1960

"Prophet? Hey, Prophet?" Stupid voice. Annoying voice. Shut up.

Klaus said as much to the empty room.

"Do you think you might be having trouble sleeping because you're not actually a prophet?" Ben, when he was really peeved about something, did this annoying Scooby Doo routine where he'd project his voice all over the place like an omnipresent specter. Because he was good at being a little bitch when it suited him.

Klaus rolled over in the soft bed toward the wall. He'd liked this room best of all because it was roughly the same size as his at home.

"And pretending to everyone that you're levitating on your own is helping any of us how?" Ben's voice came from right behind his closed eyes.

Klaus considered manifesting him so he could punch him in the face. But he was more than likely still throwing his voice and thus, sadly, too far away to be punch-able.

"Seriously, bro. What's your endgame here?"

"Endgame, yeah, right. Like I ever have one of those," Klaus mumbled against his pillow. Why couldn't Ben be coming up with the plans in his safe, unchanging little ghost world and let Klaus spiral into an existential crisis unbothered?

It had been almost six months. Klaus was good at being alone. He wasn't good at waiting alone. And if the rest of the fam didn't show the hell up soon, he wasn't sure what he was going to do.

Ben was monologuing somewhere in the dark room. Klaus was listening to almost none of it. He really needed to practice manifesting Ben on mute.

At least he'd gotten better at blocking out Mrs. Randolph's two dead ex-husbands. She really was a sweet old lady, and Klaus was glad she'd done well for herself through gold-digging from those two assholes.

And he wasn't really in a position to take anything other than what he could get. So if that included leveraging his very real powers as not quite what they actually were, he would. So Ben needed to get off his back.

"I know I'm not good at this, das Bruderherz. What do you want me to do?"

"Not freeload?" Ben's voice sounded normal again and came from what sounded like the floor near his bed. And Klaus sighed, not bothering to turn back over and just lifted up the covers. A few seconds later, Ben took the invitation and crawled in next to him.

"Shut up and go to sleep."

"This is not what I signed up for," Ben grumbled his usual complaint and plowed his half-corporeal forehead into Klaus's shoulder. It felt more real than the rest of this.

"It's all downhill from here," Klaus agreed and let Ben's tepid presence lull him into his usual uneasy sleep.

000

1962

Vanya was cold and wet and already shivering the moment her eyes opened to relative darkness. And the sensations in her body were running wild like she'd never felt before.

She'd been in control the whole day, if a removed sort of control that felt like looking into a fogged-up mirror. But still. Now, it felt like she was practically radiating with adrenaline and unchecked nerves.

It was a pretty terrible feeling, actually.

Vanya also knew as she slowly found the ground underneath her body and pushed against it with trembling hands, that she'd unleashed more of her power sometime in the last few minutes. She didn't consciously remember doing it, but she had the same afterwards feeling that seemed to be part and parcel of dredging up these latent and, for lack of a more accurate word, powerful abilities.

Maybe part of it was because she'd managed to somehow instinctively start sucking the life force out of her brothers. That was the last thing she really remembered. Something came after, but she'd been falling through endless space already. It felt like she'd landed here at the end of some long, dark, descent.

Vanya managed to reach her knees and turned. And her heart stopped at the sight of Luther on his stomach, cheek against wet cement. His mouth was open slightly, one large arm reaching outward toward the light. A-a streetlight, probably.

Vanya was unsteadily pushing herself to her feet in a panic, her powers already zapping to life and building up. She was still high from his energy, humming on it. It felt like a fiery stream of poison running its course through her veins.

Her brother's face didn't look all that different in its current unconscious form than it had through that horrible, scream-proof glass, and all Vanya could think was go, get away, leave, before he hurts you again as she stumbled her way toward the light. Her not-at-all-waterproof shoes kicked up the contents of shallow puddles as she tripped over herself to the edge of a building, gripping its rough brick corner and staring out at the street that bisected it.

It was silent and unfamiliar.

Vanya felt her power shrink to a sputtering, gasping spark and then go out. She could hear the slosh of the last droplets of rain against the wet pavement, the faint honeybee buzz of the signs that rimmed the storefronts, the dying wind. But she wasn't where she was supposed to be, and she didn't know how she'd gotten there.

And when she looked back at Luther's dark bulk, sprawled on the gritty pavement, she wavered. It only took another few moments to decide. Then she slowly limped her way back into the darkness of the buildings bordering the narrow alleyway.

She couldn't bring herself to get too close to him, so Vanya skirted his still form, and once her hand met the solid metal of the large dumpster near where she'd awoken, she slowly let it support her on the way down. With her back against the dumpster's wet side and her soaked knees drawn up to her chest, Vanya took a deep breath and stared warily at Luther's unmoving body.

Something was wrong with him. He wouldn't have just fallen asleep like that, and he certainly wouldn't be letting her sit here in peace if he knew she was a handful of steps away… On second thought, maybe she should just go; try to get help on her own and escape while she had the chance, before he woke up and figured out they were here together. But that begged the obvious questions: Where would she go in an unfamiliar, and for the most part, empty, downtown in the dead of night? How would she know who to trust? And even if she found someone willing to help, could she actually find a way home on her own? Was she really even in a state fit to try?

The unavoidable answer to all of it was no. The truth was, she didn't have anywhere to go.

And, despite herself, Vanya was also worried about Luther. Everything he did was strong: his powers, his leadership, loving Allison, defending Dad within literal inches of his own life. If an unstoppable force was closing in, he was the immovable object that walked out in front to meet it. And now he was lying passed out in a random alley, out of strength and probably hurt. Vanya couldn't just leave him. Not after she'd…

Ashamed suddenly, Vanya tried for another, deeper, breath.

Her powers were a defense, not a solution. Right now, she needed to think through the thick wall of cotton in her brain. She knew with a newfound certainty that if something did happen, she was more than capable of protecting herself and Luther. Logically, she had nothing to fear at this specific moment. She could—needed to—get her bearings. But even as she thought it, Saint-Saëns's "Danse Macabre" was rising dramatically in the back of her mind like a campy film ghost ascending from a graveyard. She could hear the jarring stops—the tritones—straining as the devil leaned heavily into the dissonance.

It wasn't even the worst of the sounds in her head. The recurring whisper-whir of her bow cutting across Allison's throat was joined by the bumpiness of the bus ride on her way to the concert, the sound of a screaming audience, the crunch of spines making contact with hard surfaces, and a soft voice. It was talking to her, and getting louder with every statement.

"Your father…afraid of you… Your brothers and your sister, they went along with him every step of the way."

"Your family. They've seen you in action and they know what you're capable of and they will come for us."

"Vanya, you need me."

It was true. At least, part of it. She'd come back and her family hadn't wanted her. It hurt her worse to hear the words in hindsight and have to wonder if they'd been true before she lost control. If she'd had a chance before her loneliness and her anger and the stress of accidently killing those men had grabbed ahold of her fledgling feelings and beat them relentlessly until all she'd felt was an even deeper nothingness than the medication had been causing.

She wondered if she even wanted her family's love anymore. If she'd come back to them peacefully with powers, they would have had to accept her. But that didn't mean it would have been pretty. Allison had always been one to grapple for status and Klaus was wrapped up in his own problems and horrors. Diego had made it clear that he thoroughly disliked her in general, which was somehow a relief. Which left Five and Luther. The only two that might have actually embraced her without making her feel like shit.

Watching him lying there, his large back moving up and down slowly, a small part of her did get it. Luther hadn't been there to see what happened. She didn't know how much context he really had for her feelings and what had been going on with Leonard. Plus, Luther loved Allison, perhaps more desperately now than ever before. She could imagine all too clearly what he had found when he eventually located her. It was brutal to even consider what those first few moments must have felt like. Then, to find out that it was Vanya who had done that to her own sister…

If she was still on her meds, Vanya might have been moved to empathize.

But she wasn't anymore. And she was angry. Luther had taken her raw pain and the very last of her trust and crushed it in his big, strong convictions. She'd handed the broken pieces of herself over to him because she'd needed him, and he'd done exactly what Leonard – even now she couldn't bring herself to think of him as Harold – had said he would do. Except he hadn't even been man enough to be straightforward about his intentions. He'd let her feel safe and then attacked; he'd used her. That one moment had confirmed everything she'd ever wondered about her family, and the implications had splintered down into her soul so far she couldn't feel where they stopped.

"They want you to feel small, but they are the small ones next to you. Compared to them, you are a god."

Vanya shoved the dirty heels of her hands into her face, trying to stop her racing thoughts and a sudden round of furious tears. Because now, it was all too obvious that Luther really was the small one, and both of them needed her to figure out where they were and what had happened. And for as much as Vanya knew she had the choice to get up and walk away, she also knew she wouldn't.

Instead, she sat there, still small, and cried as Luther used her all over again. She cried that even now, she was still just as powerless to stop him.

000

The big guy and small girl stayed longer than the others. They seemed to be direct opposites of each other, so it made sense that the girl was waiting for the guy to wake up. Elliott kept a tally on his chalkboard of how many times he had to talk himself out of venturing down the stairs and outside to check on them. Fourteen was the current number.

And every time he looked out his window and they were still there, he'd add a tally mark.

This went on for several hours and another several dozen tally marks.

Finally, after he'd fallen asleep on the couch for the tenth time and dreamed about aliens and saucers with glowing beams of light, Elliott resolutely stood and strode into the bedroom and shut the door. If the humanoids were still there in the morning, he would go out and see if they needed help and hope they weren't hungry for a curious stranger.

000

They were not still there in the morning.

Thanks to Katie for being my beta, and thank you for reading!

Das Bruderherz is my attempt at "dear brother" (because high school German did not stay in my head), so if I wrote the wrong translation, please let me know!