❝You did.❞ Nodding with a slight smile, Sophie noted the sincerity in his voice. But also the sadness. He had TRIED, but it had FAILED. Sometimes that was enough. That was okay. And so she voiced it in a gentle manner. ❝What comes NEXT isn’t on you. It’s on them to either accept what you’ve done or ignore it. And I know it’s HARD to potentially be shunned like that, but you’ve got to give them time. They’ll come around.❞ For as much as she’s heard about his SIBLINGS, she knew that to be true. They loved each other, no matter what. It just seemed as though they forgot about it sometimes.
Make amends with those you’ve hurt. Klaus didn’t usually get quite that far down the list, but... Well, this time was different. He wasn’t sure why, exactly - maybe it was just the moment he was in, the ghosts were a little more bearable and things were... almost okay. It got him further down this process than he’d been in so long, and he was - wow, he was actually proud of himself. That was a nice feeling.
But this step is tough. And he knows people find it tough because it means admitting their failings, facing the damage they’ve done, and yeah, it’s not a pleasant feeling, but it’s one to which he’s all too used. It’s one he’s been facing his whole life. No, the difficult part is the fact that he knows his siblings won’t believe him. He knows they don’t believe he’s sorry, and much less that he’s actually doing this. That he’s actually gotten this far. And that... That hurts. Even if it’s exactly what he’d expected.
“Yeah, yeah, they will.” He lets out a laugh, and if it sounds broken and hopeless then... it’s because it is. “They’ll forget all about this, put it away in their little box of ‘times Klaus was looking for attention’, and they’ll never think about it again. Things will be right back to normal.”
