After the Flood
by Sandrine Shaw
It's been a long day.
Every day is long now, since she's found out. Vampires and witches and werewolves – it's all so complicated. Human nature is complex enough, but this – this is another matter entirely. She's learned to understand people, to take them apart: their minds, their motives, their desires and fears. These creatures, though, they're not people, they are demons wearing human faces, acting out a parody of human emotions. (She doesn't believe that, not really. But it's easier to distance herself if she pretends.)
She runs a bath and tries to read a book, something blatantly fictitious to distract herself from the way storybook monsters have invaded the reality of her life. The novel tells a simple story: girl meets boy, girl falls in love, girl loses boy. It's sad and tragic, but it's straightforward in a way her life hasn't been in a long time.
(She wonders if she should sit down and write her story. Girl meets boy, boy turns out to be a thousand-year-old vampire who compels her and makes her write up his memoirs and uses her in his ploy to take over the city, then mind-controls her to skip town and forget him, girl slaps boy in the face when she finds out. It might become a bestseller. It might make her feel better, to see it comprised of neat black letters on white paper.)
The water splashes on the pages when she carelessly drops the book a little too low, her mind elsewhere even as her eyes continue to skim over the words. Frustrated, she puts it aside and reaches for the towel. There will be no respite to be found tonight, so she might as well give up trying.
When she steps into the living room with her skin still clammy and a towel wrapped snugly around her body, Klaus is sitting on the couch.
What does it say about her that she isn't even surprised? Any normal person would scream if they found an intruder in their home. They'd grab something they could use as a weapon or try to run. But then, her classes told her that normalcy is an illusion, and that was before she learned how painfully not normal everyone she knew was.
She may not be surprised that he came to see her, but she's certainly not happy about his visit. Not today of all days. Not any day.
"Klaus," she says, biting his name out in a greeting devoid of warmth. "What do you want?" She wishes she had asked Davina whether it was possible to un-invite a vampire from your home.
Too late now. Marcel came to her bar and told her about Davina, earlier tonight. About the earthquakes and the storm and the rain and the failed Harvest ritual, drowning his sorrows in bourbon while she listened to his story, horrified.
"Come on, love. Is it so hard to believe that I just wanted to see a friendly face?"
He must be desperate, if he considers her to be friendly when all she wants is to slap him again – and again and again until he feels it. Of course, there's a good chance that her hand would fall off before it became even slightly hurtful to him.
So she uses the only weapon she has to inflict pain. "You're not going to find one here."
Sticks and stones won't hurt a vampire, but words will get to him. This vampire, at least, because that's the thing: she knows Klaus; he's offered up all this information about himself, both in what he told her and what she could gather from his reactions. She knows that even though he's spent centuries killing and destroying everything that got in his way, berating his siblings for loving too easily, even though he pretends that nothing can touch him, the truth about him is that he cares far too much. Sure, he wants people to fear him and worship him, but more than that, he wants them to love him.
He's the loneliest person she's ever met. (He might even be lonelier than she is. At least she's long since given up needing the validation of others.)
She watches her words hit home, the flash of something on his face. Hurt. Regret. Anger, maybe. One day, she'll push him too hard and he'll lash out, and she has no illusions that there will be anything left of her when he comes back to his senses and remembers that he didn't mean to hurt her. Impulse control isn't Klaus' strongest point; and yet she knows he's shown a remarkable amount of it when it comes to her. She doesn't understand why, and she pretends that she doesn't care.
His lips twitch into something that's probably supposed to be a smile but looks more like a grimace. "I can appreciate the irony. The one selfless thing I do in my life, and it backfires."
Selfless. Right. If there's one thing she learned in the months since she's met him, it's that there isn't a selfless bone in Klaus' body. "Which one was that? When you compelled me to go out with Marcel so I could spy on him for you? Or when you made me type up your memoirs, listen to every awful thing you've done in your life for hours and then wiped my mind of it every day? I'm sorry, I guess I should be more appreciative of everything you did for me."
He leans back, letting his arms drape over the backrest of the couch. It makes him look entirely too much at home and comfortable when all she wants is for him to get out and leave her in peace. It makes her bristle, as do his words, full of self-righteousness. "How about when I tried to get you to leave town and forget all about this, all about me, just to keep you safe? I put your happiness before my own then, didn't I? Which I believe is the very definition of selflessness. Or when I made an attempt to give you some semblance of peace and closure over your brother's death?"
It's utterly ridiculous, that he makes messing with her mind and planting false memories sound like a gift. The worst part is that she thinks he truly believes it. It makes her want to drag him up from where he's lounging and shake him until he gets it.
"I didn't want it. I begged you not to take those memories away and you still did, and now you want me to thank you for it? Are you really so far removed from humanity that you fail to see what's wrong with that?"
Klaus averts his eyes, working his jaw. It's hard to tell whether he's struck by guilt or if he's furious with her. "I just wanted you to be happy. And safe. Somewhere far away from all this." At the tone of his voice, both sad and petulant, some of her anger dies. It's exhausting to be angry when he fails to understand why she's angry with him in the first place.
The worst part of having his mind control stripped away, apart from the excruciating pain she felt during Davina's spell, is that she remembers everything now: every single encounter they shared, the way she felt instantly drawn to him without any compulsion on his part, the connection snapping into place between them and how the only thing that stopped it from taking were the barriers he raised in her mind. And now they're gone, and as much as she hates it, the connection is back, despite all that he's done. The fact that he came to seek her out tonight – that of all the not-quite-friendly faces he could have seen, hers was the one he chose – is proof that he feels it too.
She sits down on the couch, two feet of peach-colored cushion away from Klaus, his gaze following her every movement. "I know you're telling yourself that you did it for me, because you care about me. But how can you care about me when in all this, you never once paid any attention to what I wanted?"
"Fine. What do you want?"
I don't know, she thinks, but that's a cop-out. I don't want you in my life. A lie, and worse – it's what he tried to give her when he compelled her to leave town, what she threw back in his face. My brother back. Impossible. Revenge. Done, already, by his hand.
She sighs, and settles for the least disputable, the least telling answer. "I want to make my own decisions. Maybe they're going to be stupid. Maybe they won't be healthy. Maybe they'll put me in danger. But they're my choices. My mind is all that I have, and I need to be sure that it's still my own."
He looks at her, and for a long moment, it's all he does. Unreadable grey eyes fixed on her, and she remembers what it was like to have him draw her gaze to his and rearrange her memories, how it felt like she was dizzy and drunk and couldn't look away if she tried. There's no intent in his gaze now, though; it's just resting on her as if he's measuring what he sees.
"All right," he finally says, like it's that easy.
Frustrated, she huffs. Can't he see how little his promise – and it's barely that at all – means? "How can I know you're not going to compel me as soon as I do something you don't agree with?"
Klaus looks amused, as if she's the one who doesn't understand. "You're doing something I don't agree with right now, love," he reminds her.
"You want me gone that badly?"
"I want you safe that badly," he corrects. "I take it you heard what happened today. What you might not have heard is that someone out there has been harvesting all the power that should have brought Davina and the other witches back to life. That's a lot of power, and somehow I doubt that whoever holds it is going to use it to make cute little voodoo dolls to sell to superstitious tourists. So when they make their move, I would prefer you to be as far away from this place as possible. And maybe you're right, maybe that's not selfless at all. Maybe it's because I'm well aware that you're my weak spot and you can be used against me. I think you know me well enough to know that I don't like having a weakness my enemies can exploit."
"Wow." She blinks. It's more self-awareness than she expected from him. More than she expected him to admit to her when he doesn't intend to make her forget afterwards. "That was amazingly insightful for a megalomaniac with paranoid delusions."
His lips twitch. "What can I say? I know this psychologist. She gives great advice."
When he turns on his charm, he's hard to resist, even without compulsion. She shifts uncomfortably, considering the merit of his argument. Perhaps a change of scene wouldn't be a bad idea, until it's safe for her to return.
As soon as she thinks it, she knows it's foolish and delusional.
"Look, Klaus, even if I left, just until this crisis has blown over... how long would it be until another one of your enemies had a go at you? You told me your life story, Klaus, and it's one long list of violence and power struggles and dead bodies littering your path. By your own logic, I will never be safe in this town as long as you're here, and you seem to be keen on sticking around playing king."
"I'm not pla–" He holds up a hand as it to stop himself, shaking his head and laughing softly. "People don't talk to me like that."
"People should talk to you like that. And they probably would, if they weren't afraid that you'd literally rip their heads off."
"You're not, though. Afraid. Are you, love?" He sounds curious, like she's a mystery he's trying to unravel. It's a familiar feeling, though she's usually the one in his position, trying to peer into people's heads and figure them out.
She stops to consider his question. "I think I have been, when I found out what you were and what you'd done to me, but I was too angry to let myself feel it then. And now I'm just..." Her voice trails off. She isn't sure what she feels now that the anger has burned itself out, but it's not fear.
He reaches out and touches her cheek. "I thought about it, you know?" His hand curves around her neck, thumb gently stroking her face. His voice is calm, almost soothing, a stark contrast to what he's saying. "Killing you. It would be so easy, and solve quite a few problems."
She imagines it would. All things considered, she's already been more trouble than she's worth to him, when he could easily have discarded her once Marcel lost interest. It fascinates her that he chose not to, and it makes her bold.
"It's what you do, isn't it? When something can become dangerous to you. When it can be used against you. You just eliminate it." She presses on even though she knows it might not be smart right now, when he's talking about considering killing her. She isn't quite sure where she takes the confidence to feel that he won't. "You know that this is why you're so lonely, right? Because letting someone in always means making yourself vulnerable, and you hate being vulnerable so much that you push everyone away or kill them."
If the psychoanalysis bothers him, he hides it behind a blithe smile and a shrug. "It usually works pretty well."
"Why am I still alive then?" she challenges, and she's not entirely sure if she's playing devil's advocate or if she genuinely thinks she's going to get an honest answer.
He doesn't have one, of course, or perhaps he's just not ready to share it. "Maybe I'm trying to turn a new leaf."
There's not enough time for her to come up with a sarcastic reply. He leans in, breaching those two feet between them that seemed so vast a distance a few minutes ago, and kisses her. It's forceful and almost angry, like he's trying to prove something, or as if he expects her to push him away and slap him. (She thinks about it, for maybe a split second, but she fought too hard for her free will to ruin it with denial. She wants this. She's wanted this. It's part of why she's been so angry with him for doing to her what he did.)
She lets herself kiss him back, his stubble scratching against her skin, leaving a hot burn in its wake. He tastes sweet and metallic, and he smells like rain. Cool hands roam over her naked shoulders, raising goosebumps, making her shiver against him.
It's him who pulls away first.
Of course it's him. For all that she thinks she shouldn't want him, after everything, she's not the kind of person who runs away when faced with an inconvenient truth. Klaus, though... he's easily scared by the idea that someone might see him for who he is and still choose to stick around.
His eyes catch hers and for a moment, she thinks he's going to compel her again – break his promise barely ten minutes after he made it. But the tell-tale feel of lightheadedness she's come to associate with compulsion now that she knows what to look for doesn't come, and she finds it easy enough to blink and break the intensity of his stare.
"You're going to die," he says, less warning than statement, dark frustration coloring his voice. His mouth twists in resignation. "Because that's what happens when humans get mixed up in vampire business. One way or the other, you're going to die, and it's going to make me lash out at the world and feel utterly rotten and do terrible things."
A part of her resents the manipulation, resents the way he's trying to guilt-trip her into letting him push her away. A part of her knows he's right. Of course she'll die. That's what humans do. (Unless– No. She's human. She'll die.)
"You do terrible things all the time," she says quietly, trying to keep the judgement out of her tone. He is who he is, and in her professional experience, you can't fix people – they only ever change if they want to, and sometimes not even then. "You feel rotten all the time. Maybe it's time you tried to feel something else instead."
She leans in and kisses the scowl from his mouth until his lips become soft and pliant under hers and his hands tangle in the wet strands of her hair to pull her close.
End.