#ilooklikedeath

[musesthroughtheages]

@ilooklikedeath

Klaus wasn’t meant to be home for a little while, and Eleven was passing the time with what had gradually become an almost anxious habit--sitting at the table with something light and easy to move in front of her, staring intently at it as she tried to will her powers back.

She’d thought that maybe she just needed time to recharge and heal, like with her leg, but she was walking fine on that now, the scar still fresh and raw but fully healed over. Whatever had happened with her brain, on the other hand...Klaus said not to worry too much, that fluctuations had been normal for him and his siblings when they were around her age and her abilities would come back in their own time.

She hated waiting.

[partsofthemachine]

@ilooklikedeath  ♥’d for allison

( It was just a nightmare. Go back to bed. ) Maybe it was callous to brush off Klaus’s concern like that. They were trying to be a better... whatever they were calling this fucked up thing. Family, she supposed. But Allison wasn’t going to talk about it, couldn’t talk about it. She rubbed her arm awkwardly, thumb scraping over the old scar, and waited for her brother to just leave already so she could cry in the attic in peace.

[musesthroughtheages]

@ilooklikedeath | continued

The yelling made her flinch, which she couldn’t help. Even though it was Klaus, even though she could see the fear in his own eyes, it was still a frightening thing.  But El didn’t move, and didn’t release the door.

Instead she stared silently at him for a long moment, her quaking less violent and noticeable than his, but there nonetheless. Seeing him like this was a frightening thing on its own. She knew what panic was, what the urge to run felt like. It was written all over him. 

“Tell me,” she said at last. “Please?”

[partsofthemachine]

@ilooklikedeath

( I’m not an addict, Klaus. ) Allison signed for must have been the millionth time. Not that she thought he was actually paying attention to her. He’d definitely been high when he floated the idea of coming to a recovery meeting with him. Or coming down, or on his way to get high. Diego had said he had a dealer who worked the corner outside of his meetings, right?

She had assumed, at the time, that he wanted moral support. Apparently, though, this was more of an intervention type deal. Which was really just rubbing salt in the wound. Even if she was addicted to her powers, she was definitely already going cold turkey now.

( Why am I here? )

[musesthroughtheages]

“Some things I just can’t forget. Whatever I do they’re always there, eating away at me.” -ilooklikedeath to Eleven

Some days in the Hargreeves-Ives house were not what other people might call productive days. Those involved lots of sitting on the couch, lots of TV, probably too much junk food, and were generally instigated by the need to work something deep and dark out of their systems. This was one of those days.

“…I know.” El shifted under her blanket-cape so that her shoulder touched his and was quiet for a moment, just sitting with him. “…eat them back.”

[musesthroughtheages]

‘ all you can do is learn your lesson. there’s no point in wishing you had did differently. the past is the past. ’ -ilooklikedeath to El

“I’ll learn,” she promised. It didn’t make her feel any less miserable, but there was sense in what he was saying. There was no disappointment in his voice, either, and no punishment beyond what she was feeling right now. The specter was still there, but it too, was in the past. Or would be, soon “...will it stop hurting?”

[musesthroughtheages]

i love you. -ilooklikedeath to El

She wasn’t used to hearing that. She hadn’t known what it meant until she left the lab behind, and hadn’t heard it at all until she started living with Klaus, and it still felt like it stopped her heart, sometimes, with its heaviness. Not at all like fear, or pain, or sorrow--it was heavy and a weight taken off all at once.

It felt like late nights on the couch with Klaus with matching headaches and no words between them, like being welcomed into a group of friends like she belonged there, like holding her mother’s hand in both the dark and the light. 

“I love you, too.”

[musesthroughtheages]

“I need a hit of sucrose. I’m heading to the vending machine.“ -ilooklikedeath to El

“Sucrose?” she asked, but she understood the second part of it, and followed him immediately. In her experience so far, vending machines always had the good kinds of snacks, and she could certainly use the energy.