Caroline Forbes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightestlight) wrote2013-05-05 11:32 pm
brightestlight) wrote2013-05-05 11:32 pm
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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.
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.