Even though this is the second time I'm posting this, but my previous a/n still applies, so:

[doesn't update for a year and a half]: slow burn

Your fave trash writer is back from the dead, I bring you some few thousand words of pure unadulterated sleep deprivation-fueled writing, some of which I'd written aeons ago, some I edited out, some I rearranged for it to click into place as best as I hope it will.

So like, just tell me to shut the fuck up so you can get to readin'.

—

4. if you like me, take me home

—

Now, she thinks. Wake up.

Speak.

There's no sound but the salted specks splattering the window, the mournful whistle of the wind growing louder and louder—the glass shakes with every howl. Kol is a hard black silhouette against the window, like you could lose yourself in him if you dared come closer.

It's her voice, a harsh rasp that breaks both her brothers out of their trance, that breaks the silence in the room. Kol half-turns, as if startled, but Nik doesn't move. Kol used to just smile off their insults and laugh at their punches, and Nik, he would give his rolling pin a wave, Nik would say, "Nothing disturbs the dead," with so much contempt in his voice you would hardly think they were brothers (or maybe you would think they were brothers, simply because of that).

Today, Nik is still.

Nothing disturbs the dead.

"Don't." She watches Kol step towards them, watches him reach for Caroline, and she gulps him down. She doesn't like seeing him like this, but then again, she's never seen him like this. So haunted, yet so hopeful too. She tries again, hoping her voice doesn't catch this time, "Not now, Kol. Not yet."

And to Nik: "Please don't. Don't touch her, you don't know what your touch will do—"

"Bekah." Nik sounds lost, he has dark circles under his eyes and a shadow across his face. In the dark she can't see what he looks like, what he might be feeling right now. She doesn't want to. He sounds like he's trying to be comforting, but she hears him break. "She's already dead."

No. No, no, no.

She tugs at him, wants him to move away, come here, Nik, get up— "Are you sure you don't want to come?" it sounds like a plead.

"I'm fine where I am."

Rebekah snaps, her feet turn, hands pressed to her eyes, turns and turns around the room until not even the rain makes a sound, until the pain in her chest has swallowed her heart, swallowed her whole, until all she can do is collapse against the counter with a muffled sob.

The door opens with a clang.

Elijah sweeps into the room. His cheeks are ruddy; he is breathless from the cold, but one look around the room has him almost livid. "This could have been avoided if we'd just fixed the fucking door."

.

.

Three months, two days and five hours before—

Klaus is heading home, walking around the fountain and taking the stairs to the heavy wooden doors two at a time, hands in his pockets and a wrinkle between his brows, as one does when one is ruminating something dreadful.

It occurs to him that Caroline never even demanded an apology out of him as he thought she would. Not that he had to. He hadn't lied. He still finds it odd, however, that she didn't, as the girl usually demands everything from him. She'd just washed her hands clean as per his instructions, buttoned her coat all the way to her neck and walked home. Alone, at her request. He considers following her, but something in her eyes kept him walking the other way.

The front door closes behind him in a soundless snap, and he realizes he's too tired for this, for any of this. He hangs up his coat and closes his eyes. From the arch in the foyer, he hears everything.

He hears Rebekah moving around in her room just down the hall from the staircase, her voice animated and inaudible.

He hears music wafting from Elijah's study. La Traviata, after a minute's pondering. Act four. He arches his eyebrows in part appreciation and part conjecture: a little dark considering what's just happened—don't you think so, brother? Where have your thoughts taken you tonight?

A perk of the ear reveals silence from Kol's end of the mansion. He must not be home.

Pressing up against his lungs he feels the silence left behind, a quiet left so still that it stabs. He thinks, for a moment, that he should go upstairs, put his ear to Kol's door and turn the knob just to be sure. It's one thing to be haunted by a ghost, it's another to be haunted by something that should have stayed one. But Klaus stays where he is, heel on the scuffed step-down of the front door, toe pointed in the direction of Elijah's music.

Knowing, without a doubt, the earful he's about to get, Klaus lingers by the door, until he starts to feel a bit stupid, a bit like the youngest brother he tries so hard to forget he is. His reflection in the mirror winks – you're aging, he remembers. You're getting older. What use is there being scared?

Alright then, mate.

Elijah is already waiting for him when he finally steps into the study, back straight in his armchair. He's swirling some thick amber liquid in his crystal tumbler. Elijah always did like to drink by the fire, Klaus sneers. Bit dramatic, that one.

"A little macabre even for my tastes," he says of the music swelling and takes a seat opposite his brother. It's certainly odd seeing Elijah start without him. He looks well into his rounds: the bottle had halved considerably.

"Have you thought about what to say to Mikael?" Elijah asks, ignoring him. He motions for Klaus to pour himself a drink with a quiet grunt. Not once does his chin waver or his hand shake.

"I thought I'd stroll in, venture down nice weather innit? lane. Have you visited Mum lately? Maybe dip his face into a pot of boiling sugar if time allows," Klaus says nonchalantly, taking a long pull of whiskey. It burns down his throat and coils like a snake in his gut. His following gulp is a little too hasty; it slops down his chin.

"That won't do."

"No, I suppose it wouldn't."

"And Caroline?"

"What about her?" He wipes his mouth roughly with the back of his hand, fixes his brother with a stony glare. Don't start, Elijah. "Surely there aren't any more anomalies on your list that you ought to patch up first."

"So she's an anomaly? Strange, I thought she was just another girl you brought back to life. And then lied to about it."

Elijah smiles.

Klaus glowers.

"I didn't lie." Of course he didn't. "I just… excluded."

"Neglected to mention. Slipped your mind?"

"Oh, get that bloody look off your face. I bet you enjoy this, don't you? Smug, Always-Right-Elijah," he spits, tipping back more whiskey. "It was Kol, I know it. He's self-destructive, he always has been – wait 'til I get my hands—"

"On me?" Kol strides into the room laughing. "With your dainty little fingers? I'd sooner whittle toothpicks out of them for all the good they would work against me, brother."

Kol grabs the bottle right out of his hands and swigs straight from the neck.

"What did you do with the body?" Klaus asks, watching carefully the bob of his brother's eyebrows, the long pull of drink, the hard swallow without as much as a grimace.

He's staring now. Kol holds his gaze. Elijah sits between them with his fingers steepled, gazing into the fire unseeingly, but his shoulders are stiff like he is waiting for the answer, too..

At long last, Kol lowers the bottle. "What we always do with them." A shrug.

.

.

The days pass quietly, pies are served, tips are left, and the books are tucked away in Elijah's sensible clutches. Caroline avoids everyone but Rebekah, not only giving him a wide berth (expected) but Kol as well (surprising).

Or maybe not so, considering his brother is a right fucking git.

"It was the right thing to do," Kol preaches one night. "The honourable thing."

"The fuck you know about honour," Klaus grits, his hands unnecessarily violent on the dough he's kneading.

"Tut tut, brother. No cursing around the pies! They're to be made with love, remember?"

He doesn't notice the knife he's grabbed until it's sliced between Kol's ribs—he doesn't know who's more surprised, him or Kol. Kol looks up with dark eyes, almost startled, and with inhuman speed Klaus finds his face slammed down into his worktable, flour clapping up in clouds around them. He blinks away stars, and tastes blood like a bright copper penny under his tongue.

"I was doing the right thing," Kol hisses into his ear. "I saw the way it would have ended. Her, dead on these tiled floors— messy messy. She deserved to know. Mikael is running around with his trigger happy fingers and you're content sitting there playing fucking house, hoping no one would be the wiser."

"Did your death give you the gift of foresight?" Klaus thrashes against Kol but to no avail. His muscles strain, his neck creaks, and he's inhaling flour and coughing out spit and cinnamon. "Get off, you bloody—"

Kol steps back easily. Klaus wheezes against the table, fingers curling into fists, the bowl of filling upset all over the dough. There is blood stained on his sleeve, Kol's, and he turns to see his brother absently fingering the already-mended wound.

"I may look like a right prat, parading around like a nineteen-year old, but I'm older than you. Older than Elijah, older than Finn even. I know things." Kol yanks off his apron and balls it up before whipping it into the sink. "Gods curse me for saying this, but I've got your best interests at heart."

"You would like to think so, wouldn't you?"

"Wouldn't you?" Kol flashes a smile before leaving.

Klaus makes sure he's absolutely gone before collapsing onto the table, heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, swallowing down a sob, because he would, he would, he would.

.

.

The days don't get any warmer, but they do change from a frigid cold to a late winter cool that is quiet pleasant during midday. Klaus still keeps the blinds pulled low, but that doesn't stop the light from bursting in one day in the form of Rebekah bouncing around the kitchen, rustling up that old box of Mother's recipes.

"Cinnamon, brown sugar…" she is murmuring to herself, flour dotted on the tip of her nose, intent as she is on the little frayed card in her hands. "Coconut extract? Really? I would have never thought."

Klaus picks up a bottle of molasses syrup, and frowns. "What's all this?"

"Baking something." The look she gives him is one of irritation, as if it should be obvious enough. He matches her gaze, and she sighs sharply. "Caroline's birthday."

Klaus blinks.

"Tomorrow?" she prompts.

He looks down at his hands and wills them to wrap around his favourite rolling pin, for want of something to do with them. His voice sounds terse, appallingly in his ears, when he says, "I wasn't invited."

"Oh don't be petty, Nik." Rebekah rolls her eyes and reaches for one of the bowls stacked underneath the table. She seems to have little patience today – not that she had the minimal amount even on normal days. "Of course the invitation extends to all of us."

When he says nothing, she peers at him over her measuring cup with narrowed eyes. "You're not going to do that idiotic thing where you pine and not show up, are you?"

"I don't pine." To change the subject, he adds: "And you're measuring it wrong. It says a quarter cup right there."

"Don't change the subject," Rebekah says reproachfully, and in the same manner taps some flour out of the cup. "But just to stroke your ego since you so need it, yes, of course you're invited, you're not unwanted, although why you aren't is a surprise to me as well since you're a total dick."

Strangely, the remark stings. He tightens his grip around the smooth wood, dusted with its omnipresent flour, the chip in one of the handles, the rough scratch of his initials on the other, faded now. Mother's, it had been. Rebekah sighs a final time and puts down the measuring cup.

"Nik," she says softly. "Come help me with this. I think you sweat over this once or something, I can't read it worth a damn."

.

.

He should have told her.

He runs a hand over her side of the pantry. She'd been here just moments before, he can smell her in the air. He'd been careful not to look at her, not to touch her. He hears the excited whoops of patrons outside, whistling, the clatter of cutlery as a clumsy rendition of Happy Birthday is sung.

Red is very becoming on her, the telltale sign of life flushed high in one's cheeks, and it would be stained on hers, and it would probably stay there the entire day – Caroline, she flushes easily, it's all that delicate skin she has coating her bones. She would flush and blush and mutter and gleam up at him, and he won't understand—will never understand.

It's not until later in the evening that Rebekah finds him fiddling with the oven settings. Her eyes are lined with kohl and she's in a pretty yellow dress. Her face is wiped clean of emotion, which settles strangely in his stomach. Rebekah is never hard to read.

"Are you sure you don't want to come?"

"I'm fine where I—" Klaus stops. "I—"

.

.

There is a pie on his worktable.

He ruminates over the meaning of this as he pours himself some bourbon. Surprised, he thinks. He feels surprised. And also guilt, a downturn of his mouth, that coil in his gut from last week tightening. It's her birthday. She shouldn't be baking. But he would be lying if he said he hadn't missed the strudels.

It's late, he decides. He also decides he's tired, which would explain his contemplative nature. He also decides that he should get as adequately buzzed as possible and head to bed, until he hears the jingle of the front bell.

"We're closed," he mutters, and turns around to see—

"Caroline."

It's dark in the kitchen, but Klaus can make out her blushed cheeks and soft eyes. She's looking at him in an accusatory manner, but then she steps out from the shadows, and he can see that she looks… sad.

It puzzles him as much as it twists in his chest. He isn't used to seeing her this way.

He looks at her and she looks back, and he wants to shake her, wants her to stop expecting things of him.

"It was my birthday," Caroline says slowly when the silence stretches. She pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "Everyone was there. Rebekah, Stefan – even Tyler."

Klaus swallows as she steps closer. He can't look away, not even when the mention of the Lockwood brat settles like a stone in his stomach, hardening his insides. Spreading.

Tyler had been there, he knows. After all, so had he. Lingering on her porch for so long even Rebekah snorted and pushed past him to get inside. And when he'd finally decided to come in, he sees Tyler and Caroline, foreheads locked together in a wrestle that would have been deemed adorable by the people crowding around them cheering and hollering. And Caroline had laughed, had looked so lively at the way Tyler's hands pressed into the side of her neck to hold her off, Alright Birthday Girl, you win.

The weight that had settled inside him is not unlike the weight he feels now, and maybe that's what keeps him from telling her that he'd been there, because then he'd have to explain why he'd left. But he'd stood at her house. Just outside the front door, the soles of his shoes already stepped over the welcome mat. I was there, Caroline. You looked beautiful.

You look beautiful.

Klaus clenches his jaw, killing the words, throttling them, before they drop out of his mouth. All he says is, "I just thought you wouldn't have liked my being there."

"Why else would I have invited you if I didn't?" Caroline retorts.

"You invited Rebekah."

"Which extended to you!" She stops with a huff, just an arms' length away from him. "I waited for you, you know. For so long. My dads, they made cake. Red velvet, with extra cream cheese. Broke our diet just for this. It's my favourite, but you wouldn't know, would you?" She giggles and promptly claps her hand to her mouth.

"Caroline," he says, the words a struggle in his chest. "Love—"

"Do you even mean that?" she hisses, her eyes glinting in sudden, bright fury. "Those words you say. Love." There's poison on her tongue, and for a brief moment he wonders how it would taste against his.

Under any other circumstance, if it were any other girl, he would have reached a hand out as she sways where she's standing, but it's not just another girl – hell, he's not even sure if he even would reach out if it were. It's Caroline. So Klaus' arms remain by his side, and Caroline steadies herself against the work table. Her words are harsh and quick, and she looks a little drunk, so Klaus asks the obvious question:

"Are you drunk?"

Caroline lifts herself up on the table, the back of her knees cutting into the edges, her palms pressed against the scuff marks he'd left there what seemed like a lifetime ago. "A little. It was some party."

"If this is you trying to guilt me—"

"It is," Caroline snaps. A piece of her hair falls into her eyes, and Klaus is overcome with a strange desire to push it back, trace the back of his fingers against her cheeks. He's not—he's not used to this. Maybe he looks at it a beat too long, because Caroline brushes it away herself with some impatience. "You're not stupid. Why are you pretending to be stupid? Stop – being – stupid."

With every word she says she leans closer, and Klaus has nowhere to go – he's rooted to his stool, the metal edges of the shelf digging into his spine. His hands are suspended in mid-air as far away from her as possible. "Caroline. You're drunk. Please remember where we are."

Her eyes bear into his, a little befuddled. They're a whirl of blue and grey crashing together in their uncertainty, like she's trying to figure out if it is indeed him sitting in front of her. People had always told him that he and Rebekah had the bluest eyes they'd ever seen, but Caroline, with all her incessant chatter and mixed metaphors that make no sense—Caroline had eyes like the ocean, drowning him.

"You're so afraid of me," Caroline whispers. The tide in her eyes ebbs and breaks. "Look at you. You can't even hold my gaze longer than a second."

"You know why," he says hoarsely. He can smell the sweet musk of her, rolling notes of rose and neroli – dusky and dreamy and sad, like the smell that lingers off a scarf after a day of wearing it. He's never really been this close before. Not since the first time he'd touched her. This is not going to be the last. He exhales sharply and reaches a steady hand out to touch the velvet of her dress, gently pushing her back. "Enough of this."

Her hands shoots out to grab his wrist, and for one terrifying moment Klaus feels something cold wash over his stomach and he expects the light to drain out of her, a zap and a zing and she's blue and cold on the ground—but then his heart sputters and starts again when he realizes she's wearing gloves, delicate silk pushed all the way to her elbows. He's so relieved he slumps back against the shelf with a rattly chest, but Caroline's still got a hold of his wrist.

"God, you're so – you're so dead." She sounds angry now, blinking furiously.

Klaus has to bark out a laugh then. Ridiculous, silly, remarkable girl, you don't know what you're saying— "I'm dead? Says the girl who was brought back to life."

By him, no less.

"No, you're like – you're alive, which is the stupidest part, but…" Caroline screws her eyes shut, grappling for words. "You're just there, not living. You're not dead, and that's all there is to it. You keep your head down, you tiptoe around me—don't get me wrong, like, you snarl and you scream at everyone all the time, but when it's moments like these… nothing."

She opens her ocean eyes again, and it's the clearest he's ever seen them. "I feel sorry for you."

Sorry. Sorry. Such an inconsequential word, but it rings in his ears. Klaus stands and pries her fingers slowly off his wrist; opens and closes them to get his blood flowing again – her's had been a death grip. "Enough of this," he says again, deathly quiet. "Of all the things you should say to the person who hired you – yes, look at me, I hired you. You're my employee. I don't owe you anything, and I don't even know how you got the notion in your head that my bringing you back actually meant anything." Even as he says this, he feels the stone in his chest cracking, tides crashing and winds screaming against it. "Rebekah asked me to. That's all there is to it. You were a favour for my sister."

Caroline inhales sharply. For the longest moment she is silent, but her eyes never stray from his. The air between them feels so thick he can hardly breathe, and the spot where her fingers had wrapped around his wrist prickle. He stands his ground, determined not to be the first one to look away. Finally, she lets out the breath she'd held in. Still standing so close that all that hot air ripple across the wrinkles of his shirt.

"Okay," she says quietly. She pushes away from the table, and now there's nothing but mere inches between them. She turns away and it's strange: he'd expected some perverse joy of getting one over her, but instead it's like a kick in the gut—he feels winded, a knot that's twisted too tight and just won't give, no matter how much she picks and she tugs. She'd backed him into a wall both physically and figuratively, and he lashes out as easily as she takes in a breath, his words like the callous slap of Mikael's unforgiving hand. Maybe he has become Mikael. He feels a jolt, a sting, and he starts to move away but she's already beaten him to it, making sure not to brush any part of him, her shawl trailing behind her. How easily she turns her back on him, how quickly she picks she puts herself back together, squared shoulders and lifted chin, hair like a parade down her back. "Okay."

It's a little unnerving to him, and after a while he realizes why: it's the same look his sister gets whenever she announces that she's had it, that she's leaving. And he has to ask: "Does this mean you quit?"

Caroline doesn't answer until she has her hand on the duct-tape knob. And even then, she does not turn. "Ever the optimist, aren't you?"

He opens his mouth to respond, fuck if he knows anything these days, but she's already gone. He is left standing rather foolishly in the absence of her wake, the smell of neroli still floating in the air. He clears his throat, goes back to the counter where the pie still lay.

"No use leaving a good pie to waste," he mutters to no one, reproachful, slightly ashamed that he's trying to defend himself to a pie. It spurns him, and he cuts himself a large, jagged piece.

He wonders if it's the argument, the words he said, that look on her face that leaves a strange, acrid taste in the back of his mouth, but on the third bite, the room swims around him, and he hits the floor.

.

.

Rebekah holds him down as best as she can, but it's no use, he is too agitated, he must leave, why are his feet so bloody cold, why don't his hands work—and shit. Work.

"I need to work." He shudders over his words, torn from his throat in a pale wheeze. Even as he tries to sit up his back betrays him; he would not move from this bed, not for a few days at least. Elijah, knowing this, gives him a mournful smile and Klaus feels his chest seize with terror: he isn'tdying, is he?

Elijah places a cold hand on his arm, and it hisses on contact – his body has been lit on fire. "Rest," his brother says gently, but even then it sounded like something read off a list. "Caroline will take care of everything."

"No she won't," he moans into his pillow, his voice threatening to break. "No she won't, no she won't."

"Niklaus—"

Caroline, Elijah says, but it does little to quell the stifling behind his ribcage. Caroline, Elijah says again, easing her name off his stringent tongue, forcing it onto him like an antibiotic that would not take.

Caroline, Elijah says, and she comes to him in a fever dream, her lips a slick cherry red and her eyes blue jets that glimmer. She brings the sun to him in her fists, clenched so tight he fears they might bleed, and even as she fades in and out of his sweat-lidded vision she never once looks away, and the lines of her bleed into the trenches of him, but it's only when Esther appears that he first starts to doubt if Caroline was ever there at all.

It is a dream, as he feared, and his hand closes around nothing—the sun is gone, and the moon is smiling down at him, the haze of his mother's eyes caressing his cheeks while her hands remain folded in her lap. "Your dreams are ever so strange, Nik."

He coughs and there might be blood, the way his wasted tongue curls in his mouth. "Wasn't that what you loved about me, Mother?"

Esther purses her lips at him and he feels a tenderness flood his heart; she always smiled like she was just on the edge of pain, and cold as it is, it's a smile he hasn't seen in years. "Isn't that what you love about Caroline?"

No, he moans into his pillow, wet and raspy. No, no, no. Esther is on the edge of his bed now, brushing his hair away from his forehead, and his mother, she never does smile with her teeth, does she? She says teeth were meant to bite, to mar. He sinks against the soft touch of her palm and blinks back the tears; he could blame it on beads of sweat collecting in pools under his eyes and she would be none the wiser, because she is dead. "I'm talking to a ghost," and how rueful he sounds, in this thousand-thread count nest.

"No, darling." Esther leans in and presses a kiss on the crown of his head. He can't feel it at all. "You're talking to yourself."

And then she's gone.

He falls in and out of these dreams for hours, days, weeks, he really can't tell. He walks around, peeks into rooms and walks down corridors. Finds a vast room, all the same dusty floors, grungy red bricks as the ones outside, but the next time he looks in it's completely empty. The walls are a bright white, and in the middle of it is a girl child, drawing pictures on the floor.

"Hello?" he calls. It echoes around him, all around the room, but he's not sure it came from him.

The girl doesn't look up as he approaches, eyes glued to the coloured pencil in her chubby little fist, drawing wobbly lines and shading them furiously. Her eyebrows are knit together, her curly golden hair flopping about her head like little dog-ears.

He crouches down next to her. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Her voice is high and girlish, and like his voice it echoes around the room, but stronger, sharper.

He follows her hand and watches as she draws a tail, two beady eyes, the curved torso of some beast, and – it's a horse. A silver prancing horse. She draws two more in quick succession, moving always to her right, and soon enough she has a ring of silver prancing horses around her.

"Is this a dream?"

The horses dance before his eyes.

"Does it feel like one?"

He thinks about it.

No, not really.

His mouth feels sticky and dry, his eyes burn with every blink. He closes them, listens to the sound of her pencil scratching against the floor. There's nobody else here, just him and this girl. He doesn't even know where here is, but oddly enough, he feels calm. Tired, his back aches and his stomach burns, but he feels calm. He opens his eyes again, watches her face twist in concentration. And he doesn't know what makes him ask, "Am I dead?"

Her pencil stills, but doesn't stop. She leans down to blow coloured dust away, and somehow he knows she's stalling for time. Her chubby child cheeks puff out and she blows and blows until her horses look windswept, stallions fit for battle if not for the delicate lines she'd shaped them with.

"No," she says at long last, decidedly, like trying to discern which colour to shade her horses in next. "Not yet."

"Oh."

He joins her on the floor. He wants to ask why she's sitting here, drawing silver horses in a spiral around them. He wants to ask if it will ever end, or if she'll keep on going, until the whole room is filled with them. But they don't feel like the sort of questions he should be asking.

He feels something drop on his head, something wet and warm. A splash. Then another one, and another, and another. He lifts his jacket over his head, over the girl, but she doesn't seem bothered that it's started to rain, storm clouds coming to chase her horses away. She keeps drawing.

The rain falls harder.

Her horses drown.

He swallows, feels something seize in his chest, feels his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, and he's caught in a fit of coughing, his mouth watering, his chest wheezing, falling to his side.

"Caroline," he gasps, and the girl finally looks up.

Her eyes are blue, blown out by the moon.

The rain falls harder.

The rain swaths him, almost robe-like, blocking out all sound and nearly all of his sight.

"How do I get out of here?" he yells over the roar. "How do I leave, how do I get out?"

She sighs and puts away her pencil. Her horses are melting into the puddles, but the one by her feet, the very first one, remains dry and intact. She smiles a satisfied one before getting to her tiny feet. Her pencil drops to the floor with a wet clatter, but she pays it no mind because she's reaching down to him. "Come on. I'll show you the way."

It's an effort to even lift his arm off the ground, and it feels as if her hand hovers in the space between them for a long time before he even grasps it, and suddenly he's sitting up in bed, chest heaving, something wet and cool trickling down his forehead.

It's not the rain. His vision clears and he sees Rebekah, damp cloth in hand. Her eyes wide, her mouth opening and closing around words half-formed before she finally gasps, "Nik! You're awake!"

He lies back against his pillows, breathing rapid and shallow. "How—" He coughs something guttural. His throat is a dry desert. "How long have I been out?"

"A few days," Rebekah says. He looks closely at her: she has dark circles under her eyes, worry fixed in lines in her forehead that he hopes aren't permanent. "You were having seizures, Nik. After that stomach pump, and you were still… We thought your kidneys were going to fail. We were so scared, I was so scared, Nik," she whispers, reaching over to mop his brow.

He pushes her hand away but she glares at him, determined to play nurse to his frail patient. She allows him to roll over for a glass of water, however, and as he drinks, he remembers. "It was the pie, wasn't it? It was—" Realization spreads in his throat like a bitter pill. Stupid, stupid, Niklaus— "…Mikael's pie."

"Ricin poisoning," Rebekah says, biting her lip. "It's like he wanted to kill you, oh, you know there's no cure for it. You scared us bloody. All we could do was wait, and Caroline, she—"

"Caroline was here?" he croaks.

She shoots him an irritated knowing look at being interrupted, but smiles nonetheless. "She came every day."

He remains still, his stomach coiling and uncoiling. "Does she still hate me?"

This time, Rebekah laughs. "You're alive, let's not press your luck further."

.

.

After a maddening amount of bedrest pressed upon him by his sister, he almost rips his bedsheets in half in his insistence that it's time, he has to get back back to business, and he has to convince Kol to stop spiking his food with his blood and Elijah not to postpone his Versailles trip and Rebekah to hand him back his goddamn rolling pin.

It is that exact moment that Rebekah relinquishes his treasured item that they stop fussing over him, and Klaus convinces himself that he is not disappointed. Back to the Pie Hole.

Klaus doesn't know what to expect, but it's certainly not this much sun.

Over the course of his illness someone had ripped the blinds from the windows, leaving the diner bare for the world (or Maple Grove and Vine Street, at any rate) to see. Klaus scratches at the stubble on his chin, wondering where they'd stashed it. The blinds had been eight feet in length, fitted to each window, and removing them would be no easy feat. He even checks the dumpster in the alley behind the diner, but finds nothing.

It turns out Rebekah had been behind it, giggling in a corner with Caroline, and he doesn't know why but he finds it… irking.

"Mikael could—"

"Let's not think about that old fart right now."

"He nearly killed me," he says in amazement.

"Funny, you were the one eager to get out of bed."

"To exact revenge!"

"Oh it's always revenge this, murder that," his sister snips. "And you wonder why this goes on and on. Yes, I promise you we will deal with it sometime in the future, but Nik. Summer's coming." She looks at him beseechingly. "You've been darkening up this place with your broodiness far too long. I simply won't allow it!"

She says it's for his benefit, but all the light streaming in brings out the rose in her cheeks, the gold in her hair, the double-takes as she passes booth after booth refilling coffee cups. So who's the winner here, really?

.

.

And Caroline, Caroline glows.

He spies her leaning over the counter to flirt with the Salvatore boys, giggling her way into getting Bonnie Bennett buy get another slice of butter pecan, even cheers Professor Saltzman up enough for him to drop more than the usual advocated 20% into the tip jar.

On her days off, people come in and despite already memorizing her schedule, ask him if there's a slight chance of her coming in that day. They barely ask about his absence.

It's infuriating.

On her days in, she avoids him when she can, leaving no hint of the girl Rebekah claims had visited him every day. She's always flitting away, always asking Rebekah to pass the orders to him or busying herself with the till when it's just the two of them left in the kitchen. "There are only so many ways you can stack those dollars," he tells her, but she never responds.

(He is relieved, he tells himself.

Not that his near-death experience should even mean anything to her, all in a day's work here at the Pie Hole, right? Good riddance. He is relieved.

So very relieved.)

And so Klaus turns to his pies. He forgoes the vegan shortening and the brown rice flour; grabs the Crisco and the butter, smothers more white sugar than is necessary onto his apples and all but throws out the gluten-free dough. If Caroline notices she doesn't say a thing. Once, in the rare moment that their eyes actually meet, instead of turning away as is their custom, she holds his gaze, plucks the forkful of pancake pie that's about to make its way into Marcel's mouth and, very purposefully, puts it in her own.

A mouthful of jelly'd pancakes that are most definitely not gluten-free, all to prove some sort of … vendetta against him.

He narrows his eyes at her and dumps lard into his filling.

It starts off like a joke, those idiotic ones drunk frat boys at parties make, but Caroline walks into the diner one day and suddenly – gone are the gloves and the tights, the cute little sweaters that hugged all the way to her neck, the colourful scarves she loved to wind around her neck. Now, she wears flirty little skirts and strappy sandals, pulls her hair into side-ponytails that show off her apple-white neck.

He sees the way Marcel rakes his eyes appreciatively over her and one day, as if by reflex, he stabs his knife deep in the middle of Marcel's Marcel, its handle vibrating like a warning. "I don't quite like you ogling the waitresses here."

Marcel chortles. "The waitresses? Or do you mean Caroline?"

Klaus leans forward, voice dropping as he reiterates, "I don't quite like you ogling her the way you do my sister."

"Hey man, look – I get it. Rebekah's off limits." Marcel holds his hands up. "But Caroline? She's not your sister."

The murder must be apparent in his eyes (death by skinning, or finally fulfilling all those head-shoved-into-oven fantasies he's had for Kol over the years?) because Marcel covers Klaus' hand with his and gives an amiable smile. "Come now, Klaus. We've been friends for a long time – I wouldn't do that to you. Or to our business."

Klaus lifts his eyebrows, not buying it.

"Look, two things I've picked up in my travels. One," Marcel holds a finger up, "never pet a sleeping Rottweiler." Marcel lets him ruminate for a moment before continuing, "And two… just apologize, Klaus."

Klaus sniffs. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Obviously you did something wrong here. You've been staring. Not very subtle." Marcel picks up his fork. "Women love apologies. Be sincere. Buy her flowers, ask her dancing. Apologize. Make it a good one. Dress it up, bend it over a table…" Marcel grins when Klaus shifts just the slightest bit. "Think about it."

And think about it Klaus does. Compartmentalizes, in fact, the way Elijah would.

The facts were these:

The girl in the alley, that girl had been Rebekah's to save, and he'd struggled with that his whole life; this inability to save, to keep, just for himself, without the fear of it slipping through his death-addled fingers. But she is not Rebekah's – he knows now – and she is far from his. She is her own person, alive and breathing, with choices good and bad alike, and he needs to be able to come to terms with this. The fact that he is one of her choices still causes a painful sort of twisting in his chest; the oven dings like a revelation, and—

—he realizes it isn't a twisting, but it's just as Rebekah had promised: white doves taking flight, six bells a-ringing, right there in that little box of his chest. How so many feelings could collect in there escapes him: how her laughter, which he has been parched of, had been amassing there for quite some time and it's only now when he misses it that he notices.

She passes through the kitchen to slide a pie out of the oven. He notices her lingering there, palms turned out like she's catching sunlight.

"Are you cold?" he asks, thinking of her scarves.

She shoots him a dark look. It's not a response, but it's something.

.

.

"Caroline," he chances one day when the diner's empty. About to leave, she looks over her shoulder disinterestedly, and he feels a clutching in his throat.

He opens his mouth.

Nothing.

And so it goes.

.

.

He imagines—

He doesn't know what he imagines. He imagines brushing her shoulder with his, a quick curl of her hair with his thumb, her flour-dusted fingers dropping a berry in his mouth, brushing his lips ever so softly, but that's—mate, that's fucking impossible.

Conversation lulls outside the kitchen and Rebekah peeks her head in, eyebrow quirked. "What the hell was that noise?"

Klaus, it turns out, had hurled his rolling pin across the room in a fit. "Sorry," he says stiffly, but maybe for an entirely different reason.

.

.

One day when it's twenty minutes after closing time and he's taking stock of inventory and Caroline is making to grab her coat, he lifts his head from the endless numbers and clears his throat.

The door is wide open, her hand poised on the duct-taped handle. She looks at him, and he looks back, and this time… this time he wants to shake himself as he feels his throat stuttering yet again. Caroline seems to deflate. He expects her to walk out the door, but she hangs her coat back on the hook and turns to face him fully. "Are we doing this, then?"

"Depends on what you think this is," he says, and god fucking damnit, now you want to work, you traitorous throat.

She narrows her eyes at him. "You do realize I don't have to stand here and listen to you, right? But here I am. Could you at least make it worth my while?"

And he doesn't know why, but he finds himself gesturing to the door, "Well, you're welcome to…"

"You see, this is your problem. You leave before anyone can do the same to you, like you're the greatest invention—yeah, don't give me that look. Invention, because you're a freaking robot—since sliced bread."

"Actually, the greatest invention to date would have to be—"

"I don't actually care, Mikaelson. Just hurry up and tell me you're sorry. Tell me how pathetic you feel. God knows you've been looking it for the past few weeks."

"I bloody well can't now, since you've gone and spoilt it," he says irritably. "Why are you always so adamant on having both the first and last say—"

"—like your apology is some kind of gift, oh my God – you are such a child." She pauses. "Oh wait, you're not a child. You're my boss. Forgive me for speaking so out of turn."

"Caroline—"

"See? I can do it easily; you're just a big pile of manpain getting stuck in a plane's propellers causing it to crash into a truck, creating one of the biggest manpain-induced traffic jams in history."

Klaus scrubs a hand down his face and snarls, "I'm sorry."

"I accept," Caroline snarks right back. "See you in the morning."

.

.

Caroline comes in the next day wearing gloves pushed all the way to her elbows.

Klaus doesn't realize he's smiling until Rebekah smacks the back of his head, Table 4 wants their triple berry, what the hell are you gaping like an idiot for?

.

.

There are puddles on the pavements from the light rain earlier, the late summer days marking their territory by dampening the earth with sun-strewn rain and curling its finger around saplings; coaxing flowers out of the ground, secret colours blooming through the cracks between old bricks. The air smells like clean white linen billowing in the breeze, the night settling around them as they walk home. Kol steps around the puddles. Klaus splashes right through them.

"You've been around more," Klaus remarks, if only to break the silence. It's not an uncomfortable one, but it seemed like the sort of night to have a conversation with your brother – one that isn't weighed down by inconsistent ledgers or arguments about butter or the door for once.

"Well, Elijah's off working again." Kol says of their brother who had left with the air of someone resigned. But Elijah does so love what he does, even if it took him away from them most of the year. Klaus doesn't blame him; sometimes he catches up with Finn when they cross paths in the occasions where Elijah fancies taking a ship. Finn is so far out of reach, but perhaps it's for the best, what with the Mikael business lately.

"Rebekah's worried," he tells Kol. "I heard her telling Caroline."

"I thought eavesdropping was beneath you."

"You do it," he mutters.

Kol has to laugh at that. "I'll admit I've done far worse."

"And you keep doing them. And we keep forgiving you." It's an accusation; he doesn't pretend otherwise. "Why do you think that is?"

"Because, Nik," Kol explains like he's surprised and tired and exasperated all at once, "Love is all about acceptance and other such sappy things, haven't you learned by now? It's – it's knowing there is always reason behind any considerable choice, even without words. It's just – fuck, I don't know. Acceptance. Yes, let that sink in. And—oi, where the bleeding hell are you running off to?"

.

.

Chest pounding, breath steaming up the glass, he appears at the door with his heart in his throat.

"I thought I was closing up," Caroline says, surprise in the muffled tone of her voice from the other side of the door – but not as surprised as he would have expected. He lets himself in, locks the door behind him, and, almost disoriented, walks into the kitchen. Caroline trails wordlessly behind him. The dishes look like they've long dried, so Klaus isn't quite sure what she's still waiting around for, until he realizes.

She always did have that uncanny ability of just knowing.

Now if only he could articulate it, unfreeze his tongue and let the words out. He turns around. "I have something to say."

That's a start.

Caroline hoists herself up on the scrubbed counter, her claimed spot. He counts it in his head: the counter, the bowl, the wooden spoon, the third booth from the door directly under the display window, all these things she's claimed as her own the minute she walked into this diner. She tilts her head and looks at him so earnestly that all he can do is look back.

The clock ticks. He is still by the door.

He is always by the door, he realizes. Always looking in on her.

Well, mate – now's the time. Say something.

"You really suck at this."

He walks to his work table, leans against it as he always does with his hands in his pockets. The toes of her shoes brush softly against his shins. "I'm not quite sure how to go about it."

"Use a metaphor."

"I don't think so, Caroline." He shakes his head, but he is smiling at her, and he doesn't know why, or maybe he does.

"Then," she begins slowly, peeking at him from beneath her eyelashes, "use your hands."

He stares at her.

She leans forward and very gently pulls his hands out of his pockets, cupping his hands in hers; he can feel how warm her hands are through the smooth silk.

He looks down at their intertwined fingers and clears his throat.

"I trust you," she says, and it's remarkable how she can make herself to be so soft without even him having to touch her.

"Doesn't this…" He shakes their hands a little, skin over glove, "bother you in the slightest?"

Caroline shrugs. "I don't know. I mean, yeah, it sucks. But maybe I like the pain. Keeps me anchored."

"And you trust me?"

She frowns when he disentangles his hand from hers. "Isn't that what I just said?"

"Just making sure."

He steps closer.

Swallows when he hears her breath hitch.

Ever so slowly, he traces a trembling finger around the scarf knotted around her neck before pulling at it. He listens to it rustling against her dress, her hair. The room is filled with a strange stillness, his blood pounding entirely too loud in his ears as he lifts it up to her face. Through the fabric her face is painted in purples and blues, and it's like peering through Alice's looking glass. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, watching his every move. Waiting.

He wonders if she's not breathing the way he isn't, with his face drawing closer to hers—

"Are—" This time it's her whose voice falters. It sounds shaky, too high. "Are you going to kiss me?"

His heart is caught in his throat, his voice too hoarse, too thirsty, he cannot speak. He tries, a pale imitation of sound, but it sounds pained almost, a grunt.

Oh, fuck this.

Caroline makes a noise, something like surprise, when their lips meet. His lips brush against the thin material of her scarf, but he can feel how soft her lips are. And then she parts her lips and he almost surges forward: how can he just stand there so still when he can taste her now, can feel her hot breath wetting his lips, the dampness of the kiss soaking through the scarf, something warm and distinctly Caroline filling his mouth, filling him up.

She takes in a shuddering breath when he pulls away, his shirt clutched in her fingers.

"Were you holding your breath the entire time?"

"That's the basis of kissing, Klaus," she says, but the sarcasm is weak at best, what with her nails digging into his chest. His lips brush against her scarf. He can still feel her lips shaped around his. He closes his eyes.

"Okay, look. You're supposed to close your eyes during a kiss, not aft… Like, have you even done this before?"

"You're ruining a perfectly good moment," Klaus murmurs into her scarf. He feels her nose nudge his, scratchy through the fabric, feels her blow softly on his lips which sends a shiver down his back.

"Am I?" she whispers, before kissing him again. She swallows down his muffled groan, pulls him closer with her hands still gripping his shirt, but cautiously: her movements are liquid and he has to gasp in a breath when her fingers travel lower, splaying her fingers across his stomach. He hasn't realized how starved for touch he is, or how her legs have spread enough to allow him room to lean in, to let his hands, wrapped in that scarf, cage her against the wall.

"Glitter," he observes, sewn into the scarf. Rather bemusedly he thinks she belongs in a circus, smoke in the air and lights in her eyes, skin splashed with moonlight strained like a sieve through coloured tents. She seems worlds away, but her knee is pressed against his inner thigh and it's – it feels very much real.

"We should stop," he says with a tune of regret. "Before this gets out of hand."

"We should." But Caroline has an impish smile on her face. "I mean, I wanted to, but I didn't realize how easily set off you are…" She trails off, running her calf against his leg, and god damn her. "You want me very badly."

"I do," Klaus admits feverishly, trying his hardest to remain grounded, but Caroline isn't satisfied with that, no—she gathers the front of his shirt in a tight pinch and pulls him closer, and he swallows. "For the longest – shit, Caroline, you weren't meant to know."

Her sharp breath of indignance ripples across the scarf. "And why the hell not?"

Desperate. God he sounds desperate, but once the words start spilling out they don't seem to stop. "So many things, Caroline – there was Mikael, and now this—we can't have this, I can't touch you and God knows I want to."

Caroline lifts her chin, and she looks so frightening, so unlike Caroline that he gulps. "Good. Now touch me."

Touch her. He blinks, there's stars in his eyes, had he heard wro—?

Caroline looks mad, there is a mad, mad glint in her eyes, a red blooming in her cheeks, and she's never been more beautiful. "Like this," she whispers.

And like this, she pries the scarf from his clenched fists and slowly, slowly, laces her gloved fingers through his, like a boat pulled ashore his hands are guided to her hips. Start here, she seems to say with the recline of her back. He traces the neat trim of her dress with a light finger, chances a look into her eyes before moving down. Her thighs, she feels them jerk as he smooths his hands over them, then down to her knees. He goes back to her face, wraps a hand in her scarf and cups her cheek, memorizing the rise of her cheekbones and the slope of her nose. The curve of her lips, the way she kisses his fingers. Her curls bounce in his hands, the way he'd sought out in his dreams. She smiles against his thumb. He leans forward and kisses her lashes, her brow, then her lips again, carefully, so carefully.

She sighs into the scarf, he drinks it in. When they break apart, she looks dazed and blinking – he imagines he must look the same.

It is awhile before they can do anything other than look at each other.

And Caroline, even then, says: "So I'm thinking you have great form – like, really great form, good to know your mouth does more than snark, but…"

Through the daze, Klaus scowls. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying you could use the practice," she says, smiling salaciously up at him. "I'm saying we should make out again. Want to make out again?"

"I—yes," he blurts out before he can affect some semblance of self-restraint, but she's already sliding down the counter.

She loops her scarf around his neck, pulls him closer. He takes a pointed half a step back and Caroline rolls her eyes. "So, work table?"

"I bake my pies there, Caroline."

"The counter up front."

"The till gets in the way."

"The door, then?"

He thinks about it. "Elijah would be furious."

"Perfect." She shoots him a grin that he can't help but return when she tugs him out the room; she has him thrown against the door even before he tells her Caroline love, mind the door handle – It's quite fragile still, it might fa—

It falls off.

Alright then.

He can't find it in himself to care when her hands are on his chest, when he is smiling up at him that way. Klaus lifts her scarf and happily obliges as much as he can, which is good, really – for in two weeks, three days and eighteen hours she would be – she would be…

Oh, you already know.

.

.

—

If you were (un)lucky enough to catch this story the first time around, then you'll know the ending to this chapter has been altered slightly. What has changed, I won't tell you in order not to compromise your enjoyment of this story. Just know that I wrote something that I wasn't too particularly happy with, and felt so torn by it I took it down and didn't look at it again for months. The direction of this fic remains largely unchanged, so don't you worry about that. I hope you stay for a little while longer, we're almost there!