Thursday, May 24

[wholeworldoutthere]

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.

Comments

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Seventeenth century Venice," he confirms, with a smile. "Not in our world, but one close enough. In the middle of the masquerade, you would have loved it."

He isn't stupid enough that he would have asked to go on a killing spree with him, just as he kept Amy away from those in Venice. But accompanying him to this or that evening - as friends, of course, no, acquaintances - nothing like a date - that was, of course, perfectly acceptable, and exactly what he had in mind.

[brightestlight]

She asks it because she has too, even though she doesn't really want too - it just sort of falls out of her mouth. "Was it beautiful?" She's staring up at him, mostly because she can't even wrap her brain around it. Seventeenth century Venice. Just... outside, boom, Venice. "The dresses and stuff?" She says that part softly, but she doesn't look away.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"The masks and the dresses, and the costumes," he confirms, smiling now a softer smile simply from the look on her face. He knows that it's not really him she's looking at that way, but it's close enough. "There was such creativity at the time, Caroline. A lot of us attended the Doge's ball, and you would have fit right in with the most graceful women of Venice."

[brightestlight]

"There was a real ball?" She looks enthralled, but then her brows furrow. "What's a Doge?" She makes a face, and then shakes her head. "But you lived it, didn't you? You've done all that already, since you're like a million years old or whatever. Does it matter? That you've seen it all before."

[wholeworldoutthere]

Her estimation of his age gets a chuckle out of Klaus. "It means I blend in easily, but if you're asking me if it means I don't see the beauty anymore... I wouldn't want to live this badly if I didn't. I could take you to any place, any time I've been, and I could still point the beauty out to you."

It sounds more like a promise, or an invitation, than an answer to her question, and yet it is one, as well.

[brightestlight]

"Tell me about it," she says, and she's actually smiling, and it's real. "Pick one of the most amazing things you've seen - not Venice, but anywhere, and just- just tell me." Because she needs it, maybe, or because she wants to know, or maybe just because she doesn't know any better.

[wholeworldoutthere]

For a second he's tempted to say, 'your smile', and that's why he breaks eye contact for a moment, ducking his head as he checks his thoughts, and his words, and leans his back against the curved wall before he looks up at her. "Making me choose the one is cruel and unusual, love," he points out with a half smile, but he's choosing all the same. "Have you ever seen photographs of Iceland? It won't do the country justice, but it's a start. There is this place in South, right up a green cliff, where you're standing in the middle of the vegetation, and at your feet stretches a glacier. They have waterfalls that would put Niagara to shame - they are smaller, but so much more beautiful for it. There is something touching about them, something more easy to relate to. They also have thermal pools where you can bathe in naturally hot water as you gaze upon nearby snowy peaks, and fields of lava rocks they thing are trolls caught by the sun." He smiles, because of the memory. "You'd like their horses as well."

[brightestlight]

The way she's looking at him as he tells her that is very not smart. Very not smart, because she looks sort of somewhere between entranced and moved, and it's not until she sees him smile and she smiles in response, not until he says that she'd like their horses that she realises that she's staring at him, and she jerks her eyes away, swallowing thickly. "Oh. That's- I mean, it sounds nice," she says, because- because she was dating Tyler, and Klaus was sort of a creep, and-- and there was a lot of other reasons, but right now her brain wasn't saying creep, it was sort of saying other stuff, but she had already looked away, so that was fine.

It wasn't like she was just thinking about him. At all. "So, Friday morning? You'll show up?" Her voice cracked on the Friday, because- because of reasons, okay?

[wholeworldoutthere]

Horses, he shouldn't have mentioned the bloody horses, taking her back to that spat they had, and Klaus could kick himself. As it is, he loses the soft smile, drops his gaze for a second, then pushes off from the wall and smiles at Caroline again. His other smile, the one most people get. "As soon as you start calling it a date, love."

Because he can, and he wants to, and he wants her to.

[brightestlight]

"Hey! That wasn't the deal. It was acquaintances, and I'd have to go with you as your acquaintance to some... thing. At the next place we land or whatever." She paused. "I don't have my ring."

Important thing to note. "We don't all just get zapped into wherever we land, right? Because I- I can't-" And she's not getting wound up again, she just sounds really, really tired. "I've had enough sunlight without my ring to last me a lifetime."

[wholeworldoutthere]

True, that, but he dismisses that possibility. "We get teleported, it's all very Star Trek," never mind the fact that Kirk and Spock were on board. "The teleporters remain active during the whole time we are docked, you can get beamed down at night. We can look for a witch."

More things for them to do together; who is he to turn down this opportunity?

[brightestlight]

"Okay, but... this thing. On Friday. It's not a date. I'm dating Tyler. He's my boyfriend." She's looking up at him expectantly, and then ventures. "We could be... friends?" LIke that was hopefully enough of a bone for him to let the whole date thing go.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Tyler's not here," Klaus points out with raised eyebrows, "and friends do sometimes date, from what I hear. It's a deal."

He smiles, winningly, like he doesn't know how much he's getting on her nerves.

[brightestlight]

"As friends, right? Not date? Because we're not. dating." She nodded once, watching him, as if she's going to get him to nod, too. "Friday morning? As not a date?"

Because how would she explain that? What would she do? 'Oh, yeah, I just happened to GO ON A DATE with Klaus. You know, psycho killer Klaus.'

Who also held her when she'd lost her mind and started sobbing all over him, and said he'd protect her. And- "Hey, when you talk to Bruce, there's not going to be any beating up or anything, right? Like, don't make him mad."

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Of course not," Klaus tells her, although his tone makes it very obvious that he is lying, and not bothering to cover it up. What did she think he meant when he said that he would see to it she not get hurt again?

The fact that she's changing the subject from the date is welcome, because she's changing it before she's made him agree that it wasn't one. So it is one.

[brightestlight]

"He'll hurt you." She says it without hesitating. "You don't know. You don't." Apparently talking about her dad torturing her doesn't actually make her start to ramp up again, but there's something about Klaus going toe to toe with Bruce when he's a monster that she can't deal with, because she was seriously lucky that he didn't pop her head off like a pez dispenser. "Promise me. Promise me." And she is 100% completely, intensely serious. "It doesn't matter how strong you are, he's- Please." There's that word again, and she is not thinking about why she's insisting with him, even though it'd be an easy way for him to be dead, if she had wanted him that way.

[wholeworldoutthere]

Klaus doesn't understand why she cares. If there was a white oak stake on board, then yes, she could be frightened for her life. But there isn't, so he can't die. But what she is saying does mean one other thing.

"If he's that dangerous, all the more reason for me to take him out," he points out, and there is no smile on his face or in his voice now, he's all serious.

[brightestlight]

"You can't. I hit him in the head with a bed and he didn't even blink. He ran himself so hard into the wall that it broke, and that's after he ran into the forcefield, and then he- And then-" And her voice is rising and she's insistant, because she doesn't want Klaus to get torn to pieces. "He's stronger then you. He's stronger and he's bigger and I-" She stops then, and she pulls in a breath, and turns away, not looking at him. "He grabbed me with one hand, and I could feel him pop my lungs and my ribs, and I- Please." She looked back at him again. "Why do it? Why? Because if he rips your head off, then what? Does it magically grow back? Or are you alive but headless, forever?"

She's upset. She's upset about Bruce hurting anyone else, she's upset about Klaus getting hurt - because he will - and she's upset because Bruce was, genuinely, a nice guy. "He's not a bad guy. He just- you could compel him, maybe. Make him not turn into that thing. Could you do that? Don't fight him. Don't make him turn into the monster. Please."

[wholeworldoutthere]

It sounds more and more as if that man is a modern day Jekyll and Hyde, with Hyde considerably stronger than he should be. And what Caroline is saying is sinking in. If she levelled a bad at his head and he barely blinked, even Klaus's strength - in this state, anyway - is not going to do much.

"He doesn't mean to turn into the monster?" he checks, with raised eyebrows. A quick, clean kill if he does, before the monster can come out; an attempt at compulsion if he doesn't.

[brightestlight]

She shook her head. "He- He did it when I got in his face, all fangs and stuff because I didn't know, and he said he was sorry when he started turning green, and then-" She pulled in a breath, scrubbing at her cheeks. "He forced himself while he was changing into the forcefield and when I woke up he was just sitting there and it was all wrecked and he thought he killed me and it was awful."

She licked her lips. "Please." She said it then, evenly, looking up at him. "For both of you. Don't try and fight him."

[wholeworldoutthere]

Green.

Klaus's eyebrows shot up, and by the time she stops talking he is actually laughing. "You're telling me your Bruce is the Hulk?"

He doesn't read comic books, but this is common pop culture, and people in their world couldn't stop talking about that upcoming movie that featured the Hulk. He wasn't likely to have forgotten about that particular hero.

[brightestlight]

He's laughing.

He's laughing, and she's not listening to what he's saying because she is so angry she can barely see, because he's laughing, and she can feel it, boiling under the surface, and the things she wants to do - she wants to hurt him, she wants to show him how it feels, how it felt, and it's obvious on her face, that she's so angry and hurt and it's horrible, and she can feel the fangs in her mouth and she sucks in a breath, even as she backs away from him, because no matter how angry she is, she doesn't punch first, because she's never been that girl. "Go away." She spits out the words, and she's not felt this in a long time, that she actually starts to trust someone, and just like that - Just like that.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"Come on, love!" Klaus frowns, and entreats her, but without moving from where he is, because she looks like she might lash out and the last thing she needs - they need - is for him to have to restrain her. "He's the Hulk, and you couldn't have opened up with that?"

[brightestlight]

That - that, weirdly, just knocks her off base enough that she stares at him. "What?" She wasn't listening before, but now- "What're you talking about? Opened up with what, why did you laugh? I died, and you laughed?"

She paused, and then- "Oh, my god."

"He's the Hulk. Like, I don't know, I was too busy dying to put it together, but- the Hulk's not real." She's never read comic books, and honestly, superhero movies weren't really her thing after the Spiderman movies, but like. "What the hell?"

[wholeworldoutthere]

"I take it you haven't met the geek kid yet," Klaus states, glad that he's managed to take the wind out of her sails. "Spock and Kirk are also on the station. This girl out of a British science fiction series. Oh, and a modern version of Sherlock Holmes. The geek kid says he knows most of us from one fiction or another. We apparently have a television series."

He pauses, for emphasis, and says, dryly, "It's called The Vampire Diaries."