Chapter 7: A Thousand Miles Away From Home

Inspiration: Waiting For A Train by Jimmie Rodgers ( 1928)

Mystic Falls, 2014

Klaus jerked awake; not thinking people actually did that until it happened to him. He kept his eyes shut a few moments longer; as if doing so would propel him back in time and back into her arms. Instead he stood and dressed, dreading the discussion that would follow with the Salvatores when he met them that afternoon. Seeing them every day was a necessary evil, if they got her back….no, he should be hopeful, When. Caroline would be back where she belonged. Even if they had no leads, even if they still were no where closer to saving them, he promised himself he would not fail. Not at this.

God, thinking of Gertrude justified three morning drinks. She was dark haired and sharp witted, and her accent was long and drawn out. Caroline had looked bloody radiant in that dress, and when the witch had finally arrived; he hadn't been able to pay attention, focusing instead, on watching the blonde that occupied his current infatuation. He hadn't even seen Louise at the party; wearing the most scandalous thing yet. No, Caroline had captured his intrigue for the time being.

Gertrude, Finally" Klaus greeted the witch. Rebekah laughed to herself, and muttered "Oh, you noticed?" He shot her a glare; but said nothing.

"What's it this time Klaus?" Gertrude asked, "More daylight rings?" she jeered. He remembered the feeling of wanting to kill her. It was powerful and he had entertained the thought for just a moment.

"Actually I was hoping you could help my….." His gaze met Caroline's, lingered over hers, and when she looked away, continued to search her face; memorize her features, skin and hair. "Friend…get home" he turned back to Gertrude. Caroline had said they become friends. Future and past had both celebrated the victory. Rebekah had scoffed beside him.

"Can't she take the train?" Gertrude demanded, taking a long drag on a cigarette after her words. She was not impressed to be called upon to chauffeur the originals' friends.

He was about to speak when something- no, someone- interrupted him.

"OMGEEE, the train! Why didn't I think of that?" It took Klaus a moment to catch on that she was joking. Caroline faced Gertrude head on, demonstrating little of the vast power she had below. He would see it, yet.

"You know maybe it's cuz I assumed in the 20s you didn't have trains that…I dunno…time travelled!" Caroline spat the words, unimpressed with Gertrude.

"That's Caroline" he introduced, or perhaps he'd just wanted to say her name aloud, "isn't she…exquisite?" he asked, eyes fixed on Caroline, waiting for her reaction. Little Sister ruined it instead. Caroline's eyes refused to meet his gaze.

"BLODDY HELL NIK, We'll never get anything done, with your incessant fawning over the blonde!"

"Shut up Bekah" he turned to her, lost in his anger, in the moment of being furious at Rebekah's careless words. Everything else drifted away.

"We're helping them get home, in case you didn't realize" she snapped back, "or" she laughed aloud, mocked him. "Do you think you'll be lucky with her? I mean you've been chasing every bloody skirt on the Louisiana chorus line, without success, I add. Do you think one target would be-"

"Shut up Little Sister. I will not tolerate this from you, one more word and —"

"You'll what, dagger me?" she accused. "Then there will be no one to listen to your whining"

"Perhaps Kol will be-" he started, and she had the nerve to cut him off.

"Oh yes, your favourite bloody original" she gaped at him, laughing.

Klaus was able to reconstruct most of the dialogue, to remember it and tell the broad strokes to the party watching him, waiting for a way to help Elena and Caroline to suddenly appear to them. Yet still, he couldn't shake how radiant she had looked, the exact feeling of her hand in his as if it hadn't been a dream, but it was only a memory now.

"Did you and your sister fight for the whole century?" Damon snapped, unimpressed with the turn the story was taking. He had wanted to torment Damon, to describe how beautiful Elena had looked, and laugh at the man's poor loss of power, but then he couldn't recall a detail about her. Not even when she lay on the bed while he brought Caroline lunch. His mind retained no memory of her, and he had been pleased, in past and present that she had not joined them for dancing that evening, that Caroline had made the surprising decision to come alone. To him, Elena was a shadow beside Caroline's brilliant gold. Darkness beside the Sun.

"I'm sorry, you told me to tell you every bloody detail-" even as Klaus said the words the lie felt powerful. They would omit certain facts from their dreams, that much he and Stefan had agreed on, but he certainly wouldn't be the one to let Damon know that. At least not today, he didn't feel like it.

"Yeah tell us again how beautiful Caroline looked-" Damon spat at him.

Stefan had no memories of the night save stalking a redhead in the quarter; scattering her limbs across the white carpet of her bedroom before he put her back together again like a mannequin. He recognized the value of Klaus helping them. If there was to be a way Klaus could save Caroline and not Elena, he had no doubt the Original would entertain the thought; perhaps do it impulsively and be left with the fallout of Caroline missing her best friend, and him not knowing just exactly how to impress the girl. If they wanted them both back, and quickly, before his own past self snapped her neck again, they would have to work together.

"SHUT UP" Caroline demanded. "I've been waiting all night for this witch to arrive. Do not mess this up Klaus." She turned her attention towards Gertrude "Can we get on with it or what?"

"What year?" Gertrude was serious now, ready to examine the situation. Caroline relaxed, but she felt the flush of her cheeks, Klaus knew she felt the urge to look at him, and he wouldn't dare let up his gaze. She was trying to focus on the witch in front of them. He wanted desperately to know what was going on in her mind.

"Then Caroline responded that she and Elena came from 2014" Klaus relayed to the worried, anxious group.

"Oh Elena! She's still alive, is she? " Damon demanded, "While you and Caroline are off partying and—"

"Shut up Salvatore unless you want me to stop telling you what I discovered." Klaus waited a beat for the words to sink in. "Blame your brother that he snapped Elena's neck and can't regale stories of this night to you." Without another look at the ailing, drinking, pathetic brother he continued where he had left of, thinking as he did so, mostly of Caroline.

Gertrude made a soft sound that sounded like a swear. Crunched the end of her cigarette into the ashtray on the table and took up another. "How'd you get here?" she asked.

"Oh you know! Your usual time travel stabbing!" Caroline blurted out. Klaus chuckled and he could tell she regretted making the comment.

Gertrude looked worried before she spoke, "the tool that brought you here is called a Transcendence Blade-"

"DUH. We already knew that!" Caroline snapped, then surprisingly, she met his gaze. "I thought you said she could help Klaus!" less of a question, she spat the grievance at him, but it was Rebekah who answered.

"Don't you baby vamps have any bloody patience? Let the witch continue!"

"So can you help them get back home?" Klaus demanded. Gertrude seemed solemn as she shook her head and extinguished her third cigarette in their company. Without pause another hung on her lips, "I'm afraid not" she responded, cigarette perched on her lips as she lit a match.

"WHAT?" Bonnie was the one to speak up now, "Are you kidding me now Klaus?" she demanded. The tone she took with him; the tone she thought she could take with him inspired the impulse to teach her a lesson. To murder them all once Caroline was back safely. Even the thought left him feeling crippled..no...…that would be no way to win her affection, or if won, keep it. No, he would have to let the lot of them live and he would have the suffer the Bennet witch's rude tone, though he was all the more powerful than her and her pathetic, tiny, miserable brief human existence.

"Damon's right- You're spending ages talking about Caroline and now you mention that the witch can't even help us?" Jeremy interjected.

"I'm right?" Damon asked, eyebrow cocked, quip on the tip of his tongue.

"Look, stop-" Stefan interrupted, trying not to breathe in the hostile air that turned them all against each other.

"Ok, Klaus….can you skip to the important stuff?" And though Klaus reluctantly agreed, he couldn't stop his memories. He resisted telling more descriptions of Caroline, more of how they had shared moments in the past. No one would care.

"What?" Caroline spat the word with outrage, then, once again chose to aim her anger at Klaus. Klaus with his stupid gifts, and dancing and blue eyes and she was furious with the lot of it. Some deep, dark part of her whispered; that she would never see her mother or Bonnie, or her friends ever again. "I thought you said this witch could help!" She thought to call him by his nickname, the word Rebekah so often chided him with; Nik. Instead she just flushed red with anger and stared at him for some response.

"If you are to be pointless Gertrude, perhaps you could enlighten us as to who would be able to help us in your place?" Klaus snapped at the witch, but to his dismay Caroline did not look pleased when he did so; her petty guilt rising all at once for a woman who had done them no harm, who was trying to help them, so far. But she did not know Gertrude as the Originals did.

"I didn't think it was possible…but…I mean…this evidence….the Seers must have-"

"What the hell is a Seer?" Damon Salvatore snapped, abruptly interrupting Klaus' memories and monologue. Then, he loudly dropped ice cubes into his glass before pouring himself a whiskey. Rude, Klaus thought.

"Would you let me continue?" Klaus asked. "That's what Rebekah said" Klaus responded. Damon drowned the glass of whiskey and poured himself another. Klaus would kill for a drink. He was in front of Damon in an instant; pouring himself a glass as he continued.

"I'm sorry, did you say Seer?" Rebekah asked, incredulous.

"The Seers are a coven of witches that practice time travel-" Gertrude continued. Ceasing, just for a moment her chain smoking. Instead she reached forward and pulled a clean glass and the table's bottle of bourbon towards her, pouring as she listened to the reactions of the vampires around her. She had to contain her excitement; the booze would help that.

Klaus laughed aloud. "I think I of all people would have heard of-"

"HOLD ON!" Damon brought the past to a screeching halt again. "There are witches who can time travel now?" he demanded, forcing a laugh. "Can we go back in time to when you were sane?"

"By all means Damon, keep speaking and I'll abandon you and Stefan." Klaus threatened, "I can save Caroline all by myself and let your precious Elena die in the past" the thought inspired a large smirk.

"Don't think Caroline would take kindly to that-" Damon shrugged.

"You need me" Klaus responded.

"Why? So far Rebekah's the only one that knows what's going on- let's call her over" Damon suggested.

"No!" Stefan said suddenly. As if the memories of all his trysts and moments with her- moments he didn't dare share with anyone else, would somehow affect the future. If he and the Original sister would wake up wanting each other…if somehow the past would inform the present. But then…. Elena Gilbert would start to hate him….or at least who he was, who he had been and how perfectly that man had meshed with the savage nature of the Original Family.

"And she'd help you save Elena and Caroline?" Klaus laughed at the notion, ignoring Stefan's outburst. He would analyze it later on. Rebekah would rather be daggered ten times in succession, that much Klaus knew. Or else keep Stefan for herself, perhaps that is what Stefan feared, Klaus thought. Or else Rebekah would torture Klaus for that one time he'd saved Caroline over her, though he could justify it a thousand ways, I wasn't in my body, you're stronger, but if Rebekah got it in her mind to torture him, they would have no hope ensuring Caroline's return.

"How come I've never heard of a Seer before?" Bonnie asked, directing her anger much like the rest of the party at the Hybrid.

"If you would all just let me bloody talk- I'm getting there!" Klaus responded.

"Mother told us about them" Rebekah contradicted, "I thought it was fiction" she continued, mimicking the witch's action, she poured herself a drink.

"And she's to be trusted?" Klaus laughed at his little sister's foolishness, disbelief too heavy on his features. If he hadn't heard of them in 1000 years, he doubted they existed.

"The Seers were powerful...in the late 1200s, they had the capacity to travel forwards and backwards in time without consequence. Some of the supernatural community-witches, warlocks, and travellers thought they were getting too powerful...and-" Gertrude bit her tongue as the King of New Orleans cut off her speech. He would pay for that before long. He would pay for everything.

"I'm to believe that Werewolves and Witches worked together? That witches betrayed their own kind?" Klaus demanded.

"Yes. They spearheaded the effort to eradicate the Seers. Witches were terrified of the power that they had. They were rounded up and massacred. They were burned along plague bodies and by 1350, there were none of them left, or so I thought-"

"Yeah. Obviously Not. So can we get home or not?" Caroline demanded. There was no music; there was no loud raging party behind her. Louise didn't sing "Crazy Blues" in a sultry voice behind them. Nothing existed but Gertrude.

"I don't know." The witch shook her head, "I heard rumour that-"

Damon groaned loud enough to interrupt Klaus, "Where the hell did you find this witch Klaus, she knows nothin-"

"Would you shut up Damon!" Bonnie snapped. She felt frayed, wanting desperately for there to be some quick fix. Some new creature who knew what had happened to just appear. Someone responsible to blame and torture until they got their friends back to safety. Instead, they started turning on one another.

"Oh sorry, I didn't realize you were gonna let the oldest guy in the room talk just because it's about witches. It's secondhand, made up rumour from a perpetually smoking, batty eyed witch who frankly sounds like she's high." Damon insulted, on a roll..

"Damon, If all it takes is a spell I can get them back! Now stop interrupting!" Bonnie responded, and that seemed to shut him up for the time being.

Klaus picked up where he had left off, trying to reconstruct Gertrude's words as well as he could remember them. The visions of Caroline he could capture and recall to his memory easily, as if they had really happened the day before, but remembering exactly what the Seers were was proving to be more difficult.

"I heard rumour that some of them lived. Those that lived fled into time. Some retreated into the future, and others into the past and those tried to erase all knowledge and memory of their existence." Gertrude continued, picking up her smoking again.

"All that bloody remains is rumour and nightmare stories" Klaus said. "Fantastic"

"Only witches trained from this particular magic sect can do the spell? The seeing sect? Not just any witch?" Caroline repeated the information.

"Correct" the witch nodded.

She paused for a moment; as a brawl broke out behind them. It started with one couple; then another until at least ten men were fighting. For what, Klaus had no idea, but waiting for them to finish so that Gertrude could continue was putting Caroline on edge. Rebekah's table of gangsters rose, each brandishing a weapon. Shots were fired, and within moments the mad scramble of beating flesh ceased. Blood was spilled; the dead feasted upon by vampires in the corners of the room; compelling those humans who had seen. Few men were tossed out; their female counterparts travelling to the bar to drink and sulk. The party returned to a roar of laughter, music and chatter. The poker game resumed. Finally, Gertrude continued.

"They have to be a practicing Seer. It means someone who can step in and out of time" Gertrude explained, catching Caroline's confused expression.

"There's no other way?" Caroline asked. No other way that I know of, Gertrude thought.

"Well unless you had the blade-" Fat chance at that, Gertrude thought.

"Yeah I normally carry around knives that I get stabbed with!" Caroline blurted out.

"What good would the blade do?" Klaus asked. They all ignored Caroline's angry outburst; as they ignored the raging music behind them and had ignored the fight. Caroline looked away for an instant; spotting a blood splatter on the ground. The veins in her skin came alive; her eyes darkened over. She forced the hunger down and looked back to Gertrude.

/

"That's it. We have to find the blade" Stefan was saying when Klaus returned to the living room. After describing most of the events of his dream, he had slipped out to speak with his brother on the phone. They needed all the help they could get. "We should split up to double our efforts" Stefan finished.

"'Lijah says there might be seers in the Bayou" Klaus added.

"You take the witch and baby Bennet" Damon directed to his brother.

"You and I will tackle the research, will we Damon?" Klaus asked, and it was only after the rest had left, that Damon made his true intentions known.

Klaus hadn't told them everything; making the impulsive decision to cut off the memories just before his dream had stopped. They did not need to know what would happen if the girls could not return. He would be the one to make sure that did not happen.

"The blade can be controlled by any witch. It can be spelled. That's how they found them…the witches, they followed Seers into the past and future and killed them, and returned. The Seers would go forward or back and time and take the blade with them. Once there, they could respell the blade and then just home back home. They created windows in time. That's why they were massacred, because there was so much fear that they knew the future, that they knew everything that could happen and there would be no defence for it" Gertrude had said.

"Wait, so we're here without consequence?" Caroline asked.

"If you go back, then the window you came into this time from will close and it will seem like a dream to everyone involved, as if it didn't really happen-" Gertrude thumbed a cigarette in her palm, wanting desperately to smoke her nerves away. The coven would love this. This would be perfect for them. She didn't know when she started lying, but she had to keep the blonde interested, long enough. The little she knew of the seers she had said before the fight; before she had resorted to lying. She had to get out of this alive; to get their trust, and then she would be rewarded by the coven. New Orleans would be theirs again.

"But-" Caroline started. "If we ….don't?"

"If you stay here….Well time will be…..rewritten." It was better to diffuse their hope; to drown it. Gertrude didn't dare mention the other thing she only thing knew for certain; they had just a short amount of time that they could go home. After that expired, there would be no way for them to return. But Gertrude made up her mind, that Caroline would not live long enough for that to be her fate.

Caroline Forbes sat across from the witch, feeling as if every sensation of hope was leaving her.

She stood abruptly, needing to get out..to get air…to get away from this all. They had sat with the witch for an hour,but it seemed longer. Perhaps time fell more slowly here.

"I need to go…I need to ….be with Elena" she spoke, she would take any excuse to leave. She would read every text in the Original's Library with the hope that it would help. Perhaps they would stumble upon a way that no one knew, something as simple as snapping red sparkly heels together and whispering of home. Something that not even the witch or Klaus knew about and she would be at home in her mother's arms in no time. Surely this was all a dream. A nightmare. She had no clue it was about to get worse.

"Not without protection" Klaus commented.

"We're your guests!" she blurted back, prepared to be angry at anyone. Even if he didn't deserve it. Even if he had been the picture of perfection and charm. Even if he had been helping all night.

"I am aware of that." That edged on her frustration further.

"I don't need you to baby sit me Klaus!" Caroline bit back.

"I have no intention of doing so Caroline" he met her tone with equal passion, "I am not inclined to leave the festivities simply because you wish to return home." He jerked his head up, and the movement was subtle; but out of the corner of her eye she saw four vampires straighten up. They were beside them in an instant; one was the very same vampire who had spoken to her at the bar just yesterday; Theodore. The other male she didn't recognize, and the two girls that flanked the pair looked serious and tough. "But you will be protected. On my life"

"FINE. But if you're so worried about me. Why don't you just walk me home ?" Caroline growled, eyes never leaving Klaus'. No, screw him, she had thought, he would leave the party for her. Misery loves company, and she wanted his.

"Fine" he responded.

Caroline carried the anger she felt even when they were outside. The wind rustled past her, blowing the tassels of her skirt forward, as it directed some stray paper to fly down the street. For the first time Caroline begun to suspect that what Klaus had said was true- they were guests. Guests who were quickly overstaying their welcome.

Gertrude returned to her coven that night with the promise of a weapon to finally get New Orleans back in their hands; and surrounded by her peers; she told them how she had deceived the Original family into trust; and how it had finally, finally paid off. They would start by kidnapping the vampires who held the key to the future.