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.
He's intimate and close but now that she's feeling that anger, she doesn't want to back down from it. She refuses to be intimidated by it. By him. Or anyone. She doesn't want to feel small or afraid ever again.
Isn't that why she pulled the trigger on a man with his back turned? But she didn't -- well she did hunt, but she didn't terrorize people. Except when she has. Hadn't that been what driven Rosita to betraying them, her constant threats and intimidation?
"I know that, despite popular belief, I don't think everything is." He's so close to her now she could probably at least attempt to slap him, even if what she can do is nothing compared to what he can. What she has witnessed him do, known him to be capable of for some time, but has tried to conviently ignore it. The comfort and disgust it brings in twine because it does reflect her own capabilities, her own flaws and failures. Cruelties.
She's practically baring her teeth when she continues with her verbal attack. "You want me to disgusted with you, you want me to hate you because you killed my friend, which yeah, I fucking hate, I hate that you killed her, is that what you wanted to hear?"
"
Edited (i know you're taking a break, and no pressure obviously, i was just thinking and talking out with someone else and realized her hiting him really didn't fit or serve the scene, ultimately) 2020-11-13 14:42 (UTC)
He doesn't want to hear it. He barely wants to admit to it, for fear of what decimation it might bring; for fear and reckoning of this. What he wants is a longing, hollow, mercurial thing; for all at once he knows he wants this condemnation too. He wants the familiarity of its judgment; the novelty of its sting as he lets it pierce him. Her accusations ring in his ears and the brewing injury of them snaps at threads inside of him. His hand squeezes her forearm; he pulls her in with the passion of the truth.
"If you think that’s what I want, then clearly the time we’ve spent together has been some mirage." The volume of his voice is strong, but its melody is riddled with bouts and tremors. "I’ve never claimed to be the bastion of redemption and I certainly do not aggrieve my actions, even in their most horrendous form." And that is what he knows they are — what he knows that night of the full moon was; his eyes rounding and wetted. "I do not desire hatred — nor absolution — not from you or Elena." He knows what he wants, what he's always wanted: to be seen. To be known. "That is what you fear. You fear my intentions to be false, and I am telling you they are not."
His words echo the ones she threw at him when he confronted her for running off without notice or word. That if that is what they think of one another, even after all this time, maybe it hasn't meant what they thought it was. Maybe it was never real.
Except it was. It was real when he held her hand and she told him about Alice. It was real when she cut him open with knives and he admitted what he really was. It was real when they danced together. When he held her after Lucifer's torture. When he tied her up and talked to her as she resisted the Order's demands. It was real moments ago when she woke up and he was sketching her as she slept. And this, this anger and rawness, it too is real.
And nothing terrifies Wynonna more than the truth. He can probably hear it in the shallowness of her breath, the wild beating of her heart.
"You're hurting me," She grunts after a moment, stalling as much as she was telling the truth. His grip had been nearly tight enough when he first grabbed her to bruise, and now it is even tighter as he tugs her closer. There is no place to run. He is not giving her the option to do anything but stare the truth in the face and decide if she can live with it. And she can see in his eyes, in his expression that his words are true.
"Your intentions might not be false," She admits after a moment, her own eyes wet with feeling both said and concealed. She is so tired and weary and she doesn't want to deal with this -- but she has to. Anger, sadness, the preparation for more loss all swirl inside of her as she speaks. But she does not avert her eyes now, she speaks to him directly. She owes him that much.
"But that doesn't mean I know what to do with that knowledge. It's not like I ever had illusions you were a good guy," She wouldn't have kept being attracted to him if he was, honestly. "But you've always been honest with me. Even when I don't want you to be."
Like right now. She doesn't like his honestly, she's still angry that he killed her friend, that he dropped such a bomb on her as if it was nothing, but his honesty matters too, as much as it terrifies her. There is room for both to be true.
Edited (just adding in a few more physical details for him to work off of) 2020-11-14 05:37 (UTC)
So much can be true all at once. How he is hurting her, through action and words. He feels the burning friction of his fingers against her skin. He sees the fear and obfuscation in her terrified eyes; a flutter of sickened anguish rolls over in his gut. For bruising or hurting her: he's not sure which. Both. All of it.
But he is not sorry, too. He is not sorry that she sees him. He is not sorry to force her choice. He is not sorry that in his fervor, he has mishandled her, for he knows whatever marring he might've inflicted is not truly what she meant to stall. It is that look of all they are speaking of that hangs between them. His grasp loosens slowly, incrementally, but he does not let her go.
He is not a good person. He knows this, and yet the admission of it from her lips still wounds him, quietly taking his breath with the truth. Plucking at the sutures of old wounds; old truths. But she is right: he's not. And though his honesty might be a visceral and actionable vulnerability, it might be what is right and not always wanted all at once. How could it be? How could this, right now, or ever?
He steps back wordlessly. Lets her go, his hand dropping to the side. He expected too much. Wanted and longed too ferociously for what this moment might offer. His feet draw him back until he is turning to the mussed and messy sheets of the bed, the abandoned sketchbook, and all evidence of what seems so changed and stark. His fingertips lift to nearly trace a crease of his comforter. His eyes blindly roam.
"So go." His voice is soft, aching, and decided. "Until and unless you do."
Something in her heart breaks at his words. She had expected -- she's not sure what she expected. Not this. Not more heartbreak. Not someone else giving up on her. (Even if that's not what he's doing at all it still feels like that to her.)
He sees what everyone does eventually. Her stomach churns at the realization. She tries to bow her head now as she turns to leave, trying to hide the tears she can no longer hold back.
"You don't have to tell me twice." She tries to keep her voice even, cold, tries not to betray the pain she feels at his dismissal (it's not that simple, but it feels like it)
She doesn't bother picking up her costume. Much as she might wish to be anyone else right now she is only herself, and he is only himself, and there is nothing more to be done. He wants her to go. And so she leaves, awkwardly clothed in his clothing, not that she's thinking too much on that.
Behind her are the remnants of the night before, the morning before everything when sour. They don't matter anymore, or so she tells herself as she closes the door behind her.
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no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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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He's intimate and close but now that she's feeling that anger, she doesn't want to back down from it. She refuses to be intimidated by it. By him. Or anyone. She doesn't want to feel small or afraid ever again.
Isn't that why she pulled the trigger on a man with his back turned? But she didn't -- well she did hunt, but she didn't terrorize people. Except when she has. Hadn't that been what driven Rosita to betraying them, her constant threats and intimidation?
"I know that, despite popular belief, I don't think everything is." He's so close to her now she could probably at least attempt to slap him, even if what she can do is nothing compared to what he can. What she has witnessed him do, known him to be capable of for some time, but has tried to conviently ignore it. The comfort and disgust it brings in twine because it does reflect her own capabilities, her own flaws and failures. Cruelties.
She's practically baring her teeth when she continues with her verbal attack. "You want me to disgusted with you, you want me to hate you because you killed my friend, which yeah, I fucking hate, I hate that you killed her, is that what you wanted to hear?" "
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"If you think that’s what I want, then clearly the time we’ve spent together has been some mirage." The volume of his voice is strong, but its melody is riddled with bouts and tremors. "I’ve never claimed to be the bastion of redemption and I certainly do not aggrieve my actions, even in their most horrendous form." And that is what he knows they are — what he knows that night of the full moon was; his eyes rounding and wetted. "I do not desire hatred — nor absolution — not from you or Elena." He knows what he wants, what he's always wanted: to be seen. To be known. "That is what you fear. You fear my intentions to be false, and I am telling you they are not."
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His words echo the ones she threw at him when he confronted her for running off without notice or word. That if that is what they think of one another, even after all this time, maybe it hasn't meant what they thought it was. Maybe it was never real.
Except it was. It was real when he held her hand and she told him about Alice. It was real when she cut him open with knives and he admitted what he really was. It was real when they danced together. When he held her after Lucifer's torture. When he tied her up and talked to her as she resisted the Order's demands. It was real moments ago when she woke up and he was sketching her as she slept. And this, this anger and rawness, it too is real.
And nothing terrifies Wynonna more than the truth. He can probably hear it in the shallowness of her breath, the wild beating of her heart.
"You're hurting me," She grunts after a moment, stalling as much as she was telling the truth. His grip had been nearly tight enough when he first grabbed her to bruise, and now it is even tighter as he tugs her closer. There is no place to run. He is not giving her the option to do anything but stare the truth in the face and decide if she can live with it. And she can see in his eyes, in his expression that his words are true.
"Your intentions might not be false," She admits after a moment, her own eyes wet with feeling both said and concealed. She is so tired and weary and she doesn't want to deal with this -- but she has to. Anger, sadness, the preparation for more loss all swirl inside of her as she speaks. But she does not avert her eyes now, she speaks to him directly. She owes him that much.
"But that doesn't mean I know what to do with that knowledge. It's not like I ever had illusions you were a good guy," She wouldn't have kept being attracted to him if he was, honestly. "But you've always been honest with me. Even when I don't want you to be."
Like right now. She doesn't like his honestly, she's still angry that he killed her friend, that he dropped such a bomb on her as if it was nothing, but his honesty matters too, as much as it terrifies her. There is room for both to be true.
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But he is not sorry, too. He is not sorry that she sees him. He is not sorry to force her choice. He is not sorry that in his fervor, he has mishandled her, for he knows whatever marring he might've inflicted is not truly what she meant to stall. It is that look of all they are speaking of that hangs between them. His grasp loosens slowly, incrementally, but he does not let her go.
He is not a good person. He knows this, and yet the admission of it from her lips still wounds him, quietly taking his breath with the truth. Plucking at the sutures of old wounds; old truths. But she is right: he's not. And though his honesty might be a visceral and actionable vulnerability, it might be what is right and not always wanted all at once. How could it be? How could this, right now, or ever?
He steps back wordlessly. Lets her go, his hand dropping to the side. He expected too much. Wanted and longed too ferociously for what this moment might offer. His feet draw him back until he is turning to the mussed and messy sheets of the bed, the abandoned sketchbook, and all evidence of what seems so changed and stark. His fingertips lift to nearly trace a crease of his comforter. His eyes blindly roam.
"So go." His voice is soft, aching, and decided. "Until and unless you do."
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♫
Something in her heart breaks at his words. She had expected -- she's not sure what she expected. Not this. Not more heartbreak. Not someone else giving up on her. (Even if that's not what he's doing at all it still feels like that to her.)
He sees what everyone does eventually. Her stomach churns at the realization. She tries to bow her head now as she turns to leave, trying to hide the tears she can no longer hold back.
"You don't have to tell me twice." She tries to keep her voice even, cold, tries not to betray the pain she feels at his dismissal (it's not that simple, but it feels like it)
She doesn't bother picking up her costume. Much as she might wish to be anyone else right now she is only herself, and he is only himself, and there is nothing more to be done. He wants her to go. And so she leaves, awkwardly clothed in his clothing, not that she's thinking too much on that.
Behind her are the remnants of the night before, the morning before everything when sour. They don't matter anymore, or so she tells herself as she closes the door behind her.
(They do, how could they not?)