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Caroline rifles through the closet Klaus had presented her with, marveling at the assortment of clothes that all seem to be exactly her size and style. She wonders briefly what that means, before shaking it off -- she can’t even remember her mom’s phone number right now, and she sure as shit doesn’t need to worry about whether she’s in a situationship with the vampire downstairs.
She decides on a cozy looking sweater, but falters as she pulls her shirt off and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. A clear set of teeth marks stand out starkly on her shoulder. She rubs them cautiously, turning around to investigate further. Two more stand out in various places on her back, though the one on the shoulder is clearest. She strips further, and discovers another three spread between her hip and her thighs.
What the hell? Caroline thinks, frowning down at the marks. She knows she’s a vampire, so maybe this is a normal thing? Still, a strange feeling rises in her when she looks at them. Maybe Klaus will know. With that thought, she quickly gets dressed and makes her way downstairs.
Klaus lets out a low whistle when he sees her. “You look ravishing as always, sweetheart.”
Caroline blinks down at the shapeless sweater she’d pulled on with solely comfort in mind, wondering briefly if he’s being sarcastic. “Thanks?”
“You’re more than welcome,” he says, a mischievous gleam in his eye. “I’m glad you found something to your liking.”
“The whole closet was to my liking,” she grumbles, still feeling vaguely put-out at not knowing what she is to Klaus.
He looks amused, which she immediately and inexplicably finds annoying, so she changes the subject.
“Hey, by the way, how the hell did I get all those freaky bite marks?” she asks, before wondering abruptly if she shouldn't. Is it some sort of kinky vampire sex thing that she shouldn't bring up with Klaus? Is mentioning it a supernatural faux-pas?
But Klaus isn’t laughing. “Bite marks?”
Caroline nods, suddenly less certain. “Yeah, like, scars. They’re all over.”
Klaus has gone very still, and there’s an expression in his eye that Caroline can’t place. She wonders idly if the old Caroline, with all her memories, would’ve known that face. “I'm sorry to say that I can't answer how you got them. this is the first I’m hearing of them, sweetheart. All I can tell you is that, if they’re scars, they had to have been… inflicted when you were human.”
“Oh,” Caroline says. She feels abruptly sick for reasons she can’t entirely explain. There’s a metallic taste in her mouth, and her clothes suddenly feel too tight. An odd feeling of fear rises in her, familiar and unrecognizable all at once, like running into a childhood bully decades later at the supermarket and watching them smile at you pleasantly. She shivers.
“I'm sorry, love,” Klaus says again, with enough sincerity to put her on edge.
“Hang on,” she says, latching onto the first way she can think of to change the subject, “you haven’t seen them?”
Klaus looks confused by the question, but obligingly shakes his head.
“So we never…” she trails off, gesturing vaguely between the two of them in a way that makes her meaning clear.
Klaus's eyes widen slightly, then he breaks out into a feral grin, though remnants of that inscrutable look linger in his expression. Still, his voice is wholly amused when he responds, “not for lack of trying on my part, sweetheart.”
Caroline blinks, then quickly schools her expression into something she hopes is closer to haughty than flattered. “I guess I'm just too smart to be seduced by you.”
Klaus straightens. “You always have been,” he agrees, and there’s an almost wistful quality to his voice that makes Caroline desperately wish she could remember his apparently futile attempts at seduction. She doesn’t feel too smart for it, just this minute. Though of course, she’d never tell him that -- memories or not, she’s still got some pride.
~
The memories come slamming back, between one blink and the next. It isn’t how she’d imagined it would be; no movie plays behind her eyelids. She just suddenly knows who she is, and who Klaus is, and why she’s covered in scars.
“Oh,” she breathes out without meaning to, and Klaus's eyes widen. He takes a cautious step towards her, as though afraid she’ll collapse.
“Oh?” he echoes, voice tight and careful, and some part of her basks in being able to recognize these emotions of his again. His face is so much lovelier when she understands it.
“I remember now,” she says simply. Her hand rubs over the scar on her shoulder absently, and though Klaus can’t see through her sweater, his eyes harden as though he knows exactly what’s under it.
“Caroline…” he begins, taking another small step towards her.
She shoves down the part of her that wants to collapse into him and forces herself to take a step back from those disarming eyes.
Klaus could compel her, if he wanted to. And it’s easy to tell herself that he would never, but she’d been that naive once before. She hadn't thought that Damon would hurt her, either, back when he was still a beautiful stranger with a boyish smirk and an arm around her shoulder. She’d felt the impossible strength of his arms and felt safe within them, and that wasn't a mistake she’d make again. She'd learned her lesson: someone too strong to be fought off is someone to be far, far away from, no matter how charming their accent, or how deep their dimples, or how gentle their eyes when they let her choose someone else.
And maybe she isn't quite this skeptical usually, but it all feels so raw and close to the surface just now, and if there’s one thing Caroline Forbes knows about herself for certain it’s that she won’t be made a fool of twice.
“Thank you,” she forces out, “for your help. I know you didn’t have to offer it.”
“As if I’d ever deny you,” he scoffs, like the mere idea is ridiculous. Something in her warms at the sentiment -- but no, she’d fallen for pretty words before, and ended up with ugly scars she couldn’t remember getting for her trouble.
Not again, not again, a frightened girl within her chants; and maybe something in her posture changes, or maybe Klaus knows her better than she thinks, or maybe he’s just seen enough fear in his centuries of life to recognize it on sight.
“You’re afraid of me,” he says, and there’s a genuine bafflement in his tone that makes him seem abruptly, impossibly, young.
Caroline scoffs. “As if,” she says, but he’s shaking his head before the words are even out.
“No, you are,” Klaus says. “But what I can't understand is why. You’ve never been afraid of me before.”
“Maybe it's got nothing to do with you in the first place! Did you ever consider that?” she snaps, which probably isn’t fair, and he’s been so kind when he could’ve been cruel, but there’s a tightness under her skin and every second she stops herself from flashing away is a struggle, and she doesn’t have it in her to be soft.
He opens his mouth, as if he means to refute her, but then he stops. She can almost see him replaying her words in his head, and then an ugly understanding begins to take shape in his eyes. “Where did those scars you mentioned come from, love?”
“Maybe that’s got nothing to do with you, either,” she growls, and she can feel herself shaking. She's trying to be fierce, but it’s as if every word she speaks gives Klaus another look into her soul, and she watches certainty transform his face. She feels horribly naked; she fights down the urge to wrap her arms around herself, but it’s a close thing.
“You’re right,” he says abruptly, and his jaw is stiff and sour like he’s biting back the words he’d rather be saying. He takes a very deliberate step back from her. “It doesn’t. I shouldn't push. I'm sorry, truly.”
Caroline blinks. Something hard in her chest unfurls. “Yeah,” she says, for lack of anything better.
She can practically see the wheels turning in his brain as he tries to figure out the right thing to say; a bit of fondness sparks in her, somewhere beneath all the venom. “I’m sorry,” he begins, finally, cautious in a way she isn’t used to, “if I’ve… done anything, to make you feel…. to suggest that I would-”
“Don’t,” she cuts him off quickly; she can't imagine anything she wants less than to hear how that sentence would have ended. “You haven’t.”
He shakes his head. “I've been unforgivably forward. You’ve made your disinterest clear. I thought we had something of an… understanding, but I see now that I was overly presumptuous in that idea.”
Caroline can’t help it; she barks a laugh at the misplaced repentance. “You think all this is because you flirted?”
“Then what?” he demands, near pleading, and any ounce of humor leaves her as quickly as it came. “What have I done -- what can I do to show you I’m not a threat to you?”
“But you are!” she exclaims, feeling a sudden, gripping urgency to make him understand. “You always will be!”
“Do you believe I'd hurt you? That I’d force myself on you?” he demands.
“You wouldn’t have to!” she snarls right back. “Klaus, don’t you understand? You could make me want to!”
He rears back as if struck, and his eyes search her like he’s seeing her for the first time; the molten anger fades, leaving her bereft. She feels just as small and helpless as she’d been that first night: sixteen years old and alone in a bar, desperate to be anyone's first choice, anyone at all, no matter how sharp their teeth. I’m so good to you, she remembers telling him wretchedly, begging the monster to find her worthy of being ripped apart more gently, next time.
“Your will is your own,” Klaus says, voice rough, “always. Leave, if that is what you wish. I never intended to make you feel trapped.”
“You haven’t,” she whispers, closing her eyes; it feels like rebellion, against the part of her that hisses all the ways he could hurt her, while her guard’s down. “but you could. I can't stop knowing that.”
“You know that you need only say his name, and his life is forfeit,” Klaus growls, which is both a complete non sequitur and exactly how she’d expected him to respond.
“I know,” she agrees softly. Maybe one day, she’ll have it in her to tell him the story of the scared teenage girl she once was, tying scarves with shaky hands over wounds she couldn’t remember receiving, feeling stupid and shallow and useless with every breath. But not now. She opens her eyes again, and there’s so much caution in Klaus’s face, so much care, and she wishes desperately that she could bring herself to trust it.
“Perhaps,” Klaus begins slowly, “if it would make you feel safer, you could build up an immunity to vervain as Katerina did? I could help you, if you’d allow me. I have witches who could ease the process for you.”
Caroline’s eyes burn. “You’d do that for me?”
His gaze goes soft and fond. “It’s hard to imagine a thing I wouldn’t do for you, love.”
A tear runs down her cheek, and she watches him tense, watches him struggle against the urge to reach for her. “Thank you,” she says finally, her voice rough.
“And, of course, I don’t have to be directly involved. I can get you in touch with the witches you need, then leave-”
“I don't want you gone,” Caroline interrupts, and is startled by the truth of it. “I just… don't want to be afraid anymore.”
“I understand,” Klaus tells her, and she knows he does, the same way she knows he still looks over his shoulder wherever he goes, because centuries of being hunted don’t get shaken off so quickly. Caroline knows firsthand that being powerful and immortal and ruthless isn’t enough to stop you flinching from your father’s blows.
“I want to build up the tolerance,” she says again. “And I want you there with me while I do it. Okay?”
“Okay,” he agrees, a hint of a smile playing at his features for the first time since this conversation began.
“I’m still too smart to be seduced by you,” she warns, “so don’t go getting any ideas.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare, love. Cross my heart,” he agrees, grinning, and she knows this is the only thing he will ever lie to her about. She finds she doesn’t entirely mind.