Warning: Depictions of sex. Maybe it crosses into E. This follows canon very closely, so expect Forwood to be heavily present.

Side Note: Happy (extra belated) birthday to you Caryn! I'm sorry this took so long to finish. I just wanted to write something substantial for you. Here are all the befores, afters, the inbetweens of Klaroline scenes from S3 through 511. The amount of effort I put in this is but a fraction of the amount of time and work you put into the Klaroline fandom. Stay awesome. I hope you like it

Caroline looks at Klaus. This is what she sees.

Cruelty. Malignance. He is a harbinger of suffering. Tyler writhes, and he screams so loud that it makes the room ring. Please stop this, she tips the entire weight of her body forward, but Rebekah's grip on her arms is vice-like. Klaus peers at him, casually crouched, almost smiling, studying the change in Tyler's eyes. This is empirical for him; consider this an experiment.

Tyler lifts his head and looks back at Caroline, the new poison swimming up his face in black branches that lead from his cheeks to his eyes. They pulsate so hard under his skin that she thinks she can make out the rhythm of his heart from looking at him alone.

And his eyes... They're still yellow, with the same wild glint she observes on cellar nights just before she runs out and slams the door shut behind her, after which she listens to his noisy snarling until the sun rises.

Then he opens his mouth and bares rows of deadly, uneven points, way more than she's used to seeing. Even wolves don't have that many.

Is this what Klaus' fangs look like too?

Tyler sinks down low, curling up on the floor onto his side, groaning and sputtering, clutching his chest like something's rupturing beneath. It hurts to see him like this. "Tyler?" Caroline calls out softly, as he begins to still. He gazes up at her and Rebekah helplessly, while he pins his wrist to his chest, blinking the water from his eyes.

"Well then," says Klaus, standing up. "We've got a bit of harvesting to do." He's smiling at the spatter of Elena's blood on the counter now, clearly proud of himself. Of his progress.

Caroline is seething. She wants to do something. Kick the chair. Break all of Rebekah's fingers. Spit. Gather Tyler in her arms.

There's nothing she can do.

"Now?" Rebekah asks, and nods at the ground. "What about him?"

He waves dismissively. "He'll be fine. We hybrids are a hardy lot." We hybrids.

Klaus spares Caroline a glance. "He's much better off like this."

She gives him an incredulous laugh. "Like you?"

Klaus presses his lips together in amusement at her quip. "No one's like me, love."

"I know," she snaps, "You're a sad, lost-"

Before she can finish, Caroline feels a quick pressure at the back of her neck and a jolt of pain that races into the centre of her skull. It's only when she wakes up and rises out of the black, hollow and unnerving cloak of death that she realises that she's been killed. But at least, she loosens a sigh as she lifts her hand to a sore spot at the back of her head, those smug Original jerks are gone.

When Caroline's lying in her bed with her life seeping out of her neck, she has no choice but to look at Klaus. This is what she sees.

Cunning. A mysterious hierophant, strolling into her room with calculated steps, even more careful words, venom-tipped promises slathered in honey. The sympathy is in his voice, the pity is on his face, but she doesn't know what's stirring in his head.

Probably a plan.

She pretends that she never heard him strike a deal with her mother at the door. (She's a pawn again – no, she's more... a rook, prepared for another sacrifice much later down the line.)

She pretends that bitterness isn't throttling her insides as he sits next to her and tells her about what waits for her in this lifetime. (He dangles it in front of her, string of opalescent pearls, each bead of them clicking down into his web of hope as he offers her the infinite.)

But she needs him. She doesn't need lifetimes, she just needs this one, with her mother. Possibly even her father. Caroline swallows her pride.

"I don't want to die," she whispers, fever making her throat tight.

She is not pretending about this. The tears slip from the corners of her eyes and she hates what she must look like, soft and pleading and feeble. Giving in to his devices.

Klaus lets her drink. He wanted this to happen, she thinks, sucking on the open wound she's made, air and blood in her mouth. And I let it.

And now, now she owes him.

This is the only thing on her mind when her arms shift in her blanket and she squeezes her elbows. She tenses at the taste of him, at the smell of his coat. They are comfort, and they are relief.

She doesn't want them to be. One day he will unearth this moment, and turn her choices against her. Caroline, did you forget that I saved your life, when no one else could?

He drags a gentle finger against her hairline to keep the strands from sticking to her forehead after he sets her back down on the pillow. Is he expecting… a thank you?

Caroline musters all the strength she has left to turn to her side, away from the door. She doesn't want to look at him any longer than she has to. The pain pressing into her wound is worth bearing.

Matt and her mother come in to check on her, but she keeps her breathing even and her eyes closed.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" Matt asks quietly.

Her mom touches end of her blanket, where her toes are tucked under. "She always pulls through."

Unfortunately, she's right.

Here's what the mirror shows;

A dress that isn't hers, draped over her chair. Smeared liner in the outer corners of her eyes. Her hair, still held together by half a box of bobby pins, is a blonde mess of organised chaos that she can't bear to shake out yet. She leaves the drawn picture on the end table beside her bed while she wipes the rest of her face down with cleanser-soaked cotton, her phone to her ear.

"Tyler, call me," she says. "Please."

Her cell slides heavily off her palm onto her bed. She's left six messages now, all of them a variation of requests for him to be by her side, counterbalanced with I understands and I knows that are for herself as much as they are for him.

Caroline turns and steps closer toward the mirror, hands perched high on her waist. She scrutinizes her reflection, of this girl whose boyfriend is probably still screaming and turning himself inside out somewhere underground (or in the forest?), trying to fight a condition he was damned to.

And she spent the night dancing with the man responsible.

The entire dress doesn't fit in the box the way it used to, but she forces it in anyway, ignoring the possible damage she's inflicting on the bodice when she pushes the lid down on it.

It goes to the very top shelf in her closet, where all forgettable things belong. Out of sight, out of mind.

Just like the bracelet Tyler gave her, apparently. The guilt floods her when she spots it during a swift cleanup of the top of her dresser. Caroline thumbs the football helmet charm in particular, wanting to be comforted by what it means to her.

What does it mean to her?

It's not that she doesn't have anything to list. She's just tired out of her mind, and she's had an emotional night remembering her dad, missing him, missing Tyler, and dealing with a hybrid who can't stay out of her room.

She's feeling too many things lately. Caroline ends up chucking the bracelet in her jewellery box, and leaves one last message for Tyler.

This is the first time he makes her smile, but it's also the first time he scares her.

It happens within minutes of each other - she feeds him little morsels of what's behind the Caroline curtain, her eyes narrowing at him more than once, trying to see if he's genuine in his enthusiasm or if he's simply working an angle.

Klaus is convincing, though. He looks interested, like she's illuminated something inside of him. Like she's the one keeping him aglow.

I want to know everything about you, he says to her, and it feels real. She lets out a soft laugh, shaking her head at how it almost sends a blush coiling up her neck. (But she has better control than that.)

It's so... different. To have someone listen to her like what she's saying matters.

Maybe she believes him.

There's not enough time for her to decide. Klaus reaches for his heart, seeming as if he's suffered a blow to the chest that forces him to his feet. When he lifts his head again, he grabs her, and the traces of panic start to show up on his face.

"What did you do?!" he growls at her, fingers digging into her arms so hard that her voice dies in her throat for a moment.

Every defensive instinct she has shuts down. It shouldn't; she should push him away, she should put up a fight.

"Nothing, I didn't do anything, stop it!" she manages, not knowing if she should be shouting instead. Because what use would it be, to have someone run over and try to stop a vicious, angry hybrid from tearing her head off?

Klaus looks at her – looks into her – and she supposes that he picks up on the fear she's desperately trying to suppress, which softens his expression.

What the hell is your problem?, is the first thing that's about to leave her lips, but she knows exactly what Klaus' problem is when she looks at him;

One too many treacheries, over way too many lifetimes. All the scars are just on the inside.

It's just a stupid drawing.

It doesn't mean anything. Is it a stretch to say that she wants to keep it because she's never had her portrait drawn before?

Caroline stares at the picture as she lies in bed, studying her likeness. This is how Klaus sees her, or how he wants her to think he sees her. Someone beautiful.

Did he think she was beautiful when she was dying?

The memory of it fills her with a terrible curiosity - It's been weeks since he's given her blood, and she can't figure out why he hasn't brought it up yet. She's still waiting for him to call in his favour.

And if he doesn't, there's a chance that he might be doing all this because, well... because there's someone decent lurking in there.

(And he likes her.)

This is the first time the sound of Klaus' voice soothes her.

He speaks very quietly into her ear, calm but quick, and her skin prickles while she listens to him say that she needs to go home and leave the rest to him. There's a trust me somewhere in there, and he gives her his serious, wide-eyed look that she can't fault or lay sarcasm on, because he's not asking for anything in return;

When Caroline looks at Klaus, she sees something that doesn't completely repulse her - she sees something good.

It's not very often that she thinks of him as a person.

So she says thank you, and she runs home to throw a blanket around her shoulders. She tries not to dwell on the fact that his arms around her was the only good thing that happened to her that day.

Gross.

She tries not to be a total five year-old about it, but she can't help but grimace when she thinks of kissing Klaus. How it might have gone if she didn't pick up on his manner of speech, if she had kissed it from him before he could give himself away.

She was right to punch him in the face.

Because he kissed like Tyler. Same lips, same voice, same hands skating up her waist to touch her face. He kissed her like– like–

He kissed her like he missed her. With all his heart.

And she's a little ashamed that she couldn't tell from the first touch that it wasn't her boyfriend.

That's what repulses her. That, and the fact that her mind drifts into a space where Klaus is still somewhere in Tyler's head, taking hold of her.

A part of her is curious.

Tyler's hands being Klaus' hands, Tyler's mouth being Klaus' mouth; they grasp and latch and stir warm heat under her skin all the same, but she wonders how different it'd be if she had gone all the way with that damned Original. With his fingers digging into her thighs (soft or firm?), his tongue tracing its patterns (loose, circling eights on the inside of them), if he would cover her moans with his mouth.

Sometimes she thinks about a first time with Klaus, and it doesn't feel right that she imagines a scenario where she ignores his little slip-up. They fuck like wild animals on the forest floor, temporary bruises marring her arms and her hips, scratches down the length of his back. It's not right to linger on the thought of him enjoying her, whether in this body or his own.

(She still does indulges the fantasy anyway, when she's all by herself. On accident. Maybe.)

And it's supposed to be gross, because she's supposed to be in love with Tyler. She's supposed to completely cut herself off from the man who wore him as a meatsuit for as long as he saw fit. She isn't supposed to cave in and let him star in her frisky daydreams.

What she feels is actually far from gross, but that's not what she wants to be telling herself, especially now that Tyler's back.

Caroline looks at Klaus a little differently. That's what Tyler sees.

The ruse had been simple enough; act interested.

And she was. Enough to be okay to go on a date with a pesky old hybrid too stubborn to give up trying to woo her.

She tries to play it down by calling it stupid and harmless, but there's only so much she can do to convince Tyler that it's nothing more than fulfilling an agreement. If she stands Klaus up, she loses his trust. Loses her leverage. Loses a bit of the magic hold she seems to have over him, and there will be no more strings to pull on, no more favours to ask of him when it gets dire.

That's what she thinks anyway.

It probably incenses him more that Chris had to die for it - his friend, dying for a date. The fate of his species, the liberated hybrids, dwindling down to nothing so his girlfriend can have her hand held by the asshole who enslaved them all.

Tyler flings his glass at the wall and it shatters in a rain of whiskey and slick shards, diamonds of disappointment spread about the room.

Caroline likes to think that it wasn't aimed at her.

But it does change how she sees him, just a little bit.

What a terrible idea this is.

Hayley and Tyler look good together. Her insides clench at the sight of them, and even worse, standing next to Klaus makes her feel... Unclenched.

She touches his sleeve and he opens his arm so she can sling hers through, having him listen to her, and when they have a moment alone with some booze she laughs at how creepy - maybe, maybe with a speckle of sweet - his gumshoe ways have put her old Miss Mystic Falls hopes and aspirations in his hands.

It's all upside down.

He laughs with her, strong and clipped, so infectious it makes her jaw ache from trying not to smile. Well, well, she lets one escape when he shares his mountain-hummingbird anecdote, he's got a side I don't feel sorry for.

Which is what she's always felt, but never had a moment to dwell over. Amidst all the drama with Damon and Elena, growing Jeremy's surprise hunter's ink, and Tyler's Rehab Program For Wayward Hybrids, Klaus is the outlier. With them she's cast into the storm. With him she rests in the eye, and he moves with her, until she pushes him aside and throws herself back into the torrent.

There's something enchanting about watching him peel back his layers for her. It's not that she doesn't see them (she sees through him all the time), but it's him, no longer bothering with the facades, him, telling her stories about himself that she wants to believe are fragments of memory he saves for only the most worthy (and she is more than worthy) of ears and minds.

And this entire date is such a terrible idea because her ruse with Tyler is giving her a glimpse of what it could be like to be with someone else.

Caroline looks at Klaus, and thinks that given enough time, she might be okay if it happened to be the guy she's been with today.

Is it bad that she thinks of him when Kim snaps her wrist for the third time?

Just flashes of dark blonde hair, all around her. Hybrids, dropping one by one like flies, until he rushes to split her chains with his bare hands.

Tyler and Elena burst in instead, pleading for her to be released.

Enough with the pleading, Caroline strains against the links, and just break their necks.

Klaus would.

She just wants to go home. She's been sweating so much that she can feel her liner smudging into her eyes, and it stings.

Elena grabs their attention by offering herself up when a stake is precariously positioned over Caroline's heart. "Klaus is fixated on keeping me alive. You want real revenge, or not?"

A dread suddenly deepens in the pit of her chest when she hears the question. It's old and familiar, a creature she knows too well but would rather not name. She ponders it, feeling it in the roof of her mouth.

Would he actually consider Elena to be the bigger prize in this situation? Kim seems convinced that she is, but that's Kim.

It's a little depressing, but hey. It saves her life.

Well, technically, Tyler saves her life, by shoving his hand into Kim's chest cavity. Her eyes go wide as he's poised to rip her heart out.

The rest of it is a bit of a blur to her – the pain flashing through her forearms are proving to be far too much of a distraction for her to pay careful attention to Tyler's act of assertiveness. All she takes away from it is the I'm not Klaus, juxtaposed with, Submit or die, which hurts her head too much to think about how it might make sense if she'd just listened to all the middle bits.

She does like the sound of his voice when he demands them to yield, though. It tingles in her back.

Caroline lifts her head to look at Tyler. Maybe she likes a bit of an alpha after all.

Being a distraction isn't so bad.

She gets to sip champagne and see what's at the benefit. Gets to scrutinise the hors d'oeuvres and the décor, and put her name in for a chance to win free yoga classes (while Klaus isn't looking, of course).

And she gets to have a date. Well, sort of a date. This could be a date, she thinks, stealing a glance at the Original while he studies the workmanship on the glazed ceramics on display.

"Are we critiquing the local pottery teacher now?"

He looks up at her and smiles. "No. It's actually quite well-made."

That's all he says, but here's what she feels; warmth, balled up in her stomach, a dense pull beneath her breast. Guilt, clumping together inside because she didn't even flinch when Tyler told her that he was going to end Klaus, and here she is, pretending she's not part of the grand plan that concludes with Klaus gargling concrete by nightfall.

It's so… harsh.

The feeling keeps growing in weight as they finish their rounds and they're back in front of his painting again. He takes her glass from her, pausing as their fingers touch. The hairs on her arm stand when the tips slide over her skin.

She lets him linger a moment, then draws her hand back completely. "It's good," she says, nodding once at his art. "I think it's good."

The way Klaus looks down and presses his lips together – shyly? It's so strange – makes Caroline return a soft, sad smile.

If only he wasn't all about his rage and loneliness the rest of the time. They wouldn't have to bury him alive like that.

Until he kills Tyler's mother.

Now they're back to where they began.

Caroline looks at Klaus the second time she's dying. This is what she sees.

A boy.

A thousand year old boy, sitting in her best friend's living room. He's forgotten what it's like to be loved. Doesn't understand love as much as he thinks he does. A bit of a wounded animal, too wary of hands that reach out, snapping his jaws until he's left alone.

Because alone is better than hurt.

Klaus diverts his gaze from her a lot of the time. She wants to look him in the eye and make him feel smaller than he's ever felt, for all the things he's done to her. Nevermind her friends. Nevermind her boyfriend. To her. He told her she was strong and beautiful and full of light, and today she's just collateral damage from whatever stupid dumb vendetta he has against Tyler, and it just drives her crazy.

Maybe she did believe him, even if she rolled her eyes or flouted his zealous attempts at flattery. Just a sliver of it was enough, you know? And she believed in him.

(Maybe – maybe she still does.)

Now she's on her back, on the couch, with her lungs about to collapse and it hurts, and not just in her neck.

Caroline isn't going to go out like this.

Her voice rattles in her chest when she speaks; she gathers whatever strength she has left to even out her tone. Klaus stares ahead, full of excuses that she sweeps aside with truth – you're hurt, she dismisses them with a breathy sigh, and he finally steps closer to her so he might learn why she thinks that he's more man than monster.

It's not hard for her to tell him.

"I know that you're in love with me," she says, but she doesn't know. She doesn't know. She's laying all her cards out on the table, putting on her bravest front and keeping her stare pinned to him so that when he looks at her, he'll feel it cut through him the way his fangs had cut through her.

She has to try. She'll die if she doesn't. "And anyone capable of love is capable of being saved,"Caroline finishes, the cold climbing up her arms.

Klaus turns his head, still every bit the boy. Every bit a person. "You're hallucinating," he replies shakily.

She swallows a tight breath. In a blink, her vision is swarmed with spinning patterns she used to see whenever she had been hit with a dizzy spell.

"Guess we'll never know."

But oh, she does, the moment she closes her eyes and wheezes, finding herself being tugged into a familiar blackness - he calls her name and lifts her. Presses his wrist to her mouth, her tongue so numb she can't even taste the skin of it.

Klaus can be saved. He doesn't have to be, but he can be.

Caroline squeezes his arm. She drinks, her brow furrowing deep. She tries not to choke.

She feeds until breathing isn't a struggle any longer. When she's done, she pins his hand to her chest for a moment, unable to release him - it's all just so overwhelming that she can't speak. She curls his fingers over her shoulder, and Klaus leans forward to turn it into an embrace, where he rests his cheek atop her head and keeps stroking her hair.

She doesn't stop him.

They stay with each other until the sun's well up and seeping through the blinders.

Tyler carries the sword, wrapped in canvas, under his arm. They're about to head back to the Gilbert's, with translation materials in tow.

"Whatever you did," she winces when he touches her shoulder, "I'm just glad you're alive."

The corner of Caroline's mouth lifts very slightly. "Me too," she says.

She tries, you know. She tries to be someone who can be trusted. Who can take the weight, the beating, the bruises. She'll wear them like a badge of honour. She'll carry it until her spine snaps in half, and even after she hits the ground she'll crawl to the very end if it means that her friends are safe, if they're happy. (But safe is more important than happy.)

So yeah, maybe she doesn't want the cure. Maybe she doesn't want to go back to being a frail, young girl, spending hours in the gym getting in shape and learning self-defense so she feels better about walking home alone at night. Maybe she doesn't mind the blood bags, or having to wear her ring in the shower - even if it snags her hair sometimes.

Maybe being a vampire gave her the best moments of her life. Maybe it made her better, and she wants to keep being better.

That doesn't mean that she's the same as Klaus. She will never do this to someone else.

Caroline buries her face in her hands and she cries. She grants herself two solid minutes of sobbing into her palms to get over her grief of having Tyler driven away from her again. Bites her lip and feels the tears flow hot down to the point of her chin, her hand wrapped tight and warm around the chain of the swing.

It's like she's sinking forever, thinking about it - how Tyler already feels like a ghost, questioning if she can really accurately recall his touch or his smell, or the way his voice felt against her cheek.

I will live a happy life without you. I will forget all about you. And I will never, ever think about you again.

...Until we find a way.

Caroline finally sucks in a calming breath through her teeth as she plays the moment through her head one last time. No more crying after this.

Klaus strolls out of the house a while later, free from Bonnie's containment spell. He seems intent on catching up – with Tyler, she supposes. She's not going to point him the way.

He steps toward her and she jumps up, cautious. Once bitten, twice dead; her heart speeds up and she clenches her hand into a hard fist.

"Don't worry, love. You know I'd never hurt you."

It's too late for that now. "You've done enough," she responds sullenly. She can't figure out why he acts like she'd just slapped him in the face. She's the one who just went through a forced breakup.

Then he says that he did it all for her. Did what? Show Tyler a warped version of compassion? Stuck terms and conditions to something that was meant to be selfless? Chose his pride over her happiness?

Caroline refuses to speak, not because she's angry. She's way past angry. She's just tired. She's run out of tears and fury and she doesn't have anything more to give.

No more sympathy, no more rationalising either. She's tried so terribly hard to move past the murder, the caustic reactions, the inability to let go of petty grievances, but she should've known that she would never be so lucky. Life would've been so much better if he hadn't come here and rained his chaos over all of them.

She looks at him, and she sees absolutely nothing.

(One day she'll look back on this, though, and she'll see that he tried too.)

Klaus wants what he wants.

And he wants her.

Of all the clichés she can think of, she thinks hole in the heart is the perfect descriptor for her emotional state. Post-house rave – more like post-nearly-getting-staked-by-your-best-friend – she wakes up, with not a hangover, but a sore case of no-Tyler. Doesn't even run a brush through her hair that morning. Just opens her eyes, drags herself to the Salvatore mansion, grabs a trash bag and starts clearing up the mess.

(Literally picking up pieces. God.)

Of course, Klaus shows up. He always shows up, strolling in all casual, pushing her buttons, wandering into her space. Talking about Tyler like he didn't do a damn thing.

She's not in the mood to be wooed.

And yet, even with all the resentment bubbling up in her throat, she discovers an unexpected satisfaction in watching his jaw tense up as she refuses any explanation he gives regarding Tyler. She practically thrives on how unsettled and affronted he looks when she gets up in his face about it; Caroline feels a tingle travel down her spine when she suddenly realises that she's close enough to kiss him.

Which really isn't her intention at all, so it's a bit of a relief when Stefan interrupts them.

Not so much of a relief when they end up in a small room together, trying to figure out where Bonnie is, lacing everything with innuendo; she wonders if this is what everyone actually sees when Klaus is with her. Granted that he makes zero effort to hide his attraction to her, but she doesn't remember a time when she reciprocates it, at least, not in front of anyone else – he can make allusions to her attraction to his darkness all he wants. She'll just... Look. Approvingly. At his aesthetics. Nothing more.

Shit.

She tilts her head and finally engages in his subtle attempt at flirtation. She tries not to react to him, but it's so hard. There's charm blowing out of his ears. His stubble is so annoyingly magazine-worthy that her fingers grow restless with curiosity over its texture.

She's half-certain that in another timeline, in another universe, she'd have no qualms about sliding over there right now and drawing his bottom lip into her own mouth.

Alright, settle down, Forbes.

When they have their two points, they set off into the forest, just she and Klaus, because the last time she left him to do something, he drained Elena, possessed Tyler, and made out with her against a tree. Not unlike the ones here.

Caroline has plenty of willpower to resist him, but in the event that it does happen – by some celestial planetary alignment, maybe, but in the here and now, no, never – making out with him would be the lesser of two evils. Bonnie dying as a result of trusting Klaus would be the more terrible result. So tagging along with him is far better than leaving him to his own devices.

Okay. That's settled, then.

She raises her guard as they trample on leaves and twigs, looking for signs of a ritual nearby. She brings up what he said to Stefan earlier, which he claims was about Damon and Elena, but since she doesn't want to stick her foot in her mouth, she contests it.

Klaus stops in his tracks. "So you've never felt the attraction that comes when someone who is capable of doing terrible things for some reason, cares only about you?"

The question backs her into a corner. (Let's not talk about how many times she's thought about kissing him tonight.) But she isn't going to absolve him of any of his misdeeds and give him a reason to use it as an excuse to be bad.

"It did once, when I thought it was worth it," Caroline opines. "But it turns out, some people can't be fixed. People who do terrible things are just terrible people."

Klaus' face turns grim upon hearing it, and while she's taken aback by how affected he is over her response – and how angry she sounds when she spits it out – they have no time to continue arguing; both of them speed down to the other site as fast as they can to catch up with Stefan.

Caroline steps into a circle of twelve witches.

Caroline steps out of a circle of dead witches.

There's never a moment when he doesn't want her. She knows this. She can feel it ripple beneath her ribcage whenever they're alone. Even when he's mad at her, when she's run him into the ground with merciless snark, when they're so unapologetically mean to each other, he wants her. Wants to please her, deep down inside, like it's written in the code-strings of his DNA.

He wouldn't have helped her bury the corpses otherwise.

That's how it is. How it might always be, she senses.

Klaus is narrow-minded when it comes to squabbles, though. He turns her away the same way she always turns him down – hurtfully, coldly, with no regard for how deep the words can maim the spirit. Just because he still wants her doesn't make it any less scathing.

But as iron sharpens iron, right? She goes home, lies down in her bed, and swallows her own jagged pill, hellbent on holding it together so she can prove that she doesn't need his comfort, or his adoration, or his dumb hybrid dimples to make her feel any better about massacring a bunch of people. She'll deal with her remorse her own way, without anyone's help.

Two naps later and she's still telling herself the same thing, and suddenly, she misses Tyler a great deal.

Today, he needs her.

Of all people, he calls her for help. Sends her eight texts, all thumbs and word salad thanks to auto-correct. She's still pissed off at him, but Klaus has never sent her so many messages in a row like that, and it makes her a little concerned that something apocalyptic is happening, and it isn't just the regular Trouble On Thursday variety.

She goes to investigate. (She hopes he sees that whatever he said in the forest only made her skin thicker.)

To her surprise, she finds him curled up on the floor, sweating and wounded and fraught with paranoia. He blinks up at her, uncertain about her identity, half-shouting and half-growling at her, scrambling further from her when she steps closer to him.

Caroline looks at Klaus. This is all she sees.

Someone who's afraid.

(Now she's not alone.)

She doesn't give up on anyone. Even if she says she should have.

So when Klaus thanks her and suggests that he isn't seeking Tyler's demise as passionately as she thinks, she's feels like it's a kindness not to spare him an answer to his question of whether they're friends or not.

They aren't.

But she can see that he can be softer for her sake, and that's really all it takes for her to be able to forgive him – just a little bit – again.

Caroline squints at the screen of her laptop. She's been awake looking at catering companies that might do a possible prom after-party on short notice, but she opens a new tab and takes a momentary detour from her objective instead, typing fast and light on her keyboard.

She hits return and stares.

About 11,300,000 results (0.30 seconds)

How to Differentiate Between Love and Friendship: 24 Steps

What is the difference between love and friendship? – Learn...

What is love? What is friendship? What is infatuation? What...

Quotes About Friendship And Love (112 quotes) – Goodreads

She frowns. This is entirely dumb.

⌘-W.

Not even the best dress can save a bad prom, but Tyler changes that.

Caroline's heart swells at the sight of him. She reaches out to touch him and he's real, and she hugs him, she kisses him, and it's all true and he looks wonderful in a suit and feels good in her arms.

And Klaus can't enter the house to tear him apart.

"Caroline Forbes," he takes her hand, "May I please have this dance?"

And they do; she plays a soft song on her phone meant for swaying, and they press close to each other, dancing in front of the fireplace.

At the tip of her tongue is every struggle she had to pull through without him. She wants to open the floodgates and tell him about them, but she can't, because Klaus is in every one of those instances, and it's probably the last thing that he wants to hear about.

That's okay. Their temples connect and her hand curves over his shoulder, pulling him toward her as much as she can comfortably manage; what matters is that he's with her now, if only for an hour. She tells herself that there will be other times for them. They'll laugh, they'll take long walks down beaches, they'll coordinate outfits at another school dance.

In the meantime, she tries her hardest to hide the pain of parting with a kiss that she pours all her love into. "Thank you for the best prom ever," she smiles, bright and young, and it aches so hard that her throat almost closes trying to drive the loss of him back down into her stomach.

I love you, is what she wants to say, and hopes that it fills her ears before he leaves her again.

It doesn't.

You can't have everything, Caroline.

The next morning, she returns Klaus what he loaned her.

She sets the large white paper bag down on one of the end tables in his living room.

"Pity I didn't get to see you wear it," he comments, looking inside. "I'm sure you were a vision."

Caroline purses her lips to resist conveying any emotion, and lets go of the handles. "It was part of a great night."

Klaus reaches in and scoops out the dress, eyes darting all over its pearls and ruches, then back to her.

"Keep it, then." He presents the bodice to her with a smile.

She looks down at it, her beautiful, immaculate evening dress, and the corners of her mouth turn up. It doesn't even matter that she's probably never going to get to wear it again.

Her hands rise to grasp the fabric and she nods gratefully at him.

"Thanks," she says, running her thumbs over the beading, then looks back up. "Thanks."

It's only half a week later that Caroline discovers that Klaus has left Mystic Falls without a word. She finds out from Stefan that he's gone back home to New Orleans, which she's never known anything about. For a personal matter, apparently.

"I thought this was his home," she says, and it sounds like an echo in her head.

Stefan shrugs. Guess he's gone now.

She gazes down at the lines in her hands and opens her mouth, but the words have left her tongue too thick to speak. She has no idea what she's feeling.

Her best friend's face softens at her response.

"Oh," she realises how it must look, then quickly shakes her head. "Does this mean that Tyler can come back?"

He pauses. "Is it worth the risk?"

"You mean being where he belongs?"

Stefan's jaw clenches at this, like he's holding back something she doesn't want to hear. "We don't know when Klaus is coming back."

She frowns. "And if he never comes back? Am I supposed to wait it out until he decides he's had a long enough holiday and Tyler's already found his perfect werewolf wife in the Appalachians and I'm on my third medical fellowship pulling babies out of women in an obstetrics ward?"

He's clearly suppressing a smile when he replies. "Don't be ridiculous–"

"If he's gone, then I don't want to keep being the idiot that gets stuck here waiting for him to make his move."

Caroline looks at Stefan. That's not really what she means.

Klaus leaves her a voice message. It doesn't sound like he's coming back.

She listens to it thrice; the second time, to hear the nuances in his voice, the third, to listen to the melodious tooting in the background.

She closes her eyes and thinks of what it's like to be there, wandering the streets, sitting at cafes in the day, bar-hopping well into the night, taking ghost tours and boat rides, soaked in darkness and history. She'll wear dresses of peach and primrose, with tall espadrilles and dainty necklaces.

And while she's never once gone anywhere with Tyler – much less stepped an inch outside of the county line – the person she envisions this experience with is undoubtedly, most exclusively, Klaus, clad in his dark jackets and earth-toned henleys, his hands pinned to his back but the point of his elbow brushing hers.

She doesn't feel guilty about it at all.

She opens her eyes, and she's back in Mystic Falls.

Can you miss a place you've never been to?

Hey. I hope you're doing okay. I don't even know where you are. Wish you were here? God, that sounds totally bad. I'm just... calling to say that I miss you. Klaus went to New Orleans and nobody knows if he booked a return ticket. Everyone thinks he did. Or did he drive? I don't know. Anyway, if you ever decide to come by again, now would be a good time. Today, tomorrow, whenever you're ready. I just wanted you to know that I–

How strange that she runs into the same problem she did nearly a year ago, what with the body snatching and such. It's kind of frustrates her to know that she couldn't tell right off the bat that it wasn't Klaus.

Caroline looks at the ceiling.

She thinks about her mother, lying in her own bed, cleaned up and sound asleep.

She's safe now, but she wasn't, and that traps the anxiety in Caroline's bones. She keeps imagining what it might have been like if her mom hadn't gasped up into her arms – the arrangements she would have had to make, the people she would have had to invite, the eulogy she would have had to write and solemnly recite to the town.

So yeah, it may have turned out for the better, but the danger's always present, and Caroline shudders to think that there will come a time when she's off in college or grad school and she isn't here to protect her mom.

She thinks about Tyler, who's seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, though it's likely that he's found distant relatives or family friends with equally lush manes to kick back with as he continues his (self-imposed?) exile. Does she just leave another message along with the hundred or so ones she's already fattened his inbox with? By the way, Silas almost killed my mom today. You might want to call me back.

The sigh escapes her lips. It's hard to work on a relationship when it feels like you're pretty much the only one in it.

And Silas. She thinks about Silas, how he looked at her the same way Klaus always did, how he made her nearly leap out of her skin at the sight of familiar scruff and plum mouth; oh my god, she had whispered.

I'm afraid of you, she had confessed.

It's a bit of a comfort when she thinks about it now, really, knowing that she'd been this close to telling him things that have left her in tangled strings of emotions ranging from exasperation to empathy to sympathy to distress to fondness to grave, tooth-gritting anger and muddled, poorly-expressed versions of appreciation that confused more than conveyed.

When it's out, it's out, no matter who hears it. When it's out, it's something tangible. Something real. Becomes a truth, and the universe has cosmic ways of absorbing it and cooking up its consequences for you.

She's not ready for that, she thinks.

Fine. She'll admit this much to herself; Klaus could be somewhat of a desirable to her, but it's not like she can just gather her skirts and run. People need her. She needs people, and her life is way more than just this one guy who wanted her at the completely wrong time.

Sure, there's some sort of pang in her when she thinks about how he never said goodbye (which, okay, is an incredibly astute observation by Silas and she's both impressed and offended that he so deftly used that to try and manipulate her), but the fact of the matter is: Klaus left.

And you don't just leave people that you care about.

Caroline is still looking at her ceiling. It feels like it's coming down on her.

Twenty handwritten invites. One left.

It takes two coffees and a cheesecake for her to write it on the envelope, but she does.

Klaus.

She tucks a card into it and sets her fountain pen down. Scratches her nose, and blows at the ink so she can finish her pile.

"Um," Elena starts, narrowing her eyes and drumming her fingers on the table. "Really?"

Caroline continues drying it in long, thin breaths, and ignores the pointed disapproval in her voice. She raises her brows in defiance. "He can come to see Stefan graduate too."

Elena rolls her eyes, but she lets out a short, airy laugh just shy of a scoff.

Scoff all she wants. This is one of the few times that Caroline reaches out to him of her own accord – if he wants to join her, he'll be there, and she'll be able to grasp where they stand on the rapport scale. Uh, friendship scale. Affinity scale?

Ambiguous-unable-to-determine-true-nature-of-relationship scale.

And if he doesn't show up, at least she can move on knowing that the Klaus-phase of her life is over, and that her last moment with him was a good one. It's something that she can cope with.

She had promised herself that she would be at peace when she slips the invitations into the mailbox, but there's a tiny beam of anticipation that follows long after she hears them hit the bottom.

Ugh. Begging on behalf of Damon is the last thing she wants to do, especially in her graduation gown. Even worse that his appearance – if he appears at all – will make his reasons for being here murkier. Caroline doesn't like murky.

A rabid anger starts to boil deep down in her when she hears his voicemail go off again. Stefan has Alaric in his ear shouting about Damon refusing to take the cure, and there's so much pressure from everyone right now that she's about to short-put her phone to Nicaragua.

People are actually depending on Klaus' old preoccupation with her to save Damon's life.

Pick up, pick up, pick up, she fidgets, cell feeling uncomfortably warm on her cheek. She looks up at Stefan, and shakes her head.

I don't have the same hold over him anymore.

Her frustration is suddenly interrupted with a crippling pain in her head. Stefan and Elena are keeling over too with their hands in their hair, yelping. "Remember us, Caroline?"

Oh god. Her dismay increases as her eyes fall on the group of witches from the expression triangle ordeal; she wants to exclaim that she had to, didn't have a choice, but all that's not going to interest them.

Pissed off isn't fitting enough to describe their mood – they probably want to carve out her liver while she's alive and feed it to one of her friends, which seems like a real possibility now that her brains are almost dribbling out of her ears.

But then the sharp piercing disappears as quickly as it descended upon them, and Caroline smells fresh blood in the air. The lead witch splits at the neck and her body hits the ground with a thump.

Caroline looks up in the direction of the lilted accent and sees Klaus, who's clearly out to impress with his suit and his mortarboard tossing skills. Yes, she nearly shouts, but gives him a big smile instead; old habits die hard, and she knows better than to coddle his big bad hybrid ego.

I was already on my way.

I had considered offering you a first class ticket to join me in New Orleans, but I knew what your answer would be.

Tyler is now free to return to Mystic Falls.

He's your first love.

Intend to be your last;

however long it takes.

Congratulations, Caroline.

As Klaus pulls back from his kiss, a tender, chaste brush that brims with nervous energy, it thunders hard and heavy beneath her breast.

It's all so much at once.

A show of mercy greater than what she thought him capable of,

A declaration of love without the declaration itself,

An ode to her loyalty and what it means to keep it,

A kind of selflessness borne from the cinders of his innate selfishness,

An acceptance of the choices she's yet to make and the life she will lead as a result of them,

Proof that he came for her for her for h e r,

And a promise so bold and eternal that it sears his name into her very soul;

Caroline looks at Klaus, and suddenly sees all of who he is.

When she collects the mail and opens them all to find a bevy of acceptance letters, Caroline leaps up and knocks over her chair. The loud clatter of its back against the hardwood floor causes Liz to run down the stairs in a panic.

"I got in!" she yells, and her mother rushes forward to look at each letter, studying the print on it as intently as she does the weight of the paper it's typed on and the insignias that dominate each letterhead.

"I'm proud of you." The grin and accompanying hug blooms a joy in her heart that the young Forbes hasn't enjoyed in ages.

"Ooh, hold on, I gotta text Bonnie and Elena."

Her thumbs work at breakneck speed. Whitmore College, get ready for Caroline Forbes.

Send. She looks at her mom, and feels like she needs to tell more people.

Hey, I made it into Whitmore, she types, her phone vibrating furiously from the tactile feedback. She scrolls down her list of contacts and selects Tyler, followed by, Stefan.

After a moment's pause, she scrolls back up, hovers over Klaus, and picks him.

He is the only one to tell her that she's earned it.

Packing is insane. How anyone ever decides on what's essential to take with them when they leave for college is beyond her.

"Honey, you know that Elena needs a little bit of space to sleep, right?"

Caroline continues cellotaping her box of Classroom Chic shut. "Trust me, all this will get me to where I need to be. Besides, I already cut out half the stuff I wanted to bring."

Liz sighs and shakes her head.

On moving day they load up the car, and thanks to some very strategic arrangements, they manage to stuff everything she planned to take into both the boot and the backseat. Caroline runs through her checklist a final time before she fetches her carryall from inside the house, a pale cream piece of faux leather and burnished buckle details she chooses specifically to make leaving the nest feel official.

"Ready?" her mom asks, keys jangling in her hand.

She opens her bag, where a charm bracelet and a long, dark velvet box sit snug against each other.

"Let's go."

She bites her lip to stop herself from imploding.

At first, she wonders what she's doing wrong. Prom was the last time she'd laid eyes on Tyler, and since then it'd been a fixed ratio of eighty voicemails to seven replies, plus a handful of two-minute phone calls that always left her lingering after a dial tone.

She holds on anyway. The idea is to set everything thing up and prepare the way for him so that when he comes home he can just slip back into their normal, supernatural lives and floor the gas on college without having to struggle through building a momentum – so it'd be like he never had to leave in the first place.

Then everything would be fine, you know? They could go to classes, meet up after, hang at the pub. Talk about which professor has issues and how to work with them. Frolic in the glorious fields of freedom, to wander the campus without a need to look over his shoulder for Klaus.

That's why she helps him. Bugged him to apply. Wrote his appeal letter when he missed the submissions deadline. Compelled her way through his matriculation, and filled in all his blanks. Now he just has to pick his classes and turn up.

She just wants everything to be back to the way it was. And it can be, if he tries.

But she gets, this werewolf pack I'm helping, they need me.

Caroline isn't doing anything wrong. It just feels like she isn't getting anything right. She yanks her blanket over her head and keeps telling herself this until it's four hours to her next class.

It takes a funeral – Bonnie's, no less – for him to show.

She still runs to him, though. Throws her arms around him, sobbing, missing, her face wet and leaving damp spots on his shoulder. Circumstances dictate that there's no room for anger, only grief, and sad smiles that form from hearing Bonnie's words leaving Jeremy's mouth. Tyler holds her, and it feels a bit like what they used to have; a mutual support for one another, in that when the tragedy rips through their lives, he keeps holding her until she decides she's fine.

She takes him back to her dorm while the rest move off in other directions.

Caroline forgives him after he apologises. Profusely. When he kisses her, softly. As he takes to her bed, eagerly. They have grief sex and I miss you sex and makeup sex, but it's all very different and familiar at the same time. He knows all the ways to make her toes curl, but during the spaces inbetween, he keeps avoiding any discussion about college or the Tennesee pack he chose over her, and it annoys her, because it feels like he's hiding from her, and she can't see him as easily as she sees Klaus.

(And she does her best not to think it, but Klaus would never have had that reaction if she asked him to the historical ball. How far back in history are we talking about?, she imagines he would say, and he would reminisce in her ear as he presses his hand into the small of her back.)

"You're right," she pulls Tyler's face closer to hers. "Let's not talk."

Except that not talking just delays the inevitable.

When they're on the steps at the ball, and she hears him say that they're only together because Klaus granted them permission and I need to find a way to destroy his life like he destroyed mine, there's an old rage that starts to boil inside of her at the taste of it. God, she's been through this before, hasn't she? Stood side by side with the prospect of revenge and lost. Nearly damn well died from it.

It's... so stupid. She feels so entirely stupid. All the effort she put in. All the times she looked Klaus in the eye and fought for Tyler, and thought of him, said no to a million opportunities, and dragged herself through horrible periods of yearning, wanting so badly to touch his face, hold his hand, or enjoy his laugh. She'd always known that she had never been the first thing on his mind (or he would come home sooner, right?), but she never expected that she would be shelved either.

"For someone who hates Klaus, you certainly sound a lot like him," the vexation darkens her voice.

Old Klaus, she wants to say, but there was never an old or new Klaus - just the one Klaus, who was prone to the same angry, vengeful proclivities and took it upon himself to be free of them for her sake, the way she hopes Tyler might.

Caroline looks at him. "Love me more than you hate him," she gasps out, praying that the glisten in his eyes is a sign of his heart stirring.

But she's just not enough for him.

And she loses again.

There is a time when Caroline wishes that she's looking at Klaus, so that she can see the way he's looking back at her.

It's not the admiring or adoring nature of it that strikes her, but rather ease of which he splits himself wide open and forgets how to put himself back when he speaks to her - she sees so much of him, the guts, the blood, the fangs, the marks, the soft, bruised insides of him, and while his hands are trembling, she knows what sits in his heart, knows exactly what to say to make it hurt or make it beat, knows which strings to pluck to make him sing.

Yet when she draws her own hands back, she realises that he's already rummaged through her, grasping all the different parts that make up her person, only to study, but never to change.

While it scares her how easily he slips through her defences, she's almost oftentimes made stronger by it, or at least, in her head, she's way more than just the organizer or the group's glue, or the yoke on which everyone's problems rest. She's greater than the sum of her parts; that's what Klaus is good at reminding her about, even if he puts her on a cliff's edge where she stares straight into a yawning chasm of his feelings for her. (Even if he says it through gritted teeth, and a defensive snarl.)

Sometimes she wishes she could have that again, for just one last time. But she doesn't, so she ploughs through her textbook and quietly recuperates on her own.

(And then she meets and kisses a reborn Jesse, and loses him all in one night – that's when she feels it the hardest, of having nothing and no one, and wishes, more than ever, that Klaus was around to fight it out with.)

She stops her extended periods of mulling and relationship mourning eventually, with a bit of time and a bit of booze (with Bonnie, when she isn't running off to other places to meet someone else). She never misses a lecture, scrapes together enough time to deal with Katherine and Stefan, and starts looking for opportunities to join committees and societies to expand her social network.

Maybe these aren't the best ways to deal with her heartbreak (or maybe they are?), but at least they'll tide her over until she figures out what path she wants to dive headfirst into. For now, it's just one step at a time; being able look at Tyler-related things without frowning; being able to talk to Elena without giving in to the impulse to mention Jesse.

She'll be okay. She always pulls through.

Caroline looks at Klaus. This is what she sees.

A danger. A complication. He follows her around the forest, trying to be all relaxed and charming about what he's doing here, but wow, now is not the time at all.

The worst part about it? She's happy to see him. It's wrong. It's right. Klaus in his black jacket, the twist of necklaces around his neck. The sight of him is like the swallow of air after having ducked underwater for a minute. It takes all of her strength of will to rein it in and keep her guard up so she doesn't risk exposing the soft parts of her again.

Caroline runs, and Klaus catches up, to tell her that he heard Katherine's dying, and that she and Tyler broke up – how his eyes light up bright when he says it, god – she senses immediately that there's way more to this than she wants to handle at the moment, what with his sly smiles and his constant emphases on abandoning his five hundred year revenge streak for her.

Much unlike, say, Tyler, he insinuates with the little quirk of his lips.

Does it even matter? Doesn't he have somewhere else to be? Does he have to stand so close to her as they walk aimlessly through the deciduous vegetation and talk in circles?

Her heart sticks in her throat when he implies (again) that Katherine's death was just a flimsy excuse to see her. "I want your confession," he says, and she attempts to play it off like she has no idea what he's referring to, when really all that she can think about is how ridiculously ill-timed this is, and how touchable his dark blonde whiskers look.

Because she's still being held together with stitches, her life's just starting to take flight, and she's just recently curbed her emotional late night blood-snacking; she's getting her shit together, for god's sake. She can't play this game. She can't stand here and listen to him recite everything she does to keep him at arm's length instead of surrender to her attraction to him.

It's something you think about, not something you admit to. And if you say it, it's real.

There's an eternity that presents itself whenever she looks Klaus. It creeps along her skin and it pierces the vein, pumps her full of wonder and fear and… she could take his hand, and she could take his ticket, peer into the vast and infinite beyond and be swept up in it, blood sangrias in one hand and his mouth kissing the other.

Just... Wait a little while.

Then he offers something that throws her off completely. If she tells him how she feels about him, and she'll have all the space she needs to develop and pursue everything she dreams of becoming, live as many lives as she wants to without the phantom of his presence constantly wrapped around her ankle. "I just... want you to be honest with me," his voice delves low into a whisper.

Caroline softens at his shaky sigh, at the sincerity of his request, the length that he's gone – and is still willing to go – just to know where he stands in her life, in her eyes. (Between them, she's more likely to be the one crush him into fine motes of black and blue emotion.)

Maybe she even agrees, in a roundabout way, that she does bury every inch of Klaus-associated desire in the pits of her mind where her heart can't reach and run rampant with.

Until now, she supposes. As she bares her truth, gesturing emphatically, a part of Caroline that's been locked up tight since the day he gathered her into his arms of second chances begins to unravel at an alarming speed. Heat pours from her face, both relieving and arresting when they come to an agreement.

I will walk away, and I will never come back. I promise.

She considers him. Wishes he wouldn't make it sound like they're at an end of something, because why hack off the arm for a lesion on the thumb?

But this is what he offers, a freedom of sorts. And slowly, she begins to understand.

(Besides, she isn't exactly going to remain in her beloved podunk town forever. Life in Mystic Falls is naught but a blink in her timeline.)

Well, if they're not going to see each other for awhile, she isn't going to leave it at that. She might as well go for it. There's nothing holding her back. No boyfriend. No obligations. No terrible, life-threatening consequences she can think of to stop her from giving in to the roaring need in her belly.

Caroline leans in to accept. She studies his face, then his lips, and tastes his promise on her tongue.

Her lashes, long and dark, dip down when she stares at his mouth for a moment.

"Good." She takes extra care to look straight into his eyes before she closes them again to go in for a kiss she's always wondered about. (With the right equipment, she must add.)

Ah, it's good. Especially when he kisses back. Caroline draws back for a second, smiling, and she cups the side of his face with her hand, guiltless and free. Finally, she wants to say, but it's already on his face.

Finally.

The first time is for release. Pure, unadulterated fucking, up against the lone tree she trusts won't crack and fold over and accidentally stake her. The bark cuts up her back, but she doesn't even notice it. She pries his fly apart and wraps her hand around him, with half a mind to drop her head down and take him into her mouth, but he hikes her bare leg up and gets her knee bent around his hip.

Caroline slides her hands up the smooth muscle of his shoulders and fists his hair; she nods. Yes, do it. She needs it; needs him. Klaus guides his cock into her with a scorched sigh to her chin.

That's two years of self-control out the window. (Good.)

He pulls back, thrusts up and she gasps, tugging tighter at his scalp. "Again," she says through her teeth, and he tastes the word, drawing her lip into his mouth, wanting so much to be closer, closer, closer to her. "Ag-" he pumps his hips against her, and she hums this high-low note that translates into keep going.

When she starts to clench, Klaus goes slack-jawed at the friction and grips her ass even harder; the softest fuck brushes up against her mouth. It's probably the sexiest thing that's ever graced her ears. It licks up her back and gets her so wet that she hears their bodies meeting, and she feels like the only way to manage the pleasure surging through her body is to follow suit with a fuck of her own.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He fucks her like this until she shudders, muttering for him to come, come, come– inside– she pants, and with a few staggered thrusts, he's spilling just like she asked.

But they're not really done.

The second time (almost the rest of the times, really) is for familiarising. He wants to find out what she likes. Which, of course, she doesn't mind at all. Here's what he learns:

She likes to kiss. And they do, for a long while. Klaus starts off with half-kisses instead, mouth barely melding to hers and pulling away before she can latch on, just to be a damn tease about it. "You're so annoying," she scolds, but then she brings her hand up and pulls him towards her face so they can engage more fully in a proper lave of her tongue along the plump of his lower lip.

She also likes to imagine. While she lays back to allow him freedom to explore, his fingers are drawing a winding line over the curve of her breasts. Klaus laps gently into her mouth at the exact moment he brushes a thumb over a pebbled peak and chuckles when she makes a startled noise. "You don't seem annoyed."

That's because she's getting fucking aroused picturing his tongue rolling over her nipple, rolling over her clit. "I am," she packs into a frustrated sigh.

Dragging a firm path down past her navel, Klaus' palm sweeps out onto her thigh. He grins in that insolent I-hold-a-deadly-secret way when he sees her brow knotting from the denial of his touch on where she needs it the most.

No time for that. Caroline grabs his wrist, covers his hand with her own, parts her legs a little, and brings the thick pads of his two fingers down on her clit.

His eyes immediately darken.

"If you're trying to understand what makes me come," she inhales sharply as she steers tight, invisible circles around the sensitive flesh, "do it right."

"I think I know what makes you come," he growls, grinding down harder, this time without her guidance, his wrist now rigid and perched on her pelvis. And he's not wrong.

She whines deep in her throat, arching up then curling from the pleasure as he strokes her into rapid completion – she fumbles, hips lifting and thighs closing. "Klaus," she names as a request to slow down, but he wedges his digits further down the cleft of her cunt and fucking–

–slides them into her

Caroline cries out and she folds into him, burying her face in his neck. His fingers stay inside of her until she's drifted back down to him completely.

Note to self: antagonize Klaus more often.

The last time is for remembering. Maybe it's the dying sunlight outlining the shape of his face, or the veil of humidity settling on her skin, but there's a heaviness around her that serves as a constant reminder of an end drawing near.

It's a strange feeling she gets, looking at him like this, with her cheek pressed to her jacket and her hand caught in the rough scrub of his beard.

She thinks she might miss him.

The longing looks, the lingering, the banter. Caroline knows that she said she couldn't see him in her plans, but it's all muddled up in her head like a hazy premonition - she imagines that she would be staring down her notes thinking of Klaus, how he might name-drop Darwin and tell her how he gave him pointers while he was still shaping up the theory of evolution or something. Or she would be at her twentieth birthday, wondering what it might be like if he had stayed awhile.

Or, she imagines, just being alone, thinking of him, of them, and everything they could've had for a flicker, before she stops and faces a Klaus-free reality.

Let's just say that it's bittersweet.

Klaus' hand rests on her hip, thumb grazing the jut of it; he hasn't gone five seconds without touching her. (And she does love that he can't stop, the same way she finds it hard not to kiss him.)

"What happens after this?" she says, noting the gold flecks in his irises.

He never tears them from her. "I return. I go back to New Orleans, and I wait."

For you, for you, for you, she sings on the inside, but tames it with a narrow of her eyes at him, the faintest trace of a skeptical smile gracing the corner of her mouth. "I doubt it."

Klaus lifts his head off the ground. "I suppose you'd have to find out, won't you?"

"Shut up," her brow furrows, "I'm not changing my mind."

He slides his arm up her waist, and moves to be on top. "Absolutely," he says, in a manner that most definitely strikes her as disingenuous. But his gaze is a fire, burning patterns along the line of her neck, and it's so hard to resist the ache she gets when the soft damp lap of his tongue paints a dotted path up the column of her throat.

Still not changing my mind, she thinks, curling her leg around him once more, no matter how good this feels. Her mouth drops the moment he finds his way back into her again, this time pressing into her deep - slow, she whispers hotly into his ear, slow, yes, just like that–

He's steady on the drag out, quick in driving his cock back into her, until she can feel it in her belly, until she somehow lifts her hips further and bites her thumb from the pleasure the new angle grants her. Klaus groans his desire into her cheek, flexing so he keeps hitting her deep. Caroline, she hears, rumbling through her chest like a roiling, simmering wave of heat.

She turns her face to kiss him, her body shaking, and then she releases her name into his mouth, fingers caught in his hair, cunt flickering and hard-walled around him. His eyes are fixed squarely on the dark ink of her pupils as his hips jerk in return – he'll be in love with her a long time, she senses, from the way he holds her as she slides her hands up the blades of his shoulders.

The only difference this time, unlike all the other times, is that she feels like there might be a distant possibility of her returning the sentiment.

Caroline looks at Klaus. He is all she sees.

Klaus, the harbinger of suffering, the ruiner, the hurt, the irascible. The boy, the afflicted, the vengeful. The lonely, and loyal. The tenacious, the frightened, the vulnerable, the charming and seductive, the gifted, in tongue and touch. Caroline beholds the man; beholds the beast.

"Goodbye," he says, hand combing through her hair once, forehead pressed into hers. His smile slices her open from neck to groin, and when she feels him start to pull away, Caroline grabs his wrist and pins his palm harder against her cheek, her heart in her throat.

"See you," she breathes, her mind spinning, lungs cold, eyes bright with hope.

Then she lets him go.

(But she doesn't let him go.)