Above It All " SEQUEL TO ABOVE ALL ELSE "

Chapter 2

She stood as still as a statue, gripping the doorframe so tightly her knuckles paled. Her mind registering somewhere deep inside that there were tiny slivers of wood digging into her skin from the force. But she was numb. To the physical pain, to the very air around her. To everything but the center of that room.

As she stood there, just staring blindly at the spot where her entire world shifted, a single breath never crossed her lips. The deep burn of her lungs, for even a vampire had to breathe sometime, offered a sort of sick painful release from the pure unadulterated agony she felt staring at the floor of the study.

The fact that the floorboards had been completely replaced sometime during their travels did not have surprised her. Klaus would have had the foresight to commission a team of contractors or use his personal lackeys to have the room looking as brilliant and spotless as it did before...

Her breath hitched, her throat tightened as the first stinging bite of air hit her starving lungs.

Now that she had oxygen coursing through her system her mind began picking up on smaller details. The floor looked strange, oddly out of place. She tilted her head slightly to the side as she inspected it further. The wood of the door cracking once again under the strength of her grip as she realized why it looked so off to her. This was the place where her entire world shifted and yet not a single blemish remained to show for it. Not a single smudge or scratch to give an onlooker any evidence that something dreadful had happened here.

Caroline didn't know whether to be grateful that she didn't have to look at scorched wooden floorboards or unbelievable angry that the torturous sight she had mentally prepared herself for on the flight home was no longer there.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a strong set of arms slowly slid around her from behind. Klaus's lean frame pressed against her back as his hand gently pried her swollen fingers from the doorway. She could feel the circulation returning to her digits as the small splinters began pushing out of her palm. She relished in the slight discomfort it gave her; it meant she was alive while he was dead. She had never been much of a masochist before in her life, but the little fact that she was here while he was not was still a double-edged sword for her. She was happy and thankful to be alive but the cost of that was still too much for her to grasp or handle at times.

Klaus pulled her deeper into his embrace, the soft baritone of his voice rumbling through her. His thick comforting scent acting like a cocoon, wrapping her up in one of the very reasons she was thankful to be alive.

"I knew we shouldn't have come back."

The last sliver of wood worked its way out of her palm as she laid her hands over top of his that was resting against her stomach, "It's okay. I was ready to come back."

Klaus nuzzled his face into the side of her neck, breathing her scent in deeply as his eyes squeezed shut. Even with the room righted back to the way it was before that dreadful night, the memories of seeing her laying near death in the center of the floor next to her Father played like a projection, haunting him of what could have been. Of all that he could have lost.

"Perhaps I was not." The words flowed meekly past his lips without his permission causing him to swallow past the lump that quickly followed.

The pain of the what-if's and what-could-have-been that carried in his voice ricocheted through her heart like a scolding hot knife.

Caroline quickly spun within his arms, finding a haunting gaze within his eyes that she was sure matched her very own. She removed one of his hands from where they sat low on her back, not without a small struggle on his part that brought along with it a slight grin. He didn't want to let her go. Placing it over her beating heart, a heart that beat so similarly to his own now. She then placed her own hands on him, one at his heart the other cupping his scruff covered cheek.