umbrellajackassery | Young!Klaus Shenanigans

Klaus dreads the days that he has to 'train' with Dad, which really only amounts to being locked away in the dark in a mausoleum with only the dead for company. The terrifying, blood-soaked, screeching dead, all screaming his name and reaching for him in silent bid for his attention.

And it goes on for hours.

Sometimes, he tries to just squeeze his eyes shut, clamp his hands over his ears and count the seconds until they become minutes, become hours, until it's over. Other times, he can't block it out at all, feels a sharp, icy sensation against his leg where one of the ghosts had tried to grab him. Those are the times he can't even dream of closing his eyes, because it's terrifying enough to be here, alone and not all at once-- and not seeing is sometimes worse than seeing.

It never ends any differently. Klaus is too terrified to do whatever it is Reginald is expecting of him. He's always told, "Such a disappointment, Number Four." before being hauled up the steps to return home. Klaus was seven when he stopped expecting his Dad to comfort him at all after putting him through this ritualistic torture, so he does his best on the way home to keep his breathing even and not let the tears fall.

He doesn't eat those nights, or if he does, it isn't much. He stays in the shower until the water runs cold and he absolutely refuses to be alone. He will find a sibling and stick to their side like glue whether they like it or not. He's a lot more subdued than is usual for him on nights like that, too. Calm and quiet in ways that people would normally beg for, but that are eerie in comparison.

He sleeps like hell, too. Though that's most nights, and training days just make it all the worse. He might wake up screaming. He might experience some minor sleep paralysis. But he never sleeps well. And some nights? A sibling might even wake up in the middle of the night to find him curled up next to them.

Lucy hadn't been with them from the beginning, she'd been dropped off at the house the year they all turned seven with the explanation that her mother -who had declined Reginald's initial offer- had fled the country, and the people she'd been left with couldn't handle her. The children had been young enough that after a few initial bumps, she'd integrated easily enough to be considered a member of the family, such as it was.

While sometimes it was those first couple hours after one of Klaus' training sessions that were the worst, usually it was the night after, and it didn't take her ability in predicting outcomes to know that he wasn't going to want to be alone and likely wasn't going to sleep either.

Which was why, long enough after lights-out that she knew Mom would be recharging and Pogo was likely to be asleep -and even if he wasn't, he was downstairs and wouldn't hear- she slipped out of her own room and across the hall, drumming her fingers lightly against the door before she opened it to slip through, "Klaus? You awake?" A brief pause before adding: "I brought snacks." Mom always made sure that she had a snack ready for them after training, even if the child in question's specific training wasn't entirely physical, and Lucy had pocketed hers that day, as well as the day before, just in case.

For whatever weird way that Klaus personally and mentally categorized everyone, Lucy was more like a cousin than a sister, like Charlie, Alli, and V. But cousins were pretty awesome, too, and Lucy had been around for so long at this point, Klaus isn't sure he could imagine what it would have been like without her.

He jumps at the light sound of her fingers rapping on the door, the gasp and quick-to-follow sigh of relief both audible against the otherwise silent room. "Hey, Luce." He drags himself up to a sitting position, wedging himself to the corner where the walls meet, legs folded criss-cross underneath him. "You can't sleep or something?" He knows that, more than likely, she was here for his sake, but he could pretend, right?

Honestly Lucy mostly considered herself a cousin as well, regardless of the fact that Reginald had officially and legally changed her surname when he'd adopted her, just for uniformity's sake she was fairly sure, but she didn't let it bother her any, she knew she was a Weaver, though honestly given the circumstances, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to be one of those, either.

Not that it mattered at the moment, because while she was definitely there for his sake, she was also perfectly willing to let them both pretend otherwise, "Or something." She replied, making sure the door was closed behind her before climbing up to sit on the foot of his bed, first handing over the baggie of snacks -wheat crackers with peanut butter and some apple slices- before also slapping down a pair of comic books, "Can you believe it's been two whole months since I've been able to sneak away for a few minutes?" They did, on occasion, have outings to the city, but usually for a sole point and purpose, but of any of them, Lucy was the one most able to slip away from the group and back to the group without being noticed or missed, and while they weren't supposed to have any of the media about them -except for copies of interviews, for posterity's sake- they had all read at least one of the comics at one point or another.

"You remember what sort of peril we were all in last?" She'd looked in a couple of their usual hiding places, but hadn't been able to find the last issue, which usually meant someone still had it, and it had been long enough that she only barely remembered the last cliffhanger.

He takes the snacks offered and takes a bite out of one of the apple slices. She knows him so well. And the fact that he had pretty much skipped dinner probably helped, too. He's glad she humors him about the reason she's here, because it lets him not think about... other things that he'd really rather not right now.

He settles against the pillows and watches as she produces the comics, a wide grin spreads across his face. "Damn, has it really been that long?" He snaps another piece of apple off the slice in his hand and rolls it into his mouth with his tongue before he drops it.

"Uhh, something about that robot guy, wasn't it?" He squints, trying to think back.

"Oh yeah!" She nodded, "Doctor Robotica. And I don't think that you can even get a doctorate in robotics, but whatever, it's not like he's actually using it for its intended purpose anyway."

Lucy was somewhat less smug about pointing out that kind of plot-hole than Five was, but she still did it, couldn't help herself, "You want to do the voices or the sound effects?" She asked as she made sure that the two issues she had were in order just so that they didn't actually get ahead of themselves.

"You don't need accuracy in comics, Luce." He says it like it's oh-so-obvious. But at least she was more teasing than, say, insufferable-know-it-all about it like some people.

"Sound effects." He grins. Those were his favorite, although it's less fun when they have to be quiet about it. But he'll take what he can get in form of distractions tonight.

"A little bit would be nice, sometimes. I mean, at least give the villain the right degree for their field!" She laughed then, shaking her head as she snagged an apple slice, "But maybe that's why he's the villain, nobody told him he was in the wrong educational path for what he wanted to do."

She munched her apple slice as she opened the first book, clearing her throat and settling in, keeping her voice down as she read, and she did a passable impression of each of the others, even Klaus, because as far as she was concerned, 4 and 5 always got the best lines, which was something she'd complained about at least once.

He snorts at her theory. "Sure, that works."

Klaus munches on the snacks she'd brought and listens to her read the story, providing all of the appropriate sound-effects at the right time. This was one of his favorite things in the world, and it only made sense to do with Lucy, because it had been her idea in the first place. And sometimes it's nice to have 'just them' things, with any combination of his family.

Constant vigilance was something that all of them had, to some degree, but Lucy more than most, thanks to her particular ability, which was why mid-sentence she just stopped dead, sliding the second comic into the first to mark their place even as she whispered: "Lay down, be asleep."

She wasn't sure if what she'd heard was just the house settling or a sibling-person in the hall, or if it was, in fact, Grace or Pogo coming to check up on them, but she knew that getting caught keeping him company after training would just lead to her being shooed back to her own room, whereas getting caught with the comics and clearly having a good time, would be something else completely.

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lucky_no_7 - 2019-04-20 04:53 (UTC) - Expand

Charlie doesn't mind being one of those siblings, if it helps one of her best friends out. So what if she wakes up to a bony, lanky individual in her bed? She's not going to complain. Not if it helps. And she's doing this for her benefit as much as his. She's started picking up on her siblings emotions and Klaus' are the worst ones. If she could figure out how to push feelings of comfort and peace into him, she'd do it in a heartbeat. But she can't.

The best she can do?

Wake up carefully and disentangle herself from the octopus arms that is Klaus Hargreeves, make her way to her project chest where all her finished sewing projects go for storage and pull out something with his initials sewn into it.

A quilt. All of their old, ill-fitting uniforms they can't wear anymore. It's not the best looking quilt. IT's clearly something a beginner did and just barely made successfully, and it's going to get carefully wrapped around Klaus before she crawls back into bed under her own blanket and waits.

Is he going to wake up and see it before she drops off? Only time will tell. She'll be awake for another few minutes before zonking out again, but not if he wakes up and catches her awake first.

Klaus probably seems like the type of person that would be a dead-to-the-world kind of sleeper, but the truth is, the tiniest things could wake him up. Especially nights like this, when sleep is such a precarious thing to get close enough to hold anyway.

So, when Charlie shifts and slips away, Klaus is already awake. The disappearance of both the weight and warmth he'd been clinging to was a bit jarring, and he frowns, wondering where she was going. He can't see between the darkness of the room and his own sleep-blurred eyes. It isn't long, though, and she's back and draping a quilt over him.

As Charlie settles back on the bed, Klaus turns onto his other side, staring at his sister. "Hey." he says quietly, smiling a little. "Thanks."

“I don’t know why you’re thanking me. It’s a terrible quilt.”

Charlie, don’t be a shitheel. This humble thing is not pretty. “But I made it for you. Your initials are in a few squares in your favorite colors.” The look on her face is tired and hopeful. She wants to ask if he likes it, even if it looks like nothing but flaws to her.

"So?" He shrugs and curls a little closer, to both Charlie and into the blanket. "You made it. And--" he peeks out from the edge of the quilt. "are apparently giving it to me, if my initials are sewn into it. So." He shrugs a little. "Thanks."

"I figured it'd help." With the ghosts. With the monsters in his head from the ghosts. With all of it. Give it some time. She'll figure out how to make weighted blankets and make him one in all his favorite colors and patterns and fabrics. It'll be a hot mess of a blanket when it comes to appearance, but Charlie wants to help.

"You're welcome." She shuffles under her own blanket, something in an off-white and robins egg blue stripe pattern from K-Mart, rolling onto her back and taking up very little space before turning to look at Klaus again.

"Mom says my stitches are improving." Pleasing Mom is far more important to Charlie than pleasing dad. "She says we're going to start working on clothes, next."

"It will." Not even a maybe or a might, to Klaus it's a definite with no doubt to be had.

"Really?" His eyes light up at the idea of it. "Do I get to be a model?" This. This right here? This is exactly the kind of thing he needs after days like this. Something bright and hopeful and distracting to keep the wild swirl of thoughts he doesn't want to face at bay.

Many concepts have already been successfully drilled into the teenaged Luther Hargreeves.

Firstly, his siblings -- his teammates -- are his responsibility. If they're not functioning, part of that blame lies on his doorstep. It's his job to keep them in line, to keep them all running like a smoothly-oiled machine with six components spinning in harmony. (The seventh, of course, is neglected.) It's a team leader thing.

It's an older brother thing.

But it's difficult, sometimes, to patch them back together, like gluing the seams on Luther's delicate and carefully-constructed model airplanes. The training schedule is practically drummed into his bones, and it's so easy to tell when Klaus has come back from another night at the mausoleum: he's hollow-eyed and shaky, he barely picks at his breakfast, and Luther watches him over the silent dining table.

It's afterwards, once night falls, once everyone finishes their study session in the library and they all finally part ways, sent firmly off to bed, that Luther pauses before going all the way down that hallway. Lingers by Klaus' door instead. Raps his knuckles against the wood, gently, softly, because they're not supposed to be up past curfew but. There's something he needs to check on. Someone.

Once they're sent away to bed--no deviations from routine, ever--Klaus wastes absolutely no time in heading to his room. He had debated detouring to Ben's room instead, but decided against it at the last second.

He's settled as well as he's going to for now, perched at the edge of his bed with a marker in his hand, poised just away from the nearest part of the wall, which has slowly started collecting all sorts of phrases, poetic and depressing alike, through the last couple of years. The knock interrupts him and he jumps about a mile out of his skin. "Christ on a cracker." He mutters harshly under his breath, capping the marker and setting it on the table beside the bed before clamoring his way over toward the door to throw it open.

"Oh, hey, Luther... Dad send you?" The assumption is an easy enough one to make, all things considered. When Dad wanted to know things, he had a tendency to send Luther to find them out. Klaus doesn't actively hate his brother or anything so strongly worded, but they clash more often than not because Luther is so rigid and Klaus is everything but. Plus, it's hard not to harbor some jealousy toward The Favored Number One.

A flicker at the corner of Luther's mouth -- "No," he says stiffly, jaw working but successfully tamping down whatever initial reaction he'd had at the question. Unable to quite pinpoint what emotion that was, though. Irritation that Klaus thought he couldn't show initiative, think for himself outside of his orders, and simply check in on his brother? (Or abashment that Klaus was right, actually, because Sir Reginald had sent him out so many times to take the pulse of the academy?)

But still. He's used to weathering his siblings' moods -- he's been crafted, honed and moulded and chipped into the steady rock which the others can dash themselves against, and he will not move -- so he doesn't nip back. Just says: "I wanted to see how you were feeling. If you were okay."

"Oh." He blinks at that answer, actually not expecting it at all, and not being entirely sure how to handle it now that he'd gotten it.

He snorts at that comment-- because it is, a statement, and not a question, which is just a immutable as his brother ever is. "Seriously? Is-- that even a real question?" He scoffs and shakes his head, turning away, abandoning his brother in the doorway and wandering back over to the bed, scooping up the marker he'd had in his hand earlier for the sake of having something to play with.

"You know the routine by now, Captain. Dad locks me in a crypt, I fail, get some extra trauma I really didn't need, and I don't sleep for three days. So," he twists the marker between his fingers, eyes on it instead of Luther. "Nope. As usual--" This time he looks up, and his voices takes a slightly affected tone, 'I'm telling you the truth-- I'm not o-fucking-kay'." He grins, a too-wide, too-put-on sort of mask that's out of place for the words coming out of his mouth.

This grinning mask is distressingly more-and-more-common with Klaus lately. Maybe similar to the stern, businesslike one that Luther wears, but that doesn't mean he knows for a single second what to do with it. Like seeing hairline fractures spreading across a pane of glass, but not knowing how to piece them back together.

A slight wince, at the singsong. He recognises the lyrics; it's from one of the records that he'd jotted onto what he thought of as The Klaus Shelf, free for his brother to pillage when need be. Luther hadn't listened to it much, but he'd heard the discordant tones through the walls, bleeding down the hall.

When Klaus heaves himself back on the bed, Luther leans against the wall. "Are you at least getting a better grasp on your powers?"

It came out wrong -- came out sounding like it was about the powers themselves, only. (But they were the lynchpin beneath it all, because it was the whole point behind Klaus being put through the wringer like this. Sacrifice for a purpose. If Sir Reginald kept pushing, eventually Number Four would tumble through that block and he'd be able to control the manifestations and it would be better. He wouldn't suffer anymore. Would be okay. That was what Luther told himself, at least.

He had faith; he hoped.)

Klaus has turned his focus off of his brother again already, head slowly turning toward the open closet door. Open. Always open, because he hated when the woman that lived in it couldn't be immediately seen with his five sets of lights that were on at all times in his room. It was creepier somehow, if he couldn't glance over and see her-- when she decided she wanted to be seen, anyway. Like now.

"Can you ever just shut up?" He snaps at the (seemingly empty) closet. "Screaming fuckin' banshee." he picks up one of the mountain of pillows and hurls it at the open closet door. She disperses, at least, so he'll call it a win as he huffs back against the pillows.

Maybe it's because he only just got back from one of Dad's awful training sessions and he's always cagey after those. Maybe it's the lingering soft level of annoyance tingling at all of his edges from the moment with the ghost that has been haunting his room since he was old enough to talk. Maybe it's that Luther really is just that thick and it's aggravating. Maybe it's all of it added together.

Klaus can't stop the incredulous scoff as he finally turns his attention back to his brother again. "God, is that all you care about, Luther?" His last words are thrown like one of Diego's daggers, meant to hit and hurt, venom-coated with a matching look of disgust on his face to go with them. "You're no better than Dad sometimes, you know that?"

They've grown depressingly accustomed to Klaus' random interjections and whiplash outbursts at what had originally seemed like imaginary friends. It might look like madness, mental instability, in anyone else, but the Hargreeves know the truth. The ghosts are still Klaus-only, but they do exist.

Then, as Klaus' attention turns back to him, Luther's mouth purses. Each word is a knife flung, and they hit their mark. Do you really hate me that much, he almost asks, almost lashes back.

But just as Sir Reginald is trying to train Klaus to shrug off the sound and noise and fury of dozens of ghosts, learning to set them aside and shrug off their attention -- so too has he been teaching Luther to shrug off criticism, his siblings' barbs, to make his psychological skin as durable as his physical one. If he can withstand Diego's acerbic jibes, then he can let Klaus' wash over him, too.

(Besides, Number One still idolises The Monocle. Still doesn't quite see what's so bad about Reginald Hargreeves yet. That'll take another decade-plus to come home to roost.)

"I do care, though," Luther says, simply, and there's something in that basic honesty. No long rambling speech. Just unflinching truth compared to how much their father doesn't. "I want these nights to go better for you. Is there anything I can get you right now, to help? Something from the kitchen or anything to help you sleep?"

They could summon Grace anytime for soothing teas or snacks, but he's making the offer anyway. (It matters, to him, that the team captain offers.)

That unfettered, naked honesty is a gut-check all its own, the same as any punch might knock all the wind from his lungs. Luther had a way with honesty that none of the rest of them did-- it had a tendency to knock Klaus off his axis, especially in moments like these when he's geared up to fight, and argue. Diego took this kind of bait like a child would leap for a piece of chocolate.

He blinks, three times in rapid succession, and seems to shrink back down into himself a little, all that bluster from seconds ago dispersed. And then Luther's making offers to help and it unravels any scraps of ferocity in him as surely as tugging on a loose string.

Klaus' face crumbles and the next set of actions seem to happen all at once-- knees drawn to his chest, head tucked to rest against his knees, hands fisting in his hair, a long, stuttering breath in before he finds his voice again; one that's quiet and muffled for the way he's pulled in on himself almost as completely as he can. "I want it to stop, Luther... that's all I want. I don't wanna do this any more. I can't- I can't be what Dad wants me to be, I'm just a fuck up and a failure and a disappointment and I want it to be over."

Though he's never shown any true suicidal tendencies, the way Klaus phrases things can be concerning at times. But perhaps it's only a byproduct of being so surrounded by death and the dead all the time.

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."

Young!Klaus Shenanigans

{Nightmares behind my eyes and voices in my head, my limbs all froze and my eyes won't close

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oh hi bro

char-chaaaarrr

She loves her brother ok

he loves her too sobs

i think if either of them lost the other they'd lose all their shit

1000%

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if you think MCR was not 1000% in Klaus' wheelhouse of early 00s jams, idk what to tell you XD

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