Title: "In the Backseat"

Author: Lila

Rating: PG-13

Character/Pairing: Caroline, Klaus, Caroline/Klaus

Spoiler: all aired episodes

Length: Part I of III

Summary: Klaus goes on the run with Hope; Caroline comes along for the ride and does some healing of her own.

Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.

Author's Note: 1). I'm on a break from "We Own the Sky". Not a permanent break, but a Ross-and-Rachel-type break. I will return shortly. 2). I watch "The Originals" but gave up on TVD in early season four – this fic is based on prospective plotlines from the former, what I gathered from promos for the latter. 3). Non-humble brag: I reread "Paradise Circus" recently and it's awesome! You guys, I can't believe I wrote something that good (and likely never will again). But it gave me the itch to write more Klaroline and I did! 4). Title and quote courtesy of Arcade Fire. Enjoy.

"My family tree, is losing all its leaves."

Caroline dreams of that night, moonlight in her hair and a warm mouth moving over her body. She wakes to the memory of grass scraping the fragile skin of her spine, strong fingers gripping her hips, hard, slick heat pulsing inside her. She opens her eyes, searches for the moon in the dark recesses of her bedroom. There are stars in her sky, dingy and faded in the years since her father helped her put them up. It was the last thing they did together before he walked out of her life. She longs for the stars to glitter, to illuminate the pale softness of her skin and the sharp bite of smooth, white teeth. She longs for the scratch of rough hands on her belly, the rasp of a beard against her cheek, pinpricks of starlight glimmering in his eyes. But there's only the dull glow of plastic stars, a thin trickle of moonlight slipping through the curtains. Caroline's alone in the bed, in her empty house, silent but for the wind whistling through the trees outside her window, a house absent of a heartbeat in the room down the hall.

She falls back on her pillows, sweaty sheets tangling around her hips, presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and rubs hard. She's in the woods, pushed against a tree so the bark digs into her back. Klaus grins at her, naked and feral in the inky night, long and lean as his body wraps around hers.

Her fingers trail lower, following the same path as his hands, his mouth, the slide of his tongue. She lets out a low moan, arching off the bed. It's the only time she can forget that her mom is well and truly dead.

Caroline hasn't left the house in days, her hair greasy and matted about her head. It's pulled back in a messy ponytail, loose strands falling about her face, a good match for the threadbare sweatpants with the torn hem that trails behind her as she slides across the floor, tripped her up when she stumbled to bed a few nights back. She'd cracked her head on the coffee table and cut her hand on the shattered bottle of scotch she'd landed on. She'd finished it earlier that night, the gin and beer too, and crouched on the hard floor staring at the wound as it healed itself. She'd picked up a shard of glass, sliced open her hand and watched it close, again and again, relished in the bite of the glass, the sting of her tears as they landed on the cut, her body aching the way her heart already did.

There's no booze left in the house so Caroline makes tea, breathes in deep to let the steam fill her pores. It's cleansing, after the week she's had, filters out the film of death that clings like a bad smell. She takes a small sip of tea despite the heat, rolls the citrus on her tongue, and swallows thickly. It reminds her of pigtails and lace-trimmed nightgowns, legs swinging under the kitchen table because they were too short to reach the linoleum floor. It reminds her of being young – small – of a time when she never imagined she'd be on her own. Her fingers tighten around the mug, knuckles locking even as the ceramic shatters and steaming tea hisses against her bare skin.

It takes a few seconds to notice, the broken mug at her feet, the pool of tea creeping across the floor, and she blinks back tears and storms off to find a broom. No one's there to scold her about the mess, but she goes anyway, her mom's voice replaying in her head. It makes her feel a little less alone.

She doesn't answer the doorbell the first time it rings. She can hear the heartbeat, soft but steady, and she's more prepared to face a human than her friends – the people she loves – but there's no guarantee she won't pounce the moment the door opens. It's a man, she can tell. There's a heavy tread of boots on her porch, a thin whiff of pine seeping through the knotted wood, and her forehead falls forward to rest against the closed door. Stefan she was expecting, Tyler too, and even a nosy visit from Damon, but she never predicted Klaus. She glances at the hall table where an arrangement of orchids and gladioli used to spill over the lip of a vase, a hint of the tropics sill teasing her nose even though the flowers have long since withered and died.

"Caroline," he calls, draws out her name in a way that makes her skin feel tight. "Open up."

She crosses her arms over her chest and ignores his request. "Go away," she says, winces at the petulant tone of her voice. In his presence, she always seems to turn into the teenager she was when she met him.

"I know you're in there."

Caroline fixes a glare at the closed door, like Klaus's developed x-ray vision along with eternal life and super speed. "Please love," he says, his voice dropping to a low plea. "We need you."

She scoffs, prepares to call him out for the liar that he is, but then she remembers the heartbeat, still beating evenly on the other side of the door, and she realizes he isn't lying about bringing company. Slowly, she opens the door to let him in.

He looks as she remembers, long and lean with a thick layer of stubble coating his jaw. His eyes gleam as he takes her in, the messy hair and ragged cardigan, and she'd probably be embarrassed, or staring slack-jawed at the site of his handsome face, if not for his companion. There's a laughing baby in his arms, with blue eyes and a fringe of dark blonde hair curling away from her face.

Caroline knows about her of course, heard the stories from Tyler once he escaped Marcel Gerard's "garden." She'd felt something curl in her belly, hot and mocking and a lot like jealousy. She'd swallowed it down, focused on having Tyler back in her life, ignored how it felt like Hayley had taken something from her. But she hasn't thought about it in nine months, since the news of Klaus's loss had spread across the south like a dark shroud. She'd been surprised to learn New Orleans was still in tact, had waited for Klaus's vengeance to land on her doorstep, but the small child teething on his thumb makes her wonder if she'd heard wrong – had been told wrong. It's unexpected, how it hurts, his keeping things from her, a jolting reminder that while she's dead, her heart is very much alive. It's the first real emotion she's felt since they put her mother in the ground.

"She's supposed to be dead!" Caroline blurts out, says the first thing that comes to mind.

Klaus cocks a brow and shifts the baby's weight. "She's not. May we come in?"

He doesn't need permission to enter her house but he waits patiently anyway, quietly yielding ground. She presses herself against the door to let him enter; it's unlikely that she'll achieve this kind of victory again. It's been a long time since Klaus stepped foot inside this house, but he needs no map, effortlessly opening her fridge and dumping a blood bag into a mug, heating it in the microwave to the precise temperature that she enjoys, 99.2 if she wants to be exact, all awhile holding a squirming baby.

He shoves the mug in her direction. "You looked like you need a pick-me-up." She accepts the blood gratefully, takes a long pull as she follows him into the living room, settles on the couch and watches him put the baby on the floor to play.

While Klaus solemnly watches his daughter, Caroline takes the opportunity to study her, feeling less inclined to eat anyone with a bit of blood in her system. She has Hayley's high cheekbones and lush mouth, but those deep blue eyes were inherited from her father. They're like denim, or the roiling sea, like the bruised sky the night she gave into the desire she'd hidden for so long. The baby smiles brightly, laughs even as her father hands her a small stuffed rabbit.

It jumps at her, that word, father. Klaus has a baby. He made a baby with someone. He made a baby with Hayley. There's that burn again, the sharp tug of jealousy deep in her belly, and this time she doesn't have the energy to tamp it down. It's another thing that won't be hers, another thing Hayley gets to have. She has her friends, but she'll never hold her own child in her arms, watch her belly swell while her back aches, feel her chest nearly burst with pride from being able to give life. She thinks of her mother, alone in her coffin beneath six feet of dirt. She'll never be a mother, raise a child, but what she can't have, she also can't lose. It's a small bit of comfort but it makes the knot in her belly loosen enough to smile at Hayley's daughter.

"She's beautiful," she says, even smiles as the baby shakes her stuffed rabbit at the adults.

"Yes, she is," Klaus says, doesn't take his eyes off his daughter even though the little girl has ignored them in favor of gnawing on her toy.

"Does she have a name?"

Klaus cracks a smile, just the smallest quirk of his lips, but he has a lovely mouth and a stunning smile, the kind that changes the entire shape of his face, and even though it's only a slight curve of his lips, joy radiates all the way to his eyes. "Hope. I named her Hope."

"Hope," Caroline whispers, and sets aside her mug, kneels on the rug and pulls the baby into her arms, smiles into her adorable face. She could use a little hope in her life. Hope laughs again, the same magnetic smile as her father, and reaches up to swipe a hand down Caroline's cheek.

"She likes you," Klaus says and Caroline thinks he might be right. Hope is studying her with matching blue eyes, running one tiny hand across the planes of Caroline's face. Her smile hasn't loosened one bit. "You're good with her," he adds, his own smile widening with affection. His eyes are soft and a bit wide, and before he ducks his head, Caroline swears she sees wonder there.

"I'm never spent much time with babies," she says as Hope squeals and buries her face in her shoulder. She's affectionate, this mini-Mikaelson, and it gives Caroline a window into what could have been, the man Klaus might have become had his upbringing been different. She gazes down at his daughter, this squirming, giggling bundle of warmth that showed up at her house long past dark. Slowly, she unwinds Hope's clingy limbs and deposits her on the blanket, climbs back on the couch and faces Klaus with her arms crossed.

He watches her steadily. "And now, the interrogation."

"Why are you here, Klaus?" Her tone is harsh, but her head is no longer clouded by the sudden appearance of a resurrected baby. She remembers whom she's dealing with – what she's dealing with – and she's thinking more clearly than she has in days.

Klaus shrugs and winds the edge of Hope's blanket around his finger. It's pink, trimmed in a border of wolves howling at the moon, and it only makes Caroline more demanding, confirms her suspicions about his true intentions. Klaus is a manipulator and a backstabber, sometimes literally, and there's always a plan b. That sinking feeling in her belly becomes a full-bodied throb. Nothing good has ever come of being caught up in Klaus's schemes.

He changes the subject like she didn't just ask a perfectly reasonable question. "I was sorry to hear about your mother." He looks up from Hope's blanket, true sympathy in his eyes.

Caroline expects it to hurt, rip open a wound that might never heal, but it only seals it closed. It's familiar, this routine, and she picks up the moves like it hasn't been years since they last played this game. "Thank you for the flowers," she says. "It was kind of you."

"You did the same for me."

She remembers, the roses she sent to the Hotel Royal, the card she'd handwritten to express her sympathies. She'd never wish for anyone, even Klaus, to lose a child. "You didn't answer my question."

Klaus shrugs again. "I fancied a road trip." He grins at her but Caroline doesn't relent. She knows firsthand he can't have all the things he wants. Hope gurgles and shakes her stuffed animal, and Caroline realizes it's all she has, the clothes on her back and a blanket bearing the mark of her mother's people.

"You kidnapped her." She keeps the surprise out of her voice, but doesn't hide the disgust. Nothing about him should shock her anymore, but there's plenty of room to be disappointed.

Klaus's smile falls, jaw tightening as a hard light flares in his eyes. "Hayley tried to take my daughter from me." He looks at Caroline with eyes that do nothing to betray the power lurking beneath. "She won't make the same mistake twice."

Caroline tries to read the truth in the cold mask of his face. "Hayley's alive, right?" She doesn't have to like the other girl to hope she's not dead.

"Of course," he says softly, teeth bared by his chilling smile. "I'm not that much of a monster."

She glances at Hope, grinning up at them from her blanket, and swallows hard. "Take it from someone who knows – you shouldn't keep a child from her mother."

"She's young," Klaus says. "Too young to remember the woman that birthed her." His jaw tightens again. "I can give her everything she needs. I'm the only one who can keep her safe."

"But at what cost?" Caroline's relationship with her own mother was never simple, but Liz always was there. She used to think it would have been easier having no mother at all rather than survive the disappointment that defined her childhood, but now, given what she's lost, she knows that she was wrong. She can't make up for the past, but the previous five years went a long way in repairing the damage. She blinks back tears. It's moments like these when she realizes that her time with her mother has run out.

Klaus wipes the tears from her cheek, but his eyes still pulse with betrayal. "Hayley stole my child from me once. I'm only returning the favor."

There's a story there, details he hasn't shared, but Caroline focuses on what she knows, the memory of a gaping hole in her soul that only absent parents could fill. "It's not about you," she reminds him, twists away so she won't be distracted by how he's touching her. "This is about Hope and what's best for her." She lifts her chin and meets his eyes. "Don't do to your daughter what your parents did to you."

The veins in his cheeks flare, eyes darkening to molten black, and for the first time in years, she truly fears him. She lets her fangs slide down her chin to remind him that he's older and stronger, but she won't back down without a fight. "You know nothing of my parents," he hisses.

"I know what it's like for them to leave, to put their needs ahead of yours." Memories flash before her eyes: her mother crying herself to sleep in a solitary bed, frozen dinners and missed teacher conferences, the pitying look in Miranda Gilbert's eyes when Caroline slept over at Elena's for the third time that week. Klaus should want more for Hope. "Do the right thing for your daughter."

He flinches at the word, chin jutting out defensively. "You'd let Hayley win."

Caroline throws up her hands in exasperation. "I'd have Hope win. Take her home. Make peace with Hayley. Put your daughter first."

Her own parents had failed to see to her needs, her mother pushing and pushing until her father gave up, ceded any interest in the daughter he claimed to love. She'd alternately blamed her mom and then her dad – for being impossible to love, for not loving them enough – and she can't believe she's watching it happen again. She sits up straight, locks her jaw and doesn't look away from Klaus's steely gaze. She couldn't always be her mother's daughter in life, but in death, she knows the girl she needs to be. She won't let another child grow up like her.

"If you don't take her back, I will." She says the words quietly, but the threat is evident, woven into the even tenor of her voice.

Klaus looks at her a long time, but she doesn't look away and eventually the mask falls, eyes wide and vulnerable in a face that looks impossibly young. "Alright," he says softly. "We'll take her home."

Caroline doesn't miss the way he ties their names together, pulls her into this mess of his own making, but she doesn't correct him. She started down this path when she opened her door a lifetime ago, let him in and listened as he promised her a life filled with beautiful things. She hasn't said no to him yet; she can't say no to Hope. The room is silent but for the even beat of the baby's heart, and Caroline glances at her, realizes she hasn't heard her laugh in some time. Hope's lying on her side, thumb tucked neatly in her mouth, fast sleep under the watchful gaze of Hayley's wolves. Caroline feels exhausted herself, battle weary after that clash of wills with Klaus, shoulders sagging in the aftermath. She wants a hot bath and a goodnight's sleep. The former is possible, but the latter has evaded her since the night she buried her mother. She sighs heavily and pushes to her feet. Even with her unexpected guests, there's no reason to believe tonight will be any different.

"Tomorrow," she agrees. "We leave at first light." She fixes him with a glare. "Don't even think of slipping out in the night. You never know when there's a white oak stake with your name on it." It's an empty threat and Klaus knows it, but he still smiles slowly, laughter dancing in his eyes. "What?" she demands, pushes straggly strands of hair away from her face.

Klaus stands as well, tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. "Blonde, bossy…it seems I have a type."

She rolls her eyes and gestures towards the stairs. "I'm going to bed. Alone."

The mask slips again and Klaus pauses, those full lips visibly trembling as he turns his attention to Hope. "Why don't you take her?"

"She's your daughter."

"You're good with her."

There's more to this story as well, more truths Klaus is hiding from her, but Caroline's too tired to care. She doesn't need the sleep but she finds comfort in the routines of her old life, and right now, her bed is the only place she wants to be. Carefully, she scoops Hope into her arms and carries her up the stairs. She weighs almost nothing, a soft bundle of warmth, and Caroline presses the baby to her non-beating heart as she pads down the hall to her room.

Hope is wearing pajamas and her diaper doesn't need to be changed, but they're without a crib, and Caroline pauses in the doorway, unsure of where the baby should sleep. Klaus appears behind her, his hard chest pressing in her back, and stares over her shoulder into the room. He hasn't been there since he tried to kill her, sent a message to Tyler with poison in her blood, and little has changed besides the occupants. She inches forward just the tiniest bit, puts distance between them.

"I don't know where she should sleep. You didn't bring a crib."

Klaus steps around her, filling her room with the wide spread of his shoulders and the clean pine scent of his skin. He gestures at the bed. "She'll sleep with us."

Caroline opens her mouth to protest but he's already stripped off his shirt and started working on his pants, until he's all long, lean muscle wearing nothing but black boxer-briefs and a knowing grin. She buries her face in Hope's curls, breathes in her sweet baby scent, ignores the half-naked man standing next to her bed.

"No way," she manages to say, her voice muffled by his daughter's silken hair. "I'll watch Hope but you're bunking in the guest room." Her mom's room is also empty but it's not an option. She hasn't opened that door in weeks and she's still not ready.

Klaus takes a step forward and his smile turns menacing. "I'll not let her out of my sight."

She could state the obvious, that she didn't ask for this, but it's late and she's tired, and she likes the blind trust she saw in Hope's eyes. She's not sure she'll ever get to have this again. "Fine," she bites out, tears back the quilt and gently place the baby on the bed. "But we're just sleeping."

She storms out of the room, hurriedly washes her face and brushes her teeth, returns in a thin tank top and worn sweatpants. Klaus is already in the bed, curled on his side, head propped on an elbow while he watches his daughter sleep. He inclines his head towards Caroline's side of the bed and she slides in next to him, careful not to jostle the mattress and wake the baby. She gazes at Hope for a moment, watches the rise and fall of her chest and the long eyelashes resting on her rosy cheeks before snuffing out the light.

The room is dark but Caroline's eyesight is sharp, supernaturally sharp, and she can see Klaus's eyes in the darkness, flickering like candlelight, burning the same bright blue. She waits for him to say something, to break the easy truce between them, but he only watches her, eyes gently tracing the lines of her face.

"Why did you come here?" she finally asks, unable to bear the silence any longer. It's comforting, emptying her mind and lying in bed without the weight of her grief pressing on her heart. She doesn't deserve this easy peace, not after the things she did to cope. "And don't say it's because I'm full of light."

He smiles in the darkness, teeth flashing while his eyes never leave her face. "Your heart has always given more than it takes. I knew you wouldn't turn us away."

Caroline laughs without humor. Klaus has always had a way of stripping her bare with just a few words rolling off his tongue, for calling out exactly who she is when she can't see it herself. Her mother is dead and her heart is broken and she still gives with everything she has left. "Right," she snaps. "Caroline Forbes' Home for Wayward Vampires."

Klaus reaches over the sleeping baby and tenderly brushes the backs of his fingers down her cheek. "Home," he says. "I knew that's what I'd find here." Tears pool in Caroline's eyes. She lives in a house but it's no longer a home, not when there's no one left to share it with. "Sleep," Klaus whispers, slides his hand to push her hair back from her face. "Let me take care of you."

She closes her eyes, his voice lulling her into sleep, the warm weight of his daughter caught between them. She drifts away to the distant rhythm of Hope's heartbeat, the steady stroke of Klaus's fingers in her hair. For the first time in weeks, she doesn't dream, doesn't feel the blissful stretch and pull of his body sinking into hers. She doesn't need those things when she has him beside her.

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