A/N: I don't watch TVD (and TO) regularly anymore, so if there's anything I said in this fic that doesn't follow canon, just pretend that it does.

This fic is especially dedicated to the lovely ChillwithJyl, maraming salamat for all the love. :)

-o-

Rest in Pieces

But could you find it in your heart
To make this go away
And let me rest in pieces

- Rest in Pieces, Saliva

A thousand years into his immortal existence, he has come to understand that everything can be learned if you give it enough time.

How to run so you're never caught. To hide so you're never found. How to threaten, to negotiate, to entice – how to be given what you want or to take it for yourself precisely when you want it. How to keep those whom you claim to love safe, be it through locking them up in coffins, sending them far away, or wiping the slates of their memories clean.

But there is one thing that he simply cannot learn how to do, no matter how hard he tries.

-o-

"Here... does that taste too sweet to you?" she asks, eyes squinted in an expression of absolute determination as she holds out an icing-covered spoon for him to taste.

He bites the insides of his cheeks, trying his best to hold back a smile. On a whim (and because he told her that 2 Broke Girls' Max Black will always be better than Caroline Channing because she knows how to feed a man), she took up baking last month, and the cupcakes haven't stopped coming ever since. Until two days ago he didn't even know that there was such a thing as a butternut squash cupcake.

Butternut squash. Seriously.

"...So? What do you think?"

"Definitely sweet..." he says after a short nibble. He takes his index finger and swipes some of the buttercream from the spoon, lips curling into a boyish grin as he dots her dainty little nose with the confection. "Not as sweet as the baker, though."

She laughs - childlike, carefree. "Oh my God, Kol, you are so corny!"

He tries to feign a look of hurt, but soon enough he's laughing along with her, limber arms finding their way upon her apron-wrapped waist. Her cheeks bloom into a faint shade of pink as he draws her closer to him, and he almost can't believe how adorable he finds it.

"I know, I know, that was appallingly sappy," he concedes. "But you still love me, right?"

The smile that lights up her face is as genuine as the happiness that swims to the surface her blue-green eyes.

"Of course I still love you, you big, sappy koala bear, you."

She places her hands on his shoulders, standing on her toes so she can bring her face closer to his. He grins once more as he swiftly moves to catch her lips with his, too happy to mind the smidgen of sugar and dairy he gets daubed with as her nose touches his. Her lips are as warm as the Swedish summer – gentle and ardent and graceful and eager, giving and demanding, all at the same time – and usually it just reminds him of how amusingly fascinating Caroline Forbes is; but today he feels only a calm sense of contentment. He never even notices that for the first time in almost a thousand years, he has closed his eyes before a kiss without him knowing.

...and from the sidewalk where he stands, fifty yards away from the lead-glass bay windows which finally allowed him the sight of the woman he has been searching for for the last one hundred years, Niklaus Mikaelson feels his heart constrict to an abrupt stop.

-o-

The last time he saw her was over a century ago. She told him that she felt for him – still did, perhaps – but she covered it with hostility because he was the devil and she was good, and the rest of the world told her that this goodness meant she should never come to love someone so evil.

She was nineteen – young, both by human and vampire count, and he could barely blame her for not having it in her heart to accept the truth instead of hating herself for it. So he told her that if she would give him a moment of pure, genuine honesty, he would go and let her be free.

And she did.

He knew it the moment his lips first found hers. Setting her free did not mean letting her go and giving up - it meant letting her go so she would be free to find him when she was ready. He did not know when that time would come, if it might take decades or centuries or another millenia, but it didn't matter. He knew from the way she cradled his face in her hands that she would show up on his door one day, a genuine smile lighting up her face, two tickets to Rome in her hands.

What he didn't expect was that only a year later he would find the silver pipe necklace she'd worn when they last met lying aimless on the blood-spattered pavement of Rue St. Alain, an argent incongruity amidst the mess of mangled corpses belonging to no less than sixteen bayou wolves. A call to Elena Gilbert would send his heart pounding in a frenzy of dread and despair like he had never known before.

"Caroline left three days ago. She said she was going to see the world."

He has never stopped searching for her ever since.

-o-

It's the perfect home for a young couple just starting out. A cozy little Cape Cod, three beds and two and a half baths, with a welcoming portico and dormer windows upping the Southern charm. The slate roof had been blue and the brick siding cream when the Park Cities property changed hands fourteen months ago, but now there's shingles of brownstone cedar over the clapboard siding of timid white.

But what would have one admire 0511 Amherst Avenue, ultimately, is the breath-taking picture of form and colour called the residence's front lawn. That sea of hale green grass decked with hedges of neatly trimmed boxwoods, those cheery beds of begonias and trailing verbena, lavender, heliotrope, purple dahlias and puffs of alyssum, all in full summer bloom, the limestone pathway skillfully laid out to meet almost seamlessly with the elm-lined sidewalk. It's rare for onlookers not to smile at the sight as they pass by, teenage students and St. Mark's soccer moms and harried professionals rushing downtown alike.

And the king?

There's that unbeating thing in his chest that tells him it's beautiful. That everything he's seeing is grown by hand, tended with love. And it makes him feel some kind of stirring warmth... until his eyes catch sight of the copper mailbox bearing the handcrafted sign 'Kol&Care', and then the tepid admiration quickly turns into numbing cold.

It would have crushed him to see one hundred years of searching end like this: the girl he loves, alive and unharmed, living a seemingly happy, human life, in the arms of his own brother. And truth be told, part of him feels like dying with each step he takes closer to the front door. But Kol - Kol died of a white oak stake through the heart even before Caroline disappeared a century ago, and if only for this Klaus knows that he cannot just walk away. Whether it's vengeful witches channeling dark magic, new supernatural forces to be reckoned with, or more doppelgangers walking the earth, if it must come down to that - there is an explanation he needs to hear, a truth he needs to know of, a mate and a brother he needs get back.

He stares up the slab of glass and dark mahogany in front of him. The crisp sound of the breath he sharply heaves in does nothing to drown out the frenzied beating he hears in his head; he tries to lift his hand to press the door bell -

- but then he hears a faint click of brass, the telling turn of a knob, the aching creak of wood… and suddenly the door in front of him is open.

"Nik!"

A three letter name – one he has not spoken for a hundred years - slips quietly from his lips.

"Kol..."

Before him stands Kol, a surprised but nonetheless delighted smile fixed upon the younger Original's handsome face, as though he had not expected his older brother's presence even when he knew to open the door first. He's as boyish and playful and carefree as Klaus remembers - as if he'd simply lived on and never went to Elena Gilbert's that fateful night in Mystic Falls over a century ago - and it makes the hybrid forget everything. He wants to touch Kol, grasp him, just to make sure he's real and not some dream or hallucination.

But he can't even find the strength to move, and he never even notices that Kol never makes the effort to move towards him.

"I knew it was you the moment you got to my parkway! Though I must say I didn't expect you to walk up all the way to the door... I thought you'd give a couple of days to watch the house and make sure there's no skullduggery going on before letting me know you've found me. But I digress, I'm glad you're finally here, brother!"

He shakes his head slowly; doesn't really understand. In his mind he hears each of Kol's words as clearly as he hears the glee they trickle with, and yet when strung together he cannot grasp their meaning.

"How... I saw you - I mourned you -"

"How am I alive?" Kol finishes the question for him. "Oh, it's a direly stodgy story. The Other Side was on the verge of collapse, I heard Mother's voice calling me – ran away as fast as I could, naturally – saw that pretty Bennett witch from Mystic Falls blasting people off to God knows where by touching them, so I grabbed along when it was Damon Salvatore's turn thinking that wherever she'll send him is bloody better than Hell or Mother – come to think of it, there's barely any difference between those two, eh?- and what do you know, I found myself in Whitmore!"

"When - why didn't you find me?"

"Let's see... about a hundred years ago? And you'll be happy to know, my favourite brother, that I did try to find you."

It's the exact moment he realizes that something is horribly wrong. The impish smile on the younger Mikaelson's lips murks into a grim sneer, one that Klaus will never come to forget.

"You were the first person I tried to find when I became a ghost, Nik. I thought you'd burn Mystic Falls to the ground and tear out the livers of every bloody bugger in that town for what that doppelganger bint did to me. That's the least you'd expect if your last breathing memory is of your brother screaming like Spartacus while you're burning to death, right? Oh, if you'd known how much I wanted to cry and tell you that your tears meant the world to me, that you loved me after all and it was the best thing I'd ever known in my life – it's ridiculous, you would have disowned me. So imagine how gobsmacked I was when I popped up in Mystic Falls and saw that the entire Gilbert Glam Squad was alive and very much unscathed because my loving brothers and sister didn't care that I'd been killed – they were too busy running off to New Orleans because of a magical baby!"

He feels something inside him break. "Kol, you're my brother. I -"

"Gods, it was surreal. Hearing you and Elijah and Bekah talk about how that baby was going to unite your family – it's always really been about just the three of you, hasn't it, always and forever? - how it was going to redeem you and all that codswallop, and I was standing in the shadows thinking, really, you need this supernatural mongrel baby to be all this and do all that? Wasn't my death enough to want you to make your family whole again?"

"Your death wasn't nothing. We grieved you, and heaven knows if there was anything I could have done to bring you back I would have gone to hell doing it. But you were gone and killing a doppelganger or felling a town wasn't going to change that, and Hope was alive and she could be saved. She needed me, she would never have been born if I wasn't there to protect her. You have to understand."

"Nik's city, Nik's daughter, Nik's redemption... notice anything similar about all the important things?" the younger Original asks. The derisiveness in his voice could have cut glass.

"Kol -"

"It's alright, brother. As you can see, I've done pretty well for myself, so everything turned out fine in the end."

The hybrid's eyes widen. The realization hits him like a flood crashing through a city, drowning him in horror and helplessness as he pieces two and two together. And suddenly everything is cold and blood red and Klaus can almost taste the bile rising up his throat.

Kol came back from the Other Side a hundred years ago and Caroline vanished a hundred years ago and now they're both here, and she was kissing him...

"The motherfucking - "

He lunges at Kol, blue irises swirling into burning gold as rage and terror overcomes him. He wants nothing more than to kill the git with his own hands, oh, he would kill him – but Kol needed only to step back to afford himself the protection of invitation, and Klaus' fists meet with the heavy, empty air that no vampire could force his way through.

"What did you do to Caroline? I swear to God, Kol, I will kill you!"

"Wow, threatening to kill me already, just seconds after you said you grieved my death?" Kol mocks, grin wide and gleeful, delighting at the fury that he knows will do nothing for his brother.

"Give her to me – " Klaus bites out, between teeth gnashed in anger and fists clenched hard enough to bleed. "Give her to me or I will make you pay. You know me, Kol, you know what I can do and you know I will kill you! So if you value your life, you -"

"If you value her life, you won't touch me. Did you really think I'd take the girl I knew you loved and just run away, avoid you for a hundred years? I thought everything out, Nik. And that's why you couldn't find me until I decided three days ago that I wanted you to. She's linked to me. I die, she dies."

The words hang in the air limply in the air, jeering him and his helplessness. He doesn't even know what to answer. He has been dreaming of this day for the last hundred years, the day when he finally finds her… but now hearing everything his brother just said, he's wishing it's just a nightmare he'll soon wake up from.

Kol merely tilts his head, smiling at him sweetly. "Really, Nik, you should be thanking me. If I hadn't been in New Orleans trying to hitch a plan to make the rest of your life miserable, your dear little Caroline would be dead by now. Do you know how I found her? Walking in a grimy alley in the French Quarter, clutching tickets to Rome, choking back tears. I almost didn't recognize her, really, she's a sad little thing when she cries. Ah, wait – add "followed by a pack of werewolves" to that. I think your trollop of a 'queen' saw her before you did and thought she was in town to kill your precious daughter like that Lockwood guy was before, so she sent a pack to dispatch Ms. Mystic Falls before she touches as much as a hair on your daughter's head. Seriously, why do you French Quarter lot think that everything is about Hope? How about, Nope!"

"Caroline left three days ago. She said she was going to see the world."

He begins to tremble, even when he forces himself to hold everything back. He had been right. Caroline came for him after all. But then...

"So I, your gallant cad of a brother, took care of the wolves for her – you're very much welcome, – and then I gazed at her with my irresistible Original eyes and told her to tell me what's wrong. And she told me she just learned about your child and that pathetic baby-sitting psychologist you like to make moony eyes at and she said she couldn't hold it against you because it was her fault she couldn't be honest with herself, so on, so forth. She literally had no idea you've been waiting for her all this time. Cue the light bulb on top of my head, plan to make you miserable for the rest of your life conceived!"

God - to know that she cried, thinking he'd forgotten about her and moved on with a child and another girl – a white oak stake through his gut would have been far easier to bear.

"You... you compelled her..."

"Damn right. I had to get her to leave New Orleans with me that night, it'd spoil my plans if you discovered she was there and I was alive. But I left you a souvenir, for old times' sake. You're very much welcome for that, too."

Her necklace... He remembers inwardly. The one that's now in his jacket's breast pocket, the one that he has been carrying with him every single day since she disappeared, always close to his heart.

"You know, at first I thought I'd just shut her in some witch-sealed cave, torture her a bit and start cutting off her body parts to send to you every year on your daughter's birthday. But then I remembered, she's a feisty little thing and we could have some fun while you go mad searching for her. And when you're miserable, Elijah and Bekah can't have any peace either – three birds in one stone! So I told her to forget everything about her life, except for the fact that she was a vampire, and wake up after three days in some back street in downtown Columbus with no idea who she is or how she got there. But don't worry, I was by her side when she woke up. Played the part of an adventurous vampire traveling the world and happening to stumble upon an amnesiac fellow blood sucker. I got her a new daylight ring, showed her a book of names and asked her to pick what she liked, but of course I'd already compelled her to pick 'Caroline'. I didn't even have to force her to go with me, she asked if she could tag along by herself."

"And when she tired of you and wanted to leave, you compelled her to stay and play house. So now you're the doting boyfriend, eating experimental cupcakes and growing boxwoods and heliotropes in your spare time, and she has no idea what a monster you are and what you've done to her." Klaus hisses. "Just wait till she finds out – maybe I'll let her do the honor of staking you."

The twitch in his younger brother's eye is faint, almost imperceptible; but it's there, and he sees it all too clearly before Kol shakes his head.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing, Nik. You're trying to find out if I compelled her to love me. But I'll let you carry that load a little longer. Toss in your sleep every night from here on, never knowing if your beloved Caroline fell for me on her own or if I had to force her to stay and be with me." he declares with a curt laugh. ""Also, have you ever thought about what would happen if you tell her the truth?"

The amber-haired vampire shifts bearing, crosses his arms over his chest. He leans haughtily on the edge of the door, affording his brother a menacing leer like that of a joker who knows he holds all the cards. "You're going to force me to remove her compulsion, then take her back with you to New Orleans where she'll be slapped with the reality that you're never going to be able to put her first. Admit it. She's always going to be the second choice if she goes with you. Or are you going to forget all about your Sleeping Beauty daughter linked to that useless 'good' human – well, or whatever that Camille bint is now – and just live happily with the peasant-girl you love, who will never be queen because there's already that wenchy werewolf mother of your child? That's the fun part of the plan, Nik. After a hundred years of searching, you find her but she doesn't even know you. Now you can tell her the truth and make her hurt for the rest of her life, or you can die everyday watching her be happy with me."

A lump forms in Klaus' throat, one with sting in his eyes and the piercing ache he suddenly feels in his heart. There are a hundred and twenty languages, two hundred thirteen dialects and four billion words that he knows of, but there is nothing he can say that will change the truth in his brother's words.

When he killed his mother ninety seven years ago, Esther's parting gift had been one last all-powerful spell that put her three-year old granddaughter to sleep, linked to the life of Camille O'Connell as Elena Gilbert was to Bonnie Bennett. But Esther had been far more cruel – she made Camille immortal. Not a vampire, not a witch, not any supernatural being – plainly a human, powerless but undying, helpless while the world spun around her and the people she loved passed on to the afterlife.

Hayley had thrown their friendship to the wind and tried to kill her even before the human told her that she would gladly die to let Hope live, and for the last ninety years they had tried everything they could think of to end her life, But nothing had worked, and Hope was still asleep, and Camille was still in New Orleans living a life of wishing for death.

They hadn't stopped - they could never stop - finding a way to break the spell... even if he gets Caroline back.

And Klaus -

"I will find a way to kill you. Mark my words, Kol, you will regret all of this!"

- the honest but empty threat is all that he can say.

"Yeah, sure, looking forward to see you try." the younger Original retorts, knowing fully well that his brother could never hurt the girl his life was linked to.

"...And by the way, Nik, since we're on the subject of riling each other up and all that, I wanted to ask – did Caroline ever give you head? God, I hope she did, it's a shame if you'd never known how her mouth feels around you. So hot and soft and eager to please. I've had her for almost a century and I still can't get enough. Though when I tire of her in a few years, maybe I can let the Texan werewolves use her as a cum slut. With a body like that, they'd give me whatever I want for a night with her."

He would have killed his brother for what the bastard said – it didn't matter if he burned to death trying to do it – but then he hears a voice call out from inside the house, and his world stops.

"Kol?"

The sound of lissome feet meeting the polished wooden floor fills the air between the two Originals, and the younger of the brothers smiles again. A young woman, no more than twenty, with eyes of sea green and hair of wheat gold emerges from the hallway, apron tied around her bodice, a softly puzzled expression painted on her fair face.

"Oh – do we have company?"

She walks towards the living room, and it takes every ounce of control still left in Klaus' body to keep himself still as she stands beside Kol. The latter uncrosses his arms to wrap one around her waist, and she smiles as she leans in closer to his chest.

Her eyes flick to the hybrid, wordlessly gazing at him for a second before her lips curl into a warm beam.

And everything inside him crumbles.

"Caroline, I'd like you to meet my brother. We call him Nik, but he goes by Klaus. Brother, this is my girlfriend, Caroline."

She's close – so close he can see the daub of white powder where flour had smeared on her temple, smell the scent of honey and lilacs lingering beneath her skin. He can almost touch her – and yet she has never felt so far away.

"You look familiar... have we met before?" Caroline asks. The innocence of her smile burns him like a thousand deathless suns.

You can tell her the truth and make her hurt for the rest of her life, or you can die everyday watching her be happy with me.

"No." Klaus finally answers.

-o-

He'd sit on a bench in Caruth Park for the rest of the day, bloodshot eyes looking straight past the world and into a place where 'However long it takes' still exists, ash-pale hands tightly holding a confectionery box with a single Key Lime cupcake.

"Please, Klaus, join us for lunch, I've never met any of Kol's family and I would love to know more about you." She'd asked him that morning, after he mumbled an excuse of needing to go.

He felt like dying. Couldn't even summon the strength to say more than five words.

"Apologies… I-I really have to…"

"Next time, sweetheart. Nik's a busy man and he just slotted dropping by in his schedule today. But he'll pay us a more leisurely visit next time, right, Nik?"

He nodded weakly, unable to as much as look at his own brother. How did things end up like this?

"Alright, then… Wait, can you hold for a moment? It's gonna be quick, ten seconds tops -"

She came back with a small blue box, smiling as she handed him one of the cupcakes she'd been making. It's warm and comforting, just like her touch. "Here, if you really can't stay, then please at least have a cupcake. It's not much, I'm still trying to learn how to bake. But it's for you, Klaus. Nice to meet you."

He couldn't move. There was the girl who held his heart, the girl he had promised to wait for. One hundred years ago she took the leap and decided she was ready to see the world with him, and she'd gone to New Orleans, two tickets to Rome in her hands just like he'd always dreamed of.

And now she didn't even know him and he wasn't certain what his life was for anymore.

He knew it, then and there.

He could learn how to do everything else, but he could never learn how to stop loving her.

-o-

"Kol?"

"Hm?"

"…Are you sure your brother's okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"He looked… sad."

"Oh… Nik, he's - well, he's not really fine."

"Because?"

"Well… There was this girl..."

"I knew it."

"Did you, now?"

"It was all over his face, he was pining for someone. What happened?"

"He fell in love. There's been a lot of women in Nik's life, trust me - but I think she's the only one he ever really loved. She didn't feel the same way at first, and he promised her that he would wait for her, and finally one day she loved him back. But then she disappeared –"

"What do you mean she disappeared?"

"Nobody knows what happened. She just vanished. Nik'd turned every stone in New Orleans looking for her, but he never found her again."

"Poor dear... He's still looking for her, isn't he?"

"He is."

"Do you think he'll find her again?"

"I don't know. Do you think he'll find her again?"

"… I hope so."

-o-

1. Whew! Am I ever so relieved to get this one out. This fic is one of my favourite storylines and it sat unfinished in my laptop for like two years, and now that it's finally published… it feels great. Now please wait for the 6 other oneshots and updates that have been sitting unfinished in my laptop for the last two years, I swear I am going to get them all out.

2. In a perfect world I would have the time to write a sequel for this, where Klaus goes to see Caroline without Kol knowing, and he finds out what her life has been with Kol for the past hundred years. And then he does something drastic which forces Kol to reveal if he compelled her to be with him or not, and to admit how he really feels about Caroline. (I know he said some pretty strong things about Caroline here, but when I wrote those I was thinking that he didn't necessarily mean everything, he was saying stuff that he knew would infuriate Klaus, regardless whether they were true or not.) And then the situation is resolved and everyone lives happily ever after.

3. As always, I am erica-dreams-in-colour at tumblr and she. dreams. in. colour is my main account here in FFN. Feel free to check out my stuff, links are in my profile page.