wholeworldoutthere | Thursday, May 24

Entry tags:

caroline forbes

Thursday, May 24

That morning, Klaus did wake up with a rather horrible hangover. It was far worse than the one he had had in Venice, and it took a lot longer to vanish. A couple of hours, after sufficient blood-drinking, even if the blood provided by the replicator seemed particularly horrid. Eventually, he felt good enough to function, and saw Caroline's message when he checked his comm.

He still did not know exactly what he felt, only that he needed to know more, and now that it sounded as if she had told someone else of what they were...

It took him a while to find her, because he had expected her to seek out the company of others. She had never struck him as a solitary person, but he had never known her after an abduction to a space station, either. He ended up finding her at the end of one of the long dead-end hallways on the second level, and as soon as she spotted him he raised his hands in the international sign for 'I come in peace.'

"I want to know what happened to Finn," he told her, slowly walking closer, but something in his voice made it more like a request than it usually would have been.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Something painful flashed across his eyes at her question, and he frowned. "I was never going to kill you, love." It was said almost in a whisper, and he wanted to reach out but knew better. "Now, what's this about your good friend Bruce?"

It was asked in a more normal, almost jovial tone, but he still had every intention of making sure the man never hurt Caroline again.

She shrugs when he says that he's not going to kill her, a sort of permanent shrug that leaves her shoulders sort of hunched up. "Oh." Just that one word, and she then forces herself to stand up straight, to drop her arms even though she stuffs her hands in her pockets. It's clear she's making herself because he'd seen the transformation, that she's forcing the smile on her lips.

"He's a good guy. He's just- he's got a problem, and-" She licked her lips. "His blood is poisonous. He wanted me to warn you." She doesn't talk about what he did to her, about what the other guy did. Because she's fine.

"He's the bloke that splattered your brain all over your hair," Klaus said, halfway between a reminder and a verification. "How did he manage?"

Because Caroline might not be as strong as he was, and she would have been injected with the same nanites tampering down their abilities, but it was still not as easy as it seemed to hurt her that way.

It was sort of alarming how quickly she turned white, how any sort of confidence just vanished, her eyes shiny as she spoke quietly, her voice rough where it had been fine a moment before. "H-He-- He changes-" She had to stop, looking away, swallowing as her eyes skimmed the wall to the floor. "When he's angry, he becomes this monster, and- I'm okay now."

She whispers that, and she is so very not okay, it's so clear she's not okay, but what else is she going to do besides say she's okay? "He doesn't remember it. What happens. He doesn't control it, it just happens."

"Hey," Klaus called out to her, soft and genuinely concerned. He holds a hand out as if he were going to touch her arm, but he doesn't actually go all the way. "It's all right, Caroline. He won't ever touch you again."

Klaus would make very certain of that.

"He's not a bad guy," she says quietly, and her voice is a little less strained, more insistent. She doesn't know that Klaus heard her when she was trying to get her hair clean, doesn't really know how much it shows that she's not fine. "He's a good guy. I- I freaked out because we were in jail, and- you don't know. Everything was awful, then I was here and- It was in m-my hair-"

She's losing her grip on her calm, and she's not used to it. "It's not his fault. "

"It's alright," he insists, his hand still held out just short of touching her. Given how frightened she was that he might want to kill her, the last thing he's going to do is force contact upon her. Besides, she seems on the edge of a breakdown, and he doesn't want to push her over.

"I'll take care of it," he assures her again, holding her gaze as much as she lets him.

She's not looking at him until he says it's alright and she just sort of explodes with the words "It's not alright. It's not, and I can't- he broke my neck and I woke up with pencils through my hands and he kept soaking the gag in vervain and he was going to make Elena kill me and then I'm in some space jail and my br-" Brains, she'd been about to say, but she's shaking and she can't really talk. She doesn't reach for him, but she curls up into herself and its what she's been avoiding. It's not the flippant 'I've had a bad day' she's been saying, it's the reality, and that she's alone and everything else.

It breaks his heart to see her like this, if he still has a heart to break, and it's tentatively that he reaches out again and this time, all the way to her arm. When she doesn't pull back, but keeps trying not to sob, he gradually pulls her into an embrace, and strokes her hair, because there's nothing to say just now, he suspects, and he can only let her get it all out.

"I didn't do anything wrong," she whispers it against his neck, and she doesn't think about who he is, that he'd made Tyler bite her, that she'd asked him moments ago if he meant to kill her, and she'd meant it. It was something more than that, and she was shaking when he held her close, but her voice broke as she spoke, the tears starting even though she didn't want them. "You saved me, you made him not come after me, why? Why do you care?" Her voice broke then, and she started crying, those soft, strangled sobs he'd heard once before, the day she'd shown up.

Edited 2012-05-23 21:42 (UTC)

They were even more jarring here and now, in this empty corridor, without the sound of the shower or a wall in between them to muffle the sobs. Klaus closed his eyes and stroked her hair, and took a few seconds to bleed the anger out of his voice. "You just tell me who did that to you, Caroline," he assured her in a soft voice, although he wasn't sure that she would even be hearing his words. "I saved you and I would save you again. Nobody here's going to hurt you."

She's never had anybody say that to her, not since she was eight years old and her Dad promised he wouldn't let anybody hurt her after she'd gotten in a fight at school. It sinks in a little- it's probably why her crying slowly dies off, why she tries to breathe and pulls back, her face puffy and red, even though she's knowing only back enough that she's not plastered to him, not so hat he'd let go of her. "I'm okay," She says, even though she's knowing not, because she's not used to this, to what she's supposed to say. She hadn't heard his question, and now his t-shirt is wet and she just pulls in another breath, in, out. "Bruce didn't mean it. It wasn't him doing it." Her eyes found his. "Okay?"

"He and I are going to have a talk," Klaus assures her, and moves one arm from around her only so he can gently wipe her tears from her cheeks. "Who hurt you in Mystic Falls?" All of it has made him forget that he still doesn't know exactly who killed Finn, but it can wait. Finn is dead; Caroline is alive. If she is here, then more might arrive, and he can protect her, even if he failed to protect Finn.

She pulled in a breath, then two, because she was making herself calm down, so that she'd stop freaking out because she didn't do this. She wasn't the girl who freaked out about this stuff, she was okay, even if they put her in cages and shot her, or if her dad strapped her to a chair and fried her whenever she saw blood. She was okay. She survived, because if she wasn't okay with it, then none if it would be okay and she'd be broken, and then no one would care anymore.

"Your mom did something to Alaric. He's- He's a vampire, but- but he's- staking him didn't do anything, it was white oak but it didn't do anything, Rebekkah got away, but- but he's-" She pulled in another breath, the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks even though she's looking up at the ceiling, trying to stop them even as she rubs them away with her hands. "He broke my neck, and I woke up- My hands- and -" She stops because she has to, and she takes one deep breath, then another. "I'm okay now. I'm alright, I know it's over, I know it's- I know. It's okay."

"You have a right not to be okay, Caroline," Klaus points out gently. The greatest proof that she isn't, no matter what she says, is that she hasn't moved out of his embrace. Flattering though it would be to think that she would remain in his arms when in a normal state, Klaus knows better. "You cry all you need, you let it all out, rinse, lather, repeat."

She shakes her head, even as her face twists. "I can't. I can't, I have- I'm okay." It's like she knows, even though she doesn't, because that's when she pushes at his hands, when she steps back, even though she's still scrubbing at her cheeks, and she smiles, and it's accompanied by a shrug. "He's not here, and it was an accident. I scared him, and- so it's alright." She pulled in a deep, deep breath. "I- your shirt. Sorry, I just- I freaked out a little bit." She takes another deep breath, like she's squaring herself away.

"My shirt'll be fine," Klaus assures her, without a look down at the tear-stained garment. He's watching her instead, the way she's building up her mask, and he lets her do it. He's told her she has the right to freak out, now it's up to her, and there's nothing more he can do, apart from give her a moment to pull herself together.

"Yeah," she says, and she looks away, her voice still sort of weird. "There's a dinner thing tomorrow. You should come help." She looks back at him, and her eyes are red-rimmed and she's a mess, but she's managed to shift the focus away from her. "It'd be good, probably. Lord knows somebody's got to make things better around here."

And yeah, she's holding herself together with her fingernails, but she's done it, she's managed to stop crying, to stop herself from being a wreck. "So you'll help, right?"

"Help what, Lady Grantham with her dinner?" he asks, surprised by the request. He's seen the message, of course, but he did not care. "You mistake me for my sister. I'm not the one who likes organising parties."

Not this sort of party, anyway, and what would he bring, a bag of blood? The very concept seems ludicrous to him, with the replicators being so stubbornly uncooperative.

"You're coming. Because I want to go, but I don't know anybody." She pauses, and then- "She needs help setting up and stuff." She sniffles once, because she's calming down, because this she can do. Nothing Klaus can say can out stick-in-the-mud Elena Gilbert, and she's been dealing with that since they were tiny. "She's an old lady. So, you're coming, right?"

When exactly has Klaus become her girl friend, dragged along to help out on decorating committees, or whatever it is Bekkah was going on about? "Just to clarify things," he specifies, "are you asking me to come with you to the dinner, or to help out?"

There's only one of these two options he's even vaguely entertaining, after all.

"You'd come to both things," she says, with a Duh, of course look on her face, like it's super obvious and he's just not getting it. It doesn't mesh well with the occasional sniff and her reddened eyes, but she's hardly letting that stop her at all.

"Because. Okay?" She pauses, and then after a second-- "..... Please?"

Amy's words come back to him - that they should date - and he can't help but smile a little. "If you'd told me all I had to do to get you to ask me out was get abducted on a mysterious space station..."

He has to point it out, because he's all too amused, now, and he has, in fact, never been asked out. Propositioned was something else entirely, but asked out? No. Not that he thinks Caroline will find this quite as amusing as him, but still.

"What?!" Her voice is a weird sort of squeak. 'What? That is not what this is. At all. Even a little. This is not a date. This is- this is....." And she can't come up with a word that can't be misconstrued as date, before she says, "Friends. I mean- Acquaintances. It's acquaintances, because I know you, and you know me, and I'm the only person you know, and so it would be really nice, you know, if you came and did this thing with me that I want to do."

There. That- that cleared that up. Sort of.

Well, then, if that is what it is. The half-smile on Klaus's lips is not going anywhere, but he's willing to indulge her in her appraisal of 'what this is' for the sake of argument.

"In that case, I hope you're prepared to return the favour, love," he points out. Because he's the only person she knows, and it would be really nice if she came and did this thing with him that he wanted to do.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject