wholeworldoutthere | February 15

When Klaus gets beamed back to the Porta Ianulis, he's still feeling under the weather, to say the least. He was partly healed, because otherwise, he's fairly certain he would have ended up in a puddle of his own blood in quarantine, but his left arm is still lacerated, and the neater wounds over his ribcage are barely just healed. He's only been given two blood bags during his little stay in quarantine, which is not helping this frustratingly slow rate of healing. He's sore, his arm is a mess of numb pain when he keeps it still, acute pain when he moves it, and he's hungry beyond words: the few people he crosses on his way back to his room are an incredibly tempting meal.

The tempting meals he crosses also happen to look at him oddly, because his shirt is in tatters, his lacerated arm can be seen through the tatters, and he is full of dried blood. His blood.

He's not sure whether Caroline will even be in the room, given how he left the day before, that day of all days, and didn't come back. The door slides open, and he sees her curled up on the bed in one of his t-shirts, something she hasn't done in a long time, with Star asleep where Klaus usually is. The door closes behind him and he stands there and watches her for a moment, before he walks over to the replicator, asking it for blood in a whisper. No need to wake her up.

He feeds, for a long time. Then he sits by his desk and tilts his head back, staring up at the ceiling for a good five minutes. His arm is resting across his stomach, painfully slowly healing. After a moment, he tilts his head back up and looks at Caroline and Star. A little while later, and he stands up to go get the shower. He rips the remains of his shirt right off his back, instead of trying to take it off, and manages one-handedly to get rid of the rest of his clothes.

The water only makes the pain worse, but he needed that shower.

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"What?" She doesn't pull away from him, but she lifts her head, her brows furrowing. "I don't understand."

"I attacked him, Caroline," he tells her, and since she is going to pull away, he does it first, heading for the replicator and asking it for, "A whisky. Try and make it a decent one for once."

It might be because the replicator takes pity on him, but he doesn't get a fruity cocktail or a soda; he gets a bottle of Jack, instead. Drinkable bourbon instead of decent whisky? Close enough. He pours himself a glass, his left arm still hanging uselessly by his side.

She's just standing where he left her, and it takes her a second to actually say something, watching him walk around, watching Star watch him. And then, very quietly, her throat thick and her voice rough, she asks him one question.

"Why?"

"Why do I ever do anything?" he asks, turning back around with the glass in his hand and his usual sardonic half-smile on his lips. "I'm the villain, remember?"

She shook her head slightly, still just standing in the middle of their suite. "But- No, that doesn't work. You're- You've got reasons for things, I know you do. You have reasons for everything, even if the reasons are because you wanted to, but- why did you attack him?"

She doesn't know why she hasn't moved, why she hasn't put pants on or washed her face or combed her hair. She's just standing, and she feels so incredibly alone in that moment, but she doesn't even know what's happening - and all she can think is Valentine's Day, and she doesn't understand.

"He deserved it, and I was in no mood for self-restraint," Klaus answers, and it's a real answer, even if he doesn't give her the details, and he has no intention of giving them to her. It's a real answer, so his smile is gone, and it's just him and his anger (not pulsing and alive, but lying dormant for now) and who he is, what he is.

He takes a sip of Jack, and wishes that he could manage to slide into a pair of jeans dignifiedly.

"I know you were mad at him before," she says quietly. "After Christmas, after - it was about us sleeping together, but-- you said-" And it was Valentine's Day and it shouldn't matter but it does. "You said you'd obviously defend yourself if he attacked you, but-" And she pauses, and then-- there's tears in her eyes, but her voice is clear. "How badly did you hurt him, if he did this to you?"

She's trying to be calm and figure out what to do next, and she just feels lost. She doesn't know what to do, if she should try and find Logan, if she should stay here, and she's still just standing. I was in no mood for self restraint. She brought up his family, and now, god knew how hurt Logan was, and Klaus-- Mystique was right.

"I didn't mean to mention it," she says softly. "I told you that, after everything that happened, I didn't mean to tell him, I- I don't know-" And she glances down instead of at him, shaking her head. "What do I do now?" She looks back up at him. "What am I supposed to do? You're hurt, and he's hurt, and what am I supposed to do?"

That's perhaps the worst of it - that for all the damage Klaus has suffered, Logan practically got away with nothing. "Your little clawed friend is just fine. What's a dislocated shoulder to an immortal mutant?" What's a lacerated arm to an Original Hybrid?

He swallows down the bitterness with the rest of his glass of Jack, and puts it down on the desk to pour himself another, turning his back on her to do so.

"I'm not everything I used to be," he adds, but he's more like telling himself, and hating it, than telling her, which is why she probably has to strain to hear him.

"My-" She shakes her head. "I'm not-"

And she stops again, and she's not going to cry, she's not going to let herself cry, and she pulls in a breath. "Tell me what happened. Something must have happened." Because if Logan just walked up to him and Klaus dislocated his arm - and Caroline knows him well enough that he knows he would have pulled his arm off if he'd had his strength - it's terrifying. It means that something's changed in him, that he'd do that for no reason.

He must have had a reason. She turned when he did, opening the closet, finding some pants, and it's when her back's to him that she closes her eyes and tries to pull herself together. How can you even take yourself seriously? Mystique's question has sort of transformed into that, and it's why she straightens her shoulders, and takes a deep breath. She's not going to freak out. She's not going to go ballistic, it doesn't matter what day it was, and they're vampires. They are.

It crosses her mind again - different from last time, not about making the things that hurt stop, but this time, it's wondering if it would do it. That if she turned it off, she could take herself seriously, if she wouldn't be the girl who couldn't let go of her past anymore. If she'd stop caring about things like love and friends and the fact that everything kept getting messed up, and she'd be better, here. If that's the sort of person Klaus was looking for, who would see this for what Logan deserved for being a jerk.

And she doesn't know what she's going to do, but she's weirdly a lot calmer, and when she turns back around after she's pulled on a pair of jeans, she doesn't look like she's been betrayed, like she's been stabbed herself. She's just Caroline, and she pulls her hair back into a ponytail as she watches him. "Tell me what happened. How it started."

"Go ask him, if you want to know," Klaus answers over his shoulder, letting the tiredness show in his voice, although it's more show than his actual tiredness. "I'm not playing he said she said."

It's never been his style - he does what he does, and he takes responsibility. He doesn't try to justify himself. People understand him, or they don't - and they rarely do. They so rarely trust him.

But telling her what her so-called friend said about him, about them - that's not something he's prepared to do.

"Alright," she says quietly, and there's no emotion there, and it's weird - it's not turning it off, really, it's not, because that's something different, but it's that Mystique was right.

"There's a box on the shelf for you," she says, and then she moves to look in the mirror, to get the makeup off her face. Her head's pounding and she feels sort of sick still, she's barely eaten and hasn't showered, but after the old mascara and eyeliner's gone from under her eyes, she just moves to leave. "I'm going to the holodeck." Because she literally doesn't know what else to do, and it's either be hysterical and go around in circles, or this - and she's gone.

Klaus lets her go, because what else is he supposed to do. He lets her go, but he takes the box and opens it. Two paintbrushes, odd paintbrushes, but paintbrushes, pastels, and a few tubes of paint. He doesn't know where she found them, but he lets his fingers trail over the brushes gently, before he closes the box again.

There isn't enough black for what he would paint right now.

February 15 - Early morning

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