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

[wholeworldoutthere]

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.

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[wholeworldoutthere]

Klaus is surprised by her response. Much as he does not object to getting that response, it's simply not something he expected. Still, he welcomes it, arms now sliding around her waist, holding her close and warm, rather than tight and possessive, as earlier, and he meets her kiss in kind.

"What was that for?" he asks, hint of a smile in his voice, on his lips, when she breaks the kiss, and he's perfectly comfortable with her standing on his feet; one of the many benefits of steel-toed boots.

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"Because of who you are," she says simply, and she shakes her head because she doesn't have an answer besides that. "It's cold," she says then, and she looks down for her pants.

And she sees the bodies, and she just sort of... stops, stops talking, stops moving, and actually stops breathing as she stares down at them.

[wholeworldoutthere]

Klaus frowns the moment the change comes over her, and a quick glance tells him what it is she's looking at. "Love?" he calls out, simple and warm, and there, even if he can almost taste the sudden fear at the back of his mouth, metallic tang mixing with the copper of the blood.

[brightestlight]

She snaps back into reality, and blinks at him, her brows furrowing. "I just- It's cold, I need my jeans." And she doesn't talk about them, even though she can't stop her gaze from finding them, the football player and the cheerleader, their sightless eyes staring up at nothing. She'd been avoiding walking on the ground, but now she just moves, and her hands shake as she reaches for her pants, her underwear, pulling them on even as she stares down at the bodies.

Part of her wants to throw up. Part of her wants to find more, to drink more blood, and there's a small part of her brain that's panicking. It's because of Bonnie and Stefan and Damon, and she's panicking, but it's just a tiny part of her brain, the part she's ignoring.

They're not real. And even if they were, they're both like this. They're both vampires, they're predators, they're freakshows. Both of them. But still, her hands shake, and she can't bring herself to look away, even as she gets dressed.

[wholeworldoutthere]

Klaus lets her go and get dressed, hitching up his pants, tucking himself back in and zipping up as he watches her. The way she's staring, and trembling. He makes no move to reach out, but he is there.

"Have I ever told you," he asks, quietly, although he knows he hasn't, "about the night Esther turned us?" Esther's a compromise. He'd been about to call her the Original Witch, but he refuses to call her his mother right now, in that particular sentence.

[brightestlight]

She shakes her head, her voice low and she's still staring and them, and she needs to stop and look away and tell the computer to take them away, but she can't. "No," she says softly, and she bends to pick up one of her boots that rests by the dead girl's hand, a pool of congealed blood covering her uniform, and her hands still shake even though she tells them not too. Even though she tries to will her muscles to not move.

She puts her boot on, then the other, and she's holding herself in check while she waits for him to speak. To tell her, and she still knows she could make them vanish. She could make them come back to life, but she can't forget what Bonnie told her. How her mother would react. How much she liked it, how natural it felt. That Stefan only drank animal blood for a reason. It was a giant, giant mess of feeling, but she was trying to control it... except she couldn't drag her eyes away.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"They didn't tell about the second part of the ritual," he explains, keeping his voice quiet. He doesn't want to draw her attention to him; if she needs to stare at the bodies, he wants to let her. "The part all vampires have to go through. Drinking human blood."

He wonders what it was like, for her. Whose blood it had been. If that had been the man she killed. All that he knows is that Katherine did it.

"Mikael brought in a girl from the village. I was with Rebekkah. We didn't want to."

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She's never actually told him about how it happened. About what actually happened so that she was a vampire. "I was in a car accident," she says quietly, and it's while she's still looking at them, barely blinking. "Tyler was driving. I... Damon gave me his blood, or else I would have died. Katherine gave me a message for Stefan and Damon, and then smothered me with a pillow."

"There was a blood bag. Somebody else's," she said, her voice still soft. "I didn't know what was happening." She paused, and then she took a step back, away from the bodies, closer to him - even though she still didn't look away, her brain more than happy to fill in who these two people were and their lives and it was just a meal, to her.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Mikael pulled Rebekkah off her before she could kill her," Klaus goes on, instead of answering her own story, how it's one tick in Damon's favour, and one tick against Tyler. Because he's doing more than just telling her a story. He's telling her what happened to him. He's telling her the way he used to be. Someone more like her, morally. It's about what she's living now.

"Then he made me drink. That's when the werewolf curse kicked in."

He pauses, watching her from behind, wishing her to find a way to get past this, over this. She wanted it, and he doesn't regret helping her. She wanted it.

But what if he ends up losing her.

"We didn't expect it. The hunger for blood. Mikael and Esther thought that the blood-drinking would remain confined to the ritual."

[brightestlight]

"It's there," she says softly. "Every minute of every day, except now. Except right now. The hunger." She's got her arms folded because otherwise her hands are still not steady, and she doesn't want him to see. Doesn't want to think about it, even though it's all she can think about. "How many people have you killed, do you think?" She whispers it, and she doesn't even know why she's asking.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Thousands," Klaus answers, honestly. He doesn't have a doubt about that. Once he accepted his nature...

Or more accurately, after killing your own mother, you can't afford not to accept killing as something you do. Something that doesn't matter as much. He'd paid for that particular delusion after killing the Five.

[brightestlight]

"I- I don't know what-"

And that's when her voice cracks, and she's still looking at them, at the bodies, even as she resteadies her voice, even as she tries to say something that's not this. "We should get back, before somebody else takes the room."

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Caroline," Klaus calls out to her, at last, because now that she's asked, and he's answered, now's when she needs to look at him. Because she needs to say what she'd been about to say, or what she hadn't. She needs to face this, now, and it's better if the hunger isn't distracting her.

[brightestlight]

She looks up at him when he says her name, and everything about her looks like an animal in flight, a deer in the headlights. Like she's only just realised where she is and what's happening. "I don't know what I expected," she said, and there it is again, any time she's not holding onto something, her hands go. "We're monsters. We kill. We hunt and eat and kill-" And her voice is getting strained, even as she grips her upper arm so tightly that there'll be bruises.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"We're predators," Klaus agrees, and corrects her at the same time. "We hunt, and eat, and kill." His chest feels tight from watching her, her body language, and hearing the strain in her voice. "And we're human. We hope, we struggle, we love."

He's losing her as soon as he's had her. He can see it in her eyes, and it's all he can to remain calm, and not go tearing through the throats of every cheering fan above their heads.

[brightestlight]

"We're not human. We do things they do, but we're not-" She stared at him. "You've killed thousands of people, and you're in love with me," she said, her voice oddly raw. "How? How does it not consume you? They said-" Her voice cracked. "If I did this, they'd hate me. They'd kill me, because I'd just be a monster, but I'm not-" She's confused and terrified, her arms crossed again so her hands stop."You're not just a monster." And it's got her in knots. "How do you live with it? Knowing you've ended their lives?"

[wholeworldoutthere]

"There's no other way, love," he answers, because his own personal how isn't going to help, although he's fairly certain this isn't either. "There's only so long anyone can hate themselves." You stop, eventually, and you find a way to accept what you are, a way to live with it. He's not even sure he could say how, exactly.

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"If they were people-" And her voice is strangled, and she's not getting more calm. "How can I- I want it. I want this, Klaus, I want- But I-" And she's so pulled into herself that if she could, she'd just disappeared. "He called you a freakshow and I'm the same."

The crowd above them goes wild, and she startles like the afformentioned animal - backing away from the slope of the bleachers, and she's seconds from backing into the quarterback without even realising it.

[wholeworldoutthere]

It's the only reason Klaus moves towards her, because the last thing she needs is to trip over a body. He puts on a burst of speed, and he stops her before she backs up into the corpse, a hand on her arm. "So. Am I a freakshow?" he inquires almost conversationally, but his eyes on hers are a little too intense for that.

[brightestlight]

She almost says what she'd decided, when this came up. If he is, I am, too.

Instead, it's a strangled word - the Yes coming as if it was yanked from the depths of her, and she's not talking about him, even though she is. That both of them are, that they're something other. "I want to kill people, Klaus-" And she doesn't know what to do.

"If they were people, I would have just- I did that. I killed- The man I killed, he had a family. They all have families, and how can I not be- how can I not care?"

[wholeworldoutthere]

The Yes feels like it's torn out his heart. Rationally, he knows that it's about her perhaps more than about him, but he can't help his emotional response, the devastation he feels. All he can do is shut down.

"You tell me, love," he answers, and it's his fake nonchalance all over again, and he's moving now, grabbing the stand-in quarterback by his collar and dragging him away from her, dropping him beside the cheerleader as if he were so much dead meat. He is. The bite at Klaus's neck is itching as it scars over, and he wants to kill someone all over again.

"I didn't force you into any of it." It's quieter, and more real than the nonchalance a second ago.

[brightestlight]

"What?"

She says it softly, and her face twists. "You think I think that?" And it's there, hurt and something deeper, that he thinks she'd blame this on him, that he thinks that of her. She shakes her head, and straightens her back, her words clear even if they're quiet.

"I asked you to come here, and I'd already torn his throat out."

She says it flatly, like there isn't something in what Klaus said that makes her hurt deep inside, that makes her want to ask him what the hell he thinks of her anyway, now that they're being honest and it's not sunshine and roses and apparently all the chips are on the table. Because he's been the one who has always told her to be herself, and she's trying, desperately, and now she's getting this. And she takes it somehow both as an admonishment and a decrying of responsibility on his part when she hadn't assigned him any.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"My point is," and there is irritation clear in his tone, "I don't have the answers for you."

The irritation is with himself as much as her, and it's there in his eyes, too, in the way he looks at her. He's never been any good at being hurt without being angry, and this is no exception.

[brightestlight]

"Right." She just sort of stops, then.

"Right, of course you don't." And that's when it's actually a danger, the thing he's been afraid of all this time. Not until now, not until he's drawn the line in the sand and what's she's hearing isn't what he's said, what she's hearing is you're on your own.

And for the first time, she doubts. She doubts her choosing him, she doubts a lot of things.

"Computer, end program." She says it quietly, and just like that, it's gone, the silence is deafening, the transition from the dull roar of earlier. The hunger comes roaring back - not as loud as it was before because she'd fed from him, but the sudden emptiness of her stomach made her pull in a breath.

She's always been afraid of it, that she was asking too much, needing too much, that he was supporting her too much, and yet whenever she asked him something, he always turned it back onto her, that she needed to make the choices for herself. "Do you think I blame you?"

And then, her face twisting, her jaw tight. "Are you done with this?" And by this, she doesn't mean the program, she means them. He doesn't have the answers, and it's not just that. It's a lot more than that, for her.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"I think you can't hate yourself without hating me, so you tell me," he answers her two questions at once. Should he be done with this? This is a make or break moment, and this is what it's about, for him. The sudden hunger only adds to his frustration, and he doesn't want to know why she had to end the programme.

He has killed thousands, and he's never pretended otherwise, but this is when it matters.