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An Unlikely Match

XXXI

Caroline could barely move once she heard the words Rebekah told her on the phone. She registered the word rapist somewhere in the speech, but when the younger blonde said she confessed the name of the guy who almost killed her, Caroline knew she wasn't exaggerating. Klaus was off to murder someone.

"Did Klaus leave?" Elena asked Caroline as she made her way downstairs. The resident stood still, phone in hand, processing what her boyfriend's sister told her, as she looked at the door Klaus just left through.

"Are you okay?" the brunette asked behind the blue-eyed woman, not seeing her sister's world falling.

"Caroline?" she asked, moving to stand in front of her. The moment she saw her broken look, Elena knew something was very wrong.

"What happened?" Elena cried out, but there was no answer from the catatonic doctor.

"Where is Klaus? Did you fight?" the younger woman tried again, growing desperate by the second as her sister stayed still.

"Caroline, talk to me!" Elena yelled, slightly shaking the curled-haired woman by her shoulders, but all she accomplished was Caroline's knees giving up on herself. Elena quickly found her phone, and searched her contacts before hitting the call button. It didn't take longer for the other blond to answer.

"Serena, it's me, Elena," Elena frantically greeted, seeing her sister unresponsive, crying on the floor. "Caroline, she isn't feeling good… in fact she looks very bad… she's in no condition to work today. I'm going to be late… maybe I won't go myself… because I need to help her, someone needs to help her."

"What happened, Elena?" Serena asked concerned

"I don't know. Klaus was here to catch us, but something happened. He's not here anymore… I don't know what happened… she's on the floor, and she won't tell me what happened. When Klaus gets there, try to find out what happened."

The chief of residency agreed, and they hung up while Caroline cried, thinking that at that very moment her boyfriend was off to murder someone.

As soon as Serena hung up with Elena hell broke loose in the ER. It was her first day back since Sophia was born and she already missed the heavenly peace around with her baby daughter and husband. She wasn't ready to deal with the daily pain and loss her last residency year would present her with.

"Pregnant woman involved in a car accident, unconscious and bleeding," announced one of the new interns.

Immediately a group of doctors and nurses went towards the paramedics and the intern that was bringing the woman inside.

There was a lot of blood on her face, and her hair was sticking on it, covering most of her features, while they started to check on her.

A policeman entered the ER and seeing the commotion he knew there was where he had to go.

"Heartbeat is dropping, the baby seems to be in distress, trying to find out if she's having contractions" said one of the residents Serena recognized from the obstetrician department.

"Someone page Dr. Isobel Saltzman, Dr. Lockwood and Dr. Fox," she offered taking a wet tissue from closely to clean the woman's face. The woman's face covered with blood and hair was making her feel even worse for the – hopefully – mother to be. The policemen talked to the intern and left, while the young doctor read the documents he left with her.

"Twenty-nine year old, resident at Sinai..." she read from the ID and badge the officer gave her.

"Oh my God," Serena cried, feeling her legs start to give up on her.

"... Katherine Amelia Pierce," the intern completed.

"Clear," the resident who had now also recognized his former co-worker, "She's crashing."

"Look at me, Caroline," Elena asked softly, as she helped her sister to sit on the couch.

"What happened, Care?" she asked, leading Caroline to sob even harder.

"I broke him," Caroline admitted, looking helplessly at Elena.

"He will forgive you, he loves you, Care, no matter what you do, he will forgive you," the new resident offered, knowing things have been off between her sister and her boyfriend for the last month or so. She tried to talk to Caroline many times, as well as Stefan and Bonnie, but the blonde would brush it off.

But now Caroline couldn't take it anymore, not when she felt guiltier than ever.

"Just when the residency year ended I suspected I was pregnant and although I could clearly see Klaus didn't want to be a father, he promised to be there for me and for one morning we were going to be parents. We talked about it and I knew it was very hard for him, but he was facing his old demons to have a family with me… we even talked about names, Elena. But then I found Bonnie's note about the muffins and it turned out all I had was food poisoning and a lot of stress," the blonde confessed, leading her sister to hug her, sharing tears with her.

"I wanted the baby, I wanted a family with him, Elena," Caroline confessed, her eyes and facial expression showing how broken she was.

"You can have a family, you can have a baby whenever you want, you're both so young," offered the brunette, trying to comfort her sister.

"I pushed him away, I punished him, I blamed him when it couldn't have possibly be his fault,"

"But why?" Elena asked.

"I wanted the baby," she said again "And I thought that Klaus would never want a baby. I thought he would never want a family. He had already told me once he didn't want to be a father and that he would never change his mind, I knew he was relieved to know I wasn't pregnant, and it hurt me he felt good about something that nearly destroyed me," Caroline said, the tears streaming down her face again.

"Maybe he was relieved, but he was probably hurt too," Elena offered.

"I don't know, I really don't. He told that day was the best of his life, but he had already told me he wasn't father material, what if it happens for real? What if someday the contraception fails and I get pregnant? I don't want him to accept it just because he won't consider an abortion,"

"If he said it was the best day of his life he has said enough, Care," Elena said with a soft smile.

"But why has he never said anything else about it?"

"Did you ever talk to him again since that day? Because you barely talk to everyone and I know it hasn't been different with him,"

"I couldn't talk to anyone, especially to him. He was relieved, Elena, how should I talk to him about it something that took my sleep away when he was probably celebrating it inside?" Caroline asked desperately.

"Have you ever thought he was relieved because you didn't plan it? Because maybe right now wasn't the best time for you to have a baby? You're both starting your third residency year and you still have five more to go. Even I would feel like a relief it was only a false alarm. I can't say how you feel, Care, but you didn't miscarriage, this baby wasn't real and whatever feeling Klaus may have had... there wasn't an actual person," Elena offered softly, hoping she wouldn't hurt her sister further.

"Maybe," Caroline admitted, seeing there was truth on Elena's words.

"What happened today?" Elena asked after a month. It didn't make sense that in an ordinary day, two months after it happened, Klaus would address it before he picked them up to work, unless it had been Caroline…

"There was this crime, eleven years ago," Caroline said, once again thinking about Rebekah had told her an hour before.

"It almost destroyed his family and now he found the responsible… oh my God, Elena, he's going to kill someone. He's going to kill the guy who hurt Rebekah," Caroline panicked and even if Elena didn't have a clue of what or who could have caused whatever accident or incident that happened to Rebekah ten years ago, she knew Klaus well enough to know the blonde was right.

"Caroline, we need to stop him," Elena stood up alarmed and Caroline knew she really had to do something about it.

Klaus drove to the airport, but he didn't know how he was capable of keeping his Aston Martin in control. He was shaking and his rage was blinding his vision. Marcel Gerard was the closest thing to a friend he had ever had. He couldn't believe the guy he welcomed into his home had nearly killed his baby sister. Klaus – being Klaus – didn't think it was unusual for Marcel to have gone MIA after the party and the months and years that followed. First the blue-eyed young man was focusing exclusively on his sister and her recovery, but after the setbacks continue coming her way he was too busy getting stoned. In Klaus' head it was totally normal for a friend to disappear given those extreme circumstances and after Henrik's death he couldn't even remember Marcel had ever been part of his life.

Somehow the resident still remembered the night vividly, even eleven years later. How he had left to go find Tatia – taking advantage of Elijah's absence at the party, leaving Rebekah to her own devices. He remembered greeting Marcel when they arrived and how he looked funnily at Rebekah, but that wasn't surprising, Rebekah was too young to be there and incredibly beautiful. He could hardly blame his friend to look at his sister with a bit of surprise. And then the most agonizing moments of his life happened. He had been looking for his sister after Tatia dumped him for the night and when she didn't answer her phone, he decided to check their car. The party was huge and they were a little bit late – courtesy of his lovely sister – and they parked a couple of blocks away. It wasn't exactly a secluded area, but dark enough for a monster to have nearly beaten Rebekah to death. He found his sister by the car, blood everywhere, spanked, cut, unconscious and barely breathing. He panicked, when she was unresponsive to everything he did. He started screaming and a couple who was already heading home heard him, saw what happened and called the police. He could still remember how cold Rebekah was and the many bruises covering her otherwise flawless skin.

Many times he wondered – in his darkest moments – what he would do to the man that hurt Rebekah like that and invariably it involved a lot of violence, torture, prolonged pain all leading to a very painful death.

Klaus checked his watch, wondering what could he do to stop the thoughts from entering his mind now. With Marcel's face on his mind, he felt like his body was going to execute all those ideas without any kind of repression. He would have to wait for almost six hours – which meant a lot of free time to let his mind take him do very dark places and even if his thoughts were consumed by Rebekah and Marcel now, he couldn't completely forget Caroline. He knew things weren't good between them, but now more than ever he'd do everything for them to work things out. If any sort of punishment reached Marcel, maybe he could try to really move on and he knew if he followed the plans on his mind he would lose any chance of ever making it with Caroline... he knew he was very capable of killing Marcel with his bare hands - literally. He needed to distract himself, so he headed to JFK's main terminal. While he waited, he called an old contact in London to try to find out what were Marcel's whereabouts. Julian was a well known lawyer in London and very well connected, reason why it didn't surprise Klaus it took only thirty minutes for him to hear back from the guy. But if the effectiveness wasn't surprising, the same couldn't be said about what the lawyer found out. Marcel had committed suicide not even a year after what he'd done to Rebekah. That wasn't something Klaus had been expecting and it left him lost about what to do. He wanted – he needed – to be able to do something – anything to the man that destroyed so many years of his sister's life, but it was too late.

It wasn't like Klaus didn't want the coward to be dead – that was what he wished the most, but he felt even more powerless now that he definitely couldn't do anything about it. That had been his only hope about feeling less guilty about everything. If he helped someway to give Marcel what he deserved, he could feel better about it, but it was now impossible. Also, it felt like Marcel had been the all to write every terrible chapter of this story as he wanted - everyone else just puppets on his hands, victims of his sick actions. Suicide was bad enough punishment, but it definitely didn't bring any closure, satisfaction or relief. Somehow he felt emptier than before.

Serena sat at the chair anxiously waiting for Elijah to reach ER, after Katherine had been moved to one of OR's. The news weren't good and while she wasn't the closest person to deliver the news to Elijah, she knew that at Klaus' absence nobody really was. Elijah had always been an attentive gentleman, who treated everyone remarkably well, but also very private. There wasn't anyone close to him except Klaus. Even Caroline and now Stefan – who dated his siblings, weren't too close to him. Also, the blow Katherine left was still an open wound and the already aloof doctor was nearly unapproachable.

When he turned the corner at the end of the corridor, looking flawless in his suit and lab coat, Serena just didn't know how to deliver such heartbreaking news. She was perceptive enough to know how much he hurt after Katherine left and she knew chances were that it was his kid fighting for their life, and given the few minutes she had stayed around, odds were even bigger that the kid wouldn't get to know his mother.

"Good morning, Dr. Mikaelson," she greeted with a shaky voice when he approached her and he caught on her apprehension instantly.

"Good morning, Dr. Van der Woodsen, is everything alright?"

"We just admitted a woman in late stage of pregnancy that has been involved in a car accident, in critical condition. The baby seems to be in distress and the mother crashed the moment she was brought in, although we had been able to bring her back," she explained quietly, her eyes getting wetter and her hands shaking slightly.

"Are they in need of heart care?" he asked still watching closely by her unexpected reaction.

"She's a fellow doctor at Sinai…" Serena offered not knowing exactly how to break the news of who the woman was.

"Have her family or co-workers been contacted?" his confusion growing about the state of the woman standing in front of him.

Fortunately for Serena though, one of the nurses reached them, giving her more time to figure out how to deal with the terrible news she had to break to the man in front of her.

"Sorry to interrupt, but there's a Rachel Singer on the line for you, Dr. Mikaelson, she says she has urgent matters to talk to you about Ms. Pierce's condition," she explained, leading Elijah to look puzzled for a second. The doctor then turned to Serena, and the look and tears on her face told him everything he needed to know. For the first time in his life he wished he wasn't so perspicacious as the word slipped his lips in a whisper.

"Katherine…"

Elena dropped Caroline at the airport and headed to hospital, knowing they couldn't be three residents down. The surgeon looked around, and didn't know where to start looking for. She informed herself about any flights to London and went as far as booking a ticket - her documents with her, everything ready as she had been supposed to travel with Klaus in their vacation, but she couldn't find Klaus in the terminal they directed her to.

It was already past nine and she felt her blood pressure dropping, noticing she hadn't eaten yet and walking around, she ended up in the main terminal, going to a cafeteria find something for her to eat before she continued to look for her boyfriend.

As she walked back to the Concourse she noticed him. He was watching the airplanes taking off and landing, his forehead resting against the glass, his muscles tense - she could tell, even if she was several feet away from him. She knew his body language, but above all she knew he was probably planning murder on his mind right now.

"Hey," she offered quietly as she stood by his side, but he didn't notice her presence or voice. She carefully touched his arm, and said his name, this time getting his attention, even if he had barely looked to his side to acknowledge her.

"What are you doing here?" he asked looking back to the tarmac.

"I came to go with you," she said softly.

"This is none of your business," he answered coldly.

"Yes, it is," she turned from him to the runaway.

"Go home, Caroline. Stay out of this," his tone grew harsher.

"You don't have to do it by yourself, Nik. It is my business because you are my business. I love you and I won't let you to do this by yourself or to do something stupid," she reached his arm, squeezing it slightly.

"You've been barely talking to me," he laughed bitterly.

"I'm sorry about that, I was hurt and disappointed, even if I shouldn't be," her voice cracked.

"I was hurt also, Caroline. I didn't plan it, I never expect it, you know I've never bloody wanted it. But the moment I thought it was happening, when I looked at you and I contemplated for real what would happen, it gave me hope, it made me dream. I've asked you a few times about your hopes and dreams and I've always said you were everything I needed, that I didn't hope or dreamed of anything else, that's true Caroline, because my life didn't mean anything before you. I asked you about what you wanted, but you were the one who made me dream again, you gave me hope and when Rebekah finally started to recover properly I felt that maybe my life wouldn't be as bad as Mikael said. Then turned out Nate was my father and things were brightening up in a way I never expected them to. I had Elijah, Kol, mother, we were a family again, but above all I had you and I felt like with you anything would be possible," he looked at her for the first time, pain covering his features.

"I thought you didn't want a family," she whispered.

"I never knew I could want them, I've never believed I could have had them, but you changed it all, you changed me, Caroline," he confessed as his eyes shone with unshed tears he didn't try to hold back, as they finally came down.

"I'm so sorry, baby," she said, hugging him and holding him close. "I thought you were relieved, you were happy while I was disheartened, not only about what happened, but also about our future. I just felt we were going to be over and it felt like I was losing even more than the baby that never existed. The possibility of losing you is what drove me crazy, is what scared me the most. I can't see my life without you," she confessed, also crying.

Klaus stepped back, and kissed his girlfriend, finding the comfort he needed in her warm arms.

"I saw a shrink last week," she whispered after they broke apart, "I didn't know what else to do. I blamed you, I blamed myself, I blamed our relationship, I put all my frustration on you because I thought you were relieved I was never pregnant, but mostly I needed help because I couldn't lose you, I couldn't destroy what we worked so hard to have. I knew I was ruining things between us, but I just felt like I couldn't fix them by myself."

"I was relieved, Caroline, because it was sudden, because I wouldn't have time to figure out how to be a father, but that morning, after the shock and when reality hit me hard, I realized I was somewhat happy, but completely terrified. It was the best and most scary news I've ever received in my life, and although I was relieved because the timing was off, I was also heartbroken, but then you were getting more and more distant and I didn't know what else to do…"

"I'm sorry I did that, I should have talked to you, but I won't make that mistake again, I won't do it now," she reached his hand and held it tight and his head went immediately back to the devastating news he received that morning. Only his love for Caroline had been able to take his head off of Marcel for a few moments.

"I don't want you to do it by yourself, I don't want you to be alone. I know it would be very hard for you and I know you, I know you'll kill him. Rebekah didn't tell me what he did, but she told what happened to her. Let me help you, there isn't anything that would make her justice, but please, Klaus, don't do something that will deprive you from living all those dreams you just told me about," she pleaded him with, fear and desperation on her eyes.

"I wish I could have the chance to kill him, but I called an old friend of mine… he's dead… he killed himself and stole me away from doing what he deserved for breaking Bekah like that," Klaus said as Caroline watched her boyfriend's feature change before her. His muscles tense again, his jaw tight and his eyes colder than she had ever seen them.

"He was my only friend at school, Caroline. The man who I put inside my house, around Rebekah and who he nearly killed my sister," he raged.

"That's not your fault, Nik, you couldn't have known," she reasoned, but she knew it would take much more to convince him otherwise.

"Except it is, I took her to a college party, with drunk, stoned people and then I left her alone while I went after some slut," he said through gritted teeth, self-loathing consuming him.

"Nik, look at me," she reached his face and turned it towards her.

"You may have been a little bit inconsequent, but his actions aren't your fault, nobody could possibly blame you for that because nobody could have predicted something like this would happen,"

"It doesn't hurt any less knowing it," he confessed, tears again falling from his blue eyes.

Caroline hugged him again and they stayed like that for long minutes. She then took him to the same cafeteria she had been before, ordered something for him to eat before he led her to his car.

"I'm going to call your sister, she was desperate when she called me," Caroline offered before she entered the car.

Taking her phone from her purse, she wasn't surprised to see many missed calls from everyone. Elena, Serena, Esther, Rebekah and even Kol had called her. Just when she was about to call Rebekah back, she got another incoming call, this time from Elijah – which was surprising.

"Hello," she answered.

"Caroline, please, come… Katherine… she… there has been an accident, the baby…" he said between sobs, his impeccable demeanor gone down the drain when he woman he still loved fought for her life as well as their little girl.

"Oh my God, Elijah, what happened, how is she? Where is she?" Caroline panicked for her friend. This day couldn't get any worse.

"She's here, please come, Caroline, I don't know if she'll make it," he pleaded, disconnecting the phone call.

AN: First of all I wanted to apologize for taking over two years to update this fic. I understand you may have already given up. I constantly received PMs and reviews asking me to update it and when someone just asked to share with them my plans to the end, I realized I should put some effort and finishing telling the story I started as it wasn't fair at all to leave you hanging there. ChillwithJyl, I didn't answer your PM, but I think I did better than that.

I still didn't make up my mind about Katherine's fate. I feel like I should kill her, but I don't know if I'll be able too. This is the only arc that still needs closure before the end.

Let me know what you thought about this update. We finally found out clearly what happened to Rebekah, but I didn't want to drag that story any longer so I just killed Marcel even before Klaus had a chance.

And again, I'm sorry for abandoning this. xx

Babi