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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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.

Except when she asks that, the only thing he can think about is Star.

"We found Amy Pond in that room with the TVs. I compelled her out of there, but an Alien was waiting for us outside. Star tried to back me up. He was gutted on the spot."

The rest hardly mattered - what had happened to him. It really didn't matter, to him. It was in the past. Only Star's death mattered.

She pulled in a breath, and her hand found his cheek. "I'm sorry," she breathes, and she knows it's not enough, of course it's not enough. No sort of words are ever enough, and the one thing that Klaus is never good at dealing with is loss.

She moves without thinking to hug him, even though it's a toss up on if he wants that, and it always has been. There's no sort of consolation, no 'he died protecting you', there's just those words that weren't enough, I'm sorry, and her moving to hold him close.

Of course he welcomes it; it's Caroline, and she's all he has left. He doesn't feel like it's about him, though, he feels like it's about her, and it's easier to accept when he tricks himself that way. He wraps his arms around her, and kisses her hair.

"I know," he only says, because words are fairly useless, and these are the only ones he could say to that.

She holds him close, and her cheek presses against his, her hand smoothing his hair. "It'll be alright," she murmurs after a few minutes. "I will be and you will be." He always would be, and it was something she took comfort in, in times like these. She can't imagine how bad that had to be for him; how horrifying, to see Star die, when he'd been Klaus' only connection back to Narnia.

She knew how much being there had affected him. She pulled back enough just to look up at him, her hand finding his cheek, her thumb skimming his skin. "I'll always be here for you," she promised, her eyes searching his. "I'll do everything I can." And it's a sharp disconnect from the way she's been thinking and feeling, but she knows - she understands, now, why he reacted the way he had. Why he'd been so insistant.

Klaus frowns; he can't help it, the expression's stolen over his face before he's realised. She's just told him she wouldn't be here forever, and now she's saying the opposite. A frown is a natural reaction to such contradictory statements.

But then his brow smoothes over, because it's everything he believes in, because he won't let her die. He lost Star, and that's enough. "You and me both, love," he assures her, and takes her hand in his to bring it to his lips, kiss the back of her fingers. "Together."

Edited 2013-06-23 21:20 (UTC)

She sees the frown, and it makes her brows furrow, even as she scoots closer to him. "I know that you don't want to talk about all of these things," she says quietly, and the fingers of his free hand just slowly smooths through his hair. "I know you don't, but we need to. If we want- I know that sometimes you don't get what I'm talking about, and I get mad at you, and we fight, but I think- I think it's important."

"Fighting?" he asks, with a half smile, but he knows that the answer is yes. "Do you know," and it's the evening when he says all the words, clearly, even if he might never say the three expected words in succession, "I knew that I might love you before you ever argued with me. But it's when you did that I knew I would. That's when I knew I didn't want to live without you. That I could be patient, and take my time. But that I would never give up on you." He still can't believe how little he's had to fight to have her, how quickly it's gone. He'd expected a lot longer before he was blessed with having her.

She pulled back just enough that she could really, really look at him, to search his eyes. "I know how mad you got. Upset, I mean, when we talked about it. Because it's different, because the way I think is different than it is for you." She kept slowly smoothing his hair, just a reflex now. "And, I said I didn't care about how you felt for me, because I knew that I loved you, even if it was new and I didn't really know why or how, I just did."

She paused, sighing softly. "I lied. I care. But not enough that it really changed anything about how I feel, and I thought- I sort of- You sort of know, you know? Or you guess, anyway. I sort of thought I knew - that you... felt... things, but I was scared that I was wrong. That it was just me seeing what I wanted to see, and it makes-." That's when she hesitates, her fingers pausing before she continues. "It makes this hard," she says faintly. "It makes it harder, when I wasn't sure if I was going to die for real-"

She shakes her head, looking away before she can cry, pulling away from him so she can just rub at her eyes. "Sorry, I know eventually it won't scare me as much. Thinking about it."

"Love, you've got to start and use words to say what you mean, instead of circle all the way around it," Klaus tells her, a fond smile on his lips. He has a few ideas what she might mean, and isn't sure which is the right one.

She looks back at him, her brows furrowing as she sniffles, and she shakes her head. "I don't- I mean, I guess that I didn't... I sort of don't know how you felt about me, and I didn't know if it was my own wishful thinking, or like, me reading way too much into things or not - and it makes it way worse when I'm staring death in the face." And she laughs a sort of fake, breathy, forced sort of thing because she can't keep talking about her dying, because she's still so afraid when she shouldn't be, and she's trying to have a real conversation right now and not just her freaking out. 'And I know I said it wasn't important, and I mean, definitely, whatever it is, it's your business, I just- I was lying, because it's important, it's just not going to change how I feel about you. Which, who knows if you even actually believe me about that, right?"

She's talking quickly just to put the maximum space possible between her and the discussion about her dying that she can.

"Are you telling me," he asks, and he's frowning slightly, but also smiling slightly, "that you still don't know?"

Because he's just told her in so many words. He doesn't like these three ones that she likes to say so much. They just lead to heartache and betrayal. But he's been telling her, and showing her, and so far, no betrayal.

It's the problem with emotion, with feelings, and yes, with teenagers. Her reaction to his question is so immediate, the backpedaling so intense that she actually moves away from him as she shakes her head. "I didn't- I just meant- I was just trying to tell you why it was- I meant- Don't... don't worry." Not that he was worried, but she'd tensed up already, into this ball of nerves. "I just knew you didn't believe me for a long time, and- and that's-" She shook her head again, and then cleared her throat, looking away. "Don't. It's- I'm fine with this." Where things were, she meant. That cacophony of words that was supposed to mean I'm not trying to force you into anything, because the only thing worse than someone telling you they didn't love you was someone saying it only because you asked them to. Because she felt like them even bringing it up was somehow not right.

The amusement doesn't let up, although it's not obvious enough to be insulting. "So you haven't actually been listening to anything I've been saying, have you? You've been arguing with me for long enough, Caroline."

Because he does assume that she's been listening, actually, despite the light teasing. So he phrases it that way, because she is smart enough to connect the dots, more than.

"There's a difference," she says quietly when he says that, and it's not that backpedaling of moments ago, but she sounds sort of defeated. "Between thinking you know something, and not knowing if you're, you know, wrong. It's worse. It was worse. That's all I meant about this whole thing, that when you're leaning against a wall almost in two pieces, it's- you just worry that you might have been wrong-"

And that's when she moves and gets up, because she still can't talk about it, because she has to take a few steps, because her hands run back into her hair as she takes a deep breath, before she comes back. "I don't like to think about it." She says that, too. Being honest, now, like it's a new thing for a reason. "About what happened, I freak out. So." And she sits back down on the edge of the bed. "It's okay." Now, is what she meant. That she just needed a second, to not be thinking about it.

"But I know," she says then, in the hopes of cutting this off, changing the subject immediately after. "Even if we fight sometimes, or even if we have a giant fight and things aren't great, it's the patience thing. Right?"

"It's the love thing," he answers, as candid as he's been this evening, even if he's not going to say these three words. He stays where he is on the bed, because he oddly doesn't need the proximity to say it. "I don't know if you've noticed," he adds, and this time he's poking fun at himself, "but I'm not the most patient person alive. Especially for someone who's lived a thousand years old."

He wouldn't be patient if it weren't for the love.

She's even more confused by that, because she doesn't understand-- because she didn't mean it like that, she meant it in a different way. "I meant- I meant that if something happens between us and we have the world's biggest fight and this... isn't this, we'll both live a really long time and it'll work itself out."

She shakes her head, and looks away from him. "You told me you couldn't believe I loved you, and- Just tell me. Not- Not anything about you, but do you believe me? Not that I think I do, but that I do?" She looks back then, and she's so incredibly tired of the emotional cat and mouse, that she doesn't ever want to ask him, that she needs him to understand that it's those split second when you're the most vulnerable and all you can think is what if I was wrong. "That's all, and I'm not going to talk about it anymore."

That's the sticking point, isn't it, and finally, his amusement fades. "Most times, I do," he tells her, which is the best he can do. He's not going to lie to her.

Nobody he's ever expected to love him ever has, not really. Everybody he's loved has betrayed him. Starting with his parents, starting with his first love. He can't give her anything better, because he will always have moments of doubts. Not of her, but of him. Of deserving to be loved.

It hurts. It's so clear from her face that what he says hurts, but she nods, biting her lips together. She doesn't understand, for all that she's been trying to, that he's doubting himself. She thinks it's her, that it's always been her, because of the things that people don't really forget. She's been called shallow and neurotic and immature and idealistic and impractical so many times, and even though she thought she was past it... apparently not so much. She looks down at her fingers for a long second before she looks across the room. "It's late," she finally says, because she's good for her word, that she's not going to belabor the point.

"Are you tired?" She finally looks back at him, and she's managed to get most of that emotion off of her face, so that it's like any other day, especially since everything happened.

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