5pm, February 19th

[brightestlight]

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.

Comments

[morethanhuman]

There weren't many people who visited Erik on a regular basis, but when he opened the door and saw Caroline standing there, he was a little surprised. He opened his mouth to say something, give her the usual dry greeting, but when her eyes snapped up to his he could see she was barely holding herself together.

He stood back from the door and let her come in, silent.

[brightestlight]

"So," she says, and she hasn't talked to him since that whole thing happened so the not-a-hundred-words-a-minute Caroline may seem sort of odd, "Logan told me to break up with Klaus."

And she turns back to look at him. "Because he's a freakshow."

There's something there, and it's hurt and anger and confusion and betrayal but there's something else, too. Indigence.

"I told him I was the same freakshow, and left." And that's when she stops, and it's clear that she doesn't even know what to do with herself as she stands there, and even though she's tried to stop doing it altogether, she's wringing her hands.

[morethanhuman]

Erik's eyebrows went up. "Well, Logan doesn't exactly have a leg to stand on, there," he said dryly. "Sort of the pot calling the kettle cast-iron, don't you think?"

He moved toward the couch, gesturing for her to follow. They sat facing each other and Erik looked at her with a narrow, assessing gaze. "What are you upset about-- that Logan told you to break up with Klaus, or that you think he thinks you're a freak?"

[brightestlight]

The color sort of drains out of her face, and she looks like she's about to cry. "I thought- he was my teacher." Her voice is so faint he can barely hear it. "He was my friend, and-"

She shakes her head, and looks down at her fingers, every line of her tense.

You think he thinks you're a freak. It echoed, bouncing around with everything else that's been going on the last few days. "I don't know why I came here," she says then, her eyes shiny when she looks up at him.

[morethanhuman]

"No one knows why they came here," Erik said, deliberately misunderstanding her. "But I'm willing to bet it didn't have anything to do with trying to get us to make friends with each other."

He could see her lip tremble, and leaned forward, trying to prevent the part of the evening where she was a weeping mess. "It won't surprise you to hear that I'm not exactly an authority on friendship. I could count on one hand the number of real friends I've had in my whole life." And two of them were sort of the same person. "But one thing I do know is that friends don't treat each other like they don't matter."

[brightestlight]

"He's different," she says, her voice thick. "He's not human, either, I- I thought--" And she shakes her head, looking up at the ceiling so she doesn't cry, because she's not going to. Not now. Not in front of people, because Erik's still definitely people. "I guess it doesn't matter what I thought. He- You don't think that, do you? That I'm a freakshow?" And it's just words, but anyone who says that sticks and stones hurt more than words has never had friends tell them something hurtful.

She's already in a difficult place; she's trying to figure out who she is, and there's Klaus and Mystique and Erik and her past all pulling her different directions, and she's had so much of if your friends put you out to dry because of what you are, maybe they're not your friends that Logan saying what he did turns her stomach, and she shakes her head again. "I-" And she doesn't know what to say, but it's all in her body language, terrified that Logan's right, having to reconcile someone she thought of as a teacher, an authority figure, telling her the thing she feared.

[morethanhuman]

"He's different, yes, but sometimes he wishes he weren't," Erik said. "Logan loves to over-simplify-- and he's childish when he's angry. Klaus obviously made him angry, but he can't get anywhere with Klaus. You, though..."

He stopped and waited for her to look up at him again. "I think anyone who has gifts like yours or mine is special in a way humans can never hope to be. You have to be equal to the burden of that power, or it'll rip you apart. I'm guessing it's not an easy transition, becoming a vampire?"

He didn't wait for an answer. "You survived-- that, and much worse. That doesn't make you a freak. It makes you a marvel."

[brightestlight]

"He's not getting anywhere with me," she said sharply. "He's- do you understand? I trusted him."

And she takes a deep breath, and she shakes her head when he's asked her if it was easy. "I... I was in a car accident." She looks up at him, and she needs to say this, because he says she's a marvel. "And they gave me vampire blood to heal me. My- I was-" And she pauses, and then spoke quickly, quietly because she hasn't actually told anyone else this. "I was suffocated until I- until I died. As a message, and with the vampire blood in my system, there we go. I'm a vampire. I'm dead and I'm a vampire and it was for a message to someone else." She shrugs like it doesn't matter, and she's shaking her head.

"How can you say I'm a marvel?" She asked it like she couldn't believe it.

[morethanhuman]

"How can I not?" He understood how she'd been taught to think otherwise, but it was long past time for her to see things clearly. "You've been used and cast aside and told you were less than by so many people, and the worst crime is, you've begun to believe it yourself. That you've survived so much, in spite of everything that's threatened you--" he gave a short bark of laughter-- "You stood against the Hulk, which from what I've been given to understand is no easy feat."

Erik shook his head in near disbelief. "If you can't look at everything you've done, everything you've survived, and see that it makes you stronger, better-- then I don't know that there's much advice I can give you."

[brightestlight]

Her brows furrowed and she spoke quietly. "I just-" And she doesn't know what else to say, but she nods once, pushing herself to her feet. 'Thanks," she says, because she doesn't know what else to say, and clearly she's sort of gotten herself all twisted up in knots. "Thank you. You're not... wrong," she said, even as she was already moving towards the door. "I mean, you're not, and I know you're not, and-"

And she just shook her head. "I gotta go."