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There is something wet on the pavement. It is slick; in the same way sweat dribbles down a forehead in the humid afternoon heat. Caroline wants to reach down, run her fingertips along the cool liquid that for once is not stained wine-red and clean. She wants to shake out the morning dew from the plants outside on her windowsill so the droplets could meet the ones on the cold ground. She thinks she smells his scent; earthy, like the woods behind the Salvatore boarding house and the tree bark that dug into her back when he pushed her into it hastily. Sometimes she wishes she could bear scars, if only to mark the things her healing skin likes to erase. The one cruel reminder is the harsh red hatching embedded upon her right shoulder blade. Sometimes it stings painfully enough to ensure she’d never forget.
-
Red lips, puckered and kissing inches upon inches of milky flesh, and bright eyes gleaming yellow in the dark night; there is once a girl. She looked exactly like Caroline, with her pale hair, innocent smile and her mother, alive. The girl would never have enough strength to run her clipped nails down a naked back and tear through skin. She never would have enjoyed the blood trailing like an afterthought. She would never lay in bed with the man who promised deaths to almost all of her friends. There is once a girl, before she woke up unable to breathe against a hospital pillow struggling against a face she knew since she was five years old. The girl is gone.
“Where’d you get this, love?” Klaus mumbles after nipping at the blemish on her right shoulder blade.
“A birthmark.” Caroline lets her index finger trace the pattern. She’s not entirely sure the word was appropriate considering the mark had appeared only after her transition, but it’s the first one that came to mind.
Klaus hums, chest rumbling where his skin presses against hers. “That is odd.”
“Tell me about it later,” she instructs before leaning up to give him a lingering kiss. He chuckles against her lips, holds her tighter, and forgets about the whole thing for twenty more years.
-
Caroline was nine when she realized she wouldn’t have a prince charming sized ticket out of Mystic Falls. Before that she believed she would be whisked away, onto a magical carriage to live in a castle the size of a country. She looks at her mom, beautiful and strong and brave, and she hears her cry at night when her father is late to dinner again or just plain didn’t go home. She won’t need a prince, she decided. She can be a princess on her own.
-
He didn’t come when her mother died. She didn’t really expect him to, not after she told him to never return after that day in the woods. It doesn’t make sense that she notices his absence, though. It doesn’t make sense that the thought of his voice caressing her ears in waves of comfort and mutual hurt does not leave her mind throughout the whole day. She allows herself three seconds as she stands in front singing to spare a glance at Stefan who looked at her as if she was a revelation. She likes the attention, but it doesn’t change his answer to her simple question of yes or no earlier, so after she gets to three she looks blankly ahead again.
He would have said yes in a heartbeat. That much, she knows.
There are times the mark on her shoulder burns too sharply, like it’s trying to call out her name or tell her something. Go to him. Go to him, Caroline. But she gets pregnant with Jo and Alaric’s babies, so she pinches her arm in hopes of transferring the burning somewhere else.
-
She hears his voice through a phone call a year later and something burns worse than the scar on her skin.
-
They have a few odd meetings over the years, helping each other out with minor problems, giving and taking little favors. Sometimes his touch lingers, when their arms brush against each other in the guise of friendly space and when they steal seconds of the eternity that they’re given. He teases her like no time has passed, she pushes back because does time really matter when he’s him and she’s her? She hears about his not-so-little problem, feels the same sharp burning in her scar, feels a painful tugging in her belly, and she goes to New Orleans.
-
She couldn’t change his mind. How could she, when all he wanted was to save his daughter? When all she wanted for him was to find that piece inside that would finally make everything click in place, because he’s Klaus; he was supposed to wrap a hand around her heart and tug it from her chest. He’s not supposed to keep his hold over her, gently, subtly, like he’s giving her a choice, like he’s waiting for her words. Take it, she would tell him. Rip it from me. It’s all yours.
-
She couldn’t watch him die, feels like she’s dying herself just by the thought of it. So she kisses him, because it’s something she should have done before in all of their meetings, because she doesn’t have a choice, because she loves him, in her own way. He kisses her back, and maybe he loves her still. She feels her scar burning the way it never did before, like it senses the looming pain and loss she’s about to feel the minute she walks away. Klaus has his eyes closed, but there are tear marks on his face. Caroline barely refrains from wiping them away. She kisses him. And then she says goodbye.
-
I’ll never forget you.
-
She locks herself in her room when they get home. Her daughters look at her oddly, like they knew she could burst any minute, but Caroline smiles at them like it’s just a regular day. “Mommy’s just going to rest a bit, okay?”
She doesn’t wait for their reply, doesn’t go out of her bedroom for five whole days. When she does (and only because she’s ran out of blood bags in her mini fridge), Josie and Lizzie pretend they didn’t hear her crying the whole time.
-
She’s in Tokyo when she finally realizes it. She’s standing in front of the fogged up mirror in her hotel room, bare, with her lithe fingers tracing the shape of her scar. And then she recalls that silly moment in the Mikaelson mansion back in Mystic Falls, when Silas had gotten inside Klaus’ mind, remembers his bare torso sheening with sweat, the tattoo stretching over his shoulder and chest, and remembers seeing something red over his right shoulder blade; something carved into the skin, deeper than any tattoo, like a birthmark, the same one carved into hers. She closes her eyes, smiles.
-
When they meet again, Caroline is a different woman. Her hair is shorter, more wavy than curly, her eyes significantly older, wiser. She doesn’t expect to see him there, standing still amidst the chaotic crowd and looking at her like he’s been waiting for her in the same spot for a thousand years. A familiar smile tugs at his lips–red like blood, like it’s always been– and she fails to stop herself from glancing down towards it, drawn to him like she was a naïve teenager and he’s the big bad wolf who promised to show her the world all over again.
“Took you long enough, love,” He greets her, white teeth pearly and eyes gleaming. He looks better than the last time she saw him, on the brink of a fully avoidable death. Caroline wants to rip away the space between them until there’s nothing left, because he’s here, he’s alive, he’s every bit the man who promised her a great many things.
“You’re here,” She breathes out, eyes going over his figure over and over to make sure he doesn’t just disappear. “How are you here?”
He lifts a hand; gives the exposed scar on her shoulder blade the slightest of caress, and Caroline’s grateful she wore a sleeveless dress. “Does that really matter?”
“Yes, because I thought you were dead!” She hisses, frantically, looking around to make sure no one’s listening in.
Klaus only looks at her fondly, and she doesn’t know if she wants to slap the look off his face or kiss him for it. “Trust me, love, if I’d died you’d know about it.”
He gives her a significant and lingering look, fingers still touching her scar.
“Because we’re mates,” She supplies. It took a few years and the knowledge that he was dead for her to figure it out, but she’s never been more sure now. “And you never told me. I thought you were going to die. I said goodbye to you.”
“You told me to never come back, Caroline.” He reminded her, cuts her off before she could argue back. “By the time I realized I couldn’t not be with you, you had a life of your own already. I wasn’t going to be the one to ruin that for you, love.”
Caroline clenches her fists, stands her ground. She missed him, more than she thought possible. Her heart flutters even now, at the thought of having to part again after this conversation. “I missed you. I mourned you, Klaus.”
“You got married, love.” He laughs, but there’s hurt in his tone, too. “Everyday you must feel the burn, the longing. But you got married. Stefan died and you moved on, the burn still there. But everything else is going well for you.”
“Everyday I tell myself that the burn that only ever fades when you’re with me has nothing to do with you. Everyday I tell myself it’s nothing, that you’re nothing. But I can’t lie and not tell you that I only got through what I got through–the burn, the hurt, and yes, the longing–because I know at the end of it all there won’t be anyone left to judge me for what I feel for you. That at the end of it all there’s only going to be you, and there’s only going to be me. Because that’s what you promised.”
Klaus inhales like he needs it, like he’s hungry for the air to fill his lungs. In his eyes there’s a new light, a certain revelation, a hint of knowing, a large dose of relief and contentedness. He tugs the v of his neck down, shows her his own scar, an exact replica of her own. “I chose to find another way to save my daughter, like you suggested, because you kissed me, Caroline. You gave me a new purpose. You showed me that I could still have nice things, could still deserve them, if I choose to. I didn’t want to die, not yet, not when I still haven’t been given the chance to-”
“Please don’t,” She interrupts him, and her voice is a rude awakening, a cold bucket of water splashing across his face. “Not if after this it would take another twenty years. Or fifty. Or forever.”
“Have you lived the life you’ve dreamed of, love? Gotten everything you’ve ever wanted?”
It takes her a moment before she squares her shoulders and grabs his free hand, squeezes it meaningfully. “Not yet.”
-
The morning dew on the pavement looks like teardrops from her perspective, sitting in the windowsill of their living room. She recalls a similar sight a few hundred or so years ago, back when she was encompassed with longing and confusion. Her scar is bright red to this day, but it’s only because its connection has never been stronger.
He drops a kiss to her shoulder, hands sneaking around her waist from the back. She hums, leans against him so their hearts could align and beat together, closes her eyes to enjoy the feel of him warm and solid behind her. “Where to next, love?”
“Hmm,” she ponders over her reply for only five seconds. “I was thinking Rome? It’s been years since we went.”
She feels him nip at her scar, barely conceals a moan at the sensation of it. “Rome it is.”
end.