#the sweet symmetry of caroline keeping the sketch he gave her

[morningstargirl666]

WIP WEDNESDAY THURSDAY

I swear, I intended to get something done for wednesday but it never really works that way (don't come at me y'all). Also, since I'm rewriting tbbw at the mo, it's kinda the only wip I'm working on so most of the edits are focused around the siblings - not the klaroline.

However! Made some changes to one of the scenes where Klaus broods over Caroline and here we are, on this rare occasion, to see some of the changes I've made. Spoilers under the cut:

“You are in such a foul mood today.”

Klaus made a noise that might have been a growl. “If you hadn’t noticed, Esther is still out there no doubt plotting another way to kill me and my family. Not to mention my siblings are still bound together making us more vulnerable than ever. And now-” he ground out, hissing the words through his teeth, “I find out that a white oak of the same line as the tree that made us vampires might be out there somewhere in the world, waiting to be used to kill us.” Klaus glared dangerously at Sam, lip curled as he turned around to stare instead at the fire. “My mood is perfectly appropriate.”

“So…” Sam took another bite of his apple, slowly raising it to his mouth, eyes on Klaus, who was watching the sketches become devoured by flames, a brooding hand resting under his chin. As Sam chewed, he gestured to the fireplace with the apple core. “It has nothing to do with why you’re burning sketches of one Caroline Forbes?” he asked, perfectly innocent.

“I’m burning them because she means nothing to me,” he ground out through gritted teeth, refusing to turn and deign Sam with a glance. “She was a passing fancy, nothing more.”

Sam titled his head, squinting. “The wolf didn’t seem to think that.”

“My wolf is clearly defective,” Klaus spat, throwing a hand out, abandoning his attempt at a calm, contemplative stance.

“If you say so,” Sam muttered with raised brows, deliberately not looking at Klaus and instead focusing on his phone as he munched on his apple.

Klaus shook his head, glaring into the flames as he watched the sketches burn. Sam’s silence gnawed at him, making him twitch with the urge to explain himself.

It wasn’t long before he did. 

“I knew Esther was planning something, I knew she would betray us and I did nothing because I was distracted by a girl that leapt at the chance to attack my family the second opportunity arose,” he burst out, whirling on Sam. Mouth halfway to his apple, Sam froze, rather wide-eyed. Klaus continued on regardless, his words growing more vicious, poisoned with such vitriol, his lips curled into a snarl. “Kol got daggered because of her! The Salvatores nearly killed you - because of her,” he spat, emphasised with a pointed jab to the floor. Sam lowered his apple, cowered by the wild look in Klaus’ eye. The man in question laughed, a short huff of bitterness, gesturing to Sam angrily, inviting him to prove him wrong. “So please, tell me why I should entertain this infatuation any longer? When it has proved to be dangerous not only to my own sanity but also to the safety of this family.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a long moment, his appetite completely forgotten. Then, slowly, he looked up at Klaus, a certain defiance in his eye.

“She knew about the champagne, Nik,” he said softly. Immediately, the anger, the readiness for a fight - it all drained away, leaving Klaus feeling wrong-footed in the face of Sam’s pointed truths. “Granted, she didn’t know what spell was in the champagne; didn’t know you weren’t linked to your siblings… but she knew you hadn’t drunk it. And she didn’t tell her friends.” Sam smiled sadly, shrugging helplessly. “Maybe it is stupid. Maybe it is a mistake. But if it was me? Personally, I’d want to know why she didn’t betray you as much as you’d like to believe.”

Klaus forced himself to swallow. He quickly looked away, unable to keep looking at the expression on Sam’s face that seemed to see through him entirely, his words resonating loudly inside his mind. Heaving a sigh, Sam stood, throwing the apple core into the nearest wastebasket. He hesitated before leaving the room, gaze softening on Klaus, sympathy in his eyes. 

“Just because your parents didn’t love you, doesn’t mean no one else will,” he said. 

Then Sam left, not allowing him time to respond. Klaus glared at his back, hands clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. 

“Love is a vampire’s greatest weakness,” he ground out, calling after him.

Sam stopped in his tracks, slightly turning his head back towards Klaus. Then he smiled, and with one sentence, shattered a belief Klaus had closely courted for centuries. 

“Good thing you’re not a vampire then, isn’t it?”

And with that parting remark, Sam turned with a smirk and left the room, leaving Klaus wide-eyed, forced to contemplate over what he had said. In the dancing flames of the hearth, the sketches Klaus had thrown into the fire continued to burn, flames licking at their edges and crawling across the lines of charcoal and pencil, leaving nothing but ash behind. He looked down at the last sketch of Caroline he’d drawn: the first moment she stepped into his studio, eyes wide with awe as she craned her head to look up at the paintings hung around on the walls. Fingers reverently skimming over her face, he gently tugged the paper from the pad but didn’t throw it into the flames like the others, placing his sketchbook aside on the mantel almost with half a mind. Then, careful not to damage the soft lines of Caroline’s features, he folded the sketch tentatively in two and slipped it into his back pocket.

He told himself he would burn it later. He didn’t.