Multi-fandom Writings @2-fandom-2-furious - Tumblr Blog

Jan 1, 2020

falling down, like angels fighting

TW: car accident, underage drinking, mentions of major character death, blood mentions, descriptions of vomiting, angst

Word Count: 7,500

Prompt: Klaus’s first Christmas without Ben

Read on AO3

It wasn’t particularly unusual for the house to be quiet. Reginald Hargreeves quite preferred it that way, in fact; would go out of his way to keep any and all noise as hushed as he could so his work could continue undisrupted. Not ever really silent, per se, but suppressed enough to feel like it.

But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Right now, this is different. The quiet is no longer a hovering presence, it’s haunting and clinging, dripping and dragging along every surface like spilled syrup.

It isn’t really even a lack of noise. Silence isn’t a full lack, not always. It’s the lack of voices, specifically, because there’s plenty of noise, but Klaus’s ears still ring at the nothingness. A house full of sixteen-year-olds, and not one of them with a word to part with.

You don’t realize how grating the sound of clinking and scraping forks on china is until it’s all you can hear.

Klaus has a plate piled with Grace’s cooking, potatoes and honey ham and prime rib and casserole and seemingly every other food imaginable, enough to cover every inch of the long oak dinner table in trays, pans, and bowls. Klaus can hardly see any of his siblings over the food, sees even less of them when he ducks his head and lets his overgrown curls flop down and cover his vision. His vision, which is swimming and unfocused, and has been for a while.

His hands are in his lap, twitching and fidgeting, and his silverware and plate of no-longer-steaming food are just as Grace left them nearly a half hour ago. Somewhere on the other side of the table, a fork clatters to the floor. There’s an awkward mumble of apology and a scrape of wooden chair legs on tile. Klaus doesn’t bother to look up and assess it.

You see, he’s thinking. He’s thinking, but he’s also not, at the same time. Klaus, Number Four, he’s got his eyes trained on a set of chair legs under the table, has his hands gripping and clawing at his thighs while he looks at the empty chair his father couldn’t be bothered to move. Or rather, left there on purpose.

Yeah, I’ll bet that sick bastard knows what he’s doing, keeping it there, Klaus thinks without meaning to. Maybe he mumbles it aloud, too, but his stomach is churning and his mind is teetering too much for him to be able to know for sure.

Right now, he doesn’t know a whole hell of a lot. Doesn’t really want to. He knows what he needs to; knows that his dear old dad is going to rot one day. Knows that when the old man kicks it he’s gonna spit on his grave.

And knows that doing that isn’t going to change anything. Nothing is going to change the cold hard fact, the big picture.

Klaus spares a glance up and to his right. He puts a real effort into focusing his eyes, wants to get a good look at his sister.

Vanya is looking right back, but there isn’t any discernible meaning to her gaze. She’s got shadows beneath her eyes fit to rival the ones that crawl and thrash beneath Klaus’s bed and scream for him to save them, and if he could make himself do it, Klaus would lift the corner of his mouth in a smile to soften her pain. But he can’t right now, he can’t do much of anything besides hold himself upright with a hand on the table’s edge and hope she can feel his solidarity.

Directly beside him, Allison sets her glass down with a muffled thunk, and reaches for her fork to poke aimlessly at her potatoes. Klaus has better things to do than pay attention to that, though. He needs to seethe, needs to clench his teeth and eyes closed and let his anger loose to pool in his stomach, to writhe with the half bottle of liquor he downed before dragging his ass down to this miserable Christmas dinner. It isn’t a hard thing to do, let the leash on his anger go limp. At this point it really isn’t even a choice, just something that comes with using booze as a shield. The hard part, the part he has to focus on and put his effort into, is keeping it down.

His stomach is burning warm, coiling up on him, nasty words and bile rising nice and steady, like mercury in a thermometer. But Klaus holds it; the boy’s had his share of practice at this, one of the few things he’s good at.

He breathes. In and out, good and slow. It’s far from refreshing, but it’s steadying. The air is stale and too hot, the thermostat turned up way too high to compensate for the winter air. It smells like cold food, smells like dust and unease.

Klaus’s chest spasms when he exhales. He ignores it, grips the table harder, breathes in again. He knows he’s being looked at, but now isn’t the time to open his eyes and see who’s staring. He has a pretty good feeling he already knows, anyway.

More clinking, more scraping, silver on porcelain.

Klaus bets Luther is nearly done eating, bets Allison is too. He can picture them, scurrying off and away from the table, trading secret looks like they’re getting away with something. Like they aren’t obvious. He jolts, stomach clenches and threatens to rise up into his throat.

His eyes scrunch tighter, but he holds it together, digs his uneven nails against the thick wood of the table and breathes, breathes, breathes. He can vaguely hear his father clear his throat in that haughty way he does when he has some shit to spit in Klaus’s face, but that doesn’t matter.

Lock me up in the mausoleum for as many hours as you’d like, fucker, I don’t care. I’m done.

He may have said that aloud, too, but that’s neither here nor there. If he did, no one offered any reaction.

“Number Four, you must eat. You’re scrawny as it is, at this rate you’ll waste away and join Number Six in the grave.”

That sick fuck, that disgusting, awful, absolutely unfazed man.

God, Klaus wants to slam his father’s head against the wood of this table. Wants to land his elbow right into the old man’s eye socket, break his stupid fucking monacle in the process. His fingers twitch in his lap, scratch at his thighs through his pants hard enough that it might be painful, if he could be bothered to care enough. He cracks his eyes open long enough to give his father a hard glare, all dark dilated eyes and fury. As much fury as a sixteen year old can, but shouldn’t have to, hold.

He doesn’t mean to, doesn’t want to, but he trembles, something like rage and pain climbing up his spine and streaming out of his pores. He holds eye contact with his adoptive father and grits his teeth, scrunches his face involuntarily. In the corner of his vision, Vanya tap tap taps on the table with her fingers, and shoots him a pleading glance begging him Don’t, but he pays her no mind. This doesn’t concern her, doesn’t concern anybody but him and his old man.

“Oh, you would just love that, wouldn’t you? Be some sweet irony, huh? Kid who speaks to the dead becoming one of them?” Klaus spits.

He wants to die. He wants it as much as Ben didn’t, but he knows better than to entertain the thought, doesn’t want to give the tyrant at the head of the table the satisfaction of winning. Worse, for every ounce of his being that craves to be put out of his misery, another part fears it, revolts and shivers at the idea of finding out just what torment lies beyond the veil even a moment sooner than he has to. He wants the idea of death.

Klaus gags, forces the nasty mix of emotions and alcohol down. Keeps all of his focus, all of his intensity on his dad’s ugly mug.

His face tints pink, flushes down to his neck. He’s got his father’s attention now, it’s too late to take a step back. Allison is tense beside him, fingers gripping her fork like her life depends on it, but what she does doesn’t matter. What she thinks doesn’t matter. Nothing matters like this does, nothing is as important right now as the red-hot hatred swelling at the front of Klaus’s skull, the same anger that’s begging to spill out and right into Reginald Hargreeves face.

The old man looks detached, but what else is new? Klaus supposes he can’t really even be detached, was never really attached in the first place. All the same, the man sets his silverware aside on a napkin, turns his full attention to his seemingly least favorite kid of the hour.

Klaus is huffing for breath, he realizes. He doesn’t stop, though. Keeps breathing heavy, eyes locked on every miniscule movement his father makes, waiting, just waiting for that rat bastard to say something to fuel the fire. He doesn’t give a shit that Allison is cringing away from him and the liquor on his breath, doesn’t mind Luther’s warning glare, won’t look at Vanya. Diego’s vision is locked onto his dinner plate, hands passing a butter knife back and forth to keep busy.

“I’d suggest you steady yourself, Number Four.” Is all he gets, no anger, no insult, just an unimpressed stare and disciplined tone, and in truth, that’s even worse. That’s all Klaus needed.

“How about you-” Klaus leaps to his feet too quick, hits his leg on the table’s edge and knocks his chair backwards with a painfully loud THUD in the process. He doesn’t notice all of his siblings flinch. He keeps his hands planted on the table, knows he would wobble obviously if he didn’t do so. “How about you, you steady yourself.”

Reginald raises an eyebrow, quirks his mouth. He looks so utterly unsurprised, so wholly unbothered. Maybe even a little disappointed that Klaus couldn’t come up with something better.

In this moment, Klaus hates him. Hates him. Knows he couldn’t make humour of this feeling, that his blood feels hot enough to burn through his veins and bones and skin and melt him down into a mess on the floor. Klaus’s teeth could break with how hard he’s biting down on nothing, but he doesn’t care, can’t feel anything but burning and can’t see anything but his father’s pompous, arrogant face.

Then it’s gone.

The boy’s shoulders slump, the muscles in his face relax. Hatred is hard. It’s draining, even for just a second of it. Oh, he wishes he could hold it in for longer, but it isn’t a choice. It drops down to his feet and into the floor below them without Klaus’s permission.

How anticlimactic.

“Sit down. Eat what is on your plate, and we will talk afterwards.”

The thing about Reginald, a little detail about him when it comes to Klaus: talk doesn’t mean talk. Talk means Klaus screams and cries and claws at the freezing stone walls of a mausoleum, listens to the clack of his father’s shoes become distant. Talk means Reginald pierces Klaus with his cold, unforgiving gaze while he declares that Klaus needs just a few more hours of terror; slams the door shut to finalize it, but not before Klaus begs for him to Please, let me out!

Talk is a threat.

Klaus is gone from the table and halfway out the door before he really understands what he’s doing, and even then he doesn’t really know the why of the situation. His father is shouting something or other at him from the table, but he doesn’t stand, won’t leave ‘family dinner’.

The spare keys to the car find their way into Klaus’s hands, though he doesn’t recall lifting up the matt to get them. Doesn’t matter, he has them and he’s going to use them.

Klaus lets the door slam behind him, huffs for breath once he’s outside, chest falling, lifting, falling again, rapid like his pulse. His legs are shaking, and so is the rest of him, but it isn’t because of the fat snowflakes drifting down in flurries, white flashes in the porchlight. The shake and shiver in Klaus’s bones is all adrenaline and alcohol; energy and emotion and fear and fury that he plans to use, he just doesn’t know what for, yet.

And he’s off.

The path to the car seems to be paved in ice, with the way Klaus slips and slides and falls on his ass, nothing but the thin pants of his academy uniform to cushion the falls. But that’s just another thing that doesn’t matter, another thing that stands to fuel the stifling fever in his belly that demands that he DO SOMETHING!

He does something.

Oh, he does something alright.

He sits his scrawny ass down in the driver’s seat of Reginald’s car and starts it up, buckles himself in, puts it in drive. He’s got a junior license, an empty stomach save for liquor, no supervision, and no idea what he’s going to do now.

So, he drives. Not particularly well, but he does it. And as he drives, he decides what he wants to do.

He wants to do everything that he shouldn’t. Wants to hit the gas as he approaches his turn and twist the wheel until the car swerves as sharp as it can, red light be damned. Klaus wants to go as fast as he can, push his anger out through the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal. He wants to move the car from too-far-left to too-far-right in the lane, wants to test just how rotten his luck can get.

Of course, he doesn’t really want to do any of this. Doesn’t like how his shaking hasn’t stopped, how it’s actually gotten worse. He knows he shouldn’t be driving right now. But it doesn’t matter if he wants this or not, if he should be doing it; it’s happening and Klaus doesn’t know if he can stop, so he has to bluff.

He’s only circling the block. He figures that out after seven laps, but it’s just something that clicks in his mind. He tosses it aside after a few seconds, can’t really keep any one thought in the spotlight for long. It’s starting to feel dizzying, the flash of lights from all around reflecting in the snow, the same path over and over again. It’s all looking blurry, but blurry is kind of nice. Doesn’t take much of his focus to decipher blurs. His foot eases off the pedal, a bit unsteadily, but it does all the same.

Too late does Klaus realize that his eyes are, and have been, unfocused, that he’s been slumping forward against his seatbelt, hands slackening on the wheel. He’s thankful for how much his speed has dropped, though he doesn’t remember slowing, when he feels the slam and jolt of collision.

The cars collide hard, hard enough that Klaus clenches his eyes closed like he’s done several times tonight, and keeps them that way, body tense in his seat and airbag deployed. He waits, in terror, to feel the sensation of a spirit leaving a body, a trickle of cold water down his back, but there’s nothing. Nothing but his heart beating against his ribcage and the sound of himself swallowing breath after breath after breath.

Someone nearby is screaming, but it isn’t pained, Klaus is sure. It’s the voice of someone angry and scared and ready to beat his ass at the first chance they get, but whoever is yelling is okay, and it’s such a relief that he goes slack against his seatbelt, hands dropping from the wheel long enough to put the car in park, then into his lap.

He doesn’t get to simply sit and simmer for long, though, the universe decides. Does he ever? Has there ever been a time Klaus has been allowed to just be?

There’s a rap on the window, three taps followed by a rush of cold air and a flood of yellow light from above the dashboard, signalling the opening of a car door Klaus would later recall having locked.

The light and chilled breeze aren’t enough to mean anything to him, aren’t enough to click in his mind that he just may want to sit up now and see whose car he’s wrecked, besides his father’s. Klaus isn’t asleep, mind you. Sick would be a better word. A near empty stomach, a mind full of emotion, and veins full of the worst sort of adrenaline are all heavy things to carry, they all take their toll.

Right now, Klaus wants to be in his room. Klaus wants to hold one of his flat pillows to his face and scream until the case is covered in spit and snot and tears, then throw that pillow across the room, retrieve it, and punch it until he collapses, until he can’t hold himself up anymore.

He wants to do the same to his father, and maybe even himself. Scratch that, especially himself.

He wants to dig through the middle drawer of his dresser until his fingers brush either a glass bottle or a tiny, rattling baggie, whichever he finds first, and he wants to forget about the leftovers that will be overflowing the fridge and fill himself up with his self-medication instead.

He wants a lot of things, right now, but to open his eyes and face this mess is not one of them. Good thing he’s used to doing things he doesn’t want to.

Looking in the car door is a woman, mid-thirties maybe, dark skin, tired eyes, and a blue coat paired with pajama pants. Klaus wonders where she was going before he rear-ended her car, wonders how much worse this could have been if he was going faster, or if he hit from a different angle. For a second, he feels like a child again, though really he still is one.

He feels like he did three years ago, when he tagged along with the academy at a bank heist. He remembers watching.

Watching, from across the room while so much happened at once, gunshots and yelling and hostages running past him. And what was he to do? What part did he play? None. He was to be still, to stand by while his siblings (besides Vanya, of course) all played their part. He remembers Ben, too, on that day. Ben, soaked in quickly drying, tacky blood. Ben, who stayed silent the whole drive home, and the rest of the night too. Ben, who later confided in Klaus that he was so drained from what he’d done, what their father made him do. The same kid who drew puppies in sidewalk chalk when they were younger, the same Ben who used to talk and talk and talk about anything and everything, the new book he’d gotten, the weird bug he’d seen earlier; laying on Klaus’s bed, staring at the ceiling, and whispering I wish I hadn’t looked when I did it. I wish I didn’t see their faces, and Sometimes it still feels like there’s dried blood all over me, and I can’t get it off.

Klaus opens his eyes and blinks. Hard.

“Kid?”

It takes a minute for him to register that this is the same woman who had sounded ready to throttle him moments before. Her voice is low and hesitant when she speaks that one word, scared to startle him, scared that her impression that only the cars were damaged is wrong.

Klaus doesn’t reply, not verbally. Instead he slaps his hands against his chest until they find his seatbelt and rips at it, but there’s no give. He clutches it tight, pulls and pulls and panics and kicks his feet and wriggles in his seat until he hears the telltale click. He wastes no time flinging the belt off, pays no mind to the woman whose car he wrecked snatching her hands back and away from the buckle.

As soon as he’s disentangled, Klaus leaps to his feet, out of the car and onto the icy sidewalk that takes him right back down again. The woman offers assistance, but he can’t bring himself to take it, feels selfish, feels awful for ruining her night and feels too guilty to accept her kindness.

He crawls until he finds the pole of a streetlight to grip and use to haul himself up, and once that’s done he falls again, smacks his head against the pole on his way down. He’s too intoxicated for this. He’s too overwhelmed.

He lets the lady help him up this time.

“Jesus, kid.” Either her hands are warm, Klaus’s are cold, or both, because the contact burns when she heaves him up and onto his feet, they sting uncomfortably. She tosses a glance at the wreck over her shoulder, bites her lip and sighs. “I don’t know just what in the Hell you were doing out here, boy, but you had better thank everything Holy that you didn’t kill yourself or someone else.”

He doesn't know what to say to that. It doesn’t seem like the kind of comment that begs a response, so he just nods. The woman keeps a firm grip on his hand, and tilts her head, one part irritated, the other concerned.

“You… really aren’t dressed to be out in this weather.”

“Yeah, well I’m not fit to be driving either, and yet.” Klaus’s tone tries for joking, but misses hard, lands on miserable with a hint of hopeless. He sounds weak, it’s amplified by the cracks in his voice and the bob of his Adam’s apple directly after his words. His breath whistles while he waits for her to say something, and his throat burns. The air is icy and thin, feels dry in his lungs.

She, this stranger with a newly wrecked car, shakes her head, but she doesn’t speak again. He wrenches his hand from hers, blinks a few times, then nods to his father’s car.

“My dad’s insurance information is in the glove box. He’ll have somebody take care of this.”

He’s gone, after that. Turns tail and starts walking, and if that poor woman yells after him or speaks any parting words, he doesn’t hear.

Driving laps around your block, it doesn’t get you very far from home. In fact, Klaus doesn’t have to walk more than five hundred yards before he’s on his father’s property again. Rather than aim for any particular door, Klaus simply keeps moving, goes wherever he goes, stumbling all the while.

He’s cold. That woman was right, his uniform was built for formality, not warmth. Most of his backside is wet with melted snow from his falls, and his shoes and socks are soaked through with slush. His face stings and feels chubby, swollen from the cold and probably from being whacked against a streetlight, too. But it’s whatever. It’s just like everything else, doesn’t matter.

Klaus trudges on and on. He keeps walking along, though he can’t help but lean one way or another, and his legs are stiff and his stomach is revolting. But he keeps going, makes it within twenty feet of the shitty statue of Ben that his father put up no more than a month ago before he collapses, falls to his hands and knees in the snow.

The statue is new, shiny despite the weather, and it looks down on Klaus, firm, unmoving, and cold, as statues often are. Klaus pries one of his hands out from the snow, shakes it a bit to get the wet clumps from between his fingers before bringing his hand to face and clawing, scratching at the numb itch frantically for a moment before planting his hand back down. His fingers are fat and pink, his legs are getting there too, he can feel it. Itchy, really itchy all over, and it stings and tingles.

Klaus doesn’t mind the pain all that much, though; at least, not the pain brought on by the cold. He’s more focused on the quick lurch of his stomach and the creeping sensation in his throat, more focused on the fact that he’s going to vomit, and, more importantly, that he’s going to vomit directly in front of a memorial to his dead brother.

He does. Vomit.

He spills his guts out in the snow, though there isn’t much to spill. He heaves and jolts, full body shudders blend seamlessly with the trembling of his lips. It’s all bile and alcohol, smells awful, but the smell doesn’t bother Klaus that much. He’s locked onto two things, one of them being catching his breath.

And the other being that damned statue.

God, he loathes it. Doesn’t know why Reginald had it built in the first place, considering the man hardly even took a moment to glance at the final product before having it placed smack in the middle of the courtyard. It’s his fault, Reginald’s, that Ben is gone now, anyway. Always pushed too hard, got that glaze over his eyes when he made Ben do the exact things the kid never wanted to.

Klaus retches again, but this time it’s just spit, just an empty stomach wanting to be even emptier, wanting to turn inside out. His hands are balled in the snow, but he can’t feel them, certainly can’t feel how hard his nails are digging into his palms or the blood freezing to the skin of his fists because of it.

The statue remains, stiff in posture and staring down at Klaus in an unforgiving way that Ben never would have. His neck hurts, all of him hurts, in truth, but he makes himself lift his head anyway, forces himself to look into the eyes of the shitty representation of his brother. There’s Christmas lights all over his father’s house behind the statue; the bluey-white LED kind that hurt to look at for too long, especially when there’s lots of them.

Paired with the clear sky and crescent moon, the lights are just bright enough to reflect off of Ben’s statue and the snow around it, to shine in Klaus’s eyes and make them water. There’s something building up in him, some tide crashing against a dam in his head when he looks up at the face frowning down at him, but he can’t tear himself away from it now.

So he sits and waits for whatever happens, feels his lips begin to tremble and lets them, feels hot tears build up and spill. He feels a lot of things then, on his hands and knees and thigh deep in snow.

“IT DOESN’T EVEN FUCKING LOOK LIKE YOU!”

That’s what he was waiting on, the words that broke the dam. They echo quite a bit, bounce off his father’s mansion and twist in the wind with the still-falling snow, but he doesn’t hear it over the screaming sobs that are shaking him, rattling his ribs and wasting the breaths he gasps and pants for. He’s all he can hear, his own pulse in his ears and every huff and whimper too loud. He wants to throw himself down in the snow and let it muffle him, let it catch his grief and hold it until it melts in the spring, but he’s aware enough to recall that directly in front of him is a pool of his own puke, and he isn’t going to crawl a few feet away to drop, feels too planned, too dramatic.

He stays as he is. Hunched in on himself, wailing and weeping and whimpering, he does it all. Sits there for long enough that once he’s calmed enough to breathe properly, has run out of tears and can see clearly, he isn’t sure he’ll be able to get up. Wouldn’t that be funny? Dying beside a memorial to your brother not two months after he kicked the bucket? What would his father think, seeing his son laying frozen and dead outside? Would probably be pleased. Probably make it into some sort of lesson for the others, Klaus thinks.

But he manages to stand.

Struggles to do it, but in the end he makes it to his feet. He’s sobered a bit by now, enough that his eyes will focus and he could walk in a decently steady line. But, now he’s got a new problem. Now, his legs are frozen stiff, his hands too. His fingers stay curled into claws, and he lets them hang at his sides while he walks, one numb step at a time.

Klaus slips once. That isn’t bad, isn’t bad at all for someone as wrecked as he is, someone as exhausted and frozen and miserable, but it isn’t good either.

He takes his eyes off of his legs to look at the statue one last time, does this at the same he decides to try and walk faster, and it ends in him sliding, cracking his knee hard against the metal base of the memorial, right beside the plaque. Klaus knows it will hurt later, when he’s thawed and rested enough to feel. He’ll bet that it will bruise dark enough to match his navy uniform, bets when he gets out of bed tomorrow it will feel like his knee flipped itself inside out. In fact, he’s sure that all of him will feel like that. But that’s Future Klaus’s problem. Current Klaus needs to focus on the now, on getting himself inside (is the side door locked? It usually is, fuck) and getting to his bed. So he gets up again, using the statue for leverage until he’s certain his legs are under him right.

From there, he makes it to the side door. Once he gets to it, he notices to the crack of light leaking out onto the snow, shoulders the door enough to open it and slides inside. The door catches on something, doesn’t latch, and when Klaus dips his head to look, he sees a water bottle placed so the cap just barely blocks the door from shutting. It’s full, and Klaus knows better than to think it’s a coincidence.

It hurts, and it’s difficult, but Klaus bends enough to pick up the bottle without losing his balance. It’s his biggest, and, really, only triumph of the night. He can bend his fingers enough to keep a good grip on the bottle, and he does so, carries it with him all the way to his room.

The stairs make for a challenge, but Klaus’s legs are beginning to heat up (he can tell by the god awful heat they radiate, can tell because he can feel the swelling, feel how blotchy and red they are) and that makes it a hell of a lot easier. He can’t control his steps fully, can’t tip-toe or sneak, but it’s such a large house that he doubts his father will hear a thing, or care if he does. He obviously didn’t wait up, it seems.

Klaus gets past the stairs. Makes it to his room without seeing or hearing anyone. He has a hand on the doorknob when someone clears their throat behind him, but it isn’t his dad, he can tell right off the bat. He turns.

Vanya. He should have known.

She’s in her pajamas, pale blue and striped, and her hands are clutching at a water bottle of her own. She lifts the corner of her mouth in a smile, but it’s vacant, and Klaus feels the smallest bit of shame for leaving her alone tonight. Or maybe last night? What time is it?

“Hey.” They both cringe. His voice sounds anything but good; scratchy and hoarse and absolutely brimming with grief. When he shifts, the floor squelches. His clothes are a lot wetter than he originally thought, dripping melted snow onto the floor.

“Hey yourself.”

Klaus can tell that she wants to ask him where he’s been, he can tell that she’s been crying maybe as much as he has. He can picture her, violin tossed aside in its case and curled up on her bed, facing the wall. He can imagine where her thoughts went, the car gone and her brother with it. First Five, then Ben, then Klaus.

There’s that thrum of shame again, a tug in his chest and a grimace on his face. But Vanya doesn’t ask, just nods vaguely in the direction of their father’s room.

“He’s gone. He went to deal with the car.”

So she knew about the car wreck, then. God, that must have made it all so much worse.

“Oh.” Klaus licks his lips. They’re chapped, he notes, though he probably should have expected that. “Vanya?”

“Yeah?”

She looks fragile right now, so breakable. Klaus knows this is his time to make a joke, make her laugh. It wouldn’t fix it all, but it could be a start.

Klaus isn’t in the mood to make a joke.

“Vanya. I’m sorry.”

He wishes she didn’t look so torn up. Being able to read her so easily, having her be such an open book, it’s shitty. He can see all of the trouble he’s caused her, can’t ignore how hard life has been hitting her.

Klaus feels selfish. He feels like a waste of space, looking at Vanya right now and thinking about every moment she’s spent alone since Ben died.

The thing about Vanya, it’s that she’s almost always alone. Ever since they were little, she was treated as someone separate, like some sort of outsider. Klaus understood that. It was the same way with him; always being dragged off by their father for ‘training’ or smoking something to forget it, cracking pills between his teeth, and recently, drinking. So, he got it, knew what it was like to have that barrier. And he had put in the effort to break it.

He, Vanya, and Ben? They were a dream team. With Ben to chatter, Klaus to make jokes, and Vanya to play her violin when things edged on just a bit too quiet, there was hardly ever a dull moment.

And now, with Ben gone, Klaus has been centered on the track to ruin what’s left of their dynamic.

“I know you are.”

The words aren’t harsh, surprisingly, nor are they what he was expecting. Understanding is written all over Vanya’s face, and somehow that makes Klaus feel even worse. She’s looking at him so softly. Looking at the dark circles under her eyes, it clicks in his mind again just how late it is. He sniffs a bit, clears his throat.

“What are you even doing up?”

Waiting for you to get back.

“Oh. I was just thirsty.” She raises her bottle of water, shakes it for emphasis, then lets it drop to her side again. Klaus nods.

“Ok. Well.” His voice cracks; he takes a pause. “I mean it Vanya. I really am sorry. About tonight, I mean. And, uh, every other day.” He chuckles awkwardly, and she copies.

“I…” she pauses, and Klaus can see it again, can see how bad she wants to ask What happened tonight? Or What did you do? Or Can this be fixed? Or some other, equally loaded equivalent that Klaus isn’t quite sure he can answer, right now or ever. But she doesn’t ask. Instead, she takes a long look at him, up and down at his ruined uniform and his face that he’s sure is bruising but can’t recall how it got that way.

Vanya steps forward, and Klaus flinches, can’t help it, it’s a reflex. But he adjusts quickly. Realizes what she’s doing, although he can’t imagine why she would want to. He lets her, regardless. Lets her hug him.

She tucks up against him, arms around his back and holding tight, face pressed up against his chest. Where her head rests, she can vaguely feel the ridges of her brother’s ribs through his jacket. He never had much meat on his bones to begin with, but these past few months, he’s lost most of what he did have. It’s a little scary, seeing him transform from scrawny to almost skeletal.

Klaus allows himself to hug her back, even though he’s freezing and soaking wet and probably (definitely) smells like puke. He’s wise enough to know that even though he feels, and is, disgusting right now, Vanya needs this, and he probably does too.

And it’s nice. For a moment, everything is alright. His sister is infinitely warmer than he’s been in hours or maybe days, and this is the closest to understanding he’s received from anyone lately. It isn’t often anymore that anybody in the family embraces, and Klaus had forgotten just how much of a need this sort of comfort is. This is good, it’s soothing.

Klaus has missed Vanya.

It may be a bit late for the realization, but it’s one hundred percent truth, so he says it.

“I’ve missed you. A lot.”

Vanya steps back, and he concedes. His arms return to his sides to pick at the threads of his uniform jacket.

Vanya rubs at her eyes like she’s tired, and she most likely is, but Klaus knows that that isn’t the only reason. He knows she’s swiping away tears as casually as she can. He does her a favor and pretends not to notice.

“I’ve missed you, too.” If her voice shakes, and a few missed tears streak down her cheeks, neither of them pay it any mind.

Klaus makes an unspoken promise then, wordless but palpable nonetheless. It isn’t something he has to think of, or something flaringly obvious. Just a change in the air that they both know the other can sense. I’m going to do better, I won’t do this to you again. Something in that ballpark. He knows better than to speak the promise, doesn’t need to. It just has to be one of those things that’s known, not stated. A fact not worth arguing, common sense.

This new promise feels more honest than his apologies somehow, though those hadn’t been lies. This is far less remorseful, much more hopeful.

“Klaus?”

“Yeah?”

He’s smiling now, just a little bit. He isn’t happy, not really, and he certainly isn’t alright, but he feels a lot better than he has been lately, and it’s something he won’t take for granted. He keeps the corner of his mouth lifted and leans on his closed bedroom door for support, though he has a feeling he won’t be standing out in the hallway for much longer anyway.

Sure enough, Vanya steps closer long enough to give him another quick hug, then nods in the direction of her room down the hall.

“I’m heading to bed. I’ll see you at breakfast, ok?” Klaus nods his assent, and Vanya turns away, but she doesn’t leave. After a moment, she turns her head back to face him.

“Take a shower before breakfast. You reek.” She scrunches up her nose, and Klaus comes close to a genuine laugh. He doesn’t quite reach it, but that’s ok. He’ll get there.

“See you in the morning.”

He waits for her to finish creeping down the hall, waits for her to close her door before opening his own and lumbering into his room. He doesn’t have the grace to be silent like his sister right now, can’t really maneuver his leg in the way he would need to take light steps, but it’s a short walk to his dresser and an even shorter one to his bed.

He struggles a lot more than he should getting his wet clothes off, but in his defense, he’s stiff all over and still thawing. His jacket goes first, hits the floor with a wet thwap! that feels loud enough to wake the whole house, but there’s no pause. He moves on to his shirt, then his pants, then underwear. He changes, with even more struggle and a careful focus not to hit his knee, into some new boxers and a pair of pajama pants. He doesn’t bother with a shirt. He’s cold, but he’s also exhausted. His comforter will have to be enough.

He permits his body to give up, and falls onto his back on the bed. He’s a little off-kilter, laying at an odd angle, but he hardly even notices. Just snags his blanket and wraps himself in it as quickly as he can. As he gets settled in, eyes closed for the night, he definitely isn’t comfortable. He has to piss pretty bad, and a throbbing sensation deep in his knee is making itself apparent along with many other aches and pains, but none of it is enough to keep Klaus awake. He takes a long drink of his water, recaps it, then tosses it somewhere near his pillows. He falls into a fitful doze less than a minute later. ----

In Klaus’s room, there aren’t a lot of flat surfaces that aren’t scattered with dirty clothes and knick knacks and, usually, drugs. His dresser is coated in said paraphernalia, along with the floor and his nightstand and half of his bed, but one place kept decently clear is his window sill. Not for any particular reason. Maybe it’s too thin for Klaus to want to set anything on it, or maybe he just likes having a clear view, but for whatever the reason, it stays empty, and Ben is thankful for that.

Sitting on the floor, in a seat, or on the edge of a bed was never really his style. Tables and counters were more like it, and his death hasn’t changed his taste at all. Rather, it’s amplified it. His risk of falling or having to deal with a sore ass from sitting on flat oak and marble has dropped to zero, and that’s its own type of freedom, at least for him.

But that’s really a minor thing. As much as he’ll joke later about enjoying the quiet, being dead is lonely, especially when someone who could talk to him has detached himself from that ability.

Watching his brother waste away like this, it’s something else. It’s miserable, one of the worst ways to spend his afterlife, but Ben isn’t so sure staying away would be any better. He’s got the choice to either watch his brother destroy himself and hope he eventually sobers long enough for Ben to get his attention, or leave and live (or unlive, I guess) never knowing how things could have played out.

And besides, it’s not like Ben has anywhere better to be.

So he sits on the window sill, right in front of the window. The light from outside is the same bright shade of the LED Christmas lights that line the house, but is thankfully much softer. It shines through Ben like he isn’t even there, but he’s used to that, used to things going through him, used to no longer having a shadow.

He doesn’t know why Klaus doesn’t just close his blinds. Ben would have never been able to sleep with his room so bright, not to mention how cold it is with the blinds open. Or maybe that’s just him.

In any case, Ben stays perched where he is, legs dangling far enough to almost touch the floor, if he could ever really touch anything anymore. He sits in the window, he bides his time. He’s a little anxious, and a little excited for tomorrow.

While Klaus was out doing who-knows-what, Ben nosed his way into every nook and cranny of Klaus’s room, and amazingly, found nothing but some scattered trash, dirty clothes, and a few sparkly rocks he vaguely recalls his brother pocketing from the sidewalk near Griddy’s Donuts.

Meaning?

Klaus is fresh out of drugs, and with the harsh eye Ben knows their father will have on his brother, he won’t be getting any more anytime soon. Klaus is more sober now, passed out, than he’s been since Ben’s death, and it seems like he’s going to have to stay that way. For a while, at least.

Right now, all Ben has is hope and two months worth of determination. He has no clue how the following day will go.

(But between you and I? It goes wonderfully.)

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