The night had been hell. For all of them. Tyler felt the effects of the spell relentlessly, and as Klaus had promised, he had quickly gotten sore all over his body. So had Hayley. He didn´t really enjoy the experience when it had started. Not with Caroline there. Not with the guilt for having cheated on her in the first place. It might have just been one night, but even without the photograph Klaus had given to Caroline, he had already considered it one of the biggest regrets of his life. The only thing he regretted more was not telling her about it, when they woke up in the Dungeon. He had set her up for the humiliation of learning the truth from Klaus of all people. He could have spared her that, but he hadn´t.

The soreness had taken over both of their bodies, everything about their intercourse was raw and agonizing. Neither dared to look up at Caroline.

Caroline was exhausted. Her vision had been blurred by all her salty tears. Her mind was sloshed. Either it was amplifying the effect of the sight before her, or it repeating Klaus' promise of the a grand finale in the morning. Whenever she tried to seek refuge from thinking about Tyler, she thought of all the possible things Klaus could still do to them. His taunting voice ran down her nerves like a knife, the image of Tyler and Hayley cracking in like a whip. After a few hours her head hurt like hell.

This time she heard Klaus coming back, even before he had entered the dungeon, as though all of her senses had been attuned to grant her those few seconds of warning. As he stood atop the stairs, gazing at Tyler, Hayley and Caroline`s back, he was amused. "Good thing, I put them on mute. Those orgasms probably would have driven you crazy throughout last night had they been audible."

He was right in front of her in a flash, gently picking up her head. "How are you doing, sweetheart?" he asked softly, wiping her tears away. Caroline heard a second person enter. After a brief nod from Klaus, and from the little pieces Klaus head right in front of her did not block from view, she could see Tyler and Hayley weakly grabbing their clothes and getting dressed. So the witch was back. Without ever breaking eye contact with Caroline, Klaus gave a second nod, and the next thing Caroline felt was the need to cough her lungs out as the saw-dusty feeling from losing her voice slowly and finally dissipated. Tyler and Hayley were coughing as well. "Relax love, it´ll be all over soon. My apologies for putting you through that tasteless display last night, but I needed you to see. It`s true, a picture is really worth a thousand words, and I just had to make sure you had plenty of them inside your mind, when you think of your beloved Tyler. I needed you to understand the enormity of him cheating on you." His voice made her shiver as the coughing slowly stopped.

It took her a few seconds to collect her voice, then she spat it all out . "You sick, disgusting monster."

Klaus had a fast and effective response to it. Before Caroline could even begin to fight him, he had bit into his wrist and shoved it into her mouth, holding her firmly as his blood evaded her system. "Glad you´re not losing your bite, love. For a second I was concerned about doing more damage than necessary, I am relieved to find that when I am done, you´ll be fine. We´ll both be fine. Now, listen to me, sweetheart. You can call me any bad name in the world you want to, you can fight this with all your strength, but literally at the end of the day, I´ll walk out the winner. You´re in no position to influence the outcome of today's events. You are mine, now."

When he finally released her head from his wrist, she was breathing hard. Never had he forced down so much of his blood, and all she could wonder was what the hell he had planned. "I hate you."

Klaus just winked at her, before he walked into the cell. "You´re no longer needed." was all he said before he grabbed Hayley and swiftly pulled out her heart. Then he wordlessly left the cell, locking a still weakened Tyler back in.

"So, it appears we are barely through with the program. We´re just missing one more guest." At that, a hybrid brought in another hooded figure. The hood was not necessary, they could tell by the sheriff's uniform who it was. "Mom?" Caroline asked.

"Don´t worry, love, if all goes well, I won´t harm a hair on her head. Let`s just hope she´s cooperative." Klaus said, patting her head reassuringly.

"What do you want, Klaus?" her mother asked.

"I am just trying to make good on a promise. Remember Caroline`s sweet eighteenth birthday? We made a trade. I healed her, you promised me something in return. I wonder, do you remember what that was?" he spoke calmly, as he stepped closer to the woman.

She shivered as the hybrid towered over her. But she would not let him bullshit her. "You asked for my support."

"Yes. Your support. Well, I need it now."

"What do you want me to do?" she asked, obviously read to negotiate.

"Mom, whatever he wants, don´t do it." Caroline yelled. At that, Klaus turned to her and gave her a playful look. "Really, sweetheart? ... Haven´t you learned not to disrupt your elders when they´re talking?" Turning back to her mother, he took out a small vial with a yellowish liquid in it. "You see, in about a few minutes, Caroline is going to be drinking this. Once inside her system, it´ll rip through her brain like fire. It´ll make her sick. She´ll feel like she has a nasty case of the flue. But, don´t worry, that´s only a temporary side effect. What really matters is the main consequence of the poison. By the time she wakes up she will remember a lot of things. Like everyday life. School. However, she will have forgotten every single person she has ever cared about. It´ll literally be like she has lived a life without any friends or people to care for her. She won´t even remember me, though she´ll feel like she does. You know why that is, love?" he turned to look at Caroline an askance.

She choked. "Your blood." Her eyes grew wild at the knowledge of just how much he had been forcing down her throat all that ime.

"Exactly, you see, your daughter..." he explained, as he turned back to the Sheriff, "has fortunately established a strong blood connection to me. Her system has been given lots of it for the past three days. And if the person drinking this shares some sort of blood connection with someone, those people only partially disappear. She won´t remember her time with them, but she´ll know them nonetheless, and she´ll trust them. Which puts me in a rather comfortable position, and you in a rather peculiar one, you understand why, don´t you?"

"I am her mother, we share the same blood."

"Very Good, Sheriff. So that really just leaves me with two options, if I don´t want for all my hard labor to go to waste. Either I kill you this instant, or you make good on your promise."

"No... No. No." Caroline screamed, trying her best to get out of her restraints.

"Easy love, wouldn´t want to hurt yourself, would you? Just accept the fate that whatever your mother is going to decide, you won´t like it. Not one bit... so Sheriff Forbes, what will it be?"

"What exactly does supporting you mean in this case?" she asked confusedly.

"You won´t tell her about the people she´ll have forgotten, you won´t tell her about the potion and everything else that took place down here and you most certainly won`t tell her about my rather gruesome track record. As matter fact, I want your word that you won´t get in between me and her, ever. That´ll be all."

At his casual tone, Liz Forbes felt rage taking over her mind. "You can´t just ask me to sell my own daughter out to you."

"Well, do you really want to pass up on the chance of being the only person she´d have left from her old life. Because either you stick around and play by my rules or I´ll kill you and then she´ll have no one but me. That would be the alternative. If I kill you before she drinks that potion, she won´t think of you either. She´d know she had parents at some point, but she won´t even miss them. Her mind will not even think about people that are obviously missing. Not on its own volition. Will you really leave her alone like that?"

"Let them go. It´s me you want to punish. You´ve had your fun with both of them, but they didn´t try to unsire your hybrids. They didn´t try to desiccate you. The only wrong Caroline ever did to you was to be the distraction, and you´ve had your fun... Just let them go, man. Take your anger out on me." Tyler said in all quietness and seriousness. Klaus would have been impressed, if he hadn´t caught on to the desperation in his tone. And the urgent way his hands were gripping the bars. No matter how many ways Klaus could come up to kill Tyler Lockwood, no punishment could ever equal taking Caroline away from him. Permanently. And they both knew that.

"How utterly heroic. I would probably take quite the delight in mercilessly torturing you and killing you all over again. But you insolent pup don´t understand what this is really about. This my way of cutting my losses. I desiccated Elena and gave all hopes on finding that damned cure, simply because it was you that showed me how much of a nuisance hybrids can be. There were only a few you did not get your hands on, and I ensured by all means supernaturally possible that their sire bonds cannot and will not be broken, but other than that I no longer aspire to create new ones. I took my revenge on anyone that ever dared to betray or kill me, and sadly this list included our dear, sweet Caroline. Just like it includes you. But the difference between you two is, she´ll get a clean slate. A chance at happiness. You however, I am afraid there´s no clean slate for you. Because you put her in harm's way. It was you that made her play the distraction card. Just like it was you that cheated on her and then lied to her about it. Just like it was you that unsired my hybrids and tried to have me killed. And she stood by you, with all her loyalty. I am simply taking what I am craving the most. The same loyalty you couldn´t appreciate properly when you had your chance. So, well, I fear, there is no letting them go. " With a loud growl, he turned back to Caroline´s mothers.

"Mrs Forbes, pray tell me, what will it be." His demanding tone, nearly made the woman sick. It was an impossible decision. If she accepted his conditions, she´d be betraying her daughter for the rest of her life. She´d be forced to lie to her and even worse give Klaus permission to date her and access to their house, like he was just a friendly family friend. But he´d kill her if she didn´t agree. And without her, Caroline would be truly left alone with that monster. It´s the sort of choice any mother feared.

"Mom, it´ll be okay. Whatever you decide, I love you." Caroline suddenly croaked out, earning her a soft and possessive look from Klaus.

"Your decision?" he asked, impatiently. "Do I have your support?".

"You do." The woman whispered. Just like that a content smile appeared on his face.

"Brilliant." he chimed, taking her hands and placing the vial in them. "Now feed it to her." he said with cold-hearted eyes, his hands closing her palm around the flask. He gave her a rough push towards Caroline.

He watched anxiously as the mother approached her daughter. That was all he ever wanted for Caroline to know: The feeling of utter betrayal with no one to have your back. Of course, Caroline knew her mother was out of options and understood it, but still, having her feed her with the potion that would end her life as she knew it could only end in two scenarios. Either she´d be forced to struggle against her own mother or she´d at least have to submit to the fate he had set out for them.

In the end, Caroline chose the latter. As her trembling mother approached her, she just closed her eyes in defeat and drank. The effects were instantaneous. The second she had emptied the vial, a hybrid dragged her mother away. Caroline couldn´t even respond to her calls or even properly process them. Klaus has told the truth, the poison did spread through her system like a fire. Her temperature rose to deadly heights. Her mind was almost blurry. Her vision was clouded. Her entire body felt like it was burning up. The room felt like it was on fire as well.

Suddenly Klaus was right behind her, his hands were once more ensnaring her. "I know you want to fight this. It´s okay to fight. But I promise you, the fire will be gone soon. Soon it´ll all be over. Just let go love. Fight for as long as you can, give it your best go and when you´re done, just let go." His voice, for once, was not causing shivers or threatening. The words were soothing. In a dark way. Like hearing a priest give you absolution before death takes you away. Like a dark promise.

She tried to remember them, to hold on to them all. But they kept of fading. She could barely breath. And they kept on fading. In her head, she attempted to at least recount all their names, but soon enough, she was no longer sure if the list was correct. Eventually an overwhelming tiredness burned itself through the heat. She could hear Tyler´s voice calling out to her, over and over again. And she was trying hard to hold onto his name. Then she heard a soft, velvety whisper promising her the world. It was a delusional, dark and determined voice. But mostly it was soft. "We´ll be so happy love. I promise you. You´ll be safe. And we´ll both be so happy." After mere minutes she could no longer differentiate which voice spoke what. Then her mind started to drown them out, making their words fade more and more, just like those faces she was trying not to let go of. Ultimately, the last thing she felt before losing consciousness completely, as the fever was weakening her body more and more, was the feeling of a strong hold on her waist.

Klaus didn´t let go until long after her passing out. "It´s done." Was all he said. He was smiling.

When his gaze fixed on last time onto Tyler, he walked up to him. "Poor boy. Don´t worry about her, she´ll be safe and comfortable when she wakes up. She´ll be happy. I´ll see to it. You, however, well, your punishment is only just beginning."

"What, you´re going to desiccate me as well? You sick freak!".

"No, but my witch found a way to reinstall your sire bond."

At that, Tyler turned paler. "You´re lying."

"A sire bond indeed is a tricky thing. Your first bond to me was based on a sense of gratitude, which unfortunately for both of us, you have lost. However, there are other forms of sire bonds. Like the one between Elena and Damon. Theirs was based on their previous love for one another. My witch here, however has found a way to turn your hatred for me into a base for a new bond. You see, even before all of this, you hated me to a degree that was already bordering on obsession. I wonder how you´re feeling about me now, now that your hatred for me is the only thing you have left in this big, wide world. It´s the only thing you have left to hold onto. And my witch has found a method to utilize that in fixing our bond. "

Slowly and deliberately he walked back towards Caroline, and released her from her chains. As he picked her up bridal style and was about to carry her out of the dungeon, he turned to Tyler once more.

"On the bright side, I´ll make sure you´ll get to see her almost every day for the rest of your life. As the perk for once more being my little bitch, I´ll let you watch me making her happy and more importantly, making her love me. Goodbye, Tyler."

As he left with Caroline, he heard his witch step towards Tyler's cage. He heard faint chanting. He heard agonized screams mixed with last-ditch-effort threats against his life. But as satisfying as that felt, the only thing that really mattered to him right then, was to carry his mate away from all the carnage he had caused.

There was a whole world out there, waiting for them. And he finally could show it to her on his terms. And show it to her, he would.

So... that was the master plan, re-sire Tyler and brainwash Caroline. Which means, two things A) the only thing left for me to type is the epilogue and B) There´ll be a sequel. You don´t think it´ll be THAT easy, do you?

Anyway, I really appreciate all the reviews. I am bit disappointed by this chapter, I wish I could have done a better job, but I still hope some of you liked it.

Happy new year!