Caroline Forbes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightestlight) wrote2013-06-21 02:09 pm
brightestlight) wrote2013-06-21 02:09 pm
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One, two, three bottles of beer on the wall.
Drunk.
Caroline hadn't really ever understood why Damon and Stefan drank so much, before she was a vampire. They pretty much lived and breathed scotch and brandy and whiskey, and she would just roll her eyes.
And then she was one.
It cut the hunger, and was one of the things that actually made you sort of forget the amount of crap that you had going on. It helped. And that was why, if you asked her, she was drunk as she walked home. Her heels dangled from her fingers, and she still had a glass of rum and something in her hand. It was multitasking at it's finest, and of course had absolutely nothing to do with anything that possibly happened in the last month or so.
Which doesn't really explain why, when she looked up and saw Lauren coming towards her, she actually just stopped. Not slowed down, not flashed her a smile, she just stopped, and her brows furrowed. "Hey," she said, a little loud so that she'd hear her. "Hey, do you have a second?"
And she doesn't even know what she wants to talk about out of the giant list of things she's got that she wants to talk to Lauren about, and she hasn't picked one, but she downs the rest of her drink with a shudder before she just sets it down by the wall so one of the cleaning bots'll get it.
Caroline hadn't really ever understood why Damon and Stefan drank so much, before she was a vampire. They pretty much lived and breathed scotch and brandy and whiskey, and she would just roll her eyes.
And then she was one.
It cut the hunger, and was one of the things that actually made you sort of forget the amount of crap that you had going on. It helped. And that was why, if you asked her, she was drunk as she walked home. Her heels dangled from her fingers, and she still had a glass of rum and something in her hand. It was multitasking at it's finest, and of course had absolutely nothing to do with anything that possibly happened in the last month or so.
Which doesn't really explain why, when she looked up and saw Lauren coming towards her, she actually just stopped. Not slowed down, not flashed her a smile, she just stopped, and her brows furrowed. "Hey," she said, a little loud so that she'd hear her. "Hey, do you have a second?"
And she doesn't even know what she wants to talk about out of the giant list of things she's got that she wants to talk to Lauren about, and she hasn't picked one, but she downs the rest of her drink with a shudder before she just sets it down by the wall so one of the cleaning bots'll get it.
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"Um, sure," she says, trying not to let her nerves show. She had just come up to see if the holodeck was free while everybody else was off at the party, but of course she wasn't the only person to have had that thought and she had been turned away by Sherlock's terse 'go away'. She hadn't told anybody where she was going, but Sam would miss her before too long.
"What's up?"
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She paused, and tried to find the right first question, and then just sort of- "I helped you because you needed help. I'm not... Bad." And it was important for her to say, even though she felt like it wasn't going to get her anywhere as she continued weakly. "I'm one of the good guys."
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And she pressed her lips into a thin line. "I'm going to say some stuff, and you can do whatever you want, but you need to know where I'm coming from. Klaus isn't a good guy. You're right, he's not. He hasn't been for as long as I've known him. But he's the only person- he's the one who actually cares about me. He's saved me, more than once. My friends- they don't. And they haven't, and that's okay because they have their own priorities and I get that, but he's always been there for me."
She paused for a second. "Things were awful, back home. You don't even- you can't know. Or understand. And I don't expect you to, but that's why he said what he said to Sam. Because right before I was here, I was being tortured with vervain and he promised that it wouldn't ever happen to me again."
She rubs the back of her neck with her hand, looking down at the ground. "Not... for me to get all preachy. I'm sorry. Listen, do you want to- I dunno, walk, or something? I just- I just--" She's having problems finding words, and she knows she needs to still say something.
"I can't overhear you like I did before. Not anymore." She thought it was a helpful thing to add.
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As the silence stretches out she feels the need to say something, even though none of her discussions with Caroline have ever been particularly fruitful. "I'm sorry that people were hurting you with vervain, back home. That isn't why I used it, though. I didn't even know that it would burn you, or I would've been more careful with it," she says seriously.
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She cleared her throat. "I get why you want it, but it's sort of like- I mean-" She paused. "Right before I came here," she said, and then her brows furrowed. "You saw what it did to my arm, I guess just imagine- No. You know what? It's just bad, and I know what even well-meaning people will do with it, and I guess it's something I just need to be ready for."
She nodded, and took a deep breath. "Are you okay now? I mean, I know the almost dying thing doesn't usually sit well, when you're not used to it."
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"You say you get why I want it - because Klaus used his powers to compel me to agree with him and forget my objections. It's not because of what you can do - if I was afraid of that I'd have to hide from you, and Bruce, and the mutants, and most of the people on this station. I'm not afraid of supernatural beings, I'm used to them," she says, frowning. "But I am scared of people who take advantage of others, who use their abilities to violate people's minds and show absolutely no remorse about the fact when they're confronted with it. That's what I'm afraid of."
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She paused. "What I was going to say earlier? It was a gag soaked in it. My hands were pinned to a desk with pencils. I've been shot and drugged and strapped to a chair and put in a cage and compelled to do things that I never wanted to do. My best friend told me she'd let me fry to death. Klaus's the only one who cares."
She could have stopped there, but she's not sobering up yet, so she's still not got her filter back. "But he's not good. He's killed more people than I have ever met, probably. He's dangerous. He protects me, and everyone else is if he feels like it, or if he thinks that him not doing it is going to make me upset. And I don't know why. I know he's-" And she pauses, before she says a monster, but instead her voice falters. "Not good," she says quietly. "He's not good, which is why I get why you need it. And why you want it. You just- You have to know why it's scary and awful for me. And why even though he's not good, I still care about him."
She took a deep breath, before she opened her mouth to continue, but closed it with a click when she realised that Lauren had been trying to get a word in edgewise for... well. Caroline didn't even know how long.
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"...Caroline, I'm sorry that you went through that. I don't know if you have any way to tell that I'm being truthful, but trust me, I am. It sounds horrible, and I can understand how it would make you distrust people. But I would never do anything like that, and I'd never let anybody here do that either. I promise it," she says, and she reaches out, voluntarily touching Caroline's hand for the first time since everything started happening. There's no vervain, so it's just skin to skin contact, pure and simple.
"You're not alone. And we are not the bad guys either."
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An olive branch, sort of. A tiny one, hopefully to make this be way less stressful.
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"I... should go home. Because I need to talk to Klaus about some stuff, but- but you have a good night. Okay?" She rubbed the back of her neck with a hand, the one that Lauren wasn't still holding onto.
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