Work Text:
Profession:
noun
4. the act of professing; avowal; a declaration, whether true or false
“Caroline. This obsession isn’t healthy.”
“Getting my home back isn’t healthy?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. It’s the obsession part that’s an issue.”
“Mom!”
Sheriff Forbes sat on the grass, dry in the July heat, a few feet from the border of the Traveler’s anti-magic field and looked at her daughter. “Caroline. You’re nearly twenty.”
“Yeah in October. And I’d like to be able to come home to celebrate.”
“All you’ve done all summer is obsess over Mystic Falls and hang out with your old mother. You’re talking about dropping out of college. And not that I think you need a man to be happy, but you haven’t dated anyone since you and Tyler broke up. That was nearly a year ago.”
“Mom!” Caroline flushed. You’d think being a vampire would protect one from blushing.
“You have to admit it’s a bit out of character for you.” Looking closer at the deepening red of her daughter’s face, “Unless there is someone else?”
“No I haven’t dated anyone since Tyler.” It was the truth. Mostly.
Caroline glanced at the unimpressed look on her mother’s face. There was no way her mother had missed the use of the word dated. She let the silence stretch between the two of them anyways.
“Okay. Fine. It’s just complicated.” The blond vampire pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
“Caroline?” The elder blond looked at her daughter, the familiar feeling of guilt settling into her bones. Having spent more time than ever together this summer, the Forbes women had begun to repair their fractured relationship. They had actually talked. Liz’s shock, at learning just how many dangerous situations Caroline had been dragged into since her rebirth as a vampire, almost made her long for the days when her most pressing worries were underage drinking and boy troubles. And that was the abridged version apparently. Not that she had told her daughter that she knew she still wasn’t being told everything. There were shadows in her daughter’s eyes. Secrets hidden behind a brilliant smile. Simmering anger joined the guilt.
“I don’t know how to talk about it.” The silence returned. “There’s this person… okay no he’s a vampire. A really old vampire and he’s not a good person. Like massacre entire towns type bad. Start wars because he’s bored bad.” She steals another quick glance at her mother, trying gauge her reaction. She sighed. “And he really doesn’t even want to be a better person, but for some reason, when it’s just us, talking, he’s different. Not not bad, or even less bad, but maybe more human.” She buried her face further into her knees, letting her curls create a curtain between her and the world or maybe just the truth. “He’s in love with me.”
“A really old, bad vampire is in love with you?”
There’s a single nod of curls.
“Do you want to explain that to me? Or even tell me who this vampire is?”
A shake of the curls. Then a sigh. Caroline lifted her head from her knees, but didn’t look at her mother. “But you’re not giving me a choice on this are you?”
“You are an adult Caroline and I trust you, but it would be nice to understand.”
“You have to promise me not to tell anyone. Not the council, not Elena, no one.”
“I promise. I don’t like it but I promise.”
Caroline ran a hand over the sun dried grass. She took a deep breath. “Just let me get through everything. If you interrupt me I don’t think I’ll be able to start again. Do you remember the night Tyler bit me?”
“Yes… Don’t tell me Klaus Mikaelson?”
“Mom don’t. Just. I need you to listen. You can judgey after.”
“Alright.” Sheriff Forbes resettled and looked expectantly at her daughter.
“Like I said really old vampire and not a good person. The night Tyler bit me, Klaus gave me a choice. He could let me die, if I wanted, or I could keep living. He almost offered me the world for me to live and something about that conversation, something about me caught his -” she paused, unsure how much to reveal “-attention.”
Her mother silently regarded her daughter, waiting for her to continue.
“Klaus made his interest clear. I told him I was dating Tyler and that he’s not a good person. And then Damon -” her voices cracks on the name, her disdain bleeding into her tone “-got it into his head that I should be their little blonde distraction. It became a bit of a running theme.”
Liz Forbes frowned, both at her daughter’s tone and her blatant attempt to inject some humor. It doesn’t escape Caroline’s attention.
“Somewhere between Damon using me as a distraction and Klaus daring me to get to know him, we started talking. Like really talking. He made me feel… special. Like I was a priority to him. He pissed me off, but at the same time he’s the first person who made me really believed that I could be more than Mystic Falls.”
She’s quiet again for a moment, letting both her mother and herself process everything she’s saying. “But the entire time he was being absolutely horrible to everyone else, including Tyler. Especially Tyler. He’s why Tyler kept having to leave and why Tyler and I broke up for good. Kind of. Tyler hates Klaus more than he loved me. I mean he has reasons to hate him. Anyways-” she rushes on “-Klaus nearly kills us a couple times and saves my life a couple times.” She smiles. “He saved prom and then he left.”
She pulls out her phone and fiddles. “I haven’t shared this with anyone. Everyone hates Klaus too much to even try to understand.” She makes a frustrated noise. “I want you to hear it, just please don’t hate me for keeping it.”
The message plays and Klaus’s voice suddenly makes everything far too real to Elizabeth Forbes.
‘Caroline. I'm standing in one of my favorite places in the world, surrounded by food, music, art, culture, and all I can think about is how much I want to show it to you. Maybe one day you'll let me.’
Her daughter’s eyes soften.
“When did you fall in love with him?”
“I’m not.” The denial is a hair too fast. “Not yet anyways. I think though I could be. In the future. Maybe.”
“That’s not a when answer.”
“I sent him a graduation announcement. I didn’t expect him to come, but I wanted him to know. That I could do it. Succeed. Achieved my goals. He turned up just in time to save our lives again.” Caroline locks the phone and puts it away, carefully not looking at her mother. “He decapitated a resurrected witch with a graduation cap.”
Before Liz can comment, Caroline plows on. “I mean she was trying to kill us at the time, but that’s not really important. After graduation, when I was cleaning up, he stuck around to talk.” She hesitates. The next part is personal, intimate, but she can’t gloss over it the way she had with the rest. “Klaus told me he loved me. Well not exactly, but he said he intended to be my last love. He heavily and I mean like heavily implied that he’d wait for me to be ready and to go to him. He was considered offering me a ticket to join him New Orleans for graduation, but he knew I wouldn’t take it.”
“Oh Caroline.” She’s wrapped in her mother’s arms. Half focused on the past, part on the warm air and the feel of the hug. The two are quiet for a moment, Caroline just letting herself be held. Letting her mother take the weight off of her for just a moment. “I wish you could have told me.”
Caroline clears her throat. “So like there’s one more thing. Back in January when we thought Katherine was actually going to be for-good-dead, he and Rebekah showed up. Klaus hates Katherine. Seriously hates her. Kept her running for five hundred years type hate. But he offered to give up revenge on her. For me. For my confession.”
“Confession?”
“He wanted me to stop denying our connection. I told him I was getting my life together. That I had plans and he wasn’t part of them them. I told him that in exchange for him leaving Mystic Falls and not coming back I would be honest with him.” Caroline doesn’t move from her mother’s arms, but absently starts tracing a random pattern on the bare forearm that holds her close. “He promised. So I kissed him.”
Her mother stiffened. “You kissed him?”
Caroline squirmed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “It started as a kiss. Then it felt really good to kiss him, but well Tyler and I had broken up and there hadn’t been anyone else. So things went further. And...” Her voice cracked. “And he keeps his promises, at least the ones he makes to me.” She bursts into tears, giant sobs clawing at her heart.
She cries and cries. She cries out the love and the hate and the loss. Of Tyler. Of Klaus. Her childhood. Her home. Her mother holds her the entire time, rocking her gently and petting her hair. The hot July sun is the only other witness. Eventually her tears slow, but she remains clinging to her mother for a moment longer. Then she pulls back, gives her mother a water smile, before wiping at her eyes. “Yeah so you can hate me now.”
“No none of that. Caroline. Look at me.” They stare into each others eyes. “I could never really hate you Caroline. You’re my little girl. And despite what I said, even you becoming a vampire couldn’t change that. I will never hate you for falling in love. Besides it’s not like I’m the poster child for happy, healthy relationships. I can’t say I fully understand, but I don’t hate you. I love you. Love you more than I can possibly tell you. You will always be my baby girl.”
Caroline buries herself back in her mother’s arms.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. So sorry that we didn’t have the type of relationship where you could talk to me about these things. I love you so much.” Her mother murmurs against her hair, even as Caroline’s heightened senses catch every word.
For a while they just sit there. “An Original vampire in love with you. Willing to wait on you. I always knew you were extraordinary.”
The blond vampire pulled back. “His love doesn’t make me extraordinary.”
“Of course not, honey. You’re not extraordinary because he loves you. He loves you because you’re extraordinary.”
“That’s supposed to be better?.”
“Are you in contact with him? He obviously has your number.”
Caroline shakes her head. “I haven’t heard from him since then. Like I said he keeps his promises. And according to Tyler things in New Orleans were really messed up. It’s not like we ever texted regularly or anything.” She decides against mentioning that Klaus had somehow gotten a werewolf pregnant during a one night stand and was probably a dad at this point. That was not a conversation she wanted to have with her mother. Ever. “Why? It’s not like you like him.”
“I was just thinking that if I was trying to figure out how to break a spell, a really old vampire might just make a great resource.”
“No. Just no. I’m not using him like that.”
Liz smiled sadly at the venom in her daughter’s voice. It might not be love yet, but her little girl could oh so easily fall. Not that she wanted her daughter to fall for Klaus, but Liz had shifted her perspective a bit since learning of Caroline’s change. Klaus might be an unstable, murderous vampire, but it was obvious from how her daughter spoke about him that there was a real foundation there. That he wanted more then Mystic Falls for her daughter. Klaus might not be a good person by human standards, but human morals were ever evolving and changing. And Caroline, while she had her humanity, wasn’t strictly speaking human anymore. She had eternity now. Klaus would ensure that Caroline survived her eternity. She reached out and tucked a blond curl behind a small ear. She could live with that.