Okay. I've put it off for long enough. Here it is: the last chapter. And the lyrics to I'd Do Anything.
I'm majorly exicted today, 'cuz DANIEL RADCLIFFE SENT ME A LETTER!!!! OF course, it was in response to one I sent him this summer, but still...
Anyway. Dedicated to:
Whoever was Detective Dupin? Like I could care less. But it seemed to make Klaus and Sunny all tense and worried. So I decided the Detective Dupin was not a person Violet had made up just so Klaus and I wouldn't get to
I'm blushing as I write this, by the way
Just so Klaus and I wouldn't get to kiss. Ha! I wrote it!
"Do you think he sees us?" asked Klaus.
"I don't know," admitted Violet, "but let's not stick around to find out." Oh, thanks, Violet! You don't know?! I was this close to my first kiss ever! This close! "The V.F.D. mob will only get worse when they discover we've broken out of jail."
Out of jail? The title of a quiz I seen Carmelita Spats reading in a magazine flashed through my head: Is your boyfriend dangerous? Oh, my goodness. A well, he probably had been falsely accused. Poor Klaus...
"Detective Dupin is the latest disguise of Count Olaf," said Klaus nicely. Ahhh. That was where I'd heard that name before. He made me forget things...
Klaus, not quote-unquote Detective Dupin.
"And—"
"We know all about Detective Dupin," said Duncan quickly, wasting an extra second of my life that I could have spent hearing Klaus's voice. "and we know what's happened to you."
What's happened to me, Duncan? I thought. All I can think about is Klaus. Klaus. Klaus. Klaus. The way he talks, the way he smiles, the way he's looking at me expectantly now waiting for me to say something. Ack! You all are.
"We heard everything that happened yesterday from inside the fountain," I continued Duncan's speech. "When we heard you cleaning the fountain we tried to make as much noise as we could, but you couldn't hear us over the sound of all that water."
Duncan squeezed the sleeve of his sweater, dripping water on my foot. He took his notebook from under his shirt. "We tried to keep our notebooks as dry as possible," he said apologetically. "After all, there's crucial information in there."
"We have all the information about V.F.D," I said holding up my notebook, which I had stuffed in my sweater. "The real V.F.D., that is, not the Village of Fowl Devotees."
Duncan flipped open his notebook and blew on a wet page. "And we know the truth behind poor Jac—" There was a scream from behind my brother. It was two old ladies looking at the hole in one of the fancy buildings labeled 'Jail'. Oh, yeah. They'd escaped from jail.
"They've escaped!" cried an old man. "Rule #1,742 clearly states that no one is allowed to escape from jail. How dare they disobey this rule!"
"We should have expected this from a murderer and her two accomplices," said an old woman. "and look—they've damaged the Fowl Fountain. The beak is spilt wide open. Our beautiful fountain is ruined!"
"Those three orphans are the worst criminals in history," continued the man. "Look—there's Detective Dupin, walking down the street. Let's go tell him what happened. Maybe he'll figure out where they've gone."
"You go tell Dupin," wheezed the old lady, "and I'll go call the Daily Punctilio. Maybe they'll put my name in the newspaper."
They rushed off and we all sighed. "Cose," said Sunny.
"That was too close," Klaus agreed. "Soon this whole district will be full of citizens hunting us down."
"Well nobody's hunting us," said Duncan. "Isadora and I will walk in front of you so you won't be spotted." Klaus and I were still holding hands. I tightened my grasp.
"But where can we go?" I asked hopelessly. "This vile village is in the middle of nowhere."
"I helped Hector finish his self-sustaining hot air mobile home," said Violet. Huh? "And he promised to have it waiting for us. All we have to do is make it to the outskirts of town and we can escape."
"And live forever up in the air?" said Klaus, his perfect eyebrows clenching together in a frown. I squeezed his hand tighter. Hmm. Maybe I was holding his hand too tight. I patted his hand and loosened my grip a little.
"Maybe it won't be forever..."said Violet.
"Scylla!" shrieked Sunny. Whatever that meant, I hope it didn't mean Isadora, quit squeezing my big brother's hand. We can all see just how desperate you are. Hold yourself together, girl!
"When you say it like that," said Klaus, "I'm convinced."
We all nodded, and Violet glanced around quickly to see if anybody was coming. "In a place as flat as this one," she said, "you can see people coming from far away. We'll use that to our advantage. We'll walk along any empty street we can find, and if we see anyone coming, we'll turn a corner. We won't be able to get there as the crow flies, but eventually we'll be able to reach Nevermore Tree."
"Speaking of the crows," Klaus turned to Duncan and me—me and Duncan—Duncan and I (god, I loathe that dumb grammar rule!) "How did you manage to deliver those poems by crow? And how did you know that we would receive them?"
"Let's get moving," I said back, "we'll tell you the whole story as we go along."
We got moving. We kept hurrying down streets and turning corners sharply, as Duncan began to explain.
"Olaf smuggled us away in that item from the In Auction with the help of Esmé Squalor, and he hid us for a while in that tower room of his terrible house." I clutched Klaus's hand. I hated that room, that house, those people.
"I haven't thought of that room in quite some time," said Violet, shuddering. "It's hard to believe that we used to live with such a vile man."
Klaus pointed ahead of us at somebody walking down a street, and we turned. "This street doesn't lead to Hector's house, but we'll double back. Go on, Duncan."
Duncan didn't need encouragement. "Olaf learned that you three would be living with Hector on the outskirts of this town, and he had his associates build that hideous fountain."
I picked it up from there. "Then he placed us inside, and had us installed in the uptown courtyard, so he could keep an eye on us while he tried to hunt you down. We knew you were our only chance of escaping."
We reached a corner and all stopped. Duncan checked for people walking down it, than stared down and motioned for us to follow. "We needed to send you a message, but we were afraid it would fall into the wrong hands. Isadora has the idea of writing in couplets, with our location hidden in the first letter of each line."
"And Duncan," I continued, "figured out how to get them to Hector's house. He'd done some research about migration patterns in large black birds, so he knew that the crows would roost every night in Nevermore Tree—right next to Hector's house. Every morning, I would write a couplet, and the two of us would reach up through the fountain's beak." I neglected to mention how I kissed the couplets before I wrapped them around the crow's leg. Violet and Sunny didn't need to know. I could tell Klaus later.
"There was always a crow roosting on the top of the fountain," said Duncan, "so we would wrap the scrap of paper around its leg. The paper was all wet from the fountain, so it would stick easily."
I nodded and came up with a poem right then and there:
"And Duncan's research was absolutely right,
The paper dried off, and fall at night."
"That was a risky plan," said Violet, smiling at my brother.
"No riskier than breaking out of jail and putting your lives in danger to rescue us," Duncan said, smiling back. "You saved our lives—again."
"We wouldn't leave you behind," said Klaus, looking at me. "We refused to entertain the notion." I smiled and patted his hand.
"Meanwhile," I said, looking into his eyes, "while we were trying to contact you, Olaf hatched a plan to steal your fortune—and get rid of an old enemy at the same time."
Duncan and Violet started talking about Jacques Snicket. I'll tell you about that, but some other time.
It's a long story.
Some old people came up. A few of them were carrying torches. They started yelling and running towards us!
"Lilillk!" shouted Sunny, crawling quickly down the street. We followed her, running. It felt nice to stretch my legs, to feel wind on my face and in my hair. It felt better to grasp Klaus's hand, running through streets, ducking behind dumpsters and alleys. Sometimes we would have to hide behind something, and we would always lean closer...closer....closer...
And than be pulled apart by the mob of people chasing us. Finally, we reached the outskirts of town. I kept my grip on Klaus's hand firm, although we were both sweating. He squeezed my hand back, too.
"Where's Hector?" I asked frantically glancing all over.
"I don't know," said Violet. "he said he'd be at the barn, but I don't see him."
"Where can we go?" cried Duncan. "We can't hide anywhere around here. The citizens will spot us in a second."
"We're trapped," said Klaus. His voice was horse from panic. Since he was holding my left hand, I touched his forearm with my right.
"Vireo!" yelled Sunny.
"We'll never run fast enough," said Violet, whirling around to point behind us. "Look."
The mob was approaching us, with torches and everything. I was so cared, so frightened, that all I could do was squeeze Klaus's hand and hope that we would be alive, together, when this was over.
Would it ever be over?
*************************************************************
"There they are!" cried a woman in the front who pointed at us. I recognized her immediately. It was Esmé Squalor. "They have nowhere else to go!"
"She's right!" cried Klaus. "There's no way to escape!" We held each other's hands desperately, despairingly.
All I could hear was the chaos, pounding around me, rolling in waves. An ocean of anger, and I couldn't swim through it. I was drowning, drowning...
"Machina!" shrieked Sunny."
"There's no sign of deus ex machina, Sunny," said Violet, her eyes shining with tears. "I don't think any help will arrive unexpectedly."
"Ma-chin-a!" insisted Sunny, pointing upwards.
Floating in the sky was a huge thing. It looked like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten eleven, twelve green hot air balloons connected with swaying bridges.
We couldn't take our eyes off it.
"Here I am!" yelled the voice from the fountain, "and here it is, like a bolt from the blue! Violet, your improvements are working perfectly. Climb aboard, and we'll escape from this wretched place." A ladder unfurled down towards us. "Because my invention is self-sustaining, it isn't designed to come back down to the ground, so you'll have to climb up this ladder."
Duncan grabbed the end of the ladder and held it still for me to climb up.
I held Klaus's hand tighter and held it with both hands over my heart, looking into his eyes and smiling softly. "Soon," I whispered so no one could hear, "soon we'll be together and alone, and I can tell you—"
"I'm Duncan Quagmire, and this is my sister, Isadora," said Duncan quickly. I let go of Klaus's hand and began to climb.
"Yes, the Baudelaires have told me all about you," said Hector. I hoped nobody could see up my skirt. "I'm glad you're coming along. Like all mechanical devices, the self-sustaining hot air mobile home actually needs several people to keep it running."
One of the old ladies squawked something that I couldn't hear, and there were sounds of a commotion from below. Hector started talking, but all I could see was the Klaus's tiny figure as I scrambled into the basket, clutching my sweater and my black notebook.
There was more talking as Hector helped Duncan into the balloon. I shut my eyes quickly, wanting Klaus to be up here. Hurry, I silently urged Klaus and Sunny and Violet, hurry! Come up here, come here now!
Violet began to climb, and Sunny followed. After her was Klaus. (A/N: The picture on the cover, BTW)
Esmé Squalor kept talking and pulled out a big thing that looked like gun. I clutched my face with both hands.
"Drat!" said Hector as the spear she shot from the gun hit a tank and purple stuff that looked like blood started raining out, like the love and fear that was running out of my heart down to Klaus and his sisters. "That's my supply of cranberry juice! Baudelaires, hurry up! If she causes any serious damage, we're doomed!"
"We're coming as fast as we can!" cried Klaus, as the vehicle floated higher. The ladder shook, and the Baudelaires looked uneasy.
Some brownish stuff and little tubes fell out as another spear flew up. "She hit our supply of whole wheat flour!" yelled Hector, "and our box of extra batteries!"
There was more noise, but I wasn't watching. I was leaning over the edge of the basket, looking down at Klaus. He has to come up, he just had to. How could I float in the sky forever without him? How could I live without him?"
"Baudelaires!" came Hector's voice from beside me. "Hang on for dear life! I'm going to fly even higher, over the crows!" Dear life. The person who was living the dearest life to me was on that ladder, swaying dangerously.
"No!" came Sunny's tiny voice, and in slow motion, another spear curved towards the ladder. It began to unravel.
"The harpoon hit the ladder!" I shrieked hysterically. "The rope is coming unraveled!"
"Climb faster!" Duncan was screaming, too. "Climb faster!"
"No." Violet's voice drifted up. "We can't do it. If we keep climbing up, we'll fall to our deaths. We have to climb down."
"But—" came Klaus's voice.
I heard Violet's voice faintly, than Sunny's. The world had gone still and silent, but I was screaming. Screaming, but nobody could hear me. "Hector! Maneuver you invention back down! Duncan and I can lean over the edge and make a human ladder! There's still time to retrieve them!" I envisioned Duncan clasping my ankles as I embraced Klaus in the sky.
"I can't," said Hector sadly, looking down. "It's not designed to return to the ground."
The Baudelaires were picking themselves up from the ground and squinting up at us. Not. Happening. said my brain slowly, and I tried to believe it.
"We could try to climb Nevermore Tree and jump into the control basket from its highest branches," came Klaus's voice. Yes! Yes! Just we have to be together! We have to! Oh, Klaus, what would I do without you?
Violet shook her head and said something we couldn't hear. Than she yelled up at us. "We can't reach you now! We'll try to catch up with you later!"
"How can you catch up with us later," I cried down, hyperventilating, "in the middle of the air?"
"I don't know! But we'll find a way, I promise you!"
In the meantime," yelled Duncan into my ear, "take this!" he threw his notebook over the edge and I did the same. I watched the black cover flutter as it drifted down. The black cover, where it said To Isadora—Happy thirteenth birthday! XOX Mum Dad Duncan Quigley on the inside. The notebook, where I'd doodled IQ+KB and written my best couplets and written a few measurements from class in Prufrock. The notebook where I'd taped Duncan's and my school picture from Prufrock. I looked at the picture of the girl wearing the green sweater smiling hopefully through her bangs and I started crying. Not because the picture was so ugly, but because I would never be that hopeful again. My life wasn't livable without him.
I threw it down. All my couplets, all my measurements, everything. All the poems I had written about everything and all my notes on V.F.D.
And than, like the grief that was piercing my heart, Esmé Squalor threw a spear that ripped apart my pages. I screamed in frustration.
"Volunteer Fire Department!" screamed Duncan.
"I love you, Klaus!" I yelled.
But they didn't hear us.
When Duncan gets upset, he tends to get very quiet and extremely pale. Quigley and I both knew that when he got upset, he just kinds of fall into himself and breaths in quick, short, little breaths through his nose you need to hold his hand and talk to him firmly or he just gets more upset, and quieter, and breathes quicker.
When Quigley got upset, he never really showed it. He would act normal, but Duncan can I could tell right away that he was angry or sad. It was easy to tell, although no one else really could.
When I get upset, I'm completely the opposite. I can yell and scream and cry forever, until Duncan or Quigley or somebody I trust pays attention to me and listens to what I have to say.
Nobody was listening now.
Duncan was breathing so fast he was trembling. I ignored the instinct to go grab his hand and talk. I was just kind of standing there, very, very, very still. I was still shocked.
Suddenly, reality washed over me like a tidal wave. I stood for one last moment until it knocked me over. The freezing cold, wet, feeling of terror swirled around me, I started crying hysterically, and yelling out phrases that I doubt anybody could understand.
I kept sobbing for a long time, I have no idea how long. Suddenly, someone was grabbing my shoulders and shaking me back and forth, yelling something. But I couldn't hear.
My world had just tumbled down around me, and the higher the balloon went, the lower my heart plunged.
Smack! The person who had been shaking me had slapped my face. I blinked and shook my head woozily. It was Duncan.
"Stop it, Isadora! You have to calm down!" I took a gulp of air and suddenly felt fragile, as weak as a feather in a thunderstorm. "Sit down!" He was leading me to something. I sat down on it and blinked again. All I saw was blurry shapes.
I blinked for a third time and shook my head vigorously. One of the shapes was Duncan. Another was the man who had been the guardian with the boy who I loved and would never, ever, see again.
"Izzie! Breathe!" I was breathing fast, too fast. I took a long, shuddery breath. "Just relax, okay?"
I shivered. "Okay."
"Now, just think Izzie! Izzie!" he shook my forearm, "Izzie, listen! Okay. We're in a balloon. Over the ground. We're floating. It's a Thursday. It's five fifteen PM. Can you," he shook my arm again, "hear me? Izzie!"
I shuddered. "Yeah?"
"Stop it! Listen! Izzie, listen!"
"Stop saying that nickname! My name's Isadora!"
"Okay, Is-a-dor-a," he said, emphasizing every syllable. "Isadora. Are you all right?"
"No!"
"Alright. Izzie, explain why you're crying. Can you talk to me?"
"Okay." I sniffed. "Klaus...he was down there...and we were gonna kiss...but everybody was always there...and now...I'm never—gonna—see—him—ever—again!" I choked the words out between sobs and than gulped, shaking again. "Okay. I'm okay now. But he's...he's gone...forever!"
"Izzie. We're up in a nice place. You're with me and Hector. Hector's nice, right, Izzie? We're safe. It's good to be safe."
I was nodding at his stupid phrases and rhetorical questions, and slowly my shaking stopped. I grabbed Duncan and hugged him. "Thanks!"
"It's okay. Just get...off...me..."
Okay. I slipped away from him.
I shakily stood up to look over the edge of the basket. Ah. It was high. Very high. My stomach flipped like an Olympic gymnast. I turned away.
I tried to focus on something other than the height. The first thing that popped into my mind, of course, was you-know-who.
I knew that no matter what, I would never forget him. I would do whatever I could to find him again, and I wouldn't rest until I did.
"Isadora?" It was Hector. As I turned to talk to Duncan and Hector, Klaus slipped slowly out of my mind for the moment.
But not my heart.
Never, ever, my heart...
~THE END~
Oh my god! I can't believe it's all done! These were my favorite stories ever to write, even though I may not have technically written them myself. So...I've started a sequel, say if you want it, it's hard to write about them up in the balloon thing w/out being b*o*r*i*n*g...And I am trying hopelessly to write a songfic. All this and also my mid-TAA fic. And of course they're all—(whodathunkit?)—Isadora/Klaus!
Thanks so much to: Ruby Lou (My little sister, the first person to hear these stories) Kiki Lynn Amidala Black (The firstest reviewer of all these stories!), Mysterious Shadow Writer (who gave Opposites Attract an awesome review!), Jade Roxanne (Who gave every story awesome reviews!), wizardmagic65 (Thanks for reviewing!), kav, Paulina (who still needs to read this one), Coffe Luv (who gave each story *splendid* reviews), TaNsHi (ditto—I love your D/V fic!), billy bob (My first flame—wow), Kelli Granger (I changed the title...), Genemi (who turned out to not be JT after all...), Ally Quagmire (Who was SO nice to review!!!), Sara and her Pinkys (wonderful reviews), M.N.M. (Thanks! ^_^), and Eris11! (All the reviewers of Everywhere.) Also, thanks to: Ally Quagmire, TaNsHi, EvilMicella (Wow—you always found the V.F.D.), Jade Roxanne, Iris Violetta Frankenmyer (Your reviews are all so interesting! ^_^), Sara and her Pinkys (You give awesome reviews!), Silver, Andi, toeshoe88, Coffe Luv, Eris11, GeNeMi(Who really was JT), wizardmagic65 (^_^), Elfin Emerald, SpiderSquirrel, and Raining Dreams (The reviewers of God Must Hate Me.) Also to: elfinemerald, Coffe Luv, Kates Cousin (^_~), Sara and her Pinkys, phred doesn't like you(Muffins!), bookworm39(Thanks!!! ^_^), Jade Roxanne, Bri of VFD (Wowzies), sam( Tom Felton hasn't written back yet...*sob*), Iris Violetta Frankenmyer, Eris11,