this is survival

[interminably]

WHO: Klaus Mikaelson interminably and Tim Gutterson snipedt
WHERE: New Beijing
WHEN: Starting this month on...
WHAT: Getting away, getting involved, getting into trouble
NOTES OR WARNINGS: It's Klaus, so any kinds of open threats, mentions of child abuse mentally and physically, family abuse, family death, patricide, matricide, fratricide, violence, strong language. It's Tim, so mentions of the war, death, sniping, emotionally closed off behavior, violence, guns, the desert?

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coming up for air — the train

[interminably]

( klaus insists they train back to new beijing. the gates were one thing. new casablanca and all that came with it, but they need a paper trail for klaus' employer. on the surface, he's taking the trip to find new and emerging artists, as well as acquiring a particular piece of art klaus lies about securing. it wouldn't be difficult to obtain within his usual means, but he reminds himself time and again, his usual means aren't accessible.

it's a far cry from his last train ride.

for one, he's not alone and unaccompanied. tim has a seat next to him. on the other, hope is not on here, nor any other members of the displaced. hope is not even back in new amsterdam. a fact that only tim has learned, klaus having tracked him down after returning from new casablanca.

it's amazing to him that tim would up and leave things behind to pursue this avenue with him. he's not sure what they'll find. he knows it's where kol had been last, and he knows people disappear. but, he also remembers politically how adoptions had worked and were accepted in new beijing. it could be their in and their start.

klaus is used to calculating everything, every word, every move. and this is a larger effort, perhaps, to get in better with morningstar, but it goes deeper than that, even if he doesn't know it. if they have to do things on their own, they will. )

[snipedt]

[ Tim likes long journeys, although mostly travelling alone. When his mom used to drive them to Houston to hunt, he enjoyed the journey as much as the weekend away from his father, just the two of them. It gives him time to think. It's also a little like a liminal space, neither in one place nor the other, and places like that have always calmed him down more than anything else – airports, gas stations, warehouses.

He feels a certain obligation to talk, even if it's only shooting the shit. There's a little bit of tension in him, anticipating everything that could go wrong in New Beijing, but this is the first time since he's got here that he's really felt like he's doing something – even Everest was too far beyond what he's ever known to make sense of. ]

Wanna play I Spy?

[interminably]

( unsurprisingly, klaus has never played I Spy. is it that tim can't stay silent, with his days in the desert behind him. long days of waiting. or is it that they both find comfort in what they aren't able to say. klaus had the most frank conversation with quentin at the gala. klaus believes he knows how tim feels or - what time wants - or tim's inclinations anyway. klaus' boil down to, feeling comfortable in his presence amid asking only him to skip town. things with angela were a different, much needed, beast but they weren't fulfilling. only distracting. )

Do you see something?

( he didn't properly raise a daughter or maybe he'd know this game and to what it's referring. klaus looks around them at the other seats, some empty, some filled with people sleeping, no doubt using their own neural interfaces. )

[snipedt]

I could if we played I Spy.

[ He's not bored, per se. He has a lot more patience than most people. But the anticipation is stronger than anything else right now, and it's making him edgy. Not that he fidgets – any proclivities towards fidgeting were stamped out of him and replaced with hardline discipline by the time he was about nineteen – but it's a kind of mental fidgeting. ]

I Spy with my little eye... somethin' beginning with K.

[interminably]

( This is silly, but in the kind of harmless, banal silly fun Klaus needs right now. He doesn't begrudge Timothy his fun. Or, his flirting, because isn't that what this is? He feigns a glance around them. )

Your eyes seem to be better than mine. I don't see any kaleidoscopes. ( He sneaks a look back, or thinks he does, of course Tim's eyes are on him. ) What is the objective of this game?

( I Spy? Being here with Klaus? Whatever dance they've started in earnest? )

[snipedt]

You just guess what the other person's chosen that begins with the letter they say, [ Tim says, his eyes still squarely on Klaus. He's smiling and not even really bothering to couch it; somehow it's endearing as hell that Klaus has no idea, apparently, what I Spy is. ] Have you never played before?

[interminably]

( No, Klaus hasn't played, but yes, Klaus is playing coy. It's an easy premise to surmise. )

I never did have the opportunity. Hope was in our lives for a short time before we had to send her away for her safety. And when we reunited, it wasn't to play games, but to celebrate our family. Hayley and I did go on the run with Hope once, but no games were played then either. I did where I god awful "trucker hat' to blend in. To be honest, I had my daughter very little until she was a teenager - and by then I had missed all of her firsts. ( It says something that he'd go on like this with Tim, so casually. He speaks, half smiling, trapped back in a memory he's never shared, especially not in this way. ) But, you asked a simple question. No. I never had the chance to. K. Is it Klaus? Is it because you're looking at me, or because you can't stop yourself from it?

( it really is time they confronted what this friendship is. It's been two months, they'd been on - an undefined something. With Cami, he'd waited what felt like years and he'd lost her early, and then lost what she'd become until it was too late. Caroline and he had never had proper timing. But, had anyone. With him? Had he deserved them? Does he deserve Tim? Does he have Tim?

What is Tim doing here? )

[snipedt]

[ In any other place, he actually wouldn't mind having this conversation right now – it's been long enough by this point that he's about equally split between that hard, unpleasant fear of intimacy fighting tooth and claw with his desperation to be close to someone in a way that he really has missed. But they're on a train. Anyone could be listening.

His reluctance to engage with that is maybe obvious, as he drops his gaze and turns to squint out of the window again. He knows, objectively, that this is a different world, that anyone with half a brain here has let go of their more bigoted beliefs, and it's making him realise that maybe the problem here isn't fear of coming out, since Klaus obviously knows he's that way inclined, but some sort of shame. And that makes him feel like shit, because he's never thought of himself as being ashamed about this before. ]

Yeah, you got it, [ he says. Well, it was always going to be a short-lived game, and since he's decided he's not engaging with anything else Klaus just said, he looks down and frowns a little, before he says, ] Why did you have to send her away?

[interminably]

( Tim doesn't meet Klaus halfway. He knows Tim's background, how subtle Tim thinks he's been, except for that first night. He doesn't expect confirmation, maybe in his eyes alone. But, Klaus can't blame him. Klaus is acting out of character, really, and isn't this right, something not working out in his favor. He should stick to directly confronting his prospects or not saying a word about anything for years.

He falls back into the silence, his once enticing look dissipating. )

At the time of her birth, our entire family was in danger. And a group of the quarter witches who listened to the ancestors believed they had to sacrifice her. They'd kidnapped Hayley, her mother. They cut her out of her. Hayley was reborn, a hybrid like myself, and our family exacted the revenge we intended to. After, we didn't believe it safe for Hope to be in the quarter. That proved to be true.

[snipedt]

[ Of course, it all sounds completely reasonable when Klaus explains it like that, but the fact of the matter is that none of it makes a whole lot of sense – so much of this is so far beyond his comprehension. It's times like this that he reminds himself that Klaus isn't anyone, just some guy – there's a whole millennium behind him. ]

I keep forgettin' how old you are, [ Tim says, a little softly. ] Until I remember.

[interminably]

And that wasn't a hundred or a thousand years ago. Only fifteen.

( But, there is a great divide between he and Timothy. He knows this. The train nears its' destination, New Beijing coming into view before them. )

But, even in a single year, much happened. The life of the only living hybrid.

[snipedt]

Most interestin' thing I ever did is shoot a guy with a gun on a pregnant woman, [ Tim says with a wry little smile. ] Feelin' kinda inadequate here, Klaus.

[interminably]

Nothing about you, Timothy, is inadequate. And, by your definition, you're a hero. Did you or did you not save that pregnant woman's life?