Klaus' costume is likewise not one he chose, but it is one he can find and enjoy with some humor, despite the circumstances. Entirely because of them, actually.
It's not out of the norm to discover Wynonna in his bed after hours, but she's often not wearing much, if anything at all. She's also never been wearing this. The tight pleather leaves little to the imagination, and his eyes are creeping up the curve of her thigh before it dawns on him what exactly she's supposed to be. (A better look at the spidery cape helps.)
Wynonna is not sure what she imagined he might be dressed up as, if anyhing, but seeing him in a priest costume is amusing for a variety of reasons. And also....kinda hot. Look, she may have missed out on fleabag thanks to the eighteen months she lost but she knows a hot priest when she sees one. Plus, it's that whole...not supposed to be hot thing. Not supposed to be seduced.
She sets the book aside carefully before rising to her feet, walking over to him.
The ensuing behavior, which he should really come to more readily expect from Wynonna, should be painfully cliché. And yet Klaus finds his eye roll accompanied by the curling of his lips, the tension in the corners of his smile evidence of his fight to censor his amusement, lest it be construed not only as amusement, but as encouragement.
Though how her form looks in motion wrapped in that suit has him considering that he should encourage her. Obviously, he should.
Too late, even the small hint of a smile is enough to encourage her -- it honestly doesn't take much. She also knows if he truly objected, he would not hesitate to tell her that. They've never had issues communicating what they do and do not like to one another.
Which is why she kneels in front of him.
"I am. Please, father, punish me as you see fit."
She honestly probably got this from some porn she watched. Sorry, Klaus. She wasn't planning on the roleplay but once he came in in the priest outfit...what was she supposed to do???
He's no stranger to a bit of imagination in the bedroom, and while the provided scenario is trite, her words do offer an extensive list of opportunities. It's those possibilities he ticks through in his head, looking down at her, and the power willingly shifted between them, that has him truly intent. Content, even, with the predictable banality their costumes might add — they are common fantasies for a reason, after all.
Moreover, it has been a long month. He could use some fun, and he's never opposed to taking the reins to assuage that desire for complete control. It's a handful of thoughtful moments before he steps forward, reaching to pinch her chin and tilt her face up towards him. "Take it off."
In all honestly, she had been kinda just joking around, playing up the stereotypes of those fantasies but when he gives her a command, when he takes the reign, she does not object. It is not often Wynonna offers the reigns to him so completely. There is usually more push and pull between them for control, which is plenty of fun in it's own right, but after the month she's had, there's something freeing about giving up control. And it shows the implicit trust that has built between them, she wouldn't hand them to just any one.
She rises back to her feet, making her way back to the bed, she has to sit down to start with those boots, because if she tries to take them off while she's standing she might fall over, and the sexy fantasy will be officially over. But once they're off she's standing again, and taking a little more of her time as she unzips the back of the costume, slowly pulling off the tight material, inch by inch until she finally steps out of it, leaving her in just a bra and a pair of thongs. She knows she's pushing things a little as she takes her time, but even when giving him the reigns she can't help but test the water some.
If hell had a sun, it might be peeking its way through the curtains by the time Wynonna awakes. The only fabric lending her modesty are the sheets tangled around her. Klaus has been content the past hour to let her sleep — he needs so little himself, and the moment seems a prime opportunity. For one, she's rarely still enough for this. Truly, however, what he knows deserves credit is the quiet and peace that have settled her not only in sleep, but the pieces of the same that have found their way into him.
His pencil scratches quietly over paper, drawing and committing to the shape of her.
It's true, Wynonna is not generally still long, even in sleep she is often fitful and plagued by nightmares, but for the first time in a while she's slept rather soundly. She's not an early riser except when she has to, so it takes a while before her eyes finally flutter open. She would have sat up from when she had nestled herself into his bed except she realizes he's drawing her -- and well she'd be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat curious what she'd look like through his eyes.
"I was wondering when you might draw me like one of your french girls."
Look, the opening is right there, she can't help but that it.
He knows she's stirring. Well, he knows the difference between her restlessness and her consciousness seeping along the edges. It's the change in breath, the beat of her heart, the slight tension of muscles as they flex and awaken. So it's no surprise to him to hear her voice; the only response is the dimpling of his smile as he sketches. "What makes you think I haven't already?" His eyes lift, the gaze in them equal parts provocative and flirtatious.
"I suppose I don't know." She likes to think if he had, he might have shared his work with her, but she hasn't seen a lot of his art beyond what she catches him working on sometimes when she lets herself in. But it pleases her, the idea that maybe he's drawn her before, that she's worth multiple pieces.
As much as she is trying to stay still the urge to stretch out a little is eventually too impossible to resist. Her body is still a little sore from her adventures in the maze the other day.
He's more inclined to believe she's sore from last night's adventures. Regardless, he doesn't comment on the broken pose. He's dealt with more than his fair share of inconstant subjects. And on the contrary, sometimes a bit of movement adds to the end result. There is little about her body in any motion or repose he's not inclined to appreciate. The pencil in his hand slides with skilled ease over the curve of her elongated hip; he wonders how he can possibly capture that waning shadow as she shifts.
He has. Sketched her before. This month. Though not like this; anything more than the brief recollection of her face or the curl of her hair, drafted errantly and with a quiet ferociousness on a few blank pages, would have felt too much like a submission of something truly intimate. An allowance for it.
He moves back to her face. Adds the detail of her open eyes. "I didn't hurt you too much, did I?" Not that she didn't seem to enjoy it, but he's not blind to the bruising left behind.
Well, last night's adventures probably are playing a part in the soreness as well, though none of it is so much that she regrets her choices. It had been freeing to give herself up so completely to him. It's not something she would have dared to do before. But things have shifted between them in the past month.
She shakes her head a little. "You would know if I did." If she felt like he had gone overboard, she would have no qualms complaining about it. But that's not entirely it.
"My body is still recovering from the maze too, I think. I was stuck in there for quite some time."
He trusts her. He believes, at least, that perhaps he might, with some very precious things. And in many ways, she has proven that trust. With words and action and in smaller and larger gestures, and last night's vulnerability does not go unawares to him. Nor the comfort he took from it. The comfort she gave willingly, with the responsibility and the pleasure of her body.
He knows she wouldn't have done so before.
He also knows she wouldn't have hesitated if he'd gone too far. Still, the reassurance in the metaphorical light of day is good to know, if only for next time. At the mention of the maze, Klaus rises from his armchair, rotated towards the bed. The sketchbook is abandoned to the edge, along with his pencil. His knee bears part of his weight on the mattress; his hand reaches for hers, thumb slipping into her palm. "Souvenirs, I suppose." The scratches on her wrists and ankles were ones he noticed in the night, both carefully avoided and tenderly touched. He slips beside her and brings one such wound to his lips.
She trusts him more than she does most people outside of her sister, which is saying something. And as someone who feels like she always has to be in control, always has to be the one making the decisions whether they be hard or easy (and they are often hard) there was something freeing about giving herself over to him so completely. Knowing that while he had the power to hurt her, to kill her, to crush her with his bare hands if he wanted to, he would not do so.
If he had wanted to, he would have done it long before now.
It feels sensitive as he touches brings her wrist to his lips, and not just from the tenderness of his touch, the way he had carefully avoided them the night before as well. Doc had been the one to find her when the vines captured her, and it had gone...as well as one might expect such an encounter would go right now. But she doesn't want to talk about that. But there is something about the maze she should tell him: she doesn't want to start keeping things from him now.
"I wasn't alone most of the time -- my friend Elena was with me. She told me she was from the same world as you." And it is clear from the way Wynonna presents that information that that is all Elena had told her.
There is no such thing as the control they both covet. Not even the power in his hands nor the quickness of his mind could compare. It's not hidden in her gun nor the certainty of her choices, good or bad. If it was, perhaps they both might need the reassurance of it less.
It's not the presence nor absence that soothes him, when he's with her. It's the acceptance of it. The consolation. The understanding. He's all too aware that outside this room, there's little they can do but fight, and survive. He traces a circle in her palm, knowing there is little he nor her nor anyone could do to prevent the marks on her body, dealt by this hell.
It's those thoughts that keep him as she speaks, but they are released the moment she mentions Elena. His eyes, suddenly sharp, lift to hers. He knows Elena is acquainted with the Earps. She has been forthcoming, at least in this regard; he knows as much as he suspects that there is pocket of people she has gathered to consider this place. Still, the word "friend" lands heavily — it lands with meaning of the past, present, and future. His eyes search hers; they search her face for any indication, and finding none, he feels the absence of relief. He feels a ball of something, tight and sure, thinking of Elena. He feels acceptance of the inevitable, in spite of that alliance.
"I killed her." He says the words without pomp or circumstance, without any remorse. Without, truly, any emotion at all. Only as fact.
Wynonna is surprised to hear this, though she supposes she shouldn't be. Inellectually, she knows Klaus has killed a lot of people and while it once haunted and tortured him, that lessened over time, over centuries. She remembers his dark words of comfort when she broke down to him about her new memories from home, the man she shot in the back.
If you killed a hundred men for justice or vengeance or pleasure, it would not matter to me.
Can she honestly say it's the same on her end? She's not sure. And this isn't just anyone....this is Elena. The girl who she saw face down the ghosts of her dead parents, tears in her eyes. The girl who had promised her that neither Doc nor Klaus would come in the way of what they were building together. Part of the little group that she's formed with Elena, Jon and Waverly, trying to unravel what they can about the Veiled Order. It'd be easier if it wasn't personal; the problem is that it is. She worries her lower lip as she tries to find the right words to say -- what does someone even say to a confession like that?
If he was just confessing to killing somone in general, it would be easier to rationalize. But Elena is her friend, maybe a newer one, but a friend nonetheless. It's always harder to rationalize when that's the case. Her jaw tightens snd she swallows thickly. Her voice is laced with thick emotion when she finally speaks again. She does not pull away from him, but she does not initiate further touching either.
"Why are you telling me this?" Is it just to be honest, to push her away because things are getting too real? She doesn't understand. He could have gotten away with her never knowing. And he didn't. And a dark part of her wishes he had let her keep on not knowing.
He is still. Quiet and waiting in his repose, leaning on his elbow beside her. And what he exhibits is true despite the seed of fear and the trepidation of loss blossoming in his gut; he knows what he is doing. He knows and he accepts the risk he is taking, because he believes it a risk worth taking. It is an inevitable and necessary one.
He watches the confusion and hurt muddled in her eyes. He watches the difficulty of her swallow. He listens to the uncertainty in her voice. It's only then he looks away, the thread of her emotion connecting to his, the reflection of it brightening in his eyes. A part of him doesn't want her to see it; that vulnerability. That knowledge. That dread of his own.
He looks at her hand still resting in his instead. He traces the curve of her thumb down over the pulse of her wrist. It's with familiarity and tenderness and longing that he does so, his lips parting once as he rolls the question over and over in his mind. There are many reasons and many words that would suffice. He chooses the ones spoken from the heart. "Because it's the truth." What they've shared with each other. "It's honest." What they've valued.
His gaze finds hers again. "I was the villain in that story."
He feels far away, suddenly, as he looks away, even if she understands why he does. This thumb tracing over her wrist helps keep her grounded, keeps her from getting up and running, as tempted as she is to do so.
"And she's my friend. And even if she didn't tell me -- hell could have forced it out."
Wynonna may not always put two and two together, but his logic here makes sense. It's the reason why she told Jason about what happened back home. Better he hear it from her than a demon, or Lucifer, or something else.
"She would have told me, if she thought you were a threat for me."
That much she has certainty about, Elena might have had her reasons for her silence but if she thought Klaus was still a threat to Wynonna, that he was the villain in this story she would have spoken up.
"Still...even if it was a long time ago." She has no proof it is, she's just jumping to that conclusion since Elena didn't mention it. "...it's not easy hearing you killed one of my friends. It's easier, when it's not someone I know. Do you expect it to just be okay with me?"
Even if she hasn't known Elena nearly as long as Klaus, nor does she care as deeply for the young woman yet, there's still affection there, and it makes things complicated. She feels exposed suddenly, and not just because she's still naked underneath the sheet. It's one thing to know he has a sordid past, it's another to be confronted with the details of it. And there's a mixture of confusion and anger in her voice. Not that she ever had an illusion of either one of them being perfect, truth be told she likes that he's all messed up like she is.
But this...she doesn't know what to do about it and she's almost irrationally angry he told her at all, because after everything else she's lost recently, she doesn't want to add him to the list
Edited (i'm jus this person today, i was meditating on it while zoning out to kathleen lights and wanted to change things again) 2020-11-04 00:51 (UTC)
"No." The answer comes soft but firm, an intractability to the word and all those that follow. A severity in response to the strangled passion and bewilderment in her voice. He looked at her, quiet and shrewd, as she tumbled through her thoughts and turned them in sentences. He admired the quickness of her pragmatism, pinpointing and missing so much all at once in the storm of her understanding. His hand is loose around her wrist; he knows he's hurting her. It's not his intention, nor has it ever been. "And it would undoubtedly be easier for you if you didn't know." He knows she's angry.
He knows why she's angry. That it has more to do with how she feels than what she knows.
She's angry at herself, and at him for putting her in this position. That it isn't a deal breaker when she knows at one point it would have. But she's forgiven similar things in Doc, in other people she's loved. And it's not like her hands are clean. But it hurts.
It would be easier if she didn't know.
It also wouldn't be real. And things have been becoming more real between them, much as they don't directly discuss it.
She gets up from the bed to put something on...only to realize she just has the costume from last night, which she doesn't want to put back on which means raiding his close to tug one his henleys on. It gives her something to focus on, at least for a moment. Though finding pants of his that fit might be a different story. She takes a deep breath before turning around to face him again.
"Why? Why did you kill her?" Maybe it'll help her make sense of it, maybe it'll just make her angrier. Or maybe it'll just make it more real, for better or for worse. But if they're going to go there, they might as well go there all the way.
He knows. She has every right to hate him for what he's done, but he suspects she hates him more for being honest. Hates herself for seeing, in truth, what he's always told her. What she's always known. A piece of what she's been capable of herself.
Her anger is expected. It doesn't make it any easier to bear, and when she turns from him, frenetic and searching for some relief or preoccupation, Klaus tears his gaze away, pulling in a soft and impatient and abiding breath, head turning to the side.
He sits up, arm resting on his bent knee. She asks, and so he answers. He doubts it will help. "I sacrificed her on an altar of blood to lift a curse my mother had subjected me to for centuries." He doesn't elaborate where he might've in the past or under different circumstances. He doesn't qualify nor ask for sympathy; he doesn't appeal. Klaus licks his lips and moves, sudden and with graceful fluidity to stand and face her. The truth, curdled in his gut. This is it. The horror and shame he should feel is muted by the countless others in which he's done the same, the centuries of blood he's spilled. And yet when he speaks, the score of those words are undeniable.
He is not certain if those wounds are for Elena or for Wynonna. For him or for this. "I terrorized and I threatened and I killed her friends and family until she complied."
The thing is? She doesn't hate him. She should. He's a murderer (she's a murderer too). He killed her friend. (She killed her own sister, her father, an innocent man). He terrorized. He threatened. (She's done that too, Peacemaker pointed at Rosita, telling her if she helps, she'll be the last one she kills, like that's a prize).
The curse hits home too. She would have done almost anything to break Bulshar's curse -- but he did it for her. She's free, for all that means. It's not much. There is always new blood. New enemies. There will never be any rest (and would she want it, if there were?)
"But she didn't stay dead, did she?" She asks as she pulls on a pair of pajama pants. In other circumstances it might be fun or teasing to put on his clothes, it just feels kinda annoying at the moment.
Maybe she was wrong, but Elena, at least the one she knows, doesn't give the air of someone who has just died. Not that that makes killing her in the first place okay.
His eyes are burrowed and piercing down at her changing, downturned expression; he's hovering just slightly too close for comfort. Close enough to feel the heat of her. To feel her shallowed breath. To imagine the quickened pulse of her heart if he were to reach out —
And he does, taking her arm in hand and stepping in. He means to do so; he means it because she is avoiding him, from the pursing of her lips to the scattered focus of her gaze. It's what he wants: acknowledgement. Understanding. Anger. Even hatred, if it's there to see. "Not through any mercy of my own," he assures, and in nearly the same breath he orders, "Look at me."
"I didn't think it was." Due to his mercy, that is. Usually when people like Elena survive, it's due to their own cleverness, their own determination to survive, not the mercy of others. Not that she thinks he is beyond mercy -- at least not now.
It's just hard to reconcile who she knows him to be now to who he has been in the past, the centuries of atrocities that trail behind him. But when he commands it she can not do anything other than raise her eyes and look at him. Her eyes are wet with a mixture of different feelings, sadness, anger, confliction, and maybe even a little hatred, more for putting her in this position than the action itself. Her hand reaches out to wrap around his wrist, her grip tighter than it normally would be, even if she knows she could not pose a threat to him even if she wanted to.
"I'm looking at you, are you happy?" She snaps, that anger spilling out. "What do you want me to say? That it's okay? Because it's not. That I hate you for it? I do, kinda. I don't want to hear this right now. This is the last thing I want to hear right now, asshole."
And maybe that's not fair, he's trying to be honest, trying to keep things real and that's important, but she's lost a lot lately and she doesn't want to have to figure out more of where her morality is sliding these days.
His eyes are burning with the same fierceness of feeling, his fingers digging into her flesh — nearly hard enough to bruise in reaction to the fervor, not in her grasp, but in her look; her words. He wants her anger; he realizes with the sudden onslaught of it that it is a wounding force and a balm all at once. Because it is real or because it is deserved, he does not know. What he does know, advancing near enough with sudden surge of movement, leaning in so close he can feel her breath on his face, is that he is just as feeling: angry and lashing and wearied.
"The reflection of your own cruelty may not be a pretty picture, but perhaps it's one with which you should reconcile." The words are harsh and intimately dealt. "This is not only about you." They are punctuated and heavy, each word carrying weight and landing with a pause.
He has told her who he is. He has shown her. Whatever deeds she has committed, whatever grief and turmoil she is experiencing, he deserves to tell her just as much as she needs to hear it.
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It's not out of the norm to discover Wynonna in his bed after hours, but she's often not wearing much, if anything at all. She's also never been wearing this. The tight pleather leaves little to the imagination, and his eyes are creeping up the curve of her thigh before it dawns on him what exactly she's supposed to be. (A better look at the spidery cape helps.)
He closes the door behind him, and says with authoritative caution, "That is an eighteenth-century manuscript."
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Wynonna is not sure what she imagined he might be dressed up as, if anyhing, but seeing him in a priest costume is amusing for a variety of reasons. And also....kinda hot. Look, she may have missed out on fleabag thanks to the eighteen months she lost but she knows a hot priest when she sees one. Plus, it's that whole...not supposed to be hot thing. Not supposed to be seduced.
She sets the book aside carefully before rising to her feet, walking over to him.
"Forgive me father, it appears I've sinned."
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Though how her form looks in motion wrapped in that suit has him considering that he should encourage her. Obviously, he should.
"Are you offering your confession?"
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Too late, even the small hint of a smile is enough to encourage her -- it honestly doesn't take much. She also knows if he truly objected, he would not hesitate to tell her that. They've never had issues communicating what they do and do not like to one another.
Which is why she kneels in front of him.
"I am. Please, father, punish me as you see fit."
She honestly probably got this from some porn she watched. Sorry, Klaus. She wasn't planning on the roleplay but once he came in in the priest outfit...what was she supposed to do???
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Moreover, it has been a long month. He could use some fun, and he's never opposed to taking the reins to assuage that desire for complete control. It's a handful of thoughtful moments before he steps forward, reaching to pinch her chin and tilt her face up towards him. "Take it off."
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In all honestly, she had been kinda just joking around, playing up the stereotypes of those fantasies but when he gives her a command, when he takes the reign, she does not object. It is not often Wynonna offers the reigns to him so completely. There is usually more push and pull between them for control, which is plenty of fun in it's own right, but after the month she's had, there's something freeing about giving up control. And it shows the implicit trust that has built between them, she wouldn't hand them to just any one.
She rises back to her feet, making her way back to the bed, she has to sit down to start with those boots, because if she tries to take them off while she's standing she might fall over, and the sexy fantasy will be officially over. But once they're off she's standing again, and taking a little more of her time as she unzips the back of the costume, slowly pulling off the tight material, inch by inch until she finally steps out of it, leaving her in just a bra and a pair of thongs. She knows she's pushing things a little as she takes her time, but even when giving him the reigns she can't help but test the water some.
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His pencil scratches quietly over paper, drawing and committing to the shape of her.
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It's true, Wynonna is not generally still long, even in sleep she is often fitful and plagued by nightmares, but for the first time in a while she's slept rather soundly. She's not an early riser except when she has to, so it takes a while before her eyes finally flutter open. She would have sat up from when she had nestled herself into his bed except she realizes he's drawing her -- and well she'd be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat curious what she'd look like through his eyes.
"I was wondering when you might draw me like one of your french girls."
Look, the opening is right there, she can't help but that it.
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"I suppose I don't know." She likes to think if he had, he might have shared his work with her, but she hasn't seen a lot of his art beyond what she catches him working on sometimes when she lets herself in. But it pleases her, the idea that maybe he's drawn her before, that she's worth multiple pieces.
As much as she is trying to stay still the urge to stretch out a little is eventually too impossible to resist. Her body is still a little sore from her adventures in the maze the other day.
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He has. Sketched her before. This month. Though not like this; anything more than the brief recollection of her face or the curl of her hair, drafted errantly and with a quiet ferociousness on a few blank pages, would have felt too much like a submission of something truly intimate. An allowance for it.
He moves back to her face. Adds the detail of her open eyes. "I didn't hurt you too much, did I?" Not that she didn't seem to enjoy it, but he's not blind to the bruising left behind.
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Well, last night's adventures probably are playing a part in the soreness as well, though none of it is so much that she regrets her choices. It had been freeing to give herself up so completely to him. It's not something she would have dared to do before. But things have shifted between them in the past month.
She shakes her head a little. "You would know if I did." If she felt like he had gone overboard, she would have no qualms complaining about it. But that's not entirely it.
"My body is still recovering from the maze too, I think. I was stuck in there for quite some time."
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He knows she wouldn't have done so before.
He also knows she wouldn't have hesitated if he'd gone too far. Still, the reassurance in the metaphorical light of day is good to know, if only for next time. At the mention of the maze, Klaus rises from his armchair, rotated towards the bed. The sketchbook is abandoned to the edge, along with his pencil. His knee bears part of his weight on the mattress; his hand reaches for hers, thumb slipping into her palm. "Souvenirs, I suppose." The scratches on her wrists and ankles were ones he noticed in the night, both carefully avoided and tenderly touched. He slips beside her and brings one such wound to his lips.
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She trusts him more than she does most people outside of her sister, which is saying something. And as someone who feels like she always has to be in control, always has to be the one making the decisions whether they be hard or easy (and they are often hard) there was something freeing about giving herself over to him so completely. Knowing that while he had the power to hurt her, to kill her, to crush her with his bare hands if he wanted to, he would not do so.
If he had wanted to, he would have done it long before now.
It feels sensitive as he touches brings her wrist to his lips, and not just from the tenderness of his touch, the way he had carefully avoided them the night before as well. Doc had been the one to find her when the vines captured her, and it had gone...as well as one might expect such an encounter would go right now. But she doesn't want to talk about that. But there is something about the maze she should tell him: she doesn't want to start keeping things from him now.
"I wasn't alone most of the time -- my friend Elena was with me. She told me she was from the same world as you." And it is clear from the way Wynonna presents that information that that is all Elena had told her.
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It's not the presence nor absence that soothes him, when he's with her. It's the acceptance of it. The consolation. The understanding. He's all too aware that outside this room, there's little they can do but fight, and survive. He traces a circle in her palm, knowing there is little he nor her nor anyone could do to prevent the marks on her body, dealt by this hell.
It's those thoughts that keep him as she speaks, but they are released the moment she mentions Elena. His eyes, suddenly sharp, lift to hers. He knows Elena is acquainted with the Earps. She has been forthcoming, at least in this regard; he knows as much as he suspects that there is pocket of people she has gathered to consider this place. Still, the word "friend" lands heavily — it lands with meaning of the past, present, and future. His eyes search hers; they search her face for any indication, and finding none, he feels the absence of relief. He feels a ball of something, tight and sure, thinking of Elena. He feels acceptance of the inevitable, in spite of that alliance.
"I killed her." He says the words without pomp or circumstance, without any remorse. Without, truly, any emotion at all. Only as fact.
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Wynonna is surprised to hear this, though she supposes she shouldn't be. Inellectually, she knows Klaus has killed a lot of people and while it once haunted and tortured him, that lessened over time, over centuries. She remembers his dark words of comfort when she broke down to him about her new memories from home, the man she shot in the back.
If you killed a hundred men for justice or vengeance or pleasure, it would not matter to me.
Can she honestly say it's the same on her end? She's not sure. And this isn't just anyone....this is Elena. The girl who she saw face down the ghosts of her dead parents, tears in her eyes. The girl who had promised her that neither Doc nor Klaus would come in the way of what they were building together. Part of the little group that she's formed with Elena, Jon and Waverly, trying to unravel what they can about the Veiled Order. It'd be easier if it wasn't personal; the problem is that it is. She worries her lower lip as she tries to find the right words to say -- what does someone even say to a confession like that?
If he was just confessing to killing somone in general, it would be easier to rationalize. But Elena is her friend, maybe a newer one, but a friend nonetheless. It's always harder to rationalize when that's the case. Her jaw tightens snd she swallows thickly. Her voice is laced with thick emotion when she finally speaks again. She does not pull away from him, but she does not initiate further touching either.
"Why are you telling me this?" Is it just to be honest, to push her away because things are getting too real? She doesn't understand. He could have gotten away with her never knowing. And he didn't. And a dark part of her wishes he had let her keep on not knowing.
She doesn't want to lose anyone else.
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He watches the confusion and hurt muddled in her eyes. He watches the difficulty of her swallow. He listens to the uncertainty in her voice. It's only then he looks away, the thread of her emotion connecting to his, the reflection of it brightening in his eyes. A part of him doesn't want her to see it; that vulnerability. That knowledge. That dread of his own.
He looks at her hand still resting in his instead. He traces the curve of her thumb down over the pulse of her wrist. It's with familiarity and tenderness and longing that he does so, his lips parting once as he rolls the question over and over in his mind. There are many reasons and many words that would suffice. He chooses the ones spoken from the heart. "Because it's the truth." What they've shared with each other. "It's honest." What they've valued.
His gaze finds hers again. "I was the villain in that story."
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He feels far away, suddenly, as he looks away, even if she understands why he does. This thumb tracing over her wrist helps keep her grounded, keeps her from getting up and running, as tempted as she is to do so.
"And she's my friend. And even if she didn't tell me -- hell could have forced it out."
Wynonna may not always put two and two together, but his logic here makes sense. It's the reason why she told Jason about what happened back home. Better he hear it from her than a demon, or Lucifer, or something else.
"She would have told me, if she thought you were a threat for me."
That much she has certainty about, Elena might have had her reasons for her silence but if she thought Klaus was still a threat to Wynonna, that he was the villain in this story she would have spoken up.
"Still...even if it was a long time ago." She has no proof it is, she's just jumping to that conclusion since Elena didn't mention it. "...it's not easy hearing you killed one of my friends. It's easier, when it's not someone I know. Do you expect it to just be okay with me?"
Even if she hasn't known Elena nearly as long as Klaus, nor does she care as deeply for the young woman yet, there's still affection there, and it makes things complicated. She feels exposed suddenly, and not just because she's still naked underneath the sheet. It's one thing to know he has a sordid past, it's another to be confronted with the details of it. And there's a mixture of confusion and anger in her voice. Not that she ever had an illusion of either one of them being perfect, truth be told she likes that he's all messed up like she is.
But this...she doesn't know what to do about it and she's almost irrationally angry he told her at all, because after everything else she's lost recently, she doesn't want to add him to the list
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He knows why she's angry. That it has more to do with how she feels than what she knows.
"But it wouldn't be real."
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She's angry at herself, and at him for putting her in this position. That it isn't a deal breaker when she knows at one point it would have. But she's forgiven similar things in Doc, in other people she's loved. And it's not like her hands are clean. But it hurts.
It would be easier if she didn't know.
It also wouldn't be real. And things have been becoming more real between them, much as they don't directly discuss it.
She gets up from the bed to put something on...only to realize she just has the costume from last night, which she doesn't want to put back on which means raiding his close to tug one his henleys on. It gives her something to focus on, at least for a moment. Though finding pants of his that fit might be a different story. She takes a deep breath before turning around to face him again.
"Why? Why did you kill her?" Maybe it'll help her make sense of it, maybe it'll just make her angrier. Or maybe it'll just make it more real, for better or for worse. But if they're going to go there, they might as well go there all the way.
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Her anger is expected. It doesn't make it any easier to bear, and when she turns from him, frenetic and searching for some relief or preoccupation, Klaus tears his gaze away, pulling in a soft and impatient and abiding breath, head turning to the side.
He sits up, arm resting on his bent knee. She asks, and so he answers. He doubts it will help. "I sacrificed her on an altar of blood to lift a curse my mother had subjected me to for centuries." He doesn't elaborate where he might've in the past or under different circumstances. He doesn't qualify nor ask for sympathy; he doesn't appeal. Klaus licks his lips and moves, sudden and with graceful fluidity to stand and face her. The truth, curdled in his gut. This is it. The horror and shame he should feel is muted by the countless others in which he's done the same, the centuries of blood he's spilled. And yet when he speaks, the score of those words are undeniable.
He is not certain if those wounds are for Elena or for Wynonna. For him or for this. "I terrorized and I threatened and I killed her friends and family until she complied."
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The thing is? She doesn't hate him. She should. He's a murderer (she's a murderer too). He killed her friend. (She killed her own sister, her father, an innocent man). He terrorized. He threatened. (She's done that too, Peacemaker pointed at Rosita, telling her if she helps, she'll be the last one she kills, like that's a prize).
The curse hits home too. She would have done almost anything to break Bulshar's curse -- but he did it for her. She's free, for all that means. It's not much. There is always new blood. New enemies. There will never be any rest (and would she want it, if there were?)
"But she didn't stay dead, did she?" She asks as she pulls on a pair of pajama pants. In other circumstances it might be fun or teasing to put on his clothes, it just feels kinda annoying at the moment.
Maybe she was wrong, but Elena, at least the one she knows, doesn't give the air of someone who has just died. Not that that makes killing her in the first place okay.
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And he does, taking her arm in hand and stepping in. He means to do so; he means it because she is avoiding him, from the pursing of her lips to the scattered focus of her gaze. It's what he wants: acknowledgement. Understanding. Anger. Even hatred, if it's there to see. "Not through any mercy of my own," he assures, and in nearly the same breath he orders, "Look at me."
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"I didn't think it was." Due to his mercy, that is. Usually when people like Elena survive, it's due to their own cleverness, their own determination to survive, not the mercy of others. Not that she thinks he is beyond mercy -- at least not now.
It's just hard to reconcile who she knows him to be now to who he has been in the past, the centuries of atrocities that trail behind him. But when he commands it she can not do anything other than raise her eyes and look at him. Her eyes are wet with a mixture of different feelings, sadness, anger, confliction, and maybe even a little hatred, more for putting her in this position than the action itself. Her hand reaches out to wrap around his wrist, her grip tighter than it normally would be, even if she knows she could not pose a threat to him even if she wanted to.
"I'm looking at you, are you happy?" She snaps, that anger spilling out. "What do you want me to say? That it's okay? Because it's not. That I hate you for it? I do, kinda. I don't want to hear this right now. This is the last thing I want to hear right now, asshole."
And maybe that's not fair, he's trying to be honest, trying to keep things real and that's important, but she's lost a lot lately and she doesn't want to have to figure out more of where her morality is sliding these days.
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"The reflection of your own cruelty may not be a pretty picture, but perhaps it's one with which you should reconcile." The words are harsh and intimately dealt. "This is not only about you." They are punctuated and heavy, each word carrying weight and landing with a pause.
He has told her who he is. He has shown her. Whatever deeds she has committed, whatever grief and turmoil she is experiencing, he deserves to tell her just as much as she needs to hear it.
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