He has walked into the room like a warning; she saw him before everyone else, before she even opened her eyes.

She cannot breathe. She searches for it, that breath she had just a second ago, but she can't find it.

"Hello, love," he says softly, without the vindication that characterizes him in her memories.

She sighs. She is tired, already; the weight of his presence bears down on her, all this energy spent trying to resist him.

He has brought the apocalypse with him; every time. He pretends to hold it for her sake, the scorching fire, the showers of blood, but really he doesn't want them to die. He enjoys their suffering too much.

Well. Not hers, maybe.

"I could take you away from here," he says now, not an inch from her mouth, too close. Then his fingers on her jaw, dancing. "I could save you. you'll never be safer than by my side."

She swats his hand away, annoyed that she's thinking about it. "Fuck you," she says. "I don't need to be saved."

His eyes are two big black rings, but she pretends not to notice.

The thing is that no one has loved her. They haven't; they've liked her, and enjoyed her, and kissed her, and promised her things they knew they wouldn't do. They loved her like a high school sweetheart, with a sweet sort of condescension, knowing that one day they would grow up and meet The One.

Not him, though. he loves her for real. He loves her like a queen; if she dared say yes he would close his fingers over the nape of her neck and kiss her like a ravage, like something precious; and he would kneel at her feet, and say her name over and over again until it was the only thing he knew.

What a dick.

"What do you think about true love?" she asks to the room at large.

Elena says, "I believe" at the same time as the words "What a joke" cross Damon's lips. Still; they look at each other like it all means something, how spectacularly wrong their little game is. Sometimes Caroline wants to slap them across the face, the both of them, leave long deep scratches on their cheeks and tell them to quit it. But they wouldn't listen. She's just the understudy, after all.

"Why?" asks Elena, her eyes sharper than usual, unless maybe it's only the afternoon light draping its golden halo around her forehead. "Why do you want to know what we think? Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," Caroline says, a bit snappish. "Whatever."

"You can tell me anything," says Elena, stupidly earnest. Damon rolls his eyes behind her, but his hand skates over the nape of her neck, not daring to touch her. Caroline wonders why he never even considered loving her; was she not worth-it?

"Yeah," she says instead of laughing, because she's never been able to tell Elena 'anything' since the day they met and elena was Elena Gilbert with her perfect teeth and perfect boyfriend and perfect grades and Caroline was just plain old Caroline, the try-hard.

Elena's her friend, after all.

The thing about Klaus is, he comes back. He throws a graduation cap like a boomerang and kisses her cheek and still her comes back; he fucks her against a tree, she pretends not to remember about it and he comes back. It drives her insane.

Today he's sitting on one of the benches in front of her dorm, reading a book.

"Do you really have nothing other to do than stalk me? I thought you were the king of all vampires or something equally as ridiculous," she snarks.

He holds up his book, pretending he hasn't heard her, a smile quirking up the edge of his mouth. "Anna Karenina," he says, simply.

She suppresses a shiver. "My bad, you do have other things to do. Now if you would please take your boring Russian classics somewhere else."

And she walks away.

(But he's there the next day, and the day after that; when he's finished Anna Karenina he has it delivered to her dorm through an undergrad with glazed-over eyes, who hands it to her with a blank, "Compliments from Klaus mikaelson, king of all vampires." Caroline rolls her eyes, stifles a laugh.)

"What do you want?"

The bench is freezing. It's winter already; soon it'll be spring, and Caroline doesn't know if she can walk everyday past his red smile.

He tilts his head. "You're not serious."

"You've had what you wanted. I gave in. Isn't that enough?" He arches an eyebrow, a sort of amused acknowledgment, oh, so now it happened.

"Caroline," he says her name thoughtfully, rolling it over his palate. "Love. Tell me something: look me in the eyes and tell me you've had your fill, you don't ever want to see me again. Tell me there's nothing else you want. Look me in the eyes and tell me that and I'll walk away, and never come back." He reclines against the bench; this is his pretend-composed face, but he doesn't do it as well as his brother, can't hide the nerves, his fingers tapping a quick melody against the wood.

"You've said that before. What tells me you're not going to break your promise again?"

"Nothing; I guess you'll have to take a gamble, then, love."

My entire life has been a gamble, she wants to tell him. I have thrown the dice more times than I can count, put everything on the table, and look where that's got me.

She doesn't say anything, in the end.

He reaches for her face. He hesitates, he takes an inhale, he brushes a strand of hair out of her forehead, finger tracing the outline of her ear. The impact of it reverberates all through her body.

"I thought so," he says, tender.

One day he stops her with a hand on her arm. She can immediately tell that he's anxious; his skin is hot, feverish.

"What if I don't save you?" he asks. "What if I just offer you something, no strings attached?"

She laughs. "There's always strings attached," she says.

"You can't -" she throws her arms up, irritated. "You can't just expect me to pick up my things and give up my life, my friends, everything, just because you... want to show me whatever it is you want to show me. it doesn't work like that."

"It does," he says, more earnest than he's ever been. He's too close. She feels suffocated, heat bleeding through his clothes, even though she knows underneath them he's cold as a corpse. "For us it does."

She bares her teeth. The line between anger and arousal is possibly thinner than that between love and hate, and requires greater protection. Once was enough. It tore her apart; it left scorch marks all over her insides, traces no amount of showers could wipe off. She's learned to live with them - but more will kill her, she's sure of it. (Or worse: it will deconstruct her, turn her inside out until she's nothing but a mirror for his greed.)

"You can't make someone love you," she says.

Suddenly his hand is on hers, gripping like a claw. "That's not what I'm worried about," he says, with big burning eyes that say that he knows all the things he pretends not to, that he's still -

"Sorry." She swallows. she searches her throat for an I hate you, but the only things left are searing truths. "It's not gonna happen, Klaus."

There is something on his face, for a second, like rage, like holy furor; then it deflates, and he disappears.

Travel, they said, hilariously, is the only thing that comes to her mind when she's attacked outside Vienna by two rogue vampire hunters. It's at least a little her fault, since she's the one who refused Elena and Bonnie's company on her trip, said she had to 'figure some things out,' whatever those things are. Still. If she dies, she's gonna be pissed.

"Prepare to suffer," one of the hunters, a young northern type, says pompously.

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Really? That's what you're going with?" The hunter narrows his eyes and lunges, stake raised, aiming for her heart. How original.

Facing both of them at the same time isn't the easiest thing to do, and for a while Caroline is genuinely worried that she's actually going to die in a sordid back-alley while her best Manolos are still in her suitcase. She manages to break the stake, though, and from then on it all gets much easier.

It's only after she's taken care of them and is done snacking on the younger one - she didn't have time to get breakfast, okay - that she notices something's not right. She turns around on her heels, reaching for the remains of the stake.

"Who's there?"

"That's a bit nonsensical, asking that, isn't it, love," he says, drawing out of the shadows, dramatic as always, his arms crossed over his chest.

Caroline draws in a breath.

"Klaus."

"Caroline."

One day she'll dare to clamp a hand over his mouth before he says her name, or forbid him to speak it altogether; this way she'll be able to protect herself from the way it goes through her like an arrow, almost makes her stumble.

"Long time no see," he says softly.

The words are out of her mouth before she can help it. "Three years." not that she counted, or anything. "What are you doing here?"

He looks faintly embarrassed.

"Please tell me you're not here to play the shining knight," Caroline says.

"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid. In my defense, for a second there you seemed like you might be in a pinch."

She wipes the blood off her mouth self-consciously. "I told you, I can take care of myself."

"Yes," he nods, "apparently you can."

"Was there anything else," she asks, pretending her heart isn't hammering in her ribcage, that he can't hear it, "or was that all?"

"Didn't you miss me?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. For the first time in their conversation she really looks at him: he looks grown, calmer almost. But she's always been able to see the things simmering underneath; after all she broke the skin of his wrist once, and that is a bond you can't unbind, as much as tells herself she'd like to.

"Not really," she lies.

He smiles; her first instinct is to shield her eyes. "Have you been to the Belvedere yet? there's something I want to show you."

No. Caroline has the strength in her to say no, to put her foot down, to fight the need for surrender. Her unsaid answer hangs in the silence, and for a second he looks worried, his face darkening. But -

"Alright," she says. "You can go first, I'm crappy at orientation."

(In front of Egon Schiele's The Embrace, while she struggles to get her breath back, he whispers in her ear that he dreamt of her every night, that his house in New Orleans is full to the attic of paintings of her, that he's killed countless women for the simple reason that they didn't look like her, smell like her, illuminate the room like her. He tells her all that very calmly, his thumb brushing the back of her hand, and the only time his voice breaks is when he says, "You are everything, Caroline Forbes.")

Naked in the sheets she can breathe easier: under her hands he is putty, he is human again. The cold moonlight catches on his wet lip and he says in a moan, "Caroline -"

and Caroline tells herself it's okay, it's alright, this is a no-penalty zone, this is over the ocean, this is the land of possibilities and mistakes, nothing here is real,

even when he murmurs in her collarbone that he loves her, he loves her, more than he has ever loved anything else, blood, conquest, kingship; more than he loved his hybrids and more than he loves the city he's build from the ground up.

"Stop," she says, climbing over him, pressing her palm against his mouth. "Don't talk."

For a second he looks like he's going to bite her hand; but he obeys.

Vienna is ten days of reaching for him and finding flesh, ten days free of sin; Vienna has no churches, as far as she can tell, or if it does she can't see them, turned blind by the monster sleeping next to her, and the monster wearing her skin. Vienna is harsh sunlight and his voracious laugh in her neck, his tired smile over a plate of crêpes at ten am, his arm around her waist, sometimes squeezing so hard she knows it will leave bruises, like he's afraid she'll run away.

(She will. She's bidding her time, that's all.)

She knows the MO: thieves escape in the night, pack a hasty bag and silently tip-toe to the door, throwing a regretful glance to the motionless shape they're leaving behind. But the night is his kingdom: she will leave in plain daylight.

She should have expected it, in hindsight, that he would foil her plans.

"Leaving so soon?" he asks while she's packing her dresses. In the shadows of the room he is only a collection of features; it's terrifying in itself that she knows how to connect them, that she has spanned with her hands the entire length of his flesh.

She tries to read his eyes; fails. "I told you this wasn't going to happen," she says, defensive.

"Didn't it already?"

I'm saving my skin, Caroline thinks.

She squares her shoulders. "Are you going to keep me from leaving?"

He seems to think it over. "No," he says eventually. "I already told you. You're free to do whatever you want, love."

"Don't call me that."

"What would you like me to call you?"

She turns her face away. She's furious, she finds: against him, for constantly pulling her back in, for being the beast that he is; and against herself, for falling into his traps.

"I'm going now," she says, not moving.

He takes it for what it is: for her saying, what about a goodbye kiss? With supernatural speed he gets out of the bed and plasters himself against her, her back to the door, his fingers buried in her hair, palms at the edges of her jaw. She closes her eyes. he kisses her like she is the sun and he isn't immortal, like he could die from it, like all that he has loved her already was only just an appetizer for all that he will still love her; he kisses her to dissuade her from leaving and to convince her to go. He kisses her like he doesn't care about running out of air, like kissing her is enough to survive.

And when he pulls away and she stumbles where she's standing he smiles, that self-satisfied smile from a hundred years ago, and he pulls her close and he kisses her ear and he says, "So long."

After that there's not much to say. Caroline picks up her bags and leaves.

It takes a long time. It takes a lot of learning. It takes spectacular failures and shining successes, it takes having her name plastered on billboards and slandered in the mouth of kings; it takes a lot more blood than she thought it would, a lot more growing up.

But there is a day: there is a day Caroline Forbes wakes up and remembers, and she gets out of bed and his face is the only thing in her mind. She searches all the idle mentions of his name she gathered across the centuries, the endless chase, a body here, a castle there, a trail of flames, knowing, all along, that there would be a time when he would not turn her inside out.

She opens her curtains: beyond her window a plain of stainless snow stretches, horizons no one has yet had the time to desecrate. She feels calm; ready. The thought of finding him excites her, sparks something young and impetuous in her heart.

I'm coming for you, she thinks; after a second of silence something travels back to her over the continents, like a distant cry of joy.