Disclaimer: Dudes belong to Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler. Dudes don't belong to me.
Author's Note: Yep, Nny11. Ran a red light because of them sex fantasies. Tell me, when you write a fic, do you talk to yourself like Virginia Woolf in "The Hours"? Because it's either it's just me or both of us are completely crazy. Mwrah. Dedicated to the only two dudes reading this story. Stella and Nny11. Meef.
Chapter Four:
Ghosts
"Sister."
The thought alone was too incredulous to be true.
Sadly and ironically though, Klaus Baudelaire never had much luck with thoughts. He'd learned slowly and early, from unfortunate experience, the maddeningly great difference between thoughts and reality.
Reality, simply, could not be standing in the middle of your unchanged kitchen after finally coming to terms about marriage (that it was unavoidable, but drinking cured all) while greeting your sweet little sister (who you haven't seen for the longest time) before coming face to face with the person whom you, with the charred remains of your heart, wretchedly still despised (or so you told yourself). The same person who wrapped you around her familiar fingers, promising you the world while arching her back on that creaky bed, who made you love her because you had no choice, and threw you away because she didn't need you anymore.
And only one person in the whole wide world, he knew, could ignite such sweet sorrow and memories back into his brain and heart, defeating everything he had worked for in the past couple of years into nothing but cold, black, ash.
"Violet…"
She outwardly winced at the way he whispered her name. It was the same voice she heard five and a half years ago, when nothing could be done about anything and she ran, her ribbon fluttering like bats behind her, out the makeshift wooden door, into the pouring rain and beyond.
It was the song of her little brother's heart breaking.
Again.
"Violet…," he repeated, as if convincing himself that yes, she was here, sitting right there, in this house.
She, however, could not find herself to look up at him, keeping her eyes lowered to her lap, twisting her hands together above the netted lace.
'This can't be happening.' She blinked back tears, trying to keep her sorrow at bay. The memories kept surfing over and over into the fragile, but still withholding, walls of her heart.
'Stop it. Please stop it. Why did I ever come?' Those sentences ran amuck in her mind's maze, crashing into corners, sometimes leading nowhere.
And Klaus, he tried, fruitlessly, to tear his eyes away.
But she looked so beautiful.
It tore him right apart and he was fourteen again or fifteen and she was staring up at him with those strange same gorgeous eyes and told him 'I love you' and then…and then he couldn't STAND IT ANYMORE.
"Why?" he practically screamed at her, furious and flailing uncontrollably.
Isadora had backed up into a wall, her shocked face betraying all of her emotions, and could only watch as her husband's docile mask shattered into twenty different pieces, all reflecting Violet Baudelaire's enchanting face. She couldn't move, or refused to, and watched as the ironic nature of her poetry slowly came to life and unfolded.
He, or rather his blind rage, blocked out all the images around him: Sunny yelling, threatening bodily harm if he dare approached their sister, Isadora stifling sobs into her hands, the leaking wooden roof…
Only when he heard the faintest sound penetrating the very depths of his rage did he stop.
And soon everything else came into view.
"You stay the hell away from her, Klaus Baudelaire! She's our goddamn sister and you know that!"
"I am so sorry, I didn't know, I didn't know," Isadora chanted into her palms, eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying.
Violet just sat there, watching her knuckles slowly turning ivory
"Are you even listening to me, Klaus? Take one more step towards her and I'll-" Sunny stopped short, confused as her brother calmed down, dropping his arms to his sides. Her fringe was in the way of her sight, so she had to blow the thin strands out of her face before seeing what really stopped him, since she was smart enough to know that her brother would never really listen to her, regardless of empty threats.
He was strange and scary that way.
She followed his gaze across the tiled floor to the legs of an abandoned stool, where her brother's sight ended.
There, curled up tightly in the right corner of the kitchen counter, lay James, whimpering vowels from his frightened mouth. She saw her brother shift uncomfortably in the rectangular box of her peripheral vision, clearly embarrassed at the way he shouted while in the company of a small child.
It was as if he had forgotten everything; his rage, whatever anger still coursed through his veins…Sunny knew her brother was not a bad person and she knew that. If he could still feel remorse for his actions because of a mere child, he could never be that evil.
But what then, what could cause him to turn into such a monster? She frowned and scanned the room. Her gaze landed on the only thing probable.
And her sister still stared down at her hands.
"Oh," she heard herself say, but for some reason, she already thought she knew.
Tears dribbled down the boy's rounded cheeks like icicles in late March. Now aware of eyes, though, he proudly swiped at them with his thumb and forefinger, trying very hard, as children do, to be very brave.
Klaus, out of all people, knew and understood what it was like to be so small, yet so strong.
The child, he thought, reminded him a little bit of himself.
He warily approached the child, noticing that with every step the child flinched or closed his eyes just a tiny bit more. When he finally did reach him, he crouched down so that his face was level with the child's. He smiled softly, the ghost of a smile lingering on his saddened eyes.
"Hey, Buddy," he prodded, soothingly. "Hey. I'm sorry for yelling."
The boy stared back at him, reluctant, almost, to believe it. However, children, being the forgiving creatures they are, feel quick to forgive, most especially the increasing number of sad people, a forgivable percentage considering that all the babies born in the world many years prior are suddenly growing up. The boy, James, sniffled his last and nodded, dark curls springing forward.
"It's ok," he whispered, and Klaus Baudelaire, for the first time in the last three and a half years, felt like flying. Although being granted forgiveness had a lot to do with it, Klaus had taken one look at the boy and understood.
"It's ok," he repeated the boy's words, but ever so quietly, so that only the boy heard it. "I'll take care of you."
The boy's face broke into a handsome grin, and all tears were forgotten. "Nrgh," he mumbled into his sleeve, and everyone present in the room with the exception of Isadora, understood what that meant. Sunny herself even tried a hand at her namesake and cracked a tiny grin, much to the relief of the panicked Isadora.
Sighing gratefully, Isadora leaned back into the wall, believing that the worst was over and that yes, she was quite the genius.
Isadora Quagmire, as usual, was mistaken.
As Klaus leaned over to tousle the boy on his hair, Violet spoke. It was as if she had eyes in the back of her head, or some sort of sixth sense that enabled her to foresee the action. Either way, she spoke just as his hand hovered over the boy's dark curls, still suspended in the air.
She was still staring at her knuckles, wringing her whitening hands like ribbons.
"Don't you dare touch him," she whispered, enunciating the words clearly and coldly. The words exited her mouth as the smoky substance of a threat.
"Don't. You. Dare."
Sunny stared, mouth agape at the grim audacity of her older sister. 'Was she trying to provoke him?'
Isadora, now a bystander, closed her eyes as a familiar spider crawled up the ladder of her spine. She too was having the most unforgivable flashbacks of the past, just because of this horrid interaction of brother and sisters. She clutched her own stomach, wrestling with her own demons. 'Stop it. Stop it. Forget. Forget.' Usually the mantra worked and Isadora usually felt herself transform back into a normal, breathing person, but this time, she surmised, no one could do anything anymore.
The can of worms had been opened, and Isadora herself was to blame.
Klaus spun around on his crouched heel, dropping his hand to his side. His rage temporarily quenched, all Sunny could see was the most unreadable, contemptuous, smug look contorting his features. Sunny felt her heart drop to her stomach.
Her brother's expressions rivaled that man's…Count Olaf.
He slowly got up and walked to his older sister, who's hair, in the meantime, draped over her face like a veil of black rain. When he reached her, he didn't even bother to swivel her around to face him. He just stood there, in back of her, without moving. Once he even tried to reach out to touch her, but it seemed he thought better of it.
Because of it, his hand now stood a few centimeters from her face, close enough to radiate human warmth. Sunny saw that his face was more contorted now, a confused look following the smug one, then a sadness, then a sneer, then…
She never found out what happened after that. Violet suddenly shoved her chair back into a stunned Klaus, pushed against his chest with her elbow, then ran from the confines of the uncomfortable room.
"Violet," Sunny yelled, to no avail, after her fleeing sister.
Klaus could only watch as her hair floated behind her, like a stream of black bats, into the hallway then out the back door, into the forest that was the backyard.
They all stood (the boy sat) there, mesmerized as if watching a train wreck (which indeed could have passed off as one) until the wail that unmistakably came from James erupted from beyond his tiny throat.
"Mommy!" he cried, the tears again trickling down his face. "Mommy!"
Sunny turned and watched as a dark look passed over Klaus' face. He immediately grabbed the glass bottle from the table and took a hearty swig of whatever was inside, a dribble of orange liquid escaping the corner of his mouth.
James still hollered after Violet.
"Please, Mommy! Don't go!"
Klaus, leaning against the wall, his eyes unreadable, took another swig of his alcohol. He fixated his eyes on the empty hallway.
"She always does, kid. She always does."