#klarolineauseason

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"

[Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (chapt. XXXIII)]

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

She had died; when the old crone had pierced her heart with a blessed wooden stake, as her chanting became louder and louder and the words lost meaning, Caroline had unequivocally died. She had to, so that her soul could travel backwards, annulling the last millennia like a hand swiping across a blackboard.

One moment she was, the next she was no more - and then it felt like being everywhere and everytime, as the spell warped reality, undoing it, and dragging her back to the time in which she had anchored herself through the little bit of hybrid blood that she had kept all of this time.

It felt like being in the eye of a hurricane, until abruptly everything stopped.

And she felt like being in a corporeal state once again.

A hoarse gasp echoes in the deadly silent living room, and the vampire laying on the couch blinks her eyes open.

The tangy taste of blood still lingers on her tongue, a blood she immediately recognizes - centuries weren't able to delete that particular memory from her brain - and instinct tells her immediately when the spell has taken her.

It was the chosen moment - before everything started going downhill for him, and for her too.

She turns her head, slowly, barely allowing herself to hope - and there he is, sitting on the leather lounge-chair next to the window, the warm glow of the lamp casting morbid shadows upon his stony face.

He looks angrier and more dangerous than she remembers - or maybe time had simply allowed her to grasp a bette understanding of him to the point of noticing even the smallest of his expressions - even so, she couldn't be happier.

Before she has fully made up her mind - she should probably evaluate the situation, come up with a plan, try not to fuck up too much the timeline as the witches had repeatedly reminded her, but those thoughts come a second too late - she's already up and across the room, a knot closing her throat as she tries not to cry, and --

-- in his arms.

((It doesn't feel real to touch him, hold him, feel his breath against her cheek after all this time. It would be a lie to say that her every waking moment was spent thinking of him, yet there was always something - a word, an object, a place - that made the memory of him go off in her mind, feeding her longing, alimenting her obsession. Exacerbating the void left by his absence. And the feeling of their last kiss still seared in her brain, the bittersweet taste of a goodbye that they weren't supposed to say.

He had promised her an eternity, but was gone long before that started. It wasn't fair - he wasn't supposed to die, not after everything.

She had lived missing what they never were.))

Klaus is not privy to the whirlwind going on inside her mind - he simply found himself holding the trembling bundle of a distressed vampire before he had the time to blink her back into focus. His ancient instinct works faster than his mind, and his hand circles around her throat in a manner both harsh and delicate.

Yet, despite the grief and the rage still cursing through his veins, his voice is surprisingly soft when he calls her name, confused and wary. "Caroline…?"

Her hands hold on tighter on the lapels of his jacket, and a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh comes from her lips.

"It worked," she murmurs, finally backing away to look him in the eyes. "God, it worked! You're alive."

That's when he notices it.

There is something different in the depth of her eyes, something that wasn't there only a few hours earlier - a weariness, a harshness that belonged more on one of his siblings rather than someone like Caroline - and it gives him pause, forcing to assess her, for the first time in a long while, as a potential enemy.

She doesn't look bothered by his hand around her throat, as if she trusts him, implicitly, not to overly harm her. Which is strange, considering that he bit her no less than twenty-four hours ago for much less than a potential physical threat.

Klaus frowns, barely noticing when his own thumb starts rubbing gently against her skin, lost in thought. The Caroline he has gotten to know wouldn't act this way, he is sure of it, even if she's apparently aware of his feelings - as she even told him earlier, in her attempt to coax him to save her.

If she was able to unleash this kind of gaze on him... He can almost taste her relief, see the yearning in the way she seems to physically restrain herself from - what? He swallows, his gaze dropping to her pale lips before catching himself - he must have given her more blood than he realized, if his brain has stopped working to this extent.

He almost calls her again to bring her back from whatever place her mind seems to have stuck, but in that moment Caroline backs away slowly, steel suddenly bleeding into her eyes.

“So I am.” A mocking smile tilted his mouth. “And you are perhaps not quite a girl. How surprising. Here I thought the Southerners liked to lock their women up long before they reached child bearing age.” A flash of teeth, white and straight, with canines that looked slightly sharper than she was comfortable with noticing. “Too afraid of raiders coming to steal their daughters.”

If only raiders were the reason she had spent her life behind walls. Her life would have been far simpler. Adrenaline warmed her blood, and she narrowed her eyes. “If that is the extent of your knowledge, you know very little about my people.” 

There was a flash of something potent in his eyes, and then a shift of muscle with enough speed that she flinched, and he was suddenly crouched in front of her. He was nearly eye to eye with her, but somehow still managed to give the impression of looming, and the hand gripping the edge of the altar was precariously close to her best source of light. This close, and she could catch that faintest hint of something wild and indefinable in her nose.

Metal glinted along his fingers, caught at a chain at his neck. In her homeland, each piece of jewelry would have had a specific meaning, a clue to power and wealth, to his rank within his society. She had no idea what secrets he wore, no idea what warnings he cared to offer his enemies and assurances to his friends with his choices. 

That hint of mocking laughter disappeared between one blink and the next, and the razor blade of his gaze threatened to cut her wide open. “Tell me. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t take you outside and execute you under the moon's watchful gaze for trespassing? Your kind is not well liked here, and I don’t think She’d mind.” His jaw suddenly tensed, and his head lifted to glance behind her. “Particularly when you are being followed.”

Caroline swallowed, something inevitable echoing through the hollow of her bones. So soon. They’d found her trail so soon. “I have broken no treatise by being here.”

“We have no treatise with your people,” he murmured in a soft taut, fingers reaching out to pluck a curl from her shoulder, tugging. She swatted his hand away, and his wolf rumbled in a noise that locked her muscles, and his eyes glimmered. “Hard to break something that does exist.”

“Do you murder everyone who comes through here?” The words held more bravo than she was feeling, and he snagged that curl again, eyes daring her to slap his hand away a second time. 

“Of course. This is my territory, my lands. Your people carry a rot, and my wolf doesn’t like the stink of it.” He brought the curl to his mouth, breathing deeply, and she narrowed her eyes at the blatant disregard for boundaries. He continued, unbothered by her ire, though a wrinkle briefly appeared between his brows. “There is no law here that can protect you, no magic that can be called to your aid. Here, my people are god, and I rule.”

“The moon might disagree with that.” The words held little bite, and no confidence, but something about his expression goaded her.

“The moon has chosen silence for many years,” he mocked. “I don’t think She’ll break that silence for you.”

“I have harmed no one by being here,” she continued stubbornly, refusing to let him cower her. He tugged on her hair again, but then let it slide through his fingers to fall against her shoulder.

“Your very presence brings harm,” Klaus said. “But those who follow you are still a ways from here, and why chase them when they will come to me? Now or later, they will die by my hand.”

She swallowed. “Is that why you followed me here? To kill me?”

“I considered it when I first saw you, but you were such a pathetic sight, staggering up the cliff dripping water and cursing.” He flashed those dimples, and they did nothing to remove the sting of the word pathetic. “It has been a long time since I watched someone with such determination, as foolish as it was. My wolf was… let’s call it curious, and a lack of anything else particularly amusing tonight. Then you made it here.”

“Amusing,” she repeated flatly. 

“Most.” Another flash of something jagged and sharp behind his eyes. “Perhaps you should count your blessings, though I’m certain you won’t find many more here.”

“And why is that?”

“Usually my wolf would be more interested in the crunch of your bones, your screams. But you moved as if you knew exactly how to find this place, which is impossible. This particular trail is well hidden even from my people, this temple faded to obscurity. I want to know how someone like you found it.”

Disbelief had her huffing out a breath, something wildly amused and desperate catching in her throat like a laugh. “It is still quite well hidden, I assure you.”

Those strikingly intelligent eyes narrowed. “A pilgrimage then? How strange. There are easier deaths to court. But here you are, so I will give you this chance to amuse me.” Widening his arms, he smiled at her, boyish, and somehow all the more murderous for it. “Give me the pleas you planned to convey to our dread goddess, and perhaps I’ll be merciful.”

Caroline’s lips parted at the sheer arrogance of him. “You must be joking.”

His laugh was low in his throat. “Who else could possibly be around to listen to you beg in this land? Surely not Her, not a Southerner.”

“I do not beg,” Caroline said scathingly. “Particularly not to wolves.”

The slow, dangerous curve of his mouth. “And what does a soft, summer girl like you believe she knows of wolves?”

Her heart was thudding in her chest, and if the way his gaze dipped to her pulse said anything, he knew it. Enjoyed it, from the uptilt of his mouth. Annoyance flashed through the fear, and she shrugged a shoulder. “What is there to know? I believe the word savage is most commonly used.”

He paused at her words, finger tightening on the edge of stone beneath his palm. The silence between them was broken only by the sputter of her dwindling candle for a long moment. “Such a brave little thing. I find it’d be a pity for you to die without a name.”

“I have a name.”

“Give it to me.”

Her spine went tightened, at the power in those words, the wolf she could almost see threaded through that demand. It took grit, to control the surge of fear, the compliance Caroline found herself fighting. “Names have power.”

A shrug, “so they do.”

Underneath her knees and shins, her bent toes,  the power stirred, a sensation not unlike watching a creature slowly rise from the depths of the ocean. It gave her the confidence, false though it might be, to push back. “So tell me yours first.”

His lashes hid his eyes in a slow sweep, and when they lifted again, there was no mistaking what sat beneath his skin this time. Hot gold, his eyes were moon bright in the dim light, she could feel the cold press of the jagged moonbeams of his magic. “Brave of you, to make demands. How surprising. Most of your people have so little spine.”

“You don’t know my people,” Caroline rebuked softly. The lack of spine was so they could coil around you so much tighter, so their slithering magic could sink into the hallow of your bones. “Many of us are far braver than you would know, and we are also stubborn.”

His gaze was unblinking, and she watched him choose to be amused by her defiance. That he felt so secure in his ability to kill her left her fingers flexing against her palms. Irritating. This wolf was irritating. 

“I’m Klaus.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and something niggled at the back of her mind, a cautious warning she couldn’t recall. That he was waiting for her to know him, to remember, had her hand clenching in a fist. “Caroline.”

“Well, pretty Caroline. You are in my territory and I will have my answers, one way or another. Why are you here?”

Her gaze snapped to his, and Caroline found that his amusement no longer lingered in the creases near his eyes. The iris of his eyes caught the candle strangely, more gold than belonged in human eyes, and she felt her insides twist. 

“If there is no one here to hear my prayers, why does it matter?”

A rumble of sound that should have never come from a human throat. “Because it’s been two hundred years since someone was foolish enough to seek Sanctuary here, and you should not know of this place.”

Two hundred years. Her magic rattled in her chest, and it was difficult to think through what that could mean. The certainty of her dreams gave way to unsteady footing, and Caroline dug her nails into her palms. “Why should I believe you?”

A tip of his head, the motion so canine, a silent threat that left her pulse hammering in her throat. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Are you?” She lifted her chin. “A liar?”

A hint of that damnable dimple, but nothing in her chest eased at the sight of it. “Do you think you’ll live long enough to find out?”

“If you’re going to try to kill me,” Caroline managed after she gained control of her pulse. “Do it outside.” While she wasn’t above haunting a man for the purpose of vengeance, something she couldn’t articulate told her that to commit another death here would break something fragile. Her ghost might tip the balance to something terrible.

Klaus’ brows arched high and he leaned a little closer, nose nearly brushing hers now. “So many demands. Perhaps you should be more worried what it will mean if I don’t kill you.”

She held his gaze, so close to her own she could see the individual striations of color, the way the gold didn’t blot out the blue, not entirely. It was like studying the surface of a clean flame. “Nothing worse than what awaits me if they catch me.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked in her peripheral vision. “Desperate indeed is the Southerner who runs to these lands for Sanctuary. What has sent you scurrying to this place, Caroline?”

“Does it matter?”

A humorless curl of his mouth. “It does. Particularly if you wish to keep your head attached.”

Caroline swallowed, reading the truth in his words easily enough. It wouldn’t take those following her long to find the same path she had taken, would likely take them less time to march those endless, endless steps now that the storm had eased. She supposed what few choices she had left started and stopped with this wolf. Even if this temple was forsaken, there had to be others, and there had to be someone who could explain. The problem was she would have to ask and hope she’d find answers.

No one had ever helped her once they knew, and this wasn’t likely to be different but she would rather die here. In this clean, cold air than for all the humid heat full of rot that she’d known all her life. Leaning back, keeping his gaze so he wouldn’t think this was a retreat, Caroline shook the sleeves of her tunic back. 

In front of her, the wolf made a little rumbling noise, and he glanced down. Caroline braced herself, for the disgust, or worse, for the thoughtful greed that had crossed so many faces as Bill Forbes had told his daughter to share her shame. But none of those emotions appeared on Klaus’ face. For a long, long moment, there was silence, the only moment of his body the slow exhale of his breath. 

“I don’t know what they mean,” Caroline finally said into the silence, her nerves finally catching control of her tongue. “No one will tell me.”

Slowly, as if he was afraid she’d pull her arms back, Klaus lifted one hand and traced the faint markings that ran from wrist to elbow, the gleaming symbols that made no sense to her mind. His touch burned, the markings glowing faintly as his fingertip skimmed across them. 

“Do you dream, Caroline?”

His gaze met hers, and she swallowed harshly at the intensity of the wolf. “Yes.”

A slow glide of his fingers, his voice dipping low and coaxing as light shimmered across her skin. “And in those dreams, what do you see?”

She pulled her arm back. “That doesn’t concern you.” 

Klaus studied her face, the shape and bone of him human, but every other part of him reading as wolf to her senses. As if the wolf had lunged you and lingered, just beneath the delicate barrier of his flesh. Her pulse started to pound, something drawing taut and terrible between them.

“Well,” he murmured, “perhaps She would mind if I killed you beneath her gaze after all.” Something like wonder touched his eyes briefly. “Perhaps we need the reminder that She chooses her words with care.” 

Caroline blinked at him. “What?”

Instead of answering her, Klaus’  gaze shifted to the back of the temple, head angled as if he was listening. “How many people know of these, love?”

The endearment was jarring after his litany of threats. “Too many. My father believes them to be a curse.”

“Not an uncommon superstition, I’m afraid, but less common here, though that matters little since you were drawn here.” A flash of teeth. “To me.”

Her stomach dipped. To him? “What does that mean? What do these mean?” She’d torn apart her father’s library, snuck into the palace stacks on numerous occasions, at great risk to herself, and not once had she found so much of a hint of what they were. “How do you know I dream?”

When his eyes returned to hers, they burned. “You're a moon witch.”

Caroline stared at him blankly. “What?”

A shake of his head, hands lifting to the ornate clasp at his throat that sparked with power. “You must have an ancestor from the North, there is no other possible explanation. Even Her sense of humor is not so terrible as to cast her own into the clutches of your gods.”

Before she could make sense of that, the complete impossibility of what he was suggesting, Klaus pulled the heavy cloak away from his shoulders and swung the warmth of the furs around hers. Blinking in shock even as her hands came up to catch the edges of the cloak, she froze as his palm settled along the curve of her jaw. The feel of him seared against her skin, and she could feel the pulse of that heat racing along her forearms.

Her breath stuttered in her throat as he leaned into the fall of her hair, his inhale soft, the warm dampness against her ear as exhaled pricking goosebumps across her skin. “It does explain this, doesn’t it? Stay here. I will deal with the ones who wish you harm.”

A scoff caught in her throat, even as she tried to wrench the flush of heat under control. “It explains nothing, particularly your sudden change of heart. Now you want to help me?”

He moved, so she could feel the puffs of his breath across her lips. So that his eyes, tangled up in wolf and man, met hers. The sudden heat of him did more for the chill in her bones than the warmth of the furs, and she felt her cheeks flush. “Yes.  Consider your request of Sanctuary heard. I will grant it. For now.”

Then he was gone, his hand quickly snuffing out the candle in a single movement. The shadows swallowed her with the moon still hidden behind the clouds. A long moment later, those shards of moonlight magic flared with that potent intent, and she knew with a bone deep knowing that the man was gone. Squinting at the shadows, all she caught was an impression of size, the click of nails on the stone, and then it was quiet. 

Caroline tried to bring her pulse back under control, shifting the warmth around her shoulders closer. Outside, the rain fell in soft waves, but inside the furs Klaus had wrapped her in, she felt safe. It might have been a mirage but her shattered nerves would take it. 

Though she wasn’t sure what it meant, that he had claimed he would give her sanctuary. Wrinkling her nose at his proclamation, I will grant it, as if he was the decider of such a thing, she blindly pressed her hand to the stone in front of her. If anything deserved her thanks, it was this temple, not an arrogant wolf. 

She gasped as she found the stone warm, the power beneath sluggish, but aware. And as her finger gripped at the cloak even tighter, a beam of moonlight broke through the clouds to illuminate a single, stylized character she had never seen before on the floor.