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Caroline feels like she's been going through the last two days in a haze. All of the emotions are more, they're always more, and she can't really handle them. She was a wreck already, still, continually. She hadn't dealt with the changes of the past month.

And, to boot, the last two nights, she's been having nightmares.

She looks like shit, she feels like shit, and she's been sleeping wherever she can find a room - and she's spending as much time as she can in the holodeck. Doing whatever she can to not think about what just happened.

It all would have been much easier if she hadn't walked out of the holodeck and nearly walked into Klaus. Her heart jumped into her throat, and her jaw tightened.

"Hi." She said it flatly, not knowing if he'd even speak to her, even though she's far more sober, and she doesn't know if she'll let him avoid her. She deserved better.

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Klaus didn't expect to see her there, but he figures it was only a matter of time. The station might be bigger than a village, but it's still only a small town, and with only so many inhabitants.

To be fair, he was surprised when she didn't come back, at least the next day. He must've done a better job hurting her than he had hoped (feared). He was surprised, and a mix of conflicted emotions he had no desire to pick apart.

"Hello," he answers, after a beat, sounding very much his usual self. All of his conflicted emotions are gone, when he's looking at her, and he isn't sure if he was weak two days ago, or if he is weak now. Both, more likely. Mikael always knew.

"Come with me," he adds, grabbing her wrist to pull her back into the holodeck with him. "Computer, give us a decent lounge bar, twenty-first century Earth."

She yanks her wrist out of his hand without pause, and there's very little wonder just what he had done. The fact that she went with him was an olive branch, but as the holodeck changed into a lounge bar, with people rummaging around, talking and laughing, she moved to sit at an empty table, her brows quirking high in question, saying (without words, at this point) What do you want?

Klaus raises a finger at her, to say wait a second, and moves over to the bar to order a couple of old-fashioneds from the bartender. He gets back to her once he has them, setting them down on the low table before taking a seat on the (just as low) angle couch.

He's weak either way.

"What I meant," he tells her as he leans back in the couch with one of the glasses, resting it on his knee, as if they hadn't stopped that conversation two days ago, "is that I'm the reason I can only believe it most of the time, and not you."

Her face didn't change, and she didn't move to pick up the drink. It took a second for her to put together what he was even talking about, but it didn't change anything - not that she really believed him either way.

"Did you figure out what it says about you?" She said it shortly, her words clipped. She was quoting him, what he'd said before she'd left.

Klaus looks down at his glass, then looks up at her and takes a drink. It's a good one, too, well-mixed.

"I said those things so you would leave. So I wouldn't have to explain."

He thinks she's smart enough to know that, by now. Admitting it has its price, and he hopes she knows that, too. He doesn't have endless stocks of patience, after all, for all that he is trying.

'Well, it worked." She's waiting for something else from him, her brows rising. "Do you realise how incredibly out of line you were? How much you hurt me?"

She's not ready to let him just get away with it. Not after that whole thing. She doesn't know what to believe and it's entirely his doing.

"I'm very good at being bad," Klaus says, honestly, resting one ankle on his opposite knee, and still leaning back into the low couch. It's become instinct, this carefully crafted elegance. "I don't usually care."

He lets that hang there between them for a few seconds, then confirms, in case that wasn't clear enough. "Yes. I realise." He knows what she wants, or he hopes so, anyway, and it is for her sake, for their sake, that he forces the words out. "I'm sorry, Caroline."

He has never said that to her. Those three words. I'm sorry, Caroline. Her brows furrowed when he said them, before she took a deep breath. "You can't ever do that again," she says thickly, and she doesn't want to be emotional when they have this talk but she's failing.

"Thank you," she said quietly, looking down, and the fact that she leans forward, that she takes the drink, even though she didn't move closer was still progress. "For the apology. And-" She paused. 'The explanation." Even though she didn't know if she believed it. She honestly thought that what he was saying - it had to come from somewhere, but she was trying to deal with this one step at a time.

"You haven't got the explanation yet," Klaus points out, even as he knows that he probably will do it again. It is what he does. Not today, he's surprisingly on his best behaviour today, even though ten minutes ago he had had no intention to tell her any of this. But he is what he is, werewolf, vampire, and Klaus, three reasons why he will likely do it again.

Her brows rose again as she took a sip of the old-fashioned, looking down at it in surprise because it was actually pretty good, but she still looked at him. "I thought you saying what you did so I would leave-" She took a breath so she could think again and remain calm, before continuing. "- and that the reason you can't believe that I love you is because of you, not me, were the explanation." That's her last piece, and she's not flinching from the words now.

She doesn't know what he's going to say, but she's being patient and is willing to let him talk.

Edited (derp) 2013-06-24 19:53 (UTC)

"If you don't want to know more, I'll happily hold off on the rest of it," he warns her, and he isn't sure when he's going to be able to talk to her about this again, which is what that 'happily' is doing in the middle of that sentence. He didn't expect to be able and willing to tell her any of this in the first place, so he's going with his current mood, but he's not happy about telling any of it to her. The very thought of what he's going to tell if she wants to hear it makes him want to run out of the bar and go lose himself in a bloodbath of holo-victims out in the street.

But it isn't a passive-aggressive offer, it's a genuine one, no matter how he feels about it.

"Tell me," she says quietly, and everything with her body language still says she's hurting and upset, but she's trying to still be objective and not lashing out, not being angry and thinking about everything he said.

She took another sip of the drink, and she's just waiting for his explanation.

Of course. Klaus's lips twitch at her words, but he says nothing for a few seconds, just tries to centre himself as best as he can.

"Both of my parents independently spent a thousand years attempting to thwart and kill me," he explains. "The first girl I love betrayed me with my brother, and him with me. All of my siblings have betrayed me, at one point or another. It's not that I don't think you're mature enough to love. It's that after a thousand years, it's become very difficult to believe that anyone could actually love me."

His voice is incredibly level as he speaks, too level, in fact, even in his emphases, subtle things that they are. It's obvious that he's walking a fine line in self-control, and he feels as if his chest might cave in any second, from the weight of what he's saying, for how real voicing it makes it. He's more vulnerable right now than she's ever seen him, and he knows it.

Edited 2013-06-24 20:27 (UTC)

She looks at him for a long, long moment, and she moves then, shifting up from where she was to sit next to him, facing him. She was still holding her drink, and her eyes searched his face, her free hand moving to touch his cheek, moving slowly enough that if there's any sort of indication that he was moving away, she'd stop.

She repeats what she's said before, her voice quiet. "Maybe they weren't the right people." Her tone is hesitant, careful, and quiet; she's still burned, still hurt, but she's not going to leave him to be alone in this.

The tears are prickling at the back of his eyes a second before his vision blurs, and he lets out an utterly unamused chuckle, looking away from her for a second, her fingers shifting on his cheek. "Maybe," he echoes, as fakely jovial with that one word as his chuckle had been, and he's swallowed the tears back when he looks at her. "Or maybe you just haven't seen it yet."

"Maybe I haven't. Maybe I have. Maybe it'll change, maybe it won't." And her thumb smooths along his cheekbone, her fingers gentle. "You have done some very bad things. Some horrible things, Klaus, but that doesn't mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't feel, for you. It doesn't mean I don't forgive you, or that I'm not mad - but it also doesn't mean that I don't understand, or that I don't want to understand. You're worth trying for.." She searched his eyes, trying to see what he was thinking - if what she said was making any sort of dent.

"I'll keep doing horrible things," he has to point out, with raised eyebrows. He has to point it out because now, now he's determined to get off of this bloody station. "You're never going to redeem me, Caroline." He raises his hand slowly, almost hesitantly, to cup her face, his other hand still holding his glass. "Everything they think about me is true, even if they have no idea."

She does. She's the only one, with the geek, he supposes, to know exactly how much of a monster he really is.

Edited 2013-06-24 22:44 (UTC)

She pulled back only long enough to set down her glass, to take his from him. She set them aside, and then looked up at him, her hand finding his cheek again. "Klaus," she said quietly, and matter-of-factly. "I know it's true. I don't want to redeem you." Her eyes searched his. "You do horrible things, and I understand why." She doesn't mean the conversation they had where he hurt her. She means - she really does - mean Jenna. She means everyone else. She means Tyler. "I know why you do them, and it's part of who you are."

And she accepts it. "If you weren't that person - the horrible things and the good things and sweet things and awful things, they're all who you are. You would kill for me, and you have killed people who I don't even know about. More people than I have ever met." And she knows it, deep down. "I love that man. I love you. Because of who you are." She's completely serious, her eyes searching his even now. "I don't do what you do, and I understand people who are afraid of you, but that doesn't mean I think you should change, Klaus. They should be scared of you. That doesn't change how I feel about you, and why."

Edited 2013-06-25 00:55 (UTC)

It's that wholehearted acceptance that gets to Klaus. He's never had anybody accept him that way. Elijah wanted him to grow, Rebekkah wanted him to be less protective, to say nothing of Mikael. He's never been accepted like this, and tears are prickling at the back of his eyes again, and he doesn't have any words. It's all in his eyes, he hopes, it feels, and he pulls her into a complicated kiss that speaks of thankfulness and love.

She only breaks the kiss because she has something else to say, her hands cupping his cheeks in her hands. "I know who you are, Klaus, and I don't want to change you, but you can't treat me the way you did. You can't. It was-" She hesitates, her heart in her throat. "It was cruel," she says, her voice strained. "That you could think those things- I-" And she closes her eyes, leaning forward so her forehead presses against his for a moment. "I can't," she finishes, her voice raw.

She pulls back, her thumbs smoothing his cheekbones. "You do the things you do, but you can't do them to me. That's where the line is, for me."

What he told her was one thing, but it was what he let her think, really, that was the cruel part. Even if he hadn't wanted it to be. He had tried to tell her, but he had been unable to.

"Alright," he simply says, because he can't promise never to do it again, but he can accept what she's saying. That this is the line he's not supposed to cross. He's heard her, and he knows it, now. He kisses her forehead, tender, somehow intense, his hand on her nape. "Alright, love."

Her eyes close when he kisses her forehead, and she whispers it because she has to, because she can't give it full voice. "Did you mean any of it?" She knows he won't lie - she knows, and she's so scared of asking. She's scared of what he'll say, but she has to ask. She has to.

It hurt her, it ate into her worst fears, about him, about their relationship, about herself, and he hurt her two nights ago more than he ever had, before he'd come here, or after.

"I wouldn't like what it would say about me," he answers, addressing the only thing he really did say, his lips against her forehead. But then he pulls back, and uses his fingers under her chin to tilt her head up slightly, make her look at him.

"I wouldn't be with you if I thought any of it," he tells her, and means it. He's told her before, he'll tell her again. This is nothing new, even if two nights ago, and still today, it's unpleasantly crawling all over his skin. It doesn't show in what he tells her; all that shows is that he means it. "I wouldn't care for you if you were."

The wound that he can see in her, reflected in her eyes, is one that he put there. He must have seen it happen, when he'd pushed and pushed and pushed, and she nods, but she doesn't believe him. She does have to get past that doubt, and she will, but what he's saying isn't doing it. It's not really fixing it, but she just nods. "Alright," she says quietly, and she swallows thickly, not aware that she echoed what he said moments before.

"I love you," she says quietly, her voice raw, but she does mean it, no matter if she's hurt or not. "Even with- I do. I know you can't believe me all the time, but I do."

He isn't sure if she believes him, except he knows that she can't, because she already didn't believe it two days ago. How could she believe him now, after he's used it to hurt her? He nods along to her words, to agree. "I know."

Right now, he does, even as he feels bone-weary with all of it. Not the love, but this existence. He wants his wolf back, he wants the nanites gone again, and he wants to tear the heart out of whoever is toying with them here. Then he wants to use this bloody station to find a nice world to settle on, preferably a world without anything supernatural but them.

And if he happens to kill a few of the people on board who have pissed him off before they leave, all the better.

"We need to get off this station," he says, stroking her cheek.

"I know," she says, and she believes that at the very heart of her, and she turns her head to kiss his fingers. "I don't even care where we go, anymore," she says with a soft laugh.

She looks up at him, and says, quietly. "Show me. You tried to tell me how you feel, and I know you can't, but show me." And that's when she kisses him, shifting up, her hands cupping his cheeks. "I love you," she murmured against his mouth. "Everything, Klaus. I don't want you to change."

Which is a very good thing, because he's probably going to have to be himself more than he has been since getting here, to get them off this station. But now isn't the time for this, it's the time to kiss her in his turn, bringing her close, ignoring the reactions of the holo-people around them. Now isn't the time for words anymore, it's the time to show her, because what he's told her is clearly not enough, and she's asked him to.

Two words, there are just two words they need, because he'd rather not get interrupted by holograms.

"Computer, privacy."

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