This is somewhere around where Klaus' body went up in flames, when it was revealed that Bonnie had put him in Tyler's body. Naturally I had assumed that this would have led to klonnie becoming a real ship.

lol.

This fic is Bonnie returning him to his original body that got set on fire.

Klaus climbed out of the coffin gingerly. Getting accustomed to his body again. Two legs, two arms. Ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, and a nose… Fingernails, toenails, collarbones, elbows, knuckles, knees and more or less everything he'd had before... It all felt so new, though. He was a new-born, squeezing through some supernatural birth canal. Back to life. Back to power…

Or not.

He pricked his finger on an errant splinter and watched it bleed.

It hurt.

Huh.

He paused in the coffin, adjusting…

He was weaker… Severely weaker. Drained. Rundown. Desiccated…

With a good deal of apprehension, he resumed the climb out of the coffin. Slowly. Carefully. And fuck, let's admit it, fearfully. Once bitten, twice shy, third time the paranoia goes into overdrive. Some Zoloft might set him straight. Or some hot blood pulsing down his throat. Nothing like ripping into a throat to calm the nerves, his brother Kol used to say. Zoloft or blood? Zoloft or blood? Pharmacology or biology? Succumb to humanity, or consume it?

It wouldn't be bad to meet up with Kol and Becka and have a little slaughter-fest…

Ah, to have family. People you can trust to not leave you desiccated at the bottom of an ocean. Rebecka, Kol. Poor dead Finn... Pathetic as his brother was, he didn't deserve to be shanked by Matt the waiter and Elena the doppelganger. To be killed by mere mortals… On the steps of a rundown bar that served alcohol to anybody… No one deserved a death like that. Not even self-righteous Elijah…

And speaking of self-righteous… A pair of green, sanctimonious eyes glared at him, gauging his arthritic, snail-paced progress with open disdain. He couldn't go any faster. His body was only just now coming back to life. The system only just beginning to boot after a most malicious attack.

He clambered out of the coffin like a 99 year old. Knocked a box over that sounded as though it was, or had been, full of ceramics. Fuck you, I'm in pain. Every single bone in his body, from his cranium right down to the distal phalanx of his baby toe, hurt. He felt beat up, minced, bruised, pulverized… Fuck, even sodomized. His back was tight. His chest was tight. His head was spinning, his eyes were burning, his ears were ringing, his heart was pounding against his ribcage like a subwoofer turned up to eleven, and he had a sore throat. All the ash, most like.

He looked down at Tyler's evacuated body on the floor, a circle of wax and candles all around it. Good riddance. "It worked."

"It's only temporary."

"Still, thanks," he mumbled, as he pushed his feet into the fluffy bedroom slippers provided. He might hate her guts, but manners were manners. And besides being a ruthless, murderous semi-psychotic hybrid monster, he was a good old English boy who believed that proper social etiquette could change the world. Never mind that she was the one to desiccate him in the first place. Never mind that odd little unimportant detail.

The witch, the bitch, the one and only Bonnie Bennett who he'd thoroughly underestimated, frowned. As if he'd expected anything else. He'd never seen her smile, come to think about it. Except… no, he'd never seen her smile. He'd only ever seen frowns and scowls.

She had a special way of frowning… Any gal off the street could pull her lips down into a frown, but Bonnie, he'd noticed, had an exceptional way of doing it. When Bonnie frowned she let you know she was displeased.

"What's wrong?" he asked, besides everything.

She paused for a moment, hesitation swimming in her eyes. "How does it feel, being back in your own skin?"

"I've been worse." Not really. "There's something to be said for being in one's own body. I feel more like… myself." And once more, with feeling, "Thank you."

She eyed him as though he was a hissing black mamba. On her guard as usual. Two feet of safety distance between the two of them. Not that keeping her distance would save her if he was of a mind to do her bodily harm, and he was of a mind to do her gross bodily harm…

He was only waiting for the right moment.

The swinging yellow light bulb overhead made the basement ominous. More ominous than any suburban basement had the right to be. Someday, he would have to ask her how she managed to get his coffin all the way down into her basement. Did no one notice? Not a single neighbour? Did she not have a father who might happen down into his basement to do laundry, play cards with friends, dust off vinyl records, varnish rocking chairs, whatever middle aged men did to distract themselves from their impending death… Did she not have one of those? The card table in the centre of the room was unused. The chairs tucked in nice and neat. The drone of a half dead mini fridge… The tinkle of a musical Christmas card… Candles… A black tome of a grimoire smack in the middle of the dusty poker table, and a champagne glass filled with blood…

Oh yes, Bonnie Bennett, the girl without a mother. Of course, she'd be into coffins and black magic. If he wasn't a hybrid freak of nature, he'd be creeped out by the macabre gloom of it all.

"You smell like smoke."

"Well, that's to be expected, sweetheart. I was on fire a while back."

"You hurt any one of my friends," her face tightened impossibly, "You hurt anyone at all, and I'll set you on fire all over again. A more permanent kind of fire."

… And there it was. The death threat. Why was it that they couldn't go two minutes without a death threat. Why did she hate him so? He'd never killed anyone related to her, best as he could remember. And why did he hate her? What was it about her that made him want to turn into a wolf and rip her throat out? The face? Not the face; she was cute enough for a witch-bitch. And he was no big believer in dashing beauty, anyway. The magic? Not that either. He was usually pro-witch. He'd had more than his fair share of witchy lovers… There's just something about Bonnie.

He tightened the robe around him and took in the scent of fabric softener. Mmm. Keep her or kill her? Funny how he still couldn't decide, even after all her transgressions. A small part of him was caught out admiring her gumption. Her daring. How dare she botch his ceremony by keeping Elena alive? How dare she try to have Elijah kill him? How dare she desiccate his body? How dare she save his life? How dare she restore him?

How dare she try to kill him? How dare she save him? How dare she act as though she was doing him a favour? How dare she expect him to be grateful?

The audacity of the girl!

She, the girl, the witch, the bitch, the constant thorn in his side, his tormentor and would-be slayer, Bonnie Bennett, moved to the table and sat down. He followed, sat down. She had a page in front of her. Parchment, to be precise. All written in Latin… A scroll of names, dates…

"I can make this permanent," she began. "I can restore you to your body permanently. Give you back your strength. Your power…

But…

"But I'd need a guarantee that you'd never hurt another human being again."

"For the rest of my life, or the rest of yours? I can guarantee you anything. I'd do anything."

She pushed the parchment towards him. Turned it around so he could read it. "I want you to sign this. It's a contract binding you to a thousand years of service. Or until I die, which could be any time given that I live in Mystic Falls. Sign it, and you're back from the dead. You're back in your own body for good, no more sharing with Tyler."

A cold, slimy, 100% bad feeling, went up Klaus' spine and turned his saliva to bile.

"You can't be serious." She just couldn't be. "You want me to be a familiar? Me?" The idea was ludicrous. Insane. Downright silly. He stared at her, trying to see into her brain. See exactly which part of her brain had come up with that idea.

"Don't act surprised. You thought I'd just let you back into your body to wreak havoc on my friends and me again? We'd be right back to where we started."

True. But he'd promised not to kill her. Why couldn't she just take him at his word? Did they really have to resort to a contract? Didn't she trust him?

Contracts were for lesser things. Lesser creatures of the night. Pixies signed contracts. Goblins signed contracts. Black cats. The occasional demon. The rare, desperate vampire might sign a contract…

Not one of a kind hybrids.

And most definitely not himself.

The girl undoubtedly had a death wish. There could be no question about it now. She was idea insane, or suicidal.

His eyes took in the champagne glass full of blood.

"Do you have any idea how dark this magic is?" he asked. "There are other options, you know. Less drastic ways of keeping me in check if that's what this is about."

"What else would it be about?" she spat back. "And there's nothing less drastic. What do you have in mind? Me making you pinky swear to be a good boy?"

"What, you don't believe in pinky promises? I'm shocked."

"Excuse me?"

"You seem like a pinky promise type of girl, is all. You're not shrewd and cynical at all."

"It's not too bad, being a familiar. I'll make up rules, and you'll have to follow them. But I'm a fair person. I don't want to torture you. I just want to keep people that I care about safe."

"What rules?"

"Rule number one, you can't kill my friends."

"You have friends?"

She cut him a glare. "You can go back to cohabiting in Tyler, if that's more your thing…"

Klaus mulled the idea over in his mind, trying to keep his hands from reaching up on their own and strangling the girl.

More than anything else in the world, he wanted out of Tyler's body. Tyler was all fine and well as a temporary hide-out, but being in some 18 year old sack of All-American brain-damaged jock-flesh was not something he wanted to get used to. Maybe it was just him, but he'd come to really like his original body. Not that he was vain, he wasn't, but he was rather attached to his sandy blond hair and grey-blue eyes. He wanted to smile with his own lips, to smirk with his own mouth… to stretch his own muscles. To live his own life…

The question was, did he love his body enough to agree to a contract. One thousand years of indentured labour?

A thousand years of servitude was no laughing matter. Not even Kol could find a joke in that.

Sure, the harpy would be dead in the next fifty, most likely, which would render the contract null and void… but still…

It was Klaus' turn to frown. "I'm a one of a kind hybrid of two supernatural species and you want me to sign up to be a familiar? Love, in case you don't know who I am. I'm Niklaus. The biggest Bad you will ever see in your entire life… Not some tabby cat for you to scratch behind the ears."

Bonnie flinched. Just a little.

"I can put you back in Tyler's body if–"

"No!" The word burst out of him. There was no going back to that. Now that he was out, there would be no going back. Clever tactics, giving him a taste of freedom to whet his appetite. How dare she use clever tactics against him? "Let's not be hasty."

"You might want to be a little hasty. This spell only last fifteen minutes, and then you go back to Tyler by default."

"Girl..."

"Am I going to have to tell Damon about you?"

Was that a threat?

Was she seriously threatening him? Klaus, Slayer of humans, vampires, werewolves and Mikael? And worse yet, was she threatening him with Damon? Damon? The ass rat that he could have killed a hundred times over?

Lo, how the mortals take kindness for weakness.

Curse his stupid kind heart.

If he'd come and run amok in Mystic Falls, killing them all as he had originally intended, he'd not be in this situation, begging mercy from the likes of some seventeen year old witch. A seventeen year old with no mother, little father and even less supernatural support. All her thousand and one Bennett witches were dead now and on the Other Side. Last he knew, all she had was a cousin. A Lucy something.

Was he really going to allow himself to be strong-armed by the witch bitch?

She'd tried to kill him twice. Twice. Since when did he suffer his attackers to live? When had he become Klaus the Benevolent?

He didn't need her, per se. He could kill her and find another witch somewhere to get him back to his body… Or he could sign the contract and become a familiar… His eyes scrolled up the list to where other beings had signed their lives away. Albert Cornwall, 1752. That was the last time a sentient person had surrendered himself to witchcraft. What had become of poor Albert?

"Some witches have trouble controlling cats. Some settle for mice. You want something to practice your magic on, you can do better. A spider monkey maybe. Something nice and cute that'll fit in your hand bag. Because, and trust me on this one, love, I'm too much for you to handle."

She put her elbows to the table, and Klaus imagined the girl for a moment, at an actual Poker game, with her father maybe or her insipient friends. She looked like an "all in" kinda girl. Stunning poker face, he'd give her that. Her frown transformed into a scowl, and she narrowed her eyes, letting him know she was serious as well as displeased by his resistance to the idea of signing away his soul for a millennium. "If I restore you to your body permanently, you're going to have to do something for me."

Oh?

"What's to stop me from killing you this very second and finding another witch to help me solve my problem?"

"Just my word that I'm the only witch that can help you solve your problem."

"You're bluffing."

"And you're willing to bet your body and soul on that?"

Ah… and therein lay the rub. He was literally gambling with his body and soul. He should fold. Really he should.

Except he wanted to kill her. So bad his gums hurt.

How dare she try to take advantage of him? How dare she? He was Klaus and she was Bonnie the seventeen year old orphan witch! If he had any spine, any sort of spine at all, he'd drain every single drop of her blood and mutilate her carcass afterward. Tyler's body wasn't that bad. He'd get accustomed to it in a century or two, surely.

What to do… What to do…

His fifteen minutes dwindled down to three.

Fuck it, he decided, and picked up the pen. A quant piece of stationery for a seventeen year old girl to have... Sturdy whale bone. He dipped it into the blood, sucked up the red ink, blotted the nib on his sleeve and signed his name. "There."

And let the chips fall where they may.

He was now a lesser being. A cheap, solicited night-walker.

The pimp took the pen from him and signed her own name to the parchment. Bonnie Bennett. As she crossed to the last 'T', the candle flared and went out.

Thank the gods for electricity.

"You have no idea what you've done," he intoned.

"I've kept you from slaughtering thousands of innocents–"

"I haven't slaughtered thousands of innocents since the world wars."

"Who'd you fight for, the Nazis?"

"The English, girl."

"Oh."

"Oh, indeed. I'm not some raving maniac Ripper."

"Could've fooled me."

"Are we bantering?"

"I don't think so."

"I think we are," he pursed his lips, pondering for a second. The deed was done, and already he could feel some of his power returning to him. The spot where he'd pricked his finger slowly stop hurting. Bit by bit, slowly, slowly, he'd return to his former glory… Then he'd kill them all, Bonnie Bennett in particular. He'd do an Irish tap dance on the girl's grave and throw a party the Western world was yet to see the likes of. He'd play nice in the meanwhile. Bide his time until the apocalypse. "We can be friends."

"I doubt it."

"Why? Because you've just forced me into slavery? I won't hold it against you, love. Because you permanently botched my coming of age ceremony? I'm over that." They'd be enemies right up until her dying day. And he'd be standing over her watching her die with a grin from ear to ear.

"Because you've tried to kill me and my friends multiple times–"

"And yet you're all still alive."

"Except Jenna."

"Well, except Jenna."

"And Alaric."

"How am I responsible for Alaric?"

"Your mother turned him into an insane vampire."

"Am I my mother's keeper? You of all people should know how irascible mothers can be."

A flare of white hot pain went through his skull, crippling the right side of his brain for a moment. A long short moment.

He pushed off from the table, sighed and regained his bearings. "Where do we go from here?" Would she make him call her Master? Could she make him? What power did she have over him now? Would she force him to do her every bidding? Could she? He didn't remember her aneurysms being that painful… In fact he couldn't remember her aneurysms at all. Funny. Was this part of their new master servant relationship? Would she make him wear a collar around his neck, with a bell? Could she?

Could he play nice, and slowly drive her insane? Stay close to her and make her suffer mentally, the way he'd suffered physically, desiccated in a coffin in the dark? Could he torment her? Make her wish she was never born? Make her rue the day she decided to stand against him?

He smiled. Yes. He'd torment her, he decided. No master plan. No Machiavellian scheme. Just flat out destruction. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth… He smiled.

Bonnie only glared at him.

He must look the grinning idiot. No matter, she'd catch the joke when the time was right. He was Klaus. The only person in the world who could afford to waste a couple decades being the plaything of an adolescent girl. She wanted a familiar, well by golly, he'd be familiar. He started up the stairs. Done is done. He'd get his strength back, lie low while he recuperated… Then retaliate.

Bonnie Bennett. Damon Salvatore. Stefan Salvatore. Tyler Lockwood. Jeremy Gilbert. Matt, whatever his surname was. Plus or minus one blonde Caroline Forbes….

"Where are you going?" her voice followed him up the stairs.

"To have a shower." Pause. "I'm allowed showers? I've never been a familiar before. Am I allowed bathroom privileges or do I have to use a box of sand? Kitty litter." He came out of the dank sourness of the basement into relative sunshine. "You've a nice home, girl."

"My name's Bonnie."

"I know." Like he could forget. He'd have to etch it into her tombstone, right before he set up his boom box. Have himself a little graveside Mardi Gras…

The scent of bacon pervaded the air… Eggs… He followed her into the kitchen.

A neat little breakfast for one was set out on the table. She took her lonely seat. Began to work at her toast and orange juice…

His eyes caught the clock on the wall. 7:46.

Late for school…

"There's some blood in the fridge. I picked up a couple bags for you in case you're thirsty." She stuffed her mouth full of bread. Softened it with a swig of orange juice. Late for school… "Stay inside the house… I don't think you're strong enough to try the sunlight."

"Thanks."

"Have you ever been a familiar before?"

"Never had the pleasure." He pulled up a chair to the table. Sat down… "In this weakened state, I'm assuming a regular stake to the heart will do me in?"

Blank stare… Cute. As much as he hated her, he'd admit that she was cute. For a witch who'd tried to kill him twice.

"You'll be safe here," she answered, and if he didn't know better, he'd think she was genuinely concerned for his life. "Damon and Stefan don't have an invitation. I don't think they even know where I live."

"Thanks."