Gravity

Smut, angst, dark!Caroline

Caroline goes to him, finally. She's fought for so long that its almost hard for her to walk the final steps to the terminal, but then she's on the plane and all she can think is that for the first time in the year that she's spent without him, she feels content. She missed him, she realizes, and this isn't just because she hasn't had sex in five months, and it isn't just because she's pissed as hell that Tyler can move on to whoever he wants, regardless of who they are or what they've done- catching him in bed with Katherine was probably the worst betrayal she'd ever felt, and for crying out loud she was only gone for the weekend, was he really that horny and desperate?; and sure Klaus killed Tyler's mother and Jenna and tons of other people, but Katherine killed her and he was still with her then, and he slept with Katherine of all the people in the world; she could have been forgiving, well more forgiving, if it had been anyone else, but she had spent months fighting her feelings for Klaus out of guilt, and then Tyler went and did that- and she waited after that event for five months because she didn't want to run to Klaus just to have a one night stand because of Tyler. For some reason, she didn't want to do that to Klaus, and she was glad. Because now, sitting on a plane headed for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, she knew that this wasn't petty revenge on Tyler, or even her friends for using her as bait yet again and almost getting her killed, this was about her and Klaus, and that she wanted him.

So when she lands, she pulls out her phone quickly, realizing that she made no plans and she doesn't even know where he freaking lives. She forgot to plan for once in her life in between her epiphany that she couldn't forget him no matter how hard she tried and that she needed to see him again, she needed to feel him again, she needed to hear his voice echoing in her ear. She dials his number, a number she's memorized in the year without him, though she never called him. And he answers with a shocked "Caroline?" and she's so happy that he sounds so happy, and it's made even better when she tells him where she is, and she can practically see the smile on Klaus' face as he tells her that he'll be there in twenty minutes.

She suspects he was planning on speeding there; her suspicions are confirmed when he runs up to her in no less than fifteen minutes later. His smile, his breathtaking smile, firmly in place, but he still stops some distance from her. Too far, her mind screams, and she closes the remaining distance, tugging his head down to hers, kissing him as she's wanted to since the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant, the night Klaus ran Tyler out of town (she doesn't feel as guilty admitting those things to herself now, not after Tyler's betrayal), when she killed the witches, after Silas played with Klaus' mind, before she knew Silas was playing with her mind, at graduation. She finally kissed him as she had wanted to so many times before, opening her mouth for him, an invitation that he readily accepts. It's very romantic, so human, lovers (almost lovers) being reunited in an airport. She swears she sees smiles on nearly everyone around them's faces when Klaus pulls away, grabbing her bag and placing a hand at the small of her back, leading her to a car.

She can't seem to resist touching him, though, whatever had been holding her back in the past thoroughly vanquished, and she places a hand on his knee, running it up and down his thigh. He doesn't stop her, and she smiles in response. He does however, put more pressure on the gas, tightening his grip on the steering wheel, and they arrive at what she assumes to be his house in no less than ten minutes. Still, he's ever the gentleman for her, coming to her door and helping her out, and she notes with a smirk the very evident bulge in his pants. He asks through clenched teeth if she'd like to see some of the city, and she thinks about teasing him for a while, but she realizes that she's made both of them wait long enough. So she shakes her head no, smiling at him when she asks, "Ravish me?" And that seems to break his own control, because he scoops her into his arms, her luggage in the trunk forgotten, and flashes her through his home.

Caroline doesn't have time to think or consider or analyze, because his mouth and his teeth are at her throat, and she doesn't care about consequences or right or wrong anymore. She just wants him. And he seems happy enough to oblige, pushing her skirt down over her hips as she kicks her flats off, her tank top following, flung across the room, and he stares at her, hunger and love in his eyes, and she shivers in delight, feeling more heat rush to the area between her thighs, and she's glad that she had the sense of mind to wear nice underwear on this little trip; her red lace thong is removed from her body with practiced ease, and her matching bra follows soon after. She tugs his shirt up impatiently, suddenly angry that she is naked before him while he remains fully clothed. He chuckles at her shortly, but still pushes himself back enough to lift the henley over his head, flinging it in the direction that her own clothes went.

He slips a finger between her legs, twirling the digit in her juices, before lifting it to his mouth, sucking the evidence of her arousal off of it. She shivers again, and again when he spreads her legs, looking down at her predatorily. Then his tongue is on her, lapping up her juices, two fingers pressing inside of her, stretching her, and she moans and whimpers, and tugs his hair in an attempt to get him closer, to find her release. He works her fast and hard with his tongue and his fingers, bringing her to the edge, but just as she feels that she's about to fall, he slows down, his movements becoming languid, and while her release still looms and beckons, it feels so far away. And then he speeds up again, only to slow his movements once more soon after. Klaus keeps up this pattern for several minutes, and she thinks she may go crazy, and she begs him to let her come, she makes promises and she doesn't even know what she's promising, she just knows that she would give him anything if he'd just let her come. He pulls his tongue away from her, and she growls in annoyance, but she still feels his hot breath on her core when he says "Come for me love." And she comes.

She's still angry at him though when she comes down from her high, though she can't say she's really all that angry, so she flips him over, putting herself in control. She places a soft, chaste kiss on his mouth, rocking her hips against his, relishing the groan her movements elicit from him. She enjoys the feel of his hard length pressed against her, and when she can't take the friction of her movements anymore, and he looks ready to take back control, she grasps him in her hands, guiding him to her entrance. And then she lowers herself down onto him, gasping as he fills her. He grips her hips to steady her, and then she lifts herself up slowly, slamming her body back down onto him. She repeats the motion several times, slow and then hard, torturing him in the same way that he tortured her, but Klaus only has so much patience, and it doesn't take long before he flips them over, pounding into her. She cries out in pleasure, her legs wrapping around his waist, her hips moving up to meet his thrust for thrust. She falls again, seeing stars, and she feels him stiffen, his movements stopping before his own release comes.

He rolls off of her, and she snuggles into him, enjoying his warmth and his smell, and just him. They lay together, tangled up in his bed sheets, as the sun comes up and shines down on them. Content for the first time in a year, Caroline falls asleep in her new lovers arms. And she can say in that moment that she is completely happy.

Of course, happiness never lasts long. When she wakes up, Klaus is gone. She wonders briefly where he is before deciding to look for him. With a smile, she picks his henley from the night before, slipping it over her head, running her hands through her tangled hair. She skips to the bathroom quickly, wiping away the last traces of the makeup she had on from the day before. And then she hears it. Soft, persistent, gaining strength.

The unmistakable cries of a baby. She doesn't think it's his, not at first, until she hears a voice accompanying the cires, a voice she hadn't wanted to ever hear again, and now here it is, and she hates it, she curses the voice of Hayley when she says, "He's your son, he's your responsibility too!" And somehow Caroline knows that whoever this child is, it's Klaus'. Hayley's and Klaus', and she feels her hate for the werewolf girl growing. Klaus may love her, he may have slept with her the night before, but he has something with Hayley that he'll never have with her, that she'll never be able to have.

She throws her underwear and pants on, suddenly filled with the desire to flee. She wishes her suitcase had been brought up so she could put on clean clothes. She wishes she had never come at all. But it's too late, and without a thought she runs.

For the first time, she's the one to run. She's the one to leave, and she remembers Elena's words, words that seem so far away. Your two boyfriends left you. Echoing swirling in her mind as she speeds from his house, tears pouring down her face without any real permission from her, because dammit she doesn't want to cry for him, she's so sick of crying and being hurt by people that she loves. And then the pain is gone, and she doesn't care anymore. She doesn't hurt. She doesn't feel. And she smiles, not really feeling any joy, but feeling it's appropriate. She has given up, given in. She has been broken, and she has finally turned it off.

He looks for her, not personally of course, but he sends his henchmen after her. She knows because she heard whispers in darkened alleys and blood dens of the great hybrid Klaus looking for a girl who went by the name Caroline Forbes, sometimes they asked for Caroline Lockwood. She smiles behind her glass; no one questions her when she says her name is Carolyn Michaels. A coincidence that her first name is a derivative form of Caroline; a coincidence that her last name is close to Klaus'. Its strange, she muses in her darkened corner of the bar she's currently frequenting, in a city whose name she can't remember, a good amount of the population dead by her own hand, that vampires of all people would believe in her lies. They refuse to see what's right in front of them, and for a moment Caroline scoffs at them; for people who so want to be removed from their humanity, they are, at their core, still human.

She's not though, not anymore. She can't recall the light she once held. She can't feel it coursing through her. Even her conscience is quieted now, and Caroline relishes in the feeling of not caring. The feeling of not having feelings. She kills as she pleases now, enjoying the hot rush of fresh blood when her teeth tear into the flesh of a human. She is greedy now in her bloodlust; she's not a ripper, not quite, but if he looked- not for a girl as he described her, not as she hears on every tongue, every vampire club she walks into, asking her if she has seen or heard of Caroline Forbes or Lockwood, a pretty vampire that instead of walking in darkness, walks in light- if he looked instead for Carolyn Michaels, her name whispered in the places she leaves, and there's talk that though she can't really be called a ripper yet, all she does is feed on them until they're dry, she's starting to rival the Ripper of Monterey for kills and she's only been active for five years. They won't kill her, she's one of their own, and for all their supposed non-humanity they still feel loyalty. They don't stop the hunters from going after her though, but that's fine because she has no problem killing them herself.

Such fragile things humans are, she muses as she drains the life out of yet another victim, so easily killed. And she is strong and powerful, and she holds their pathetic lives in her hands, and she can't even enjoy it. Sometimes though, she thinks that the switch isn't as real as people make it out to be. Sometimes she likes to be cruel, to tear painfully into her victims skin without compelling them, she likes to know that someone is in more pain than what she was in before she turned it off. Other times, when she sees news reports of "animal attacks" in various places around the globe, the death toll in the thousands, she smiles, feeling a grim sort of satisfaction. She always shuts the feelings down though. She doesn't want to feel, not anymore.

It's Stefan who finds her, and for once she knows exactly where she is. Paris. Paris, where she dreamed once that Klaus would take her. Now, she takes a different man to bed every night, she lets them have their way with her, and then she kills them. It's easy to use her looks, her seeming naivety to lure men to her bed. Sometimes, she wears the shirt she took from Klaus afterwards, a sick sense of revenge filling her. But then Stefan comes, breaking the neck of the man kissing his way down her throat. And he shakes her, yelling at her, asking what's wrong with her?, and then he says the words that she never wanted to hear. "Your mom died Caroline."

And she breaks again. She feels it, the rush of feelings, and it hurts. She doesn't know if she can take the pain, but Stefan is there, and he holds her, and she lets him. She feels everything though; the pain of the loss of her last parent, the guilt from everything she had done for the past five years, and the sting of knowing that for all his pretty words she hadn't been the only one for Klaus. The worst part was though, that she misses him, even still. After everything, she still misses him, and she feels bad for it, but she wishes Stefan were Klaus. That Klaus had been the one to find her.

She cleans up, trading in her revealing dresses for jeans and Klaus' henley. Stefan raises an eyebrow at her, but chooses not to comment. He ushers her out of the hotel, into a waiting car, and then she's on a plane again. Going home. It was strange though, she couldn't think of Mystic Falls as home anymore. Distantly, her mind whispers that home is where Klaus is, but she shoves that voice down. She can't- she can't let herself feel for him again. If she lets herself, all the pain will come back, and she's afraid. Afraid that she will turn it off again, and she doesn't want that.

The she's back in Mystic Falls. She plans her mother's funeral. She ignores the judgemental glances of Elena and Bonnie and Matt. She ignores the understanding looks Stefan sends her, and she ignores Damon as he ignores her. When it's over, her mother buried six feet under and she knows that she'll never see her again, she leaves. Stefan tries to convince her to stay, but she can't. There's too many memories here in this town, and she hates it. Because they are good memories; memories of her and her mom and her friends and Tyler and Klaus. Bad memories of being tortured and almost killed and Hayley. She can't stay here if she wants to feel sane.

She reads Wuthering Heights for the first time, and a passage almost breaks her heart. "You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?" And she wonders if this is somehow her fault; that she betrayed herself and he grew tired of waiting for her, so he slept with Hayley. And then she left him, and she wonders if he hates her now. She wonders if she deserves the pain she feels everyday knowing that he'll never be hers. She doesn't enjoy reading the book.

She doesn't think it's a good idea when she goes back to New Orleans, but her new friends convince her. It's Mardi Gras, and internally she reasons that there's no possible way that he should be able to pick her out of a crowd. Besides, his child would be five years old by now. He has concerns other than her. Still, she continues to introduce herself as Carolyn Michaels, and she bunches her hair in a bun with a hat on her head, sunglasses on her face, on the off chance that he does venture out into the festivities, he hopefully won't recognize her.

Of course there was no actual avoiding him. He's the king now, Marcel, she hears through stories as she waits for an audience with him because "All vampires entering the quarter must meet with Klaus", stepped down, relinquishing his power to Klaus. And she cringes when she hears his sharp intake of breath when he sees her, winces when she hears his sharp voice growling at the others to leave them. And then he's in front of her, staring her down, his hand raising slowly, his fingers grazing her cheek.

She wants to turn and run, she wants to leave him standing there on his own. She wants to run so that he'll never find her again, but he looks at her like his word starts and ends with her, and she can't. He tugs her closer, his other hand having fell to her waist, and she stumbles forward, her head and heart begging her mouth to tell him to stop touching her to leave her alone because she couldn't think straight when he touched her and looked at her like that, but his mouth is on hers then, and it's a pleading sort of kiss, as though he's begging her not to leave him again. And she melts into him. She gives up fighting, and she lets him kiss the sense out of her.

He pulls back then, and she can see the sadness in his gaze, the look causing an involuntary pain in her heart, the muscle clenching. "Why did you leave?"

She's dreaded this, she's dreaded explaining her irrational jealousy to him sleeping with someone else before she admitted how she felt. But she has to, she knows that. "I was angry at you. I don't really know why. For sleeping with Hayley, for making me love you and then not waiting for me to be ready, for not telling me that you had a child."

He laughs then, relief entering his gaze, a hand moving to cup her cheek. "I thought you thought it was a mistake."

She shakes her head vehemently. "No, I enjoyed it. It was the surprise I got in the morning that I didn't enjoy."

"You'll be pleased to know then that the child wasn't really mine. Seems the witches that told me she was pregnant lied about the baby's parenthood. If you had stayed a week longer, you would have found that out."

She bites her lip, mentally berating herself. "So who was the father then?"

"I'm not sure-" She glowered at him then, and he nodded. "Tyler."

She tries to feel the same anger toward Tyler that she felt towards Klaus, and she can't. She simply doesn't care. "Oh."

He smiles when she smiles, her fingers treading into his hair, trying to pull him down for another kiss, but she stops. "Why didn't you come and look for me?"

He sighs, resting his forehead on hers. "I didn't think you'd want to see me. I thought I had a better chance of sending people out to find you and then if they did, to go to you myself. You're very good at hiding though sweetheart, better than Katherine even. You left no trail at all."

She laughs shortly, because how wrong could he be? "I changed my name. Carolyn Michaels."

She sees the realization dawn in his eyes, and she feels a twinge of embarrassment that he knows what she did. He doesn't say anything though, merely tugs her closer. And there, finally in his arms, she's happy. "Did you say you love me?" He questions suddenly after several minutes, and she laughs, nodding, and his answering smile is more than enough for her. His next words though surpass, enough. "I love you too."

A/N: So this was a celebratory 100th drabble. I hope you enjoyed it. Being a hundred drabbles long, I think it's time to start a new drabble serious. It's already up and called I Know You Love Me Too. Thank you all for reading and reviewing and putting up with me. I'd love it it if you stuck with me for a hundred more. I love you all.