Gone (A Klaus and Caroline Fanfiction)

Ideas

"Oh great, you're back," I mumbled before Klaus appeared in my periphery, the slight tilt to his chin inexplicably irritating me. It looked confident. I refused to look at him directly and kept my gaze fastened on the ceiling.

I could feel him studying me. "Indeed. Can't have you being too dispirited now, can we?"

Rolling my eyes, I pulled myself into a sitting position and finally shot him a glare. "Just leave me alone," I hissed. "You got what you wanted. I'm not going anywhere, but that doesn't mean you can't."

"That pains me to hear," he replied, voice lilting with sarcasm.

"Oh, please," I fired back, rising to my feet "I bet I'm more capable of emotion than you, even with the switch off."

He just pursed his lips, silently appraising me.

I tossed my hands up, annoyed by his silence. "Why do you even care?" I practically spat. "I mean it's not like I was ever that high of a priority of yours."

"It's simple really," he said calmly, drawing the words out nice and slow. "I'm doing this because I don't want you to ever look into a mirror and see a monster staring back. You saw what that would have done to your father and just the thought of such a possibility made him break."

I smiled at the image of the man in my memories; could still feel the phantom binds of Vervaine-drenched ropes searing into my wrists. "He didn't break. He followed what he believed. Even death didn't keep him from turning away."

"Do you have admiration for you father?"

I scoffed and resisted the urge to roll my eyes skyward. Or where the sky out to have been, if this stupid prison weren't in the way. "For him leaving his daughter in order to do what he thought was right? No, I'd like to think of it more as bitter regret."

"How did it feel?"

"Better than this, I imagine." I scrutinized Klaus, narrowing my eyes at him, as if it were enough to sift through the ideas in his head. But we were still playing the game, and I had ideas of my own. "But you tell me how he would have felt," I said, looking pointedly at him. I took a few leisurely steps forward. "How does it feel to leave your daughter? To abandon her? To know you won't be there to protect her against your enemies? Against herself?"

Klaus's stance wavered, just slightly, I barely caught it, and the action revealed a tiny, almost invisible chink in that stoic armor he always wore. I found it. And it was like rubbing salt in a wound.

"Picture her helpless," I went on as I neared the small window. "Her begging you to never leave her, because she needs you. But you turn away. You reject who she is and call her a monster. You reject her as your daughter."

It didn't grant me the satisfying reaction I'd hoped it would. The chink I'd glimpsed a moment before repaired itself and Klaus only smiled at me. "You forget, Love, I've perfected the arts of persuasion. Your words are empty to me," he turned away. "I really wish I didn't have to do this, but you are being...a bit stubborn. So," he looked back."Since I can't just demand the switch turned, I will have to be a bit more avant-guarde in our approach."

My brows raised. "What?"

"Unorthodox in my attempts," he clarified with a mischievous smirk. "So instead of targeting the physical sensations, we'll be starting with the emotional traumas you've experienced. Which is why I want you to remember what it was like when you killed that first man."

At his words, I felt my mind work before I realized it was, digging for the memory, rising unbidden. Dark eyes. The sticky, wet feeling caking my hands.

"I want you to remember how it felt to know of your strength and your ability," Klaus continued, voice as soft as a lullaby. "And I want you to think of that moment, for that single, agonizing breath, when you held his life in your hands, and decided to let it go."

It was like telling a person not to think of pink elephants. You just did and I remembered it with perfect clarity. The distant emotion shouting beyond the wall I'd erected, like watching it play out on someone else's face. The moment the light left those dark eyes.

"Yeah, like that makes me want to come back," I quipped. "Great tactic, Sherlock."

Klaus leaned against the opposing wall, looking intently at me. The one recalling the memories- that had nothing to do with him, I knew. That was all me. He was just giving me reminders, the same ones that, once upon a time, had woken me from my bed. Screaming.

"When your father died," Klaus whispered. "That had to have been difficult to bear. But what was worse, I wonder. Torturing you or dying to prevent becoming like you?"

I ground my teeth, switching my thoughts to . . . to what? There was nothing that made me feel. And I had to give myself my own reminder that I didn't want to.

He sighed with faux sadness. "Trust I'm being honest when I say I don't understand how your father could have done the things he did, but I expect it was out of the very reason that has me keeping you here now. He became the monster so you wouldn't have to. He became the wolf. But after all this, the blood trailing you in your wake, it seems his efforts have been done in vain. "

"You're full of it if you think you can actually pull the guilt card on me," I said, closing in on the window now.

But Klaus acted as if he hadn't heard me. "The first man you killed, the very first, that hurt you, Caroline. Do you want to know why? Because it ripped a piece of your humanity away and the more you kill, the more you lose. There's always a price."

"I'm really not looking for a lesson on ethics by the living contradiction himself. And contrary to what you might think, this honestly doesn't seem to be doing much good." In fact, I was adamant for it to fail.

But this was Klaus. And Klaus didn't have a reputation for giving up.

"And your mother," Klaus drawled, doing that infuriating head-cock thing. "Shame." There seemed to be almost genuine sympathy in his eyes. "You were forced to watch her die, were you not? To see her strength lessen with each passing day. Knowing that there was nothing you could have done. Or maybe there was, and you just didn't look hard enough."

I smirked, my nails digging into my palms as I smiled at him. "Doesn't matter much now, does it?"

"Then why keep the switch off?"

I leaned forward, his face so close to mine, I could smell the vague traces of Bourbon on his breath. "Because I. Don't. Care. You're the one who does. The thousand year old legend, made vulnerable by eighteen year old teen drama. That's just sad." I tapped his nose with my index finger. "You won't hurt me. You won't do anything. So really, . . . it's you who's weak. The nefarious Niklaus Mikaelson. Beaten by a Barbie."

His expression hardened, until I was staring into stone. "You're right," he said, his breath disrupting a strand of my hair. He made no move to back up. "You are my weakness. At least, you are one of the limited few among them. Which makes me all the more determined to save you."

"Ugh. I think I'd rather you just save me the pain of listening to this and kill me now."

Finally he leaned back, his gaze snapping off from mine. "I actually want to show you something since this is proving to be quite ineffective."

"And what's that?" I challenged. "Another saloon?"

Klaus cast a glance upward and offered a slight shrug. "We'll call it therapy," he said, just as he flipped something on the other end and the door gave a groan. He pulled it open and stood before me, dark jacket blending with the shadow until he looked almost corporal.

"One of the most terrifying moments in a vampire's life is the moment they die before they wake up as one," he said. "So I'm going to recreate the memory for you."

I flashed back to my night in the hospital, what it felt like to suffocate, and against my volition, my throat tightened.

"Recreate how?"

"It involves some chains and a large body of water."

I waited for the punchline. The look to tell me he was kidding.

This time though, Klaus didn't smile.