Hi everyone!
This is my first venture into the land of TVD fanfiction, so I hope you'll enjoy :)
This first scene is just a starter to get to the next...lets just state that this begins from 3x11 and follows the storyline only with additional scenes.

Lastly, I do not own TVD, of course.

Caroline ran her hands through her hair with a sigh, trying to keep the straightened locks from being messed by the wind. She supposed she could just climb down from her perch in the tree and head inside instead, but she didn't quite feel ready for normalcy. She ran her fingers over the old boards that served as the tree house that she, Elena and Bonnie used to play in, seeking the place they had carved their names over a decade ago. The wobbly initials were already becoming worn with age, and she frowned. Everything passed by with time. But she wouldn't anymore. She'd be forever stuck in the filler year. She'd never be of a legal drinking age, never really be ready for college, never grow up and have kids and a career and a loving husband. She'd be stuck forever.

Caroline lay back, watching the light filter through the leaves. At least she could survive the sunlight. But even then it felt different to when she was human. She toyed with her daylight ring, pondering. She could take it off, just for a moment, just to fully feel the sun on her skin before it burned her tainted vampire body. Her fingers ran over the edges of the lapis lazuli ring, and in a moment of spontaneity she slipped the ring off.

One blissful microsecond of warm sunlight on her skin…

And then the burning began. She could feel the blistering heat of it all, feel her skin charring and smoke rising off her. She bit back screams, not wanting to alert anyone to her presence. She looked down to her ring, and in a brief second of deliriousness, wondered whether she should put it back on her finger. For she could still feel the warmth and energy of the sun, and she hadn't felt alive in so long, she missed being human and vulnerable purely because it meant that she was alive. So should she stay in the sunlight, in pain but alive? Her skin was smarting at this point, and she couldn't hold back the groan of agony that escaped from her lips.

The ring slid back on her finger as her self preservation kicked in, and she panted. Caroline looked wistfully up to the sun through the trees. She felt cold again. She felt dead. She held back tears, not wanting to seem weak even to herself, and sat upright as she heard a noise. Someone was nearby.

"Hello?" She called, sitting up to look down at the grassy area underneath the tree.

A brush of air told her that someone had moved with supernatural speed to the branches above her. She glanced upwards and bit back a yelp of surprise.

"Little one," Klaus greeted from his perch on the oak branch a few feet away from the tree house floor boards. His face was utterly unreadable to Caroline, which frightened her further. She knew exactly what this man was capable of, and yet she had never experience it first hand. She was petrified, recalling everything he had done to her friends and what she had seen him do to Tyler.

"Klaus," She said warily, not showing how he scared her. If he didn't know how he affected her, he'd think that she was strong and hopefully leave her alone. And she was strong. She'd endured enough already, she could easily take on him.

He remained where he was, clearly comfortable and not planning on leaving soon. She knew how his emotions switched quickly, however, and tensed herself, ready to run. Screw not showing any fear, self-preservation was not fear.

"Relax, love," He said, making her jump at his insight and the unfamiliar pet name. "I'm not going to kill you here."

"Why?" She asked bluntly, and he laughed unexpectantly.

"In my book, I work by vengeance. You wrong me, I wrong you. You've just got to wrong me first." He watched her as she continued to eye him carefully. He couldn't blame her suspicion, he had already put the wheels in motion for her to come to harm for what her friends had done, but he felt the need to prove himself to this baby vampire for some reason, even if it was to show her that his actions didn't make him a monster before her life ended. "I'm not that low."

Caroline refused to flinch at the harsh ways his mind worked. She was stronger than that. And they did made sense to her, in the most bizarre way.

"Then why come here, if you're not going to kill me?"

He looked over to catch her eye properly for the first time, and she felt his gaze pierce right through her.

"I was out hunting and couldn't help but notice a pretty vampire burning herself in the sun."

She bit her lip, embarrassed that he'd caught her doing something so completely reckless and irrational.

"I did wonder why you'd do such a thing, since you have a daylight ring and you know that while you are immortal, you aren't invincible." He continued.

She didn't need to explain herself to him, but she did anyway, without thought.

"It's the pull of the sun. The light. You know how it makes you feel so alive?" She envied his hybrid ways in that sense; he needed no ring to walk in the daylight. He could feel the sun as she used to. "You probably haven't felt anywhere near alive for centuries anyway." She stabbed. He was a hollow being as far as she was concerned.

Klaus smirked. "I'm not that much of a monster, little one."

The odd pet name irritated her, and mixed with the envy she was already feeling against him. "No? Could've fooled a lot of us."

Oddly, Klaus ignored the comment that usually would've fired his anger. "It felt like something else when I woke up in the sun for the first time in a thousand years with no ring. The burning feeling was gone. There was only warmth, like my skin was humming."

Caroline's envy got the better of her, and she slid the ring off her finger again to feel that same feeling he talked about. She gritted her teeth to the burning that followed, only it didn't last long. The pain stopped, and she realized that Klaus was next to her, his fingers around the ring that was back on her hand. She looked up at him with a complete sense of loss and vulnerability in her eyes, before she snapped at him, her own personal fire.

"What the hell was that for? You're the sadistic monster, why don't you just let me burn if I feel like it?"

Klaus was shocked by her outburst that reminded him of a werewolf overreaction, and reminded himself that she was young and still in emotional transition. Truth be told, he had no idea why he had stopped her. He presumed it was a reaction to his plans changing. If she hurt herself, even killed herself, by burning, he couldn't get revenge at Stefan through her. But there was another part to it. Seeing her hurt herself like that, for one second of bliss; he knew what that felt like.

And she deserved more.

The caring thought had come from nowhere, and he sent it far back in his mind.

We do not care.

Klaus distracted himself by returning to the present, while she waited for an answer.

"There are much brighter things for you in the future." He replied cryptically, thought he could see it in her eyes that she still had the world to discover. He felt an unfamiliar twinge of regret that he had practically signed her death certificate only hours previously, and that despite his words she would not have bright things in her future, she would not discover the world, her bright future was to serve as another pawn in his game with the Salvatore's and Elena. From his knowledge of her, from what he had seen in his time in Alaric's body, she always served as the pawn in the game, her needs second to her friends. She did deserve more.

He sent the foreign human feelings somewhere else. His needs were greater than hers. His needs were greater than any of them. Nevertheless, if she was going to die, he may as well give her a blessing.

"Love, you've not taken off your ring at night outside, have you?"

She eyed him, confused and curious.

"The stars. The stars give the same feeling. They don't burn like the sun. They are made of the same light and energy, only a million miles away. The energy thrums on your skin at night when the daylight ring isn't protecting you from the weakened light. The stars…they sing to us, Caroline. They sing on our skin."

It was the first time he had said her name, and he admired the way it sounded on his lips, the sweet taste it brought to his mouth. Caroline. Caroline.

Caroline closed her eyes, picturing it all. Then she remembered who she was talking to and opened them to find him looking at her with his most unreadable look on his face. Rather than scare her away like before, it drew her in, making her notice everything. How his face was softer than the harsh lines it became in a confrontation, and the sweetness of his poetic words, and just how stormy blue his eyes were.

He quirked a brow, and she realized it was her turn to say something.

"I'll keep that in mind." She replied lamely, cursing herself for taking the time to get lost in his eyes but not coming up with a witty retort.

He had drawn closer to her to make her put the ring back on, and she noticed his body heat burning her from the few inches between them. His gaze made her feel like she was being x-rayed, and she drew her knees up to her chest, wanting distance between them.

"Don't you have some hybrids to boss around or some other vampires to torture?"

He smirked, and broke his gaze to look at the boards they were sitting on, easily spying the place she had carved her initials when she was seven.

"As a matter of fact, I don't, but I know an invitation to leave when I hear one. I'll leave you to reminisce about the good days when you were still mortal." He caught her eye quickly to flash his trademark smirk. "Just know that even though you can't feel the sun, it doesn't mean you no longer have any light. You're not a little girl anymore, Caroline. You're a creature of the light."

And then he wasn't there anymore, gone too fast for her to catch, and she let herself sink into the jelly-like feeling that his admittedly sexy smirk and words had brought her. For a killer, he sure knew how to make her feel special for a moment.

Happy Birthday, Caroline.