brightestlight | Everything sucks. The end.

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Everything sucks. The end.

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.

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"Give them a few days to prove to me that they aren't going to start working again," Klaus says, because he's not planning for anything else until he knows that this is going to be permanent. "In the meantime? Probably try to bust open some doors."

He reaches for the shampoo, and yes, he's going to be washing her hair. Just try and stop him. "Turn around and tilt your head back for me?"

She doesn't protest, and instead just does what he asks, closing her eyes. There's so much that they need to talk about - both of them, but it's easier to just let this happen instead.

"The clock doesn't have a lot of time," she murmurs. "I hope we don't get gassed again." She didn't really think she could handle it, if they did.

"Maybe it'll drop the rest of them, this time," Klaus states, lightly. He doubts it, but you never know.

Wouldn't it be something if the only way to revive them was vampire blood at full power? There are a few temptations that he knows he would have a hard time resisting - but he would, for Caroline's sake, if no one else's.

The shampoo has become closer to a scalp massage; if he can make her relax with it, all the better.

She's tilted her head forward, and is trying to relax. She's trying, and she pulls in a deep breath, and she reaches back for one of his hands, and pulls it around her instead, taking that half-step back so she's leaning against him. "Just for a minute."

She breathes the words, before asking him a question. "Has it ever been like this? Anything you've experienced, has it ever been like this?"

"Like what, exactly?" he asks, because right now, he's holding her, and she's warm in his arms, and he can hear her heartbeat again. The smell of her shampoo is strong in the air, but so is the smell that's so very much her, and he hadn't been able to smell it like this since she had showed up on the station.

She hasn't turned in his arms yet, because she's hiding from him, in a way. Waiting for the right time. "Everything?" She swallows thickly, pulling his other arm around her, leaning back against him as the water they're standing under slowly rinses the last of the soap from her hair. "Any of it."

"Nothing is ever the same," Klaus says, because it's true, not two days have been the same in over a thousand years, "and I've never experienced this much science fiction. But I've known a lot worse than this."

By far. Compared to the Hunter's curse, this is a walk in the park.

She turned then, her eyes searching his, trying to find some answer.

"It could be a lot worse," she says with a small, tight smile. He's not wrong, and she knows it, even though she's so afraid of the future right now. It's different for her than it is for him, but she doesn't speak on that, instead she brushes - sopping wet, of course - his curls from his forehead as her eyes search his, thinking about how much he really did need a haircut.

It's something she had said before they'd passed out again, and she pulls in a breath to ask him something else. "Tell me that everything will be alright?" She needs it, even if he doesn't know it will - even if it's a lie.

"Of course it is," Klaus assures her, and tilts her head back to kiss her. His kiss says that, too. It's the kiss of someone who's lived too long to believe anything else.

Whenever things are looking down, it means that they will eventually look up. Being immortal means they have the time to wait things out.

She cupped his face in her hands as she kissed him back, and her own was tinged with fear and desperation, unable to keep that edge of what she'd been avoiding this whole time from the way they were together now. She was too young; too inexperienced.

She didn't believe him, but she closed her eyes tightly, and she pulls him closer, if it's even possible.

"I've got you," Klaus assures her, against her lips, and wraps his arms around her, holding her close. Of course he's hard; she's naked in his eyes, how could he not be. But it's really not where his focus is. "You'll be just fine, Caroline," he goes on, after another kiss.

She exhales against his lips, and pulls back enough to look up at him, the stark vulnerability in her eyes something that makes her look away for a second, before they search his.

"I love you," she breathes, and she wishes- sometimes, she wishes she'd hear him say it. She'd thought that she was dying. Him, maybe, but her-- certainly, and he'd never said it to her, and even though it's just words sometimes she wondered.

But in the end, they're just words, and she shakes her head minutely before leaning up to kiss him again, tender and soft.

It's there in his kiss, even if he won't say it. At this stage, he believes that if he says it, everything will go to hell. It would be the ultimate jinx, it would be asking for it, it would be the end of everything they could still live. So he kisses her with it, but he doesn't say it.

She pulled back, and rubbed his cheekbone with her thumb as she took a deep breath, and then stepped back, pulling him with her. She didn't care that they were both dripping, instead she spoke quickly. "I was afraid that I'd never see you again." She leans up to kiss him again, and it's like her priorities are at war-- to move, or to keep touching him, kissing him. There's an urgency to the whole thing that's been on the backburner until now, but it's still there - has been there since she'd really realised he was alright. That she was alive.

She doesn't have the faith he does, that everything will be fine. That they'll be fine, and maybe that spurs this, too.

It's a long while before they stop, both slightly breathless, in bed. Real vampire stamina; its return is a welcome one. Klaus moves over to kiss her, fingers threading in her almost dry hair.

"I really hope the nanites are definitely out of the picture," he smiles against her mouth.

She kept touching his skin. All through this, she kept needing to touch him, and it made her relax into the kiss. She murmured quietly as she pulled back, "I think we broke something." That's when she sighed softly, and pulled away enough to stare up at the ceiling, even as she still touched his arm.

"What're we going to do?" She doesn't mean about the possibility that they'd cracked one of the structural supports on the bed, that much is clear from her tone.

"We're going to wait and see, love," Klaus answers, and after kissing the slope of her shoulder, slips out of the bed to go and ask the replicator for some blood. He gets some for her and for him, and brings two mugs back to bed, sitting beside her and, once he has a hand free, stroking easily at the most readily available skin. "There are too many unknowns for any real decision, right now."

"They have vervain, Klaus." She says it quietly, and she's pulled up the sheet enough to be decent, but she shifts so that they're still touching once she's taken the mug from him. "And you heard them. They weren't even concerned . It was like, 'Oops! I meant to wash my hands, sorry I literally just-" and she doesn't say the rest.

"And they're just giving it out. How long before it's like it was back home?"

Klaus shrugs, a one-shouldered shrug in order not to disturb the mug in his hand. "We'll deal with it, love. There's no point worrying about what-ifs. Let's see if the nanites reboot, first, alright?"

It's going to be a very different life if they don't.

"There's a point," she says shortly, but she doesn't belabor the issue-- which, more than anything, is the indicator that it's actually something she's worried about, that she's scared of, since she's not running off her mouth at a million syllables a second.

Instead, it's just those three words.

It's a silence that stretches, until she drains her mug, and takes a deep breath, exhaling in a rush. "We need real sleep, not being in a coma. Both of us."

If there's a point, he doesn't see it, unless worrying yourself to death over what-ifs is in itself a point. But it's not one he recognises as such. He finishes his blood, and he couldn't disagree with her more - he doesn't need sleep, he needs blood off the vein, he needs the hunt and the glory of being himself again - all things he has to deny himself for now.

"I'm going to go pick up Star," he tells her, and leans over to kiss her forehead. "I'll stay until you're asleep, if you like."

Caroline tips her head up instead to lightly kiss him, and she shakes her head. "Go and find him. I'll be here." She skims his hair with light fingers, and flashes a quiet smile before she sets aside her mug, and slips down to go to sleep, trying not to let the very thing he'd warned against-- the worries, the fears -- keep her awake.

It was, she thought, different for him; but it was something that they could discuss later.

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Everything sucks. The end.

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