Work Text:
Klaus sat nervously on the waiting room couch, fiddling with his fingers in his lap.
He was here today to interview for his dream job, and had never been more nervous in his life.
Violet had wanted him to go to this interview under a fake name, let the past stay in the past, but he wanted to be honest, truthful. He was starting to regret it already.
Klaus watched the hands on the clock tick by for what seemed like an inordinately long time, but was only about fifteen minutes or so.
Attempting to calm down, he pulled a photo out of his wallet, smiling down at the face of his daughter, one taken last year at a picnic Sunny had prepared for her seventh birthday.
She looked so happy. She was so happy.
It reminded him of what he was like at seven years old, innocent and joyful, about a fourth of the way through his parents library.
He had wanted to finish the entire thing by the time he turned fourteen.
It didn’t really happen that way.
That was part of why he wanted to be a social worker, he guessed. He wanted to help other children find somewhere to live, other orphans a good home, a home that cared. He wanted them to grow up with people who loved them, even if they weren't their biological parents. People who loved and cared for them as much as he loved and cared for Beatrice.
Every single day he thought about Beatrice. He thought about what he would have done if she had had to grow up like Sunny did, like he and Violet did. Every day he thought about that and he bit back a scream.
No one. Not a single person, no matter their age, or background, or parents, or... anything else that could possibly exist deserved to spend a single night with someone even half as vile as Olaf.
A knock on the edge of the doorframe startled him.
“Klaus… Baudelaire?” a woman asked. “Right in here, please.”
He followed her into the office, taking a seat across from her at her desk.
“My name is Klaus Baudelaire,” he told her. “I’m twenty-two years old. And I would like to apply to be a social worker.”
The woman nodded.
“Tell me about yourself, Klaus. We did a background check and well… we’d like to hear what you have to say.”
He nodded and swallowed loudly.
“My name is Klaus Baudelaire,”
You’ve said your name three times already, his mind whispered. Say something else!
He swallowed again.
“When I was twelve years old, my parents died in a fire. It was just me, and my two sisters, one fourteen, the other a little less than two years old. The city that we lived in… didn’t really have social workers. Looking back on it, it was strange, but there was nobody there to help kids like us. You just had to hope your parents were wealthy enough that the bank would take care of you. Anyways, we were taken to live with a man we’d never met, and the banker who took us there, well, he didn’t even stay to make sure that the house was a good place for kids.”
Klaus paused to catch his breath.
He just needed to tell her what happened.
“That man… our guardian… he wasn’t safe for kids. He screamed and yelled, making us live in a cramped room filled with bugs and mold, and… looking back, it wasn’t a safe place for us. He hated it, we hated him, but even then we didn’t get how dangerous it was. I didn’t know about the things that could happen to young children, how they could just-”
He stopped again, but the lady motioned for himself to keep going.
“My baby sister could have died in that house. She almost did. After a few days, our guardian went from neglectful to abusive, and we went to try and get help from the man who had brought us there. He didn’t listen. He put us back with him.”
The lady nodded again.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, I can definitely see your motive for wanting to be a social worker, let me-”
“I’m not done.”
“Oh.”
“This man that we were put with, was a horrible person. The worst I have ever met. He didn’t just hit us, or anything else, he tried to kill us. He tried to kill my baby sister. He tried to kill us so many times, and the banker who was in charge of us didn’t listen. And then he did. He moved us to home after home, bouncing around for weeks on end. Only our new guardians weren’t giving us up. They were being killed, murdered, by the first man, but our social worker refused to believe that was happening. They were all just ‘accidents’. At least, they were accidents until we could be blamed for the murders.”
The lady interviewing him had stopped taking notes by now, listening intently to what Klaus had to say.
“That’s why my form says I’ve been accused of murder,” he told her. “That’s why it says that I spent my teenage years as a fugitive of the law. But I didn’t do any of those things, my abuser did. He was only able to get away with it all because of how fucked up the system was. He was wrong from the beginning, horribly, insanely, wrong, but what was even more wrong was how the people in charge treated us, the people who were supposed to be the good guys, who were supposed to help, and didn’t.”
The lady nodded, meeting his eyes.
“That’s a horrible story. I can totally understand why you would want to-”
“But that’s not why I want to be a social worker.”
“Wait, what?”
“Not all of it, at least. When I was fourteen years old, me and my sisters escaped from our abuser, escaped from everyone. But something happened at The End, or rather, someone happened. Right before our old guardian died, he had a daughter. One that looked almost exactly like him. And when I looked into her eyes, his eyes for the first time I thought I would hate her.”
He smiled, taking a peek at the photograph of Beatrice.
“But I didn’t hate her. I loved her. I loved her more than anyone else. Because she was my daughter. Not his. Never his.”
He smiled at the lady now, thinking of Beatrice. Her first steps, when she learned how to read, even the first word she spoke. Dada. Him. Not Olaf, him .
“My daughter is my entire world, and I am grateful every single day that she lives with a family, a father who loves her, instead of one who doesn’t.”
He wiped a tear off his face with his shirt sleeve, before remembering what he was here to do.
“So… um… you should hire me. Thanks.”
The interviewer nodded, grabbing a tissue out of the nearby box.
“You should be hearing from us in the next few days.”
He walked out of the office, checking his phone while he waited for the bus.
One missed call. Violet.
He called her back.
“Hey Klaus, how was your interview?” she asked.
“It was good,” he replied. “Or at least I think it was-”
“Hold on one second,” she said. “I have someone here who wants to speak to you.”
There was a noise of Violet handing the phone to someone else.
“Hi Daddy!”
Beatrice.
His heart swelled.
“How’d you do?”
He smiled.
“I think I did really well Bumblebea,” he told her. “I got to talk about my favorite thing in the entire world.”
He could hear Beatrice pause for a moment in thought.
“Books?” she asked finally.
He shook his head.
“No, silly. You. ”