ACT THREE; MISSILES FIRED
SCENE SIX; YOU'RE LOSING ME
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SOMETIMES SALEM'S MAGIC GETS RESTLESS.

Most of the time it was a part of her like anything else. Simple as breathing, she lived inside her body with this endless abyss inside of her, and she never fell too deep into it, and never let it rise too high. The wolf helped with that, too. Her animalistic side had always been even-tempered. They were a chorus, together. In perfect harmony more often than not.

Right now was one of those times it wasn't harmonious. As if everything was fine, just slightly to the left. This part of her didn't like unrest. It didn't like when Salem was in a state of chaos outside of herself. Her magic was the chaos, it was her controlled flame, it didn't know what to do when the chaos came from somewhere else. It put Salem on the defense. It made her want to retreat into her mind until she could find a way to regain control and soothe the simmering chasm inside her.

Right now, she was nothing but a jumbled, spiraling mess. She can't figure out how to make it better because she doesn't even know where to start. Everything is intertwined, everything is connected to everything, but it's all unraveling, it's all wrapping around itself, pulling into tight knots, entangling, suffocating, burying, silencing. But it all begins somewhere. Everything has a beginning. This is no different.

Maybe it begins with a man who has lived for centuries, whose blue eyes haunt her every step. His fear of being alone is palpable, she can almost taste it in her mouth the way it clings, the way he clings to things. The only way he knows how to. With teeth and claws, because no one will stay unless he cuts them off at the knees.

No.

It begins with a man and a woman going against their own kind because they loved one another. They loved one another enough to show the world their daughter, this beautiful little monster they made. But the world did not love their daughter like they did. The world feared her. And love was not enough, it was not enough to beat the fear, and instead the feared monster was stolen away in the night and hidden until she could not bear it any longer.

No.

It begins with a woman, centuries upon centuries ago, being crucified by her own people because they feared her. They feared her and called her a monster, and no one had ever loved her enough to make her believe otherwise, so she knew nothing except for fear and pain. She knew nothing except fear and pain until she could bear it no longer and then she became the thing that inflicted pain and she became the thing that instilled fear.

Fear, fear, fear.

It begins with fear. It always begins with fear.

Salem inhales deeply, letting it out slowly. Her eyes open, both burning a sharp shade of amber, for once the same color instead of that disjointed kaleidoscope. She turned her palms up to face the sky and drew her fingers together, spreading them out slowly like she was stretching the air around them.

Liquid filled her palms, burning bright like her eyes, but it didn't hurt her. It never would. It was a balm to soothe her aches. A hug to pull her from her loneliness. A cradling cup to her cheek. Her magic never betrayed her, it never would. They needed each other to survive. At the end of the day, all they had was this. Even in these times of crisis, of fear, it just wanted to help her. It did not want her to live in that world of fear and pain.

The pools of magic in her palms stretch around her fingers and drop down into singular threads, like she's got puppets hanging from them. For a moment they're simple, and a singular thread wraps around each finger, counting up to a solid 10.

And then she lets out another breath, another pulse of magic pours over the lip of the abyss, boiling over but still holding back. The ten threads become twenty. They jostle one another before settling.

Thirty. Salem thinks it looks like a braid at one point. Messy after a long day, windblown and knotted.

Forty, fifty, sixty– it doesn't stop. Salem's chest heaves with racing breaths and she stops, suddenly, not letting any more pour over, not letting any more threads spill.

She brings her tangled hands together in a clap that echoes in the chasm of her mind, and she looks up at the nothingness surrounding her, watching the threads stretch far and wide above her head and all around her.

Less tangled than before, with more space to stretch out. Still too many to easily figure out.

She holds her breath, watching the threads hum as she reaches a hand up, ink-dotted fingers tugging at two, three threads gently. Letting only them come back down to her.

She lets out the breath and watches them pulse a few times before they settle, seemingly content to have her attention. The other threads hum with envy around them.

Salem plucks one of the threads in her hands and lets it fall off of her finger, dissolving into nothing. She picks up the remaining two and though they are hers, her magic, her mind, it's not what she's looking for. So she lets them go, too, and plucks a few more down, sorting through them, feeling them thrum and vibrate, and sing with her attention.

There's still hundreds of threads surrounding her when she finally feels it.

This thread doesn't burn any brighter than the others, it doesn't sing a different song, it's not special in any particular way. But when Salem looks at it, she knows that this is the thread she must unravel. This is where it starts.

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Damon lays on the stiff cot, one hand tucked behind his head, the other tossing a rock up in the air mindlessly. Klaus leisurely looks around the cell in the basement of the boarding house like he's never seen it before.

"You know," The hybrid turns, giving Damon a grin that holds nothing promising. "None of this would be an issue if you'd have just done your job properly. I was willing to let you train Jeremy,"

"No, you weren't," Damon scoffed. "Are you kidding? You got there day two. Do you know how hard it is to get these Xbox brains to focus?"

Klaus smirks and rolls his eyes, pacing the short distance of the cell. "And then, when I turned a room full of barflies into vampires for him to slaughter, you let Kol kill them."

"Your brother problem, not mine, buddy,"

Klaus hums, nodding at him. "And whose bright idea was it to saddle Jeremy with a conscience?"

Damon shifts, turning his head on the pillow Stefan had thrown in with him to look at Klaus. "Well, we couldn't have him trying to stake Elena in her sleep, now, could we?"

"Ah, yes," Klaus says, sounding smug. "For the love of Elena. How is it that she manages to overlook every horrific thing you've ever done? Is it willful ignorance? Or something more pathological?"

Damon shrugs against the cot, continuing his mindless game. "Some people are more capable of forgiveness than others. I bet you score about a -500 in that realm."

"Come on, there must be a secret," Klaus shakes his head. "It can't just be the sire bond. What is it? Compulsion? Manipulation?"

The hybrid falls silent for a split second too long, faltering. "What is it you say to her?"

Damon pauses as he catches the rock in his hand once more, slowly turning to look at Klaus with narrowed eyes. The somber look on his face has Damon sitting up, realization dawning on him smugly. "I think that this has something to do with a certain hybrid we know."

Klaus looks down at the dirt floor and Damon raises his brows at the non-answer.

"I think that you murdering Carol Lockwood is the latest of a long line of transgressions, and you're worried Salem's not gonna forgive and forget for much longer. Not even mentioning the fact that you ultimately got our best friend killed, and your family regularly tries to murder her, of course,"

Klaus clenches his jaw, giving Damon a dark look. "You've done worse,"

"Debatable," He spits back, unwavering as he looks at Klaus. "See, I don't mind being the bad guy. Because somebody has to fill that role and get things done. You do bad things for no reason. You do them to be a dick,"

"Debatable," Klaus weakly echoes.

Damon shrugs, swinging his legs over the side of the cot to sit completely upright and look at Klaus head-on. "If you're gonna be bad, be bad with a purpose. Otherwise, you're just not worth forgiving."

Damon shifts, laying back down on his bed for the foreseeable future, continuing his mundane game of catch. He huffs, grimacing without looking at Klaus again. "And for god's sake– make up your mind. Who's it gonna be? Salem? Or the family you can't trust not to stab you in the back?"

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When she pulls the thread, the rest disappear. She gasps sharply as the feeling of unrest within her suddenly disappears into nothingness, and then relief hits her and she lets out a deep breath that takes weight off her shoulders.

Her eyes open, and she is unsure of when they'd closed, but when she opens them again, she is no longer alone in this void.

Salem straightens her spine, wariness creeping up her neck. "Who are you? How are you here?"

The little girl before her looks up at her with wide eyes. Eyes speckled with green and yellow. One almost completely blue.

She's got freckles smacked across her face like they were sprinkled there haphazardly. Her skin is olive hued like Salem's, but it's paler. Her hair sits at her shoulders, thick, and a syrupy shade of brown that sits in tight curls that shift when she tilts her head back to look up at Salem. She can't be any older than 7 or 8.

"You know you can't stay here anymore," The little girl says, her voice soft but oddly wise.

"What are you talking about? Who are you?" Salem isn't hostile, but she's nervous. She steps towards the little girl carefully, like she's scared she'll run before she gets answers. The girl doesn't move from where she's sitting on the ground of nothing, her legs crisscrossed neatly. Salem slowly mirrors her position, her knees nearly touching the little girl's.

Close up, Salem can see her eyes more clearly and she wonders if this is how people see hers. They're hypnotizing. Beautiful.

Roaming her eyes over the girl, she almost wants to say she looks a bit like Salem did when she was young. Not the same, though. There's something different about her, not just the shades of her eyes, or the color of her hair, the way that it curls.

"You know you can't stay here. It's not safe for you anymore."

Salem's brows furrow and she wracks her brain trying to make sense of the words. "I'm not... I'm not safe anywhere. Because of what I am."

The girl tilts her head at Salem. "You know that's not true."

Salem is silent for too long to be able to deny it. She feels her breath catch and resents it. She can't cry in front of a child.

"Who are you?" Salem questions again.

"You'll know one day. But if you want to find out, you know what you have to do."

Salem slowly nods. When she speaks again, her voice is weak. "I know."

The girl's eyes soften knowingly. "Leaving isn't easy. For anyone."

"I just..." Salem stops. Hesitates. Then tells herself this is all in her head, this is her magic, and no one will know what she says. "My mom left. She ran from my dad and my brother because she was scared and I don't want to be like her. I hated my mom for breaking our family apart, how can I leave him and not be doing exactly what she did?"

"You're not scared, though," The girl says easily, like she didn't even have to think about the truth behind it. "You're not leaving because you're scared, you're leaving because it's time to go. The end is near, and your path has been set. Mystic Falls isn't the place for you anymore. That's not fear— that's life."

"He'll hate me forever. I'll never be able to come back to him."

"Perhaps," The girl nods. "But this isn't about him. If you want the answers you're looking for, you need to leave. You already know where to go."

Salem swallows roughly and hastily wipes away her tears as she stands. The girl follows suit, and when she stands her eyes drop to Salem's stomach. Salem's hand instinctively comes up to rest against her stomach and the girl lays a hand on top of Salem's.

Salem inhales sharply, looking down at the little girl, and then to where her hand is resting on Salem's.

The girl looks up at Salem one last time. "You'll always find your way home, Salem. You're already headed there."

"Will I recognize you?" Salem asks suddenly, knowing this will be gone soon, back to the real world. She never lasts long in this empty space, whatever it is. "When I see you again?"

The girl smiles. "Yes. You'll know sooner than you think."

Salem nods and she feels the shift in her body as she wakes up. As she leaves this state of being and throws herself back into her body.

When Salem returns to herself, she can feel it. When she looks down, her hand is still resting against her stomach. Salem slides it away and stands up, walking silently into the bathroom connected to her and Klaus's bedroom. She comes to a stop in front of the large mirror in the corner of the room that nearly expands from the floor to the ceiling.

Salem blinks and looks at herself for a moment before she turns to the side and lifts her shirt up.

She doesn't know what she's expecting to see. But when she shifts to hold her shirt up with one hand and press the other flat to her stomach, she understands.

For the first second, there is blinding awe. Then, there is disbelief, and Salem is stuck looking at her slack-jawed reflection.

"No," She breathes out, utter shock in her voice that sounds thunderous in the silent house. "There's no way."

Before she can continue her inevitable descent into sheer panic, her phone rings from the other room. Salem takes the out with no hesitation, dropping her shirt and making it to her bed in a few hurried steps. She reads Klaus's name on the screen and quickly answers it, pressing it to her ear.

"What?"

"You need to come to Elena's house. Now."

Salem frowns, pulling the phone away from her ear to look at the contact name. "Tyler? What the hell are you doing with Klaus's phone?"

"He's here with me and Caroline. We're at Elena's— Elena and Jeremy killed Kol. Klaus was— he was going to kill us, alright?"

Salem's hand clenches around her phone at the news of Kol's death. She can't pretend she feels anything but relief. Clearing her throat, she keeps her voice low and steady. "What did you do to Klaus?"

"Bonnie put a boundary spell on him."

"But he's alive?"

"Yeah, but— Caroline?"

Tyler stops speaking abruptly, and she hears the scramble of footsteps and concerned noises on the other end, mutters of Caroline's name and the faint echo of Klaus's taunting voice. Salem's already making her way downstairs, and she's halfway out the door by the time Tyler seems to recall he's on the phone with her.

"Salem—"

"I'm on my way. Just— don't do anything until I get there."

She hangs up, hoping he might have enough sense to heed her warning in the 15 minutes it will take for her to get to Elena's house. She doesn't know what's going on. Klaus went to babysit Damon so that he didn't kill Jeremy, and now Kol is dead and Klaus is trapped. And if Tyler's fearful words are anything to go by, Caroline is in danger.

And now— now she's dealing with this.

Salem clenches her fists around the steering wheel as she pulls out onto the road and once she's steadily moving, she pulls her phone out and opens up a text thread that hasn't been touched in weeks.

Eyes darting from her phone to the road, she sends a message that she hopes is read as urgently as she's meaning for it to.

Meredith, it's Salem. I need to speak to you somewhere privately. Call me as soon as you can.

Salem sends the text and drops her phone into her lap to put her full attention back on the road. She tries not to pay attention to the way her heart pounds in her ears, deafeningly loud. She tries to ignore the way she can still feel that little girl's hand on top of her own, resting on her stomach like it meant something. She wishes she'd understood what was happening in that moment because she'd have asked more questions. But she gets a feeling that she wouldn't have gotten answers no matter what, and then she can't help but feel that for once, her magic might be trying to make her go insane.

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When Salem arrives at the Gilbert house, it's the same misleadingly peaceful place it always is on the outside. On the inside, she walks into chaos. Death.

Caroline is lying on the couch looking at the wall with panicked, tearful eyes and a rapidly gnarling wound. Salem meets her gaze briefly and sees the despair in the girl's blue eyes, so she quickly looks away, continuing to the kitchen where Tyler stands, shoulders heaving. Her eyes fall and she sees the covered shape on the floor, and her fingers twitch with the urge to make sure it's really Kol under there. She knows it is, though. If they had failed, Kol would have found her by now. He wouldn't waste a moment turning her into collateral. Into a petty punishment for his brother.

Then, her eyes fall to Klaus.

He's already looking at her when she finds his eyes and she instantly sees the grief in the glacial tides, swallowed by black irises. He blinks and it's gone. It was only for her to see, because he needed her to understand that he has acted out of grief. Salem doesn't question it. She doesn't blame him, despite the pity she feels for Caroline and Tyler. This was the way of life for them. This is what Mystic Falls does to people. It's why Salem had to leave now more than ever, lest she end up a rotting corpse on the floor like Kol.

She looks away from Klaus where he sits on the floor against the cabinets near his brother's body. She looks towards Tyler instead, schooling her face into something neutral. "What is going on?"

"They're on their way to find the cure," Tyler says, the words practically spilling out of him. His words provide a bit of context to the text she'd gotten from Damon last night that read, 'If this all goes to shit and they can't find my body, just bury all my booze next to Ric'. She had yet to hear back from the vampire after her follow up questions, so it is disappointingly unsurprising to hear that he's on some remote island with a group of the most hostile, untrustworthy people around. Only missing, of course, present company.

"How did this happen, then?" She gestured around vaguely, trying to encapsulate the mess inside the Gilbert house.

Tyler clenches his jaw, glancing at Caroline while the vampire whimpers and writhes on the couch as the werewolf venom trails through her veins. He tears his eyes away to look back at Salem. "Kol attacked Jeremy. Jeremy and Elena killed him, and they unlocked the rest of the map to the cure. Klaus got the news and came here, started threatening to kill everybody. Bonnie trapped him in here and they all left to go get the cure."

Salem's eyes drift to Klaus again briefly and he shrugs causally, not offering any corrections to his hybrid's words. Slowly, she looks back to the teenager, gesturing for him to continue.

"I... came here to gloat. Caroline wanted me to leave. I'm a stubborn asshole, one thing led to another, and Klaus bit her. He's refusing to give her his blood to heal her."

"Well, she wouldn't very well be collateral damage if I healed her, would she?"

Tyler turns to give Klaus a scathing glare. "She's going to die,"

"Okay," Klaus says. "Beg me to save her life."

The teenager steps towards Klaus, clenching his fists at his sides. "Is this what you want? To remind me that I'm powerless against you? Fine. You win. I'm nothing. Now save her, please."

Klaus tilts his head, feigning obliviousness. "I'm sorry, mate. I didn't quite catch that,"

"Please," Tyler begs quickly, unhappy about it but genuine nonetheless. "Please, please save her life."

Salem looks at Klaus and raises her eyebrows. "Klaus,"

The Original holds his hands up in innocence like he's trying to fix things. "Now I think he's just telling me what I want to hear. I mean, he did call me pathetic earlier," Klaus looks away from Salem to look at Tyler. His words make Salem's eyes widen slightly and she also turns to look at the boy as Klaus continues speaking. "And wouldn't it be more pathetic of me to help now, knowing that hours ago, you announced your plan to kill me in a manner in which you're still debating because you want it to have a certain amount of flair?"

Tyler looks away in slight shame. "I'm just asking. I'll be your slave again. I'll do whatever you want. Just help her."

Klaus pretends to think about it for 15 seconds, which Salem thinks is technically an improvement. "No."

Caroline groans weakly from nearby and they all look her way, finding herself pushing to her feet with faint whimpers of pain. "Just get me out of here. I can't even look at him,"

Tyler hurries to her side, taking the brunt of her weight as she practically collapses into him. He hesitates in following her orders and looks to Salem, who nods.

"Go."

Tyler nods and assists Caroline down the hall, murmuring quiet words of encouragement as they go. The front door of the Gilbert house opens with a creak and closes with a definite slam, leaving Klaus and Salem in stale silence that feels oddly punctuated by the corpse lying between them.

"You've effectively killed Caroline,"

"They killed my brother,"

"I know," Salem steps towards him, sitting down on the ground in front of him, crossing her legs together. "I'm sorry."

"You're not," He murmurs easily, head tilted back against the cabinets, making him look at her through tired, lidded eyes. "You don't have to lie to me, darling."

"I'm sorry that you lost him, Klaus. Not me. I don't think lying is necessary when I have the history with your family that I do."

Klaus silently concedes her point, but his fingers continue to wring the feeling out of one another in his lap. He feels trapped; he is trapped. He feels claustrophobic, like the walls are closing in on him. He isn't sure what to do with it.

"I know you'll kill him as soon as you're free," Salem breaks the silence again, a knowing solemnity in her voice. "I won't pretend that anything I say will change that. But I..."

She trails off, eyes closing as she gathers herself. "I wish that, for once, you wouldn't prioritize revenge. It's not a way to live your life, Klaus, and I'm so tired of all of us ending up in the same situation every time something happens. Everyone betrays everyone, and we all still lose in the end. What does that get anyone? What's the point of that?"

"I don't know if I'd call it revenge so much as I'd say I like to right peoples' wrongs," Klaus tells her. "This is no different. I will chase Tyler down for 500 years just as I did Katherine, if I have to."

"You'd truly give up another 500 years trying to get revenge on someone?"

"Time means nothing to me, Salem."

"What about me? My time is much more limited than yours," She says, her voice thick with emotion she won't let break through. "Does your time with me mean anything? Or does your need for proving a point outweigh every other part of your life that much?"

Something flickers in Klaus's eyes but he stays silent. His eyes fall to the necklace on her chest as she mindlessly fumbles with the gleaming 'M' on the chain.

Salem scoffs at his silence. "When will it be enough? If not for me, for your family, then who? When will the day come that the great Klaus Mikaelson decides to live passively? Klaus, it's all— it's all temporary. You may be immortal, but everything around you is temporary. And this town, the people here, they are not worth all of this."

"Living passively is certain death for me, Salem."

"An eye for an eye makes the world go blind."

Klaus raises a brow at her abrupt diversion.

She shrugs, that familiar emptiness coming to life behind her eyes the longer she speaks to him. "It never stops. It won't stop, until it's too late. You think this," She gestures to Kol's covered corpse. "Is where it ends? You think Tyler is where it ends? There will always be someone else to blame, and someone that needs to pay for their mistakes. So, you can spend the rest of eternity blinding the entire world. They'll continue to blind you right back, and you will never know peace. That's the life you continue to choose, Klaus."

"You would rather I live passively? What does that do besides get me killed?"

"I'm not saying you need to become some peacemaking pacifist, Klaus."

"What are you saying, then?"

She looks at him for a long moment before she blinks, a ragged sigh leaving her. "We could leave. We could... go somewhere else. Forget all about Mystic Falls and everyone here. We could live wherever we want and do whatever we want for the rest of our lives, and we could— we could do things we never thought were possible."

She drops her gaze to her hands, biting her tongue hard. "You know, we could... have a family. Whatever that may mean. We could be happy, I think."

"Happily ever after is not in the cards for me, my love," Klaus says quietly, an old longing in his voice. He swallows down the want he feels in his bones. It does not matter what Klaus wants, he can't have it. He can't have what he wants, but he can have what he takes and that is what he has to be happy with.

"You'll fight for everything but me, won't you?" She whispers the words in defeat, not looking up from her hands. "You've orchestrated massacres for less. But I ask you to leave before we end up dead, I ask you to come with me and— and have a family, a real family that doesn't try to kill one another every damn day, and suddenly it's not in the cards for you?"

"Salem—"

"No." She cuts him off, uncrossing her legs quickly so she can push herself along the floor, putting distance between them. She moves to sit just outside of the boundary of his imprisonment, refusing to meet his gaze. "I know this already. It's not news to me. I just— had to try."

Klaus looks at her and for a moment she thinks he can read her mind, and he's just figured her out. He's heard every thought that's racing through her head, and he knows her plans, knows her feelings and thoughts, knows how absolutely terrified she is.

But the moment passes and his face is indifferent again. And she reminds herself that she has always looked for more in Klaus than there actually is.

They fall silent, because there's nothing left to say. They've reached a dead end.

─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────

Salem and Klaus both hear Tyler before he's in the house. Salem, from her place on the floor near Klaus, leans forward just enough to see Tyler carrying Caroline's limp body in his arms directly to them.

"Tyler?"

The young hybrid looks down at her, the gleam in his eyes all too familiar with the promise that he's about to dig his grave a bit deeper.

Without acknowledging her, he gently lays Caroline on the floor in front of Klaus, eyes running over her sickly frame worriedly before he pushes it away and fixes the Original with a glare. "You want to be in control, Klaus? Here. Now you get to be in control of her life. If you want her to die, fine. But then you can sit here and watch her die yourself."

Klaus raises an eyebrow at the hybrid's words and he keeps his comments to himself as Tyler exits as quickly as he came, leaving the 3 of them in a stiff silence yet again.

Salem looks at Caroline, eyes roaming over her with slight concern. She doesn't know if Klaus is going to go through with it. She doesn't know what he's going to do at all, and that's not a new thing, but she has yet to come to terms with it. It makes her feel a little pathetic, and that makes her mad.

"Nothing personal, love," Klaus says finally, to a glaring Caroline. "If I heal you, that means victory for him. Don't worry. It won't be long now."

Salem abruptly sighs, getting to her feet swiftly. She moves to help Caroline to her feet, bearing most of the girl's weight as her knees tremble. Slowly, she gets the girl over to the couch and lays her down, careful to adjust her head on a pillow so her neck isn't bent awkwardly. She's not sure it matters much considering the girl is dying, but it's an instinctive action.

Caroline's raspy breaths are audible in the otherwise silent house and Salem doesn't have to follow the direction of her glare to know she's looking at Klaus with nothing short of hatred.

"If you don't feed me your blood, I'll die."

"Then you'll die, and Tyler will have learned his lesson the hard way."

Caroline's face twists, in pain and disdain. "How could you do this to him? To his mom? To me?"

Klaus shrugs, getting to his feet and crossing the distance to her on the couch. "I'm a thousand years old. Call it boredom."

"I don't believe you,"

Klaus sighs tiredly, looking from the blonde to Salem. Watching her observe the verbal tennis match like they didn't have their own version of this conversation earlier. "Fine. Then maybe it's because I'm pure evil, and I can't help myself."

"No, it's because you were hurt," Caroline says, matter-of-factly. "Which means there's a part of you that's human."

Klaus resists the urge to laugh in her face because he thinks that everyone would hear the emptiness behind it. "How could you possibly think that?"

"Because I've seen it," Caroline says weakly, her eyes finally drifting away from Klaus to Salem, who stands over her with wide, sympathetic eyes. "Because I've caught myself wishing that I could forget all of the horrible things that you've done."

"But you can't, can you?"

Caroline doesn't acknowledge his words, her eyes still on Salem for a moment longer before she looks back to Klaus. "I know that you love her. Despite it all. And I know that anyone capable of love is capable of being saved."

Klaus exhales sharply and it seems to echo between the three of them. He looks at Salem, but the woman is pointedly not looking at him. He shifts and looks back at Caroline. "You're hallucinating."

She lets out a ragged breath. "I guess I'll never know,"

Her eyes flutter shut like she's lost the battle of exhaustion and Salem leans forward, resting a hand on her arm and shaking her gently. "Caroline? Caroline?"

The blonde girl doesn't respond and Salem looks up at Klaus, finding a matching wide-eyed expression on his face. "Klaus, please. She's just a kid. You want to get revenge on Tyler, fine, but don't make her the collateral."

Klaus clenches his jaw, seemingly in frustration, but he quickly bites into his wrist and shoved the pool of blood against Caroline's mouth, waiting until her face twitches with life before he pulls it away, smearing the leftover liquid onto his shirt as his skin heals.

Caroline's chest heaves with grateful air, and Salem lets out a sigh of relief as her skin regains its color and the signs of death dissipate completely.

Caroline's eyes open and she immediately looks at Klaus, lingering for a second before she looks to Salem like she knows what happened. She doesn't say thank you, and Salem doesn't want her to. But she nods anyways and then steps back, quickly dismissing herself from the house.

Salem ignores Klaus's call of her name at her back as she shuts the front door behind her, haphazardly wiping tears off of her cheeks as they fall from her eyes.

In her pocket, her phone vibrates against her skin and she quickly pulls it out, seeing the response to the text she'd sent earlier.

Salem, is everything alright? I'm free for the rest of the day, come to this address–

Salem glances back at the Gilbert house for a split second, a glimpse of hesitation in her eyes that she quickly forces away as she hurries to her car, following the directions of the location Meredith had sent. She doesn't spare a thought to the man left behind in that house.

Caroline is alive— for now. Salem's done all she can do for them for the time being. Right now, she has much, much bigger problems to worry about than the cure.

Not for the first time, Salem is glad she's not a vampire. This cure, for all that it's supposed to cure something, seems to be shrouded in death. Salem has enough of that on her own.

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author's note; nobody listened to me when I said klaus wouldn't be sleeping with hayley and getting her pregnant so i just want to take this opportunity to say i told you so

edited and published; 1.30.25. 

- liz