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Her head tilts dismissively at this offer, a scoff her only answer to what he proposes, but the words he weaves so carefully—they whirl around her, like a lover's soft caress (just like she imagine his to be on her heated skin), like a cage (analogous to what his presence in her little town has been, at first), like a chance, an escape (Rome, Paris, Tokyo, so many other cities, so many opportunities, and she can have it all).
Klaus is smart, and more importantly, he knows she is, too, and so he no longer tries to tempt her body and settles on stimulating her mind instead with stories of kings and queens she's never heard of and of long-forgotten cities which no one but him knows the paths to.
The world, she can travel it on her own, but his, she will never get past the gateway without his guidance.
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She takes his hand and he leads her away.
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Caroline leaves a voicemail to her mother as the jet is gently rocking her back and forth, fiddles with the sleeves of her blouse as she nervously tells her she will be away for the summer, that she's fine but feels like she could use a change of scenery. Get away from Mystic Falls for a while. Meet new people.
Klaus is leaning against one of the plush lounge chairs, champagne flute in hand and one leg crossed over the other, bent at the knee; an effortless picture of elegance, looking all too tempting and all too amused as she hangs up.
"What?" She bites out angrily, eyes flashing.
"Nothing," he says innocently, annoyingly.
She huffs out a breath when his smile widens. He does so love bickering with her, she's noticed.
For a man so perceptive, so calculating, he doesn't seem to understand how important this is for her. She isn't just leaving her temporary residence for a new unimportant trip, this is new for her, leaving without talking about it beforehand, leaving to another country, to another continent, unknowing what to expect once she gets there.
She feels restless as she looks around the spacious jet in search of a distraction, her eyes sweep over the cabin area to the liquor cabinet, and she has half a mind to drink herself into a stupor, feeling the imperative need to get something to regulate, to organize.
She'd always felt calmer after she'd been given a task to keep her mind off thoughts she didn't want to pay attention to. When she was younger her mother would tell her to tidy her bedroom up and would later find her daughter asleep with her children books sorted alphabetically on the shelves, her crayons and markers neatly tucked according to their sizes and colors in her drawers, her teddy bears all placed alongside the windows and her dolls all stowed in her toy boxes.
She has nothing now and that makes her feel anxious.
That feeling in her ribcage is stirring again, growing claws and lacerating and Caroline feels helpless. It's ravenous, like bloodlust.
And like bloodlust, she can control it. She focuses on a feeling and doesn't let go.
Unfortunately for Klaus, that feeling happens to be irritation.
It's a long, long flight.
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He takes her to Rome, as promised.
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She doesn't have it in her to feel self-conscious as her head swings wildly, taking in the new, exciting surrounding and despite Klaus' scornful insistence regarding tourist traps like he insists this one is and how perfectly stereotypical she knows she looks with her black sunglasses perched over her head, digital camera in one hand and a map firmly clutched in her other hand.
For once, she's only relishing in the new experience.
Sensory overload is something else when all your senses are heightened.
New smells are assaulting her nostrils, carried by even the smallest gust of wind, new languages echoes seemingly from everywhere and she can't pick which one she'd like to learn after that trip—she doesn't even know what the name of the last exotic-sounding language she's heard is but knows Klaus will probably know if she repeats it—, new buildings and architectures tower over her, ancient and magnificent and enclosing thousands of stories in the crack and hollows of their bricks.
Caroline is glad she's come.
She can't imagine having stayed in Mystic Falls, brooding and bored and waiting for Tyler and for her mom to come back, for anyone to choose her.
Maybe it’s time she chooses herself.
And it maybe makes her selfish, but she rather thinks she has earned the right to be a little self-centered after how awful the past year has been.
(She won't think about how he's the one who inflicted most of that pain, how her very death was caused by his shenanigans, by his need for power and vengeance, how he's the one who set in motion the events that have lead to endless hours of torture and anguish centuries before she was even born, how he would mercilessly do it all over again in a heartbeat.
She won't.)
He comes back to her with his hands cleansed of blood and she pretends she doesn't know better.
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She is dazzling in the afternoon sunlight, drenched in the burning rays that find a rival in her smile, in the golden strands of her silky curls he wants to roll around his fingers, her cheeks crimson—it's a stunning color over her porcelain-white skin—, redder than he remembers, her smile unguarded with effervescence.
He stares and stares and stares and swears he is going blind.
(He wonder what he will have to do to see her euphoric just after he's started imagining how she would look like then.)
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Her mother calls back. She's disapproving but she's also in a hurry, apparently, because Caroline can hear her deputy telling her of teenagers vandalizing the new store Susan Larson just opened and Caroline's already aware that— "I will give you a call later, okay? Take care, honey."
Her mother hangs up.
Caroline's frustration bubbles over, billows out, and her phone is smashed against the wall.
Klaus doesn't comment on her mood when they meet for lunch.
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A few weeks later she gets her first glimpse of the world he's promised he'd show her.
He takes her to sumptuous balls and introduces her to vampires almost as old as him. He brings her to the ruin of temples nearly destroyed but enduring even with the passage of time. He tells her how in the seventeenth century he witnessed an alliance between vampires and witches who had worshiped the same God, describes their attempts at communicating with it and their ensuing sacrifice at the very altar they're standing a few feet from.
"I don't believe it was a deity," he reveals conversationally, nudging a few burned out tree branches with the toe of his boot. As expected, he doesn't need to be prompted to continue; he likes telling her stories, likes the rapt attention she listens with, the clever curiosity in her eyes. "I think it was nonetheless a very powerful spirit that maneuvered to convince them of its supposed identity so that they thought it was their terrestrial lives they were sacrificing to join another world."
He looks like he's about to say something else but then she hears it, what made him stop in the first place: the pounding of several pairs of feet as they dig into the soil, the scent of smoke that she can only see the outline of for now, the haunting chants flourishing in the night and mingling with the wind, leaping to her ears.
She is so entranced she doesn't notice the group approaching and Klaus flashes them afar from the spot they settle on but close enough so that Caroline doesn't have to squint to see each detail of their ritual.
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The night, Caroline learns, is lovelier than the day.
She admits it—albeit only to herself—more than she realizes it.
Even in the sun, as it lays a warm blanket over her, her eyes see nothing but a deep blue, almost obsidian, and a haze of smoke ascending to a starless sky with unknown melodies guiding its murky form.
"Where are they going?" Caroline asked Klaus when the hooded women had gotten to their feet, abandoning the fertile earth and leaving after them only the ashes of their fire.
"I'll make an educated guess," he drawled, "and say they will join the rest of their coven."
He explained that, like their ancestors, they worshiped the same spirit that had cost several generations of witches their lives and souls.
Dying while—for—believing in something that never existed is awful, Caroline would know. She died with memories that weren't her own, twisted and altered so that Elena's not-really-but-sometimes boyfriend who'd plunged her life into an incoherent nightmare could roam Mystic Falls' streets free, she almost died for friendships she isn't sure are worth much anymore, assuming they ever did, she was tortured on more occasions than she cares to count, fighting battles that weren't hers.
Death hangs to her skin, not trying to catch her, merely following her.
Death looked enchanting last night with his angel face and curling plump lips, with a mouth full of sharp teeth and sharper fangs, fatal to her—but enticing. He smiled a monster smile and told her that there were no rules in the darkness, that all could be forgotten in the morning if she wished it, that all she had to do was ask.
She didn't realize how close they'd been until that moment when it all flooded back to her, the poison stinging with each palpitation of her heart, the rhythm quickening before halting all at once, veins bulging with a threat her body couldn't eliminate. And him casually telling her that she was a collateral damage. That her life didn't matter, at all.
She pushed herself off of him and flashed to their hotel, heaving the breath locked behind her teeth only when she'd been wrapped in her sheets, safe and alone.
Still, she can't help but think about that, how close they had been.
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They don't talk about that.
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She knows what it is like to be a blood bag, mindless and worthless save for what your body can provide, a doll or a quick meal. But his hands are always clean when he comes back from hunting—he doesn't specify what kind of prey he chases and she doesn't ask—and she can convince herself quite easily that what she wants isn't so wrong.
It's easier than to try and persuade that she's still human when she's craving blood and the adrenaline of the hunt, when her fangs protrude from her tender gums, seeking something she won't be able to withhold forever.
The world is full of monsters and hers is close to the surface.
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If she sees something red dribbles along the corner of his mouth she contends that it is pomegranate juice that brushes her tongue when she dashes forwards to collect the droplets, that she isn't animated by an inhuman hunger when the succulent nectar hits her taste buds.
"Delicious."
It's a breathless, starving voice that she doesn't recognize that murmurs the word.