How about your thoughts on the short lived romance of Jesse/Caroline in S5? Did he really like her? And wasn't she with Tyler? :/ I sort of liked it because it looked stable and okay. He seemed to like her. And it was one of the few interracial relationships in TVD. And what does Stefan think of te whole Jesse/Caroline thing last season?
I liked it, I figured it wouldn’t havebeen more of a rebound for Caroline to kind of help her get over Tyler but Idon’t think it would have lasted too long. Personally as a white woman marriedto a black man I’m always partial to interracial couples on TV so yeah I rootedfor them based on that a little bit, plus Jesse was hot lol. WellAmnesia!Stefan didn’t seem to be a fan of Jesse/Caroline since it was obvioushe was crushing on Caroline but Stefan when he got his memories back didn’treally mention the relationship since Jesse was already dead by the time himand Caroline spoke about it on screen. If Jesse hadn’t died I think Stefanwould have had a little bit of jealousy sneaking through about itbecause he obviously had come in regards to Enzo/Caroline.
Hey, ckhybrid, remember that time you sent me a prompt for Jessoline with assassin!Caroline, and I turned it into a Black Widow inspired AU? No? Well now you can! Hope you enjoy it.
----
He had pretty eyes, and an even prettier smile.
The observation was made with a critical but distant eye. She could appreciate the eyes, the smile like you might appreciate fine art. It was nice, but wouldn’t stop her purpose.
The pretty eyes and the pretty smile belonged to a man named Jesse, and they wouldn’t keep Caroline from fulfilling her purpose.
Stealing his research and then disposing of him.
Caroline didn’t know why the Family wanted the pretty boy dead as well as the research, but it wasn’t her job to ask questions. Her job was to receive orders and obey them like a good dog. Occasionally the leash grated, but more often she was simply content to have a place to belong. Perhaps it wasn’t a particularly good place, living amongst the Family, particularly given her past with the Wolf, but it was a place, and that was more than she would have had, had the Family never taken her in.
She shook off the thoughts of places, and particularly thoughts of the Wolf and her history with him, and refocused her attention on Jesse. He was smiling at the barista, probably flirting good-naturedly. Caroline knew his type, saw them almost every day that she was on the job. Charm was second nature to men like Jesse, it came as easily as breathing.
She could almost feel sorry for him.
She watched him turn away from the counter, make his way toward the exit, and executed her next move with careful precision, pretending to be absorbed in her cellphone and stepping into his path, so that his coffee hit the perfect angle to land on the front of her shirt. The liquid was hot, but Caroline had experienced worse, would experience worse, and she managed to keep the pain from her face, instead adopting a surprised, innocent expression.
“Oh, God,” he said, instinctively reaching out with the pile of napkins the barista had given him to go with the donut he held. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry!”
“It’s fine,” Caroline replied with an embarrassed smile, a faint flush climbing her cheeks as she took the napkins from his hand. “Really, it’s fine. My fault. I should know better than to text and walk. I’m such a klutz!”
She pulled the shirt away from her just right, so he could see the top of her bra, but not in a way that would lead him to think it was on purpose. She saw his eyes dart between her face and her cleavage, and smirked internally.
Even charming pretty boys were helpless against that move.
“Look, could I get you another coffee?” she asked, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. Caroline had pulled this act a thousand times, could almost write the script on how the next move would go.
“No, no you shouldn’t do that,” Jesse replied with waved hands, and Caroline’s carefully crafted expression almost shifted, so surprised was she by the response. “Let me get it… and maybe get you a refill? I have some time to kill.”
Confidence back, and Caroline’s smile widened. Not so surprising, after all.
---
His name was Jesse and he was a scientist for the Augustine Society, which made the Family’s interest in him make more sense. But it wasn’t her role to question what the Family wanted from him, or why they wanted him dead.
It wasn’t her place to regret seeing the light die from his pretty eyes.
“Science,” she said with a smile, looking at him over her wine. It was their second date, if you counted the coffee interlude, and Caroline had dressed to impress in a little black number with a plunging back that showed off her cleavage just right. “That must be interesting.”
“It is to me,” Jesse replied with a grin that made Caroline feel uncomfortable. It was so incredibly warm, and it made her want to grin back – not one of her fake grins, but a real grin, one that she hadn’t smiled in…
Caroline couldn’t recall a time she had smiled outside of a mission. At least not one born from warmth rather than violence.
“- I imagine it would be boring to someone like you, though,” Jesse finished saying, and it startled Caroline, to realize that she had been so caught up in his smile that she had actually lost track of what he had been saying.
“Oh, no,” she replied with a quick grin, tossing her hair over her shoulder and looking at him from beneath lowered lashes. “I find science quite interesting. Especially chemistry.”
Jesse looked at her with that warm smile, and those pretty eyes for a moment, then he threw back his head and laughed. She wasn’t sure what he found so funny, but she decided that she liked his laugh. It was warm, like his smile, and pretty, like his eyes.
“That was sort of cheesy,” he admitted between chuckles, and Caroline raised her brows at that, thinking back over what she had said.
“Yeah,” she admitted after a moment, with a sheepish grin that wasn’t entirely an act. “I guess it kind of was.”
“I kinda liked it,” he replied.
Caroline felt her smile grow into something real and genuine.
---
He touched her like she was something to be worshipped. His hands trailed over her body, made her sigh, and he was gentle with her. Caroline had been fucked, she had done the fucking… but never before had someone made love to her. It almost shamed her, to realize that there were tears in her eyes in the aftermath.
When Jesse’s breaths turned steady with sleep, she left his apartment without any research, and left him perfectly healthy and alive.
She returned to the Family’s compound, licking her wounds and uncertain of her next step. Everything she was, everything she had, she owed to the Family… but the Family wanted her to kill Jesse, and Jesse…
Jesse was so incredibly good, with his warm smile and pretty eyes and quick mind that worked so well for Augustine. Worked so well against everything the Family wanted.
She walked into the compound, peeling off her heels and rubbing her feet once she was within the building. She had grown used to heels, being expected to wear them whether she be on a “date” or administering the deadly toxins she used to end her target’s lives.
“Returned from your date?”
The low, gravelly voice made her pause. It was the Wolf, Klaus Mikaelson, son of Esther Mikaelson, head of the Family. Caroline couldn’t remember a time when Klaus hadn’t been in her life, hadn’t ruled her life. When he had wanted her virginity, he had taken her to bed. When he had decided he wanted pretty Hayley Marshall, heiress to the Crescent Clan, he had discarded Caroline in order to pay court to her. And when, after he had married Hayley and gotten an heir off of her he had wanted Caroline again, he had taken her to bed once more.
Hayley hadn’t liked that, and in order to maintain some peace Esther had told her son to keep it in his pants, at least until he could get his wife pregnant once more. That had been six months ago, but he still watched Caroline with dark, hungry eyes that promised they weren’t done yet.
“As I’m here, I say it’s safe to say the date is done,” Caroline replied coolly, holding her heels by their straps and dangling them over her shoulder. She looked at him with a single raised brow. “No nappies to change tonight?”
“Hope is three. She hardly wears nappies anymore, Love,” Klaus replied, walking up to her. Carolien refused to back away from him, refused to be intimidated by him. She watched him without expression as he reached out, twined a piece of hair around his finger. “Look at you, so very cold and distant. Did the scientist not warm you up enough? Perhaps I should do it instead.”
“Esther made it clear what will happen should we do any warming,” Caroline sneered, finally stepping back from him, her hair drifting from his fingers as she did so, and turned away from him. “I’m to be the family’s assassin, not your whore. Not anymore.”
“Ah, yes, our beautiful Angel. Tell me, Caroline, when will you be done with this boy? Two dates already, and you come home empty handed? That’s not at all like you.” She felt his presence at her back, always warm. Too warm. “The Ripper thinks you’ve grown attached. I’m certain he’s wrong.”
Caroline jolted at that. The Ripper – Stefan, the assassin most loyal to Klaus himself, rather than the Family. How the hell would he know about her and Jesse… unless…
“You had him follow me?” she asked, her voice deadly calm and cool. The thought that she, of all the people to work for the Family, wouldn’t be trusted. Hadn’t she been there the longest? Taken in by Esther at four and raised to be whomever they needed her to be?
Hadn’t she been loyal?
“Don’t be like that, Love. I worry for you. You’re an investment, and you know we hate to lose returns on investments. Tell me, Angel, did he make sweet love to you? Did he sigh your name and kiss patterns across your skin as you lay there and planned how best to kill him?” Klaus’ breath was warm on her ear. His hand wrapped around her throat, pulling her back against the length of his body. His grip was hard on her, exhibiting his control over her. She had been his lover on and off for eight years, since she was fourteen, and he knew her body better than anyone. And her body knew him. She could feel herself melting against him, as he pressed a kiss to his pulse point. His hand left her throat, drifted down to her breast. “Tell me, Caroline, does he make you feel like this?”
Caroline closed her eyes, not wanting to answer. Because Jesse had made her feel beautiful and loved, but Klaus made her feel as though she were on fire. She knew what it was like to be with him, how it made her feel invincible, and she hated that he could do that to her so very easily.
He had always treated her like a possession, but her body didn’t seem to care. It just wanted him.
“Niklaus!”
The voice was like ice water running down her back. It didn’t belong to Esther, thank God, but Elijah was bad enough. Tagged as the Gentleman, Elijah never bloodied his hands unless it was to answer what he viewed as a direct insult to his family, in which case he got very bloody. Usually, however, he preferred to send Caroline to do his dirty work, utilizing her abilities every bit as, if not more, often than Esther herself.
“Brother, you have impeccable timing,” Klaus muttered, pulling away from Caroline to glare at his brother. “Tired of my wife’s company already?”
“I just finished assuring Hayley that you were over your foolish indiscretions,” Elijah replied coolly, looking between Klaus and Caroline. “Yet here you are, showing me to be a liar. Go to her, and your daughter. Leave Angel be.”
“Ever Angel to you, isn’t she, brother?” Klaus sneered. “Perhaps you enjoy the thought of someone so corrupted bearing the name of something so pure? Fine, I’ll go to Hayley. But remember, Caroline, my Ripper will be watching you. Make sure you kill the boy before you grow too attached.”
Caroline watched him leave, could feel Elijah’s eyes on her even as her eyes remained on his brother’s retreating back.
“I expected foolishness from Niklaus, Caroline, but you-”
“A moment of weakness, nothing more,” Caroline replied, her voice empty. She wondered if she looked as empty as she sounded, as she felt, when she turned her gaze to Elijah. The earlier feelings evoked by Jesse had been destroyed by Klaus, and now she felt wrecked as she watched his brother. “The boy, Jesse… why is it so important he die?”
“You’ve never asked questions,” Elijah mused, watching her with the eyes that saw far too much. “Surely it was just Niklaus’ jealousy speaking. We both know how possessive he is of you… but if he is correct, and you care for this Jesse-”
“I’ve interacted with him exactly twice,” Caroline replied walking down the hall, past Elijah. “I don’t do emotion, so what could I possibly feel for some foolish scientist? I’ll get his research and eliminate him. Good night, Elijah.”
Anything Elijah may have said in reply was lost on Caroline as she turned a corner in the hall, leaving him behind.
---
She began to spend more time at Jesse’s than the compound.
She sometimes thought she felt someone watching her, would look around for Stefan, but the Ripper was just as good as she was. He was, in fact, the man who had trained her. So she never spotted him… but she knew he was there, and so she tried to focus on her mission, on getting to Jesse’s research.
While she focused on that, he seemed to focus on her. He gave her gifts, little things like a daisy from the park, or a cheap charm that was supposed to ward off the nightmares she often had but refused to explain.
And at night, he continued to make love to her.
And she began to smile in his presence. To sometimes almost forget that he was a mission, not her boyfriend.
And then it happened.
I love you was murmured into her skin. It was four weeks, far too soon for I love you, but rather than scoff and tell him so, she murmured it back.
And she knew she was screwed.
And that was when the opposition appeared.
She sat in the very first café, the one where she had met Jesse, waiting for him to make his appearance, when the man slid in across from her.
“If it isn’t Angel. You know, we weren’t sure at first. You look different, all dolled up for seduction and subterfuge. The shoes are great, by the way.”
She felt her features shut down, turn cold and carefully impassive.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caroline said coolly, but her hand inched for the knife in her boot. She could slice the vein in his thigh, leave him to bleed out as she made her retreat. Or, if she timed it just right, she could make Jesse believe he had attacked him, destroy any trust this man might try to foster with her pretty boy.
“We work together, Gorgeous, your boy and I,” the man murmured low, smiling at a pretty brunette passing the table. “This goes well, I’ll be gone before he sees me and wonders why you’re talking to someone he believes works security for Augustine.”
“Not a very trusting bunch, are you?” Caroline replied coldly. “Not telling everyone who you are… I take it that you’re the one they call the Nomad? Augustine’s answer to, well, me.”
“You see, that’s better. You know me, I know you, and we can skip that awkward introductory stage. You’ve been sent to kill our prodigy. I can’t allow that, Gorgeous.”
“Then I suggest killing me,” Caroline replied with an agreeable expression, leaning forward as though interested in whatever he had to say. “That’s really your only choice.”
“Maybe,” Enzo agreed, leaning forward with an equally agreeable expression. “Or maybe I’ll see what Jesse’s pretty smile and friendly ways get us instead. I distracted your boy the Ripper. This is a one-time deal, Gorgeous. Don’t waste it.”
Then the Nomad was gone as silently as he appeared, and less than a minute later, Jesse took his vacated seat.
“I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
Caroline looked at him, her throat working frantically.
I distracted your boy the Ripper.
She was insane, it was obvious she was insane. Everything she was and had started and ended with the Family. Without them, she didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know where she belonged.
But looking at Jesse’s warm smile, his pretty eyes, she thought she might know where she wanted to belong.
“Run away with me,” she said, her hand coming out to grasp his. “Trust me, please, and run away with me.”
“Care, what are you talking about?” Jesse asked with a laugh. “Why would we run away?”
“Because if we don’t, I’m going to kill you.”
That stopped the laughter.
---
Admitting to four weeks of lies wasn’t easy.
Admitting to four weeks of lies and convincing someone to trust you despite knowing that you were supposed to kill them? Even harder.
Yet somehow, Jesse believed her.
Even more, he believed her and agreed to run away with her.
She knew the Family, knew the network they had. But that also meant she knew their connections. She knew to avoid Russia and the Norse countries, because their holds were strongest there, outside of the U.S. She knew that they had powerful allies in Japan, Italy, and France, so those were off limits as well. She knew that Augustine had strong ties to Great Britain, China, and India. But that neither organization had particularly vested engergies in Africa or Brazil.
So Brazil was where they fled to.
“How did you get tied up with them?” Jesse asked, tracing patterns with his fingers on her skin. “This… Family. How did you get caught up with them?”
“I don’t remember a time I wasn’t,” Caroline admitted. “I think I was four, when Esther took me in. I don’t know where I was before that. I just remember the Family. The Ripper trained me. He was an experiment that the Family did. I’m not sure how old he is, just that he’s a lot older than me. And that Klaus has been in charge of him for a long time. I don’t know what they do to him, but I do know that he doesn’t remember training me. They did something to him, to mess him up. He doesn’t know how to be anything but loyal to the Family.”
“Neither do you,” Jesse pointed out. “I could kill them, especially Klaus. They tried to destroy you, to ruin everything good in you. Thank God they couldn’t succeed. You’re too good.”
Caroline didn’t think that was true. She had done horrible things in her life. She had started young, killing for the first time with her poisons when she was seven, and she had never really stopped. She could remember training with Stefan, learning to snap a grown man’s neck with nothing more than the strength in her legs. Everything about her was meant to entice, and then to kill.
But Jesse didn’t know it all, not the very darkest parts of her, and she liked the thought of him believing there was still good in her.
“You couldn’t kill anyone,” she said at last, because what was the point in digging in the darkness of her past, when he had finally brought her into the light? “That’s one of the things I love best about you.”
---
They moved often, because she was paranoid and as soon as she thought she might feel eyes on her, she had to flee them. They moved and moved… until they settled and she grew complacent.
And when she came home one day, not to Jesse, but the Nomad, she knew that she had made a mistake, and that Jesse had paid the price.
“Where is he?” she asked, dropping the groceries on the floor and moving past him. She pulled out her guns, one for bullets, and one for the special capsules she made herself to hold her poisons. She was an excellent shot, and sometimes getting close enough to administer with a needles simply wasn’t plausible.
“Gone,” the Nomad replied, and Caroline ignored that. Jesse wasn’t gone. He was light and laughter and life and without him, there was nothing left. She had ran from the Family, betrayed them, and even if returning to them was an option, no one else would have killed Jesse.
Betrayal cut both ways, and Caroline wondered if Klaus had tortured him first.
“You don’t want to see him,” the Nomad said, as if he had read her thoughts. “It was the Wolf first, and then the Ripper with what remained.”
Caroline wanted to throw up. Stefan… he hadn’t gotten his name because of a charming personality. It was because his choice way to kill was to simply use the modifications the Family had made to him to rip his victims apart. And Klaus… Klaus had always been creative.
“Why didn’t you stop them?” Caroline demanded, her back to the Nomad, tight with tension.
“I’m good, Angel, but I’m not a miracle worker. By the time I got here, they already had him. I could maybe take the Wolf on a good day, but the Ripper? Until I found you, I thought he was just a myth.”
“Most do,” Caroline replied, looking out the window over the city. They had managed to avoid the Family for a year. That was eleven months longer than they should have been able to. She supposed she could consider it a good run.
But she had always thought she would pay the price when they got caught, not Jesse.
“Here,” the Nomad said, holding out a Kleenex, and Caroline stared at it blankly for a while before she realized tears tracked down her cheeks. She reached up, touching them with her fingertips. She was crying.
Had Caroline ever cried before? She didn’t think so.
“Enzo,” the Nomad said as he watched her wipe away her tears, and Caroline looked at him with confusion. She was off her game, showing emotion so easily in front of someone who could still be an enemy. “That’s my name. I figured I should tell you it, before I make you my offer.”
“Your offer?” Caroline repeated blankly.
“Yes. I’m here to kill you. You’re still Angel, the Family’s most dangerous assassin, at least the most dangerous one not considered a myth, and that makes you dangerous. So you have choices. I can kill you, and you can join Jesse, if you believe that’s possible. Personally, I figure dead is dead and there’s nothing more. So you can die. Or you can come with me, and take down the people that took him from you.”
“The Family was all I had for a long time,” Caroline stated, fingering the capsule gun, wondering if she should just kill the Nomad, Enzo, and go crawling back.
“The Family killed your family,” Caroline jolted at that, shook her head, because hadn’t they taken her in? “It’s their M.O. They kill their targets and take any children, as long as they’re young enough, and train them to be their assassins. We have files upon files about it at Augustine, Angel. They killed your family, and now they’ve killed Jesse. Do you really want that to be all you have?”
“I could kill you,” Caroline mused, pointing the gun at Enzo. “I could kill you and ignore all this.”
“Then do it, Angel. Pull the trigger and crawl back to the Family” – Enzo stepped forward so the capsule gun pushed into his chest – “do it and live with the murderers of the man you love. You’re still crying, Gorgeous. Think you’ll forget it?”
Caroline watched her own hand with a distant expression, wondering what was wrong with her. It was shaking. She was shaking. She never shook. She was never anything but in utter control.
And wasn’t that a crock of shit? When had she ever been in control? Since the moment she was taken in by the Family, she hadn’t controlled anything in her life. Not her actions, not who she had sex with. Nothing.
Until Jesse. The one choice she had ever made on her own, and he had died for it. Killed by Klaus and Stefan, and she knew he would have made him suffer. Suffer because of her. Because she dared to leave him, when he had left her any time it suited his needs.
“I won’t,” she said, the gun lowering. “I won’t forget it. Every time I close my eyes, I’ll see him as he should be, and as I know he is, because of him. I want him dead, Enzo. I want the whole family dead. And I want to kill them.”
“Okay,” Enzo said. “Then come to Augustine.”
It was all so polite, she mused. He offered her the chance to kill the people she had once thought of as family. She accepted, because isn’t that how assassins worked? An eye for an eye, because she didn’t know anything else.
All so very, very polite.
“Caroline,” she said as they scaled the wall outside of the window, climbed into another apartment three windows down to get over to the fire exit, because they would be watching the exit, waiting for the chance to take her as they had taken Jesse.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” Enzo asked with a raised brow as he pulled out a metal baton, gave it a hard shake, to make it unfold into a staff. The Nomad was excellent at hand-to-hand, she recalled. Preferred the staff and knives to guns.
“It’s my name, or at least the one I use. Angel is just a cute codename. I don’t want it anymore.”
“Keep it,” Enzo replied. “Keep it and turn it into something. Make them fear the very name they gave you.”
Caroline considered that, and then gave a slow nod.
“Okay,” she agreed, before looking out the fire exit, surveying the view and easily catching sight of the men the Family had sent. None of them as good as her. “I’ll cover you.”
“I’m trusting you, Gorgeous,” Enzo said. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“Don’t make me regret choosing you,” Caroline replied.
OMG I literally just remembered Jesse!!!! JESSE, you guys! Why didn't they bring him back?! I mean, I wasn't in love with his character or anything but he was a cutie and nice...and another guy that was interested in Caroline and didn't give a fuck about Elena. So there for another relationship I would have rather seen than Caroline having one-sided feelings for her best friend.
Several asks this morning inquiring as to whether or not I still ship Klaroline or if I have "abandoned ship"?
CALM DOWN, PEOPLE.
Do I still ship Klaroline? Absolutely. They are my number one TVD/TO ship.
Do I also ship Caroline with other gentlemen callers? Yeah. I sure as shit do. Why? Because I like to enjoy what I watch and I love Caroline and her sass and snark and joy with other male characters on TVD.
Caroline/Enzo? Yep.
Caroline/Stefan? Yep.
Caroline/Jesse (RIP)? Yep.
Caroline/Kol? Yep.
Caroline/Markos? Probably.
Look, I just like having a cheerful and sassy Caroline on my screen. If that just so happens to be with a sweet gentleman caller, then so be it. If it's bonding time with, hopefully, NEW friends? Fantastic. Why do people suddenly need reasons for shipping what they do? Can't I just like my favorite character together with someone pretty?
Basically, I am a Caroline Forbes fan first and foremost. So, I just want her to be in all the scenes, with or without dudes.
I have not "abandoned ship", nor am I a "traitor" to Klaroline. As you can see from my blog, I still make Klaroline fanfic covers and still read a RIDICULOUS amount of KC fic. So, yes, I do get plastered and watch TVD and feel "safe" to post that I ship the hell outta Carenzo and Steroline. I give no fucks anymore. You can't make me feel bad about shipping what I ship because it's what I enjoy.
I also am attempting to live vicariously through her because I, too, have a thing for menz with accents and would like one for my very own.
I am a multi-shipping sonofabitch. Embrace it or leave me now. :)
I just went through the Klayley tag. I didn't see a single post hating on Klaroline, but I did see many that called KCers out on their terrible behavior.
And they are right! Why can't we see that we can be passionate about Klaroline WITHOUT bashing on other people?! The queen of our ship's videos, xxwhisperofdreamsxx, just left us! While I scrolled through the Klayley tag, I saw SO MANY posts of people who used to ship Klaroline but stopped because we're mean! WHEN ARE WE GOING TO SEE THAT WE'RE THE ONES AT FAULT HERE?! OUR OWN SHIP'S FANBASE IS SHRINKING BECAUSE OF A FEW BULLIES!
And I know it's not all of us, but we can't say it's a minority of us anymore. I go through the Klaroline tag many times a day and about a quarter of it is about OTHER ships. Stop hating, and maybe Plec, Candice, and Joseph Morgan will respect us a little bit more.
To all the beautiful Klaroline shippers who are peaceful and non-hating, you guys are the most fabulous people in TVD/TO-verse and please don't ever change <3
To all the Klayley, Klamille, Jessoline, Forwood, or whatever shippers that have received hate from bullying Klaroliners... I am truly sorry. Please don't think that we're all like that and please continue to ship what you ship. BE WHO YOU ARE, OKAY?
Thursday night’s episode featured the triumphant return of recently turned vampire and college biology assistant, Jessie, who also happens to be Caroline’s first college conquest. They kissed way back around “Remembrance Day” in Mystic Falls, before Jessie disappeared. (He was being held captive and being treated like a lab rat by Dr. Maxfield and the Augustine mad scientist club.) He and Caroline reunite for a short period of time before he goes off the deep end (too much testing will do that, I guess), and Elena stakes him to death because she’s officially a doppelgänger badass. So we can officially add him (even though he’s now deceased) to the list of Caroline’s poor choices in men:
