wholeworldoutthere | The Night After Jurassic Park (March 5th, 2am)

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caroline forbes

The Night After Jurassic Park (March 5th, 2am)

It's not like Caroline not to be there late at night, and at first, Klaus thinks it might be that the lift's refusing to take her up to their floor. It wouldn't be the first time. Sometimes, they also get locked in their room, or out of it. But he lets her be, anyway, and he paints, instead. He's been thinking about his time in Narnia again, since he first drank from Regina, and he needs something to occupy his brain.

The brushes have taken a little used to, but he likes the new style it's created, in his hand. Something he's never done before, but something he still meant to do. And painting calms him down; it's always calmed him down. He's taken the biggest canvas he has, and he's painted something in dark colours, glowing eyes in the night, shapes of almost beings, and yet it's nowhere near as eerie as he'd set out for it to be, and he likes it that way. It's not actually threatening, and it was a pleasant realisation, halfway through, when he could still have taken it in another direction. It's not threatening, it's family.

By the time he's done, he heads towards his communicator to check the time, right when it beeps. A text, from Caroline, asking him to meet her in the holodeck. No, not asking him. Telling him she needs him. It's enough that he's out of their room in a heartbeat, leaving a puzzled wolf there on his own, as he heads towards the holodeck at full speed (such as it now is), the door sliding open for him. There's small smudges of paint on his face and arms - a little dark blue over his right brow and on his left forearm, an ochre near his jaw, some white by his right wrist - but he clearly could care less. Caroline needs him, that's all he knows.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She's standing in the middle of the street, in a place that's eerily like Mystic Falls - Small Town America, the program's called.

It's the middle of the night, and she's standing on the double yellow, the fog from the creek that's close enough to hear making it harder to see more than a couple of hundred feet, but he didn't need to see that far, because she's standing there, and the smell of blood's nearly overpowering, and she's not exactly alone. There's somebody - a body, alive but barely, at her feet as she just... stands there, her communicator in her hand.

It's only when the smell hits, door closing behind him, that Klaus realises how hungry he is. He hasn't fed in a little while, taken up as he was in the painting. But it's easy to ignore, and he's by Caroline's side as soon as he can be. If she weren't who she is, he would be kissing her now, licking that blood off of her lips, but she is Caroline. This is hardly a kissing moment; if he had any doubt, the look on her face would tell him that much.

"I'm here, love," he tells her. "Computer, take away that body and the blood. And give us a sunrise, will you?"

And just like that, body and blood are gone, along with the smell of it heavy in the air.

It's gone, and her face changes - from the blank, almost overwhelmed stare it flickers and she's looking down because abruptly, the taste of it's gone, the warmth of it- and she's hungry, she's starving again.

She bites her lips together, and her shoulders tighten up even as she sticks her communicator in her pocket. "It's like home," she says, sort of to the air, and not to him.

"I'm hungry," she says then, and she turns towards him, her eyes flicking from him to his neck, and she swallows thickly. "Computer, playback program from Forbes One." And it changes, it turns, and it's night again, it's night and there's a guy walking down the sidewalk in the distance - the same one who'd been in a crumpled heap on the tarmac not long before.

Alright, then.

"Then if you're going to do this, you're going to do it right," Klaus answers, looking thoughtfully at the approaching figure, before he looks back at her, catching her gaze. "No one's ever taught you, have they?"

Between Damon - and Klaus's blood turns cold at the thought of him and Caroline in the same sentence - and Stefan who's off human blood unless Klaus literally has a say in the matter...

Caroline shakes her head slightly, and she's watching Klaus in this moment, not the man, who's not noticed him yet - he's got headphones in, not smart in the middle of the night. "I've fed on four people. The guy I killed, Mycroft, Jim, and Lauren." She hadn't told him that she'd fed on Lauren while they'd been off the station, she hadn't really said much besides how glad she'd been to see him.

"Tell me this is okay. They're computer people, and when you stop the program, they're all gone." Because she needs it, because she needs to not have to think of herself as something wrong and bad and needing sanitizing against, because it's impossible to be yourself when there's a giant chunk of yourself that you're in denial about. "It's okay, right?"

Klaus shows no reaction to the news about Lauren; she had to have fed from someone in that bloody park.

"Whatever you want to do's fine by me, love," he answers, not quite the question she's asked, but the only question he's in any position to answer. "If you want to learn, I'll teach you."

She simply had to tell him what she wanted. This would be her decision, either way. But what was okay for him was not always okay for her, and he would not answer her question without making sure she understood that distinction.

"They're not people, they won't hurt us, and-"

And I'm just as much of a freakshow.

"Teach me." She doesn't know how long they'll have - most people here kept normal hours, but they can't be uninterrupted forever, that much she knows. "I want you to teach me."

"I'll teach you to feed from people," he warns her, even if he'll use these figments of computer coding to do so. She has to understand that. For the purpose of this exercise, they're people. "Alright?" he asks, holding her gaze, his fingers brushing her hand.

The figment of computer coding in question is walking by them, but it's alright. They can catch up to him whenever they like - or restart the program, but Klaus likes that option less. He's teaching her about people.

"I'm not human," she says, and it's different then before. "We're not. And I need to know. If I'm starving, I need to know how to do this, or else something will happen and I'll die." She doesn't take his hand, but she seems to come a little more into herself.

"I'm hungry," she says quietly, again. "And I've been hungry since the second day of this, and I'm done, right now. I know, it'll be back to the blood bags, but-" She doesn't say it, that there's something about being a predator, and it makes your heart drop to your feet when you just have to ignore those instincts again and again.

"I trust you. I think you're the only person I could trust with this," she says it with a soft laugh, and she shakes her head, like even she doesn't believe it, that she's here, in a holodeck, learning on how to eat people with Klaus.

"You can trust me, Caroline," he confirms, ghost touch of his fingers on the back of her hand again. "What do you want from your feed? Do you know?"

There are so many different ways to do this, and Klaus has practiced them all extensively. He doesn't suspect she'll want the hunt, the chase, the fear, but he wants her to know that there are options, even if he expects her to pick the obvious one.

"Everything," she says, and she actually means it, and she inhales as she turns towards him, and her eyes search his face. "We're not human, and I guess I just figured that out." She inhales, and she tries to figure out what she's thinking in words, and eventually - eventually, her hand does find him, and she looks up at him without hesitation. "I dream of it, sometimes. All the time, it feels like. What it feels like to have them, and it's-" And she can't say it, but she knows and somehow she's told herself that this is different, because it's a holodeck, and finally she can give in.

"We're not some parasite," she finally says, and it's getting more at what she's thinking. "We're not bottom feeders, Klaus, it's not- we don't beg for food." And yes, there's something else going on, there always is with her, but she's 100% behind what she told him. She does want everything.

"We're predators," he agrees, evenly, because it is what she's saying, and it is true. It's always been true, even for those without a wolf in them. He might speak evenly, but he doesn't speak coldly, or flatly. This is the beginning of another chapter in the story of her life, and it's going to be beautiful.

"Quick and easy?" he offers, as the first way to teach her, because she's still not said, so he's offering it. The lack of reliable compulsion means that there is no point asking the computer to make the people in this place compellable; it's a lot of options that are not open to them, right now. It also means that 'painless' is not an option for their victims.

She nods, and there's a light in her eyes that she's been in denial about for two years. The want, the desire that every fiber that changed in her started with when she woke up in that hospital room, and she's actually not saying it doesn't exist, she's not denying it, and it's the first time when she's been in her right mind that she's made that choice. "First, quick and easy." She lets go of his hand so he can show her.

First. Klaus shows no reaction, but it's a mix of conflicting feelings and thoughts inside him, because he doesn't want her to go too fast, either, and besides, this bloody station does not make for ideal circumstances to learn all this.

He gestures in the direction the man is gone, and she falls into stride beside him. "You'll need to go for the carotid artery," he tells her, and easily finds the place on his own neck, to show her, near the bottom of the neck. "Here. Any higher up and it splits into two, you'll get less blood flow. Obviously," he adds, although he doesn't think he needs to, "best to take our man by surprise."

As long as the nanites had their way, in any case.

She nods, and her eyes settle on his neck a little bit too long, because she's thinking about Christmas, about how she fed from his wrist and how she'd thought about it - she's not known what she was doing any other time, and she'd made that mistake with Mycroft and Jim both, and she wonders if she would have killed them if she had known better.

But she looks over at the man, walking away from them now, almost gone in the fog. "Anything else?" She says it softly, glancing over at him. She knows she doesn't know what she's doing, and if anything, Logan did teach her how to listen to people who knew far more than she did.

"The amount of blood pressure might take you by surprise," Klaus warns her, "make sure to hold him still." He gives her a half-smile, and his last piece of advice for now. "Listen to your instincts. Trust yourself."

It is in her to do this, even if she's not wanted to until now.

She nods, and takes a deep breath before she moves. It's odd, doing this with this in mind, and she's giving herself over to something she's held in check for months. It's not do this, it's be this, and she's walking up behind the man...

And then something - maybe a feeling in his gut, maybe something with the AI has him turn around. Caroline doesn't stop, doesn't blink, doesn't come up short. Instead, she smiles, and it's just as bright and sunny as anything.

"Sorry, I know it's super creepy if there's somebody behind you," she says even as the man takes out his headphones. "I tried to tell you I was there, but..." And she shrugs, looking pointedly at the headphones.

He actually apologizes, and she moves close, like she's going to tell him a secret. "Hey-"

And just as he leans down to hear her, she moves. It's not as neat as Damon's done it - she's seen him bite someone and drop them to the ground and he's barely got blood even in his mouth, but it happens all at once. Her face changes and she grips his shirt and shoulder, and when she sinks her teeth into his neck she remembers to aim lower than they do in the movies.

It's not just the blood, even though it's hot and satisfying and he struggles some but only enough to make it better - it's that she did it, it's that his life is in her hands and she really can't not drink deeply.

She was listening to her instincts - every single one of them said Drain him dry, and she didn't stop, even though his blood pressure - and his heartbeat, she could feel it - was getting weaker by the second.

Klaus watches, a few feet away. She doesn't need him to hold his hand and in fact, it's best if he doesn't, even if part of him wants, straight away, to move to the man's back and make the other side of his neck his. But this is a moment for her, not for him, not even for them.

She messed up the surprise element, but she recovered from that wonderfully, so there's nothing to say. She's clearly got the carotid on her first try, or the man would've struggled more in her embrace. She's doing it, and it's not perfect, but it's beautiful all the same.

She feels his heart flutter and stops herself just before it would stop. She knows, instinctively, that he's just a swallow or five from death, already limp in her hands. She drops him where he stood, and stares down at him, her eyes still black. Her mouth is streaked with red, her lips smeared with blood and a trickle has slipped from one of the sides of her mouth.

She's out of breath, but it feels so good. So good, even better than the first time, when she'd nearly ripped out his throat. She wants more, but she doesn't know if she can. If she's allowed, as if needed permission for any of this. And she wasn't lying when she'd texted him, when she'd said I need you, because this - this was something she couldn't do alone.

She turned to look at Klaus, and she knew she made the right decision when Logan had given her the ultimatum. This was right.

Later, she could freak out. Later, she could think about what she'd done, and how much she'd liked it, and try to figure out how that fit into who she was. Right now, was the experiencing.

"Alright, love?" Klaus asks, quietly, as he takes the few steps that still separate them. The man (if he's going to keep thinking of him as anything but computer coding, an illusion more easily maintained by the smell of blood, heavy in the air all over again) is dying, blood now pooling on the ground.

She nodded, her eyes flicking up to his. "I want-" She paused and swallowed, licking her lips. "I want to find someone else." And she's sort of expecting him to say no - Enough for today, love, you've killed the same man twice - but she lifts her chin and it's clear that she's serious.

"And you to be with me."

"I'm here," he tells her, having come close enough to reach out and wipe his thumb over the trickle of blood from the corner of her lips, "with you," eyes flicking to hers as he sucked the blood off his thumb. "I'm not going anywhere."

She nods, and she stares up into his eyes for a long moment before she leans up to kiss him, knowing she still tastes like blood, knowing that this is different. This is new, with them.

She only pulls back to catch his hand. "Come on." And she knows where she wants to go - she found it before, the first time, that there was a football game, and that's when she'd made all the people vanish.

But now, a football game is exactly what she wants. People. Everywhere.

"Love," Klaus laughs as he is pulled along, and stops her, makes her turn to him. "You're not exactly presentable yet." Never mind that he has smudges of paint; it's not as if he realises it, or as if he could do anything about it, since the paint is mostly dry. But he can finish cleaning her mouth up, and her chin. "There," he says, at last, fondly, warmly. "Now, lead the way."

There's two more - a guy standing in the crowd beside the stands, and a cheerleader - she's less careful with the last one, and she feels her die in her hands, and she doesn't let it sink in, because she's not doing that right now, but she still stops, finally, ditching the body under the bleachers.

She's finally, for the first time in recent memory, not having to ignore that gnawing hunger that never quite went away, and she turns to see Klaus with his face buried in the neck of someone who looks like a football player, and she can't help the smile, even if her mouth is still a garish red at the moment.

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