Take me back to the night we met (a Klamille stoty)

Goodbye, My Lover, Goodbye, My Friend

Klaus and Caroline were strolling through the streets of New Orleans as the annual Mardi Gras parade passed by. They stopped to watch a street artist working on a black-and-white painting.

The night that Klaus first met Camille 16 years ago came to mind.

"You know, when I first came back from Mystic Falls, I met a woman near here, and we mused about art," Klaus tells Caroline.

"I guess another blonde..." she teases him, and he smiles. "You have a type! she laughs.

"Intelligent, beautiful, fierce, with a heart bigger than the sun," he says.

He had just found out he was going to be a father. The witches were attempting to gain control over him by using his unborn child.

The news confused Klaus, and he was enraged by the manipulation attempt. He thus said to Hayley and the witches that he didn't care if his unborn child died. "How dare you command me, threaten me with what you wrongfully perceive to be my weaknesses? He raged. "Kill her and the baby. What do I care?" He said.

And now Hope was 15 years old, and Klaus Mikaelson was preparing to give his life to save her.

The painter's brush slowly and rhythmically carved vertical lines, painting the branches of a black tree.

Caroline admits to him that she never really "understood" art, apart from the fact that it is "pretty".

"Well, you have to see past the paint and the technique to understand the deeper meaning of it all. As they gazed at a man's painting, Klaus continued: "This piece, for example, is about time and the way it rises and falls, races and slows."

He could almost appreciate the irony that he was now the one running out of time.

16 years ago, it was a piece about the inner struggle of a lonely man with his demons, and another blond was standing beside him.

Today, he had Caroline by his side. She came because this was his last day. After 1,000 years of plaguing this world with monstrosities, the mighty Klaus Mikaelson will die.

He will not die at the hands of an enemy; he will not be defeated; he will sacrifice himself to save his daughter; he will sacrifice himself because he finally learned to put others before himself.

Love made him strong, as Cami promised him.

He was holding Caroline's arm tenderly, lost in his thoughts. She was a woman now. When he met her, she was a teenage girl, full of stubbornness, life, and ideas. It reminded him of himself and the girls at the Viking village where he grew up. She was kind, caring, loyal to others, still innocent, optimistic, and loved by her many friends. All the things he used to want for himself, so, naturally, he felt for her.

Somewhere inside him, she had awakened the desire to be accepted at last. The need for someone to see him for what he was, and not for what his 1000 years on this earth forced him to become.

The blonde girl refused him, and that made him stubborn. After all, he was Klaus Mikaelson. The most powerful creature on earth: the original hybrid! No woman refused him. It was not only fear for their lives that left no room for denial. It was his charm. If nothing else, Klaus was a very charming man and he knew it.

He was sure of himself, sure of his power, unaffected by petty feelings and fears, always ready to lead a woman to the extremes of pleasure. Catching his eye was a huge compliment. To invite you to his bed even more.

Caroline felt drawn to the bad boy; she was intrigued by the big, bad wolf. She sure was flattered by his attention. It was her morality that held her back; it was her insistence that she was better than him. Better than the monster.