Klaus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wholeworldoutthere) wrote2012-11-28 04:28 pm
wholeworldoutthere) wrote2012-11-28 04:28 pm
Entry tags:
Not a swamp witch after all - November 2
For two days, Klaus and Caroline spend a lot of time inside (during the day, anyway). The owners of the house they're staying in, the very ones that graciously invited the young married couple to stay with them, have had to leave on a mysterious and rather abrupt trip, or so says a letter they left at their home, a little while after Klaus first arrived.
So the servants have been there for the two of them, tending to their every need as if their masters were still there, and it's been a very luxurious couple of days. Klaus has stayed mostly inside during the day, in order to keep Caroline company, and at night they go out and explore the town and its surroundings.
Two days pass quickly for Klaus, although he knows that it is the exact opposite for Caroline, and for her sake he is glad when it is time to mount their horses and head out to the place where they had met the witch last time. It's a couple of hours before they reach the crossroads where Caroline had followed her instinct, and they take the same road and stop where the witch had been standing.
"She had better show up," Klaus says, something a little dangerous in his tone, as he dismounts, puts a hand on his horse's neck to steady it, just in case the witch shows up out of nowhere.
Caroline was more than bored. Originally? Just bored. Bored, and there were precious few differences between waiting in a mansion and waiting on a station, and at night, there wasn't nearly enough to do. So, bored - but then, as time went on, she started to get more and more anxious; what if she didn't show up? What if Caroline would never get a ring? What if they didn't go back on the station, and she'd be stuck living in some house in the Carribean until 200 years rolled around and she was born again?
She was, to put it nicely, a little on edge.
"Yeah, I know, she'd better." She swung herself down from her horse, still holding the reins in her hands. "If she doesn't? I'm going to find her and give her a piece of my mind, just you wait." She frowned, her brows furrowing. "I mean, I can't just wait forever, and it's not like the station really seems to be handing out passes to go into the place to get your stuff back."
Tia Dalma suspects dey don't know she's coming because she can hear dem talkin and it sounds strange. All this talk about not bein able to wait forever is strange and when she gives a promise, she keeps it. She don't expect dem to know that, though, as they's clearly not from here.
She's got de ring just like dey asked, complete with de charm to keep her safe from the sun. Dere's a little more, too, because she doesn't just do things out of de goodness of her heart. She steps from de shadows.
"Told you I'd be here, didn't I? Did you trust me?"
"I make it a habit not to trust anyone," Klaus tells her, and he's relieved to see her there, especially since the sun isn't too far out. Best timed so they could check that the ring works, before he gives her double the gold he originally had, a heavy purse in the pocket of his coat.
The horse is a little spooked, but less so than last time around, and he leads it to the side of the road and ties the reins to a tree there. "Steady," he tells it, as if that might help, a hand on the side of its face, before he walks back to the road, to face off the witch. "Have you managed?" he asks her.
Caroline looks between the two of them, her smile a little too bright, a little too tight. She's following Klaus' lead, mostly because if she blurts out that she needs the ring, there'd be no reason for the lady to give it to her, money or no - and she needs it. She needs it, because she's just about done being trapped in the night. She misses the sun, and she's pretty sure that if she had a tan? It was long gone by now.
"I have," Tia Dalma says, handing over a small leather pouch that contains the ring. "It won't protect you from anything other than de sun, though, so you still have ta be careful."
"All we asked for, thank you," Klaus says, taking the pouch and throwing it over to Caroline. "You'll have your gold as soon as we make certain that it works." He's not going to trust a witch's word that the ring is enchanted, although for her sake, he has to hope that she did not try and pull one over on them.
Caroline catches the pouch, even though she shouldn't have been able to - her reflexes are better, and she moves a little too fast to be normal. She's all smiles, because finally she's got what she wants, what she's wanted since day one. A daylight ring, so that she can be normal again. That's one of the only things Caroline really wants, that she's wanted since she turned even if she doesn't talk about it. To cling to that normalcy as long as she can, to be in high school, to be with her friends until it's the inevitable time when she's still 17 and they're thirty and it gets weird.
She pulls open the pouch, and she can't really express what she's thinking, besides a bubbly "Thank you so much," and then she puts on the ring.
It's odd, watching the blood drain from her face. She's pale from lack of sun, sure, but this is a whole other level of pale. This was seconds before passing out pale, and it only happens for a moment before things abruptly turn to chaos. She can't control herself, the anger and rage an odd layer without cause, and Caroline - what remained of her in those seconds - was trying to fight herself even as she could feel her fangs drop, even as she moved faster than she'd had reason to move since she'd ended up here - and she's going for Klaus' heart without so much as a moment's hesitation. It's like her mind had its own impetus, one that overwhelmed her and controlled her. Tia Dalma was forgotten, while Caroline, a vampire of a year and change, tried to kill an Original - which would kill her in any case, if she had even been remotely able to succeed.
It was, to be honest, even more finely crafted a spell than Tia Dalma knew.
Klaus might not trust anyone, but he still was not ready for this. His surprise means that Caroline manages to reach him, but he is still faster and stronger than her, even if it is by a smaller margin than it used to be. He grabs her and throws her off course before she can actually do anything to him, and his own fangs haven't dropped yet, because he has better control than that. He knows that it can only be the witch doing this, because why else would Caroline attack him, so he's barely had time to throw Caroline off that he's speeding towards the traitor that really does not know what she's up against.
Then again, unbeknownst to him, neither does he.
De spell works da way she wanted it to, with de young one under her control. Once dis man is dead, Tia Dalma can pick another target, and another, and have her own personal slave to do what needs to be done.
But de man seems to be able to fight de girl and comes headed straight toward her.
Caroline landed in a heap of skirts and hoops, but it's only a moment before she's back on her feet and she launches herself at him from behind. It's terrifying, that she is not holding back, that the monster - if you believe that she's a monster - is unleashed, and she's moving to snap his neck, knowing it would buy her time, that she couldn't kill him but she could try. She would try, because even if under it all there was a piece of Caroline in there - a piece that was terrified and horrified and couldn't stop any of this - it was subsumed by Tia Dalma's spell.
In normal circumstances, circumstances that do not involve bloody nanites, Caroline wouldn't have got close. As it is, though, it takes Klaus a moment too long to notice her footsteps speeding up behind him, and he turns around at the last possible second, sidestepping her at the same moment, and hoping to do to her exactly what she has been planning to do to him, even though he doesn't know it. He just knows that if he snaps her neck, she'll stay out for a while, and he can deal with the witch. Slowly, and painfully.
It happens in an instant, a flurry of motion that's not quite too fast for human eyes. Caroline's foot comes down on Klaus' lower leg, and there's a sickening crunch even as he manages what he'd planned - and she sees it coming, but she's not fast enough to move away. It's a quick Snap and she just drops to the ground in a boneless heap, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Her head's at an unnatural angle, and all that's left is Klaus and Tia Dalma.
Dese ones are stronger than she thought and she's starting to get a little nervous. Dere's ways for her to get away but she's not as close to de water as she needs ta be and so she decides she'll try and talk to him instead.
"Don't be hasty now, boy. You don't know what I am."
Klaus's femur cracks just a second before Caroline's vertebrae do, and when she collapses to the floor, he ends up in a one-legged crouch, tears in his eyes from the sheer pain of it. But he isn't crying; he's too angry for that. Even with his abilities lessened, he is still someone who's lived a thousand years old, and pain is something you can teach yourself to ignore. He watches Caroline's face, even with her head tilted at this odd angle, and he looks at the thigh he's not leaning on. There is a bump where the bone broke, and he clenches his jaw as he pushes it back into place.
It won't heal for a while, what should have been minutes probably hours now, but like hell if he needs both legs to deal with a witch. "A soon to be dead witch, is what you are," he answers her, almost nonchalantly, but for the thread of danger in his voice.
His back is still to her, but all his senses are focused on her, as he grabs a sturdy stick by the side of the road, undoes his cravat, and fixes himself a makeshift splint. "You see," he goes on, as he works, just as pleasantly-yet-not, "you haven't the faintest idea what I am either. And even the people who do find it difficult to get rid of me. I'm one of a kind, you see. And I hate that you just made me snap her neck," he finishes, pushing up to his feet - or rather, his foot, balancing his weight on his good leg as he turns to face her.
"You be triflin' wit things outside your ken," Tia Dalma says, voice laced with warning and a hint of her true power. "We can work together, though, and be more den dis place. Final offer."
"You might have wanted to offer that before you forced me to kill her," Klaus points out, with a not that pleasant smile. "I might have even spent a few seconds considering it." And he ignores the pain in his leg to rush at the witch anyway.
"I may be away from de sea a little but I'm still strong." Magic isn't much of a match against physical powers sometimes, though, and she tries to duck and roll even as she mutters a spell. Dis one is much stronger than dis body she has.
Not a simple swamp witch after all, Klaus figures, between her words and the invisible shield he runs into. He's about to strike at it with all his might when he feels that telltale tingling over his skin, and he glances back at Caroline on the ground before glaring back over at the witch, and then he is gone.
So the servants have been there for the two of them, tending to their every need as if their masters were still there, and it's been a very luxurious couple of days. Klaus has stayed mostly inside during the day, in order to keep Caroline company, and at night they go out and explore the town and its surroundings.
Two days pass quickly for Klaus, although he knows that it is the exact opposite for Caroline, and for her sake he is glad when it is time to mount their horses and head out to the place where they had met the witch last time. It's a couple of hours before they reach the crossroads where Caroline had followed her instinct, and they take the same road and stop where the witch had been standing.
"She had better show up," Klaus says, something a little dangerous in his tone, as he dismounts, puts a hand on his horse's neck to steady it, just in case the witch shows up out of nowhere.
Caroline was more than bored. Originally? Just bored. Bored, and there were precious few differences between waiting in a mansion and waiting on a station, and at night, there wasn't nearly enough to do. So, bored - but then, as time went on, she started to get more and more anxious; what if she didn't show up? What if Caroline would never get a ring? What if they didn't go back on the station, and she'd be stuck living in some house in the Carribean until 200 years rolled around and she was born again?
She was, to put it nicely, a little on edge.
"Yeah, I know, she'd better." She swung herself down from her horse, still holding the reins in her hands. "If she doesn't? I'm going to find her and give her a piece of my mind, just you wait." She frowned, her brows furrowing. "I mean, I can't just wait forever, and it's not like the station really seems to be handing out passes to go into the place to get your stuff back."
Tia Dalma suspects dey don't know she's coming because she can hear dem talkin and it sounds strange. All this talk about not bein able to wait forever is strange and when she gives a promise, she keeps it. She don't expect dem to know that, though, as they's clearly not from here.
She's got de ring just like dey asked, complete with de charm to keep her safe from the sun. Dere's a little more, too, because she doesn't just do things out of de goodness of her heart. She steps from de shadows.
"Told you I'd be here, didn't I? Did you trust me?"
"I make it a habit not to trust anyone," Klaus tells her, and he's relieved to see her there, especially since the sun isn't too far out. Best timed so they could check that the ring works, before he gives her double the gold he originally had, a heavy purse in the pocket of his coat.
The horse is a little spooked, but less so than last time around, and he leads it to the side of the road and ties the reins to a tree there. "Steady," he tells it, as if that might help, a hand on the side of its face, before he walks back to the road, to face off the witch. "Have you managed?" he asks her.
Caroline looks between the two of them, her smile a little too bright, a little too tight. She's following Klaus' lead, mostly because if she blurts out that she needs the ring, there'd be no reason for the lady to give it to her, money or no - and she needs it. She needs it, because she's just about done being trapped in the night. She misses the sun, and she's pretty sure that if she had a tan? It was long gone by now.
"I have," Tia Dalma says, handing over a small leather pouch that contains the ring. "It won't protect you from anything other than de sun, though, so you still have ta be careful."
"All we asked for, thank you," Klaus says, taking the pouch and throwing it over to Caroline. "You'll have your gold as soon as we make certain that it works." He's not going to trust a witch's word that the ring is enchanted, although for her sake, he has to hope that she did not try and pull one over on them.
Caroline catches the pouch, even though she shouldn't have been able to - her reflexes are better, and she moves a little too fast to be normal. She's all smiles, because finally she's got what she wants, what she's wanted since day one. A daylight ring, so that she can be normal again. That's one of the only things Caroline really wants, that she's wanted since she turned even if she doesn't talk about it. To cling to that normalcy as long as she can, to be in high school, to be with her friends until it's the inevitable time when she's still 17 and they're thirty and it gets weird.
She pulls open the pouch, and she can't really express what she's thinking, besides a bubbly "Thank you so much," and then she puts on the ring.
It's odd, watching the blood drain from her face. She's pale from lack of sun, sure, but this is a whole other level of pale. This was seconds before passing out pale, and it only happens for a moment before things abruptly turn to chaos. She can't control herself, the anger and rage an odd layer without cause, and Caroline - what remained of her in those seconds - was trying to fight herself even as she could feel her fangs drop, even as she moved faster than she'd had reason to move since she'd ended up here - and she's going for Klaus' heart without so much as a moment's hesitation. It's like her mind had its own impetus, one that overwhelmed her and controlled her. Tia Dalma was forgotten, while Caroline, a vampire of a year and change, tried to kill an Original - which would kill her in any case, if she had even been remotely able to succeed.
It was, to be honest, even more finely crafted a spell than Tia Dalma knew.
Klaus might not trust anyone, but he still was not ready for this. His surprise means that Caroline manages to reach him, but he is still faster and stronger than her, even if it is by a smaller margin than it used to be. He grabs her and throws her off course before she can actually do anything to him, and his own fangs haven't dropped yet, because he has better control than that. He knows that it can only be the witch doing this, because why else would Caroline attack him, so he's barely had time to throw Caroline off that he's speeding towards the traitor that really does not know what she's up against.
Then again, unbeknownst to him, neither does he.
De spell works da way she wanted it to, with de young one under her control. Once dis man is dead, Tia Dalma can pick another target, and another, and have her own personal slave to do what needs to be done.
But de man seems to be able to fight de girl and comes headed straight toward her.
Caroline landed in a heap of skirts and hoops, but it's only a moment before she's back on her feet and she launches herself at him from behind. It's terrifying, that she is not holding back, that the monster - if you believe that she's a monster - is unleashed, and she's moving to snap his neck, knowing it would buy her time, that she couldn't kill him but she could try. She would try, because even if under it all there was a piece of Caroline in there - a piece that was terrified and horrified and couldn't stop any of this - it was subsumed by Tia Dalma's spell.
In normal circumstances, circumstances that do not involve bloody nanites, Caroline wouldn't have got close. As it is, though, it takes Klaus a moment too long to notice her footsteps speeding up behind him, and he turns around at the last possible second, sidestepping her at the same moment, and hoping to do to her exactly what she has been planning to do to him, even though he doesn't know it. He just knows that if he snaps her neck, she'll stay out for a while, and he can deal with the witch. Slowly, and painfully.
It happens in an instant, a flurry of motion that's not quite too fast for human eyes. Caroline's foot comes down on Klaus' lower leg, and there's a sickening crunch even as he manages what he'd planned - and she sees it coming, but she's not fast enough to move away. It's a quick Snap and she just drops to the ground in a boneless heap, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Her head's at an unnatural angle, and all that's left is Klaus and Tia Dalma.
Dese ones are stronger than she thought and she's starting to get a little nervous. Dere's ways for her to get away but she's not as close to de water as she needs ta be and so she decides she'll try and talk to him instead.
"Don't be hasty now, boy. You don't know what I am."
Klaus's femur cracks just a second before Caroline's vertebrae do, and when she collapses to the floor, he ends up in a one-legged crouch, tears in his eyes from the sheer pain of it. But he isn't crying; he's too angry for that. Even with his abilities lessened, he is still someone who's lived a thousand years old, and pain is something you can teach yourself to ignore. He watches Caroline's face, even with her head tilted at this odd angle, and he looks at the thigh he's not leaning on. There is a bump where the bone broke, and he clenches his jaw as he pushes it back into place.
It won't heal for a while, what should have been minutes probably hours now, but like hell if he needs both legs to deal with a witch. "A soon to be dead witch, is what you are," he answers her, almost nonchalantly, but for the thread of danger in his voice.
His back is still to her, but all his senses are focused on her, as he grabs a sturdy stick by the side of the road, undoes his cravat, and fixes himself a makeshift splint. "You see," he goes on, as he works, just as pleasantly-yet-not, "you haven't the faintest idea what I am either. And even the people who do find it difficult to get rid of me. I'm one of a kind, you see. And I hate that you just made me snap her neck," he finishes, pushing up to his feet - or rather, his foot, balancing his weight on his good leg as he turns to face her.
"You be triflin' wit things outside your ken," Tia Dalma says, voice laced with warning and a hint of her true power. "We can work together, though, and be more den dis place. Final offer."
"You might have wanted to offer that before you forced me to kill her," Klaus points out, with a not that pleasant smile. "I might have even spent a few seconds considering it." And he ignores the pain in his leg to rush at the witch anyway.
"I may be away from de sea a little but I'm still strong." Magic isn't much of a match against physical powers sometimes, though, and she tries to duck and roll even as she mutters a spell. Dis one is much stronger than dis body she has.
Not a simple swamp witch after all, Klaus figures, between her words and the invisible shield he runs into. He's about to strike at it with all his might when he feels that telltale tingling over his skin, and he glances back at Caroline on the ground before glaring back over at the witch, and then he is gone.