theseancekid:
Continued from (x) with @rumorsabound
For once, Allison doesn’t speak. Words don’t fly forward on her tongue with the need to be said. The silence doesn’t feel like it needs to be filled. Instead she cards her fingers through her brother’s mess of curls on his head, pressing them back away from his forehead.
There is a reason Allison doesn’t speak nor does she feel the need to. It’s Klaus. Klaus, who if there’s anything that needs to be said and if there’s anything that doesn’t, always beats her to the punch no matter how fast she can think. But he’s said nothing. Not for a while. And so she follows his lead and says nothing too.
Pulling him closer she sits in the quiet, setting him so that her knees could form a nice pillow for his back and shoulders. She fixes the blanket around his body, tightening its hold on him as if she were making sure Claire was well tucked into bed.
She doesn’t know what brought her brother into this state, that he’s so quiet without a peep on his lips and for a long moment that stretches she’s too afraid to ask. But Allison’s okay to sit. She’s okay to do nothing but run her fingers through his hair. She’s okay to stay like that and not speak a word.
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It’s an odd feeling, to be silent in Allison’s company. Even when there is no need for chatter, he finds himself filling the silence with useless comments, random gossip he’s been collecting in the back of his head. Hell, even during those humiliating eight weeks of utter torment, when he was reduced to a pathetic mute, he still found a way to communicate with his sister, to tell her how his day was, to let her know when he needed help, or when he needed to be alone.
She’s never been the first person to go to when he needs silence, but seeing as Ben is, well, dead, and Diego’s out on vigilante duty, he’d snuck into Allison’s room instead. The way he leans himself against her, nuzzling into her lap as she pets his hair is an all-too-familiar set of motions, and for a moment he wants to cry, not because of the awful circumstances that had brought him here, but merely because how small he feels, how childish. Like the scent of his favorite childhood blanket, there’s an overwhelming feeling of bittersweet nostalgia that catches his off guard.
He knows he has to talk eventually, but he allows himself to savor the silence for as long as he can, forcing himself to count his breaths, feel the warmth of the blanket around him, wiggle each finger and toe every once in a while, just to make sure they’re all there.
It’s not unusual for him to have nightmares. Even as a child, most nights whatever spirits had haunted him during the day had a nasty tendency to bleed into his subconscious. But his dreamscapes now are even worse than ghosts or ghouls: theres a war in his head, every time he closes his eyes, and it’s killing him. During the day, sure, it’s easy enough to distract himself, to drown out the ringing in his ears, the spark of gunpowder beneath his skin. But every goddamn night is a battle, and the longer he’s in the trench, the harder it is to remember why he’d gotten sober in the first place.
But admitting I need you to stay with me because my PTSD has once again pushed me to the brink of relapse isn’t exactly something he wants to do. So instead, he takes his sister’s hand from atop his head and gives it a small, thankful squeeze.
“D’you think…can you maybe can stay with me for the rest of the night?”
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Allison had always had the eye for detail, especially when that detail happened to revolve around the little planet she called herself. Details were useful things, powerful when remembered. Details were weapons to be wielded like guns, leveled against whoever she saw fit to point them at. But the only one that the details were leveled against now was herself. She noted each shaky twitch Klaus made, the tenseness in his fingers or the way his toes would curl against the ground in a way to make sure he stayed there. It hurt- in a way she was surprised it hurt.
No one who called themselves a graduate of the Umbrella Academy were averse to nightmares. Sometimes Allison’s nights were filled with them. Sometimes, or more than sometimes, as a kid Klaus’ nights had been filled with them too. Most of what she did on those nights were a blur, but she’d never felt the hurt looking at her brother the way she did now.
His long, gangly limbs were small. So very small- she hadn’t noticed before. She thought of Claire. Perhaps that was it. Claire had come into her life and had given her just the right pair of glasses with just the right kind of shade covering their lenses to show her just how hurt she should have been those other nights when she hadn’t.
It was easy to answer his question then. She knew the answer before Klaus even asked it. Of course. “Yes- yeah, sure. Though I think maybe you should get up off the floor first.”
She moved her hand from his hair, holding it downwards where he could see it and offered to help him up. It was something she should have done ages ago- something she should have done over whatever petty, useless distraction she could offer her brother when the night’s darkness came for him. But she knew better now. She could try better.
