Ripples: A Klaroline Fanfiction

21.

Cold.

She was so incredibly cold.

A dim light shone above her head as Caroline Forbes fought to crack open her lids. It turned out to be quite the fight as they felt like they'd been turned into lead. Finally, on the third attempt, she managed to pry them open and keep them that way.

Immediately, wide, green orbs darted around trying to grasp the surroundings.

Where was she?

What had happened?

And more importantly, why did her head feel like bombs were going off inside of it?

While she struggled to remember, Caroline risked another look around. She appeared to be in a damp, cold basement, with no windows, molded walls and a string of leaking pipes in the corner accounting for the only sound she could make out: an annoying dripping that could drive almost anybody insane. In fact, now that she had gotten a better hold of her bearings, she could discern that her hands were tightly tied to one of the rusted metal poles.

How had she ended up in this situation?

Panic was starting to make itself known and the woman had to inhale and exhale deeply a few times in order to keep the anxiety attack at bay. It was the last thing she needed. No, for her to get out of here, she had to keep her wits.

But, first things first, she had to remember how she'd ended up here in the first place.

Closing her eyes, Caroline went over the last thing she recalled- a movie. She'd convinced Klaus to go see one -"Beauty and the Beast" of all movies. A miracle that she still could not believe she'd accomplished. Then… she'd gone out to grab some popcorn…

Frank.

He'd been outside and asked for her help and she, like the dumb girl she was, had believed his ridiculous sob story. God, she'd been so stupid!

Desperate tears were threatening to take over at the reminder of her idiocy. She'd walked right into Mikael's trap. She'd made it so spectacularly easy. Just like those characters she always loved to criticize in books and movies. Who'd have ever thought she'd end up becoming one of them? God sure loved his irony, didn't he?

However, that was done with and she had to move past it and focus on finding a way out of this wretched place. And now that she stopped to think, there was something that did not make sense: Frank. He was too young to be Klaus' stepdad. Yet the hatred with which he'd looked at her had been much more than she'd expect from a mindless lackey.

No, there was something she was missing, a detail that she was overlooking. But it didn't matter. She could figure it out later. Firstly, she had to get out of there before Frank, or whatever the hell his name was, returned.

Biting back a wince as she lifted her head to get a better look at the knot around her wrists, Caroline finally noticed the small trail of blood slowly running down her neck. It was probably just a mild concussion caused by the blunt force trauma to the head, but it definitely explained the dizziness, weakness and pain.

But those could be ignored, had to be ignored until she was away from this place and, hopefully, in Klaus' arms. With that image in mind, the woman began tugging at her restraints, mouth tightly shut, teeth grinding as the rope started digging into her skin.

With each and every pull, the strings cut deeper and deeper into her flesh, but didn't elsewhere budge. All she'd accomplished, she noted frustrated, was to peel away her first layer of skin, a small trickle of crimson rolling down her forearms.

This was pointless!

Whoever had tied her up had known perfectly well what they were doing and there would be no miraculous escape. Not by her anyway. Perhaps someone with Klaus' background could improvise something, but 10 years of medical training did nothing to prepare her for liberate herself from a deranged psychopath. It was pointless to continue wasting energy on something impossible.