A/N: So I'm really late in the game for reading this series (for . . . various reasons) but I think as an adult I appreciate it more. I just finished 'Book The Seventh: The Vile Village' today.
(Also I have Asperger's Syndrome and as a kid I think I would have taken the 'translations' for the figures of speech waaaay too literally.)
I'm also watching the tv series.
I think if Sunny or Klaus died the remaining Baudelaires would be devastated, but I think if Violet died it would be so much worse.
...Enjoy. . . ?
DISCLAIMER: Series Of Unfortunate Events belongs to the snarky and a tad smug 'Lemony Snicket.' … Isn't . . . that the name of a cookie?
Visage
He's breathing heavily and clutching a still-too shocked Sunny to his chest, gasps heaving from him and sounding sickly as snot and tears still get in the way of his breathing.
They'd been running forever; V.F.D far behind them and midnight long gone. The flat land had eventually run out, as the direction he had chosen had eventually lead to a small swath of forest.
He couldn't breathe.
… He kept running.
Klaus thought he felt Sunny trembling but he couldn't be sure; adrenalin and fear and horror because oh god why-
He himself could feel his body tremble violently as he remembered. Violet, oh god, Violet-
He immediately shoved the thought out of his mind.
But like hell, of course, it just came back with a vengeance.
The Officer had launched her spear - Ésme, had. Of course it had been Ésmeyou idiot- and with all the Crows in the way no one could s e e . . .
Sunny had luckily had her vision obscured, face too close to the net where tiny hands and teeth had clung, and with what little vision she had obstructed by black feathered crows.
Klaus had not been so lucky.
He had seen (oh god he had seen) as the harpoon ripped through Violet's back; her expression of shock, and how her body flew back as the harpoon retracted and-
The rope had already been severed by then. Klaus had grabbed Sunny and ran; ran the hell away from there. Because he had already seen.
Had already seen that his sister was dead before she hit the ground.
Vaguely he hoped that the Quagmire Triplets would be safe with Hector. That maybe they would meet up again.
But all he could think was to not think, and to run, and to protect Sunny, glad she hadn't seen, but numb with the knowledge that she understood what had to have happened; because Klaus would never, ever, abandon their sister.
So he didn't let himself think, and he just kept on running.