(anyone who is capable of love is capable of being saved.)

He knew that he would never be worthy of her affections.

No matter how hard he pursued her, no matter how much he wooed the marvelous and lovely Caroline Forbes, he would never be good enough for her. She had a beautiful soul. She was full of light, and her smile lit him on fire. She was a marvelous creature, and she belonged with someone that could give her everything that she wanted out of life. She was a rare woman, and she deserved the world. And all he wanted was to lay it at her feet.

He was too dark for her lovely self. He would corrupt her, and change her, and turn her into something that—while still just as marvelous as ever—he feared that she did not wish to be. He had seen her dark side, and she was magnificent in battle. But the last thing that he wished to do was help her become something that she did not wish to be. And, right now, she did not seem to wish to explore the darker aspects of her personality.

He would always be a monster. He had been told that he was one since he was a child. Of all of his siblings, it was he that his father hated. He was the one that drew the ire of the fearsome man the most often, and the one that took the blows the longest. It was a childhood of violence and lacerating words—words that left a mark on his heart.

When they turned, life wasn't easier. The bloodlust was terrible to learn to control. It was a disaster. He and his siblings were still children, learning to navigate the world as demons of the night. For the longest time, it was only he, Elijah, and Rebekah. They were the three that remained.

He daggered his siblings to protect them. He would kill to protect the ones that he loved, and putting his siblings away for a bit to keep them with him was what it took. After they lost Henrik none of the siblings could bear to lose another one of their own. It would kill them all. Kol was either daggered (usually because he had caused some disaster by his reckless behavior), or running around seducing women and making a general fool of himself. He had been let out on occasion over the past few centuries. Finn, the poor fool, had been daggered for nine hundred years. To be honest, Klaus might have forgotten that Finn was still in his coffin for a few hundred years, and by the time that he did remember, it was just easier to keep the guy neutralized where he wouldn't be pestering the rest of them about that redheaded strumpet Sage he had turned. Rebekah, like Kol, had been daggered on-and-off over the centuries. She usually got put away because she fell in love with some pathetic human man and wanted to leave him. He couldn't take someone leaving him again. Elijah, out of all of the siblings, had been daggered the least. Whether he would admit it or not, Klaus needed the counsel of his older brother. He needed Elijah to help him with decisions, or to simply just talk to. Elijah kept him grounded. Even immortal Hybrids needed their older brother.

He had been a terrible person for the past thousand years. He had tormented the people of Mystic Falls, the majority of them close friends to Caroline. It was no wonder that he would never gain her affection. He would move heaven and earth for that girl—that marvelous, wonderful, girl—but he would never be worthy of her.

When he had first taken an interest in her, he had done what he did best—he snooped a bit. And, after delving into her transcripts and pretty much everything he could find on her, Klaus was not surprised at what he found. She was brilliant. Literally brilliant. She had outstanding grades, and near-perfect test scores. She was an immaculate student that had managed to keep a 4.0 GPA while being captain of the cheerleading squad and four other school committees, not to mention that she organized half of the events around the tiny town that she called home. She didn't even know how capable she was, and it was a shame.

She had the makings of a queen. She was worth so much more than what Mystic Falls could offer her. She was worth more than the high-hemmed skirts and low-cut tops that she paraded around in. He knew what a broken person looked like—one that was so starved for love that they would give all that they had to the first person that blinked at them. He knew because he was one. And it broke his heart that the broken look he saw so often in the mirror was visible in her lovely eyes. She had been told time and time again that she was worthless. She had come to believe—and he knew, because he believed it about himself as well—that she was not worth anything. He would spend centuries chipping away at her heart until she believed him when he said that she was worthy of the world. He wanted to rip the throats out of every person that made Caroline Forbes believe that she was not worth waiting eternity for.

But, no matter how much he wanted to cherish the sweet Caroline, he would never get to. He merely was not worth her time. She was kind, compassionate, and so, so, tender. She was brash and loud, controlling, and more than a little bit meddling. She was wonderful, and she deserved someone so much more than him. He would forever be the one that had taken so much from her friends and family. She would look at him forever as the monster that had tortured, and killed, and sacrificed. She would never see him as the man that he really was, no matter what he did to show her the other side of him.

It made no difference. He had grown used to the loneliness. It was not unusual for him to be alone. He had been deserted by everyone that he had come to care about over the centuries. The rejection was normal. It just hurt a bit more, being rejected by the only girl he had come to truly care for in a thousand years. But no matter how much it hurt, Klaus understood. He would not want to be with a monster such as himself, after all. He and Caroline were the same, and it was their similarities that made it impossible for her to ever give him a chance. It was the reason that they were destined to be apart.

He had spent thousands of years, a broken man. And, when he came to the tiny town in Virginia searching for the doppelganger whose blood would give him a family, he met the fast-talking blonde that changed his heart, bit by bit. He was still broken, but so was she, and when they were together he felt a little less shattered. But they were not meant to be. He was a terrible monster, not worth her shining light. He was a dark man, undeserving of love or affection. He wasn't worthy of her.

He was never enough.

AN: So, I confess, I was crying while writing this piece. It was just heartbreaking, how these lovely three-dimensional characters believe that they aren't worthy of a fantastic love. I have more pieces coming up for the TVD fandom-a Kalijah piece and a Mikaelson Family piece are already in the works-so keep an eye out for them. The song that inspired this piece was "I Don't Deserve You" by Plumb, so give it a listen! Thank you for reading!

-Inky