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.

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[brightestlight]

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."