wholeworldoutthere | Thursday, May 24

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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.

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"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.

"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.

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

"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?"

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?"

"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."

She doesn't even know what to say, until, finally, slowly. "So I was killed by the Hulk, and.... and I'm on TV?" Caroline stares at him, and then she swallows thickly. "I'm done. My life can't get any weirder. I'm eighteen, I'm a vampire, my boyfriend's a werewolf, you're a million years old, my friend's a witch and the other one's a doppleganger and my history teacher just killed me, tortured me, my dad tortured me, Bonnie's mom is vampire, my dad is dead, Elena's parents are dead, she's in some weird kind of love triangle with two vampires and I was just killed by the Hulk. And you and I are going on a not-date on Friday. I'm done."

She leaned her head back against the wall with a thunk, rolling her eyes to look at him. "I'm done. What do I do? Whatever. Because what the hell, Klaus. Oh! And Jeremy sees ghosts and Jenna's dead and Katherine's who knows where. And I planned Homecoming with your sister, who's also a million years old."

"Don't ever let her hear you say that," he says, amused and fond of them both.

"There's not much point lingering on the fact, it's only amusing trivia," he adds, because that's what he does, he just doesn't think about it very much. Their lives are their lives no matter what, not plots scripted by writers, although when she puts things the way she just has, it does sound as if they were part of a supernatural soap opera. "And we are not."

They're not going on a not-date, they're going on a proper date. Well, yes, that needed reasserting.

"We're not what? And seriously, you guys watched the dinosaurs walk around." She smiles then, just a little. "And it's.... I mean, who do you think plays me? Do you think she's pretty? I guess I could ask that guy." She was still a little weirded out that somebody was watching her and writing a story about her life, or whatever, but it's not like it didn't sound like super entertaining television. Just... living it was a lot less nice then just tuning in.

"I'm sure she's beautiful, if their casting director's any good," Klaus assured her, and nodded at her pillow and blanket. "Are you going to stay here? I always fancied you for a higher-maintenance kind of girl."

She looked down, and her eyes widened. 'Oh! Oh, that. I- I guess I just... needed to be alone for a while. You know?" She looked up at him, like- well. Like she needed somebody to say it was okay.

Why that person was him, she didn't really think it through. "I am totally still taking showers, though." She still felt like she had things in her hair, when she knew they must be gone by now. "Because I was being alone, not gross."

"You can't be alone in a room?" he inquires, eyebrows raised. It isn't that he thinks it isn't okay, it's that he wants to understand. It isn't really his place to say it's okay or not, not unless he feels like she needs to hear somebody say it, and he hasn't picked up on that this time around. "With a bed?"

"I didn't want anybody to find me." And the way she says it, she means him, or maybe him and Bruce, but who else does she know here? "It's okay, though. I'm done." She bends down, gathering up her stuff in her arms, and maybe she's weird and quiet, but what about today hasn't been weird?

"I should go put this back in my room. So..." She trails off, and then-- "I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning." Because... because she would see him tomorrow morning, because he said he'd show up.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Klaus agrees, lips twisted into a small smile, like there's a joke only he's getting. Close enough, there's a date only he will admit they're having. Not the decorating, that's a small price to pay. But the dinner itself? Yes, it's a date.

"You know where to find me, if you need me," he adds, as the smile fades, letting the concern seep into his tone. It matters that she knows she can come to him. If she needs him, or even if she simply wants him.

"I'm okay," she says again, but then she stops, and she opens her mouth, and then closes it, and then--

"I need a dress." She doesn't ask him for it, doesn't say she needs his help getting a dress, but just that she needed a dress, because the whole goth-surburban-housewife yoga pants was not working for her. "And shoes." She's watching him, and maybe she looks a little wary, maybe she is a little wary. She doesn't want to be in debt to him, she doesn't want him to think she owes him, but he's the only person she knows who's been here for a while, and he has normal clothes, which, by the way, she'd not returned and had no plans to.

"C'mon, then," he tilts his head in the direction of the end of the hallway. "Let's drop your things in your room, and we can go and look for someone with access to the wardrobe. I'll explain on the way."

He doesn't think she'll owe him. He's just honestly helping because he can.

She bit her lip for a second before she nodded, because she's still not asking him for help, he's offering it, and she's taking it, but she didn't ask him, and that's what matters. That's what makes the difference between debt and not, between her owing him and not.

It's not that she thinks he'll hold it over her head, it's that she's been on this slippery slope since day one, this slope that's got these huge thorns at the bottom like sleeping beauty, and everything is making her slip a little more - the bracelet, the drawing, him saving on her, her crying all over him like some sort of mental case - and this, too, him being nice, him offering his shower and showing her around, it's all her sliding further and further into the abyss that's eventually going to chew her up and spit her out, that's going to kill her. And she knows he's going to kill her, but she can't stop herself, and that's why she hesitated, but it's not like she's going to go to dinner looking like some weird soccer mom who really likes black. "Okay," she agrees. "And tomorrow, we decorate and then it's dinner and not a date. Sold."

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Thursday, May 24

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