This is the sequel to anthems for a seventeen-year-old girl, first published in 2017 on tumblr and ao3.

if the first fic was sparse, this is pretty dialogue-heavy, and is an exploration of friendship as much as it is anything else. a series of moments, perhaps? maybe you'll find something you like here - maybe you won't. in any case, i think it's pretty necessary to read the first fic before you dive into this one.

do let me know what you think!

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park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor

part ii

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—

The days go by with an eventuality that moves something within her – when she rings up the days on her calendar and realizes she has lived a grand total of three hundred and fifty-two days here in Mystic Falls, and she is still alive.

Remarkably, fantastically alive.

She supposes it helps that the town's resident evildoer has a thing for her.

—

In the town of Dinan, dropped somewhere in Côtes-d'Armor, underneath the canopy of a pastry shop, Caroline spies a little unnamed pawn shop filled with dusty silver trinkets and objects glinting knowingly in the dark.

Klaus has his hand on the small of her back, guiding her through the network of cramped streets, stuffed through with dents polished by centuries of footfalls. She hears the tinkle of a bell and the resolute swing-shut of a door, and feels compelled to stop right in her path.

Caroline feels the puff of his breath on the back of her neck and the threads of his woven shirt scratching against her sunkissed shoulder –

"Sweetheart, we've talked about you stopping like that—"

"Then quit walking so close," she tells him, but it is with a trail of distraction as she ventures into the shade of the shop.

There is a still hush in the store, an untouched magic, that tugs her along. The kindly old woman who smiles at her from a corner has wrinkled, brown skin. It stretches over her cheeks paper thin when she bobs her head at the two of them, before going back to her knitting.

"What are you looking for?" comes his voice from behind her.

She turns around, sighing. "It's quiet here."

"Is it?" Klaus regards the store with a tilt of his head.

She nods. Her fingers find some necklaces, little artisanal pieces with rubies worked into the faded gold. She tests the weight of them in her hands. "I was dying out there."

Klaus laughs.

"What?"

"Nothing, love."

"Why are you laughing at me?"

"Because I'm astonished by you."

"Make sense."

"It's not quiet in here. Not at all."

Caroline rolls her eyes. "If you're going to keep showing off like that—"

"I'll stop when you stop being so obvious about it."

Caroline puts down a jar she'd been examining with unnecessary force. "I asked. You said no. I'm allowed to pout."

"Let's go back to the hotel. You must be tired if you're getting this testy—"

"I'm human, not incapable." She flicks her gaze to him. "And I'm not fragile."

Klaus must see something in the look she gives him, because that little grin of his recedes – slightly – and he says, "I'm sorry, Caroline."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go back to the hotel."

Klaus very visibly bites back a retort. Caroline smiles sweetly at him. Before they leave the shop, she asks, "What'd you hear in there anyway?"

Klaus glances at her. "Wind chimes."

—

Gerta trills at the smallest of things. She'd asked Caroline to pass her the plate of olives and had looked utterly charmed at the little bird tattoo inside her wrist. "I've never had my skin done! Did it hurt? Oh, marvelous creature she is –"

She's one of Klaus' oldest friends, apparently – oldest being the operative word here.

"She's nine hundred and three tonight," Klaus divulges, and the table erupts in a cheer. Someone tosses a plate to the ground and soon more follow, and in the crash and tremble of the room Caroline slips out, cheeks pink with champagne.

Dusk has made the green surrounding the estate look marshy. She sees fireflies lead the succession into night, a sporadic blinking of yellow-gold. The sing of crickets is another thing, loud and insistent amidst the festivities inside.

This morning Bonnie had texted her the weeks' worth of homework she'd have to catch up on when she gets home. Over lunch Klaus announces his plans to whisk her off to Versailles for "a birthday party", and now she stands in something drapey and layery that Elena and Bonnie would definitely gush over, if they were the type of friends who went out for movies instead of awkwardly bump into one another in the hallways with talks of 'meeting later about the killing Klaus thing'.

Maybe she should tell them he's gone soft. At least, that's what Marcel had said, eyebrows shot up as he drinks something amber from a crystal glass. "Never thought he was one for pets."

Asshole. "I'm his friend."

"This may be a misleading situation, but Klaus doesn't have friends. Gerta plots to kill him at least once every thirty years."

"Tell her to move to Mystic Falls."

"What was that?"

"I said, nice overalls."

Marcel glances down. "You think so? I lost a bet to Kol last year, but hey, since you think so, maybe he's the one that lost, huh?"

—

"Are we going anywhere tomorrow?" Caroline asks as she's settling into bed. Klaus looks up from his sketchbook in the corner. The villa they're staying in faced the setting sun lighting up the canals, and while Caroline had snapped about three hundred pictures with her phone, Klaus had chosen to draw.

"I thought we'd have a nice lie in. Yesterday's party requires a bit of recovery time."

"You drank a lot."

"I can hold my liquor. You sound resentful."

"I was in a room full of people who, as I've been told, hate you as much as they fear you." She pulls back the neatly-tucked covers with a snap. "And you brought your little human friend with you."

"An honour not even the most resilient of vampires are given, rest assured."

"The way they were looking at me, I could've died any minute," she snaps. "You didn't think about that before you dropped me in there?"

Klaus' face darkens. "They wouldn't dare."

"Submission doesn't work the way you think it will when it's beaten into you," Caroline says quietly. She slides into bed and crosses her arm.

"But you're still alive." Klaus smiles at that. He's always smiling like that, like it's some sort of gag to him by now. "Remarkably."

"I'm not your betting pool."

"You always think so low of me, sweetheart."

"And you," she retorts, "want me to die."

Klaus' sketching hand stills.

"You deny it, but it's true!" Caroline forces herself deeper into the plush bed, blinking hard. "You refuse to turn me, and you bring me along to your little blood soirees where everyone's drinking from a leaking neck and the only thing stopping them from taking a spout to mine is your grand show of murder to anyone coming even an inch close to me—"

"How does that warrant your death wish?"

"You don't give a shit about my safety."

"Did you not see how I sliced Lucien's hand off—?"

"If you really cared, you wouldn't bring me to those places to begin with!" Caroline yanks her hair out of its scrunchie. "Not in my state! My stinkin' human state."

"We've talked about this," Klaus says. He snaps his sketchbook closed and puts it on the table in front of him. In the warm light of the lamp hanging just behind him, she can't make out his expression. "There are complications to the process, it isn't as easy as a snapped neck and a drink of blood—"

"You're afraid I might be sired to you."

Klaus stops. "How do you…"

"I talked to Stefan."

Klaus sighs, shutting his eyes. "You talked to Stefan."

"I could get him to do it."

"No."

"And why not? Why can't I?"

"You're being a child right now. A petulant, spoiled—"

"Why am I here, Klaus?" she asks suddenly. "Why did you bring me to Paris?"

"Because you asked," Klaus says. "And I said I would."

"I know, but—" she struggles with her next words. "But you didn't – you didn't actually have to."

"I'm a thousand years old, Caroline. If I weren't a man of my word, what else would I be?"

"Dude, didn't you dagger Elijah right after you promised to reunite him with the rest of your family?"

Klaus grins. "Man of my word."

Caroline lowers her gaze. "I don't understand what's going on."

Within an instant Klaus is perched at the foot of her bed, watching her with volumes. "The problem, love, is that you're impatient. You're young. You're dabbling in things beyond the realm of your understanding—"

"Do you like me or something?"

Klaus splutters. "Of all the ridiculous—"

"Friends don't just jet their friends off to Paris just because they asked—"

"You seemed lonely."

This time, Caroline's the one who splutters. "Excuse you—"

"I meant no offense, sweetheart. Please don't take it as one." Klaus sighs, darts a glance at her, and then looks away. "The feeling isn't foreign to me either."

Huh.

She wiggles her toes. They nudge his knees through the blankets. "I'm going to bed. Mind turning that lamp off on your way out?"

—

Back in the periphery of Mystic Falls, Stefan and Damon still lurk around Elena, whispering, keeping her on the sidelines, side-eyes. But since Klaus –

They haven't put her in any hostage situations or whatever – she has a sneaking suspicion it's down to Elena – but she knows Damon is dying to. She sees him wrestle with a red face whenever he sees her walk into the Grille, wants to shake her, spit in her face.

"How's your bestie?" he snarks one day, as she's nursing the bottom of her milkshake glass.

Matt still gives her a full cup of cherries, but it comes along with a sidelong glance as well. She won't complain.

She ignores Damon and licks cream off her thumb. Sheriff's daughter, villain's best friend. These people won't stop goddamn labelling her.

—

They do try to kill Klaus. The plan fails spectacularly, as things go.

"He hasn't done anything in months," Caroline points out the next day, when Elena's in bed with her foot in a cast.

"Yeah, but Stefan's squicked out that he won't leave," Elena says. She'd refused Damon's blood, on account of the spell backfiring and a possibility of her death. Caroline's not sure when they'd all begun to discuss this so casually.

"I hope this doesn't affect… us," Elena says, watching her carefully. "I mean, I'm not sure what's going on between you and Klaus, but—"

Caroline raises a hand. "Hey, kill him all you want. Just leave me out of it."

Elena raises an eyebrow. "You don't care if he dies?"

"I think I would." Caroline chews on her bottom lip, reflecting. "I'd care a lot, in fact."

"But you're not… doing anything to stop us?"

"Well." As long as she's being honest here. "You guys aren't exactly successful. Like, ever."

Elena almost turns green in her attempt to bite her tongue. Weird, people seem to do that a lot around her these days.

—

Figures she'd spoken too soon.

—

"Maybe you should leave town," Caroline suggests.

"Not you too," Klaus groans. It's weird, because he's in Tyler's body, and the sneer he constantly has in place looks twisted on Tyler. In fact, the sight of Tyler in Klaus' garden is weird, too, seeing as how they're the only two people who are ever there.

The grass rustles in the wind that's picking up. Caroline sticks a flower behind her ear.

"No, I mean. Aren't you tired of constantly renovating?" There's a hole on the side of Klaus' garage where Damon had hurled a truck right through it.

"Gives me something to do, now that I've lost all ability to make hybrids."

"Even Elena's a vampire now."

"Don't start on that, love."

"Don't call me that. It sounds weird coming from Tyler."

"I'll be back in my own body soon. Once that happens, what do you think about Rome?"

"Tyler literally borrowed two dollars from me last week for a sandwich, and now he's waving plane tickets in my face."

"You are too nonchalant about things, have I ever told you that?" Tyler-Klaus frowns. "When you heard news of my death last night, were you sipping on a margarita?"

"No," Caroline says quietly.

"What then? Plotting ways to get your vampirism going now that I've finally gone?"

"I was trying to remember how I dealt with my dad leaving me, because I figured if I'd been able to survive that – which was pretty much the most painful thing that had ever happened to me – I'd survive you. Somehow."

Tyler-Klaus is silent. He's lounged next to her with a piece of grass in his mouth, but that disgruntled look that had been fixed onto his face for the past hour had melted into something akin to confusion. Shock. Awe. Something, in any case. It made his eyes go wide and unblinking. "You mourned me."

"Well, I was about to, until you showed up in my bedroom. I'd like a text first the next time you decide to show up in someone else's body. Or at the very least let me know before you do it?" Caroline huffs.

"Caroline."

"Also? If you're going to kiss me, I'd rather it not be in Tyler's body."

Tyler-Klaus splutters. "Of all the ridiculous—"

—

The monotony of life here is broken, every so often, by Klaus whisking her away to whatever country he suddenly fancied having a drink from. Her mother learnt to school her expression from terror to exasperation soon enough, because at least Klaus has the decency to knock on the front door first before every trip.

"You're the only one who isn't terrified of me," Klaus tells her conversationally one night when she refused to pack for Thailand on account of her AP History test the next day.

("Not like I can compel an A out of her," she says goadingly, and he'd kept his mouth shut.)

"I was, at first," she says, stacking her flashcards. "It's called getting to know someone. You should give it a try every once in a while."

"It's alright. You're enough."

Caroline fights the smile that threatens to bloom on her face. "You gonna help me study or what?"

"No. Thailand wasn't in season, so your cancelling last minute set me back quite a sum." Klaus finishes perusing her small library and decides to settle onto the arm of her armchair. The last time he'd tried sitting in it, he had sunk three inches. "If I'm bored later I might quiz you."

"You're not even remotely nice to me outside of your extravagantly planned trips." Caroline tilts her onto its back legs and balances dangerously as she looks at him. "How did I ever think you'd ever turn me?"

"Maybe as a graduation gift."

"Do you mean that?"

Klaus presses his lips together, rubs his chin. "Yes. I suppose."

"Does this mean I have your word?"

Klaus looks resigned. "Yes."

He is surprised when she bolts out of her chair to hug him. They do not touch so openly – in Mystic Falls it invited stares, and in different countries, in air flows easier into her lungs, in nights colder and bluer than the ones she usually knows, she had determinedly shied away, not wanting to give him an excuse.

"Thank you," she whispers.

Klaus' only response is to place his hand on the small of her back.

—

"My graduation gift?" she asks breathlessly when he shows up, finally, at the edge of the field. She'd been looking for him all day, she can't believe he'd had to go to New Orleans the night before her graduation, but the sight of him in his suit and pocket square that matched his eyes all-too-coincidentally made all her grief disappear, quite suddenly.

"Your mini fridge is already in your room," Klaus says. He walks slowly, with purpose, down the walkway. It takes all of thirty seconds for him to reach her, but it felt like much, much longer.

"Not that," she clicks her tongue. "The other thing."

"Ah, yes."

And all of a sudden he seemed nervous, and she – she feels angry, but – not angry, no. Upset? Her palms are damp, she wipes them hurriedly down the sides of her dress.

"You promised," she reminds him accusingly.

"I know I did, love," he says. "I know."

She holds her breath.

"I can hear your heart beating," Klaus says absently. He looks down at her, the field's floodlights pick out the bonework of his face, his strong cheekbones and furrowed brow. He's looking at her and yet not: his lashes trap his unseeing gaze and Caroline feels a shiver run down her spine.

"Klaus?"

"I wanted to have done this at least once," Klaus says. "Just to know the difference."

When he kisses her, it is gentle. This doesn't surprise her. She knows he's capable of being gentle, she's seen him draw. He pins down his sketches with a precision that startles her at times, but some days even with a careless hand he can fill up entire books in one sitting, when she visits. The lines always come out softer. She likes those pictures the best.

It doesn't last long. Klaus pulls away soon enough, but the moment lingers. Caroline is reminded of a night spent in Verona, the way he looked at her then, the way he looks at her now. And everything, the sky, the confetti, the singing evergreen – everything clicks into place.

"Wait—" she rasps. "Wait."

Klaus, in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt sleeve, stops. "Yes, love?"

"Back then, when I asked about the sire bond thing? Stefan said that – those feelings only manifest if the human and the vampire share, like, feelings of love or whatever, and I laughed it off and said never in a bajillion years would a sire bond ever happen between us—"

Klaus scowls. "Thanks, sweetheart."

"—but now I'm pretty damned sure I can't take your blood. Hey, you think Stefan's still awake? I mean, he'd be hard pressed to give us some of his blood, but you're creepy enough to be the kind of guy who keeps a vault of collected vampire blood, so maybe—"

"Wait," now it's Klaus to say, "What do you mean you can't take my blood?"

Caroline rolls her eyes. "I thought you were worried about the sire bond?"

"I've been quite vocal about that the last year or so, yeah."

"There's a high chance I might be sired to you, since I'm pretty sure I've got…" she cringes. "Feelings for you."

Klaus blinks. "And this wasn't a problem before… how?"

"'Cause I just realized it."

"You mean two minutes ago when I kissed you?"

"Pretty much."

Klaus lets out a long sigh, interspersed with a couple choice curse words. "You're impossible, sweetheart."

—

Klaus doesn't talk to her for a week after that. Something about "putting his feelings on jeopardy" and a lot of Well I did tell you, love. Caroline sends him text after text to quit being emo, of which he doesn't respond to.

It's not until she threatens to take some of Tyler's blood that he knocks on her front door one night.

"Flowers," she notes, taking them from him. "Oh, you shouldn't have."

Klaus glowers. "Don't offend me."

"You're a thousand years old. Sarcasm should slide right off you."

"I'm not Finn, love." He stands in the middle of her living room, necklace and Henley and brown, brown curls, out of place as always. "Are we done with this push and pull?"

"Klaus, you're the one who avoided me because you don't know how to deal with feelings," she points out, but keeps her tongue in her mouth. She's not that petty. "Where'd you go? Tokyo?"

"Don't sound so reproachful. I wouldn't go again without you." He paces the room. "I was making arrangements. After you turn, there are going to be repercussions. The Salvatores might not take too kindly to your return here if bodies start dropping—"

"Bodies won't drop."

"Sweetheart, while I admire your confidence, you're bound to slip at some point."

"No—bodies won't drop, because I'll be on blood bags," she explains patiently.

Klaus stares at her.

Without further ado he walks out the door.

—

That takes another week of coaxing for him to come back, and her tweeting OneKlausMikaelson a picture of her faux biting down on a pseudo-terrified Tyler's wrist.

The screech of wheels outside her house is all she needs to know he's back from his brood-a-thon.

"What do you bloody mean," he storms into her kitchen, "you'll be on blood bags? You think you can be at your strongest sipping on cold leftovers? You think Stefan is the way he is because he's constantly on the receiving end of heartbreak? No, it's because he has to live with the knowledge that he is injecting his body with stale—"

"Hi, Klaus!" she greets warmly. "Why'd you delete Twitter?"

"—do you not respect the sanctity of your body? Do I not bring you to only the finest restaurants whenever we go—"

She finishes setting the table and goes to him, slinging her arms around his neck. "I'd hate to be cliché and shut you up with a kiss, so do you think you can manage without that?"

Klaus breathes once, very hard, through his nose. "You are determined to make this very hard on me, love. Imagine my partner guzzling down on blood bags when there's a warm body at her disposal. I won't have it."

"Okay, one: you're delusional if you think I'd let you cater to the rest of my undead life. I was Miss Mystic Falls, Klaus. I've got a system for everything. In the year you spent denying me of my vampire existence I'd already thought everything through. I won't kill for sport."

"Hardly counts as a sport when it takes barely an effort to snap their necks," Klaus mutters.

"Look, can we discuss this when I'm actually a vampire? Are you going to dangle this carrot in front of me forever?" Caroline scowls, but brushes her lips against his. "You can't police my actions. I mean, you didn't even ask if I'd like to be your esteemed partner. You just assumed."

There is an ugly pause. Klaus looks very close to murdering someone, so she unhooks her arms from his neck and goes to pour him his tea. "Come drink while it's hot."

The scrape of the chair against tile, the rustle of the biscuits, and Klaus is now sullenly munching. Caroline joins him, chews on her biscuits while he chews on his thoughts, and after ten minutes of blowing on her earl grey Klaus says, "What about a compromise? You drink from humans. You don't have to kill them."

"But?"

"I'll do the killing for you."

"Kl-aus." Caroline slams her teacup down. "Did you really think I'd spend the rest of my existence being so laissez faire about human lives?"

"You're policing my lifestyle."

"God, way to make this about you?"

"My entire existence – the empire I built. How do you think I got here?"

"By killing and maiming. You don't have to do that anymore."

"Caroline, being a vampire means you're just another category on the food pyramid. How else to ensure you're on top of it?"

"We've talked about you using that tone on me."

"Strange, we've also talked about you using that tone on me, and yet I never see you upholding your end of the bargain."

"I'm not killing innocent humans."

"I've countless enemies, sweetheart." Klaus pinches the bridge of his nose. "How do I rest easy knowing you've this unnecessary policy? What happens if danger befalls you?"

She rolls her eyes so hard that it's almost painful. "I said innocent humans, Klaus. I didn't say anything about the paranormal, or – or people threatening my life. I live in Mystic Falls, for god's sake. How do you think I stayed alive this long?"

Klaus takes another biscuit. He mulls this newfound information over, but that kink is still in his eyebrows. Probably trying to figure out ways to trick her into taking a life. She doesn't even understand why this is an issue right now.

"I admit," he concedes finally, "that I might have overreacted."

"Yeah, you had twenty-two thousand followers, Klaus. What the hell."

"The first time I truly saw you, in my garden," he says, "you were full of light. I'd never seen anything like it. To take that away—"

"You could teach me, you know. Control."

His lips twist. "Control has never been my strongest suit. Not when it comes to blood. I never saw a reason for it."

"Well, duh." She nudges the teapot his way when he gestures for more tea. "Would I sound really full of myself if I pointed at myself very obviously right now?"

"A tad." Klaus smiles. "But that's what I like about you."

—

It's sweeter than she imagined, vampire blood. Fuller. Different planes of flavour every which way she sloshed it around in her mouth, but ultimately like swallowing a mouthful of molten copper.

She sets the red-stained vial on the bedside table. In the corner of her eye she sees him move – he pushes aside the sheer white drapings hanging from the bed's overhead bannister and comes to settle at the foot of the bed. Heady, she turns to him, and finds her cheek resting against the warm pads of his palm.

"Are you ready, love?"

She leans forward and he meets her halfway: the kiss is hot, slow, his tongue seeking entrance against the smooth inside of her mouth. When their tongues meet she shivers and he pulls her closer, and the world tilts – she is aware of her back hitting the soft mattress and of his knee between her thighs, she welcomes the weight of him on top of her, how he is careful not to leave her too uncomfortable. She grasps him tighter, her fingers raking down his back. Klaus lets out an appreciate groan. She catalogues this for later.

For now—

"This will hurt a bit, when you wake up," he whispers, eyes watching hers fervently. His hands wrap around her neck in almost a seductive move.

"Just do it quick." Please, she doesn't add, and some naïve part in the back of her head prays it won't hurt too much. For some reason she's seeing visions of her mother pushing her on her rickety old pink bicycle, and that – that's painful enough as it is.

She registers, faintly, a sharp crack, before everything goes black.

—

Years later she will tell him what an absolute sap he is, to make sure she wakes to the soft crackle of fire burning in the hearth, wrapped in only the softest of cotton sateen, to have him waiting in the chair by her bed, swirling a crystal of human blood, lost in thought.

The first slide of blood down her throat is sweet mercy. It fills her with a hum of vibrant adrenaline, it makes her fangs jut out and scrape against the glass.

She doesn't notice his look of hunger upon seeing her wake as a vampire – or maybe she does, heightened senses and all, but she's too busy thinking more, and more and more.

Her insides turn, her bones feel like they might never shake. She feels ageless, suddenly. A terrifying concoction of strength and beauty, all the ruthless people she's ever met, all the eternal places she's ever been.

"Hello, love," Klaus says, and when she looks at him there is a strange blooming in her chest, the unfurling of wings, the sway and swoon of wildflowers, a still, still night.

"Hello," she says, and then realizes the night isn't as still as she'd thought. She rolls to her feet – Klaus follows, that smile on his face as she turns the room, straining her ears.

"You can hear it, can't you?" Klaus asks. She's never noticed how gracefully he moves. She supposes she's never noticed a lot of things.

"Yeah." She nods, smiling so hard her face might crack in two, and she doesn't know why this makes her heart feel so full. "I can."

Somewhere, in a little corner of his house, she knows he's put them up just for her—wind chimes.

fin

what do you think? part three necessary?