"I'm on fire like a thousand suns

I couldn't put it out even if I wanted to

These flames tonight

Look into my eyes and say you want me, too

Like I want you"

Hunger, Ross Copperman

PART FOUR - WITCHING HOUR

(Caroline)

Caroline sighs, flipping through her biology book.

She's in the library, desperately trying to catch up on the homework she's blown off the last week. She taps her pen on the wooden table, tries to read a passage and fails, again. Everytime she focuses on the page, or focuses on anything, her mind goes right to Klaus. It's like there was nothing else. Just him. And her. And them. Was there even a them? She sighs, slaps her book shut and drops her head onto it. She hasn't heard from him since the night at the diner two nights ago. Not a vision, not a peep from him.

Caroline wonders what he's doing now. Probably cooking up some other way to ruin your life, she grumbles to herself as she packs up her things.

Once she's seated in her car, she leans her seat back, closes her eyes. She stops fighting the thoughts of him, and lets them all tumble in. She sifts through the mess until she can just make out his form, seated on an expensive looking leather couch. Yellow paint is smeared across his cheek. She hears a fire crackling in the background. He's focused intently on his work, but she knows he knows she's there. She steps forward in her mind, peers over his shoulder to see what he's huddled over.

He's painting.

And it's beautiful. A field of sunflowers, and a golden haired woman running through them, her hand outstretched behind her, as if reaching for him.

Caroline looks from the drawing to him, at the monster who's ruined everything. And explained nothing.

How can someone so cursed create something so beautiful? Caroline wonders. Maybe monster wasn't the right word. Maybe there was so much she didn't understand.

Klaus turns his head, his eyes meeting hers as they so often eerily do in these visions. He's got the looking glass inside of her.

He looks worn, tired. A stark contrast from the man who'd ordered a kiss from her just two days before. His skin is pale, usually glorious curls falling flat.

"I need you," he says, reaching out to her, hunger swimming in his eyes. His fingers close around her wrist, pulling her in, and in, and in...

Her eyes snap open, and she raises her seat back up. She looks down at her wrist, swallowing when she sees the yellow paint tracked along her arm.

He said he needed her. Would he come to her tonight?

Caroline paces nervously back and forth across her room. She'd deep cleaned everything, maybe hoping to settle her nerves, maybe hoping Klaus wouldn't judge her small and cramped apartment when he obviously lived quite large. She was so confused. Half of her wanted him more than anything, and the other half, well, the other half despised how he'd torn her quiet life up.

She sits on her bed, slides her feet into her bunny slippers. Anticipation swirls in her belly. "If you're coming, please come now," she whispers out loud. I miss you. I need to see you. She shakes those thoughts from her head, throws herself back down onto her bed. "I don't need anything from you. Don't listen to my diseased brain." She feels insane, talking to herself like this. She's just never sure of when he can or can't hear her. She has no privacy anymore.

Then, a knock at the door.

Caroline's heart stops. She slowly sits up. The air tastes like a forest after the rain, and she knows it's him behind the door.

How the hell did he get there so fast? Unless he was already coming for her. Heat rises up in her belly at the thought. Could she get away with not answering?

"No." a dark voice glowers inside her head. "Open the door, Caroline."

Instantly, she's on her feet. She stops a few feet from the door, fighting the pull. It wasn't fair, how she was so affected and he wasn't. She goes to the door, peaks out of the peephole. He's there, black on black and just as gorgeous as he was when she'd seen him earlier. He's washed the yellow paint from his cheek. She swallows, eyes raking over his stubble. He crosses his arms over his chest, glaring at her as if he can see her.

"Ugh, fine." she sighs, opening the door.

Klaus steps inside, shuts the door behind him. "Thank you for letting me in."

Caroline rolls her eyes, "Like I had a choice." she did try to resist, after all.

"I was trying to be polite."

The air feels tense around them. She feels awkward in her slippers and bathrobe, she's nothing compared to him, with his nice car and expensive clothes and-

"Stop." Klaus says, frustrated, "It's getting tedious listening to your insecure mental ramblings." he sits down on her couch, ignoring her sputters. He pats the couch beside him. "As much as I usually enjoy our banter, darling, I'm not in the mood tonight."

Caroline sits beside him, careful to leave enough space so that she can't feel his body heat. Not that it makes much difference. She's hyper aware of him anyway. He seems off. Something is bothering him. "What's wrong?" she asks, and she's surprised to find that she genuinely wants to know, wants to help. Anything to make him feel better. Ugh.

"I'm hungry." Klaus says bitterly, he kicks his legs out, propping them on her coffee table.

Understanding floods her. That must be why he looks so dreadful, she hadn't felt that he'd been with any other woman since she'd scared the last one off. She puts her feet up beside his. He smiles a little at her slippers, his hand coming to rest on her thigh. "I have frozen pizza." she mumbles, a shitty joke, but he laughs anyway.

"Not enough protein for me, love." Klaus says, squeezing her thigh.

Caroline wants to help so badly, at least the part of her that's connected to him does, but the other part of her wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Which part of her is real? This was too much. What was she supposed to do, fuck him whenever he was feeling peckish? "This isn't fair." Caroline says, jerking her leg from under his hand. "I don't want any of this."

Klaus takes a moment, and she could go inside of his head to feel what he's thinking, but she doesn't bother. She already knows too much anyway. He sifts through his thoughts, settling on something to say, "I know, darling, and I'm sorry." he takes her hands in his, "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. I never meant for this to happen." he reaches up, brushes a few wisps of hair from her face, "We were supposed to have one night and then go our separate ways, and you would be none the wiser to what I am."

She believes him, she really does. But it doesn't fix anything. "I don't want to sleep with you." she hedges, "I don't even know what I feel about you underneath all of this...hunger." she grimaces at her poor word choice. She could practically hear his stomach growl.

Klaus chuckles, "Can't say I blame you." he drops her hands, pats them softly, "But you do understand...what you feel and see when I'm with someone else, that will happen each time I feed, if it's not from you."

Caroline swallows, remembers the pain and the jealousy and the burning rage. Then remembers how out of control she feels. She has to take it back. She cannot let him set up shop inside of her. I am my own. "I understand. I can handle it." she says. Lie. The thought of him with another woman turns her stomach, clenches at her heart and squeezes.

He doesn't show it, but she can feel his disappointment. He wanted it to be her, too.

They sit for awhile longer in silence, until she's drifting off, head lolling against his shoulder. Eventually, he carries her to her room, tucking the blankets around her. "Goodnight." he says softly, turning her bedroom light off. She fades out after that, desperate for a dreamless, thoughtless sleep.

But of course, that wasn't meant to be.

Caroline wakes in a dark room, a fire roaring to her left.

Once her eyes adjust, she recognizes the room. The hotel room where she'd had her tryst with Klaus. She sits up, looks around her. The room is empty, but a red dress lies on the floor in front of the bathroom door. Steam from the shower pours out from under the door as she climbs out of the bed, a thin line of light washes over her bunny slippers as she steps closer. Her heart pounds loudly in her chest, dread filling her belly. She presses her ear to the door, hears a soft moaning.

She steps back, swallows the lump in her throat. He was in there. With someone else. In their hotel room. How many women had he brought here before her? How many would he bring here after her? Did he enjoy them as much as her? Her heart sinks as the water turns off, and the bathroom door opens. A bombshell of a woman walks out, towel wrapped around her. Her eyes are vague and glassy as she shimmies into her dress.

Klaus steps out of the bathroom a moment later, his eyes bulging when he notices her. He'd been so wrapped up in his super model he hadn't even felt her arrival. Like that made her feel any better. She felt every move he made the second he made it, even when she didn't want to, but he couldn't feel her breaking apart at the seams less than five feet away. He bids farewell to the woman, and locks the door behind her.

She falls apart the moment he turns back towards her.

She'd been dumped over text, cheated on, lied to, left for another woman, but nothing-nothing-compared to this. This crushing pain. She feels Klaus hovering a few feet away. I'm sorry, she hears in her head. I told you it would hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. I wanted it to be you. I would rather it be you.

You. You. You.

Caroline wipes at her cheeks, looking anywhere but him. She can't stand the sight of him, glowing and strong after his feed. The other woman had given him what she couldn't. She wills herself back to her room, back to her bed, back to her solitude so she didn't have to smell the woman's perfume and sex in the air. Her hands come up to either side of her head, please let me go home please let me go home-

Klaus' hands come down to rest on her shoulders, and she feels disgust when he touches her. How could she want someone like this? A different woman every night? A soul eater? A monster?

Caroline feels him flinch, and his hands pull away from her.

She misses the contact.

She's glad she hurt him.

What do I really feel?

"What can I do?" Klaus asks, his voice wavers, almost breaking. She slips into his head, feels the high he's riding from his feed. Watches as he whispers in the woman's ear, hears her moans. In an instant, she sees their night, the one she couldn't remember. How gentle and loving he'd been. How he'd paid attention to every noise and move she'd made.

And none of it was even real. He didn't want her.

He'd never even planned on seeing her again.

"What can I do?" Klaus repeats, desperate. He can feel her in his head, knows it's going to go badly.

Caroline, through clenched teeth, hisses "Leave. Me. Alone."

And then, she's back in her own bed. Tears stream steadily down her cheeks. It would be different if she loved him. If she felt anything but hatred for him. If the pain was worth something. She feels the fracture in the bond, then. Feels him trying to get inside of her head, but she pushes and pushes and he's gone. He doesn't get to see her like this.

He tried to warn you.

Caroline breathes deeply, pulls her blankets tighter around her, as if the fabric would hold her shattered heart together. I feel nothing, I feel nothing for you, she tells herself over and over again.

Distantly, in the back of her mind where he always is, she hears the beat of his heart.