Klaroline AU | Crossover, Modern!AU, Frankenstein!AU

[Part 1] [Part 2] [AO3]

A/N. lmao it’s been 2 years, omg. I am so, so damn tired of this chapter – it has been lying on my drafts for years, literally, and every so often I went to add something, delete something else, and I was just. tired. of seeing it there with no apparent will to go somewhere, anywhere. What even is this story?? It doesn’t even have a plot. It’s just an AU for which I have some ideas, each one worse than the other, so idk if there will be an end. Or a point? Lol. Just – enjoy creature!klaus and dr. frankenstein!caroline and don’t expect too much. Let’s call it a personal experiment and practice for English writing.

This of course doesn’t mean I don’t love every single one of you who for some reason love this story??? Guys, really, each ask gave me life and made me cry because – yeah I suck, I can’t meet the promises I carelessly make, I’m so so sorry! But yeah, I hope this will make me look less, idk, bad?? I hope you enjoy despite everything. Also, since this is probably the only thing I will post until next year (also the only thing I’ve posted this year I guess??), merry Christmas and happy holidays and happy new years and hugs and kisses and confetti for everyone! ♥♥♥

warning: mentions of suicide and depression. no beta, i’m posting this now because, again, if i don’t it will just die in my drafts, so. i will read it tomorrow or in the next few days after I purged my eyes for a bit and i will be able to take a carefully objective look at it. feel free to point out any mistakes anyway!

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PARADISE LOST – Part III

Abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and
saw

Virtue in her shape how lovely.

—saw, and pined his loss.

[John Milton, Paradise Lost (846, 848)]

A year and ten months earlier.

Niklaus Mikaelson knew
perfectly well that this time around, there would be no saving him. Strangely
enough, the rapid nearing of his death did not worry him in the slightest.

After all, it wasn’t as if
he had anything left to live for.

His family had been
decimated – his brothers, his sisters, his parents, all dead in some way or
another during the last fifteen years. And he was even more or less responsible
of most of their deaths – that was probably the only reason why he hadn’t tried
to escape the prison. His own kin’s blood that stained his hands. He was tired
of fighting, tired of running, and he was sick of living with the ugly regret
those deaths brought along.

Besides, cowardice was
beneath him: he did no fear death.

Honestly, those nine
months in the death row had been far worse than whatever would came next. For a
man who had enjoyed life at its fullest, who had fancied his fair share of women
and men, who had admired the most exquisite art, even producing some of his own
– the devastating absence of any kind of beauty in the prison was probably a
fate worse than death.

Moreover, the food was
uneatable.

He hadn’t even wanted a
lawyer, what would have been the point? So, they had appointed him one – an
attorney who surely wasn’t paid enough and who trembled and swallowed anxiously
every time he found himself sitting in front of him, as if he were Hannibal
fucking Lecter.

Ludicrous. He had killed
people, not eaten them. He wasn’t barbaric.

Wiser men than himself said
that when one approaches one’s own death, images of the life he had conducted
would flash in front of his eyes, like a morbid recap of all his good and bad
and awful deeds that would determine his fate on the other side. As per his own
personal experience, Klaus couldn’t really think of anything. He’d rather his
last moments weren’t focused on his past, on things that he couldn’t change and
for which it was too late to ask for even a modicum of forgiveness. Those who
could grant it were dead too, anyway.

He let the guards move him
from his secluded cell to the room where he would die soon, his eyes apathetic
as they counted how many steps he had to walk. They had handcuffed him with his
hands behind his back because they didn’t trust him – fools, each one of them;
if he had a single spark of fight left he could have freed himself even with
hands and feet chained, as it were, but the truth was – he hadn’t. He still
remembered the time when he had bit off the jugular of a police officer just
because he had liked to mock him, and – but no, he had decided he wouldn’t
think of the past. He buried those memories in the back of his mind and kept
counting the steps and the floor tiles.

They pushed him inside a somber
room with grey walls that looked halfway between a doctor’s office and an
interrogation room, seeing as it had both a hospital cot and a two-way mirror
right in front of it. He ignored it – he didn’t want to think of how many
reporters and police officers were sitting on the other side getting ready to
enjoy his departure from this world. He simply let them guide him to the bed,
allowing them to uncuff him so that he could sit and lie on it and then
watching dispassionately as they cuffed his wrists to the banks of the bed.

Once settled, he decided
to let his gaze wander around.

He counted ten people: the
two guards who had held onto him as they brought him there, three who kept
their weapons aimed at him from the corners of the room – bit of an overkill, he thought with a barely repressed smirk – his
lawyer, the district attorney, a nurse and two doctors.

It was there that Klaus’
attention settled eventually: surprisingly, one of the doctors who had come to
monitor his execution was a young and lovely blonde lady.

Finally – something good to focus on in his last
moments on this blasted earth.

She didn’t look as if she
particularly cared to be there – but he was a good judge of character, and so
he knew better. Her skin was pale, but in an unhealthy way: the red of her eyes
and the dark shadows under them suggested that she had had little sleep lately,
a fact she was trying to hide behind glasses. She had little to no make-up, her
hair styled in a bun ordinate enough to look professional.

He casually wondered what
she would have looked like with her hair loose over her shoulders, without her
glasses, perhaps with a smile on those delicious looking lips – must have been
the drugs.

He didn’t listen as the DA
read him his charges – he knew perfectly well why he was being executed. He
didn’t need to be reminded of all his awful deeds – or, well, of those that the
police were aware of.

Instead, he kept staring
at that stunning blonde – damned him if he would leave this world without
taking with him a delightful vision to look at on the other side, if there even
was one.

Funnily enough, she was
staring right back at him.

He would have liked to
know her name, he realized while the nurse was fixing the needle in the crook
of his elbow. The drip with whatever poison would have had the honor to kill
him was ready, and Klaus was determined not to look at it. It wasn’t that
difficult, with that woman’s attention utterly focalized on him.

He saw her gasp when they
opened the tube to let the poison into his system, her teeth biting softly her
bottom lip as her eyes darted around, as if someone would jump forward at any
moment to stop the execution. I’m sorry,
sweetheart, he thought, his mind already drowning in the mist of drugs. There’s going to be no salvation for me.

Her blue, wide eyes were
the last thing he saw before being lulled towards the empty darkness.

.

Present day.

Caroline awoke slowly wrapped
up in a comforting warmth, something that hadn’t happened in a very long time.
A soft light poked timidly through her window’s curtains, making her groan and
hide her face into the pillow.

She had the weirdest dream last night – she dreamt
that Niklaus had returned to her.
Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on her part – her subconscious revealing
her desire for forgiveness, the gaping abyss of regrets she lived with – but
she had almost made peace with him, had comforted him, held him. She had
stopped wondering a long time ago why she dreamt of him instead of Tyler –
clearly her shame exceeded the nostalgia she felt towards her late fiancé.

As she sluggishly came to
her senses, though, she started to gather more details. A body pressed firmly against
her back; an arm curled around her waist, its hand covering her stomach and preventing
her escape. Slight puffs of air ticked her nape – someone’s breath – and occasionally
a nose nuzzled her neck.

Caroline froze, confused. She
didn’t remember having Stefan stay the night…

Because Stefan had the night shift at the hospital.

Suddenly, everything came
together at once.

Trying to stifle the loud
gasp she felt coming, Caroline stiffened, all the while looking for a way to
get up without waking the person – Niklaus
– still sleeping behind her.

When she had agreed in
letting him sleep with her, last night, she hadn’t expected to wake up with him
wrapped up around her like a second blanket. It was also strangely comforting,
if she had to be honest; and in a brief lapse of clarity, she realized that she
had not slept that well in more than a year.

His hand splayed over her
belly was cold even through her top; one of his leg lied trapped between her
warmest ones, and his face was buried in the sweet hollow of her shoulder. She
had never known him to be a cuddler – not that they had ever slept together,
voluntarily at least. She remembered, in fact, there were times when she had
awoken just to find him next to her, usually well alert, rarely asleep, like a
guardian dog of sort. Nightmares often kept him awake, at that time. Caroline
wasn’t usually afraid of him – maybe in the beginning, but then she had quickly
learned that Niklaus looked at her with that same unconditional trust and love
that children nurture towards their mothers, and thus he would have never hurt
her. Not purposefully, anyway.

Although now, the
situation was quite different. She had betrayed him – abandoning him – and thus
she doubted that his feelings towards her were still that pure. She tried not
to think nor give a lot of importance to the kiss he had forced on her – she
was sure there was a good, logical explanation.

Swiftly, and carefully as
to not brusquely awake her guest, Caroline slipped from the bed and padded
towards the kitchen, remembering to snatch her phone from the nightstand and
setting off the alarm: no reason to wake Niklaus – Klaus, she mentally amended – earlier than was necessary.

Checking quickly her phone
for texts, she found the usual Good
morning from Stefan: he had just finished his shift at the hospital and was
returning home hopefully to sleep the morning away, thus giving her plenty of time
to think of some excuse to cancel their lunch date. With Klaus back in her
life, and with no way to know where they were standing, she felt horribly
guilty about seeing Stefan as if nothing were wrong. But she didn’t want to lie
to him, so she decided to text him back later: in the meantime, she hoped she’d
be able to gain a little more insight on the whole situation.

Klaus did seem to be in a
talking mood just a few hours earlier, hopefully that hadn’t changed with a
night of sleep.

Her hands started
automatically to fix breakfast. Her stomach was currently too tightly wound to
let her eat anything heavy, so she would have to give up on her eggs. As she
prepared some coffee, finding a sort of peaceful comfort in the familiar
gestures, Caroline went silently over all the questions she would have liked to
ask him.

It was probably best to
start from the beginning, and slowly work their way down to the present. She
was indeed curious about the life he had lead away from her – one year mightn’t
seem a lot, but for a newly reborn man, who had had only a moderate knowledge
of the world and the way it worked, it ought to be a damn long adventure.

And what about
companionship? Did he keep himself away from humanity, or had he tried to form
links, have relationships, make friends?
She noticed he had a way with words, now – he didn’t stutter, as he had done in
the beginning, instead his tongue slithered fluently with every syllable,
curling almost seductively around the most insignificant of letters. Again –
did he have some tutor, or was he self-taught? Caroline found herself most
intrigued, and despite everything she couldn’t wait to question him.

But all of this simply
served as a delay for the actual problem. For she certainly hadn’t forgotten
the ardent speech from last night – what he had pledged and threatened, what he
had promised.

He wanted her – he said she was his.

Her first instinct was to
scoff and dismiss him, it was that ridiculous. This was the twenty-first
century, no one belonged to anyone anymore, what was this kind of caveman
philosophy? Certainly not something he had learned from her.

And yet… A part of her, no
matter how hard she tried to ignore and fight it, was somewhat thrilled. Well,
she couldn’t belittle their relationship, by any means: they were linked, and deeply
so – she had brought him back from the dead, for heaven’s sake – but was there
something more? Perhaps his feelings were simply caused by the fact that she
had nursed him back to health, that she had cared for him when he was in his
most vulnerable state.

Perhaps it was only
gratitude on his part, a gratitude he was misunderstanding because, with his
memories missing and his innocent mind, he did not have any other basis for
comparison?

Narrowing her eyes, she
started stirring the coffee to cool it down a little. How in the hell was she supposed to deal with that situation…?

“You’ll ruin the cup that
way,” came suddenly the quiet voice of her guest.

Caroline startled and raised
her head, not very surprised that he had managed to come upon her undetected,
and she offered a tentative smile. “Would you like some?” She asked, gesturing
towards the coffee.

He nodded, and went to sit
down in front of her while she fixed him a cup. Klaus murmured a thank you,
cupping it with both hands and reveling in its heat, and wisely waited for her
to speak again.

The silence stretched for
a while longer, however neither of them found it too uncomfortable. With the
morning light entering from the window, Caroline could examine Klaus for the
first time after a long year.

His hair had grown. The
last time she had seen him, he had a short, curly mop that she had loved to
comb with her fingers, feeling the tiny scars underneath. Now, his hair was
longer and darker, his curls less cherub-like: they looked softer and ruffled,
but they didn’t give him the appearance of someone who neglects his look. To be
honest, he looked like the first time she had seen him – in prison, about to face the death penalty with a sort of dignified
resignation – maybe that’s what the aura of danger was about.

She swallowed the last of
her coffee, then put the cup down with a soft click. Klaus seemed to sense that
she wasn’t unable to start talking anytime soon – she had so many questions,
she didn’t know where to start – so he was the one to finally break the silence.

“Why did you send me away,
Caroline?” His voice, for the first time since last night, held no accusation. Just
plain curiosity. “Were you so scared of me that abandonment was really the only
option?”

She inhaled brusquely, her
eyes snapping to his and her lips mouthing mutely some kind of answer. There went her carefully constructed questionnaire. “What…?
No, Klaus, afraid of you? I was afraid of me,
actually.”

She watched him frowning, his
eyes darting all around her face as if there he could find further
explanations; his coffee entirely forgotten, he rested his hands on the smooth
surface of the table, in a gesture that Caroline knew meant he was deeply in
thought. She knew what he was thinking, or at the very least she could guess
where his pondering was taking him. He probably thought she was afraid because
of the life he led before: she didn’t exactly know how much he remembered about
it, or if he recalled anything at all, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that Klaus
had berated himself over it after she sent him away. After all, she didn’t have
any other reasons to fear him – except for last night, he had never even talked
to her with spite or rage.

“What do you mean, you
were afraid of yourself? You’d never hurt me, Caroline – and besides”, here he
rolled his eyes, a familiar gesture that he ought to have taken from her, “I’ve
always been stronger than you, physically. You knew that, you built me that
way.”

Caroline frowned, pressing
her lips together; she didn’t like thinking of it as her ‘building’ him – it
felt even worse, more unethical. She looked away from him, focusing on
something over his shoulder.

“I wasn’t… in the right
state of mind when I did what I did to you, Klaus. I even went to therapy,
after.” It felt so strange to finally admit that out loud, when no one knew
except for her and her doctor. “I wasn’t feeling well, and that whole process…
it destroyed me, emotionally, you know? I-I even tried to… well. It doesn’t
matter now, I suppose. I hated what happened, and I was depressed, and alone,
and… honestly, it’s only luck if I’m still here to tell you this.”

Her voice got
progressively hoarser as she spoke. Images of the misery she’s been through in
the last year – when she was alone, with no Tyler nor Klaus at her side whom
she could seek comfort from – flashed in her mind like scenes from someone
else’s life, leaving behind a dull feeling of helplessness and regret.

She felt Klaus’ golden
eyes burning holes on her skin, but she refused to raise her head and look at
him – she wouldn’t be able to keep talking, otherwise.

“I let you go because, in
some tiny window of clarity, I realized all of that. I could have hurt you, or
worse, and even if I deeply regretted my work, I… I didn’t want you to suffer. You
didn’t ask to be brought back, you had no faults in that… Plus, you were still
unused to a lot of things; some concepts came to you slower than others. I
doubt you fully understood what was going on most of the time, why were you
like that, why were you with me? It just felt like the right thing to do,
giving you a chance to start over, to move on, away from me.”

The more she talked, the
more she felt a weight lifting off her shoulders, as if the last year was spent
in waiting of something like this to happen – as if apologizing and explaining
herself to Klaus were the only things that mattered, that could save her from a
hell of self-hate and desperation.

“I felt responsible for
you. You looked up at me with such awe, such trust in your eyes, that I
couldn’t… there were times where my feelings got the best of me, and I
couldn’t even get up from the bed, let alone take care of you. Do you
remember?” She wasn’t waiting for his answer, so he kept silent. “The first
time it happened, you were so scared and worried that you couldn’t even speak
clearly. You cried, and moaned, and tried your best to make me react, but of
course it wasn’t that easy. I think it was the first time I lashed out at you.”

Caroline sniffed, rubbing
the palm of her hands over her eyes, trying to conceal her tears. It was harder
than she had thought taking it all out like this, laying the whole of her soul
bare for the man in front of her to see, scrutinize, judge. Yet she didn’t stop.

“God, you should have seen
your face. You just looked so… so betrayed, Klaus”, she swallowed, her voice
dying a little. “You were trying to take care of me the only way you knew how,
and instead of being nice I went mad.”

Oh, Klaus remembered
perfectly well what she was referring to: it had happened a few months after
his rebirth, when he still struggled to do things on his own, when he still
couldn’t talk, when he didn’t even know her name. It wasn’t something he liked
to dwell on – especially since he had so many other moments he could choose
from, when he came to think of how he and Caroline had spent that first year –
but now, in hindsight, he could do it with more clarity and a deeper
understanding of events.

That didn’t mean, though,
that knowing her reasons made forgiving her any easier.

He did think, at one point
when the memories of his past life were starting to flow back to him, that
Caroline had discovered some ugly truths about the person he had been before,
and that that was what forced her to push him away, to get rid of him. It
didn’t justify her, but it did explain her actions.

Of course, that hypothesis
got discarded as soon as he remembered that she had been there, during his
execution – she had known from the very beginning who he was, and who she was
bringing back to life. If the fact that he had been a murderer wasn’t a problem
before, surely it couldn’t be the reason why she had decided to let him go.
Somehow, that was even harder to suffer.

But now, as he watched her
as she forced her eyes to stay dry, as he listened to her voice tremble, as he
smelled the sweet scent that always surrounded her like a cloud – he couldn’t,
for the life of him, find that loathing that had kept him going for so long.

“Caroline…” He started,
undecided. What could he possibly say to her confession? “I- You could have
talked to me. You could have told me anything, and I would’ve understood, and…
I could have helped you, Caroline.”

The honest pain in his
tight voice made breathing harder. “It wasn’t your burden to bear”, she said.

Klaus shook his head,
straightening up and pressing his back against the backrest of the chair. “I
don’t understand”, he eventually snapped. “Did you think my mind was too simple
to grasp the fact that you were suffering, and that your misery was somehow
linked to me? Maybe I took my time to reacquaint myself to the world and its
mysteries, but you! You, I’ve always
known, since the moment I opened my eyes for the second time! If you recall, in
those first weeks, I didn’t sleep much; I used to stay awake all night, jumping
at the tiniest rumor, uncomfortable in my own skin. And so I heard when the
nightmares woke you up, or when they kept you muttering and whimpering, when
you spent the night turning and fussing in your bed. I knew you were in pain, I
just didn’t know the exact motive, and it tortured me! You always pacified me
the next morning, appeasing me with a strained smile, but that didn’t change
the fact that I worried for you.
Dammit, Caroline!”

He pushed violently the
chair back, standing up and starting to pace around the little kitchen. He
ignored her gasp at his reaction, passing a hand through his hair with an
impatient gesture.

“Do you have any idea how
much I worried? I may not have been that eloquent at the beginning, but even then,
you should have known what I felt for you; I do like to think my affections
were quite straightforward. And then one day, out of the blue, you drove us to
the beach only for leaving me on the roadside later with only a bag and no
explanation! After a whole day spent together, right when I was beginning to
think that maybe you were starting to heal! You
left me. Like an old dog you were suddenly tired of. I can’t… You left me
alone in a world that was extraneous to me, a world where I didn’t belong
anymore, and where the only person I had come to trust and care for had just
betrayed me. You killed me a second time,
Caroline.”

Caroline was crying
silently, now, her shoulders trembling and one hand pressed against her mouth
to muffle her sobs. Every word was a knife to her heart, a nail to her coffin –
but she felt she deserved it. She wasn’t thinking clearly when she took the
decision to let Klaus go – in her mind, she was convinced that it was the right
thing to do, giving him a chance to a new start, a blank state, away from her
and what she might represent. Of course, it wasn’t completely selfless of her –
as she already told him, it was more for her benefit than his that she had left
him. She was becoming ill, for heaven’s sake, it had nothing to do with Klaus
personally!

God, sometimes
it still felt like a dream. As if all that had happened right after Tyler’s
death was but a fragment of her tired imagination, something she had dreamt in
between shifts at the hospital, that would have disappeared into thin air as
soon as she had opened her eyes and the sunrise had eaten away her nightly
visions. A hallucination, maybe, caused by her grief.

However, once her eyes opened
again, shedding the oddments of her dreams, the heavy burden of reality – of
what she had done to Klaus, the horror and the ungodliness of her project – fell
on her, leaving her breathless and almost crying on the floor.

Those weren’t the times
she loved to remember when she her mind went back to Klaus, in the long year
they spent apart. There were fun moments in between all the pain and the
remorse, before everything became too much – times that she thought fondly of,
with bittersweet nostalgia. Like when she had taught him to read, and he used
to listen with rapt attention to her voice as his eyes followed the text; or
when he watched her as she cooked, or of the few times, at the very beginning,
when he barged inside the bathroom where she was taking a long bubbly bath
because he didn’t find her anywhere in the apartment and was starting to get
worried.

She cared so much about
him, she could even admit in the privacy of her head that she loved him too, somehow – I’m yours, he had said, vowed, only the
night before, when he had kissed her with an unrestrained passion that still
made her shiver – and finding out how he had reacted at her giving him his
freedom… as if she had purposefully done it to hurt him, as if she could possibly
be able to… It was heartbreaking.

“I’m sorry”, she whispered
after a long silence, wiping the tears with her hands. Her voice was but a
shadow, a whisper of air. “I’m so sorry, Klaus.”

He didn’t answer
immediately. She felt him watching – always watching, his eyes scorching upon
her skin as if he could devour her simply by looking at her, as if he simply
couldn’t bear to look anywhere else when he had her to stare – his ragged
breath a loud sound in the empty kitchen. She didn’t fear him, no matter who or
what he had been in his previous life: he was different now, she hoped, and her
reactions from the last night were simply a product of her surprise, and the
shock of suddenly finding someone in the darkness of her own home.

Suddenly he moved, and she
hated herself for flinching.

Moving slowly as if she
were a wild animal not to scare, Klaus bypassed the table and went near her. He
kneeled besides her chair, his eyes never leaving her face, then he reached for
her hands, carefully holding between his own.

She took a deep breath,
then raised her eyes to meet his. She almost started to cry anew when she saw
that there was no hate in the dark, inhuman gold of his own – only wariness and
a deep fatigue, made easier to bear by the gentleness she found in his expression.

“Klaus…” She started
again, her voice broken.

But he only shook his
head, gentle yet firm. “The only reason why I accepted to hear you out,
Caroline, was because you took care of me when I was helpless, and weak, and
dependent on you. You brought me back to life in more ways than one, you taught
me how to be human again, and your kindness will forever endear you to my eyes.”
He raised a hand so very slowly to cup her face, softening when she didn’t
recoil but pressed instead her cheek against his callous palm. “But you did
abandon me, Maker, and that it’s not something I can just simply forgive.”

She closed her eyes, feeling
as if he had stricken her, trying uselessly to prevent any more tears from
coming. “Don’t call me Maker, please”, she whispered.

His thumb started drawing
slow circles upon her cheek. “Isn’t that what you are?”

“I…” She snapped her lips
shut, because she didn’t actually have an answer to that. What would she even
say? That she thought they were friends, at the very least? Partners?
Companions?

Could she even dare to
think along those lines, after what was nothing less than a betrayal?

But that word – Maker – was dreadfully cold and cruel,
it erased everything that had been between them, undermining their story, and
most of all – it made her feel sick for what it represented.

“It puts me in a position
of superiority that I most certainly don’t deserve, nor do I want”, she said
eventually, lowering her teary eyes upon his carefully guarded expression.
“Please, Klaus… Say something”, she whispered, raising a hand to cup his own,
still solid against her cheek.

Klaus’s eyes flickered
briefly on her hand, but he didn’t move – to her secret delight. He took a deep
breath, then he fixed her with a grave stare.

“I am so angry with you,
Caroline.” He admitted, roughly. “If you could look inside my soul, now, you’d
be scared at the depth of my rage. And yet”, he continued, rising a bit more
towards her, his voice going impossibly soft, his caress on her face gentle
despite his words. “I find that I still love you so profoundly that I can
almost feel it in my marrow, and it overshadows that anger. Even when I hated
you, even when I planned thousand ways to get my revenge, I’ve never stopped
loving you. Maybe that is what made me truly vicious, what ruined me.”

“Klaus–”

“Don’t leave me ever
again, Caroline”, he interrupted her, shaking his head. “I couldn’t bear it a
second time.” His lips barely touched the soft line of her jaw as he spoke, yet
she closed her eyes, shivering. “I wouldn’t forgive you, a second time.”

Caroline couldn’t find in
herself the will to avert his touch – his cold skin felt pleasant, his stubby
cheek gently stroking her own a surprising comfort. She sighed, her eyes
half-closed and tired, and she discreetly inhaled his scent relaxing in its
familiarity.

Klaus kept talking, a
soothing murmur barely audible over the pounding of her heart. “I know that
you’re in love with that other man. I’m not asking you to love me like that, to
love me like I do… I did not come here to force your hand. I only ask that you
allow me to stay, here, besides you. I would be content with that.”

Caroline was so shocked by
that declaration – by the certainty with which he had spoken, as if he knew her
feelings better than herself – that she didn’t manage to reply on time, telling
him – reassuring him? – that she
didn’t exactly love Stefan. God, love was such a misused word. Why would she
tell him that, though? Why would she want to? After everything?

She was too emotionally
drained to deal with that now, so she pushed it in a corner of her brain and
decided to leave if for another day.

“Why”, she asked,
confused. “What do I have to offer you, that you can’t easily find anywhere
else? You spent the last year travelling, and yet here is where you’d like to
end up?”

Klaus’ eyes seemed to
warm. “Precisely because of that, because I’ve seen the world and I came to
realize that this, here, is where I belong. Where I long to be. By your side.
Caroline”, he exhaled, grabbing her hands and holding them tight. “I wasn’t
even meant to live this second life. And because you gave it to me, you gave me
this second chance… Caroline, my life is yours. I’m yours. Don’t–” His voice
broke a little, “don’t send me away.”

Caroline was so dazed by
the drastic turn her morning had taken that she couldn’t even manage to feel
panic at Klaus’ plea and pledge, and she didn’t know if that counted as a good
or a bad thing. She thought he was angry, that he wanted to take revenge; she
would be an adult and admit it, she hadn’t been fair with him. She had let her
fear and depression take charge and had acted without taking into consideration
the consequences, least of all what the abandonment would have felt like for
Klaus – a newly reborn man that was just beginning to live again, and that
could potentially risk imprisonment for crimes he didn’t even remember. She couldn’t
bear to think of how that would have gone down – she had so badly miscalculated,
and she could only thank Klaus for deciding to finally pay her a visit before
things went worse.

Besides – she hated the
idea of him despising her so much more than the one of having back in her life.

Eventually, with her voice
hoarse and trembling, she gave him the answer he wanted. And inwardly said
goodbye to the quiet, normal life she had briefly considered to have with
Stefan.

“I won’t, Klaus. I
promise.” She closed her eyes as her creature released a relieved sigh, his
hands bringing her own to his lips to cover them with tiny, grateful kisses.

Later, as they sat in
front of a fresher, warmer cup of coffee – their knees touching under the
table, their shoulders pressing against each other in comfort – Klaus hummed as
if he had just now remembered something, and nudged her gently to catch her attention.

With an interrogative
sound, Caroline turned to him.

“There is another thing I
meant to discuss with you”, he said, suddenly seeming uncertain.

What more could there possibly be? “Yes?”

“I remember you.”

Caroline blinked,
perplexed, then – a light sparkled to life in her mind, shocking her into
silence. She could only gape at him as she realized what he was referring to, except
it couldn’t have been possible – not after the invasive surgery his body had
gone through, not to mention the simple fact that he had died. He shouldn’t be
able to remember anything from his previous life – he couldn’t. Science didn’t
work that way.

Yet, Klaus seemed
perfectly confident in what he was telling her, his thumb brushing gently her
knee in a soothing manner. “I found out why I’ve always felt so at ease with
you after all, why that sense of familiarity – it came to me in bit and pieces,
and then I simply knew. You were there, Caroline. When I died… you were one of
the doctors. I remember you.”

Caroline stared at him
with wide eyes, speechless.

[word count: 5856]