Caroline Forbes

Caroline didn't have much preamble when she walked into their suite, a bottle in her hand. "We need to talk, and you need a drink." She moved to pour him one without hesitation, looking back at him over her shoulder. She knew that the last thing he'd wanted to do was go to the party, and while she'd wanted to try and get out because even with his sort of not-super-overwhelming questions, she's been avoiding the answers, the times that she's actually not just straight up changed the subject.

Which, he's not exactly been super communicative, either. It'd been a lot of both of them totally ignoring the matters at hand. Now, though? Now things were different. Now, she was home, and she looked fantastic, if you asked her, and she was going to pour him a drink (in fact, she had, and was holding it out to him) and they were going to talk and then things could somehow maybe go back to normal a little.

She doesn't like this. She doesn't like the way her mind is running around like a rat in a trap, that it's the hospital and Sam and Lauren and vervain.

Caroline remembers the hiss of her burning skin, the gross smell - she'd forgotten it until now, what it smelled like for her own flesh to burn. It's different than the sun-- worse, takes longer to heal. Not long. Not long, but that just means that you can be burned a bunch and you just heal right back up.

She's upset. She's walking towards home, because that's all she can do. Walk towards home, because it's two floors up. Around the ring, through this hall and that, up the turbolift, and then it's the place she hasn't been in who knows how long.

It takes her until she's halfway around the ring, Klaus walking beside her, before she says it quietly. "My powers are back." It's not about her powers, but she doesn't want to talk about what happened. She especially doesn't want to talk about her reaction to it. Not yet, anyway.

Steve had been thankful to find Caroline where she was - in one of the observation rooms - rather than in the suite she shared with Klaus. The less likely the other vampire was to interrupt their conversation, the better. He stood in the doorway for just a second, watching her, before he walked into the room and down the steps, to join her. "Hey, Caroline," he greeted her with a half-smile.

It wasn't forced. He couldn't believe that she agreed with what Klaus had done to Lauren.

"Hey," She said with a smile, sitting on the edge of the bench. She turned to look at him, but she didn't get up, nodding for him to sit beside her. "How're you? I... the clock was weirding me out. So here sort of seems..." She sighed, blowing out her cheeks, looking back out at the stars. "Better?" A little better.

She bit her lower lip, and sort of shrugged her shoulders, even though it's space - the endless starscape of space, it's still not the countdown to whatever awful thing was coming.

"Less oppressive," Steve agreed, sitting beside her, elbows on his thighs, as he looked at the starscape for a few seconds. Then he turned his head to look back at Caroline. "I'd like to talk about something that happened during the lockdown. Something that happened to Lauren. That was done to her."

That makes Caroline sit up a little straighter, and the smile? Gone. Just gone, instantly, and her brows furrow. "I-" And she presses her lips together, rubbing her hands on her skirt without even standing up - she's always been an awful liar, and she already knows she's not going to lie to Steve. "Okay." And she's just waiting for him to talk, because sometimes- sometimes she actually remembers that there's a reason to be quiet, first.

Steve purses his lips in acknowledgement, then keeps going. "Klaus seems to have forced his will upon her. Is that true?" Is it true, and is it something they could do, but he would get into the technical aspect of things, so to speak, in just a moment. Right now, he wants to establish facts.

"Sort of." She pulls in a breath, and exhales. "It's- it's compulsion." Which, she thinks that she pretty much just guarenteed herself a giant fight with her boyfriend, later. And, worse, this means it wears off. She's only ever put Mycroft under a compulsion and had it work, which means he remembers. Which means she's fed off him, and he remembers, and she now has to be infinitely more careful to make sure she doesn't end up with a sharpened spoon stuck in her ribs.

"Tell me how it works?" Steve requests, because compulsion, to him, sounds exactly like Klaus forcing his will upon Lauren, not just sort of. And because he needs to know how it works, to know if it can be resisted.

She looks away. "There are reasons," she says first, even though that's not what he asked. She has to preface it with that, because this is a one-way ticket to a screaming mob if Steve wants to make it be that way, and even though she trusts him, she's scared. "It's- You just do it. Back home, it worked all the time. You just- You just do, you compel someone, and if they're not on vervain, they can't- they do it. Or think it, or whatever. And they'll never know, unless a stronger vampire can undo it, or they turn into a vampire." And she doesn't explain it, even though she could. Even though she could say I know how bad it was, we had to do it. "Here, it doesn't. It doesn't work, hardly ever does it work, and it wears off." She'll act like they knew, because that means that they can make the case that it was for safety. That it was for their own safety, and it wasn't to make Lauren never ask again.

You just do it isn't exactly working for Steve. It's like saying you just kill people, or really, you just rape people, as if that made it okay. But he keeps quiet, especially since he is getting information out of it. Vervain - whatever it is, he'll look into it. "But when it does work, you can make us think whatever you like. Do whatever you like. You, Klaus, and Pam." He has to check. All of it.

"I mean- Yes, but it's not- We don't do that to people. Not like, just oh hey, Gee whiz, I feel like totally taking over somebody's mind today!" She knows this is going downhill. That this is going downhill, and she seriously, really, and truly counted Steve as her friend, and now it's going to be awful. Horrible. "I don't know if Pam can do it," she said lowly. "She's... different. She's not from where we're from, and she seems like she's a different kind of vampire."

"But Klaus did it to Lauren," Steve reminds her, or maybe asks for confirmation, looking at her again.

"It's not something we do lightly," and even as she says it, her stomach is sinking, because it is. It is, and she's lying, but here- here it's not something they do lightly. "Like I said, there were reasons. Nobody else has said anything about it, have they?" And she means it as a this is thing we only do under dire circumstances, way, even as she's praying that Mycroft didn't say anything to Steve.

"It's not something you should be doing at all," Steve points, not answering her sort-of question, because it doesn't mean anything. Doing it to Lauren means doing it to one person too many, and it is, apparently, something they do. Less so, apparently, here, or have other compulsions hold out? Steve doesn't know what to think, other than disapprove of them doing it in the first place. "What reasons did you have?"

"Stopping everybody from freaking out. That's how mobs start. She was going to announce to everyone - including those who didn't know - that we were vampires. It's- A tiny room filled with people - part of which wouldn't mind killing you anyway--" She's pulled in a sharp breath. "We've tried. We've tried since day one. Don't feed on people, don't compel people. We know that if it's us versus a lynchmob, we'll lose."

And she shakes her head. "Lauren doesn't get to be the one who decides that she's going to tell thirty exhausted, hungry, terrified people that they just happen to be bunking down with vampires, if you didn't know, and that they're going to eat everyone. She's not the one who has to worry about getting killed over it."

"You agree with what he did," Steve acknowledged, frowning and doing nothing to hide it.

She's frowning too. "Yeah, I do. Because if you're in a tiny room, trapped in a bunker, and somebody's telling you that they don't care about people being scared and freaking out and lynch mobs, and no matter what you say it's their way or the highway, I think that that's one of those times where it's valid and totally makes sense to do for the short term. It's like- It's like if Bruce was going to change, or Jackman tried to start eating people. What she wanted to do was dangerous." And it's after the fact - that's the thing, it's after the fact and memory is fuzzy and while Caroline thought the same at the time, it's definitely become more defined, more real.

"I know Lauren," Steve answers, still frowning. "I doubt she 'didn't care' about any of it. And there would never have been a lynch mob. Enough of us know about you already, and we wouldn't have let anyone hurt you because of what you are." He pauses, and wishes he didn't have to go on, but Steve Rogers is never the sort of man to shirk from what he perceives as his duty, or the sort of man to be anything less than upfront about his intentions. "Right now, it's who you are I'm worried about. And how to protect the rest of them from you, if you think that it's okay to do this. That you were justified."

Caroline's staring at him, her brows furrowed. "Seriously? Seriously, Steve? I get that you're Mr. Sunshine and whatever, but the way to handle this kind of thing was not to just announce to everyone that we have three people who, through no fault of their own and were handling it already, are going to need to feed on some of you. Not from her, who has about as much social tact as a bull in a china factory or whatever, and did you consider the fact that Pam and Klaus know how this works? That they've been there? And this was the best choice. It wasn't permanent, it wasn't making somebody just like, I don't know, lend herself up for being somebody's chew toy without her remembering. It was letting us handle it, instead of it being forced on us, when everybody was already afraid. You say there's no lynch mob? That you won't hurt us because of who we are? Tell that to Logan, who is just looking for an excuse to kill Klaus. It takes one person with a grudge against vampires, and I could wake up doused in gasoline." She's seen it happen - Mystic Falls, where she knows the people, she knows they're good people, and a lot of them know about the vampires, and it's just fear. It's fear, and people turn into a mob.

"Why didn't you talk to her afterwards?" Steve asks, after a beat, instead of answering that speech that he's let her have because he knows to pick his battles, to some degree. "You knew it was temporary. You knew she'd realize what you'd done. After we all were released, you've had days. Why haven't you talked to her?"

"Because-" And she just stops, and she looks out the window, the ticking timer in the corner. "Because I don't like her, Steve. Because I tried, and she acts like this- This thing I am? Is a sickness. And it's a handicap, and it's awful. That it's a medical condition, instead of it being who I am, and I have way more going on, and am trying to figure it out, instead of her acting like I'm some sort of junkie addict." And it's totally Caroline projecting, but she's not cognizant of it, and that's why to her, that's pretty much the only answer. "Besides, when it wore off, if I'd talked to her about it, it would have seemed like I was trying to do it again." Which she wasn't, because - not that she's telling him that - she didn't know it was going to wear off at all.

"Your issues are your own, Caroline," Steve tells her, as he pushes up to his feet. He sounds as if he is stating a fact, which is his version of merciless, compared to his usual warmth. "We all have things going on. But you let Klaus force his will upon her, and you didn't go to her or to anyone about it afterwards. Before it wore off. I don't care that you 'don't like' her. I don't care that you have to drink blood to survive. I care that you think all of this is okay. I care that I can't trust you anymore."

"What?" She's standing, too, and the incredulousness on her face is incredibly obvious. "I think - which, thanks for just sort of deciding that for me - that somebody who doesn't know us corralled us into a room and told us that it was her way or the highway, even though her way was incredibly dangerous. Have you had people who care about you and love you hurting you just because of what you eat? No? Then guess what. You don't know what the people who 'know you' will do. She thinks she knows best, she doesn't, and this sort of thing? Is a safety thing. Because she's making this something to scare people, when it's something that we're handling as adults. Nobody's sick, nobody's being fed on and then having their memory wiped. We were in one situation where someone who doesn't know us decided she knows best and wouldn't even take the stuff we had to say at all, and gave us an ultimatum, and we did what we had to do to protect ourselves." She shakes her head. "I guess that I can't trust you either. I never thought I'd actually say this, but I'm disappointed in you." She says it before he can say it to her, and she means it, one hundred percent.

"Of course you are," Steve nods, and he sounds sad. Not so much that she's disappointed in him, but that he's disappointed in her. "I know you were scared, are scared, but think about this, at least. In handling things the way you did, you did exactly what you were afraid Lauren would do." If human decency isn't enough to make her see they had been wrong, perhaps simple logic will do. He nods at her, a goodbye, and turns to go.

She should have been back. That's all she can think, is that she should be back already, but she's currently trying to figure out how, exactly, she's not going to get eaten. Her knee's screaming - it twisted the wrong way when she'd been running from what she'd found out was the two raptors down here with her. Two, she'd found out, when she'd been flattened by the one that'd moved so fast behind her she'd barely had enough time to turn around, much less get out of the way.

She'd hit that one in the head with a piece of rebar longer then she was tall, but right now, she was in the cage with the circuitbreaker - so, yay! she'd found it - but the raptors weren't far behind. She's got enough stuff piled against the gate that it's probably not going to be pushed open in the next three minutes, but she's trying to remember what the hell she had to do - the switches don't work, but then there's the pump thing, and she can hear them outside.

"This is not how this is supposed to go," she says to herself, and pretty much everything hurts right now.

Caroline wasn't really sure exactly how her life had become one giant whirlwind of drama. She was still working on figuring it out - on hashing out the whys and whatfors and exactly what all had happened over the last week, and she didn't have words for a lot of it; they'd just moved, and there wasn't really anything else besides that. They'd moved spaces, they'd moved on, she'd changed sort of as a person.

She'd managed to avoid talking about most of the things that'd been bothering her, but she and Klaus had somehow found a good steady state that worked well between them - it was an excellent sort of balance, where neither of them discussed what'd come up when everything'd been settled, but they both moved on with their lives.

That was, until today. Until she'd actually talked to Logan, until he'd told her to break up with Klaus, and until he'd called him a freakshow. Until she'd talked to Erik.

But then there was that tiny bee-dle-beep from her communicator, and it was Klaus, telling her to meet him by the inventory room.

Two seconds. Deep breaths, in and out, because she didn't want to drag him into this, not until she'd figured out her own mind, but then she squared her shoulders and it was a short walk and a turbolift before she walked towards where he'd asked her to meet him. "I'm here," she said the open air - she didn't see him yet, but she knew he'd hear her.

She goes to Erik's room before she tells Klaus. Before she does anything, really - she literally left Logan's room, and it's not like it's far. Not when you compare it to upstairs, to having to take a turbolift and possibly not being able to get down again.

She's there, and she's not crying, she's just standing - and it's a hard thing, standing up to your teacher, your friend, somebody who Caroline's trusted for months, and they just asked her--

Right. Erik's the person she needs to talk to, because he's the one who's been talking about this the most. Accept who you are. That it's not bad, who she is. And still, she's got what Mystique said just sort of hovering around the back of her mind, it has been since she said it; How do you take yourself seriously?

And she just knocks, not even sure what she'll say.

She'd spent what amounted to fifteen hours in the program "Small Town America" over the last three days. She'd walked in the sun, sat on benches-- but when someone had talked to her, she told the Holodeck to get rid of the people. She didn't want to see people. Not now. Not at all.

It was only fifteen hours because she couldn't monopolize the whole holodeck, and besides that she spent her time wandering level 5. She ate, she slept-- it was all a blur until she finally went back home, until she steeled herself to walk in on Klaus, to figure out what to say to him.

And their room was empty. She stood in the doorway, staring at the place they'd lived for seven months, and it was empty, and she wasn't able to stop the well of panic in her chest, the sort of emotion she'd been avoiding for the last few days. The reason she'd left in the first place. It took her a few minutes to realise that there was a note on the desk, and when she read it - Level 5. 5-A-16. and there was a drawing of her.

---

She'd fixed her makeup, and she knew there wasn't much to be done for how red her eyes were. Her hands shook as she knocked carefully on the door, and when it slid open she didn't say anything, just moving into the room and tried to figure out where everything was, not looking at him. It had been days - they hadn't not talked in days since the very beginning, and she didn't know what to say even now, just moving around the suite, looking at everything.

Finally, finally she spoke, her voice cracking and clearly worn, her throat aching from the way she'd lost her handle on this new-found calm earlier, thankfully when she was alone. "It's nice," she said, and it was only then that she looked back at him, but only for a moment, before looking back down at the bedspread and the night table and walk-in closet and everything else.

So, first off, Caroline's mad. That's the thing that gets her, she's mad, and she's not been this kind of mad-at-the-world in a while. She's in the gym, and she's managed to actually mess up one of the punching bags but she's moved to another so she can try and blow off steam.

Well, half blow off steam, and half get better at this, so that her age isn't so much of an overriding factor that she wasn't a better sort of pick then two humans. Let's see Cuthbert go up against Logan, or Klaus, or Mystique, and honestly she wasn't really one to blow her own horn and stack up her powers for her being capable, but it wasn't just her powers. She'd gone up against the Hulk, and was pretty well fine. She could handle herself. She'd died a bunch of times, she wasn't exactly jumping at shadows in the dark. She's trying hard, and she's here, and it's everything that everybody's shown her in this sort of weird mishmash of steps and movements that mixed between human-fast and faster than, and Logan said it was like stacking marbles.

She's sweating and glaring, and really it looks like the bag's personally offended her, but she'll figure it out later - except, of course, she hears the woosh of the door and she turns on a dime, glaring - somewhat without reason - at whomever's in the doorway.

The habitat? The habitat had been - well, boring wasn't the right word, because it was anything but boring, but Caroline realised about halfway through all the weird stuff that weird stuff here meant probably weird stuff on the station, and that's where there were a lot of people who weren't, you know, superheroes and indestructible. Sharon, though, Sharon was totally one of the superheroes, and that's why Caroline peaced out, a simple Take me home being way more than enough.

Except that there wasn't anybody in the hub.

Scratch that, there wasn't anybody human in the hub. There were monitors, showing the cameras following her. There was something that looked like a body in the shadows, but as she crept forward with a quiet, "Hello?" She heard it.

Rrrrrrrrrr.

"Okay," she said to herself, backing away from the body, trying not to pay attention to herself on camera. "Okay, so I'm just going to head to the party like a good little girl, and you're going to-"

And then she could see the glowing red eyes, and she backed up, her voice raising into a squeak, "You're totally going to let me go, and-" And there were another set.

"Oh, why me," she said in a rush, and that's when she did three things, all smashed together into one movement. She took a chair-- thank god there were chairs -- and it went winging across the hub, and... totally missed. Plan number two, especially because they were stalking her, the things with red eyes, in the shadows, that thought that growling was totally awesome.

She ran. She ran, and it was faster than a human, faster than normal, and twice she almost went the wrong way, into more of them, it seemed like, but then she got to the room, she could hear the people inside, hear the music. She skidded to a stop, nearly running into the door before it wooshed open, and she stumbled in the last few steps, gasping for breath. What the hell was going on?

7:53am.

The meeting room where Mycroft and Lady G have somewhat successful dinner parties, now creepy and empty. Awesome.

Caroline's pacing back and forth, flexing her hands together, the click-click-click of her heels (yes, heels, because the wardrobe room's locked, and apparently nobody's freaking out about this except her, and well maybe Mycroft is, but Mycroft's also pretty sure that she made him a snack, and it wasn't like she'd meant it--

And besides, Klaus should have handled it. She'd not told him about her little 'conversation' at the party, but he said it was alright, and she'd told Mycroft to forget it and he'd seemed too, and besides the whole you're a vampire thing and the impending pitchforks, a dozen people were missing and parts of the station would apparently lock themselves and not open and what did that mean? Could some of the people be inside?

"Being a vampire turns you into a hyperactive freak," she mumbled to herself, forcing herself to take a deep breath, in and out. "Just be normal." She had to remember not to let herself be carried away - crazy neurotic Type-A personalities that were just heightened even more with the whole new-diet-of-O-positive thing wasn't exactly helpful, right now.

She was still pacing, when the first person showed up. "Oh! Hi. Okay. Okay, thanks for coming."