Witnessing this bare pain, stripped down to the bone, results in a sympathetic ache in Luther's chest, the panic of I don't know what to do and I don't know how to fix this. Because they can't quit the Academy. It was never something they signed up for, but they'd been flung into it since birth anyway, with no chance to opt out. It was their job. It was their purpose in life. It was what they did.

And Sir Reginald was the reigning king of cruel, cutting comments that chased them back into the saddle, and Luther might have been learning those lessons at their father's elbow, but he still can't put those sorts of words in his own mouth. Doesn't know how to do it. So he sits down on his brother's bed instead (all rumpled tangled sheets, unlike Luther's, which is made tight and pristine until you could bounce a coin off it). Draws an arm around Klaus' narrow shoulders, his bowed head and whole body turtling in on itself.

"You're not a fuck-up or a failure, Klaus," he says, because he can't think of anything else to say, and the rest of the truth is too miserable to name. (It'll never be over.) "You're just... still learning. Remember how Diego almost drowned when he was first learning his powers? It's a process."