brightestlight | Klaus: Feb 14

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klaus mikaelson

Klaus: Feb 14

An hour ago, she'd been furious. An hour ago, she hadn't talked to Mystique, and she hadn't really done anything besides busted a sandbag and been on her way to busting another one. Now, though... now, she found herself actually hesitating before going into her room, and she realises that she hadn't even taken the tape off her hands, sort of going back and forth until finally, the door slides open and it's not like she can just act as if she wasn't there the whole time. The fact that it's Valentine's Day has totally slipped her mind and fallen by the wayside, because she's got a whole other set of problems, and besides, the days sort of bleed into one another here.

"Hi," she says, sitting at the end of their bed, unwinding the wraps from her hands. She hasn't really talked to Klaus about what she's been doing with Logan and Mystique past the occasional I'm meeting with Logan today or I ran into Mystique earlier. He knows what she's up too, or at least she thinks he does, but she's never really gone into it in detail. So now, her all flustered and unwrapping her hands, it's a little unusual.

She takes a deep breath, and she's trying to formulate a question, because nobody knows her better than he does, and she's got a lot of things in her head right now but instead of the things she wants to ask - Do you think I can protect myself and Tell me if you think I'm wrong (which, of course, would have lead to another million questions about what the hell she was talking about, given that she didn't tell him about the whole guard duty/getting turned down fiasco, either) - she just asks quietly, "Do you take me seriously?"

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To be fair, Klaus is relieved that Caroline still hasn't said a thing about the bloody holiday, and dearly hopes that she hasn't been planning something special for their evening, like stacking up of blood as good as the replicators ever get them for the vampire version of a romantic evening (his version includes live food). He's finished a drawing he wanted her to have, and he's gone back and forth between letting her wake up to it or not this morning, but he ended up not doing it, because it's bloody Valentine's day, and he has standards.

Or he likes to think so, apparently.

When she comes into the room, he's working on a drawing of Star, who perks up at her arrival and pads over to her, nudging his nose at her legs. Klaus isn't sure if the wolf realises that something is wrong, but either way, he does, and is expecting one of Caroline's emotional speeches to rush out of her any second. So he just watches her patiently, to let her know that she has his attention, and that he's going to listen.

But then it's just a question, and he frowns. "If you need to ask, I've been doing something wrong."

She scritches between the wolf's ears distractedly, and shakes her head. "No, I mean- me." Like somehow he didn't get that when she said Do you take me seriously. "The stuff I do, and like, and- do you think it's stupid?" She stopped herself. "Young. Useless."

And it's not like her to be like this with him, not anymore. Months ago, maybe, but now? She's mostly past the walls and the rest of it, but right now it's the only way she knows how to ask. "Pointless," she says finally, her eyes flicking up to his.

"I don't understand what the big deal about prom is," Klaus compromises, after a few seconds, and he puts the sketchpad down on the desk, pencil on top of it.

"But I don't understand Rebekkah's newfound passion for school dances either." It's really not about reawakening that little feud between the two of them, but it's to say, she's a thousand years old and she understands, she's that way too. And if its only use is symbolic - all the more so here - that hardly makes it pointless. "I'll still be your date. Get a corsage out of the wardrobe."

The last is said with a half-smile, and the look on his face is clear enough; he's trying to make her smile. Not because he doesn't take whatever is going on seriously, but to break some of the tension inside her and make the oncoming talk easier, or just less difficult.

She shakes her head when he mentions it, and she looks down at her hands. "That's- It's stupid, the whole prom thing, it's not like we're at school, and it's a bunch of people who don't care about it just because I wanted to wear a fancy dress and dance with you when we were actually dating. It doesn't make sense to do it here, and I shouldn't have thought about it in the first place."

Which is a complete one-eighty from every other time she'd talked about it, ever. "It doesn't matter. You know? None of this matters. This stuff I do, it's just-" And she takes a deep breath. "I'm not in high school anymore, I'm not-" And she just stops. "I'm not."

OK, so this is going to be even more complicated than that. Klaus stands from his chair, and moves to sit beside her on the bed, watching her profile. "What's going on, love?"

"I was talking to someone- and I just- I mentioned it, because I didn't really think, and- I never realised how dumb it sounded. Like, I have enough problems with people thinking I'm not able to do things, and then I'm setting myself up for people to think I'm an idiot." She looks over at him, and she shakes her head. "I'm going to look like this forever, I can't act like nothing changed when I became like this, and it was stupid for me to try." She's upset, clearly, and it's sort of the mess she's been sorting out for the past two months. Who she is now; both away from Mystic Falls, and figuring out her own humanity.

"It's no wonder that they said no, I would have said no, too, because who I am is the girl who runs away from the fact that her diet's O negative and wants to cling to high school. A prom? Here?" She runs her hands over her face, then just shakes her head.

Klaus is trying, he really is, but he's never had an even temper, and she's still not telling him. He takes a deep, silent breath, lets it out slowly, and asks again, because she's referring to half-stories and he doesn't know the full one, "What's going on?"

He's glad that he sounds attentive, and the frustration is nowhere in his tone.

It's when he repeats his question that Caroline realizes he doesn't know what's going on, and it makes her stop and explain, sort of. Even though she guesses that he's not going to be the happiest fit in the world that she volunteered to stand guard over an apparent psychopath, even more so because Steve spearheaded the whole thing.

"I volunteered to guard Hyde," she said first, "And I got turned down because 'I'm too young' and stuff about him being psychologically manipulative, or whatever, and, I mean. " She stops for a moment. "Ok. You know, okay. But then, I saw that they were totally fine with Cuthbert, and- he's human, Klaus, and he's young, and I-" I've been trying , she wants to say, but she doesn't, because Mystique was right, it doesn't matter.

"I was mad, and working it off, and I ended up having a talk with Mystique. I sound like an idiot. I'm not human, and I keep trying- Erik told me that. I'm not normal ."

There's the rush of words, but then it's gone, selling out at "I need to stop trying to be. "

Klaus frowns when she tells him that she volunteered, but it's mostly - mostly - because she hasn't told him before. He has to say, he's glad that she was turned down. Caroline doesn't need to be around something like Hyde; nobody he cares for does.

But in the end, it's all that talk about being normal, and young and sounding like an idiot that gets to him the most. It's what matters most, clearly.

"You should mostly stop trying to define yourself by listening to others, love," he tells her, and from the tone it's simple, rational advice. "'Mystique was right', and 'Erik told you'. You're Caroline Forbes, and you're the only one that gets to decide what it means."

He's just like Mystique and Erik himself; he puts a clear line between what they are and humans. But if Caroline wasn't so very human, he doubts she would have such light inside her. They're complex creatures, especially in their early years, because he thinks that things become easier with the centuries. Things thin down to their essence.

"But they're not wrong. What's the point of wanting those things here? We're being held prisoner, and I'm thinking about dances and boyfriends, and all this stuff that nobody else cares about. Even you just said you don't get it."

She looks over at him, and her eyes are dark with confused misery. "All the stuff I'm trying to do, and be, it doesn't matter, because nobody cares. They care if you're strong enough to protect people, or fast enough to save the world or smart enough to defuse a bomb or whatever, but nobody cares about all the stuff that I like, and they think I'm some idiotic blond cheerleader, and it matters."

She exhales slowly. "And I was trying to hold onto it. I was, even though I want to rip people's throats out, and when you told me about the stuff at Christmas, I wanted to be there. I was trying so hard to be normal, and I just wanted-- I'm only going to be able to do this stuff once, before I'm just a vampire forever, and-" And I wanted to do this with you, she was going to say, but she just stopped, shaking her head. "I don't know who I am. I don't know how to decide what that means, because all the stuff I knew? Doesn't mean anything here."

Klaus is silent, for a few seconds, and then he reaches out to cup her face with one hand, thumb brushing over her cheekbone. "Do you remember what I told you, when I first fed you my blood?"

When I healed you from Tyler's bite, is what he really means, but he does not like to think back on it. It was the right move, it was necessary, he had to teach them, but he didn't like having to do it then, and he doesn't like having done it now.

"You can have a thousand more birthdays, love," he reiterates. "You can be anything you want. You can do anything you like. Whatever this is, it won't hold us forever. This is transient. Everything is, but us. Be the person you want to be, Caroline. That's who I want to be with." He cares, and values, and respects her, is what he's saying.

She turns towards him, and her brows furrow, nodding slightly when he asks. Her eyes are shining with tears, but she speaks quietly, like she's telling him a secret. "I want what you said," she admitted, her eyes searching his. "The art, and the world, all of the worlds, and I don't know what to do."

Her eyes flicked up to his. "I want- I feel like being a vampire makes me a monster, sometimes. That I want people, that when you talk about all those things that are violent and awful I can see myself doing them." She hesitated. "But I still- I care, and it's stupid, but I just wanted to do all of those things like dances because I didn't want to regret not being there." She wanted to go to a dance without being mad at him; she wanted to be prom queen (because, let's be real, she'd win), and she wanted to have those memories with her friends, before she had to leave, sooner or later.

She shook her head, looking up at the ceiling as she exhaled slowly. "But I know that we're not there anymore. Neither one of us." She looked back at him. "How do you know? If-" And it's dangerous territory, talking about his family, because she knows how much he misses them, but she just sort of barrels ahead anyway. "Your family means so much to you. How can you just be without them?"

It is dangerous territory, he can feel it in his chest, that unease, that anger that makes him want to lash out, and Caroline and Star are the closest things, and the wolf didn't ask the question.

"I don't have a choice, do I," he says in a controlled voice, because he's thinking about Finn as well, and he wants to rip their throats out.

"None of us do," and it's out before she can stop it, that sharp answer because she's on edge anyway. It's out before she registers the anger in his voice, and it makes her pull back into herself. "I- sorry." she says, because she doesn't have anything else she can say. "I didn't mean..." And she did mean, she did want to know how someone who was so defined by the people around him, the people he cared about, how he could function here, but she hadn't realised how angry he still was.

"I just- Yeah." And she pushes herself off the bed, shaking her head. He doesn't have the answers for her - he never has, even though he was a big part of what guided her to make her own choices. "I guess I just need to figure it out. Listen to myself, and all that. Thank you." And it's sort of her trying to back away from the question she'd asked, even though she's never been particularly good at defusing this sort of thing.

"Don't thank me," he tells her, and he stands up, and he has to get out of there. "Be true to yourself, it's all that bloody matters."

Except for how he can't be true to himself, because that might get them both lynched. But he is dying for a proper meal, or at least some decent violence.

"I have to get some air," he adds, as if he were just going for a walk, as if there were any air around that was actually fresh air, as if he could just step out and into the sunlight.

And he's gone before she can say anything, Star making a low whine at his sudden departure, and the general tension in the room.

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Klaus: Feb 14

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