February 15 - Early morning

[wholeworldoutthere]

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.

Comments

[brightestlight]

"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."

[wholeworldoutthere]

"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.

[brightestlight]

"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.

[wholeworldoutthere]

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.