Klaus had clearly made a mistake giving Caroline some privacy to get ready. He had done everything right: bought her an evening dress, booked the tickets, not pressured her (at least not today) and she still tested his patience by being late.
Just as he was about to storm back up to the room, Caroline walked into the hotel foyer and left him speechless.
The black cocktail dress he had picked out was superb, draping and wrapping intimately around her every curve. Her hair was pinned back from her face, allowing her curls to tumble down her smooth back. She walked across the lobby to meet him, her heels making a perfect percussive beat for her to move to.
Klaus slowly let his eyes glide from the tips of her Louis Vuitton shoes, up her endless legs, appreciating every curve till he reached her face, and his mouth was dry.
"Ravishing as always, sweetheart."
Caroline beamed, radiant.
"But you're late."
Her smile faded, but she raised an eyebrow. Surely she had to know what she was doing to him?
She strutted past him, taking care to sway her hips seductively. "Then stop looking like you're the big bad wolf and lets go."
He watched her walk to the door and noted the red backs of those devil shoes. He certainly didn't mind being referred to as the Big Bad Wolf if she was going to be Little Red.
Klaus followed after her like he was on the hunt.
Caroline was not at all surprised to find he had booked a private stall when they reached the theatre. Neither was she surprised that it was somewhere as nice as the Mariinsky Theatre to see Swan Lake.
"Wouldn't have picked you as one to see a ballet in your spare time." She commented as they took their seats.
"I like all the arts, Caroline. Surely you know that by now."
The lights dimmed, and she was very aware of how close their seats were and how Klaus' body heat reached her even through his immaculate suit.
"Sure, you're just saying that, and then you'll fall asleep fifteen minutes in." Caroline scoffed, trying to break the sudden intimacy that had settled on them in the dim light.
"With something lovely to watch onstage while something so exquisite sits next to me? I'm certain I'll stay awake." His voice purred in the dark, and she had to turn her attention to the stage in the hopes that she could be distracted.
"I'm sure you're just imagining how the prima ballerina's blood would taste." She said bitterly.
"I had a ballerina once. Very flexible, but absolutely nothing special about their blood. Most half starve themselves to death for their art." Klaus glanced over to Caroline to see what she thought of his past, feeling pleased at the flash of jealously that passed across her face.
It was gone in an instant once she realized that he had obviously had other conquests over the years, and that he was trying to provoke her.
"Perhaps I should take up a ballerino, then." She mused, eyeing the male lead as he twirled the tutu-clad ballerina around in impossible circles. "Flexible, but strong, not starved, and attentive."
Klaus bit back his snarl at the thought of her with another man, turning it into a scoff. "You might have been correct up till attentive. Ballerino and ballerina alike, they're very egotistical."
"Oh, then you'd fit in perfectly." She swiped, not even bothering to tear her eyes away from the majestic display as the Prince lifted Odette.
"Well I don't mind that comparison. Does that also mean that I fit in with your ballerino rat pack?"
"Only if you're also a gentleman, which sadly, I don't think you are."
"Such words wound, Miss Forbes. I have been nothing but a gentleman."
"You are nothing but a rogue." She shot, tucking her hair to let it fall over her left side.
"I'll accept that for some instances." He murmured, tracing two fingers along the curve of her right shoulder to her neck under the thinly veiled excuse to tuck a wayward curl back into its pin. She suppressed a shiver, fixing her eyes on the stage, choosing to ignore him in the hope that she could also ignore the warmth growing in her abdomen at his touch. His hand travelled up further to sit on the nape of her neck, gently stroking the strands of her golden hair. His palm was warm against her vertebrae bone, but she found herself wondering what his touch would feel like elsewhere, perhaps her hipbone for a start. Caroline closed her eyes with a faint sigh, before opening them to continue watching the ballet. Klaus noticed her sky blue eyes had darkened to indigo, and he kept his hand there for the remainder of the performance till interval.
As the lights came up, Caroline dipped her neck away from Klaus' touch, and once again he let her go. He would advance as far forward as she let him, but if she shied away from him, he would not push her. She could not be pushed.
Caroline ran down the corridor, past the many lockers, trying to escape. She twisted and turned...and suddenly found the monster standing in front of her.
Alaric.
She gasped, whirling around to sprint, but he was already there, blocking her way.
"Hello, Caroline. Miss me?"
"Stay away from me, or you'll regret it." She snarled, her fierce words marred by the steps she took away from him.
"Doubt it." He laughed cruelly before flinging a vervain dart at her. It exploded into her bloodstream like a thousand watts, and she cried out, falling to the ground. Another dart hit her, and the pain stabbed at her like fire and ice. She thrashed on the lino floor, sobbing.
"No, please, stop,"
"Oh, sure. No more vervain darts." Alaric said sardonically, pulling out a gun. "But wooden bullets? Why not?" He almost lazily cocked the gun and shot, lodging a bullet in Caroline's shoulder. He waited till she had fished it out, blood coating her fingers, before sending another one into her leg.
"Stop, make it stop!"
"Make me."
Caroline found a strength pushing her up from the floor, gathering behind her arms so she could pounce at Alaric. His eyes widened, and she felt like she was finally conquering her fear...till he pulled out a stake and she fell onto it, screaming, clutching at her chest and twisting away from arms that tried to cradle her.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" She whimpered, finally waking up fully and curling into a ball. Klaus looked back at her, waiting to see her reaction.
"You're okay. You're safe now."
"I can't believe that." She said bluntly, and was surprised when he flinched.
"Well you should."
"Maybe."
Klaus watched as the girl sighed, curling under the covers again.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Her voice was muffled by the sheets she had buried herself in.
"Fine." He shrugged, leaving her alone and returning to the other bed. After she had caused a fuss, he had found a room with two double beds, just so he wouldn't have to take the sofa again. He settled back into the sheets, keeping an eye on her. He waited for her breathing to even out again before sleeping as well. Though his patience was fading and his harsh side returning after so much rejection, he still wished he could comfort her like she needed to be comforted.
Caroline woke up two hours later alone after peaceful, lonely dreams. The sun hadn't risen yet, it was only just about to turn four in the morning. She lay curled on her side for a while, remembering who she was, where she was, why she was here, who she was with. Then she listened to the sound of her breathing. Then she broadened that to the sound of someone else's breathing. She sat up a little against the headboard to look across to see him.
Klaus was stretched out on the bed, not looking comfortable or restful. Yet his face was certainly smoother, boyish almost. She giggled softly to herself at the thought, and the soft noise was enough to make him flash his eyes open before realising there was no one coming to get him, and he closed them once more.
Caroline tilted her head. How long had he been on the run to have such awareness even in rest? She bit her lip, not sure whether her talk would make him irritable. But she figured she could at least try. Wasn't that what she was doing on this trip in the first place?
"Klaus," She called softly, the word dying out in the middle and trailing off to nothing as she chickened out. But Klaus heard all the same, and sat up this time, immediately on guard.
"What is it, love?" His voice was a contradiction, gruff with sleep but soft with caring. Clearly he wasn't his full self-confident self.
"How awake are you?" Her small voice continued, unwilling to break through the darkness of the very early morning.
"Awake enough." He sighed, and she smiled a little, because the words were innocent enough, but she knew that had he said it in fully waking hours, it would have been far more suggestive.
"Do you want to talk?"
"Of course."
Those two words shouldn't have made her smile grow, but they did, and she was beginning to accept that.
"What brought this about?" He asked, sitting up a bit more where he was and facing the sound of her voice.
"Purely selfish reasons." She answered truthfully.
"What are they?"
"Couldn't sleep, couldn't relax, and..." She was allowed to be honest in the dark, right? "And it'd be nice to get to know you." She admitted.
He stared at her from across the room, and even if she couldn't fully read it in the dark, it didn't stop it from getting under her skin. So she wriggled down slightly till she was looking up at the ceiling again.
She listened as his weight shifted on the bed, heard his feet pad over, and felt his presence settle on the side of her mattress. She was thankful that he kept his distance, not touching her, only moving to see her face. Creepy, but vaguely endearing. Odd how she was starting to see that.
"So what do you want to talk about?" He asked casually, and she faintly remembered that similar conversation in reverse back in Mystic Falls, what seemed like centuries ago.
"Anything."
"Like?"
"Like...your favourite colour." She winced. Had she seriously just asked the deadliest man on Earth what his favourite colour was? How childish.
"Yellow."
"Just like that?"
He let out a breath that sounded vaguely like a laugh, but she knew he didn't laugh that much, surely he couldn't laugh that much, even around her. "Surprised?"
"I wouldn't have expected it to be something like that."
He settled more firmly on the bed. She glanced over to find he was sitting cross-legged. "I like contradictions, when they go my way. And I find myself drawn to opposites."
She swallowed, aware of her own brightness and how it contrasted his darkness.
"What about you?"
She pursed her lips, giving the tiny question thought. "Blue, I think. Or teal."
"Because there is such a difference."
He could almost hear her roll her eyes in the dark.
"Of course they're different."
"How?"
"Well, blue is just blue. But I like teal now, cause its such a different blend." She cut herself off quickly before she started rambling about how she had come to the colour itself after spending time pondering just what shade of blue his eyes were.
"Interesting." He mused, and she felt a serious jolt of fear that he could really read minds and he had just failed to tell them about this crazy old-vampire ability.
"Well then you come up with a good question." She said, rolling over on her side so she could see him.
He looked up to the ceiling for a moment, actually contemplating. "What's your first memory?
"Gosh," She exhaled, fluttering her eyes slightly. "You're pulling out the deep questions early."
He merely shrugged, waiting for her answer with a concentration that was both disconcerting and flattering.
"Um, lets see." She closed her eyes, picturing the scene in front of her. "My first memory is of my mom and dad and I making a snowman on the front lawn at Christmas time when I was three. I really didn't like my snow gloves, so I kept pulling them off with my teeth so I could form the snowman's neck with my fingers. I liked feeling the snow. My mom kept putting them back on my hands, but my dad understood, so he got me to lie down and make a snow angel next to the snowman. And I loved that, cause the snow was all around me, and the snowflakes fell on my face, and my hands weren't as cold." She opened her eyes to find his looking at her with such soft emotions on his face that it threw her back into self-consciousness. "Meaningless, maybe, but it was also a time that I wasn't fully aware of whether or not my parents still loved each other, it was more a given thing, something you assumed cause it just had to be true. And I like snow. So there. Your turn."
He boldly lay down next to her to stare at the ceiling. She startled a little, but relaxed next to him as he just lay there thinking. She was very aware of the two and a half inches between them.
"There was a field near our house that was specifically ours. That's the spot we claimed, my siblings and I. We used to go there whenever we wanted a bit of space. My father didn't know that I wasn't his by then, but he was starting to come to the conclusion slowly. I must have been...five, or six? Not a very young memory, but that's the one I can recall. Finn and Elijah were play fighting with swords, and I wanted to join in, but I couldn't. Rebekah was still not born yet, and Kol was three, still too young to join us. So I climbed a tree till I was away from it all, and I could just sit in the branches and feel the sun and wind on my face. It was wonderful." He smirked. "Of course after that I fell trying to climb back down. Finn was concerned, but impassive – he knew that I'd get hurt somehow, and it might have taught me a lesson. Elijah was worried, almost like a mother hen. It was only a scar, though. At least my first wasn't to my fathers hand."
He lay staring at the ceiling for a while before catching her eye again. They stared at each other quietly in the dark. She broke the stillness with a quick inhalation of air.
"Can I see it? Your scar."
He frowned slightly, clearly not liking the idea of anyone seeing his weaknesses, but he raised the arm closest to her and twisted it slightly till the white jagged line of the old scar could be seen.
She ran two fingers slowly over it without much thought, and let them rest against his skin even after he had lowered his arm again.
"Favourite letter of the alphabet?"
He scoffed at the absurdity of her question, but he knew it was said just to rescue him from reminiscing about the past.
"A."
"Lemme guess, cause it stands for alpha."
"You know me so well." He smiled sweetly down at her, and was rewarded with an eye roll, her fingers lightly scratching once against his skin before subconsciously settling into a light, soothing circling pattern.
"Mine is E. Although I've always had a soft spot for Q."
He looked at her incredulously.
"It barely gets used! But when it does, it usually has U as a buddy. That's nice."
"Are you high, love?"
She buried her face into her pillow, but he smoothed back her hair so he could see her still. She looked up at him with one eye, the other still hidden in the pillow. Her circles paused for a moment, then continued as he moved his hand away from her golden hair and back down to his side.
"Your question now." She murmured, the sound getting lost in the pillow.
"Any bad habit?"
"Hmm, where do I begin..." She mused softly, and chuckled when he growled lowly like an irritated lion. "You're the one who asked."
"Only because I knew whatever habit you claimed to be bad couldn't be all that terrible." He gazed down at her gently. "You need to see yourself in a brighter light, sweetheart."
"Just for the record, I think that's one of your bad habits. Calling people sweetheart and love and that."
"If you haven't noticed, you're the only one I've been calling those things since I met you." Because I didn't mean them before, but I mean them now. He added in his mind. He'd not admit that to her till he thought it wouldn't be wasted air.
"Still makes it a bad habit." She noted the sour look on his face. "Maybe just a habit." She amended.
They lay quietly for a moment before he brought her attention back to the conversation.
"So are you going to answer the question?"
She shrugged, tracing a star onto his arm with a feather light touch.
"Don't we have to leave at some point? Or is this the extent of the world?"
"We'll be leaving at about 10:15 this morning. We've got some time."
"Where are we going?
"You'll see when we get there."
She frowned at that, but let it slide. For the moment.
"Where have you been, then? You know I've never been anywhere, but where have you been?"
He chuckled, the small sound so intimate this close in the dark. "The question probably should be where haven't I been."
"Go on, then."
"Antarctica, Hawaii, a couple of territories in Africa, and one of the Baltic States."
"But everywhere else?"
"Yes. I've been everywhere else. A thousand years gives you plenty of time to travel. Particularly when you're trying to find a doppelganger."
Her fingers flinched away from his arm.
"We probably shouldn't talk about that."
"Caroline, you should try to understand. I've had a part of me buried for centuries, had part of who I was meant to be locked inside me for almost my whole life. I didn't feel complete the whole time, didn't seem truly real. And I've seen wars and famines and disasters, death every day. So a sacrifice for my selfish self didn't seem that awful."
"I do understand that slightly, but you killed innocent people."
"Innocent people die every day, love."
"You sacrificed innocent people I care about. Innocent people who had lives and families that they were torn from by your hand."
They reached a silent impasse. Klaus realised that he would have to change to fully be with Caroline, and Caroline recognised the fact that Klaus could never be a good man for her. And neither was comfortable with facing that right now, certainly not thinking about the ramifications.
So Caroline sighed, rolling out of bed to go curl up on the wide windowsill that faced the cobbled stone streets and Dvortsovaya Place, the Palace Square. The sun wasn't yet peeking over the horizon, but its light wasn't too far away, and the sky had the spooky before dawn gleam to it. The glow illuminated her face in a way that Klaus knew he could not catch on paper, regardless of his talent. So he simply admired it from the bed, tracing every feature with his eyes.
Come back to bed, love, he wanted to say.
Its not all what you think it is, sweetheart, he wanted to tell her.
Meet me halfway, he would have said.
But he found he couldn't draw breath.