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“Klaus?” Vanya stared at her brother, sitting down on his bed and holding his head in his hands, from the hallway. He looked up, noticing her, and then went right back to hiding inside of his hand, rubbing his temples and sighing.
“Are you ok?” Her voice was more compassionate than it had been in days as she saw her sibling, a changed man, dog tags hanging from his neck. “What happened?”
“Vanya, please just leave.” She slowly walked up to him, Klaus not even noticing, lost in the torment of his mind.
“You would tell me if something is wrong, yeah?” The man lowered his hands from his face which were occupying them and looked towards his sister.
“I really don’t want to talk about it, and I doubt you would care. Besides..” Klaus took off his leather boots and threw them to the other side of the room. “It’s over now. Go on with whatever you were doing.” Vanya sat down beside him. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“What do you want to talk about then?”
“Why do you look like this?” She looked down at his tattoo. “What the hell happened?”
“What happened Vanya, is I now understand why Five can’t stand all of us. We’ve never been through that amount of suffering, I only got a kiss of it and I can’t stand it.”
“You’ve got to explain to me what you went through for me to help.”
“You know how Five got lost time traveling?”
“Of course.”, Vanya said obliviously.
Klaus glanced into her eyes and itched his nose, looking away awkwardly.
“No, not you. How?”
“These people in suits, they tortured me.”
“Hold up, what?”
“I was tortured, but it was a long time ago. I mean it was a few days ago, but it was really a few months.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s ok, Vanya. You weren’t here to even notice I was gone. If there’s anyone to blame it’s everyone else in this family. Or me, for not being close enough to you for you to notice. But they tortured me, trying to get me to rat out Five, I don’t even care anymore truthfully. They had this briefcase with them, and I took off running.”
She sat down by her brother, listening to every word he said thoroughly.
“A briefcase?”
He laughed, “I thought it would have some money, or maybe I could sell. Regardless, I was gonna use it to numb the pain.”
“Oh.”, She said awkwardly, feeling stupid.
“I believed I had been put through hell when I sat in that chair, those two assholes terrorizing me. But that was nothing compared to what happened when I opened up the damn thing. I sat on the subway, hoping to god that there may be some treatment to my pain found in that metal box. But when I unlatched it, I found there was this energy inside, looking into it somewhat made me forget all that happened. When I looked up, I was somewhere else entirely though. Surrounded by all these men in uniform panicking.”
Vanya gulped, dreading the words that would come out of Klaus’s mouth.
“I was so confused at first, and then some general handed me a gun, and I heard all of the battle in the air. Then I realized what had happened, and felt this deep pit in my stomach.” He swallowed nothing, trying to tell his story without tears.
“And I was scared, truly, for the first time in my life. It wasn’t this long anticipation of the future like I had with the drugs, it was just pure fear. I just wanted to be home, to see my brothers, my sisters.”
Vanya smiled, to which Klaus smiled back, then many tears fell from his eyes. “Did I do something wrong?” “No, no. That’s the first time I’ve felt happy since it started. God, Vanya. I’m so done with everything.”
“You’re back now, Klaus. Whatever happened there doesn’t matter anymore.”
There was an empty silence that filled the room for a few minutes, Vanya was now leaning against the wall, staring into the ceiling and staying with her brother, trying to comfort him.
“Does it feel like it’s ending? The suffering?”
Klaus looked back at his sister and smiled slightly, “Yeah. A little bit. In a way, I feel higher than the drugs could ever make me. I’m here with you, I have walls surrounding me, it’s really comforting”
“How long were you there?”
Klaus took a moment and then responded, “Ten months. I haven’t been home for ten months.”
“Jesus.”
“Klaus, maybe you should go talk to someone else. Pogo or Allison, or one of our brothers. I’m not right for this.”
“Hey, who said you’re not right to talk to? I think you’re perfect. Besides, I haven’t seen you in ten months, this is lovely.”
“And the truth is, I never really appreciated you for who you were until now. I was always caught up in my own life, never realizing how much you meant to me.”
Vanya noticed her eyes stinging, “No one’s said anything to me like that, you seriously mean it?”
Klaus smiled, “Well yeah, I mean it. We always lollygagged through this house, ignoring you, and it wasn’t right. Dad was ignorant and separated you from us, but I was even more ignorant to let him do it. You always kept me going on those tough days, hearing your violin on a sad day, sometimes it was the only beauty I could see in the world.”
Vanya gave a genuine loving smile and laughed.
“I’m not even that good, I’m only third-chair.”
“Bullshit, you’re amazing. I remember watching that performance you gave at the concert hall in, I don’t know, 2017?”
“When I was wearing the blue suit?”
“Yes! That one. That shit was legendary, you basically upstaged the conductor himself.”
Vanya smirked, “I thought that was one of my bad performances.”
“Well you were wrong, I loved it. Your music really gives me this feeling of hope, that one day life will be the best that it can be, you know?”
After laughing joyously for a little bit, Vanya asked, “You lost someone didn’t you?”
Klaus suddenly dropped all emotion from his face. “How’d you know?”
“No one appreciates life like that without losing something.” Vanya stared at the wall adjacent to the bed, not sure if intimacy was appropriate at that moment. “Who were they?”
Klaus tried his hardest to speak, his voice wavering in the still air, his chest feeling heavy. “His name was Dave.” The soldier wiped his tears which ran from his cheap mascara. “He was the first person I really felt I could connect to while I was there. Then I realized our connection was stronger than any connection I had with anybody else. He was so kind, despite all of what was going on around us, he sat down and tried to make me, the newbie, feel comfortable. Before we got familiar with one another, we used to go down to the river and skip rocks in the water. I would stare at all of his curves, admiring him as if he were a Greek god. He would turn around and laugh. ‘Klaus’, he would say. ‘You don’t have to look at me like that all the time. There’s so much more beauty around us that isn’t me or you.’ ‘But there’s so much beauty in you and me.’, I would say back.”
He laughed innocently. “The universe just felt different when we were together, I never thought about all the bullshit. I just loved him and he loved me back. When he died, that feeling grew larger. For some reason, I’m just happy, I can see the beauty in everything now. I always felt the ghosts around me but never thought I would see someone I love turn into a ghost. His death was unimaginably painful, but it reminded me that life is precious, and every single minute matters.”
“Is that why you keep talking with me?”
“I guess so.”
“You really weren’t lying, you like my music?”
“Of course.”
Klaus looked at his sister to see tears streaming down her face, which she desperately failed to hide. “I’m sorry.”, She said in between her sniffles. “It’s just that…” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “I keep on going throughout the day wondering if I even deserve life, feeling like I’m not good enough at anything I do. I’m third-chair, and even when I’m relaxing I can’t relax so I’m just in this in-between of not knowing what to do, and I end up doing nothing, and I’m scared that if I die tomorrow my life would be meaningless. I just wish life were simple.”
Klaus looked into Vanya’s tear-clouded eyes. “Hey. None of those feelings are your fault, Dad abused you, he abused all of us. Of course you want to make the best out of life when your Dad is the guy who Jeffrey Dahmer probably looks up to.”
Vanya chuckled and slowly her tears faded.
“I’m just tired, you know? I never feel special.”
“You are insanely special, I wasn’t lying when I said you got me through the day, nobody else could do that. That’s a superpower itself, inspiring people to continue on.”
“How does it feel being back?”
“Scary. I had all this time in Vietnam that I don’t know what the world is anymore, I know I want to appreciate it but, I can’t really remember what it is. I don’t know how long it will take to get used to it, you can’t just go from bombs and dead lovers back to filing taxes.”
“Klaus, you have never had to file taxes, we don’t exactly have normal lives.”
He laughed, “Yeah, you’re right. Still, it’ll take some time, but I’ll be ok, at some point. It’s hard though, every time I close my eyes I can’t help but to see his soulless face staring back into mine, eyes looking right through me.”
“You lost somebody important to you, somebody you cared for. That’s not something you can easily bounce back from. You just have to be patient.”
“Yeah.” Klaus seemed as if he were staring at somebody in the distance, somewhat ignoring his sister at that moment.
“Klaus? What are you doing?”
“Looking at somebody I took for granted.”
Vanya was confused by this and assumed that maybe he was hallucinating.
“But yeah, it’s not going to be easy, going back into this life.”
“You know, you’re the first person in a very long time to make me feel like I was alive.” She itched her head nervously. “I mean really, I feel powerful right now, like I could take on the world”
“You’re the first person to even be concerned for me since I’ve been back, thank you.”
“No, thank you.”
Vanya and Klaus hugged each other, as they were doing so they felt all of the stress of the past fade away, the toxicity leaving their bodies. When it ended they both felt alleviated, ready to walk into life, and take control.
“God, why don’t we talk like this more Vanya?”
“I guess we never really thought to do so.”
“Well that was a mistake, I feel better than I have in years.”
Vanya smiled slightly, highlighting her little mouth corners. “Me too.”
“What do you want to do now that you’re back?”
Klaus breathed in deeply, “Hmmm, I want a hamburger.”
Vanya grinned, “A hamburger?”
“Yeah like just a really good hamburger, maybe with some chili on it, and some onions where it will all just melt with the cheese and really hit the spot.”
“I thought you were vegan.”
“I was just in Vietnam, I get to have a cheat day.”
The siblings rushed up, excited to do something for what felt like the first time.
Luther sat on the leather living room couch, a protein bar sitting in his gargantuan hands, staring off into the distance when he saw two familiar figures enter his vision.
“Klaus! I haven’t seen you for days.”
Klaus scratched his forehead awkwardly. “Oh yeah, I was tortured.”
“What?”
“Then I fought in Vietnam for ten months, it was great.”
“Are you high?”
“No actually, I’m not. Vanya and I are gonna go get chili burgers. Have an orgasmic day King Kong.”
Vanya smiled at her muscly brother, and waved goodbye, being surprised at how happy she was feeling. Luther had no choice but to look at Pogo in confusion, as to say ‘What’s going on with them?’ To which the butler shrugged his shoulders. Luther then stared at the marble floor for a minute or so, and smirked, biting into the chocolate protein bar and just being happy his brother wasn’t sleeping in a ditch somewhere.