brightestlight | I do what I waaaaant.

I do what I waaaaant.

Caroline didn't have much preamble when she walked into their suite, a bottle in her hand. "We need to talk, and you need a drink." She moved to pour him one without hesitation, looking back at him over her shoulder. She knew that the last thing he'd wanted to do was go to the party, and while she'd wanted to try and get out because even with his sort of not-super-overwhelming questions, she's been avoiding the answers, the times that she's actually not just straight up changed the subject.

Which, he's not exactly been super communicative, either. It'd been a lot of both of them totally ignoring the matters at hand. Now, though? Now things were different. Now, she was home, and she looked fantastic, if you asked her, and she was going to pour him a drink (in fact, she had, and was holding it out to him) and they were going to talk and then things could somehow maybe go back to normal a little.

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"But that's the point." And she hasn't ever been overwrought in this way, not with him. Of course, she's had hard times, both of them have. It's never been like this, the way her face twists with the emotion, her voice raw as she shakes her head yet again. "I'm not immortal. It's not soon, but it's going to happen someday, and you can't-"

She shakes her head again, and she's trying to breathe and speak and she's still crying. "It's not letting me, Klaus. I love- I love that you keep me safe and that you care, but you can't change me and lock me up forever. It almost tore me in half-" She stops talking then, because she can't continue.

Of course she's immortal, the same way he is. She has a few more loopholes attached than he does, and that's all. But what she says next takes precedence, and Klaus frowns. "What did?"

She shakes her head. "Before. The Alien," she says, like it's enough of an answer and like she's not telling him something she hadn't. She'd downplayed it when she'd told him the first time, to a ridiculous degree, but she certainly doesn't remember that now. She pulls in another shuddering breath. "I know it's over. I know it's over now and there aren't any more. I know it." Even though she clearly didn't, deep deep down.

Edited 2013-06-23 15:05 (UTC)

"Love, we're going to live a bloody long time." He already has, but he means together. "There are going to be more, at one point or another. But the beautiful thing is, what's a little gut-spilling when you can just heal up."

The sooner she gets used to not-dying, the better for her. She should have by now, but it's harder to get used to with the nanites affecting their recovery time, so he's not surprised that she still hasn't.

She actually pulls away from him, scooting back on the bed, shaking her head, and she makes herself take deep breaths, before nodding. "Right. Right, it was- Small." And she laughs, a short unpleasant sound, and she tries to scrub her face with her hands. "And so was the radiation poisoning, and everything else. So-" Nevermind she didn't tell him about that, either. "I guess neither one of us should worry, since it just doesn't matter."

She chokes on the last word - this was, by far, the worst thing that's ever happened to her, but she doesn't know what to do, now, besides acting like nothing happened.

This is more like their usual patterns, and Klaus is effortlessly calm, now. He comes to crouch in front of her. "Physical pain's a bitch, but it's just that," he tells her, without touching her, looking up at her. "The quicker you learn that, the easier it'll be. And you're never going to be able to accept it if you keep pretending nothing's wrong. You need to own your pain, if you don't want it owning you."

Torture him and he would scream as much as the next person. It wasn't about not feeling it, it wasn't about being tough. It was about knowing that it would be gone even as it happened, it was about knowing it couldn't have a hold over you. All physical pain was transient.

"It's not that it hurt." The words come in an explosive rush, and she's shaking her head. "It's not that it hurt," she repeats, quieter now as she looks away. "Things hurt. Nothing's worse than your spine stitching itself back together, so far. I get that things hurt."

She doesn't think he understands, but she doesn't know how to tell him without it being her, her, her, without it being that she's so immature and whatever else people thought about her.

"What is it, then?" Klaus asks, eyebrows raised, the picture of attentiveness. He's resting in an easy crouch, forearms propped on his knees, entirely focused on her.

"I cooked from the inside out, and was nearly torn in half," she said flatly, her eyes welling with tears and her face twisted for a moment, until she forced herself to take another breath, rubbing her eyes with shaking hands. "I had radiation poisoning. They pulled Sam into the walls. I'm not like you, Klaus. What happens when a vampire gets torn in half? What happens when you're so blasted with radiation that the cells of your heart are damaged? I don't know, and-" She had pulled herself into the smallest amount of space she could take up, even as she stared at him. "I don't-"

She took a deep, deep breath. "It's not like before," she whispers, and she's gone white, and doesn't know what to say anymore. It's the abject terror, the fear - and she doesn't know what else to say to him, to get him to understand. Honestly, she doesn't know if he can, because he's never had to have those fears.

"You thought you might die," Klaus states, simply, because it's what he thinks she's saying, and he wants confirmation that that is it.

She doesn't say anything, except she nods only slightly. It's because it's sort of that, it's kind of that she might have died, but she was alone - she was alone, and no one would have known, and she just knows it, that she could have lay there and no one would have known, and she could feel herself dying and it wasn't the way it was when her neck was broken or anything else.

So yes, it's that she thought she might die, that she would die, but it's also more than that. It's also that she would have been alone, that it just would have ended. It's being face to face with an Alien. It's knowing she has to do the good thing, the right thing, and she would have just died.

It's thinking about the aftermath of all of it, of him finding out, and she honestly can't say how he'd react and it's the rest of the station, their life here, and her mom would never know, and it's so much all wrapped up that all she can do is look away and scrub the tears from her cheeks - but he's not wrong.

"But you haven't, love," Klaus goes on, after she's nodded. "You're still here. So be here, and live. There's nothing else for it."

He remembers Mikael's hand around his heart, the stake in his other hand, but it doesn't claw at him the way it is clawing at her. He doesn't know how to help her, and that, that is clawing at him.

"That's not it," she says, and she shakes her head. "I've never- I know you've seen almost everything, I know- I know you're not like this. It was- it was so awful--" And she doesn't know what else to say, and just shakes her head. "I'll get better," she says quietly. "And I'm not just trying to say that, I know I will. I will."

"You wouldn't have known," she says then, quietly. "And nobody else-- My mom, or Elena, or anybody else would have known, and it just- I know it's over, I just keep seeing it. It keeps feeling like it's happening, and I can't- If I act like nothing's happened, then it's okay." She's trying to tell him why it's different. Why all of this is different, and why she's upset. She can't not be, not without pretending like it didn't happen at all. Because she remembers it, the way it felt and sounded and smelled and looked, the lighting and everything, and she was so afraid.

Klaus doesn't understand, it's as simple as that. He would have known, even if afterwards, he would have known, not that he wants to think about that. And her mother and Elena, he doesn't understand what that's about. He's long since reconciled with the fact that he's still over there, even as he is here. He doesn't expect anything from anyone over there. The rest of it sounds just like PTSD to him, and he's not exactly qualified to help her deal - at least, not with his powers as they are again.

"What can I do to help?" he asks simply, instead of saying anything else. He wants to help her, but he has no idea where to start.

Caroline shakes her head again, slightly, her voice low. "I don't know." She takes a deep, deep breath. "But I know-" She scoots to the side so she's not quite in the middle of the bed, clearly an invitation for him. "They don't get why I love you. None of them do. They don't understand that when they see a monster, it's-" She exhaled slowly. "It's that you have no reason to care about them. None. And- and you do, about me, and you keep the things you love safe."

And she doesn't know if she's saying it for him, or for her. "If something happens, promise me that you'll be okay." And it's not about her, it's that part of this, she was worried about him. Thinking about him. And she's got a bucket of her own problems she doesn't even know how to start on, but this, she can do. "... Eventually. That eventually, you'll be okay." She doesn't know if she matters enough to him to make him be not okay for a long time, but she just needs to know that eventually, he would be alright.

Klaus moves, slowly pushing up to his feet, and taking a seat beside her, still watching her. Of course he's a monster to most of them, and he's hardly done anything, it's laughable. They're lucky the nanites are back in working order, or they would meet a real monster.

But he's too focused on Caroline to let his anger resurface, aimed at them. Instead, he keeps listening, and he frowns slightly at the vow she asks of him. "If it's within my power, love," he answers, because it's the best he can give her. He's not going to promise to something unconditionally, when so many conditions will not be dictated by him.

She nods, and it's sort of defeated and acknowledgement that he never will actually just say things, will never promise her the things she asks even though she does ask it of him. She turns to him, and her hand finds his cheek again as she leans up to kiss him. "I love you," she murmurs against his mouth, and she pulls back enough to look into his eyes. "This-" And it's because of what he said earlier, that she says what she does. "It matters, no matter what happens. If I'm okay, or not. It still matters." And she needs to hear it, to hear him say it, almost.

"You're a part of me now, Caroline Forbes," he tells her, after a moment, a hand stroking her hair, and he's watching her face with so much love that it's impossible to miss it. "This will never not matter."

She sees it, and it's the first time that she knows, deeply, that it's not her imagination, and that he knows it, too. That he recognizes how he feels, and is acknowledging it.

"Do you understand why I want you to tell me? Because I don't want you to change me. Because if I don't know that I'm compelled, it changes who I am. He did that to me, and you- I don't want you to do that. Ever." The words are raw as she says them, her eyes searching his. The he is Damon, and she's largely past everything that'd happened; it seemed like a lifetime ago, but it means she knows firsthand what it means to be compelled, and what it can do.

"I will tell you, next time," Klaus tells her, although he doesn't even know if there will be a next time. With his powers as they are now, there is no guarantee. "I'll always tell you."

She nods, and her eyes search his. "They don't understand, but I don't care." She says it quietly, her hand on his chest. "I should have told you. I should have told you what happened, what Dr. Watson said, about everything that happened. I'm sorry I didn't."

Because to her, something had just changed, between them. Hugely, hugely changed. "Tell me," She said, her eyes searching his. "What happened to you?" Because she wanted to know. She needed to know, because she's trying to be honest and get the same from him in return.

"Uh-huh," Klaus denies her the answer to her question, right after what she's just said. She does that all the time, say one thing and move on, but this time, he's not letting her. "First, what did Watson say?"

Because that was vague enough that Klaus has no idea what she's talking about.

"Why I was sick." She shifts so that she's more comfortable, even as she's emotionally less so. Facing him, but both of them not sitting awkwardly. She doesn't want to tell him, because she doesn't know his reaction - he may not care, and she doesn't know what she'd think about that, or he might be upset. She had no idea.

"I had radiation poisoning," she says quietly. "If I was human, I would have been dead, like, a million times over, but it was so bad-" She paused, closing her eyes for just a second as she took a deep breath. "It was so bad that it kept me sick. The healing, it couldn't just get rid of the radiation."

"The fever," Klaus acknowledges. She has mentioned the radiation poisoning, earlier, but he didn't think it would still be with her. Of course, everything is still with her, so it's no surprise. "Sometimes, I do wish my mother were here, if only so she could tell us how come radiation poisoning affects us, right before I rip her heart out again."

He would never let her live, when all she wanted was to end him, and everyone who owed their undead lives to him, however indirectly. Since Caroline was one of those, it had become all the more important.

"He gave me medicine, it just- the lights, he thinks. They-" And her voice wavers, but she keeps talking. "They sort of... cooked... me? And I was sick because of the radiation because it didn't go away. It's like if somebody put something that slowly leaked vervain inside my arm or something, I wouldn't wake up until it was empty."

She shrugged, taking a deep breath. "I'd be dead, if the nanites hadn't been back, or in a coma, or I don't even-" She stops, and then takes another breath. "Tell me," she says to change the subject from her own fear, from what she knows doesn't help anything. "Tell me what happened?" And she's not trying to get him to talk about Star, specifically, but just to talk.

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