recklessthings | ♎ caroline forbes

[ was his impulse control questionable? he wants to say yes, because his adult impulse control wasn't exactly stellar, but he can't recall. his teenage years were a very, very long time ago. back when he was still mortal, back before gray was taken. ]

You know, it's been a long time since I met someone who wasn't surprised by any of this. [ even other companions, like the three who now traveled with the doctor's latest regeneration, could still be surprised. but this woman isn't.

it's oddly refreshing. ]

Oh, don't get me wrong. The idea of life beyond Earth is ... a lot and I'm sure I will have a existential crisis about that and what it means later, but once you wake up a vampire, it's kind of a sliding scale, you know?

[It's much easier to accept that something is a thing, rather than fighting it and trying to pretend it doesn't make any sense. Also, since he's sharing, she feels like she might as well.]

[ —he takes it back, he apparently is still capable of being surprised. his eyebrows go up. ]

Vampire? You're a vampire?

Yep.

[The "p" lands with a pop, and she glances back over her shoulder towards the store. No one's coming in or going out, it's too late for that, but she will hold up her whiskey as an offering.]

Maybe we should do this over a drink.

[ maybe they should, even if he's incapable of getting drunk. if he drinks fast enough, the buzz will hit him for a bit, but it never stays and he never gets truly wasted. not that he wants to experience a hangover again after recalling the headache he had while he was mortal during the miracle, but knowing he can't is one of those things he has a lot of conflicting feelings about.

he gestures for her to drink first — ladies first — and then holds out his hand for the bottle once she's taken the first swig. ]

So you're, what, a couple hundred years older than you look?

Oh, no. Not yet. I mean, barring any future disasters I will, but right now I'm just a couple decades older than I look.

[Benefits of turning at seventeen, wrinkles are never going to be a problem. She takes a swig of the whiskey, before passing it over to him.]

I'm hoping to at least get a couple of centuries under my belt though. Make a respectable showing.

[ jack debates not saying anything at all about not looking one's age, but in the end, he's curious. it's rare for him to come across those who have the potential to live as long as he has, and for someone who is supposed to be a leading expert on everything "strange" on this planet, he knows very little about vampires. ]

I stopped counting somewhere around twenty-five hundred or so.

[Her eyebrows go up at that because "stopped counting" implies that there could be a considerable amount more, and while two thousand year-old creatures have made an appearance in her life in the past, nothing older than that.

At least not before Jack.]

Congratulations, you are officially the oldest person I've ever met. Silas had the record for a while, but he tapped out at two thousand.

[And is now dead. Good riddance.]

So what flavor of immortal are you? If you don't mind my asking.

Not at all, [ though he doesn't usually clarify this. for anyone. not even those closest to him, usually out of a need to either protect the doctor in the only way he knows how or out of an inability to even begin talking about that part of his life to those who have no prior understanding of it. ]

I'm a living fact, a fixed point in time.

[Her brow furrows at first. Science has never been her strong suit and when her world became full of magic and she stopped paying attention even more. But she does at least give it a try, taking the bottle of whiskey back and taking another swig as she tries to think through it.]

So ... is it like you physically can't change because you're always going to be as you were when you became a fact?

[She makes a face like she doesn't think that sounds right. She's probably offending someone somewhere.]

Kind of. Long story short, I was killed once and a friend brought me back to life using the power of a temporal vortex, but they didn't know what they were doing and accidentally brought me back forever.

[ it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it. ]

I can be killed, but I don't stay dead. I revive pretty quick. I've been trampled by horses, shot through the heart, blown up, starved, exsanguinated... Nothing sticks.

... Oh.

[As cavalier as she can be about her immortality, at least she knows that she has a way out. When she finally becomes sick of the world, should she live that long, there are ways for her to bow out of existence.

She can't imagine what it would be like to have zero options for death. That no matter what you do, you keep coming back.]

I'm sorry. That sounds terrible.

There are worse things out there in the universe than being the only immortal human.

[ it might have taken him a while to learn that and to embrace what he is, but he got there. eventually. he had the time to figure it out. ]

Maybe. But ... I don't know. I think I'd lose my mind a little if there was really no way out.

[Embracing being a vampire is one thing but eternity is a lot heavier when you grow out of the romanticism of it all.]

But that's me. Maybe it's something you just have to adjust to.

You'd be surprised by the universe's ability to keep you interested and engaged in spite of having seen so much already. Like this lot here, humans in this century... They're like nothing else. History does not do them justice, and getting to actually live through these changes that set the cosmic stage for their place in that universe is fantastic.

[ sure, the 2020s were the absolute worst, but there are thankfully far greater things to come. ]

[And that makes her smile. Her girls are growing up in this particular century, and the idea that there generation could do great things still means a lot.]

I'll take your word for it. I still have to go through things linearly. Anything I should look out for or would that be considered a spoiler?

[ spoilers. he can hear river song laughing, somewhere. wherever/whenever it is she is. ]

Much as I would love to tell you about all the great and not-so-great things to come, not telling people about those things is one of the number one rules of being a person from the future living in the past. Time may be fluid and always fluctuating, but some things need to happen. And you don't want to be the one that does something to stop them from happening.

Fair enough.

[She shifts to lean back against her car.]

But good to know that there are good things on the horizon.

Lots and lots of good things. Trust me. I'm originally from the 51st Century and people are still talking about Earth, even way out on the Boeshane Peninsula.

[ jack in turn leans against the railing of the cart return she's parked next to. ]

[There's space too? Man she has so many questions.]

Where's the Boeshane Peninsula?

[ soooooo much space. ]

A long, long way from here. I've actually never visited the Earth in my time. My first visit to Earth was in 1941 during the Second World War.

Wow.

[She tips her head back towards the stars, trying to imagine what that may be like.]

You certainly picked a time to visit.

I enjoyed it. First time around, anyway. There's a stark difference between posing as a soldier to blend in and actually being one. Wouldn't recommend the latter.

[ he says it lightheartedly enough, but it's far from being that. but he doesn't want to get into the gruesome details of war right now. no amount of alcohol she could supply him with would make him want to do that. ]

[Caroline nods, because she gets that.]

My ex was in the war too. But it also wasn't his first war. Still, he didn't really talk about it much.

It wasn't mine, either. My first was... I guess, technically, it was the last leg of the Time War. When I died the first time. Exterminated by Daleks. You never forget your first war — or your first death, even if you're not big on talking about either.

[ sometimes he wishes he could actually get drunk, but imbuing alcohol and enjoying what he manages to experience of the affects will have to do. he holds his hand out for the bottle. ]

♎ caroline forbes | the vampire diaries

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