Little Talks
Caroline was sitting up in bed, a mug of something clamped between her hands. She looked exhausted, but otherwise perfectly healthy. And she was smiling at Klaus as he entered.
"Hey," she said quietly. The sound of her heartbeat, steady, healthy, filled the room. Klaus walked forward wordlessly, half expecting to come to a point where he could see through the illusion. She didn't vanish, and looked up at him as he stood over her.
"You're alive," he finally breathed in disbelief, sitting down slowly on the side of the bed, and reaching out to touch her face, brushing his fingers so lightly across her skin, like he thought she might shatter.
"One-hundred percent," she assured him lightly. "Well, more like seventy-six percent; I'm still…" But whatever she still was that prevented her from being considered entirely alive was lost as Klaus Mikaelson, Original Hybrid feared the world around, pulled her into a bone-crushing embrace.
"Don't you ever do that again," he growled into her hair.
"Yeah," she agreed with a breathless laugh, "I'll leave the sticking-people-with-sharp-objects to you from now on."
That wasn't what she had meant to say. This wasn't how she was supposed to act. His emotional response had caught her off-guard, and she kept making light of everything, trying to diffuse the intensity. She needed to tell him that she'd heard him. She needed him to know that he'd saved her life. But her efforts worked, a little—he laughed at her lame joke.
"When did you come around?" he asked, releasing her and sitting back a little—acting more like himself.
"A few hours after you guys left," she responded. "I've been in and out though—an hour from now I'll probably be fast asleep again. Weird that I'm so tired when I've done nothing but sleep for weeks now…"
"I rather doubt that dying counts as rest," Klaus reminded her, and she smiled ruefully and nodded.
"How is everybody else?" she asked, recollecting herself. "I've been stuck here all day, and I have no idea where my phone is or what your computer password is, so I'm basically insulated from all forms of modern communication."
"Must be a strange sensation," the hybrid ribbed, and she stuck her tongue out. "I left them at the airport, and haven't been back since."
"Or answering your phone, according to Meredith," Caroline added, frowning. "She's been trying to call you all day—you know, cell phones only work when they're powered on and you respond to them making loud noises from your pocket…"
"I believe Bonnie had yours," he informed her, remembering vaguely that piece of info from when they'd transported her from Elena's living room to his house. Bonnie had picked up the phone from in between the couch cushions without ever pausing in her chanting. But that thought brought him back around to the problem at hand.
"What the hell were you thinking?" he demanded.
"What?" Caroline asked, frowning in confusion.
"The dagger is fatal to any vampire that uses it. If you knew everything was going to hell, then why in blazes would you step in like that and get yourself killed?" Caroline's eyes widened a little in recognition as she realized what he was talking about, and then she rolled them and shrugged.
"There's so many rules," she grumbled. "It's all very confusing. In the heat of the moment I just… forgot." He was already shaking his head.
"I might believe the empty-headed blonde routine if I hadn't seen you use it so effectively before, but I know better. You're cleverer than to forget an important detail like that." Caroline sighed, and glowered up at him.
"Look," she said flatly, "I get that 'angry' is kind of your default setting, but could we please rewind? To the part where you were happy that I was alive?" Klaus froze, and then smiled a little ruefully.
"Sorry," he murmured, stroking her hair back from her temple with his thumb. "You've had a rough month. And I am… indescribably happy… that you're alive," he admitted softly.
Caroline swallowed. If there was ever a right time to tell him, this was it. But her head was spinning, and a new wave of exhaustion hit her, dragging her into its depths. She moaned softly, pressing a hand to her eyes. Why couldn't she stay awake for this? She couldn't still be that weak, could she? Apparently, however, she could. Strong hands guided her back down, and tucked the comforter over her shoulders.
"Thank you," she managed to murmur before she faded back into sweet, black oblivion.
-0-
The next time Caroline awoke, early morning sunlight was streaming through the windows. She inhaled deeply, and sat up, reveling in the simple fact that she could move.
Over the month that she'd been here, Elena, Bonnie and her mom had moved a lot of her stuff into the room for when she finally woke up, as she'd discovered when she tried to hunt up her phone the previous day. Several sets of her clothes, her undergarments, and most of her pajamas, were in the dresser, her toiletries were stashed in the bathroom, and a couple of her favorite books lay on the bedside table. Her mom had read them aloud to her sometimes, when she came, and although the stories had been harder to focus in on than the personal messages, it had still been nice to hear what she could of them…
She got up—slowly, still feeling sore and weak—and padded slowly into the bathroom to take a shower. She'd had a bath yesterday, when she couldn't stand up for so long, but today she felt better, and was determined to start getting back to normal. So, she found some of her clothes, turned on the water, and did her best to wash her hair with only one hand. Although the rest of her body looked normal, her left hand had gotten the worst blast, and was taking its sweet time healing. The skin was still grey, and it was difficult to move it.
After her shower, she dressed, brushed her teeth, and then nearly collapsed on her way out of the room into the hallway.
"Good morning, love," Klaus exclaimed as he appeared out of nowhere and caught her before she could hit the carpet.
"Morning," she gasped in response as she got her feet back under her. "I really hope this sudden vertigo thing goes away soon," she added, pulling away a little, testing her balance to see if she could stay upright.
"Could be worse," he reminded her, and she nodded. "Where were you trying to go?" he asked, his hand still on her arm.
"Looking for something to eat," she responded. "And, er, drink." She knew she didn't need to elaborate.
"I can have my staff bring you breakfast in bed, you know," he told her, but she shook her head.
"I've been stuck in one place for weeks," she reminded him. "Besides, I'm a vampire, not an invalid." Humiliation colored her tone at that, and she didn't meet his eyes. This was another thing that didn't need explaining; it was no secret that Caroline loved the strength and invulnerability of vampirism.
"Well then," Klaus said, gesturing down the hall. "The dining room is this way. Would you care to have breakfast with me?"
"Sure," she agreed, and they headed down the stairs. Caroline leaned heavily on the railing on the way down, and Klaus hovered close by, but didn't plan on grabbing her if she didn't need it. She made it down the stairs, through the living room, and into the dining room under her own power, and Klaus pulled out a chair for her—a move he could pass off as an ordinary gentleman's habit, rather than coddling.
Monica and Amber appeared on cue, carrying blood bags and glasses, and Klaus sent Monica to go and tell his chef that they'd both be eating at the table after all.
"I called Stefan last night after you were asleep," Klaus informed her, sipping at his morning A+. "Let him know that you were still walking among the undead."
"Thanks," Caroline said with a smile, polishing off her glass of blood in two gulps. Amber appeared at her elbow with another bag immediately.
"The girls are lovely, by the way," Klaus observed, "if you'd like something a bit warmer." Caroline was in the middle of a sip, and choked a little at that, glaring up at him. He shrugged. "Well, figured I'd offer…" he muttered.
"So," Caroline began, changing the subject before she could get into a fight with the Original, "did you get it? The cure?" Klaus's face darkened considerably—clearly it was the wrong thing to say.
Alphonse, the chef, chose that moment to enter, carrying two large platters of food—eggs, bacon, waffles and fresh fruit arrayed like Klaus's dining room was a gourmet restaurant.
"Do you drink coffee?" he asked Caroline. She'd been on blood only yesterday, so the man didn't know her habits. She nodded.
"Yes, please." Alphonse bowed and retreated back to the kitchen.
"We found the cure," Klaus explained, "but then Katerina turned up. She killed Jeremy Gilbert, and stole the cure out from under all of our noses."
"She killed Jeremy?" Caroline shrieked, nearly dropping her blood glass. "Why didn't you say that earlier?" She sat back in her chair, hands pressed together, thumbs against her mouth. "Oh my god…" she whispered in horror, "Elena and Bonnie must be devastated!"
"Damon used his sire bond to convince Elena to flip her humanity switch, actually," Klaus continued, pouring syrup on his waffles. "Bonnie believes that Silas will help her revive him, but the rest of us are hardly confident, considering it is Silas." Caroline could only nod. She was holding back tears of sympathy for her friends.
They finished their food in silence, and afterwards Klaus gave Caroline his phone to call Stefan, Elena and Bonnie. Stefan was clearly delighted to hear her voice, but he sounded deeply exhausted underneath the joy.
"Hey, do you think you're up to having visitors yet?" he asked. "I think it would be really healthy for Elena to have some good news and quality friend time."
"Of course!" Caroline exclaimed, resolving to whatever it took to stay awake for this. After she hung up with Stefan, she called Bonnie, since she'd be seeing Elena in the flesh fairly soon. However, whether it was because it was Klaus's number or because she was busy with witchy stuff, her friend didn't answer. Caroline asked Amber to brew up some more coffee—as strong as she could make it—and leaned back into her pillows to wait for Elena and the Salvatore brothers.
Seeing Elena in her emotionless state was… strange. She looked the same, moved the same way, even made facial expressions, and yet, something behind her eyes was staggeringly different. After Stefan hugged Caroline for a long minute, and Damon gave her a little one-armed side hug, Elena hugged her too, but it seemed that she was only doing what everybody else was doing. Stefan sat down on the side of Caroline's bed, and Elena and Damon took the two chairs.
"Are you okay?" Caroline asked Elena quietly. Elena rolled her eyes.
"That's sort of the point of flipping my switch, Care," she reminded her. "No pesky feelings. I'm fine. Great, even."
"Well, it's really too bad your switch is flipped," Stefan observed casually. "You're missing out on everything you'd be feeling right now over Caroline's miraculous survival." Elena just shrugged. "If you could feel," Stefan continued, "what do you think you would feel about it?" Damon shot him a warning look. It was clear the brothers were not on the same page about this.
"I don't know, Stefan," Elena shot back, sounding bored.
"Yeah, but, just imagine," he suggested. Elena's eyes snapped up to meet his, and then slid over to Caroline's.
"I think I'd feel like it was horribly unfair," she sighed finally. "You got to live, but my brother had to die." Silence roared. Caroline's eyebrows rose up her forehead.
"Wow," she commented before Stefan could jump in. "So many years, and now she finally sounds like a cheerleader. Turning off your emotions makes you into a less-glamorous version of me, Sophomore year." She smiled coldly, and Elena smiled back, even more so.
"Do you ever get nostalgic for a time when your biggest problem was that you couldn't get anyone to have sex with you who wouldn't rather be sleeping with me?" She asked.
"Not ever," Caroline shot back instantly. "I'd always rather fight bad guys than my best friend." Elena looked a little surprised, and then appeared to concentrate hard for a moment. Then she laughed.
"You know," she suggested, "you'd probably benefit from flipping yours some time. Then you would stop moping about how Tyler left you—again. And an added bonus: you wouldn't have to feel so guilty for all the dirty thoughts you have about Klaus.
"Okay," Damon announced, standing up. "I think that's enough quality friend time for one day…"
"Who says that I do?" Caroline demanded quietly, eyes never leaving Elena's. Elena scoffed.
"Please. It's obvious. I don't blame you—he's pretty cute when he's not trying to kill everybody."
"Feel guilty for how I feel," Caroline clarified, eyes flashing. There was a beat. Nobody breathed.
"Feel? After all the crap you gave me about Damon… you have feelings for Klaus?" Elena breathed in fascination. "You hypocrite!" Caroline sighed, dropping her eyes to her hands. Flipped switch or no, Elena had a point. She might not like Damon, but it was wrong to punish Elena for how she felt. Especially considering… Well, it was wrong, in any case.
"You're right," she admitted simply, looking back up. "I'm sorry."
"Never thought I'd hear those words from Caroline Forbes's mouth," Elena observed, and Caroline ran a hand through her hair sheepishly.
"So, what now?" Elena asked coldly. "Am I supposed to be so excited to hear Caroline finally admit she was wrong that I turn my feelings back on to give her a big warm hug?"
"A girl can hope," Caroline sighed. In her peripheral vision, she saw Stefan's shoulders droop.
"Too bad for you, I've known you long enough to see through your act," Elena said with another heartless smile. Then she twisted around to call over her shoulder. "You must be so disappointed, Klaus!" Caroline's hand flew to her mouth. Klaus had been on the phone with somebody when Elena and the boys arrived, but she realized now that he'd been silent for several minutes. That meant that he could easily hear everything they'd said—including her hint that she might have feelings for him… and the fact that she'd only said it to try and trick Elena into flipping her switch.
"Yeah," Damon said, walking around the bed and putting a hand on Elena's shoulder. "We're done. Come on—let's go eat some sorority girls."
"Never thought I'd see the day," Caroline spat out as a parting dig, "when Elena Gilbert would lower herself to acting so like Katherine Pierce."
The sound of Elena's fist connecting with Caroline's jaw echoed around the room, and before the sound died entirely, Damon had his arms wrapped around Elena, Stefan was standing in front of Caroline, and Klaus was in the doorway, mouth opening to say, "Get out of my house before I throw you out in pieces."
"Leaving!" Damon said before the Hybrid could even finish speaking, and he half led, half dragged Elena out the door. "What the hell was that?" they heard him say from the hallway.
"Don't pretend like she wasn't asking for it," Elena responded flippantly before they exited the house and got out of earshot.
"She's capable of getting worked up," Caroline mused, rubbing at her fast-bruising cheek. Stefan and Klaus looked at her with worried expressions. "She's switched off all right, but she hasn't walked off the edge—not yet."
"I'm sorry," Stefan said tiredly. "I didn't realize things would get so… heated." Caroline shook her head.
"It's Elena—how could anybody have predicted that?" she sighed. "I hope she turns it back on soon."
"You and me both," Stefan agreed. Caroline glanced at the doorway, but Klaus was gone. He'd responded to the sound of violence, but apparently he didn't want to see her right now.
As Caroline continued to talk with Stefan, getting all of the highlights of the last month that Meredith and Klaus had left out, a pit formed deep in her stomach at the thought of the original hybrid. She hadn't meant him to overhear her conversation with Elena. And the worst part was, even though she'd only admitted it aloud for Elena's benefit, she was being honest! She did have… were they feelings? Gratitude, certainly. That was the major feeling. She had that in abundance, and she still needed to tell him about it—about what it had meant to her when he said what he did. Of course, now he probably wouldn't want to talk about it. Thanks, Elena. She could hear the faint wet sounds of brushes against canvas. Was he killing time, or brooding, she wondered.
"Oh," Stefan added as he got up to leave. "I almost forgot." He pulled her phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. Then they hugged again.
"Will you be okay?" he breathed in her ear.
"Yeah," she whispered back, nodding slightly. Stefan pulled away, still looking worried. Caroline smiled reassuringly up at him. No doubt, this was going to be incredibly awkward, but she got the impression that Stefan was worried about her actual safety, and she wasn't at all concerned about that. Klaus wasn't going to hurt her. Stefan nodded, and headed out, apparently trusting her judgment.
He'd brought her laptop, and a flash-drive with notes and reading lists from all of her classes. Caroline surveyed them critically once she was left alone. Her best friend was a sociopath, the guy she owed her life too was probably very upset with her, and her GPA was in the toilet after a month-long absence from school. Since she had control over exactly one of those things, she opened up her laptop and plugged in the USB stick. She was afraid to turn on her phone—it had probably fried its brains out with a month's worth of notifications.
In true Caroline fashion, she immersed herself in the task at hand, and her eyes flickered back and forth at an incredible rate as she read and comprehended at vamp-speed. Sometimes she'd glance at the clock in the corner of her screen. Hours were flashing by like minutes as she ran to keep up with the rest of the school. She had to graduate on time—with Elena and Bonnie and Matt and… Well, it was doubtful that Tyler would graduate with them, at this point, she admitted to herself miserably.
Naturally, it was right when she started thinking about Tyler that a pair of footsteps approached her, and she looked up to find Klaus entering the room.
"Alphonse is preparing dinner," he said, with none of the rage and hurt that she'd expected to hear in his voice. He seemed calm; normal. "Will you eat downstairs, or shall I have him bring it up here for you?"
"Up here is good," she said, glancing up briefly before returning to her reading. "I'm trying to catch up on a month's worth of schoolwork," she added with a little self-deprecating laugh.
"You're avoiding me." It was an accusation, but he just said it calmly, like a fact.
"No," she denied, a knee-jerk reaction. "I just said, I'm—" she looked up at his stoic face, and saw, buried deep down behind his eyes, a hint of the anger she'd expected. Which reminded her of why she'd embarked on such an impossible project in the first place. "Totally avoiding you," she finished, wincing.
"If you're concerned about what Elena said, I'm not upset," he assured her lightly. She looked up again in surprise. That was what she'd been worried about… "Don't look so shocked, love," he continued with a bit of a laugh. "This sort of thing is par for the course with you."
"I see," she nodded, closing her laptop. Her head hurt from reading uninterrupted for so long—a fact she hadn't realized until she'd looked away. "So, then… if I said something deep right now, would you assume it was a lie?"
"Probably," he admitted, "if I'm being quite frank." Caroline's stomach sank. So much for her plans of a heartfelt thank-you.
"Okay," she said, setting the laptop aside and getting up. "I think I'll come down for dinner after all—my eyes are about to fall out."
"What mysterious deep thing were you going to say?" he asked with determined casualness as they walked downstairs. She glanced at him over her shoulder, face unreadable.
"I'll tell you some other time," she said softly, and then headed to the dining room, leaving Klaus with the now-familiar feeling of frustration brought on when he thought that perhaps they were becoming closer, but couldn't bloody read her! He sighed silently, and then followed her to the table.
A/N: Ooh, so close, but not quite! Their feelings, ships passing in the night! And—
Klaus: If this is the beginning of another EGREGIOUS rhyme…
Beth: (cowers, says in a teeny-tiny voice) Please don't hurt me…
