Timeless

Chapter 9

Caroline lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. No clocks in the middle ages meant she had no idea of the current time. The sun had gone down maybe a few hours ago, so she guessed it was around nine or ten. She lay there, playing with the charm necklace that lay on her chest, her one connection to home, the only thing that gave her comfort at the moment. She closed her eyes and thought about what she would be doing right then if she were back in Mystic Falls, in present day. Maybe she would be hanging out with Elena and Bonnie. At the grill. Or maybe with Tyler. She had been spending time with him a lot lately. He'd been a really good friend to her since everything had ended with Matt. Elena and Bonnie were here best friends, but they were so wrapped up in their own drama, sometimes they forgot to ask her about hers.

She wondered what they were all doing now. If Bonnie was trying to figure out some spell, if Stefan had escaped Klaus and come back to Elena, hell she even wondered if Damon was ok or not. She heard the lock on her door click and sat up. The large door swung open slowly and she saw Klaus standing in the doorway. She frowned. He was the last person she wanted to see. She was tired of him and his mood swings and his controlling behavior.

"Go away," she said laying back down and turning away from him.

"Get up, come with me," he said.

"No!"

"Caroline, please. Come with me."

Something in the way he said her name, and said please, made her rethink her reaction. And she hated him for it. With a heavy sigh she sat up again and turned to face him. He just stood there, in the doorway, waiting for her to come forward. She squinted her eyes at him, trying to think of what he looked like back in Mystic Falls. Of that night and the sacrifice. But she couldn't picture it. All she could see was the Klaus, standing in her doorway, black trousers and white shirt, tied up at the collar; looking like he stepped out of a fairytale. Except he looked normal to her this way. Picturing him in leather jackets and jeans seemed odd to her now. Her whole perception was off.

She climbed sluggishly out of her bed and slid her feet into a pair of slippers that she left by her bed. She followed Klaus as he walked away from her door, down the hall, and out into the night.

It seemed like they trudged for miles through the forest. The moon was barely a sliver hanging in the sky. Neither Klaus nor Caroline said a word. It seemed to have become their thing; long, silent walks through the woods. No, Caroline thought. They didn't have things. They weren't friends or anything else. Klaus was cruel and mean and selfish and had some fucked up family issues. Last night, when they had talked underneath the castle, she thought she had seen some humanity in him, but it had been a joke. He was drunk. That wasn't the real him. The real him was the man that had yelled at her today for absolutely no reason. The man who had locked her in her room while he tortured innocent servants, that was who he truly was.

"Ok stop!" She shouted. Klaus turned toward her, just staring, waiting for her to continue. "I can't take this anymore. I want to go back home and just be in bed."

Klaus smirked, but obviously Caroline had missed the joke.

"What?" She snapped.

"Nothing love," Klaus said, "and anyway, we're here."

Caroline rolled her eyes and looked around. She hadn't even noticed her surroundings. It was as if the place they were in had appeared out of nowhere, as if by magic. She stood in the middle of a group of ruins. All around her, vines reached around and covered every surface. Old statues, people without arms or legs, watched over the ruins, hoisting their swords or whatever weapon they had left up into the air. There were archways that led to nowhere, except the next open air room. The large white bricks of the broken walls stood tall and proud, keeping the stories of the history they had seen within their cracks.