ishi requested a "canon-compliant superhero non-AU for Caro where somewhere down the line she decides to ~use her powers for good~ and do the vigilante thing, mask and everything (no stupid impractical costume tho)", among other things.

i tried my best. also, i have no clue what's going on in the originals, but from scraps i get an a very helpful explanation from my friend anne, i sort of got the gist of it, tried to work more of the plot into this, and then decided to just... not. much apologies, please be kind to my v. confused self should you decide to leave a review.

—

—

12:51

—

Part One

In Which Everybody's Week Must Have Been Pretty Rough

—

—

The weekend after Klaus escaped from his wall, he sat down in his study with three bottles of liquor and double that amount of fresh blood, a steak cooked medium rare, and five years' worth of newspapers to catch up with the world.

Freya regarded him curiously. "You could have done away with the mess. We just ordered those new tablets."

Rebekah was much ruder about the piles he left. She was probably still mad she had had to miss four seasons of Supernatural in order to save his skin.

Klaus didn't answer them. He continued skimming the pages with a prevailing interest, rubbing ink and paper between his fingers. He soon found that he hadn't missed much in his Marcel-imposed exile; that the mundanities of life had persevered through the years.

His thoughts started to wonder when he was three-years deep into his catching up. Nothing caught his eye, and he was starting to feel the gratitude of being able to sit in a comfortable armchair as opposed to being shackled to a floor dusted with rubble chip away.

Until he saw it.

He read the little opinion piece, then read it again, and a third time for good measure.

And then he called Damon Salvatore.

—

At that point, not even Damon knew of their little hijinks despite having moved himself into their apartment. He used the pretence of "keeping an eye on them" to make it past the front door. The living room became his sanctum santorum, and the couch he took refuge in constantly smelled like booze and Doritos.

Caroline was not happy with this arrangement, and made sure to be very vocal about it every chance she got.

Sometimes it ranged from loud, to shrill, to wake-your-neighbours-up-at-3am-because-Damon-you-fuck-you-left-your-underwear-in-my-laundry-basket piercing.

Tonight, Damon had the apartment to himself, and was glad for the peace and quiet. Caroline was out on a date, and Bonnie was at the library borrowing a book. She was always at the library borrowing books, and he liked telling people how bookish she was in a tone that was both patronizing and fond. It had taken some time, but he had finally perfected it.

In the middle of his Grey's Anatomy rerun ("Denny? You chose a dying sack of meat over Alex? Really, Izzie?" he yelled at the tv), his phone rang.

It was Klaus. He hadn't heard from the fucker in more than a decade, and was immediately suspicious.

"City Morgue," he answered cautiously.

"Just to be clear, you're still second best," came the familiar gout of Klaus's voice. "I only called you because Stefan's number seems to not be working, mate."

"That's 'cause it's not," Damon said. "How do you still have mine?"

"If I wanted idle chit chat I would've resurrected Finn again."

Damon muted the tv and got to his feet. "And yet here you are, making idle chit chat."

"I merely called to enquire about Caroline and Bonnie's wellbeing."

"They're fine," Damon said shortly.

"You best make sure they're getting adequate rest for all the crime-fighting they're doing," Klaus said, and killed the line.

Damon spat out his bourbon.

That's how it all started, really.

—

Caroline was having a crummy night. The sole of her shoe had torn away as she was chasing her assailant across the rooftops of Midtown, and it now flapped with every step she took, and slowed her down considerably.

"I'm gonna get you, Raul!" she yelled, to make up for how she was losing him, fast. "Your album sucked!"

Raul the Eurovision Vampire came to a screeching halt. He was screeching quite literally, because of all the insults Caroline had hurled at him in the past week of stalking him, this one hurt the most.

"And your win last year?" Caroline continued as she hauled herself over a crumbling ledge. "Total pandering."

Raul hissed and bared his fangs. "You know nothing of talent, silly girl. If you did you wouldn't be spending your nights in cowardice, hiding your face with a gaudy mask. A poor man's Catwoman."

Caroline bristled, because it had taken her and Bonnie splurging on a sewing course in Uptown to get their stitching just right.

"And you would've gotten more than a deal sponsoring mattresses after you won Eurovision," she retorted, and Raul actually looked pained.

Actual, legit pain.

Caroline sighed. "Look, I'll cut you a deal. See this stake here? I won't stick it in your heart if you meet my conditions."

Raul warily eyed the stake she was twirling between her fingers. Normally he would have told her to kiss his ass, but he was cornered, and he didn't fancy becoming a splat on the sidewalk.

That, and he was afraid of heights.

"And the conditions are?" he asked finally.

Caroline took a moment to rip the failing sole completely off her shoe. It came off with one clean pull, and when she looked up Raul was still there, which meant there was still hope for a redemption arc for him.

She gave him a winsome smile. "Do you have a pen?"

—

Bonnie slid in through her bedroom window, heady with glory. She had gotten better at sneaking in and out at odd hours, but evidently not by much, since she managed to wake Damon up.

This was because he was in her bed when she threw herself on it.

"Damon, what the hell?"

Damon awoke with a snort. "A-ha! Proof of your foolhardy life choices!"

Bonnie rolled her eyes and unhooked her cape. She made a mental note to pass Caroline twenty dollars. "Took you long enough to realize."

"I am living with hoodwinks." Damon pouted. "How could you not have let me in on this secret?"

"Damon, you helped me with laundry last week. You literally folded pieces of my costume. It had my alter ego name on stitched across the front." She swung her feet and walked to the paper partition by her dresser, where she wiggled out of her outfit safe from Damon's prying eyes into a worn Whitmore sweater and blue shorts with lightning patterns on them.

"Are those anti-aging potions you're brewing finally screwin' with your head?" Damon was still on a roll. "You know how I had to find out? Klaus!"

"Klaus is alive?" Bonnie asked.

"Yes, and even in his state of barely living he ousted you and Blonde Distraction's sly night crime-kicking."

Bonnie started to respond, but then got sidetracked. "Blonde Distraction?"

"Uh – yeah." He fiddled with his phone. "Blonde Distraction and Feisty Fire."

"That is fucking terrible," Bonnie said mildly. "And not even our names."

"That's what I call you in my blog, which I only update when I'm drunk. I've been following you for years. Check out the threads!" Damon waved his phone in her face.

"Are you drunk right now?" she asked.

"Yes," Damon said sulkily, "but only half-stupid. You were never at the library, were you?"

"Well, you were really sweet about it—"

"And you kept missing all those scrabble/pizza nights!" Damon howled into his hands, betrayal gutting him like a fish.

"Damon," Bonnie narrowed her eyes. "I'm tired. "The next time you spend the night in my bed, I'm burning your brains out."

"Reduced to being treated as one of your petty criminals," Damon sniffed. "So be it. Our friendship always had an expiry date, huh?"

Damon slinked out of her room. Bonnie considered calling after him, but figured she'd reason in the morning. For now, she had a huge bruise in her side to nurse, and sleep was calling.

—

It started with scaring off new vampires from innocent clubgoers, and then keeping the pasty creep-o's who lived in the apartment adjacent to theirs in line when bodies started piling up in their shared dumpster.

Caroline hadn't blown all her cash for an apartment in New York just for it to be crawling with the diseased, depravity and blood, so she took it upon herself to clean it up. An act of charity, if you will.

At night, she donned a mask and put on sensible boots. No stupid impractical spandex for her, nor did she for a minute entertain midriff-baring leather, no matter how hot she might have looked.

Sipping from her thermos of warmed AB, she kneeled by stone gargoyles and prowled through the night. Afterwards she would either jump from rooftop to rooftop, or practice her parkour, feeling invincible and (not gonna lie) really fucking cool.

At around 1am she got the read from Bonnie (in other words, Bonnie texted her in their coded-emoji) that their target for the night had arrived.

From five stories above she followed the sound of his footsteps through the alleyway, waiting to catch a heartbeat. When none came, she knew that he was the one. His steps faltered when he heard a noise behind him. Caroline took the opportunity to jump down on him.

"Hello," she smiled sweetly, when he was thrashing and spitting underneath her. She was sitting on his back, which couldn't be comfortable.

"Killing. Maiming. Money-laundering." Bonnie came slowly from the mouth of the alleyway, her cape flowing behind her. "That last one's kind of random, but the other shit we have on you—yikes."

Caroline gathered his hair in her gloved hands and yanked hard. The vampire cried out, enraged, but didn't look away from her piercing gaze.

"You've got a locker full of civilians waiting like lambs for slaughter," she said slowly, so he might not miss the threat in her voice. "Tell us where they are and you get to live."

"I'm gonna have to call your bluff," he rasped. "I've cut a pretty good deal, and ain't no stinkin' blonde and her twitchy sidekick are gonna stop me."

Bonnie's face darkened.

"Oooh," Caroline whistled. "Bad choice of words there, bud. She's not my sidekick. We're partners. I kick ass, she takes names. Sometimes I take names, and she kicks ass. Though 'kick' might not be the right verb here…"

"I prefer not having to touch you scum," Bonnie said, and from her fingers erupted flames.

Caroline smiled, eyes shining brightly in the fear that Bonnie had incited into the now-still vampire.

"What are vampires most afraid of?" Caroline whispered into his fear.

"Werewolf venom."

Caroline clicks her tongue. "No, the other thing."

The vampire, cold sweat on his forehead, hesitated. 'Uh—stakes?"

Caroline knuckled the base of his skull. "Fire, you moron. She's waving it right in your face!"

It didn't help that he passed out immediately.

Bonnie sighed and dropped her hands. The alley dimmed once again. "Can we talk about this whole intimidation tactic thing?"

Caroline refused to look her in the eye.

—

It took about twenty minutes for him to come to, by which time Caroline had gotten bored of sitting on his back and had decided to chain him to the dumpster instead.

After they heckled and tortured the information out of him, Caroline pulled out the usual contract – stating that no further harm would come to him from their hands if he got the hell out of the city and signed along the dotted line – when he started monologueing and posturing in a way that was really, really familiar.

Caroline pulled the pen away from his trembling grasp for it. She squinted in the dark alley, trying to make out his eyes.

"Caroline?" Bonnie asked, but Caroline barely heard.

The vampire was still monologueing, and Caroline felt a rising anger. She knew a compelled gaze anywhere.

"Damn it, Bon."

Her fist swung out of her own accord, knocking the vampire out cold. There was a satisfying crack accompanying the slump of his neck, and Caroline dusted her hands off.

Bonnie eyed his body with distaste. "Harsh, Care. Don't you usually wait for them to sign the contract first?"

—

True to his word, Damon had indeed started a blog following the accounts of Blonde Distraction and Feisty Fire (not their actual names, but given the fact that he only ever blogged when he was drunk, he never bothered to learn their real names) and their vigilante crime-fighting on his blog, WatchOutVillainz dot com.

It was a smorgasbord of garish colour, Comic Sans, and badly-worded headings.

Klaus would never admit it, but he loved reading it.

He followed it with the same tenacity Caroline had for new episodes of The Bachelor, and one night even set up a username for himself to partake in the lengthy discussions over who Blonde Distraction and Feisty Fire might be.

His username was entirely anonymous, and he enjoyed having a persona to parade as he took down trolls and ventured the tags, verbally maiming anyone and everyone who dared speak ill of Blonde Distraction or Feisty Fire.

Granted, he didn't care much for the witch, but thought that Caroline would like it if he were to stand up for her too, so he did.

Damon showed up at his hotel room one night sullen-faced. "Get off my website."

"Make me," Klaus said, typing progressively faster on his keyboard.

Damon failed to make him, and returned home, turning all his loyal followers on one hybrid_master_127. Unfortunately, Klaus seemed to have accrued a cluster of minions of his own in his short time of perusing WatchOutVillainz dot com, and they threatened to hack into the mainframe of one of his life's most precious work.

Damon, having limited knowledge of IT, highly doubted the existence of a mainframe and whether or not it could be hacked.

In the end decided to play it safe, and Klaus stayed.

—

The way Caroline figured out it was Klaus who had been sending thug vamps her way was almost as fast as him discovering their true identities as the Vigilantes of the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

A week after Damon had almost thrashed his hotel room, Klaus opens the door to his magnificently ransacked quarters. Caroline was sitting on what appeared to be the cracked granite of his bathtub, in his living room, with her legs crossed. She was still in her mask and boots.

"What is wrong with you?" she yelled. "Why can't you pick up the phone and call like a normal person?"

"That would have ruined the fun," Klaus replied. "Besides, would you have answered?"

Caroline hesitated.

"I thought so."

"You never answered any of my calls."

"I was chained up in a wall, love."

Caroline considered this. "Hm."

Klaus picked his way towards her, straightening lamps as he went. Minute goosefeathers floated about his shoulders; the pillows had all been speared onto the ceiling fan like kebabs. "It was all too easy to suss out it was you."

Caroline refused to bite. Instead, she stayed silent, watching him come closer and closer.

"You offered them redemption instead of gutting them alive, in document form to boot." Klaus sounded reproachful and he righted an upset table to hide his exasperation. "Furthermore, Bonnie made no secret of her pyromanic abilities. She was always very artful with that certain power of hers."

"You compelled yourself a massacre just to draw me out," she hissed. "I happen to take my craft very seriously—"

"I know, love. I'm not laughing." And indeed he wasn't. In fact, he sort of admired the spirit in which she undertook her task. In all honesty, he believed this to be a phase—it took him a while to process the fact that she'd chosen to spend her eternity (or at least, a significant early part of it) doing this.

"So why are you here?" Caroline asked.

"Because." He paused. Why was he here? Papa Tunde's torment had left him withered and raw; Hayley and Freya had gone to the ends of the earth to release him and when he'd woken up Hope was well in her teen years. Despite the world staying to same, too much of what he cared about had changed. He needed—he needed to make sure, needed to see for himself, how she was.

Perhaps she was right. A phone call would have worked better.

"I wanted to offer my services," is what he decided on at last.

Caroline snorted so loud he thought it was a piece of his ceiling falling on them.

—

"I know all the criminals in this city," he insisted, dogging her down the street. Caroline walked remarkably fast in the night. She had left her mask in the debris of his room, stating she had 'plenty more'.

"I'd rather go to vampire jail," she told him sedately.

"Ah, that rather poorly masked vampire rehab you set up," he said, falling into step with her. "The Elizabeth-Bill Institute for the Morally Bankrupt. I was just short of amused as to what an easy target you made yourself."

"And yet the only person who managed to figure it all out was you," she said.

"Well—Kol did, too. We were playing crime-bingo with your exploits." Klaus grinned. "I was one money-launder away from a win, so I decided to pull things to my favour."

"I'll wall you in myself," she seethed.

"Oh, where will you possibly find the time in between all this crime-fighting?"

Caroline whipped around, fangs bared. "Leave me alone, Klaus."

"How are the twins?" he asked gently.

"None of your business."

"They should be around Hope's age, shouldn't they?"

"Stop talking about them."

Caroline took a detour through an alleyway, and with more agility than Klaus expected, climbed her way up the side of a building, all to get away from him.

Klaus weighed his options, then hefted himself up after her.

He found her sitting on a rooftop edge, the city pulsating beneath them. He sat down beside her and was surprised when she offered him a thermos of blood. It was still warm.

"Where were you keeping that?" he asked admiringly, studying her outfit.

She sent him a look that could kill, and went back to counting headlights. "Please don't tell anyone," she said quietly, after a while.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said. He cleared his throat and glanced at her. "When did it start?"

Caroline shuts her eyes. "A few years ago. Josie and Lizzie were growing up pretty fast. Alaric—he, well. Didn't want me to have…" she gestured vaguely, "words were exchanged. I decided that if I could do my part to help in any other way, I'd do it."

"You'll soon be bored with the futility of it, I imagine."

"I've got an end goal in mind," she said absently.

After a fashion he realized she had stopped counting headlights and was focused on a window in the building across the cobweb of streets. Two girls, remarkably alike, were pulling the curtains closed for the night.

"They're nocturnal creatures," he said softly. "If I could venture a guess, just like their mother."

Caroline didn't answer. Instead, she rested her head on his shoulder. He stiffened in surprise, but she didn't comment on it, neither did she move away. "Next time, just call. You can't base my reactions on the girl you knew ten years ago."

"Some things will always remain singular," he said. He wasn't speaking about her. She hoped she saw it in the look he was giving her.

Caroline pulled away slowly. For a long time, she only looked at him. Klaus took a chance and reached for her hand, after which she tangled her fingers in his. They stayed that way for only a short moment, but the feeling of her palm, soft in his, lingered long after she'd slid her thermos back into its hiding place on her body and left.

—

Damon had taken to fixing them breakfast in the wee hours of the morning when they finally returned. He reasoned that it was the least he could do, what with all the slander he keeps slinging their way on his website.

"To blindside the scrutinizing eyes of the public!" he insisted, flipping pancakes.

However, when Caroline returned home with an extra guest, his spatula fell onto the island with a smack.

"I refuse to feed him," he told Bonnie. So offended was he that Caroline had brought Klaus home that he refused to speak to Caroline too. Looking right through them, he pointed out, "And I only made pancakes for three."

Damon gestured angrily at the table, where three immaculate plates piled high with pancakes and cream had been set.

Klaus scowled. "But there's four more, burning, by the way, on the skillet." He tried not to sound too indignant.

"You kidding me? These are all for Bonnie!"

As the two immortal beings squabbled, Caroline speared a triangle of pancake with her fork. Bonnie sipped her glass of orange juice. It felt strange for the apartment to be so full, especially with the presence of Damon's entire liquor cabinet dotting every corner.

Klaus finally wrestled himself a seat next to Caroline, but not before flicking off Damon's shirt that had been slung over the back of the chair with dispassion.

"That's it! I'm done! You can make breakfast yourselves from now on!" Damon yanked off his apron and was gone with a huff.

"Does this happen a lot?" Klaus enquired, sniffing around a piece of bacon.

"More times than you can imagine," Bonnie said.

—

In the coming days, Klaus visited more often. His hotel room had been properly demolished, he took to reminding Caroline, who sighed and held out a towel for him to use her shower.

Bonnie delighted in the fact that she now has leverage against having a broody roommate/parasite, seeing as Caroline had one of her own now, too.

Damon continued to be miserable.

Klaus continued to goad them with his offer.

Caroline and Bonnie continued their crime-fighting.

"Let's not make this routine," Bonnie told Caroline as she garrotted a vampire who had been hell-bent on chowing down on a family of four. "By next week we kick them out."

"You got it, Bon," Caroline said, waving the contract in the choking vampire's face. "We're burning the couch. And can we finally talk about that cape of yours?"

Bonnie rolled her eyes, but nodded her agreement as the vampire very reluctantly signed her name along the dotted line.

—

tbc