62. look how all the kids have grown (2/3)
title: look how all the kids have grown
chapters: 2/3
fandom: the vampire diaries, the originals
characters/pairings: caroline, hayley, bonnie, elena, rebekah (ALL THE GIRLS), the originals, klaus/caroline
word count: 15k~
summary: He'd taken the Caravaggio. They'd taken his brother. Something has to give. or, SPIES AU.
look how all the kids have grown
part three: cast me in to wage a war
-
"Polyester," is the first thing she moans when she comes to.
The second is: Please, make it stop, when she realizes he's been waiting for her to wake up, his accent (his real one) grating in her ears, so he can do that whole For the Greater Good monologue crap people like him seem to love.
People like him.
Compartmentalized, asshole.
There was only once that she'd encountered such 'people like him', and that was in Saltzman's simulators. The level she hasn't managed to pass just yet. Rebekah had come close last time, but she'd ran out of arrows before she could bury it in the simulator's head.
Caroline gulps. She so totally failed Jenna's test, didn't she.
Not only that, but she's probably going to die.
Ah, crap. She'll probably never see Class 4.
She'll probably never even see daylight again, from how tight this polyester thing was blindfolding her. The room they're in must be one of the standard ones - she knows because she feels the difference in the carpeting, the fact that the chair she's tied to is made of synthetic wood and not from an actual chunk of tree. They have the brochures tacked inside Elena's organic chem textbook. She knows there's a window right across the bed, she feels a strange sort of coldness on her back; he must have her placed in front of the bathroom. Door open, lights switched on. That must mean she's about twenty, twenty five feet away from the window. Still a long shot, but one can hope.
What a way to go, she sighs. On her birthday, too.
Of course, that had been two minutes ago, and now she thinks she stands a pretty good chance, especially considering the fact that she'd pierced a sizeable gash in his stomach with her heels, the blade that shot out when she presses the buckle.
"You're pretty good," he grunts, ducking a blow. "Where did they train you, Camp Swampy?"
"CIA?" she snorts. "Hardly." She heaves a punch that Elena's once codenamed Vicious but he throws up a hand and catches it in his palm, twisting them around so she's on the floor, his knee pinning her there, her arm twisted painfully behind her.
She winces as he presses down, her spine creaking under the pressure.
"That was fast," he remarks like they're both still in the ballroom making pretentious small talk, but because he's the kind of person who likes to give in to his impulse (educated guess) and a little bit of a douche (fact), he leans down, presses his nose to the back of her neck and breathes in, long and deep.
It's all instinct and adrenaline from there, her rolling them over and bringing home a fist across his jaw, him throwing her off and her stumbling for only a breadth of a second before she catches his arm with the squeeze of her thighs, flips herself so he falls to the floor with a heavy thud, doesn't stop squeezing until she hears a resounding crack.
He's jolting underneath her, so she jabs the gash in his stomach with her knee until he lets out a cry, doesn't stop until his face turns white. She deals blow after blow, something delirious in her punches, doesn't stop until she's sure he's out cold.
"So was that," she pants.
-
First order of business: tie the fucker up.
She drags his body into the closet and dumps the bedding on him. Her dress is pretty much ruined, she thinks with a tune of sadness, so she balls that up and throws it in after him, before locking the door and jamming the door handle.
There's a black bag under the bed, most likely kicked there in their struggle, and she rifles through and finds a spare shirt. It'll have to do. It sags at the shoulders on her but at least it covers her underwear. She finds her comms unit and her pushdagger on the dresser. She slides the comms unit into her ear and the pushdagger into her thigh holster.
"Night Owl?" she tries. Nothing but radio silence.
Well then.
She goes back to the bag, finds some sketchbooks. She she'd been wrong about him being in publishing, she realizes. He sketches. She flips through it listlessly, the novelty of art drained out of her the minute he'd dropped the bomb of his real accent, but pauses when she sees a page that isn't like the others.
A map, she thinks, but she looks closer and sees that it's blueprints. She snaps the sketchbook shut, feels around in the bag and pulls out long, cylindrical leather case. A bead of sweat trickles down her neck, her legs refusing to sit in this position for so long, just ready to spring, to run, but she forces herself to stay and unzips the case, and gasps.
Her girls. She has to find her girls.
In what probably looks like the most horrific walk of shame ever, she clatters out of the room in her too-high heels and heads for the stairs. Penthouse Three, Elena had said earlier. She hopes nothing drastic had happened while she'd been out, because the night had certainly taken a turn for one.
A bellboy is dragging his cart down the hall so she presses her back flat against the wall, frowning up at the golden chandeliers streaming warm light, chasing shadows away. The elevator dings, the cart rolls in, the doors shut-she rolls out of her hiding place and all but kicks down the door to Penthouse Three, wincing, because yeah, these stilettos were pretty much indestructible, heels were still heels, and kicking down a door with one? Ouch.
"Elena!" she cries, hobbling in. "Are you alright?"
She turns just in time to see Elena cracking the Augustine Vampire in the back of his head with a champagne bottle.
"Shhh," Elena croons soothingly as he goes limp. "This is just a bad memory." Then she turns to Caroline, gives her a once over. "What happened to you?"
-
"What do you mean you don't know?" Caroline demands in a whisper as they make their way back to the laundry room.
"I mean I don't know," Elena says, biting her lower lip. "My comms went dead, all signals blocked from the sixteenth floor up-what?"
Caroline's held her hand out to stop Elena before she can push the door open. "There's somebody in there."
They exchange glances. Elena holds up a finger, two fingers, three-
They kick the door open, both yelling. "Hands in the air!"
"Aughh!" Bonnie screams, dropping her stun gun.
"Aughh!" Caroline screams back, brandishing the leather case, before coming to her senses. "What the hell, Bon?" she hisses. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be-"
"In the van, yeah, but everyone's line went dead. What was I supposed to do, just wait there?" she's breathing harshly, probably terrified out of her wits - she's the hacker, not the muscle; she rarely if ever travels so far out of the back of the van. "Oh, and The Tank's awake."
"I can see that," Caroline says, wrinkling her nose as the banging stars up again. "Time."
"Twenty hundred hours, on the dot," Elena reports. She holds up another sodium thiopenthal ball. "Shall I?"
Bonnie looks up from her packing. "Ooh, can I do it?"
Caroling reaches for her discarded sweater, gladly divesting herself of the Hybrid's shirt. She throws it down the chute after the sodium thiopental. "Did you dig anything up on the Hybrid?"
"Nothing," Bonnie admits with a trace of shame. Caroline gets it. They've never been one-upped like this before. Somewhere in the back of her head she thinks they might have bitten off more than they can chew with the Augustine Vampire, but how the hell was she supposed to know that the dude had a lot of people coming after his shit?
"I found this," she says after clipping on her utility belt. The leather case. She tosses it to Bonnie, who unzips it, and her eyes go round.
Whether it was an exact reproduction or not, Caroline's not sure - she is so done with this shit - but either way, it's the painting they were going to steal back tonight. The Lute Player, stolen from some Californian quote unquote philanthropist who'd probably stolen it from someone else, but - psh, details. Besides, Netherlands was pretty chill about stolen art, and as far as the dude was concerned it was as good as his, if the last twenty-three years of having it in his possession meant anything at all.
"Is it real?" Elena asks in a hushed voice.
"No," Bonnie says decidedly. "I mean, it's perfect, but its' not the real deal. This was just a distraction. By the time the buyer finds out they'll probably have sold it on the black market."
Distraction. Caroline feels a bit like a novice all of a sudden. Their distraction had been to set up bombs, just tiny ones, on the other side of the city, thereby distracting the police. And this Hybrid guy's was something as simple as a replica.
Oh well. Not like they needed the explosions anymore.
"So if the Tank's after the Caravaggio-"
"And so is the Hybrid-"
Bonnie rolls the replica up and slides it back in the case. "What do you think? Working together?"
"Definitely. And they might not be alone. Remember what Saltzman said? It's best to work in threes." Caroline looked at her friends and they looked back, and hysterical laughter bubbled up their throats.
"We're well-compensated for, then," Elena giggles, wiping her eyes.
"Not if we can't find Hayley and Rebekah," Caroline says darkly, and that shuts them up.
-
It takes Bonnie about four minutes to fix their comms devices, and Caroline's never felt so much relief to hear Rebekah's voice fill her ear-
"What the bloody hell have you girls been doing? Mingling with the socialites?"
-as annoying as it might be.
"Fighting off hitmen, so it would seem," Caroline snaps back. "What are you doing, still stuck in a ventilation shaft?"
"I got out, I'll have you know," Rebekah replies snootily. "An hour ago. And guess what? They brought the painting out to be auctioned off. It's gone, Miss America."
Caroline feels the blood drain out of her face. "Gone?" she whispers. "What do you mean gone?"
"Gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Poof."
"And you didn't stop them?"
Rebekah's voice cracks like lightning. "And what was I meant to do, run into the room screaming bloody murder? There's only one of me!"
"No way." Caroline slumps back against the wall. "No. It couldn't be gone." She looks down at the replica in her hands. Their reserve must have picked it up, then, upped and fled when they realized the Hybrid wasn't coming. "They have the Caravaggio. No way," she says again.
"Yes way," Rebekah says, but there's regret in her voice. Somewhere. "Mission failed?"
No. She refuses to believe it.
"Girls." Caroline sits up. "Anyone heard from the Wolf?"
-
Back home, and by home she meant Westchester, and by Westchester she meant the academy, Hayley could disappear for hours on end and no one would bat an eyelid. It's not the same as Bonnie disappearing. No, Bonnie would disappear behind a book one moment, and when you turn around she wouldn't be there. Probably run off to test out a new gadget she'd read about in Gadget Today, or to decode an encrypted message from her parents. She knew the cipher by heart, and it's not like the rest of them could actually decipher the message on the spot, but the girl still liked her privacy.
But Hayley, whenever she disappears, Caroline would usually find her in the gym, unloading the day's events into a punching bag.
She had good form but too much anger, always fighting like she's being backed into a corner, thrashing out with everything she has in her. Caroline steps up onto the mat behind her and reaches a coaxing hand out, and suddenly Hayley has her hauled into the air in one fell swoop.
She catches herself before she's face-planted into the mat, but just barely.
"Sorry," Hayley says tersely, wiping sweat from her brow. She doesn't sound very sorry. In fact, she sounds nearly hostile, and Caroline knows not to prod. Not after how many years of rooming together.
The gym is empty but for the two of them, the sound of Hayley's fists pounding into the air drummed out like morse code. Caroline wonders what Bonnie would make of it. She just sprawls back, watching Hayley beat the crap out of the bag like it'd done her some personal wrong. Waits.
Ten minutes in-
"Anna Johnson got into Class 3."
"Hm," Caroline says.
"You're in Class 3."
"So I am."
"Along with Rebekah." Punch. "And Elena." Kick. "Even freaking Bonnie."
"Well, we don't have many people on the research track," Caroline shrugs. "She's a valuable asset."
Hayley grunts and Caroline groans inwardly - totally the wrong thing to say, wasn't it? Like she hadn't just spent the morning in Culture and Assimilation working on cotillion etiquette, gracious smiles, the art of small talk. Etcetera etcetera.
Zen is something Hayley's never mastered, while Caroline's all in for fakin' it til you're makin' it. Maybe it's time they try a different approach. "Don't jackknife me," she warns, reaching for Hayley again. "But… you need to calm down."
On a different day, Hayley would have just let that pass, but not today. She pushes away from her punching bag and zeroes her fist in on Caroline's face, and - um, rude much? She ducks at the last minute and kicks Hayley's feet out from beneath her, pulling out every defense maneuver Saltzman had ever taught them.
"Come on," Hayley growls, hands balled into angry little fists, shoulders hunched, feet apart. "Fight back. You love this."
"I'm not fighting you," Caroline says calmly. She stands with her back straightened. "Not without grounds. Unless you used up the rest of my cover up, which you so know is only legal in Europe, then yeah - we have a problem."
"Your hair is a problem," Hayley says as snarkily as possible, but Caroline just rolls her eyes.
"We both know you don't give a shit about that. Try harder."
Hayley lunges forward just as Caroline steps aside, anticipating every move. "This is why I'm in Class 3 and you're not, Hayley. You forget to breathe."
She throws herself back onto her hands in a perfect arc, Hayley's combat boot striking the air just a centimeter away from her nose. Hayley breaks her handspring with a shove of her hands though, and they both end up in a heap of styled hair and rumpled tanks on the mat.
"Totally uncalled for," Caroline gripes, wind knocked out of her. "You knew I was dying to try out that move."
Hayley rolls over, pins Caroline down by her shoulders with her hands, fever hot. Always fever hot. "I'm breathing now."
"Good. Keep doing that."
Hayley closes her eyes, tries to get her breathing levelled out. There are flecks of gold in her eyes when the sun hits them, and it does nothing for the anger still awash on her face. "I just don't know why I always seem to get left behind."
Caroline decides then and there on a solution. "What are you doing tonight?"
-
They split up. Bonnie with Rebekah (since Rebekah was the strongest out of all of them, and while Bonnie could take out a man if she wanted to - she's not sure she wants to, shocker - it would help to have Rebekah's skillset with her), Elena with Caroline.
They round a corner and nearly collide with a body being hurled their way. Elena goes down with it, but Caroline's reflexes save her at the last minute.
Hayley's crouched down the hall, looking disheveled and sweaty. "Hey."
"Who was he?" Elena asks, struggling to sit up. She kicks the limp body off of her. "Bad guy?"
"No, he was just annoying. Kept trying to get my number," Hayley says, dusting her hands off. "The Hybrid has the Caravaggio."
"Glad you're all updated," Caroline starts to say, but Hayley interrupted her with, "No, I saw him take it. Tall, about 5'11". Dark hair, brown eyes, definitely the grifter, because when he saw me he didn't even try to fight, he just sent me the most condescending smile and like, waved before scaling out the window."
Caroline scrubs her hand down her face, reaches for her comms. "Night Owl, we found the Wolf."
"Fan-tastic. I'm stuck in yet another airduct with the Duchess." Bonnie sounds like she has her face pressed against a wall.
"Oh, be grateful I'm even letting you near me. I know you've been sniffing my hair all year, trying to suss out the conditioner I use-" Rebekah sounds like she's struggling to breathe while upside down.
"Girls," Caroline hisses. "Now is not the time."
"So what's the plan?" Elena asks, looking at her. Caroline has her back to them, eyes closed, massaging her temples. If Elena asks, she'll say she's fighting a slight migraine from all the blows she's taken, but really, she's wishing for a birthday miracle.
"Caroline." She feels Hayley's hand on her shoulder, hot as it always is, even with the thick wool in between. "There's a chance they might still be here. They can't leave that many of their men behind. The whole hotel is on lockdown. The lobby's in mayhem, we can't go through there: people running around trying to figure out what happened to a seventy-five million dollar painting."
Caroline opens her eyes, a slow smile growing on her lips. "Perfect."
"Perfect?" Bonnie repeats blankly.
"We have nowhere to go but up."
-
Hayley's guess on the door being locked two flights down is right, but instead of wasting time picking the lock she chooses to kick it open instead-the bursts open and hangs off its hinges and they run across the roof, panting hard.
That's twenty floors in just two minutes and fifteen seconds, she'll have you know.
"Where are you?" From up high, the night air whips her hair about her face.
"Look down," Rebekah says, and Caroline grips takes a peek over the edge to see Rebekah hanging from the side of the building, one hand on the holder she'd suctioned to the glass, the other fastening her rappel securely around her waist. She tugs at her crossbow strapped to her back, the soles of her boots pressed against the glass to steady herself. She lifts the scope to her squinting eye.
Caroline unravels her rappel-a-cord and tries to secure it to the ledge; Hayley swats her hands aside when her hands tremble too much for a proper anchor. "What's taking so long?"
"My finger is on the trigger, Miss America."
"Well, pullit." She sees the back of his shirt-the Hybrid, she thinks, the Hybrid-rippling in the wind all those stories below as he bounds across the street, and her voice hitches in desperation. "They're getting away."
"I just need him to look this way-"
Hayley leans over the ledge and yells down, "No, you just need to freaking aim-"
"Duchess!"
"Why isn't she shooting?"
"I swear to Go-Duchess, shoot him now."
"I know what I'm doing, will the four of you keep your fucking knickers on?"
"The van's pulling up-"
"Duchess!"
"I have visual!"
Caroline whips out her comms piece and screams into it: Fucking shoot him, Mikaelson!
Rebekah shoots.
Rebekah misses.
Gravity loses all meaning as Caroline promptly kicks herself from the ledge and rappels down forty feet so fast her blood shoots straight to her eyes. "What the hell was that? You go on and on about being finest freaking marksman a girl our age with a golden freaking plaque to prove it, and you-what the hell!"
Rebekah slips a little, her grip on her rappel cord something liquid. She turns to Caroline, eyes wild, and gasps, "That's my brother."
"Holy shit," they hear Bonnie whisper. "So the guy we have trapped in the laundry chute-"
"Must be my other brother, yes. At least now I know why I found them to be so pretentious." Rebekah tries to affect a laugh, but it comes out shaky.
Caroline presses her forehead into the glass.
"We're dead," she realizes.
SUMMARY OF SURVEILLANCE
OPERATIVES: Bonnie Bennett, Class 3; Caroline Forbes, Class 3; Elena Gilbert, Class 3; Hayley Marshall, Class 3; Rebekah Mikaelson, Class 3. (Hereafter referred to as "The Operatives")
In order to retrieve the Caravaggio (hereafter referred to as "The C" as Hayley M. has trouble spelling it), Operatives undertook a (totally allowed!) reconnaissance mission that brought them deep into unknown territory, aka the Mandarin Oriental, located 40.7691° N, 73.9830° W.
Operatives could not ascertain as to how they stumbled into "some Oceans 11 type bullshit", as Caroline F. puts it, but it is with duly respect that the Operatives report that they did the best they could under those circumstances, and under those circumstances they observed the following:
The Augustine Vampire does in fact "suck you dry" as is his modus operandi. Operative Elena G. reports that he is very bad at it.
The C could not be acquired on time, resulting in massive disappointment and five sore girls, and a missed curfew.
Operatives did however manage to acquire Kol "The Tank" Mikaelson (residence unknown, MO unknown) who remains bound and gagged as this report is typed out.
part four: we live in cities you'll never see on screen
-
"You're not dead," Hayley says.
"It's fine," Hayley says.
"We have leverage," Hayley says.
Hayley says, "Nobody could have anticipated this. We weren't made or anything. In and out clean. The miniscule detail that we kind of kidnapped a government operative is just going to have to blow ov-"
"Not a government operative," Rebekah interrupts. A pause, a sheepish admission. "My family is evil."
Elena, patron saint of disbelief, says, "What do you mean evil?"
"What, like Refuse-to-pay-taxes evil? Assign-their-daughter-to-infiltrate-spy-school evil?" As soon as Bonnie says this everyone's immediately on their feet, not exactly crowding Rebekah, but not giving much space to move should she choose to run either. Caroline hopes she doesn't run. While fighting in stilettos came in handy - what with their sharp points and ability to pierce the most tender of body parts - they also gave her a shitload of blisters, and imagine the mess if they burst untimely.
"No," Rebekah says mournfully. She doesn't even look offended that they're eyeing her like she might be like, a double agent. Or something.
"What, No, they pay taxes or No, I'm not a double agent?" Caroline demands.
"I'm not a double agent," Rebekah snaps, scowling. "My family's just evil. They steal for sport, they kill for power. Other than that they're pretty good citizens. No overdue mortgages. Finn goes to church on Sundays. And I'm pretty sure they pay taxes."
"Yeah, who cares that they kill people, right? As long as they vote." Bonnie's still trying to keep composure, which is great considering the situation: Elena's already thrown herself down on Caroline's bed, her teeth worrying away at her bottom lip. "So what do we do with him?"
She's referring to Rebekah's brother, of whom they have tied up in the corner of the room, their wardrobes pushed around him to form a makeshift cage. He stirs every so often, and every so often Hayley hits him in the back of the head with Caroline's discarded stiletto.
"I can't keep doing this, you know," Hayley says as she whacks him for the seventh time. The stars are still out, but it's not going to be night time forever. Morning will come, along with the repercussions of what they just did.
"We just kidnapped a government operative," Elena whispers.
"Again, not a spy," Rebekah reminds them exasperatedly. "He's just evil."
Evil, Rebekah says, like they were in some kind of Disney movie. These villains, they maimed and murdered, too, fire and chaos. Only without the spells. Caroline cards her hands through her hair. "Yeah, pretty sure I can account for that."
Hayley reaches a hand out and traces the bruise blooming under her eye. "That looks bad."
Caroline brushes her hand away. "It'll heal. So, okay. We've got a guy chained in a corner of our room. Who's not a spy," she adds, rolling her eyes. Rebekah looks satisfied. "How many demerits is sneaking a boy on campus going to cost us?"
"Forget that. We didn't just kidnap a spy. We kidnapped a straight-up 'He's just evil'. That's even worse," Elena moans. "We kidnapped an evil guy, more evil guys are going to come to his aid-how many evil brothers do you have?"
"Four," Bonnie pipes up, tapping into the school's database. She's pulled up Rebekah's permanent record, and while Rebekah had glared at that, she couldn't exactly do anything about it. "Finn, Elijah, Klaus, Kol. And - woah, Finn's a pirate?"
Rebekah nods and adds as an afterthought, "Oh, but he's not evil."
Three evil brothers and a pirate. Suddenly Caroline's own family history - absentee sheriff mom, dead gay dad, present-but-distant stepfather - doesn't seem so bad. Not all of them came from spy families like Elena, who was probably going to grow up and work for the CIA before retiring and taking up the position of headmistress here, as was her legacy. Not all of them had parents who worked for the MI6 like Bonnie. Hayley grew up in the Bayou, drifting from foster family to foster family until she found her place here. And Hayley, she remembers, Hayley's been here almost as long as Elena has.
"O… kay." Bonnie shuts her laptop with a sort of finality. "That's all there is to it. No record of your family ever running for office or even purchasing a handgun. Your family sure knows how to cover their tracks."
Caroline squints at her. "Is Mikaelson even your last name?"
"Of course," Rebekah sniffs. "And don't be daft, Bonnie - we're Britain's best-kept secret; do you really think it'd be so easy to do recon on us? Now are we done playing twenty questions or are we going to wake my brother up? Can't have you lot making him more unattractive than he already is."
They splash some water onto over his head and Caroline slaps at his face, and after a while Kol comes to with a groan. Rebekah's crouched in front of him, her face tight, and he blinks down blearily at her. "Bekah?"
"How are you feeling?"
"Aside from this massive headache…" He trails off, notes the tense circle of girls around him, the rumpled tie on the dresser table, the class picture Caroline's tacked above her bed. She sees something register in his eyes and - ah, crap. "Am I in your school? Your all-girls school?"
"Look, Kol-"
"Brilliant," Kol enthuses. "I'm feeling great! Do you know how many times I've tried to break into this place? Elijah catches me every time, of course-your security's oddly tight for a prep school-"
"Kol, shut up. We're going to ask you a few questions."
Rebekah's brother does a double take. "Why are you wearing all black? Have you joined some sort of cult?"
His eyes fall on the utility belt.
And then:
"Oh shit." Kol throws his head back, and then winces as the ostrich egg-sized lump in his head hits the wall. "Oh shit. We sent our baby sister to spy school. Nik's going to love this."
"Wait, you didn't know?" Caroline whirls to Rebekah. "I mean - you didn't tell them?"
"There are some things I'd like to keep to myself," Rebekah says quietly. "My family keeps from me so many things and they take even more, it felt good to have ownership of something. Even if it is something as inane as identity."
"Oh boo fucking hoo, so we didn't tell you of our comings and goings; would you rather us subject you to the sight of us microwaving our enemies to death?"
Bonnie wrinkles her nose. "That's graphic."
"Well, that's what we do," Kol says airily. "And I must say, Beks, you've shamed the family. Imagine having a spy-"
"In a family of con artists and thieves? Is there any difference, brother dear? What were you and Nik doing so far from home, then? Taking in the sights? Defending the patriarchy? As if the world needed any more of it from you, you-you sexist asshole!
"Admit it!" she cries, grabbing the stiletto from Hayley and hurling it at his shoulder. "The only reason you never let me in on all the-" she airquotes, "-family meetings is because you think I'm a girl and I can't handle it, well guess what? Elijah ends up enrolling me in the best academy in all of Westchester, in all of this side of the world, in fact, and I was raised a spy right under your noses." Rebekah stands back, chest heaving. "All because you thought I wasn't good enough. It's your fault."
Kol looks away.
-
"There he is," Hayley says and jabs at the screen. "That's the guy."
The screen is frozen with the image of the dark-haired man Hayley had described, in the middle of deftly dismantling the Caravaggio's frame, caught by Bonnie's much-complained-about micro camera.
"That's Elijah," Rebekah says. She looks as dumbfounded as the rest of them, the newfound knowledge of her family's nightly activities.
"Codename unknown," Bonnie says softly in disappointment. "I hacked into the IRS and came up with nothing. If your family paid taxes nobody would know. You guys are paranoid."
"Comes with the territory, I suppose," Elena says, and twists her body around to look at Kol. "What exactly do you mean by 'tanking' someone?"
Tanking someone, as it turns out, involved Kol locking them up in a tank filled with piranhas and watching them drown in a shroud of their own blood and shredded flesh, screaming and beating soundlessly against the shock-proof, twelve-inch glass.
"Is that why I'm not allowed in the third-floor pool?" Rebekah demands suspiciously, but Kol just smiles at her and refuses to say anything else.
It was a goddamn miracle, really. The Tank could talk a nun into selling children into slavery.
"On the bright side, Nik will never underestimate you again," Kol says brightly a few hours later, when they were still pacing the room trying to figure out what to do. Dawn is creeping in, the dusty stars chased away by a pink-and-purple plume, and despite hurting everywhere and being exhausted to her bones, Caroline can't find it in herself to sleep.
"Shut up, Kol," everyone says automatically, and a disgruntled Hayley grabs a sock from the floor and stuffs it into his mouth.
"Isn't that the one you used for PE yesterday…?"
"Yep," Hayley says shortly.
Kol gags.
Caroline turns away from the hideous sight, eyes screwed shut. At least we have an advantage, she reasons. The Hybrid, or Klaus, or Nik - whatever the hell he goes by - hadn't seen Rebekah, right? All he'd known was a chatty-on-the-verge-of-homicidal blonde who'd poured a vodka soda down his pants. Who also happened to be a spy.
Maybe taking Kol wasn't such a good idea, but he's leverage, if not a really annoying hostage.
"He couldn't know where we are, who we are," Caroline murmurs to herself as she paces. "Could he?"
On the bed next to Elena, Rebekah had gone very still. "Caroline, what did he say exactly?"
"Before or after the attempted torture?" she replies. Rebekah sends her a look (one night stuck in a vent with Bonnie and she's already gotten the brows down) and Caroline acquiesces. "I don't know, he said I smelled quote unquote exquisite and wondered where he'd smelled it before, except he said it in such a pretentious way-"
"Yes, yes, I think we've already established how pompous he can be. And what did you tell him?"
"How is this even relevant?" Caroline snaps, but she must be tired, because all of them knows how it goes in debriefs. Everything comes up. Even the most miniscule of details could uncover landmines. Better safe than dead, wasn't that what they said? And even in this profession nobody was ever safe. Not really. She squares her shoulders and turns away from the window. "I don't know, some version of the truth? Did you want me to tell him Oh I borrowed this from my friend who happens to be a spy, sorry I don't know the exact name of it, but I know it's Clinique."
Rebekah pales. "Oh no."
"Oh no. Don't say that, Rebekah. Oh what?"
"Well," Rebekah begins with a stammer, "growing up, my brothers always made fun of me not being like the other girls-"
Muffled noises came from Kol from behind the sock; Hayley cocked an eyebrow and retrieves the stiletto, dangling it in his face. He narrows his eyes and shuts up.
"-so I made a big show of informing them of my, um, shall we say… superior taste, and bragged about how this particular brand of perfume I wear hasn't been sold anywhere in years; mostly because I bought out the last batch of it-"
Elena interrupts, "So what you're basically saying is: we're fucked."
"Yes," Rebekah says grimly, "that sounds about right."
"Fan-tastic," Bonnie says, but nothing about her voice alluded to such a situation.
"He's going to come, you know," Rebekah says worriedly. "He's going to descend upon all of you." At their cache of blank looks, she shrugs and says, "It's Elijah's favourite saying."
Caroline doesn't mean to gape, but - for real? Were all of her brothers so full of it? And she's not just talking about sweaty sock stuffed into a mouth.
Elena stands. Caroline doesn't want to admit it, but there's an air of defeat about her, the way she pulls her hair into a half-hearted knot at the nape of her neck. "You know we're going to have to tell Jenna."
That was exactly the sort of thing she'd been dreading, and she closes her eyes, but she's out of birthday miracles, not that they'd helped much. Her birthday is over. Morning has come.
"Or," Bonnie begins, and all heads, including Kol's, snap towards her. She says again, "Or… we don't tell her. I mean, we could take them. Klaus works alone, right?"
"Not alone," Rebekah corrects. "With the rest of my brothers. Which is pretty much the same as working alone, now that we've taken away their hacker. He hates taking orders from anyone else, and Elijah - well, Elijah can be swayed. I think. I hope."
"No, Bon's got a point. We weren't prepared last night," Caroline says, catching on. Her pacing starts up again. "We didn't know what we were walking into, which is sloppy of us, but we know now. We have reliable intel-" she waves an arm at Rebekah, "-we have means of defense. As terrible as your brothers are, you're their sister, I mean, I'm sure-"
"If you think that actually means something to Nik, you're in the wrong business," Rebekah says in a small voice.
Caroline thinks about him then, not the Hybrid and not the Nik that Rebekah is spitting, but Mister Quite-Fond-of-Baroque, the one who still enjoyed contemporary art without even sounding like a douche about it. She hadn't thought much about it then, had just done as she'd trained, which was not to wonder how to act in moments like that, but to not act - to breathe along in the moment as though it's the most natural thing, as if that was right where she belonged.
He'd taken the Caravaggio. They'd taken his brother. Something has to give.
All at once, she just knows that he won't come. Not right away. He'd want to come, she knows, he'd want to give into his first impulse, which is probably to burn this place right to the ground, rip apart its foundations to find his brother, but the Klaus she had met last night wouldn't. The Klaus she'd met last would want to evoke some sort of response.
A rematch, she thinks. Because what happened last night, no one could have anticipated that. Haley had been right. A response, a rematch.
And that would take time, wouldn't it? They had a day. Two days, if they were lucky, and even though they haven't had much of that, she still had her friends around her, and that amounted to pretty much the same thing.
"I'll call Katherine," Elena says then, a newfound hope in her eyes. "I mean, first I have to find her, but I'll call her."
Bonnie gets to her feet as well, already pulling out a fresh uniform for the day. "One of us needs to be here at all times to watch over him. Bad sushi?"
Sure, the rest of them agree, but Caroline says, "We're still going to have to tell Jenna eventually."
"Let's just take things one at a time," Elena says, even though that's so not how they do it. Not here, Caroline thinks, not with the lives they lead, but you know what? She's just spent the night being kicked at and free-falling off the side of a building. She deserves a damn break.
The wakeup bell rings. Above her, she hears the sound of feet shuffling across the floor, shower knobs creaking, the sound of her sisters stretching out their limbs like willow trees shaking frost off after a long winter. Telling Jenna is going to be a bitch, but Hayley reaches over and squeezes her hand and somehow she's not so worried anymore.
Let him come.
She's ready for a rematch.
tbc?