They stay a couple weeks in Alaska, an idyll of sorts before they have to return to the real world. They talk, with and about one another. It's bliss to simply exist in the other's presence, without distractions or outside obligations. Not that they've forgone the outside concerns. Neither of them can ignore that eventuality, but they can set it aside.

She understands how he could dance and court her at a ball thrown by his murderous mother. She also realizes this is the skill that lets her consider people as acceptable losses, but there's really no going back from a shift in worldview.

She isn't sure what it says about her that she doesn't try.

He isn't angry she waited to revive him. If anything, he seems pleased. That takes longer to puzzle out, but eventually she realizes he's touched she's gone to such lengths for him. For Klaus, time is the ultimate test of affection and while a century doesn't say endless devotion, it does say, "I care." A little ruthlessness only adds verisimilitude. He can't understand a love that's devoid of selfishness, if there is such a thing.

Besides his family, when was the last time anyone had done so much?

They even speak a little about the future. He makes it perfectly clear there will be no happy reunions with Elena or the Salvatores any time soon. That's so far down the list of problems it doesn't even bother her. They've got time, and Elena will no doubt be horrified at the idea of Caroline throwing caution to the wind for herheart. But Elena is still her friend, or she's still Elena's, and she very tactfully suggests that with the next doppelganger, they try asking nicely since no one will have to die.

He doesn't agree but doesn't dismiss it, either, and that's enough for right now. She's had a long time to consider her options and despite being a psychopath he's also results oriented. There are at least four centuries between them and that eventuality, anyway. It's no rush.

They go back to Mystic Falls, taking considerably longer on the drive back to see the sights. He hasn't forgotten his promise even if she didn't show up on his doorstep, but he has to be sure things there are in order, has to see for himself that his dream is intact.

She's not unfamiliar. She did choose to bury him under her house, after all.

Elijah greets them at the door of the mansion, a sort of wry smile on his face and a fire burning behind him. It's all very dramatic and she'd suspect him of staging the scene if he weren't so damned stoic.

A thousand years and all of them still prefer the heat of an open flame. What piece of home will she be desperately clinging to in her time? Klaus? Somehow it's not the pleasant thought she anticipated. (That kind of need scares her.)

Later, Elijah pulls her aside, outside the range of Klaus's hearing, looking grim and utterly reasonable. He doesn't waste words, but then, he usually doesn't. Not with her. Not anymore. They aren't so very different, either.

He says, "It won't go smoothly, you know. My brother is who he is."

And she really wants to be annoyed, to get frustrated and walk away from his obvious, pedantic little lecture. She's better than that, though, so she marshals her patience and looks at him, really looks, because Elijah doesn'twaste words, so he's saying this for a reason. His face was never exactly readable, but there's something... something leading. Something concerned.

"You're afraid I'm going to hurt him?" He doesn't answer, because she's still forging ahead, coming to a far more realistic perspective, and he'll wait. He has time "No. You're afraid of the fallout if I do."

Graciously, he has the courtesy to provide a guilty smirk. Elijah's honesty is always deliberate, something considering and then allocated. It's also potentially revocable upon further consideration. Or more specifically, ignorable. With Klaus it's anyone he doesn't care about, with Rebekah it's just about everything, with Elijah, it's his morals. Collateral damage.

Maybe everything eventually comes down to a compromise when you're stuck with eternity.

"Can you blame me?"

After a brief moment of consideration, she answers honestly, "Yes."

The callous little laugh pops out of him and it's one she hasn't heard before, not from him. Even he seems kind of surprised. "Perhaps it'll go more smoothly than I thought."

She can't decide if she's being insulted, but is it really such a bad thing to be conclusively oneself? If there is a definitive answer to that, she certainly doesn't have it.

Klaus appears behind her with a speed she should be accustomed to but isn't, his arms slipping casually around her waist with a possessiveness she's already come to expect. "Everything all right, love?"

"Everything's fine." And it is. Everything is fine.

The family he places under watch after a week spent reminding his people just how beneficial loyalty can be. It only takes five examples. The knowledge that she did that, that she's responsible, sits in her chest. She waits for the guilt to hit her, to be reduced to tears and regret at the thought of what's happened, but it doesn't come, and that makes her a little sick. It should matter. It is significant that five people are dead. So why doesn't she care?

She drinks from a blood bag that night just to feel closer to the girl she used to be and when he slips into bed with her, a bed they now share, it seems worth even that price to have him back, to have made her choices. She's almost sure she'd make them again if she had the chance.

She lets that sense of uncertainty go, too.

They meet Rebekah and Kol in Buenos Aires, sans Stefan, and it's all pretty ghastly with Rebekah swearing at Caroline in a fit of misplaced guilt, Kol making it so much worse than it had to be by egging his sister on and Klaus threatening to dagger him for another century if he can't shut up.

She finds herself in the living room of their home staring into the fire, her head aching with the aftermath of that confrontation, when Kol strolls in with a bottle of vodka and two glasses. She's never been more fond of him.

They each knock back their first drink in silence, and their second, but on the third he pauses, his smile a bizarre mixture of gratitude and sneer. "You just managed to resurrect the biggest pain in the ass this world has ever known."

"Second only to you," she agrees. "Top that off, please. I'm not nearly drunk enough."

He fills her glass, but stares into his own with a look on his face she's only seen once before. It makes him look so young. "I really thought we'd gotten rid of him."

"No thanks to you," Rebekah snarls, hatred rolling off her in palpable waves. It vaguely occurs to Caroline that she ought to be afraid, surrounded by Originals, at least one of whom is murderously angry, but all she feels is a kind of vague annoyance with Rebekah for being so irrational.

It's profoundly odd and distinctly funny, so she laughs. In retrospect, she recognizes this as a bad idea but at the time it seems perfectly reasonable. Between the three of them, they demolish half the house before Klaus comes back to separate them like scolded children.

He glares at his siblings and checks her over for injuries with gentle hands. In a clinical, detached voice, he asks, "Have you taken leave of your senses?"

She sighs, thinking of Mystic Falls. "We weren't really trying to kill each other."

Kol toasts them with the miraculously unharmed bottle of vodka. "Obviously. You're not dead."

"Thank you, Kol, that's very helpful." She rolls her eyes at him and he smirks under the attention, but even Klaus is smiling a little as he brushes his thumb across her cheek. "Just a spat," she says, and knows she's pouting a little, but can't seem to stop.

And that half smile she loves so much is back when his hand moves from her face to her neck, tangling in her hair. "Love, I'd hate to see you have a fight."

It doesn't occur to her until later that he should have been angry - furious, really - with her and them, and that the only reason he isn't is because he believes them. He believes they were just blowing off steam using each other as punching bags/wrecking balls.

Kol, oddly enough, is the one who gives her a little insight on it as he playfully tosses a chunk of concrete in her direction. "Welcome to the family, love."

Rebekah ignores her beautifully whenever possible, but there's no true anger in it. It's the sullen, stubborn silence of a bratty child, and by the time they move the following year, she even deigns to ask Caroline for help getting her room in order. It's about as close to an apology as the Originals ever give.

Caroline accepts, because she's nice like that.

She learns Spanish, or at least, she learns the Argentine equivalent of Spanish, and Klaus teaches her some Lunfrado, but not much. It's fallen out of favor since he was last there. They go dancing every night, sometimes in Recoleta, or Puerto Madero, but she falls in love with San Telmo.

Stefan shows up at their door three months later, and fortunately for him she is the one who answers. They stare at one another for a solid minute before either of them speaks.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell you how massively stupid this is." She studies him, looking for a hint of what he hopes to accomplish.

He chuckles darkly, a kind of self-deprecating mirth dripping from the sound. "No," he agrees. "You don't." He always did have that brooding thing going for him.

Once she would have tried to rush him away from the house, tried to convince him to hide until they could figure something out, to save him at any and all costs from the clutches of her monster.

Once.

No longer. He's allowed to make his own choices, just like she did.

She knows, then, why he's there. It's not a realization. It's a change in perspective. She says, "I'll get her."

Sheer surprise prompts him to meet her gaze directly, his own strangely vulnerable. He swallows thickly, voice gone husky with emotion, and manages, "Thank you."

Ironically, there is no irony in what she says next. "What are friends for? Wait here." In the den, she tosses Rebekah a look she hopes is meaningful. "It's for you."

Klaus is mildly perplexed but doesn't protest as she slides onto his lap, her arms going around his neck as his encircle her waist. He asks, "Something wrong, sweetheart?"

And Caroline sighs, resting her head on his shoulder. She had known this moment would come, or one just like it. One day she'd have to choose whether or not to stand between him and those he intended to harm. But now that it's there she's realizing she made her choice already, from the moment she reached into his chest and touched his heart.

She had always known she'd have to face the consequence of that choice sooner or later. Although she'd hoped for later, all that waiting had served another purpose. It had given her time to think. "My friends are idiots," she says after a pause that's just a tiny bit too long.

In the span of time it takes her to meet his eyes they've gone dark with the cold sort of fury she knows is his worst, the veins dancing under his skin at the very thought of a Salvatore in his home. It says a good deal about both of them that his grip on her doesn't change and that she doesn't flinch away. That anger, it isn't for her.

She brushes a thumb across his cheek, asking him to look at her. He does, the tension in his every muscle apparent in the set of his neck. "He was your friend, too, once. He's still mine. Don't kill him." It's an entreaty, not an order, and then as smoothly as she slid against him, she lets him go, slithering impossibly back out of the chair the way she came in. He's gone before she's upright, and judging by the thud from the hall, she knows exactly where he went.

Rebekah is screaming at him in Russian, which she only does when she's very, very upset, and Stefan is pinned against the wall by his neck, Klaus holding him nearly a foot off the ground.

"I should kill you where you stand for having the gall to come knocking at my door."

Using the breath he still has, Stefan manages to choke out, "Surprised you haven't."

Klaus grits his teeth, and brings his face dangerously close to Stefan's throat. "It's not for lack of desire, I assure you." In what might be the most awkward moment of her immortality, no one looks at her.

Without warning, he drops Stefan, using way more force than necessary.

(Caroline can hear femurs snap. Drop probably isn't the right term. In a weird moment of mental slippage, she wishes Elijah were there. He could probably tell her what the right word for it is.)

Klaus straightens up and waits until Stefan is facing him to go on. "Caroline doesn't want me to kill you. It seems neither does, Bekah. You might think to be grateful."

Quick as a snake, quicker even, Klaus lashes out, his hand sinking into Stefan's chest, and Rebekah is screaming all over again, but not moving. None of them are moving, not even Kol, and if Caroline had a steady heartbeat it would be lurching. Stefan is staring at nothing, his focus turned in, toward the horrifying sensation, and Klaus... Klaus is calm.

He says, "It's a very unique feeling, isn't it? Sure, there's the physical pain, and the panic, but mostly it's the betrayal of knowing your friend's hand is buried in your chest, holding your heart."

When he lets go he stalks away without a backwards glance, leaving Rebekah to catch Stefan as he falls, to give him her blood. Not for the first time, Caroline wonders what happened in Europe, but it isn't really important. Whatever it was, it was enough for Stefan to come back and that says everything.

She gives Klaus a few hours to cool off. In the study, he's gone through half a bottle of bourbon and tosses her a vicious glare when she sticks her head in Expecting her to be judgmental, no doubt. She can't suppress the flash of annoyance that he doesn't realize she's not the same person, but she tries to remember old habits die hard. He's only had a few years to get to know her again.

Maybe that's why he's closer to Rebekah and Kol. Now he knows what it feels like to lose a century. It fits their sense of honor. An eye for an eye.

He's caught completely off guard when she throws her arms around him, her face pressed into his shirt, and says, "Thank you." Into the stunned silence, she goes on. "You could have killed him, but you didn't, so thank you. I know it wasn't just for me, but I'm grateful and I wanted you to know that."

Slowly, carefully, he folds his arms around her as well, presses his face into her hair. For a long time they just stand together, holding one another. When he does speak it's so low she almost misses it, even with her hearing. "It wasn't worth it." In his voice she hears a grief she doesn't understand.

"Nik?"

He lets her pull away far enough to meet her eyes. His face is carefully blank, but in his eyes she can see fear. "I wasn't sure you'd forgive me. If I killed him. I had his heart in my hand, my revenge, and all I could think about was whether you'd be able to look at me the same way if I took it."

It cuts deeper than she thought it would, that grief, and she hates the little tremor in her voice when she says, "You make it sound like a bad thing."

The arm around her waist pulls tighter, pressing her hips flush with his. "It's terrifying. I'm not used to having something to lose, Caroline."

And there are no words to fix that for him. She doesn't bother trying to find them. Instead, she presses her lips against his, fiercely, a little desperately, and he answers it, every lick and nip. She might have been the one to start it, but he's the one whose tongue delves past her lips, whose hands are already sliding under her shirt, across her back. Those are his lips leaving a trail like fire down her neck, against her threading pulse.

She stops trying to keep up with him, stops trying to respond to his every attention and lets the pleasure wash over her. When he slides a hand between her thighs, she kisses his neck. When he pushes into her she drives her nails into his shoulders, because she wasn't quite ready, but couldn't stand to wait. And sometime between him sinking into the wet heat of her and the moment when she falls into the abyss, she knows that she would have forgiven him if he had ripped out her friend's heart because she knows exactly what it's like to be alone.