Chapter Text
The garden was small, and not especially green. Mother did her best to keep the plants and vegetation alive, but she was never truly programmed to be a gardener, and it was obvious in the sporadic array of limp-brown leaves and healthy vines, wilting flowers and blooming bushes.
It was an odd space, a disturbingly at ease place where life mingled with decay in an easy companionship.
Klaus has always hated the garden.
For reasons that must be quite obvious, once thought is put into it.
Even still, Mom told him to go outside. So he’ll go outside.
He was lingering in the open doorway, bare footed and shivering slightly in the mid-morning air. Slowly, he stepped outside, the wilted grass crunching weirdly underneath his toes. Luther was on the opposite side of the garden, huddled comfortably on an old wooden bench with a book sat heavy between his fingers.
He looked calm, and relaxed. He looked like an echo of how Klaus felt. (Although, Klaus was the tainted version, the distorted copy of the motionless calm. He didn’t feel calm, not in the relaxed type of way. He felt calm more in the ‘this might as well happen’ type of way. The nihilistic kind of way. The Klaus way.)
Klaus would be the first to admit that he played favorites with his siblings. In childhood, he clung to Ben. In teenage years, Ben and Allison. In adulthood, Ben and Diego. (Always Ben.)
He played favorites, and Luther was never a favorite of his. Too stuck up, too innocent and naive. He looked at the world in a way Klaus never had, looked at it with the eyes of someone who has never been hurt, someone who has never had reason to see the world as anything but just and fair.
His eyes skittered to the empty corner where Ben’s statue will someday sit, for now nothing but a small closure of defiant flowers and brittle grass. Grass that will someday be weighed down by ash and rubbled marble.
He made his way over to his brother. Without the added monkey muscle, Luther was tall and lanky and much, much smaller. Barely taller than Klaus and only fifty pounds heavier, the boy barely looked like the power house he surely was.
When he got close enough to be heard, Luther’s head popped up from the midst of his reading, his gray-blue eyes were pointed, wary at the skinny boy in front of him. (No doubt remembering the screams, the blood, the death hidden behind Number Four’s bedroom door. No doubt remembering the boy’s wobbly smile as he emerged in a cloud of blue sparks and pale skin and power thrumming from his fingertips.) Klaus ignored him, ignored the thoughts banging around in his skull, and threw himself down on the bench beside the blond.
He stretched his legs, dug his toes into the grass. Luther stayed quiet beside him, his book laying forgotten on his lap. (The title was Slaughterhouse Five. A nasty book, if he remembered correctly. Ben had read it to him during one of his many, many rehab stays.)
Klaus has never really known how to talk to Number One. Never really knew what the other expected from him, never understood why the leader was always disappointed in him. He never understood him in the way he did the others; with Ben’s quiet and Diego’s anxiety and Five’s sullenness. So he had made a point of interacting with the other as infrequently as possible, always trading his company for that of Allison’s or Diego’s. (The only other two Luther had ever made constant attempts to interact with, as well. Call him petty.)
“Klaus.” Luther stated, awkwardly.
Klaus rolled his head lazily to the side to look at his brother. Luther was looking at him already, a constipated expression twisting his face in a way that Klaus knew meant that he was about to get a lecture.
Might as well, he supposed.
He had come out here because Mom asked him to, but he stayed because he wanted to talk to Number One, tell him, beg him, demand him to keep the events of last night to himself. (Out of their father’s reach, out of his awareness, out out out and as far away from Klaus as possible.)
He knew their other siblings would keep quiet, knew that it wasn’t necessarily out of any consideration towards Klaus but instead a show of that same old childish rivalry. Everyone wanted to be the strongest, the most powerful, and no one wanted Dad to know that Klaus had suddenly jumped to the front of the line seemingly overnight.
The only one who would rather tell the truth and stick their nose where it didn’t well belong was Luther, their father’s first hand, his faithful Number One.
Prick.
Luther stretched his jaw, running a hand down his still-startlingly-youthful face.
“Last night was… weird.” He began, and Klaus huffed in resentful amusement.
Luther paused, casting a forlorn expression at Klaus’s drawn face. Whatever the other boy saw there (Was it the purple and blue bruises smudged under tired eyes? The angry scabs on his pale skin? The gauntness to his cheekbones, maybe, or the haunted cloud covering pale green irises? Was it all of the above?), it was enough for the other to throw his book to the ground and twist his body closer to Klaus’s.
“I don’t know what happened, and I’m not going to lie, it’s really bugging me. You were.. The sounds we heard. The people, and you…” Klaus grimaced, and ducked his head. He didn’t need to hear this alternate version of events, he knew plenty well exactly what he had done.
Luther sighed softly, dropping his line of thought, and grabbed Klaus’s shoulder, forcing the smaller boy to look back at him. His gaze was stern, and his lips were pressed in a tight line.
All of a sudden, his brother didn’t look young anymore.
“Listen, Klaus.” Luther said, his voice low. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know what happened in your room last night, why those people were there, or what they did to you. All I know is that I have never heard you scream like that before. I have never seen you cry like that.”
Luther’s fingers tightened their grasp on Klaus’s shoulder, and he felt himself shudder.
“You’re my brother, Klaus. And I’m sorry I couldn’t help you last night. I hope you know that if I could have, I would have. I tried.”
Luther closed his eyes. “I tried so hard to open the door, but it just wouldn’t budge.” (Glued shut, held there by something big, something new, something blue.)
“I know.” Klaus blurted out. Luther cast a confused glance at him, and he clamored to explain.
“That you tried, I mean. I know you tried. Uh, thanks.”
Luther tried a smile, but it came out crooked and awkward. “Good.” He whispered.
He was silent a moment more, and Klaus let him gather his thoughts, too caught up in his own processing to think of anything more to say.
Eventually, Luther swallowed, and when he spoke once more, his tone was kind. (Kind in a way that Klaus cannot honestly say he remembered ever hearing directed towards himself before.)
“Anyways, I just want you to know that I won’t tell Dad.”
“What?” He breathed, sliding upright from his slumped position against the bench. “I mean, what? How did you know I was going to ask that? Did you even? Why aren’t you-”
Luther laughed, and pushed the boy’s shoulder lightly. “Calm down.”
Klaus felt his cheeks warm, and he huffed backwards, arms crossed against his chest.
“Mom talked to me, after she cleaned your room. Told me that you probably don’t want any extra attention from Dad while you’re figuring stuff out.” Luther shrugged, and Klaus loved his Mom.
God, he loved her.
“I...thanks, Lu.” He smiled, relieved and lighter than he had been all day.
“Don’t call me that.” Luther rolled his eyes. “But… if you ever need me, while you’re, uh, working things out, just. Just let me know.”
Klaus knew, inherently, that Luther valued Dad’s respect more than he loved their Mom. He knew that, and he knew that for Mom to get Luther to call off the hall monitor act, she probably had to threaten him, or beg him, or get Allison to do all of the above.
But right now, he didn’t mind.
Right now, with his toes in wilted grass and cheeks in melting sun, he didn’t mind that his leg was resting against his (least favorite) brother’s, or that Klaus himself is feeling a bit too good right now considering the previous day’s events.
Sometimes, he just loved his family.
It’s later that night, while he was standing in the dark of his cleaned room (empty, gaping, swallowing him whole) that he realized it.
He loved his family.
Not that much of a revelation, to the normal eye. But to him, whose lifeline was dead and whose father wasn’t his father but his jailor, and whose siblings were separated and angry and blind, it was novel.
He hasn’t felt this love for his family in a… very long time. Even during the shit show of the apocalypse, even when he was fighting side by side with his brothers and sister, he didn’t feel this way. Like he missed them, like he was willing to lay down his life for them. (Not that he wouldn’t, even if he didn’t love them. He would, but not because he loved them. He would, because he didn’t care.)
He hadn’t loved Luther since he was fourteen and high and passed out in the bathroom, beer bottles and simmering blunts drooping from his fingers, rolling across the tiled floor. Luther had told Dad, and Klaus spent the next three days locked away. He came back, and he hated his brother and he never stopped.
He hadn’t loved his Mom since he was fifteen, and she was sat immobile in her favorite perch, surrounded by paintings and lights and sewing needles. Her eyes were hollow when she looked at him, and he knew she didn’t care. That she had never cared the way he needed her to. He didn’t hate her, then, he never could. But the love he felt for her dimmed and faded away just the same as her’s did.
He stopped loving his siblings the day Ben died and no one had thought to tell him until after he had found out for himself.
He stopped loving Vanya, started hating her, the day she published that horrid, foul, disgusting book.
He fell asleep that night more calm than he had been in a long, long time.
Perhaps that was why She decided to show her stupid, ugly face to him once more.
“Number Four.” She simpered from a different face. It was young, too, and feminine, but the hair was cropped shabbily, a muddy sort of blonde cast in mellow shades of gray. Her eyes were slitted low and squinty from annoyance, and Her pale lips were curled into something just this side of a snarl.
She was on a swing set this time, dress billowing around her shins with every push.
“Oh, God,” He groaned theatrically, and the girl raised a brow at him in detached amusement. “Don’t tell me I’ve gone and died in my sleep, now.”
She shook Her head slowly. “No. You’re still alive.”
Klaus didn’t like the veiled threat to Her words, for now. His mind supplied. He was still alive, for now.
Who even knew how long a corpse could last rejuvenated with God’s spite? How long did he even have left? The pit in his chest and the gleam in Her eye told him. (Not as much as he would want. Just the exact amount for Her to get her kicks. Just a little bit more than was necessary, just a bit more than he deserved.)
“Why am I here, then?” He asked, resigned, and kicked a bare foot at the prickly woodchips on the ground.
The girl hummed, soft and sweet. She looked away for a moment, to her left, toward the rising sun. Her face was relaxed. Her eyes were shadowed.
She looked a little sad, if he were to be honest.
“I brought you here.” She revealed, eventually, once the sun had risen above the edge of the horizon. It glowed a startling red, bright and strong as it cast into his eyes; blinded him, made him look away with a hiss.
He stared at Her, and he felt calm. (He wasn’t sure why, exactly, because he knew he should probably be freaking out a little bit, God brought him to- what? Heaven? Is that what this place is?) He felt calm, in the slope of his shoulders and the beat in his veins. Some part of him welcomed this place of after life with open arms.
“Missed me, did ya?” He taunted, smile pulling on the corners of his lips.
She glanced at him quickly, rolling Her head dramatically like any child would in Her annoyance. “So much.” She drawled, and he laughed.
She watched him for a moment as he smiled, and Her eyes softened.
“I knew a boy like you, once.” She said.
Klaus tilted his head. “A boy like me?”
“Exactly like you.”
“What, did he talk to ghosts, too?” He clipped, rolling his eyes.
“Sometimes. Eventually.” She hummed, and Klaus felt his heart skip a beat. He whipped toward Her, feet walking automatically until he was beside Her swinging legs.
“Wait, seriously?” His voice came out choked, caught on his tongue and tripped on his teeth.
She nodded, silently, before chewing her lip in thought. “Although, you don’t really talk to the ghosts, do you?”
He winced, and She smiled, cruel. Then She shook Her head, “He wasn’t important, though. Not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
The girl took Her time, slowly letting Her gaze rest on Klaus. The weight of Her felt like anvils upon his back, made his skin prickle and his muscles tense. “He had a power almost identical to yours, but he got it because sometimes weird things happen. You got it because I gave it to you.”
She… gave him this power?
There was so much to unpack with that statement that he honestly didn’t know where to begin. His heart was thundering in his chest, anxiety welling up inside him like a flood.
He decided he was going to ignore that statement. For now.
“What happened to him?”
“He was a little dumb, that boy.” She said, and She almost sounded fond. “I liked him, though. More than I like you. More than I like most.”
“Why?” Perhaps he could gain some pointers.
She smiled, all teeth. “He was funny. The words he said. The choices he made.” Her teeth glinted, “The ways he died. They were funny. They’re still funny.”
Klaus swallowed thickly. He looked away from Her, toward the empty swing beside Her. Slowly, he gripped the chain, let his body fall onto the swing heavily.
He kicked against the ground, let his feet drag against the chips and scuff the dirt.
“Is he still alive?”
She shook Her head. “Not really.” Then, She tilted Her chin, “Well…” She bit her lip and brought Her hand to Her mouth, staring intently at the ground in front of Her. Eventually, She sighed, and turned back to Klaus. “No. I don’t think so.”
Klaus decided he was done talking about this boy that was so much like him. This boy with his powers. This boy who saw ghosts and had died more than once. Had died in funny ways.
This boy, so far gone, that God Herself could not find any determinate sign of life or death on him.
He shivered, drawing his arms around his stomach. He felt ill.
She swung in silence for a while even as Klaus held still. The sharp whines of the chain the only sound between them.
“Are you going to kill me, too?” He asked.
His hands were held in front of him, a pale shade of gray in this after world. They looked knobby and thin in this younger body. But they had looked a lot stronger when streaks of blue had wrapped and spread between his fingers. He squeezed them, missing their bite.
“No.” She said. But it wasn’t a comfort; instead, the words sent a spike of fear down his spine, cold and sharp like a knife in a child’s hands. “I can’t kill you.”
She sounded sad. Like it had been Her one wish to see him dead.
Klaus dropped his head into his hands, letting his fingers cover his eyes.
“Okay.” He whispered. “Then what do you want from me?”
“Wrong question.”
He bit his lip, dug his fingers harder into his eyes. A groan bubbled in his throat and he didn’t bother to keep it quiet. The girl huffed amusedly next to him.
“You’re a little dumb, too, aren’t you?” She whispered, and he shivered.
Yeah. He's a little dumb, too, he thinks.
He thinks he’s a little more than a little dumb, sometimes.
Klaus wondered what the boy like him would have done in his situation. He wondered if the boy was still funny, wherever he was.
“Can you tell me anything?” He asked, ignoring the way his voice came out like a beg, like She was his last option. “About anything?”
There was silence for a long moment. So long, that Klaus was beginning to wonder if She had left him. But then there was a warmth on his hands, pulling them away from their clawed position against his eyelids.
She tugged at his fingers, drew them to Her chest. She was standing in front of him, now, Her body illuminated by the red sun. Red, red, red like the blast of the moon against the theater, red like the fire that consumed his past, his future; red.
His eyes were wet, his hands were warm. Her grip was strong, it burned against his skin.
He doesn’t think God was meant to touch human skin. Her small hands felt like pure heat, unbound and free like open flame.
He blinked away the tears in his eyes. She gazed down at him, patient, and brought their hands closer to Her body. She tugged at him, kept tugging until he fell from the swing onto his knees.
He didn’t get up.
“Your powers are scary, Number Four.” She whispered, and Her voice sounded different than before. Sounded a little bit more. “They are a lot, and you are scared. You have been scared for a very, very long time.”
He nodded, eyes frozen on Her hands.
She nudged him with Her foot, bare like his, and he looked up at Her.
Her face was blank. She held no emotion, not even the annoyance he had become so used to.
“You need to stop, now.” She said. “You have no time for small things like fear. You think the boy I liked so much was scared?” She taunted, and Klaus grappled for his tongue.
“N-No?” He asked.
She shook Her head, slowly, like She was disappointed.
“No, Klaus. He was.” She paused, and Klaus let himself show his confusion. He pinched his brow, stared at her harder. “He was not a particularly brave boy. He was scared. But he was a little dumb, too, and he let himself act before he felt that fear.”
“You need to do that, too, Number Four. Act before you think it through. You’ve been thinking so hard these last three decades. Give your tired brain a break, it wasn’t meant for such hard work.” She smiled, and She was calling him stupid, but he didn’t care.
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” He rolled his eyes, and She squeezed his hands.
“Your powers are not meant for thought. Open your head, let them in. Do not give yourself the time to be afraid or you will get nowhere.”
He opened his mouth, desperate for more answers, for something a little more concrete than Open your head, but she was already moving on.
She had let go of his hands, and as they dropped, Klaus realized the burning heat was lingering on his skin. He went to look, but She grabbed his hair and pulled him away.
Her eyes were white, he realized. He didn’t think they were before. They were white, glazed like a thin layer of membrane was stretched over Her corneas, blurred like She had no line separating Her iris from Her lens. They glowed, and She brought Her hands to his face, cupped his cheeks and brought Her thumbs to his eyelids.
“No more fear, Number Four.”
Blue was a pretty color, Klaus thought.
There were prettier ones, like green. He has always been fond of the color green. (Green, like his eyes. Unique eyes, the only ones in the house to be such a shade, Unique, like him. Green, like him.) But blue was quite pretty, too. Blue; like the color of the sea. Blue, the color of the sky.
Blue, the color of his hands illuminated and strong. Blue, the color of Ben in his brief moment of visible death.
Blue, blue, blue like the color- like the- blue.
Blue was everywhere.
It sung behind his eyelids. Burned and glowed until the color was forever sealed inside his mind. Everything he looked at, every flutter of his eyelashes only revealed more and more of the pretty little color until he was drowning, suffocating beneath the omnipresent blue.
He brought up his hands, and they were blue, and he slammed them against his eyes. Wiped and smudged and dragged them against the soft flesh until they burned, until the nerves behind his eyelids screamed in pain, until his cheeks were wet.
Blue.
He ripped his hands away, and there was blue.
It was taunting him, mingling on the surface of every object, simmered and bounced and drifted along his vision like a particularly traumatizing acid trip.
It was driving him insane.
Suddenly, blue wasn’t that pretty a color anymore.
No more fear, Number Four.
Klaus can honestly say that he was a relatively calm child, considering.
Maybe not calm in terms of hyperactivity, in his quite positively ADHD lifestyle. No, he was calm in the sense that he was ridiculously hard to scare.
Although. He had his moments.
As a baby, not even a day old, he had a scare.
He didn’t know what the object was, at the time. He had only drawn breath a small number of hours, didn’t have the knowledge that such an object was a thing to be feared. Didn’t know. Couldn’t have known.
All he knew was that his mother was with him, and that she was safe. Should have been safe.
He didn’t know what she was holding.
She raised it, and he had gurgled up to her, confusing the thing for the toy raddle the nurses had wagged in his face just moments previous, in the hospital they left behind. He reached for her, smile on his baby lips, and she shook.
There was no rattle. There was no innocent laughter of a child’s amusement.
No, there was a bang, a shot, a scare.
The baby woke up and his mother was gone. He couldn’t see over the raised edge of his crib, but he could smell the thick scent of rot. It clouded in his nose, lay in his lungs like a disease. It made him cough, choked him with its hefty grip.
He woke up scared, because his mother was gone, and his crib was red, and his skin was sticky, and his head hurt more than anything he had felt in his short, short life.
That was the first time he felt fear.
Years later, Number Four felt fear once again.
He was young, so young, and he was playing with his friend.
Her name was Leanne, and she was five years old. She was older than him, he was only three and a half, but he didn’t mind. Leanne was nice, and her laugh made him smile, because she chortled and snorted and sometimes when she laughed she choked on water from seemingly nowhere, like a magic trick. She pulled the water from which there was none and she placed it in her throat, held it there until it made her choke, until she spluttered with little bubbles and Klaus would laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
They were playing in the kitchen, alone, and they were having fun making a mess of the bags of flour hidden in the cabinets.
Then Dad showed up, and Number Four wasn’t having fun anymore.
“Number Four.” He said. He peered at the flour, at Four’s grubby hands, at the white stains on his immaculate clothes.
He ignored it all.
“Who are you talking to, Number Four?” He asked, kneeling down next to his adoptive son.
Four tilted his head, curls bouncing and green eyes wide.
“Leanne.” He whispered.
Reginald held his gaze a moment before slowly dragging his eyes across the room. Pale irises passed right over Leanne, and she squirmed.
Four looked at her, and she avoided his stare, instead dragging her pinkie finger through the flour on the floor in a straight line. Klaus watched her do it, watched the the way the white powder collected on her skin.
“There is no one there, Number Four.” His Dad said, quietly, as he observed his son stare at empty space.
“Yes there is,” He argued. He turned, and motioned with his hand. “She’s right here.”
Reginald shook his head. “No, she’s not.” And he lifted his arm, letting it fall straight through the girl’s body.
Four gasped, his hands flying to his small chest as he watched the girl ripple away into the air like lines on a pond. His last glance of her, she was turned toward him with big blue, blue, blue eyes. They were wet, there was flour on her fingers.
The line in the powder was still there, drawn on the floor.
She was real, he knew she was. But Dad was real too, and his arm went straight through her.
So one of them had to be fake, an illusion, a distortion, and Four didn’t know which one.
He felt fear.
He felt fear in the mausoleum. The ghosts that followed him and screamed his name, the dark walls, the locked door, his father leaving him, alone, his own screams. They all scared him.
They scared him a lot.
He felt fear when Five disappeared.
He felt fear when Ben died.
When he ran away.
When he was found again.
When Vanya published her book.
When Dad died.
When Dave died.
When he died.
When he came back.
When the world ended.
When the world started once more, far, far into the past. A hop, a skip, a jump sixteen years into days gone by.
He always felt fear. He felt it everyday. It lived in him. Festered in him. He’s been afraid of something since the day he had been born.
No more fear, Number Four.
The blue was fading away. Dimmed until the murky colors of every other shade of the rainbow began to show their faces.
He was in the mausoleum.
He woke-
He woke up in the trunk-
In the locked room-
On the bus-
Next to Da-
He woke up, and he was in the mausoleum. Again.
It was dark, as it always was, and it was small. The walls were far apart but the dark pushed them close, the thickness in the air clogged his lungs until he felt too large, too stuffed, too much in the small, small, room.
It was dark, and his eyes were seeing blue, blue, in the dark, in the dark it was blue-
Jesus, he needed to chill out.
He gasped in a breath, forced the thick cloud of dust and oxygen through his throat until his lungs felt like they would explode. He coughed, and spluttered, and honestly, breathing made everything worse.
(Maybe he should stop. He’s pretty sure he’d come back, anyways.)
No more fear.
Fuck.
He sucked in a breath, exhaled and breathed in once more.
No more fear.
As he focused on his lungs, he let his eyes skitter across the familiar room.
Nothing has changed. Nothing is new.
Everywhere he looked, there was evidence to his previous encounters here in his dungeon. The grooves etched into hard stone, chewed away by broken nails and scavenged rocks. Faint stains on cold marble floors, residue of blood and piss and vomit. The smell long gone, mixed with dust and rot and decay.
The ghosts were gone.
He was alone.
There was no ringing in his ears, no humming on his skin. His body was relaxed, pliant to his powers’ inherent ability to sense the spirits of the long dead. There were none. None were here, none were coming, none.
He was alone.
For some reason, that made him feel worse.
He meandered to the wall containing the caskets of the forgotten, dragged his fingers along the cold stone. It felt hollow. It felt empty.
Suddenly, he became aware of his toes. They were cold, and they were bare even still. The tile was damp beneath his feet, wet and cold and untrodden upon for quite some time.
He stared at his feet, green eyes captured on his pale skin. On the freckle resting on the popped knuckle of his pinkie toe, of the the veins pumping blood blue beneath his skin.
He stared, and stared. His eyes just couldn’t look away.
He stood there for quite a long time, feeling the ground beneath his feet, feeling the specks of dirt and the pricks of stones roll under his toes. The longer he stood, the more he felt.
His mind was empty, his lungs were relaxed.
No more fear.
Suddenly, he wasn’t alone.
There was no one there, not in the mausoleum. No spirits, no people.
But they were there, not in form, not in thought, but there, under his skin, tugging on his fingers, weighing him down by the heels of his feet.
He wasn’t alone.
Hello, he thought, and he listened.
Hello, Number Four. They responded, and he heard them, and he wasn’t afraid.
He wasn’t scared at all.
Their words breathed into his lungs, expanded his chest cavity and lingered on his tongue. He felt his mouth move along to the words, form on his tongue and bite at his teeth like he had been the one to speak them. He wasn’t, he knew he hadn’t, but it felt so.
Who are you? He asked them.
We are you. They said, and he felt as they lingered, paused, and spoke again. No, we are for you.
Oh.
That doesn’t make much sense. He thought for them, and they hummed on his skin.
Not yet.
He supposes his experience at the mausoleum was a dream, just like his conversation with Her was a dream, like his memories had been a dream.
But if that were completely true, he wouldn’t be seeing the tints of blue on the edges of his vision. Wouldn’t feel like his hands were wrapped up in bandages laced with burning gel, heavy and slow and scalding. Wouldn’t feel like his feet’s nerves were singing, trembling all the way up his nervous system and through his bones and ringing in his ears.
He supposes, if it had been a dream, he wouldn’t feel their whispers on his tongue. Soft, and nondescript, too far away for him to make out but loud enough for him to know they were there.
He supposed even dreams were anchored to reality, sometimes.
When he woke up, his eyes refused to open. They stuck together like glue, congealed with old tears and the general muck and gunk that came with restful sleep. He raised his hands to rub them open, when he felt the burns.
He cried out, flinging himself upwards, and forced his eyelashes apart to gaze blearily down at his fingers.
They were red.
(Red, red, red. Red like the moon-)
Burnt and bleeding, raw and bursting with open sores against his palms, his nails were chipped and cracked, hanging on by pure will and bubbled nailpolish.
They were ugly, and they hurt, and his heart was beating so, so fast, but there was no adrenaline in his veins. His heart beat with blood, excited and activated but not for fear. He was not scared. He felt like he should have been, but he wasn’t.
No more fear, Number Four.
He stared at his hands for a long time. Let his eyes rest upon his damaged skin and drink in the red that stared right back at him.
His fingers were tingling, the awkward feeling of slowly regaining feeling in a numb limb. The painful reanimation of dead tissue.
Slowly, he realized his eyes were heavy. The drooped and swayed under invisible weight, pulled downward and sank until they sealed themselves shut once more.
He realized, suddenly, that it wasn’t the natural occurrence of a restful sleep that had forged his eyelids together as they had been.
She had grasped him, before he woke. Gripped his cheeks and placed Her thumbs on his eyes. Held him with hands not made for gentle touch until he drifted away from Her.
She had burned him. Burned his hands. His eyes.
He could still feel. He could still see.
The wounds would heal, he’s sure. But why give them to him at all?
What was he not understanding?
Behind shut lids, he saw Her. She was on Her swing once more, but for some reason, each kick of Her legs felt more dangerous than the last.
Each sway felt like a warning. Her eyes were on his, white, heavy, staring into him with all the answers he needed but couldn’t understand.
She kicked Her feet, and Klaus watched as Her tiny body flew into the air, free and floating and so, so dangerous.