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He’s leaning back against the room’s desk, Elijah across from him and Alaric by the door while they grill Hope and the twins, still trying to understand how it was even possible to resurrect two Originals without any of the Hollow. Considering this sudden resurrection came to pass without the concurrent return of the entity they were getting rid of in the first place, he’s not really worried. Hope is one of the only beings on the planet with enough strength and power to rival his own, and the combined magic a pair of Gemini Siphoner twins can wield allows for a large variety of impossible things to occur.
So it’s a shame really, that he’s got to spend this time being the responsible one, playing the adult in the room even though he’s certain this interrogation would go by just as smoothly if he left the problem to the other two men. Elijah has always had a terrible problem with not allowing things to occur without his exact knowledge, and even after all these years of surrounding himself with people significantly more powerful, Alaric still suffers from a terrible habit of underestimating the strength of said powerful people.
He’s about to shut this little discussion down – tell Elijah and Alaric to wrap it all up so they can all move on to doing more interesting things. He’d quite like to go grab a fresh meal and then sit down with Hope for a while. He’s hoping for the chance to find a quite place later on so that he can fill up a sketchbook with all the images that have been floating around his mind since the night he died, (the realm for dead souls without peace is severely lacking in art supplies) – when his senses pick up something he’d like to indulge in just slightly more than his initial plans.
He shifts, standing up and turning his head slightly towards the door but not looking; just waiting, always waiting. Elijah, always the perceptive one when it comes to his favourite brother, notices the movement and asks him what he’s focused on. He doesn’t bother to dignify him with an answer even though he knows everyone else’s attention has shifted towards him as well, all of them tensing as if preparing for a fight.
He couldn’t care less about their actions though – his senses are already narrowing down, hyper focusing the way they always do in her presence. He’d consider such a separation from the world a problem if only her mere existence didn’t have him so entranced, so mesmerised. He could sit for hours, days, weeks, more; reach the point of desiccation willingly if only he could be certain he’d be surrounded by her aura, her presence, encased in her light throughout it all.
He hears her steps pause, and her voice reaches him – she’s asking a student if they’ve seen Alaric or the girls but that doesn’t even matter because her voice. He lets out a breath, just in response to the awe and exhilaration he feels at clearly hearing the voice that’s never left his mind. Wherever he was (not the Other Side, that’s long gone) is muffled – he’s spent time watching the living members of his small group of loved ones, listened to them talk if they pique his interest but it never carries the exact nuances of their speech, the specific intonation of their words with the perfection he can recall in his own mind. To hear her voice now, clearly and exactly as he remembers, it fills him up with a sense of happiness he can’t explain not even to himself.
He hears the boy tell her their location and that everyone’s been warned not to bother because “apparently Hope dragged Lizzie and Josie into helping with some spell and now Mr. Saltzman is super pissed but no one knows what they did.” He thinks that’s a hilarious understatement and with the way the boy phrases it he can practically see her reaction in his mind – the fake smile, the subtle eye-roll, the determined look on her face as she heads towards them intending to save the girls from Alaric. It makes him want to grin like a fool.
She pauses outside the door, taking a deep breath before knocking twice – he knows she’s only doing it to be polite, a result of that Miss Mystic Falls courtesy and propriety that’s embedded in her bones – not waiting for a response before barging in.
“Hey Alaric!” She pauses halfway through the door, her back still turned to him. Considering Alaric is right at the door, jumping to attention because his dull human senses aren’t enough to prepare him for what Caroline Forbes is made of, it doesn’t surprise him that she hasn’t bothered to look around the rest of the room. She has always been supremely focused when facing the object of her irritation.
“I’ll be honest I expected a more happy welcome; you know one where I get to surprise the girls instead of having to hunt for them and find them in the middle of being lectured in our office.”
He thinks her daughters are happy to see her, Hope too. Elijah is indifferent, never actually interacting with her enough to know her, but he won’t be surprised if it only takes a few days for him to warm up to her. He does however, have a problem with the way he suspects Elijah to go about his preference for her. It’s something he’ll have to focus on soon, but not now. Not when she’s so close to him for the first time in so long.
She’s lecturing Alaric, not pausing to listen to what he’s trying to bring her attention towards. He’s quite certain he’ll never stop being amused by her ability to ruin people with her words only. Memories of her very vocal opinion regarding the Doppelganger’s then newly made life decisions echo in his mind.
She slams the door shut – from what he understands the office is spelled for silence but only when the door is shut – probably realizing she shouldn’t allow the voices of their argument to echo through the school’s hallways. She turns around again, gaze briefly falling near him, and opens her mouth again but no sound comes out.
She tenses and slowly, so very slowly and cautiously, turns towards him.
It’s a slow realization, one that’s filled with doubts and hesitation as to what she’s seeing right now. He had felt the same – Hope barreling into him for a hug when he first materialized was enough to set his body still; if not for his senses recognizing her scent he’s sure he would have reacted much more violently.
She hesitates before taking a quick look around the room – a subtle widening of her eyes at the sight of Elijah – and then immediately returning her gaze to him, as if expecting him to have disappeared. Alaric speaks up behind her, recounting what happened in the past few hours while her eyes stay deadlocked on his face.
It’s odd, the way they both manage to distance themselves from a room full of people; vampires are focused creatures, in tune with the hunt and aware of everything that can come in their way. But here, while the focus remains, it’s in complete ignorance of anything that could interrupt the moment hanging between them. Her eyes stay focused on his face; his never stray from her.
And then she moves forward; slowly, she walks until she’s standing right in front of him. Her brow is furrowed, like she doesn’t know what to make of what she’s seeing; she could react worse, he thinks.
Slowly, as if she fears what might meet her, she raises a hand to his face. Her longest finger grazes his cheek and a sudden gush of air runs out of her; a breath finally released as she’s met with what her eyes held so hopefully. It prompts her to lay her whole hand against him, eyes running across his face in quick motions, as if she’s trying to take in every aspect of an image before it disappears from her sight forever.
But he has no plans to leave ever again.
“Hello Love,” he says with a smile on his face.
And he’s barely got the words out – the tone, the look in his eyes he reserves only for her – when she moves forward, a burst of vampire speed aiding her. One arm slips around his waist, hands gripping his jacket and the one she raised to his face moves to the base of his neck, fingers twining in the short curls. He faintly thinks that he should grow his hair longer, just so that he can revel in the feel of her hands in his hair. The sudden intrusion of the thought pulls a single airy laugh out of him and jerks him into motion.
He wraps an arm around her waist, fingers digging into her hips because he never wants to let go. His other hand cups her neck and draws her in; they’re pressed against each other but he still wants her closer (and wasn’t that always his problem? Never finding what she gave him enough, always wanting more and more and more).
He never could help himself when it came to her.
This moment, it’s pure and good, something he’s not used to but it’s also the first words he’d use to describe the wonder that is Caroline Forbes so he has no idea why he always questions what he experiences with her. Her light is bright enough to lessen the pitch black of his millennium old heart, it’s powerful enough to make him want things he’s never desired before he met her. He’d pray to a deity he doesn’t believe in if it meant he could stay here forever.
“Never do that to me again,” she whispers into his ear.
He smiles into her hair – Caroline Forbes, always demanding things from him, and Klaus Mikaelson, never able to refuse her.
“Well, when have I ever been one to break a promise to you?”
She giggles, tightening her arms around him.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says. Her voice is small and he knows with every fibre of his being how much it took for her to say it. How long it took for them to finally be here and not shy away from the other or deflect with an argument when things get more intense than either of them expected.
He’s touched her in ways he’s never touched another lover, let her do the same to him but to just hold her in his arms – not spontaneous sex, not saving her from Alaric’s former homicidal self, not feeding her his blood to save her from a bite he inflicted on her, no other overbearing, dynamic altering moment – it brings upon him a calm he has not felt anywhere outside the quiet of his studio.
It’s just Klaus and Caroline – a thousand years and he’s never felt this way with anyone else.
He pulls her in tighter, shifts his head and closes his eyes, a single breath drawn in to surround himself with the scent of lavender settled in her hair. Every other thought, everyone else in the room is irrelevant – nothing matters more than Caroline Forbes here, in his arms.
He thinks he’ll never get closer to contentment than this single moment.
He feels peace.
He feels at home.