Everything sucks. The end.

[brightestlight]

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.

Comments

[wholeworldoutthere]

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.

[brightestlight]

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.

[wholeworldoutthere]

"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."

[brightestlight]

"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?"

[wholeworldoutthere]

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.

[brightestlight]

"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."

[wholeworldoutthere]

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."

[brightestlight]

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.