Wicked Schemes

Chapter 20

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We are the Jack-o-lanterns in July
Setting fire to the sky
Here it comes, this rising tide
So come on
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Caroline wasn't sure how long they had stayed in the same position, her arms wrapped tightly around Klaus, face pressed into his neck as she cried for her mother, for everything that she had lost in that moment. Klaus didn't let her go; one arm locked tightly around her waist, holding her close as his other was buried in her hair, stroking it softly. Eventually she focused on his voice, listening to him whisper what he would do to all those who had taken part in her mother's death, lips brushing against her forehead every so often.

She was certain she should be feeling disgusted by what he was describing, the horrific ways he would make the witches who had failed to safeguard her mother pay, the torture for whoever had brought her down to New Orleans, and the crowning glory of Marcel watching the city he loved, that he thought he had won, continue on without him before his heart was torn from his chest. But she didn't, the words soothed her own rage that had begun blossoming in her heart and wanted to take control of her own actions, and Caroline was grateful that Klaus had a plan for how to get justice for her mother when she was too far gone in her grief to do more than cling to him and cry.

"I keep thinking that if I'd just compelled her like I thought of doing so many times she'd be alive, you know?" Caroline murmured, still not moving from where she was tucked against his body. "She'd be off on a beach somewhere, living it up, and no one would know who she is...was...and no one would be able to find her and she'd be alive. But I know that's wrong. That I shouldn't want to have controlled her life, but....maybe it'd be better than this pain of losing her."

"You can't lose a brother if he's locked safely away in a box," Klaus replied quietly, and Caroline pressed her lips to his neck, knowing he was referring to Kol and remembering how devastated he had seemed to her for a moment or two before all the chaos had erupted between them in the Gilbert living room. "There are times you need to control your family's lives because they do not know what is best for them."

His grip tightened on her and she couldn't help the chill that ran through her at that thought, remembering Rebekah's warnings. "Eventually they forgive." Even if they never quite forgot and the forgiveness seemed to be taking its sweet time this round.

"Do they?" she murmured, unsure if that was the case because it didn't seem like Rebekah was in a very forgiving mood. "Family isn't meant to stay together forever. You're supposed to make your own eventually and see the blood ones or whatever on like important holidays. Not be around one another twenty-four seven. How can you ever grow up if you're with people who've known you since you were a baby and expect you'll always behave a certain way and don't...I don't know...push you to be who you can be instead of who you've always been to them." She had no clue where that had come from and sighed, not wanting to deal with this heavy of a conversation on top of everything else. "But maybe that's a more twenty-first century kind of mindset. I don't know." And her head was too much of a mess to really contemplate it.

"It used to be that the woman would leave behind her family and become part of her husband's upon marriage," Klaus told her, hand stroking though her hair. "There have been many different customs and changes over the years." He stared off at that, but continued to soothingly brush her hair. "Everything changes with time, Caroline, but you control how it affects you."

"I don't have a family anymore." Both her parents were dead and she'd never had siblings, barely talked to her aunts.

"You're hardly alone though," Klaus murmured into her hair, and she closed her eyes, knowing he was right about that. "And we will destroy those who Marcel deems to be his family before killing him as well. I did promise you his heart."