Timeless

Chapter 27

After nearly a week of being gone, Klaus was back in Mystic Falls once again. As he drove past the welcome sign, he felt the foreboding energy of the cursed little town wash over him. Nothing but acid and bad memories came from this place, created long before it even had a name.

This small, sad town had once been his home, long ago, before time even existed. He had walked on these grounds as a human. It was here that he was born and grew to be a man. It was within the forests, lost to development and population growth that Klaus hunted, wrestled with his brothers, fell in love for the first time, and lived with his siblings in as much peace as he could. As he continued down the narrow county road, he recalled sneaking underground to the caves with Rebekah, carving their names into the stony walls, wanting to leave a piece of themselves behind so that anyone who came there in the future knew that this place had belonged to them first. It was theirs by right and anyone after them was just an interloper.

It was all before their parents had killed them, turning them into vampires. Before either one of them even had a real grasp on the possibilities of immortality or time.

"This place looks like a dump," the girl in the passenger seat next to him remarked. Her name was Mindy. She was a wolf he had picked up during his travels. And now, thanks to the doppelganger and her wonderful blood donation, Mindy was a hybrid. Four other hybrids sat in the back seat, all looking out the tinted windows of the large SUV, agreeing with Mindy's assessment.

"Have some respect," Klaus replied, "this is home."

The gut-wrenching clang of steel echoed onto the stone walls, causing Caroline to shudder in fear. It was morning. The time she feared the most. At night she had her reprieve from the endless torture, but the day brought hour after hour of pure agony.

What made it worse was the fact that all of this pain was coming from her own father. He claimed he was trying to help her control her vampirism. That he was going to "fix" her, no matter how much she cried and pleaded and protested that she couldn't be "fixed".

Everyday her father would come in an hour after dawn, when the sun hit the trap window of her prison at the perfect angle. He would hold a blood bag out in front of her, opened so she could smell the sweet scent of the liquid. He would test her, challenge her to control her urges, but each time she would fail. Her mouth would water and her face would transform and then her father would drop the window shade, letting the sunlight in. He had taken her lapis lazul ring from her, her protection against the sun, and she would burn as punishment for what she was. The sizzle of her skin had become as familiar a sound to her ears as her favorite song on the radio.

For hours and hours each day her daddy would repeat this torture, urging her to fight, to control herself but she was doing no better now than she was when he first imprisoned her. An hour before sunset, Bill would stop. The sun would be out of range and he would close the window. At this point, Caroline would pass out immediately from pain and exhaustion. Her body was unnourished and was slower and slower to heal itself. Bill would leave without a word, only a sigh, and a promise to see her again the next day before locking the chamber again and leaving her alone.

The part of all of it that hurt the most, was the fact that she knew her father hated her now. He had to. There was no other explanation for why he was doing this to her. Why couldn't he see that she was still his little girl? He had always been the parent who understood her, when her mother didn't. Why couldn't he understand now when it was most important?

The locks and tumblers clanged once more and she heard her father's footsteps scrape across the stony stairs down to where she was. She lifted her head weakly, her vampire vision focusing on him.

"Good morning," he said to her.

Caroline dropped her head again in response. She was too weak to reply. She had nothing to say. He never answered any of her questions anyway, except to say that he was doing this because he loved her, before commencing with his torture.