A/N: This is a drabble I wrote for the tumblr blog, Klaroline69, which is comprised of a team of writers who fill various prompts messaged to them by other users. The prompt was role reversal (so more Original Caroline and newborn Klaus) and the couple's first time in New Orleans.

In this warm molasses midnight, there is a sudden stirring.

From the Hotel Mazarin: a single cowboy.

With confident steps and swinging arms he goes to his fate, his first stride a human advancement, his second a supernatural mist.

Beyond the windows of nearby storefronts: the secondhand click click click of hammers drawn, slides racked.

"You think the barrier's down yet?" Marcel asks beside her, crossing his arms.

She watches.

There was always a certain futile romanticism in those hard-leather men of the plains who with pistols on hips strode out to meet their fates, to be buried beneath dry white tumbleweed hills amidst the horses in their bleached xylophone scatterings, but this new generation of iron-eyed John Waynes, these boys with steel skin, marshmallow nerves-

They're all show.

She can see the boy shaking from here.

He reaches the street in a blur.

God, how long the thunder rolls on from these little black mouths that poke out from behind waxwork dummies, toyshop fashions, confectioner's ribbons.

"Nope."

She pops the 'p'.

They watch the boy's little rag doll corpse convulse against the spell that holds them all in place.

"Maybe if you hadn't sent a damn baby to bring Sophie down-"

"He's the only one who can get through to the other side- the wolves think he's one of them." She flicks a curl over her shoulder. "He'll do it."

"You're putting a lot of faith in this kid, Caroline. Don't tell me he suckered you in with those pretty little dimples. Come on- the Caroline I knew back in the 20th century? She'd have gutted him just for trying."

She lets out a little huff. "He's useful. As soon as he ceases to be? I will."

She taps her fingers on the railing.

She adjusts the hem of her shirt, the sleeves of her jacket, and she does not for a moment swallow down anything hot, she does not stare out over these damp spring streets and wonder what the hell is taking him so long, she does not want him to just come back to her-

First the heart.

Slippery thing.

With fish elusiveness it skids about in your fingers, leaps from the fist, flops about on the floor, rolls to a long red halt.

And then of course, the neck: a bit of kindling in his hands, a matchstick rupture, a peppermint shattering.

Down sags this rearranged bodyguard, his head twisted round, his larynx poking through.

Beside his companion and his empty chest this bodyguard goes to seek his final rest, staring so endlessly, bemusedly, plaintively with his bright marble eyes.

"Jane-an-"

In a flash he takes the witch down, and like the first guard he divests her of her heart and he pulls his fingers away coated in this bright candy nectar, his fangs prickling his lip, his nostrils full of this alcoholic lure, but now from the other room there is a sudden commotion.

"Sophie -Sophie, what the hell- you can't break the connection, the wards will all go down, dammit-"

"I'm afraid she didn't have much of a choice, sweetheart," he says from the doorway.

"Klaus. Jesus Christ."

He smiles. "Let's not take the Lord's name in vain, shall we, love? After all, haven't you still got a chance at that pearly salvation within the clouds?"

"You can't tell me you expect to make it out of here now. There's a whole pack just outside that's going to take issue with the fact that you just murdered two of their own-"

"Oh, I don't intend to make it out. I'm rather aware of the consequences of my actions, sweetheart. I just need to buy a moment," he says calmly, and then he is upon her.

He breaks three of her ribs on his way inside, and when her scream brings four sets of steps at a dead sprint from the lobby of the hotel which they have selected as their headquarters, he gets her round the liver, and he squeezes until she can scream no more.

"Another step, and I tear it out of her," he snarls, unearthing his phone with his free hand. "If you think she can simply spell herself a new one, by all means, mates, have at it."

"Go. Now," he barks into her ear, and with a click he is gone.

She snaps her phone shut.

"The ward's down. Go," she snaps, and with a light little hop, she swings herself out over the railing and she drops with soundless cat grace to the ground far below.

He makes his way through six of them before a lucky shot grazes his shoulder and a skillful one pierces him through the lung.

He staggers, he loses his grip on a chest, he reels sideways into the wall, but you'll have to do better than that, mates, newly risen from the ashes he may be, his abilities not quite honed, his strength not yet unbeatable, but Mikael beat into Niklaus the boy a true survivor, and Klaus the beast is not yet so removed from this lesson that he would bend his neck so easily to the sword.

With one bullet still in him he throws himself down the stairs, the carpet singeing his palms, the treads opening his lip, and on the bottom level he finds his feet again with a brief sea leg staggering and he makes a dash for the front door, his lungs charred, his throat burned away-

He is side-checked by a mountainous shoulder, and now through the glass he crashes, rolling as he hits, his assailant crunching along behind him through this twinkling gravel-

Asshole, asshole, super asshole- God, don't any of this selfish twenty-first century dicks know how to treat a lady?

She drops another to lie with his fresh lipstick throat still seeping, stepping over him as she wipes her mouth, her eyes scanning in little flicks that pick up another one over there and one just beside him, from the shadows they emerge, gaping mouths, gaping rifles, wild eyes, wilder screams, please-

She has seen it done so much better, boys.

The storming of the Bastille, the roiling of those disgruntled Russian peasants who dispersed to leave behind the Romanovs like so much flotsam forgotten by outgoing tides- this is nothing, she hasn't a single scratch on her, freaking come at her, for God's sake-

The candy shop whose barricade she broke so easily comes alive.

Lightning! Thunder! The eye is upon her! The wretched lid with it's Frankenstein embroidery flickers, oscillates, lifts! The beast stirs!

And so on and so forth, blah blah, yawn.

She cracks her neck.

Question, boys.

No, don't take potshots at her while she's talking- you see what happens, when you pull that sort of shit? Now, of course she didn't want to twist that kid's head around until it just popped right off -oopsie; she always forgets how delicate those things are- but rudeness is such an unfortunate side effect of this bustling century with phone perpetually to its ear, and God, is a little simple courtesy really so much to ask for?

Gun down, sweetie.

Safety on, dickbag.

Now.

She's looking for someone.

She's sure you've seen him around somewhere- about yay high, curls, dimples to shift a man's very sexuality and awaken the sleeping nun's erotic instinct?

By some grace of a god who must surely have turned the blind eye to him long ago, he reaches the street.

With a great foaming of sharp copper saliva he digs the bullet from his lung and folds forward to rest on his hands and knees for just a moment, breathing past the bile.

One, two, mate, and up you go.

He staggers to his feet.

"Turn around, asshole," someone snaps, and round his neck goes an arm, into his knee thrusts a heel-

Down he goes with his fangs in this arm, his nails hooked to the bone, and now one hot white explosion is followed by another, the shots muffled by his shirt, the muzzle flush to his spine.

"Turn around," she mimics, smiling perkily.

Bye, jerk off.

A scream, a twist, a cracking.

"Get up," she says coldly, and jerks Klaus to his feet. "Run with them in you, unless you managed to somehow slaughter that entire building full of pissed off witches and werewolves?"

"Caroline?" he asks hazily.

"No?" she replies, thrusting him behind her as another volley is fired from one of the lobby windows, holding onto him as he shudders and sags and goes down to a knee. "Then get up."

"Did you come for me?" he asks, and how much hope there is in this boy who has no reason for it.

She holds him up by the elbows, and in a blink she whisks him from street to back alley to side entrance, and she stands supporting his head on her shoulder as she feels around for the little sharp wooden splinters they have left inside him.

"Bathroom's to the very back. Marcel had the front desk bring up some clean clothes. I'm going to assume your wolf friends probably burned all of yours, seeing how you turned out to be such a little backstabber and all."

He peels off his shirt and leaves it in a pile on her floor, reaching for his boots next. "Well now, whose idea was that?"

"I didn't hear any protests on your end."

He drops a boot, works off his sock, sets to work on the other. "On the contrary, I believe you heard plenty- you merely chose to exploit my gentlemanly inability to refuse a lady." He looks up from beneath his eyebrows with a smile as he unlaces his second boot.

"Well isn't that the biggest load of crap I've heard since Henry VIII tried to persuade me that Anne Boleyn's execution had nothing to do with her failure to provide him with a viable male heir." She pauses to admire the movements of his arm muscles as he undoes the knots in his laces.

Lean little thing, but what he has is tight and toned, his abdominals in subtle little ridges, his forearms roped with delicate cable, none of him burdened with a spare inch, his waist trim, his hips narrow.

He kicks off his second boot, flicks off his remaining sock.

"I'm curious," she says, lounging back on the settee across from him and crossing her legs. "How far is this little strip tease going to go?"

He straightens with a smile, his dimples showing, his hair a little mussed. "As far as you want it to, love."

"I think we established back in London that you don't want to charm your way into my panties. Most of the guys who sleep with me don't make it out in one piece."

He cocks his head, loses the smile.

She does not mourn the loss of those adorable little pockmarks, the precise lift of his brow, the coiling of his pouty Abercrombie lips.

"And why is that, Caroline?"

He's always been a little nosy, this one. How much of history has she seen; whose elbows has she rubbed; in which wars did she participate; what did she like in the past; for what does she hope in the future-

But you don't dig down into someone like her, kid.

Yes, she was once a girl.

Yes, she once gripped in her needy little hands friends, lovers, a family, but time -it chips away at everything, walls crumble before its might, civilizations topple beneath its touch- a sister, a mother, a brother -everything, Klaus- your cheeks never show a day, your back remains so stiffly straight, your hair does not mature from ribbon to wire, but do you understand that that's it -that's all you can keep- your firm cheeks, plump lips, smooth hands, a pleasant mirror, preserved sex appeal- think that's enough, Mikaelson?

She ticks her eyes away from him.

"Caroline."

"Get in the shower."

"Why did you come after me?" he asks, and she sees in his face how much he needs to not be dismissed, to hear that what happened was someone chose him, someone will always choose him; a place at someone's side and arms that will not turn him away, God, that's all he wants, this boy whose face gives away too much.

But to cross the line, to step over this careful barrier she has erected between them, to search around underneath all her layers upon layers of centuries-thick armament and to acknowledge that ok, yes, maybe she jumped that railing and she whisked away into the night because he makes her laugh, because she likes his smile- she can't do that, not when time with its reaper inevitability will come and snatch him away, when one day he will subside beneath either grave mold or memories.

She watches his jaw tighten, his eyes flicker away, the slow white-knuckled bunching of his fingers within the shirt he has bent low to retrieve from the carpet.

He opens his mouth.

She shuts him up for good.

"I know what you're thinking, about me," she says coldly, before he can slip free a single word. "About how you feel. But you don't. You can't. Not anymore. You think getting all warm in the bathing suit parts means there's a part of you that's still human? That I laugh and you get those little butterflies in your stomach and oh, fanfreakingtastic- little Nik is still somewhere locked away inside, maybe down deep, but he's there, and he loves a girl. And one day? They're going to ride off into the sunset on their rainbow-colored unicorns and forever- that's how long that boy is not going to be lonely anymore. But you know what? You're a monster now. Get used to it. We don't really feel- or so I've been told. We can't love, and we can't be loved, and you're just going to have to get over it. Nobody's loved me- really, really loved me in a thousand years, and that- that, Klaus Mikaelson, is what you have to look forward to. Not a fairy tale of a girl and a boy who didn't get enough. Not a happy ending. Nothing but time, and how you're going to spend it all."

She sits looking up at him, her throat very tight and her hands very still.

He is not quite done after all. "You've been told wrong, love," he says quietly, and in a blink he is gone.

He hears her feet on the carpet just outside the bathroom, and in a moment she has cracked open the door, let out the steam, slipped through into this wet jungle atmosphere with its fog in a cirrus gathering on the mirror.

He holds himself very still, the water thundering off his head, scalding his back, pooling beneath his toes.

She stands for an entire minute while the shampoo stings his eyes and the soap gathers between his toes and the drain gurgles its deep wet inhales.

There is a rustling.

The whispering of a shirt pulled off, the hissing of jeans skimmed down, underclothes discarded, hair let loose.

She twitches the curtain aside and lifts one long white leg over the edge of the tub to join him on its sticky blue mat, and he lets out a breath he does not even remember drawing.

Her slow revolution is a thing that lasts forever; for an eternity she turns, profile first, a sliver of throat, breast, stomach, her feet squeaking on the mat.

The shower paints streaks of wheat through her hair, flattens her curls down her back, makes its way in thin little tendrils over her nipples.

She blinks up at him. "Don't say anything, all right?" she whispers, and then her hands find his chest and a hesitant step and a forward lean and her breasts touch him next, her nipples hard.

He stirs between them, but she does not reach down for him.

She tilts her face and she shuts her eyes, and a simple brush, a tentative touch, and the things that are awakened inside of him-

What she with her thousand years does not understand, what she who has spent years as the affluent squander dollars can no longer see is that hope lingers forever on, a pestilence without cure, an epidemic sans treatment.

He sees it in her eyes and he hears it in her laugh and though she tells him not to speak she lets out a little breath that sounds like his name as he grips her by the hips and he pulls her up against him, and don't try and persuade him, love, that you are no longer capable, that this is merely some bloody little tryst, an instinctive animal mating.

He kisses her chin, her nose, her forehead, slips his arms round her waist, presses his hips flush to hers.

He backs her up against the wall and he watches her face as he slides his hand down between them and he slips in first one finger and then two, and now she arches further into him, drops her head, opens her mouth-

He lowers his cheek to her chest as he strokes her clit with his thumb and pumps his fingers slowly down to the knuckle and then back out again, her breaths rattling in her throat, his hoarse against her skin.

"Faster," she gasps, arching again, one hand fumbling up to find his shoulder, her nails drawing blood.

He drops instead to his knees as he works away at that same leisurely pace, catching her ankle with his free hand and hooking it over his shoulder.

He leans in to replace his fingers with his mouth, sucking her clit in excruciatingly slow intervals between his lips to explore it with his tongue.

"Oh, God," she hisses, and clenches her hand in his hair.

The rain has turned tepid against his back.

Her nails hurt his scalp; her foot twitches against his shoulder.

He slides his tongue inside, withdraws it slowly, laps it up to taste her clit, glides it back down along her lip.

"Oh my God."

He continues this unhurried exploration as her leg twitches again and her nails dig in harder, flicking his tongue in little figure eights, adding a finger to his ministrations, taking it away, thrusting with his tongue, sucking with his lips, and now suddenly her foot bears down hard and with a little kick it shoves him away.

He looks up with clouded eyes.

"Sit back," she demands.

He lowers himself down, stretching his legs out in front of him.

She takes his face roughly between her hands, eases herself down onto the tip of him, kisses him until his lower lip bleeds.

He lets out a shivery little breath as she takes him to the hilt with a little buck of her hips, her nails raking his shoulders, her teeth tasting his neck.

She begins to rock, just a little seesaw of motion, a fantastic friction, and in a moment she begins to spasm, convulsing around him, squeezing him as she comes-

He crushes her hip in his hand, kisses his way from breast to collarbone to jaw line, thrusts up as she slides down to meet him, and now as this first wave passes, she takes his face in her hands again, and she rests her forehead against his own as she rides him.

He opens his eyes to watch her face, all the little minute motions of lash and lip, the quivering of the lids, the helpless shifting of the mouth. "Caroline," he breathes, and she closes his mouth with her own.

She tweaks his hard little nipples between her fingers and she grinds until another wave collapses her with an expletive against his chest, until she hears him let out a sharp little exhale into her hair as his orgasm bursts warm and wet inside her, one arm snaking around her back to pull her closer against him.

He kisses her so reverently, as she sits here on top of him with the water going cold above them and the mat sticky beneath them.

It is not going to move her; she will not let him burrow beneath her.

He opens his eyes very slowly.

He smiles so freaking sincerely, this boy who like all others will one day leave her behind.