Disclaimer: I don't own TVD.

Note: This was a piece that started as a two-sentence story and just grew from there. I was feeling nostalgic about Inertia Overcome. Call this an epilogue to the epilogue. Enjoy.

"Caroline," said a low, cultured voice from the doorway, "what are you doing?"

"I'm knitting," I growled, trying like hell to untangle the yarn from my chair leg and losing the fight. How did it even get caught in the first place? The Youtube video did not say a thing about the clingy-ness of yarn. Add that to the fact that my tension was either too tight or too loose, and my fingers felt weird, and my wrists couldn't seem to get used to the positioning-

"Knitting?" Klaus canted his head, eyeing me with suspicion. You'd think he'd caught me making ritual puppy sacrifices, not completing a time-honored home crafts tradition.

A tradition which freaking sucked, by the way.

He came closer, easing his way into the room. "Hardly an activity I imagined you interested in." He sat on the loveseat, arms and legs spread. He never sat like a normal person. Nope, he just had to own every bit of space he came across.

He was alive when Freud was. I'd bet that guy would have had a ball analyzing Klaus.

I wondered if Freud's house was still in Vienna. I'd have to check. It would be worth visiting. "I'm interested," I insisted, yanking on the yarn just a little too much. It snapped. "Dammit!"

No, no. I was not going to be defeated by home crafts. The yarn was not going to win. I was Caroline Forbes. Former beauty queen. Former cheer captain. Former human. I'd survived death and werewolves and doppelgangers and every other kind of supernatural snafu that could possibly exist. I could learn how to knit.

And I was going to do it perfectly.

I sucked in a heavy, steadying breath and carefully put my work back in the basket I bought for this very purpose. I wanted to throw everything and stomp my feet, but that would not be ladylike. I am a lady, I repeated to myself. I will not set fire to this basket. I will not let it get to me. I will watch the video again, and this time I am going to use my vamp vision to concentrate on every single detail.

Klaus watched me pick up the computer tablet and nearly poke a hole through the digitizer. "Caroline."

Maybe it was the video tutorial itself. Maybe I needed to find a new one.

"Caroline." More insistent this time.

"Yes?" Jeez.

He gestured. "What is this about?"

"Does it have to be about something?" I finished typing and scrolled.

"You did just turn 30, my love."

And what a blowout party that should have been. But wasn't. Klaus and I had been married for almost nine years. In that time I could say that our circle of friends had expanded by exactly four people. The aftermath of New Orleans hadn't blown over yet. Frankly it was the kind of thing that probably would be remembered for a few more decades to come.

Instead of the gigantic party I'd always pictured for myself, we went to that little German bakery Klaus once got a Black Forest cake from. I fell in love with the nice lady there, and in nine years my German had improved enough that I could be comfortable speaking her native tongue. I still got confused between Schlussel and Schussel though.

Things had changed for me in the last decade. Many, many things. Most of that I wouldn't take back if I could do it over.

Some of it, though...

"One also wonders if this has anything to do with your mother's appointment with her doctor."

I stopped scrolling. I thought about denying it. Nobody wants to admit that they're scared of something as inevitable as death. Especially not someone who had dealt out more than her fair share of it when she had to.

My fingers curled a little tighter around the edge of the tablet. "Do you ever think about how unfair it is?" I didn't look up from the screen. "We've got all this time when some people don't have any at all."

He shifted forward. "Why the knitting, Caroline?"

I sniffed back the mist that started to cloud my eyes. "Because I'm thirty years old. Because we're still in New Orleans, even after all that's happened. Because I realized that I had about a thousand things that I wanted to see, learn, and do, and somehow that got shoved to the side in the last ten years. I mean, why hurry, right? I've got time."

I selected a video and set the tablet firmly back on the small table next to me. It looked kind of weird in this big, old library with five million books stuffed everywhere. Books that spanned the ages. Guess it was just another mark of change.

"And now your mother's diagnosis has caused you to question things," was Klaus' flat assessment. I couldn't tell if he was mad or amused or frustrated or what. You'd think after living with someone for this long, I'd know that by now.

Most of the time I did. Maybe it was just my radar that was off. Ever since I got the call from Mom, it felt like my whole life was off. In the course of a phone call I was confronted by the fact that things can and do change, in such a personal, awful way that it felt like someone ripped blinders from my eyes.

But you see, I knew things changed. I was living proof of that. Sort of. Klaus was freaking proof of that! Who thought he would get married? Who was crazy enough to think he'd actually be a good husband, even if he was a psychotic asshole from time to time? Okay, a lot of the time, but he was still a husband who loved me more than...well, than the average human could tolerate, probably.

So how in the world did it happen? How did my life become...boring? When did I get stuck in a rut?

We were still in New Orleans. We'd taken trips to Europe, but we didn't live there. I finished college. I learned languages. But when all was said and done, when Mom told me about the cancer and I saw my undead life flash before my eyes—I realized how much I hadn't accomplished.

I sat down and made a list. A very long, very compulsive list with bullet points and subcategories. Colby told me that it was more of a manifesto, but what did he know? He had Artie. They were married. They were thinking about adopting. They were moving on with their lives.

So many people were. They were getting married, getting divorced. Having kids. Changing jobs. Doing things.

After that phone call, I wondered what the heck I'd been doing in the last decade. "It's the most treatable form of cancer," I said. "I've done the research. I've called a few specialists. Everybody says the same thing."

"And your mother? What does she say?"

"She said she's fine." Repeatedly. I lifted my chin. "I am not to get on a plane, a helicopter, or any other form of transportation to go and see her."

"And we cannot invite her here."

Well, that went without being said, didn't it?

"Medicine is not what it used to be," he said. "She will be fine."

"She won't always be." And that was the heart of the problem. "She's going to die, and I'm not. At least not by natural means."

The look in his eyes sharpened. "Not by any means."

"The point is that I've been a vampire for twelve years, and somehow I feel like I'm wasting it." I rubbed my temples. "I'm thirty now. Am I going to wake up one day at fifty, and still be here? Still not doing anything?"

This was a midlife crisis. Had to be. Did being a vampire screw with the timing of these things, or was it just me?

Suddenly exhausted, I buried my face in my hands.

"Come here, my love."

"Oh," I groaned without looking up. "Why don't you come to me?"

"Alright."

"What—hey!" He turned and settled me on his lap, comfortable in seconds. I sank into him out of habit and need, wanting him wrapped around me in the worst way. The man I loved. Strangely enough, the rock I could rely on.

Eighteen year old me wouldn't have believed that for a second.

"Perhaps it's time to uproot ourselves," he mused into my hair. "My work is done here. There are wider, more pleasant mountains to become king of."

"No more kings," I sighed. "No more mountains."

He stroked my neck absently. "I thought you enjoyed being queen."

"I do. But been there, done that." I played with his tshirt. "I want to go to Italy for a while. I want to fly Mom out to the beach and let her meet some young hottie in a speedo."

He made a sound in the back of his throat. Something between a laugh and a harrumph of horror.

Yeah. Klaus was pseudo-European (for lack of a better word), but speedos had never been his deal. Briefs in general, actually.

Well, if I were honest, underwear. Underwear wasn't his idea of a good time. Once a Viking, always a Viking.

Made things a little easier, if you catch my drift.

I lifted my head. "Are you okay with that?"

He met my eyes. "For now," he said easily. "One doesn't rule out future possibilities."

Some things never changed. Still, I kissed him on the chin and went back to snuggling. I didn't know how tense I was until he came over. "I guess that means we're moving."

He didn't answer. Just hummed.

I couldn't believe how easy that was. I didn't know I needed that answer. Now that I had it, my mind started to pick up. Plans started to form. I was getting excited. Finally, a challenge. Something to do. Momentum.

Suddenly Klaus broke through my thoughts. "How long have you had this deep seated desire to knit?"

I chuckled into his shoulder despite myself, inhaling his scent in the process. "A babysitter of mine used to do it. It looked cool, and I liked the idea of creating things. Then I hit puberty and it was lame to know that kind of thing." I shrugged. "It seemed like the easiest thing to accomplish, and I wanted something crossed off of my list."

He played with my knee. "During the Great War and so on, bedridden soldiers were taught to knit during their convalescence. They sent their scarves and such to the men on the front. Color choice, I'm afraid, was fairly limited."

"You would rock pink," I remarked.

"Another misconception of the modern era. Before Hitler, baby boys were the ones dressed in pink."

"I read online that there's this thing where it's bad luck to knit something for your significant other." I was not going to be outdone on facts this time.

Well, it wasn't a fact. More of a rumor.

But still.

"And why is that?"

"Because if they don't appreciate it after all the time you spent making the stupid thing, you'll end up breaking up with them." I totally believed it too. Knitting was hard and time consuming.

"Is that so." Klaus' gaze took on a particular gleam.

"That's so."

"A good thing I am not your significant other, is it not, my love?"

I blinked. "You're not?"

"I am husband, hybrid, and king."

Oh, that was rich. "I don't suppose arrogant and egotistical would hurt your feelings."

He merely smirked.

"Is this your way of telling me you want a scarf?"

"Merely pointing out that rules do not apply to me. Nor," he told me in a low voice while tracing my jaw, "to you."

I had no idea why that made me feel better. It wasn't so much what he was saying that made the bands across my chest loosen. It was what he wasn't saying that meant so much. He didn't tell me I was being silly. He didn't say that vampires shouldn't be making bucket lists, or that my fears were unfounded.

More than words, the look in his eye—the love he hardly ever voiced, the warmth I came to think of as mine a long time ago—comforted me in the deepest part of my hurt and bewilderment.

I got quiet and serious. "I love you." It was impulsive. I didn't know I was going to tell him until it came out.

His gaze was steady. No hesitation. No doubt. "I know."

The End