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caroline forbes

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Klaus beams in with everybody else, but a quick look around assures him that Caroline's body isn't here, and he knows just where to look. He ignores everyone, although on his way he finds John Watson and gets him to give him a proper splint. Watson clearly thinks that Klaus is a little insane for having walked even this little with his makeshift splint, and tries to get Klaus to take a crutch, at least, but Klaus ignores him.

Once he's fixed up enough that he can walk - painfully, but that's nothing, and the broken bone will have mended in a couple of hours - Klaus is on his way again, towards the morgue.

It's not an easy thing, bringing Caroline's body back to their room on a broken leg, but he does it anyway, and changes out of his Port Royal clothes. He loosens Caroline's corset, feeds her a little of his blood in case it helps, and waits. He's taken her ring off, and he's holding it and wondering what to do with it. Now that they're cut off from the bloody witch, it might not subject the wearer to her will anymore, and yet still work against the sun, if she enchanted it for that at all. Best not to trash it, but he doesn't like it.

Eventually, his leg mends, and he's sketching again, the ring abandoned on the desk - sketches of Caroline in Port Royal.

And eventually, Caroline moves, and it's an effort not to crowd her. Instead, he puts pen and paper down and leans his forearms on his thighs, body angled towards the bed where he laid her out.

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This is something that Caroline's been through more than she ever wants to think about or admit. Not the possession, no, but something else. She's been shot and had her neck broken and her head smashed in and all sorts of things, but this is way worse then the dying, if you ask her. This is the dredging your consciousness up out of nothing and you sort of wish you were dead.

Which defeats the point. She groaned quietly, and barely lifted her head - it hurt, it all hurt, and now was a lot worse than the last time her neck was broken because the healing was a lot slower. It's a second before she can flex her fingers again, and her body's making all those connections - the deep ones, like breathing and heart beat and nerves are rebuilt, and it sort of feels like everything's asleep like when you sit wrong and your leg goes way past pins and needles.

She doesn't cry, though, because if Caroline knows how to do something, it's die - and she just swallows thickly, and stares at the ceiling and it's then that she realises that they're home. She's home, somehow, and her eyes flick to Klaus, where he was sitting across the room. She licks her lips, and tries to think of what to say, and she remembers all of it and the words die in her throat because she doesn't know if there really are any words.

Finally, she comes up with some, as inappropriate as they may be. She can tell what she's wearing, and she's pushing herself up so that she can get it off, even if it's slower than usual and she's still clumsy and things feel weirdly blunted. "Help me," she says without a hello or a what happened or anything else. She's just sort of standing, sort of sitting, sort of leaning, and trying to undo the laces even if she's mostly failing.

Just these two words, and it's enough to have him move, not as fast as he could, but still fast, to stop her freaking out, which she is clearly doing. His hands wrap around hers, eyes on hers, and he tells her, "Let me," before he releases her hands and starts to undo her laces, helps her out of the clothes all the more quickly if she, in fact, lets him.

It's all in a pile on the floor, and she's wearing what could only be described as a puritanical nightgown, and she just nods, sitting on the edge of the bed. When her nerves end up connected right, each time there's the intense feeling of pins and needles crawling under her skin, but she exhales slowly, and looks up at him. "How long's it been?" It's a soft question, but it's still guarded, still almost cagey as she looks down at her fingers and realises that the ring's gone. Of course it's gone, he'd not keep it on her, would he? Not if she was dead and it made her crazy - but they weren't talking about that right now.

She sits down in nothing but her shift, and Klaus sits beside her, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to be there, to be touched if she wants to. "Eleven hours and some change," he tells her. "Do you remember what happened?"

With magic in the picture, who knows.

"Yeah," she said with a nod, and she's not touching him or anything else really. "I remember." And she pulls in a breath, trying to re-center herself, because it's all too real, and she's still not feeling well - shocker, but the lack of blood and the slowness of the healing make both be pretty much awful. "Can you grab me something to eat?" She looks over at him when she asks, and she looks tired, her smile small and entirely perfunctory.

She rubs the place on her finger where the ring had been, and nods once. "It's good that you took it off," she says, because she should say something.

Klaus is moving to the replicator by the time she speaks again, and he confirms, "I wasn't going to take that chance," before he tries and gets decent blood out of the thing. The first blood bag smells off, but the second is alright, for dead blood, and it's warm, so he pours it into a mug and brings it over to her. "There you go."

Magic can work in so many different ways, and he has no idea what kind of witch that witch really was. "The station beamed us back before she got what was coming to her," he tells Caroline, since that much she doesn't know, and she ought to. It also means before Klaus could learn more about the spell she crafted, or before he could get her to take it out of the ring.

She doesn't say thank you or anything else, just gulping it down gratefully- not caring how it tasted, that it's not the neatest thing in the world, or anything else. She nods as the mug is empty - only some twenty seconds later, the warm ceramic in her hands. "How's your leg?" She's still looking down at the mug, rather than up at Klaus, and at least this time it's not that she's pretending that she's fine, it's that she's pretty overwhelmed. She can take this in bits and pieces, and that she smashed his leg - she remembered it, the way it felt when the bone gave way - it the piece she's currently tackling. Not that she was possessed, or whatever.

Because it was awful, and she doesn't even know if she's got some way to process that at all.

"It's healed," Klaus assures her easily, and holds his hand out for the mug. "More?"

The leg really doesn't matter, if you ask Klaus, but as usual, he's going to let her process it the way she likes. Well, as usual, up until a certain point, but they're nowhere near that yet; she's barely just come to.

"Yeah, more." She passes him the mug, and when he brings it back she downs that, too, before setting it carefully on the side table. "So," she says, her eyes flicking up to his face. "Did anyone else die this time?" Because the last time, there'd been two bodies brought back, and this time-- well. She guessed she qualified, even if she wasn't thinking about that right now. She flexes her fingers, and her brows knit as she continues, "It's weird," and it's clear it's an afterthought. "It happens slow enough that I can feel it, now. The last bits going back together."

"I'm sorry I had to do that," Klaus says, and pulls his hands out of his pockets to sit beside her on the bed. Again, not crowding her. It seems obvious to him - both that he had to and that he wishes he didn't - but he still says the words, because she might need to hear them. "And I have no idea. I haven't been checking up on anyone."

He really doesn't care about anyone enough - the only ones he does care about, he trusts to handle themselves, like Nuada or Mystique.

"Hey," she says, trying to keep her voice light even as she's still flexing her fingers. "It's not every day I go crazy and try to kill you, right?" And there's an upwards lilt to that last word, one that is remarkably close to panic. It's her trying to somehow make sense of this. "So, you know, no harm, no foul, and all of that." Even though it was really obvious that there was harm, she just didn't know what to say.

"Is that what it felt like? Going crazy?" Klaus prods, gently, his eyes on her face. He knows, intimately, what really going crazy feels like, and he's certain she has no idea. But he wants to know what she's going through, whatever words she wants to put on it, and he's doing his best to imagine what she thinks going crazy is.

"No," she said softly. "It was like, I knew what was happening, and I didn't- That's not what I wanted, but there was this- I don't know, shell, that was just so angry, so angry and wanted to kill you and had to, and it wasn't me and can we not?" She knew they had to, but she'a not handling it well. "I just had to kill you. It didn't matter if you killed me, if you killed me for good, if you had torn my heart out, I had to do it. And-" And it wasn't like being compelled, she didn't believe it, underneath. "So, you know," And her voice breaks twice as she tries to say it, her voice oddly raw as she tried to pitch the words like it was no big deal. "Probably the best thing that could have happened, right? What you did."

"The best thing that could have happened was me tearing her throat out before I had to lay a hand on you," Klaus answers, matter-of-factly enough, but there's a hint of exactly how angry he is underneath. He hates that he couldn't protect, he hates that he couldn't be fast enough, strong enough; in short, he hates this bloody place, even if it brought them together.

"Yeah," she says, and there's still that thread of panic in her voice that's just sort of bubbling up to the surface instead of having come up all at once. "I mean, her being dead before I decided you were enemy number one would have been good, right?" And she pulls in a breath, and she tries to find other words. "Do you die a lot? Like this, I mean, I'd guess not, right? Since you're all fancy hybrid, and all?"

And her hands are shaking, so she presses them to her legs so that they'll stop.

"It happens," Klaus says, but he isn't lingering on the memories because he is focusing on her, instead. He moves, slowly, closer to her, holding his arm out so she has a warning what he's about to do, and he pulls her against him if she lets him. "You've got to cry it out, love."

It's obvious how shaken she is, and trying to hold on will not be doing herself any favours.

She lets him, but she doesn't cry, she shakes her head as she's pulled against him. "Do you know how many times this is? How many times really horrible stuff has happened? I've been like this for less than two years, and it's horrible. It's awful," she says, and her voice is small and strained. "And now - I did that. To you, I did that. I couldn't stop it, I couldn't-- It was worse than being compelled, because I knew and I couldn't stop myself, Klaus."

"You didn't do anything, love, the witch did," Klaus says, even though she knows that already, she clearly needs to hear it. "And I did much worse to you, without having anyone taking over my will, than you did to me, so if you're really looking for someone awful..."

He doesn't feel awful; he knows he did the only thing he could. But he would much rather she hated him than herself.

"Not someone awful," She says, and she shakes her head. "Everything. Too much stuff has happened. That's awful. That two years ago, my life was normal, and nobody was dying, and- I've died so many times in a year, and it's horrible. It's awful and horrible, and my boyfriend just had to snap my neck and-"

And that's when she does start to cry, her voice thick with the tears. "I've been compelled and mind-controlled and tortured three times, and had my head smashed in and my neck broken and I'm tired and I'm eighteen." Her forehead presses against Klaus' neck, and it's so hard, that she knows that it's been close a million times, and she doesn't know if this is how things are now, and it makes her feel ill. "I can't do this. I can't just have this keep happening, Klaus."

And it's the really-really first time she's actually thought about it, about turning it off, about making herself not care because she's so tired of being collateral damage.

Klaus doesn't think that there is anything beyond her words but actually processing what has happened, in part by expressing her dismay at the whole of it. So he just holds her, and kisses her hair, and tells her it's going to be alright (because he believes it), and that she's stronger than she thinks, and nothing can extinguish the light inside her.

Of course, he has no idea what she's thinking about, or he would amend that statement. She certainly can extinguish her own light.

"Would I not care anymore?" The question comes out of the blue, and it's the sort of thing that she can't really stop. She's not really talked about it with anybody, but if there's anyone she can trust to tell her about it, it's him. She doesn't realise that with no context, the question probably is non-sensical, but there you go.

"Wh..." Klaus is frowning and about to ask what she is talking about, but there's really only one thing, and he trails off.

"You wouldn't," he confirms, after a moment. "Well, it would likely make you angry more than anything else. And you'd probably be dead within a week, in these circumstances."

He doesn't trust that she wouldn't kill, if she did it. It's the most pragmatic reason why he doesn't want her to do it, the one that doesn't make his blood boil, but it's what he chooses to focus on, because it is her choice, and he understands the need. He tried it, too.

"I don't know if I can keep doing this," she says, her voice thick. "I don't. My dad-" And she shook her head. "I mean, I can't, right? I'm supposed to be the one who's dealing with this okay and oh, hey, I'm a vampire now and I'm the poster girl for 'Your Life's Not Over Just Because You Have To Drink Blood.'" She pulled in a breath. "You had to do it. I know you had to do it, but-"

And that's when she pulled in a deep breath. "It's okay, right? Like, I'm okay, and- and hey, if I was human, I'd be dead, so- so that's good, and-- and I mean, I'm still trapped here, but-" She shakes her head, and that's what pushes her to disentangle herself from him, standing up with her arms crossed and her shoulders high. "And, I mean, people are dying and it's just like I never left Mystic Falls, so, I mean, it's not like it would- It's not like it can really get worse without me being dead," and even as she says it, she knows it's not true, and that's why her face twists as she looks away.

"It's never about things getting worse or better," Klaus says, after a few seconds pass, and he's still sitting on the bed, leaning on his hands on either side of his thighs, and looking up at her. "Because they always can, in a myriad of ways. It's about finding the beauty and the light and all the other reasons that make it worth it. That make all of it worth it."

All of it, including the deaths, and the pain, all sorts of pain, all of it. There's only one moment in his life Klaus was unable to do that, and he likes to think of it as special circumstances.

"I can't tell you how to do that, and I can't tell you flipping the switch wouldn't be the way for you to get by for a little while." A little while; when you're a thousand years old, the time that tends to work for doesn't seem very long at all. "But there is so much light and beauty out there, Caroline, whatever form they take for you. Now," and he stands, his eyes on hers. "What do you need, right now?"

"Right now, I feel like the only thing I have going for me is a bottomless wardrobe and you. I mean, I don't have my friends, I missed Prom, I've missed everything, and you- You just-- There wasn't anything else you could have done, but, you know, I saw you do it. I saw--" And she just sort of stops, and bites her lips together. "So that makes my dad, my history teacher, my boyfriend, and one of the best friends I've had here, and my real best friend's doppleganger, and then just some other people. You know. Good track record." She's trying to just make it into a litany of what happened, that the fact that it was Klaus not mattering as much, but it does. That if she just shuffles it in with the rest it doesn't make it different than anything else.

It matters, and she hate that it matters, but it does. She intellectually knows why he did it, she understands what happened, but that doesn't stop her from knowing what it looks like, when Klaus takes her head in his hands and snaps.

"Caroline," he says, and waits until she's stopped, and is looking at him, and might actually listen to him, this time around. "What do you need right now?" he repeats, calmly, evenly.

He can talk around in circles with her, but what good is it going to do? He's not shutting down dialogue, far from it, but he wants to start with the here and now. Anchor her in this moment.

"I don't know." And those three words sound so incredibly hopeless, and she's hugging herself where she's standing in front of him because she literally doesn't know what to do or what she needs or anything, and that's when she says it, small and vulnerable. "You killed me." There's not blame in that, but a sort of helpless confusion that's very unlike her, like she's a ship adrift at sea with no moorings.

Klaus simply nods at that, his eyes quiet on hers, a slow, steady nod that means I know, and that means you know, too, you know why it was the best option. It's acknowledgement, but there's nothing he can do to make it better if she doesn't know what he should be doing, if she doesn't tell him.

It's the first time he wants to make it better for someone he's killed.

Well, for someone whose neck he's snapped, anyway. He didn't kill her, but he knows what she means and it isn't the time to play on words - or maybe it is, but he doesn't because he trusts that she doesn't need that much, that she knows that much already.

She nods too, and it's when her face crumples, and she looks away as she starts to cry, but it's not big active sobs like before, just tears trickling down her face. "I need you," she said thickly, but she doesn't know what more than that, what she needs more than that, or what she expects him to do. She's torn and trying and it's up there with the most difficult things she's ever done, even if it's not -the- worst.

She's barely said the words that he's there, arms wrapped warmly around her, not too tight, because he did just snap her neck a few hours ago, so she needs to know that she can get away if she likes, if she needs. One hand is stroking her hair, and he presses a soft, long kiss to her temple. "You've got me, love. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere."

It's one of the things that she still doesn't know what to do, and she just stands there for a long while, letting him hold her as she stood in his arms. She didn't know how long she was there, how long it took for her to curl up in bed and sleep what amount she could. She had nightmares-- it was no surprise that she had nightmares, and it was days before things even sort of got close to normal. Even after a week it still wasn't right - he'd move in the periphery of her vision and she'd tense, and the amount of time she spent in their room, in pajamas, eating whatever ice cream she could coax out of the dispenser was somewhat surprising, before she started going out in the world, again.

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