Hello everyone!

So this popped into my head while listening to Ed Sheeren's song Small Bump. If you are familiar with the song then you may have an idea of what this story is about. It is pretty obvious from the story description though.

I've put this under Klaus and Caroline simply because, while it is Caroline-centric, the subject matter is inherently linked to their relationship.

I warn you, it is not easy reading. It was not easy writing.

But this idea, this one-shot would not let up and it was interfering with my work on the Black Hearts series.

So, here it is.

All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

She had read that once, back when life had seemed so much simpler. It had seemed such a profound statement, so beautiful in its simplicity that she had held onto it like a lifeline in the weeks that followed her parents' divorce, her youthful ignorance and naivety blinding her to the truth behind the verse. Caroline had never much cared for Shakespeare but even she was not exempt from the playwright's truth. Romeo and Juliet had been a beautiful story of naive love and the power of its destruction. Hamlet was something else entirely.

She'd been drawn to the play at her worst, nothing more than a young girl bitter and heartsore. She had thought that her life could get no worse while reading the depth of Hamlet's despair. It was incomprehensible to her young mind. The death of her parents' marriage was the greatest ill she would ever see or experience in her whole life. She'd been so young and so naive, clinging to the Shakespearean verse with the belief that all living things, including her mother and father's relationship, would eventually end. It was nature, an inevitable cycle. And while she had been right in her assessment, ignorance stemmed from the hopeful belief that there would be no more pain, that this was it, the one and only ill of her life.

And then Damon Salvatore had waltzed into town and destroyed any and all innocence she'd had left. Caroline had known then the real truth behind Shakespeare's words. Vampires. They were the living dead, the poor yet fortunate souls that had had the chance to pass through nature, to die and become eternal. That had not been Shakespeare's meaning. But it was her meaning now, her understanding and her interpretation of the truth.

And now that meaning had changed once again.

Caroline didn't know how or why it had happened, only that it had.

It being the utter cruelty of life.

Her life.

The truth was that Caroline could hardly comprehend what had happened. She'd been out in the woods, running slowly to try and work out the burning ache in her bones. It had been a long week, one filled with undue stress and she was tired, so unbelievably tired. Caroline had simply ignored the pain and moved on. There were more important things to worry about than a few simple aches and pains. Markos and The Travellers were a far more pressing issue than a stomach cramp. She had kept quiet, ignoring the growing ache and dull burn in her gut, and simply kept moving.

It had never occurred to Caroline the abnormality of it all. Vampires were immune to common illnesses. She had never once stopped to think back, to actually remember the last time that she had been sick or felt this tired and sore without first being tortured. There was no vervain, no werewolf venom running through her veins. She was simply tired, a little stressed from the incident between The Travellers and her mother. She'd stayed in Mystic Falls for a couple of days following her mother's brush with death. Tomorrow she would leave for Whitmore.

Caroline had run, her body instinctively moving through the woods and into a clearing she knew only too well. Her mind had conjured images of the place ever since that day, nearly four months ago. It was hard to believe that so much time had passed since Klaus' visit and Katherine's very timely demise. She had tried not to think about that day, tried to forget the taste of his lips and the warmth of his smile. Caroline had tried to forget but of course, it was impossible for her to do so. The ghost of his lips haunted her. If she closed her eyes, Caroline swore that she could feel them moving along the base of neck.

It had taken her a while but she'd moved passed the guilt. That day had been her choice, her indulgence. She had finally done something for her, given into the temptation that had gnawed at her from the beginning. The result was a magnificent liberating rush that, to this day, she had not been able to recreate with any other.

She'd stopped in the clearing as a sharp pain tore through her side. Even then, Caroline had failed to realise the gravity of her situation. Something had been wrong with her for weeks. She'd simply been too preoccupied to notice. It was only when the pain in her stomach grew sharp, so sharp that her body folded in on itself that she finally realised something was wrong.

The pain had been awful.

It came from deep within her, as if her body was tearing itself apart. She'd fallen to the ground, one hand gripping a nearby tree for support while the other curled around her abdomen. She had screamed, so afraid and so confused. It was only when she looked down and saw the blood, the dark red liquid between her thighs that a part of her brain registered what was happening.

It made no sense. And yet, it was the only explanation.

Caroline didn't know how long she had laid there in the aftermath of it all. She couldn't bring herself to move through the haze. Her mind felt numb and uncomprehendingly blank. She had simply lain there, curled into a ball on the forest floor, covered in leaves and blood and sweat. The tear tracks of silent despair trailed down her face, creating a muddy path as she pushed her mouth to the ground with a soundless scream.

Day had turned to night when finally she'd found the courage to move. She'd moved silently through the woods, burying the small bloodied mass in a shallow unmarked grave by a large oak tree in the clearing. Caroline could do no more than that. Maybe later, she would go back and carve something into the wood but as it was, she could hardly comprehend the turn her life had taken in the last few hours.

Vampires could not have children. Their bodies were dead.

Her mother was thankfully absent as she'd crept into the house, moving upstairs and into the bathroom. She'd sat in the shower for nearly an hour, watching with morbid fascination as red rivulets slowly turned clear and the evidence of her failure washed down the drain.

When her mother came home, she'd smiled sweetly and asked how her day had been. She'd played her role to perfection. In the days that followed, Caroline had continued to play the character she'd cast for herself. No one knew what had happened. And they never would.

She'd gone to Meredith Fell one evening, a few days after the incident in the woods and asked the woman hypothetically what would happen if a vampire were to become pregnant. The conversation had seemed ridiculous. Vampires could not procreate. Caroline had had to feign interest in the difference between supernatural lore, the fiction of today and what was reality. Meredith had explained that it was simply impossible for two vampires to ever conceive a child. Their bodies, just as Caroline had thought, were very much dead.

The prospect of a vampire and a werewolf conceiving a child were equally as improbable. But, hypothetically speaking, if it were to happen then the vampire's body, if she was the mother, would naturally reject the foetus. Werewolf venom was toxic to vampires. It would stand to reason that the foetus would have some level of the venom in his or her blood, blood that it shared with its mother.

Caroline knew that it wasn't her fault. She knew that the foetus' blood had been slowly poisoning her and that eventually her body would have shut down had it not instinctively fought back. Her body had rejected the venom and thus the child.

She knew it wasn't her fault.

And yet, a part of her was very much aware that it was her body that had failed. She had, for all intents and purposes, killed her own child without ever knowing it was there.

Caroline had run into the woods and screamed, so long and so loud until eventually her voice gave way. She'd instinctively found her way back to the clearing and to the oak tree.

Why?

It was all she could think.

Why had this happened?

The logical side of her brain reasoned that Klaus was not a vampire and nor was he a werewolf. The full knowledge of what werewolf-vampire hybrids could or could not do, as a species, was not yet fully realised. It was entirely possible that he could, in fact, father children.

And he had.

With her.

And she'd failed.

Caroline knew that she was not to blame. She knew it and told herself over and over and over again, praying that one day maybe she would actually believe it.

Days passed and still no one knew. She was still the smiling bubbly girl she had always been. Why would they think that anything was amiss? This was her secret, hers and hers alone. No one would know. She would never tell another living soul. Of that, Caroline was certain.

She had faltered only once. Her performance, her mask fell but only once.

Bonnie and Elena had been talking in their dorm. She'd tried to ignore the conversation but not even she, who feigned an interest in study, could drown out the words.

It was horrible, Elena. There was this little baby. He was so small, too small.

Caroline had bit her tongue, fingers digging hard into her sheets.

A baby? Oh Bon, that must have been awful. I didn't know children were –

Sent to the Other Side? Yeah. It's hard to comprehend but I have seen a few. They tend to be little girls – witches. Never a baby though. I don't even think he had been born yet. He was too small, no bigger than my hand really. And he was all alone and crying...

Caroline hadn't heard the rest of the conversation. She'd fled the room, bile rising in her throat as she ran toward the Whitmore parking lot. Other students had walked passed her with little more than a curious glance when she'd collapsed on a nearby bench, heaving up the contents of her stomach onto the sidewalk. Caroline had felt the tears rise in her eyes as her mind replayed Bonnie's words over and over again.

All alone and crying.

All alone and crying.

All alone and crying.

Her hand had dialled his number without her knowing. Caroline couldn't breathe, couldn't think. She just needed to hear his voice. This was his loss too, not that he would ever know. The phone had rung and rung and rung until eventually it went to voicemail. Perhaps it had been a blessing, him not answering her call. She had told him to leave, to never come back. He had made a promise and it seemed as though he intended to keep it.

She tried to forget about Klaus and forget about Bonnie's words. She'd never even stopped to wonder whether it would have been a boy or a girl.

He was all alone and crying.

He.

Caroline had sworn to herself that she would not name the baby. A part of her couldn't bear to. A name would make the loss real. And yet, in the aftermath of her friend's unknowing revelation, all she could think about was his name, what it would have been, what he would have looked like. Would he have been a William, a Bill, like her father? Or maybe he was a Henry, or a Henrick? She knew Klaus' younger brother, the one that died when they were human, had been called Henrick.

Somehow, Caroline couldn't quite remember leaving Whitmore, she had found her way back to the clearing. It was all she could think about. Here was his beginning and here was his end. It was a cruel irony. She'd moved without thought, kneeling by the covered grave and carved with her fingernails, ignorant to the pain and blood as bark tore into skin, a name onto the large oak tree that stood sentry to her son's eternal slumber.

Henry William Forbes-Mikaelson.

She'd kissed the crude engraving, tears falling freely. If Klaus came back, for whatever reason, and saw the tree then she would deal with the repercussions later. But she didn't think that he was coming back, not for a long time anyway. Maybe she would tell him. One day.

And now, here she was. Caroline sat quietly by her friend's side, waiting and thinking, remembering the last few weeks and how she had been, how she had behaved and how none of them had noticed her pain. To be fair, she was brilliant actress.

Caroline looked at Matt's serene face and wondered. He was on the Other Side right now. Markos had killed him for getting in the way, for figuring out that Tyler wasn't Tyler anymore but some foreign Traveller parasite. Would he see Henry? Would he stay by him, if only for a moment, so that he would not be alone?

She could feel the tears run down her cheeks.

She hated herself the most for leaving him alone. The idea, the image of a tiny face crying in the dark with no one to hear; it haunted her. She awoke every night drenched in sweat with tears in her eyes, the ghost of an infant's cry echoing in her mind. Caroline had forgiven herself for what had happened. It had not been her choice or her fault; that, she had come to finally accept. Him all alone on the Other Side; she hated herself for that.

Matt gasped, his body arching with life.

Caroline closed her eyes and fixed a smile on her face. She looked down at her childhood friend and high school sweetheart. He was frowning, a confused crease in his brow as he looked around. When his eyes landed on her, the frown deepened.

She felt nervous, suddenly self-conscious under his gaze. What if he knew? She didn't know how he could. But what if he did?

Matt opened his mouth and then closed it, pushing himself up off the ground. "I remember the Other Side. Again."

Caroline swallowed against the lump in her throat. "And?"

"And Kol was there. Again."

She started in surprise. He'd never mentioned seeing Kol before, only Vicki. "What happened?"

"Something is really wrong over there, Care. It's like they're disappearing or being dragged out by something. It's not stable. If I didn't know any better, I would say the Other Side is breaking..." his voice trailed off as he licked his lips, swallowing hard. He was looking at her so strangely.

"What is it?"

Matt shook his head in confusion. "I don't know exactly. Kol said to tell you not to worry. He said that he had him and that he was safe, that he wasn't alone, that he would never be alone. Caroline, who was he talking about? What's going o –"

She didn't hear the rest of Matt's words. Her mind focused only on Henry and the knowledge that he was safe, that he wasn't alone. She hadn't condemned her child to a life of solitude and loneliness simply because of her body's failure to carry him to term. To this day, Caroline still didn't know how she had gone on for so long without knowing that she had been pregnant. If only she had stopped, just once and thought about the pain, about the burning ache that was now, in her mind, so similar to her experience with the effects of hybrid venom. Perhaps if she had stopped her boy would be alive, Klaus' son would be alive.

Instead, he was on the Other Side with his Uncle Kol.

The fact that Kol had found him, had known to find to him made her smile for the first time, truly smile, in weeks. He was with family now. Kol would keep him safe over there and she, she would do everything in her power to keep him safe from over here. Starting with Markos and The Travellers and fixing whatever it was that was broken with the Other Side. Caroline would do what she could, where she could, because she was his mother and she loved him.

All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

Yes, her understanding of the Shakespearean verse had certainly changed.

As had she.

I would really welcome feedback on this.

I've never tackled a sensitive subject like this and I really am hoping that this wasn't horrible or insensitive.

It's the first piece I have written in a very long time that I am actually really hesitant to post.

So yeah... Feedback would be great.

Thank you for reading :)