more I can read, I think, hesitating before I turn to the next page.

I don't recognize this moment, probably because the drawing is of me sleeping, looking peaceful, lips slightly parted, a hand on my cheek.

His hand.

I nearly killed her. I nearly snuffed out the only light in my life, the only person to see me as more, because I was hurt with the thought of losing her for killing Carol Lockwood. We were back to the beginning, and her words of me no longer being worth the calories had stung.

My eyes widen in realization. This is the night he bit me inside Elena's house.

Yet, with her dying breath, she saw me redeemable and I felt my rage and hurt fall away.

How is she able to do that?

I smile.

Holding her in my arms then, watching my bite heal, I pondered her words that severed my core:

"I know that you're in love with me…and anybody capable of love is capable of being saved."

I didn't deny it because even I cannot name what I feel for Caroline. Whatever it is, it is beyond words, able to compel me to do just about anything in her name. If that is love, then it would be weakness. A weakness that I do not think I can afford to have.

I frown at that, turning to the next page.

It's me (of course), head turned back to look at someone behind me with a small smile on my face.

She came. Despite everything, she came to save me in my hour of need and I can't help but feel it had nothing to do with her or her friends being part of my sire line. I had been mean to her about the witches she killed for her friend Bonnie, angry at her for calling me a terrible person for doing terrible things. Yet, she came, meticulously digging for a white oak stake in my back that didn't exist, cleaning up my home stained with my blood, wilingly. As I watched her leave, gratitude and a heavy swelling in my chest, a warmth welling up in me that consumes me, that makes me ache so strongly to grasp her face, kiss her and make her mine.

For now I know the name of that feeling now and there is no more lying to myself. Silas wouldn't have wasted his time trying to manipulate me while I thought I was dying by turning into someone I did not care for, did not...love.

He had tormented me as Caroline all that morning...

I sniff hard, holding back tears. Is this when he realized he loved me?

I know what this means. She is my weakness, and I should probably kill her as self preservation, but I'm too far gone to care, let alone willing to do anything about it. I've never felt more alive, more content then when I'm with her. Even in the midst of her rejection, I can find no fault in her, because I will forever be undeserving of her goodness. So all I can do is bask in her presence as much as she'll let me, and make it enough. Prove to her that though I am unworthy, there is nothing I will put before her, not even my own life. For what is the point in living a thousand, a million more years, without her?

The book is dropping from my hands and I'm getting up, suddenly desperate to see him.

I pull back the top half of the casket, tears falling from my face, his words fresh and searing in my mind.

With a shaking hand, I reach out to touch his grey, desiccated face.

"Klaus?"

Of course. No response.

"I'm here," I whisper. "And...I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything."

There is a heavy silence and I start to shake harder, emotion overtaking me. Eventually, I snap.

"God! It seriously wasn't supposed to be like this!" I shout at the air, my eyes falling back on him. "I was supposed to show up and you were supposed to help me the way you always do and then this time, this time," my voice breaks tearfully. "I was going to say thank you," I whisper. "This time, I was going to kiss you senseless and tell you I was finally ready. Ready to choose you and this is what you do," I hiss at him. "You bail! Like everyone else!"

My lip is trembling, and the tears are rolling. "Now I can never make it right. I can never tell you everything I ever felt for you because what is the point now? You're gone and you aren't coming back."

I gaze at his handsome face, the cheeks that will no longer be graced with those dimples of his, his lips that will never speak words of comfort or devotion in that luscious accent of his.

No more lingering stares.

No touches.

No more kisses.

No more...except this one.

Like a magnet, my eyes draw to them, and without thinking, I'm leaning forward, kissing him.

One last time.

My eyes flutter close, my hand caressing his cheek, tasting my tears as my mouth rests on his.

I wish. I wish so hard I can talk to him. I wish I could hear him say:

"Hello love."

My eyes snap open at the voice. My heart nearly failing when I see what I see.

Somehow, I'm back in the woods of Mystic Falls, yet the details of it are hazy, unclear, like a dream.

What is sharp, defined and without a glitch, is Klaus, standing before me.

Alive.

"Klaus," I breathe out.

A/N I know. Forgive me. Part II is hopefully coming out soon. Feel free to leave a review ;)